Valentine's Day Weekend

We had a great weekend in the Chicago area this past weekend so I'm going to tell you faithful readers about it. To start I was super excited that we got our new GPS earlier in the week because we had 7 locations to get to that we would have had to look up directions for without the GPS. So it was a perfect time to buy one. As a side note, we got a refurbished Garmin off of Amazon. I would highly recommend going the refurbished route because technology is so much cheaper that way and most of the time things like GPS, ipods, etc. are returned because the previous owner just never figured out how to use it. So back to the weekend. We had 4 major events that I will summarize below.

Event #1: Teresa's Baby Shower

We have a picture of Teresa with her hand on my belly from when I was pregnant so we had to reverse recreate the picture.

I'm very excited to welcome Teresa's baby girl into the world in just about a month. Teresa and I have known each other since high school, are both 1st borns and obviously are both girls. It will be fun to have 1st born daughters close in age. Our friend Sonya hosted a wonderful lunch shower for her and it was lots of fun!

Event #2: Chinese New Year Dinner

Grace's red envelope from Jared and Yvonne.

My BIL and SIL, Jared and Yvonne, invited us to celebrate Chinese New Year with them this year by taking us and Matt's parents out for dinner at a yummy Chinese restaurant. Yvonne's family is Chinese and this holiday is very important in their culture so it was really special to be able to celebrate with her. Jared and Yvonne picked out all the food and we ate family style which was delicious. They also initiated Grace into the Chinese tradition of giving a red envelope with money in it to unmarried family members that are younger than them. At least I think that was the stipulation but I may be wrong. They also have to give her an even amount of dollars for luck. It was really cool for them to include Grace in that tradition.

Event #3: Mark and Julie's Wedding

Me, Mark (the groom) and Matt at the wedding reception.

On Valentine's Day we attended the wedding of our good friend Mark and Julie. We have only met Julie once but from what I could tell Mark chose very well. Mark went to college with Matt so several of his college friends were there as well as some of my high school friends who also went to college with Matt. It was nice to catch up with people and celebrate a marriage on Valentine's Day. The wedding and reception were in Chicago so of course I was a little shocked and overwhelmed by the amount of traffic. I am just not a city girl!

Event #4: Leaving Grace for several hours

Jenna, Josh, and Grace all at Grandma and Grandpa's house while their mommies and daddies went to a wedding.

Another big thing that happened for me this weekend is I left Grace for longer than I ever have before. Yes, she will be 10 months old in a couple days but I have never left her for more than 4 hours. This weekend we left before 2 and didn't get back until close to 9 so I was away from her for 7 hours. Matt's parents watched her and I completely trust them so that made things 100 times easier but it was still hard. She had to take 2 bottles which she has never done before and she did ok. When she is done nursing in a couple months I think I will feel a lot more ease about leaving her because this Sunday went well. Maybe Matt and I will take and all day date sometime in the spring.