The Windy City Weekend

I had to go to St Charles, Illinois for a week of training for work so Dave took this opportunity to check out Chicago for a long weekend.  Dave flew up Thursday night and I met up with him at our hotel Friday afternoon for a weekend of Chicago fun.

 

Friday morning, Dave checked out Wrigley Field while I finished up my training class.  Once I got into town, we headed out to Mr Beef for an Italian Beef sandwich then walked around town.  We checked out Millenium Park, the Art Gallery, the John Hancock tower, then caught a movie (The Men Who Stare At Goats) and had dinner at a pretty cool italian restaurant by our hotel.

Saturday, we headed out on a double decker tour of the city.  Pretty informative tour and definitely an enthusiastic tour operator.  It was a pretty windy day, but at least it was sunny!  Even nice enough to snag 2 seats up top of the bus.

Afterwards, we stopped at Gino's East for some Chicago deep dish pizza and then headed back to Michigan Avenue for some Garretts Popcorn.  After waiting in line for a long time (over an hour!!!) we went back to the hotel to catch the second half of the Florida - South Carolina football game.  Then it was off to a late dinner at Grand Lux Cafe on Michigan Avenue.

Sunday morning we did some shopping on the Magnificent Mile before heading out to Midway to catch our flight back to Florida.  Of course we couldn't leave Chicago without a Chicago Dog so we grabbed some for lunch at the airport.

Dave took most of the pictures over the weekend, but here are 4 off of my camera!

 

Hehe...Dave being dramatic about the line at Garretts!

Marine Corps 10K Weekend

A while back, I decided that signing up for running a 10K road race would be a good idea. I've never run any races before, but have walked plenty of 5K ones. Not really sure why, but I thought a 5K would be too easy for me to cheat my way through...so I signed up with Lelaine for the Marine Corps 10K run in Washington, DC. It sounded like a great race and it gave me an excuse to go and visit Lelaine and Chris!

I got into DC Friday night before the race and we kicked off what was to be a fun weekend with dinner at Zaytina. It's one of Lelaine's favorite places and it also was a restaurant with a chef who competed on the latest season of Top Chef.

Zaytina oil and vinegar

Saturday was a pretty dreary, cold, and wet day but we decided to make the best of it and drive out to Maryland for some touristy fun. We headed out to Fredrick and checked out a great little chocolate shop, Volt Restaurant (also owned by a contestant on Top Chef), and a local Maryland winery. Back in DC, we had a "pasta dinner" in preparation of our run and headed back to Lelaine and Chris' to watch some Gator (Lelaine and Jenn) and Missouri (Chris and Doug) football before Sunday morning's race.

Downtown Fredrick, Maryland

Outside of Volt

This wouldn't be a very "Jenn Blog" if I didn't post pictures of the food! Volt's dining area was booked solid for lunch, but we were able to snag 4 seats at the bar and had a great $20 fixed price lunch. The bartendar was friendly, the restaurant was great (minus the bathroom door layout which caused me to totally NAIL some poor woman with the sliding door as I was leaving...oops!), and the food was tasty!

Ravioli Appetizer

Striped Bass Entree

Textures of Chocolate Dessert

Race Day! I'm such a cold weather wimp! I'm not going to lie...I really thought about not running at all, but with much coercing (and a lot of mocking by Chris!), I suited up and made it down to the Mall for the start of the race.

Pre-Race: Lelaine wasn't able to run the race because of a training injury, but she went with us to provide moral support, carry our stuff, and take pictures.

Post-Race: Chris and I stopped to pose with the Marine Corps Bulldog.

Lelaine channeling The Barefoot Contessa with her Tequila Lime Chicken!

Viva Las Vegas

I ♥ Vegas!

This time, the hotel of choice - Encore.

An obligatory stop to the M&M World shop


A day trip to Hoover Dam

Reenacting Repelling

Back in Vegas to see JUSTIN at Mandalay Bay for his JT & Friends Concert

Friend 1: Jay Sean

Friend 2: Taylor Swift

Friend 3: Alicia Keyes

Friend 4: TLC (minus L, but she was there in spirit...err...voice overs and on the big screen)

Friend 5: Ciara

Friend 6: Snoop Dogg

Friend 7: Timbaland

And then...JUSTIN!

Birthdays, Arabian Nights, and NASA

The BIG 3-0!

Seems like this birthday snuck up on me as far as planning for some big event to celebrate turning the Big 3-0! Even though Lelaine did her best to make sure we had some plans!!! Its ok though, I still plan to make up for it another time :)

Without grand plans, we settled on a family weekend to celebrate our birthdays (Goo Ma, David and mine). We ended up going to watch the ARABIAN NIGHTS Dinner Show, then went to Cape Canaveral to check out NASA and had a late lunch at a local seafood bar on the water.

Dinner choices for our dinner show - unanimous vote that the mashed potatoes were the best thing on the menu

Horses that were part of the show

A fruit cake birthday cake

Goo Ma's gifts


David boycotting some afternoon NASA activities

Looks like he's cheering up

Thanks for sharing the birthday weekend with me!!!

July 4th Blue Ridge / California Family Trip

I thought about backdating some posts just to make me feel better about being a complete slacker when it comes to blogging...but I decided against it. A.) Because I'm lazy :) and B.) Because...well, I just dont think I am up for the work.

So...with that said - here is a brain dump of some events past!

4th of July weekend in the Blue Ridge Mountains

Dave has had this idea to go "camping" for a while now. While there were no tents involved, we did rent a cabin out in the woods and spend a weekend "with nature". An 8 hour car drive later, we found ourselves home away from home in a cabin in Blueridge, Georgia.

We spent the holiday weekend hanging out in a very modern cabin, cooking, grilling, hiking, tubing, and watching fireworks.

Long weekend trip out to California to meet up with my parents:

Back in the middle of July, my parents flew out to San Francisco to spend a week or so visiting my mom's sister and her husband. I decided to fly out for a long weekend and spend a few days hanging out with them, check out the sites, and see my aunt and uncle who I hadn't seen in a year or so.

Saturday, we got up and made our way down the Pacific Coast Highway with our ultimate destination being Hearst Castle. The road was definitely windy (twists and turns, not wind gusty) but very pretty. My parents had made the drive a few years back and had great memories of this roadside restaurant they had stopped at. Of course we didnt know the name of the place and we werent sure what city it was in, but we figured if we drove long enough, we'dhave to run into it sooner or later. Well...turns out it was further south than we expected, so we had to stop earlier in the drive to get lunch. After a pretty disappointing lunch at some random grill in Big Sur, the restaurant of my parents' previous trip appeared some miles down the road. We stopped for coffee and to soak in the views of the Pacific Ocean.

Back on the road, we continued the drive to our hotel for the evening. At the end of the day, I think we had been on the road for 6-7 hours...I can't really remember, but I know it was long.

We checked into our hotel, drove around town and settled on a local Chinese restaurant for dinner. We turned in for the night and headed out the next morning to take a tour of Hearst Castle.

Once we made it back into San Francisco, we met up with my other aunt who lives in the area and we had dinner. Next day...more family eating! We skipped breakfast on Monday in preparation for a buffet lunch. Good thing because there was a lot of food. There also was a huge (taking up an entire separate banquet room huge) party there and the staff couldn't keep up with the food. They were literally RUNNING from the kitchen to the stations to refill all the entrees. I have to say, it was a good thing we got there early because there were huge lines once they got there.

Rhode Island

Friends Jen and Dan got married in Rhode Island in early June and Dave and I make the trip up for the weekend to help celebrate.

The day was great...all sunshine and lemonade :)

We stayed at the 'swanky' NYLO Hotel in Warwick, RI. Trendy and modern with lots of concrete...oh and dance music till 2am courtesy of the DJ downstairs :) Once you move to a high enough floor and away from the bar area, you're good though!

We were pretty close to Evelyn's Drive In (featured on Food Network's Diners, Drive Ins, and Dives) so we ventured out to see what the place was all about. Unfortunately, it was mostly fried seafood. Normally that wouldn't be a bad thing, but Dave and I had just stuffed ourselves with clam cakes and clam chowder at the wedding. We took some pictures of the place and later on went to Bertucci's for dinner instead.
We spent Sunday checking out Providence, had a nice outside lunch and then headed off to the airport.