Brrrrrr!!

Holy carp is it cold outside! You walk out the door, inhale, and all of your nose hairs immediately freeze. It's insane. Just transferring stuff from my mom's house to our car, and from Mimi's house to my car, and then brushing the snow off of my car - it took me half an hour to warm back up. It's miserable out there.

We went up to Grammaland on Friday to have Christmas with Gramma Susan. Uncle Tim and Aunt Debbie came too, which was a nice treat. We had a lovely dinner, then opened gifts and laughed a lot together.

We spent the night at my mom's with the girlies. Then Saturday morning, after getting my alignment fixed (something I've been procrastinating for about a month, because last time I took the kids to the car dealership, they came out to go over the invoice with me and the kids snuck off and were coloring on the brand new cars with crayons) we left for Chicago. When we arrived BJ was beat, having only slept 12 hours or so since Wednesday (it was Saturday afternoon, remember), so I left him in the hotel room to rest while I did a little quick shopping and looked for a snack. I came very close to buying him a Lego Death Star, because it was 33% off. Unfortunately, it was still $200, even after the discount, and that seemed like an awful lot to spend on a toy. Even a cool toy...

After walking around for about 45 minutes, I returned to the bakery across from the Wyndham and got a couple of sandwiches for us. Of course BJ hadn't really rested at all, but at least I tried, and I managed to get BJ a couple of small gifts while I was out, so it wasn't a complete loss. After he rested, we walked to the department store formerly known as Marshall Fields (no, I won't call it by its new name, thankyouverymuch). On the way there I saw what I thought was a solid piece of slush covered ice. It wasn't. It was a puddle. And I leapt into it, and got soggy up to my ankles. So, I got a nice new pair of faux fur lined boots from TDSFKAMS. That, and a new pair of socks, was the only shopping we had time for. We looked at FAO Schwartz, on the fourth floor, and everything was 50% off (are they going out of business too? I can't find anything online about a current bankruptcy, but found quite a bit about them filing a few years ago...), but we really didn't need a gigantic stuffed dog ($150) or unicorn ($800), so we passed them by.

We missed the tree and didn't even consider the Walnut Room, but it isn't the same anymore, anyway. No Frangos. The era has ended.

We headed back to the hotel for happy hour in Bill and Chris's room, then we all went together to the show (Blue Man Group at the Briar Street Theater). Since there were 14 of us, we rode in this:

HAHHAHAHA! I'm not even kidding - we rode in a totally pimped out white Hummer Limo (Hummo? Hlimo? I don't even know...) It was only $10 per person, and the bellman said that it would be cheaper than taking four cabs. Isn't that funny? We felt like the shiz-nit. Heee!! The driver said that the most famous people he'd driven were Shaq and Miley Cyrus. They also apparently drive a lot for the Cubs and Sox, so he knew all the coaches and a bunch of the players. It was too cool.

We arrived right on time at the theater. The show was very strange (and not only because I'd had 3 or 4 glasses of wine in Bill and Chris's room!). Afterwards we walked (a mile and a half, whoops!) to a restaurant called Vinci where we had an amazing meal.

After dinner, we called the Hummo guy again, but he was busy (or we'd really annoyed him asking him about which famous people he'd transported) so he sent two regular limos to get us instead of the one big ol' limo. You know you've arrived when riding in a "regular" limo just isn't as cool. Kind of like when I worked for my mom and I got sick of prime rib, because I was eating it every weekend at the weddings. Hello, my name is Amy and I am spoiled.

We returned to the hotel and ordered a movie on the pay per view (wink wink). Ok, seriously, it was Get Smart, and we both fell asleep about halfway through. Do we know how to party or what? And what's really sad is that I didn't sleep well at all, because I kept waking up to look for the babies (and I forgot to turn the temperature down in the room, so it was way too warm for sleeping, oh the irony - I spent today freezing my buns off, even inside).

This morning we slept late, took our time getting dressed, and then met Scott and his family for breakfast at the Corner Bakery again. We headed back to Indiana to finish our shopping though - it's a 7% sales tax that will actually benefit us versus an 11.5% tax that benefits other people (people who, I might add, are terrible drivers as a whole). Hmmmm...

We went to the Toys R Us and got the last few things for the kids. I waited in line for years, and finally when it was my turn to check out, I stepped up to the register and the power went out. Remember that ice storm I mentioned the other day? Yeah. I guess the power lines just couldn't take it anymore. It wasn't long, though, before the power came back... Then we just had to wait for all the computers to reboot. That took a while.

After that I was ready to go retrieve my babies, so we headed back to Grammaland. Mary Grace was pretty glad to see us. Claire was asleep. Apparently she spent the night waking up about once an hour to look for us and scream, and wiped herself out. She took a 3 hour nap for Mimi.

Aside from a rough bit of sleep, it sounds like the girlies had big fun with Gramma and Pops and Uncle Chuck and Uncle Trey and Aunt Mimi, though.

We had a little bit of tenseness driving back. The snow was blowing up over the highway quite a lot, and I just kept waiting to hit a patch of ice and go spinning into the northbound lane. I did half the drive and BJ did the second half. Mary Grace slept. Claire watched Cinderella and whined. But we made it.

And it's almost bed time. Hooray!

How was your weekend?

(Confidential to U.D. - happy b-day!)