Catch up

I know, I fell off the wagon.  I committed to regular blog updates and failed miserably.  

Here is a recap of the past two months:

Birthday weekend in April

The demise of my blogging began with the

 birthday extravaganza the last week in April.  Alex has his party at the gazebo in Grant Park on Saturday and the Mier girls had a party at the clubhouse in their neighborhood on Sunday.  We were so busy driving to Atlanta, eating cake and pizza, and recovering from food comas that we just didn't have the energy to post. 

Dining room update

Most of May was a blur of home improvement

 projects, mostly focused on the dining room.  This included approximately one million trips to Home Depot and a lot of elbow grease.  We sanded, painted, and put a polyurethane coat on the wine cabinet, dresser from the bedroom, and dining room table.  (I just made that sound way too easy).  We retired the squeaky dining chairs and replaced them with new ones from Ikea.  We also selected some prints we had laying around and had them framed.  All this and voila...a new dining room.

  

Chicago

I spent 9 days in Chicago for work at the beginning of June.  Jay and Mia visited me for the weekend.  We went took the train to the Museum of Science and Industry, had a picnic at Millennium Park, and saw a little bit of the Blues Festival.  Jay experienced a 10 hour flight delay on the way home.  After running out of diapers (requiring him to get his checked bag back to retrieve more) and entertaining a  tired and cranky child through the airport all day (and evening), he finally boarded the plane and squeezed into his middle seat with Mia on his lap. She screamed the whole flight.   

Cancun

Two days after I returned from Chicago, Jay and I took a much needed vacation to Cancun-- a wedding gift its taken us 4 years to use.  Grandma and Pop Tom took care of Mia while we were gone.  It was wonderful.  We went to the gym every morning, I read four books, and we didn't even think about scheduling anything.  We just did whatever we wanted whenever we wanted.  

Back to normalcy

Things have been back to normal in July.  We've been making regular trips to the park, hanging out with friends and generally enjoying the summer.  Its a good time to resume regular blog posts.  I'm even going to try to include a few videos.