Such a Good Weekend Back Home!

So I just spend a lovely 3 day weekend back home up in Chi-town.  I left my place ridiculously early on Friday morning, around 5 am, and after a mildly stressful flight on Spirit Airlines (there is NO legroom in those seats!) I arrived in to O'hare around 10 am.  My mom picked me up and took me back to the house where I immediately downed a handful of her homemade, yolk-free chocolate chip cookies that are ALWAYS stashed in the freezer.  Heaven.  We then made our way to the nail salon for a little mother-daughter manicure.  After my dad got home that evening I was invited to join them for their weekly bowling league where I filled in for a couple of games and got one of my best scores ever: 131!

Saturday was fairly low key.  I actually went to the gym for the first time in 2013 and got in 45 minutes of cardio on a bike and then did about another 45 minutes of stretching.  I used a list of stretches from the P90x X-stretch video and tried to recreate that routine best as I could.  It felt good!  After the gym we lunched and then relaxed around the house for a while - I got about 75 pages into a new book that I'm quite enjoying. Then we made our way back out that evening for dinner at the Crystal Lake Rib House where I partook in some delicious ribs and my parents both tried to shovel their way through the biggest pulled pork sandwiches I've ever seen.  We topped our evening off with a movie: Lincoln.  I hadn't been thrilled about seeing it, but I have to admit that for a historical story I was pleasantly surprised.  Daniel Day Lewis played a great character and really brought good ole Honest Abe's famed story telling skills to life.

Sunday we woke up to snow!  It wasn't the dangerous road kind, more just a light dusting really (see the first picture), but I was excited regardless.  Sunday was also the reason I had made my way back out to Chicago for the weekend in the first place as it was the day of my dear, incredible friend K's baby shower!  My mom and I headed into the city a bit early so we could catch extra quality time with K and then we drove her over to the party.  Since we've been friends for more than 10 years now, I've gotten to know a lot of her family and friends over time and it was great to see a lot of them again at the shower.  K looked gorgeous as usual and it was just so wonderful to get to spend time with her.  Next time I'm out in the Chicago area to see her, she'll be a mommy!!