Chicago Part 2

We slept in a bit on Sunday morning, but awoke to the sounds of breakfast being made. Sandra is excellent at making breakfast, so we were in for a treat. She made the standard monkey bread, which was wonderful, eggs, bacon, and sausage.

After our huge breakfast we decided we should head back out on the lake for some fishing. We all piled into the boat and went out to Sandra's fishing spot, where we were guaranteed to catch a fish or two. Sarah was the first to catch a fish, about 14" and 7 or 8 lbs. It took me a while, but I also caught a little smaller fish. He sure felt really heaving when I was reeling him in though. Allison was not so lucky and didn't catch a fish, something about the pregnancy hormones scaring the fish away...

Sarah and I got our photos taken with our fish so we can grace the wall of fish in the basement. Now we just need to get the photos from Sandra (hint, hint).

After we were done fishing Sarah and I said our goodbyes and headed back into the city to go to my sisters house. We did get slowed down by traffic, so it took us a little longer than we had hoped to get to Dana and Paul's house. Luckily they live right off the interstate so their house was easy to find. You certainly wouldn't know that they live right off the interstate though, there is no noise from the busy road and their tree lined street looks like something out of a story book. I didn't know these neighborhoods existed so close to the city!

It was great to see Dana and Paul and their new house. I had seen pictures, but it looked even better in person. The house is older, but has great details in the woodwork, built ins, windows, and just the rooms in general are very open letting in lots of light. Unfortunately, Charlie, their cat was not so excited to see me and hid most of the time I was there.

Not too long after I arrived we all started getting ready to head out for an afternoon and evening at Rivinia. If you don't know, Rivinia is a huge outdoor amphitheatre and space where concerts are held all summer long. It is right next to/in the Chicago Botanical Gardens. Everyone that goes to these concerts packs up food, drinks, tables (fun fact, most of the people had the same Rivinia table from Crate and Barrel, the table was named for the place!) chairs and blankets. The gates opened at 5pm and by the time we got in at 5:30 we could hardly find a place to set our camp up. And it was HOT and sunny and we didn't find a spot under a tree. But it wasn't actually as bad out as I thought it would be. It was fun just to sit and people watch and catch up with everyone. We had an excellent assortment of food, Dana brought cheese and crackers, and brownies. we also had taco dip, hummus and veggies, turkey and cheese wraps, Popeyes chicken, corn and mashed potatoes and lots of wine and beer.

Paul, Dana and Holly trying to beat the heat!

Sting started promptly at 7:30 and sounded great. He was playing with the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra and while we couldn't see him (seriously, this place is huge!) the sound was great since we were close to speakers. The sun had also started to set, so we could enjoy being outside a little more.

We didn't have a problem leaving Rivinia and traffic was light.

Monday morning Dana went in late to work so she would walk me to the train. We had a pretty relaxed morning having breakfast and me getting packed up.

My flight home was also uneventful. We left on time and I arrived into Knoxville a few minutes early! Nina was wonderful and picked me up from the airport since Dave was at a golf tournament in Nashville. It was great to see Dylan when I picked him up from daycare on Monday, I had certainly missed him!