Saturday we hauled my car to Grossman's, the local Chevrolet dealer.

Nathan is so bummed, he's never been defeated by a car before and not be able to fix it! But it just got to be too much for all of us.

Grossman called this morning to get permission to do another test, we're at $260 so far and that's just for testing. Hopefully I'll hear back from them soon and they'll have found the problem. If it's less than $1k for repairs we're just going to have them fix it (bye, bye Mexico…) and if it's more than $1k and Nathan's able to fix it we'll have him do it.

Anywho, that's the update on my car… At least we saved $50 by renting a car dolley and bringing it to the shop ourselves.

~Amy

Jess, Polly, and I had a most excellent trip down to see Kristie this past weekend. Friday we picked up Polly and headed out at around 3:30. We stopped at good ole MickeyD's on the way for dinner and drove straight through the rest of the way. Got to Kristie's apt in Hoffman Estates, IL at about 9:40. We got the grand tour of her apartment, it is so cute and has so much closet space!

We gave her her housewarming gifts and she loved em all!!! Polly got her a set of glass coasters that you can put pictures in with the words Live Laugh Love around the border. Jess gave her a really cool bowl made of a wire flower design filled with those cool twine balls. I bought her a framed black and white picture of a road and some trees. She had liked our tree pic in our bedroom and I saw it and thought of her. Just like I figured she wasn't expecting any gifts, which made it all the more fun to give them to her!!!

Anywho, after gifts we were starving so we headed out to Portillo's and we all got a shake/malt and foods, I had a wonderfully delicious Chicago Dog! It was so good, we all had a good time laughing about it though because the end of the hot dog sticking out looked exactly like a big toe!!! I'll post a pic on here once I get them all uploaded (hopefully tomorrow!).

Saturday morning we woke up and headed downtown Chicago! We took Jonathan's jeep, which was so nice because it had the ipass and we didn't have to pay any tolls! (Kristie also paid for our parking downtown- thanks K!) Kristie asked me to drive, which I was totally cool with, I have this ability to stay calm in downtown driving situations, even if I'm lost I'm able to keep my cool, which we kind of did end up lost cause the GPS went wacko but we figured it out and it was all good. We parked at Millenium Park and our first order of business was to see the big silver bean!!! (AKA Cloud Gate) We took many cool pics. After we walked down to Buckingham fountain but it was closed for repairs. Then we headed up the Magnificent Mile and shopped away!!! Even though Illinois' clothing tax is 10.25%- blah!!! We helped Kristie pick out a bunch of new work clothes and a really gorgeous black suit jacket.

Stopped for lunch at a cute little corner deli and we all had some soup and sandwiches. After we continued our trek along the MM. We ended at the John Hancock Tower and Jessica proceeded to buy us each our $15 ticket to the top- THanks so much Jess!!! The view was incredible!!! It was so cool to be up there, I took a ton of pictures and will have to post a few on here

After the tower we decided it was time to head back to the car. We walked a block to catch the last free trolley to our car.

While on the trolley I got a really sad phone call from one of my friends, but I won't go into it here…

After we got to the car we headed to Giordano's back in Hoffman Estates to meet Jonathan and his friend Nick for Chicago style pizza! It was so wonderfully delicious! At the end of dinner Jonathan grabbed the tab and told us to get the tip, so so sweet of him. Polly and I split the tip since JEss paid for our Hancock tour.

By then it was almost 10pm and we headed back to K's once again and chilled and talked til late and we were all sleepy.

Sunday we woke up to a cute little continental breakfast Kristie had set out for us and a super sweet note from Jonathan letting us know we need to visit again and soon!

After the 4 of us were ready we headed out to Kristie's church, Life Changers. The place was HUGE!!! Kristie jokingly calls it Solomon's Temple, it has huge columns and kind of looks like a temple. The inside was gorgeous! We got a tour of the place from Kristie and the place is huge and decorated beautifully. All of the women's bathrooms have a cute little sitting area with nice chairs and/or couches.

We also got to see Kristie's Kindergarten classroom. It was so cute! Then during our tour a little girl came running up to Kristie shouting 'Mrs. Hayes!' and gave her a really big hug, so darn cute!

After church we went to my long awaited Baja Fresh! IT was so so delicious and everything I remembered and hoped it would be!!! The other girls liked it, but not quite as much as me, lol…

After lunch we headed back to K's and got packed up and said our goodbyes and hit the road. It was a very uneventful drive home. Had KFC for dinner, that's bout it…

Anywho, it's good to be home and not so good to be back at work, but oh well.

~Amy

Well, this is the first weekend in a while that we haven't played disc golf, bummer… Friday night we chilled at home and didn't do much. Saturday was another story though!

Saturday we headed up to Taylor's Falls and met up with a few of Nathan's co-workers and some other friends to rent canoes for the day. We had 6 of us in 3 canoes. We strapped the canoes together and had 'party barge' on the river. It was a truly excellent time. The boys (3 of em) kinda got outta control but mostly they were just funny. We were on the river from 1pm-6pm, we didn't really paddle much til the last 45 minutes and then we were hauling arse to get to the 6pm shuttle back to the cars… On the way home Nathan and I stopped at My Burger right outside Lindstrom and split a burger, fries, and chocolate shake. Oh man, that place was delish!!! It's one of those burger stands that you walk up to and order, definitely stop in there if you're ever in the area.

Saturday night we were supposed to meet up with more of Nathan's co-workers to go downtown to The Shout House but that ended up not working out. We took the scooter out and met up with Mike and Polly at Buffalo Wild Wings in Apple Valley around 10pm. It was fun catching up with them and eating some tasty wings!

Sunday- I did absolutely nothing. I watched TV all day and caught up on laundry, that was about it. Kinda weird but nice.

Monday Polly and I went up to Patina in St. Paul to look for a housewarming present for Kristie, she found something, I did not. Though I did find Jessica's birthday present and I think she's gonna love it! We ate at the Chatterbox for lunch, it was so good!!! Their strawberry lemonade is to die for!

Last night I met up with Jess and again I went shopping for a housewarming gift for K, this time I found something and so did Jess! I really think she'll love all our gifts!

Friday Jess is picking me up from work at 3pm and then we're gonna go grab Polly and hit the road!!! We'll hopefully get to Kristie's around 9-10ish. We'll be spending the weekend there and heading home Sunday afternoon so none of us miss any work!!! So incredibly excited to see Kristie and Jonathan's place and church and hopefully classroom too. That and we're gonna eat at Baja Fresh this weekend- Yay!!!

Anywho, hope all is well with my reader(s)!

~Amy