April 2014 - a bachelorette party in our city

After a quiet few months to begin 2014, we did quite a bit in April!  Katie started a new job on April 15th.  After commuting out to suburbs for 9 months, a good opportunity came along for her as a financial reporting manager at CDW, which is located downtown.  Her previous role was a small company and her position had many mixed responsibilities including approving invoices, reviewing journal entries, closing the books and to a lesser extent financial reporting, so she was excited to find an opportunity at a big company doing only financial reporting.  For those of you that havn't heard of CDW, they sell computers, printers and everything IT related to large and small companies, the government and schools and hospitals.  Katie's dad likes to tell people that she now works for Charles Barkley, because he is their spokesperson and does all the commercials.

The weekend right before starting my new job, I had a fun weekend planned for my friend Shannon's bachelorette party.  Charlie and Brady drove down to Cincinnati to stay with Grandma Leslie.
Several of the Labrynth girls came into town for it, including Ashley, LisaB, Sarah, and LisaW and all stayed with me in our apartment on Damen Ave.  Rachel and Kate who live in Chicago came out for all festivities as well.  Friday evening, we kept it fairly quiet and just went for pizza and drinks at a place called Homeslice in Lincoln Park.

Saturday, we had a very busy day planned.  In the morning we all met for a big breakfast at Eggsperience, next we had nail appointments at a small day spa called Spa Emilia in the Gold Coast, and then at 1:30 we had reservations at The Drake for "Afternoon Tea".  Since Shannon had recently moved back from London , it seemed like a very fitting thing to do and she had always wanted to go to the Afternoon Tea at The Drake.  The tea is held in the Palm Court of The Drake Hotel and has been a long tradition in Chicago, set in a gorgeous dining room we all sipped on teas and had mini finger sandwiches and scones.

Afterwords, we walked along Michigan Avenue for a bit and then headed back to my apartment for naps and to get ready for the evening.

We had dinner reservations at an Italian restaurant downtown in the River North district called DaVanti Enoteca.  There were 8 of us girls, and Dominick (Shannon's husband/fiance) came to dinner.  Since most of us hadn't met Dominick yet, I planned a "newly wed" game with questions for him and Shannon and each time they answered a question wrong, they had to take a drink.  It was a lot of fun getting to know their relationship more from this game with questions like where was their first date, what was Shannon wearing on their first date, what are their favorite foods, etc.

After dinner, Dominick went home, but the night was still young for the us girls.  We bar hopped along in the River North disrict and eventually ended up at Howl at the Moon , a dueling Piano bar, which is one of my favorites.  Katie even got the piano players to play the Darlin' Song at the very end of the night.

It was such a fun weekend to celebrate my friend's wedding!

St. Patrick's Day 2014

After we got done with the 2014 busy season, one of the first fun things we did was celebrate St. Patrick's Day.  St. Patrick's Day is a fairly big deal in Chicago, which has a lot of Irish heritage.  The city is most famous for dying the river green - which Katie went to see with friends this year  (Charlie has yet to do so).

For the second year in a row, we spent the day at our friends the Gottfreds.  They typically have people over for St. Patty's - and this year it was a bunch of friends with infants and toddlers!  We had a great time, and Katie even met some friends out afterward while Charlie and Brady went home to nap off the excitement!

A quiet start to 2014

After we got home from Ohio for Christmas, we had a fairly uneventful next few months.  New Year's Eve was even that way!  No parties this year - we went to dinner with just us and Brady.  We ate at an Irish restaurant about a mile from our house in Lincoln Square called the Grafton, which was very good.  We did stay out later than Brady's bedtime - but he is still quite a few years away from seeing the New Year :)

January and February are busy season for us accountants.  We have lots of deadlines at the end of February.  Katie was busy filing the 10-K at her job, and Charlie was busy auditing various mutual funds.  February 27th was an all-nighter for Charlie, which is par for the course.

This was the first year that we both worked and had Brady, so we did need some help.  Charlie's mom came up on two separate weeks, taking Brady to and from daycare and cooking us a number of frozen meals - all this was very helpful and saved time!  Katie's parents came up for two weeks as well, taking Brady to daycare and helping catch up with housework.

December 2013 in Columbus-Visiting Friends and Family

All these Christmas posts are really getting me (Katie is writing this one) excited for Christmas this year.  To follow up on the most recent post, after we spent some time in Eaton, we went to Columbus for a few days to see friends and Peter and his family.
We first went to see Peter and Becca and the kids and wow it is crazy how time is flying and how much older they are all getting.  Little Tommy was 9 years old last Christmas. It was fun seeing them again and opening presents.

Afterwords, we went to see Katie's college friends, Sarah, Cathy, Lisa, Ashley with husbands and kids.  Cathy and Joey had just moved into a new house in Plain City (outside of Dublin) and had just had new baby, Max.  It was so much fun seeing everyone and meeting the newest Labyrinth baby.  Brady loved chasing their dog around the table, the kids had a dance party in the living room to Gangnam Style and then Brady had a party in the bath tub with Lily and Zane.

From Left to Right (Elliot, Brady, Zane, Lily, Parker)
Elliot and Parker are twins born a week after Brady, Zane and Lily are year older than Brady and the twins.

Just three bengals fans, getting along.

And we also made some time to stop over and see our good friends, the Rost's who had also just had their 2nd child.  Brady and their son Will are about a year apart and Brady loved his train table.

Christmas 2013 in Ohio

We made our way to Cincinnati for Christmas at the Mowry's after Charlie wrapped everything up for work.  In what has become an annual tradition, we went to the Wyoming Presbyterian Church for Christmas Eve.  Brady was not nearly as quiet as he had been the year before; instead of falling asleep on Charlie, we had to bring him out to the play area as he was trying to squirm around and show off his newfound powers of walking!

Brady also got to see some old Wyoming folks - like the Bartells, Charlie's friend's parents.  Paul was playing the violin as part of the service - and Brady was intrigued by that!

After church we continued the tradition of dinner at the Mowry's house.  The Caricos, Grumpa, Grandma Dorothy, Abby and us all enjoyed a nice meal put together by Leslie (and Tom said the prayer!).

Christmas morning, we woke up and opened presents.  This was the first time Brady was mobile and really able to participate.  He didn't completely understand everything - the act of opening the presents often was more exciting than the present itself!

Of course, a fun time was had by all...

Movies are the popular theme for Christmas night for us; Charlie and Mom went to the Hobbit, while the rest of the family went to see Saving Mr. Banks - the Disney movie about the Mary Poppins author.  

The next day, we went to Eaton for Christmas with the Caricos.  Brady loved his presents, there as well.  He particularly liked the stuffed animal dog he got - it was much bigger than him!

Also, he really liked playing with things at Bob and Sue's house.  The train tracks around the Christmas tree were a harbinger of things to come as far as his love of trains!  He also loved playing the piano downstairs, and dancing to the TV upstairs!

We stayed in Eaton for a few days, then headed to Columbus to see some friends up there.  But that's for the next post!

2013 Holiday season in Chicago

Unlike Thanksgiving last year, we did get the chance to travel back to Ohio for the Christmas holidays.  However for this post - we did put up our Christmas tree in our house in Chicago, and the standard stockings to decorate the house.

Brady's big present from us was his own chair!  He also got to open a few other presents while we were still in Chicago.

We got ourselves a brand new couch - which you can see behind Brady's chair here.

We also went to see Santa at Water Tower Mall the weekend before Christmas.  Brady actually did pretty well and didn't freak out.

After the trip to the mall, however, he was very exhausted!

It was good to catch up on some rest, though - we were heading to Ohio for Christmas 2 days later!

Thanksgiving 2013

Continuing with out catch up on the blog - Thanksgiving last year is next.  We didn't travel to Ohio for Thanksgiving last year, as we both were pretty busy at work.  But we did get some good family time, and got the chance to hang out with friends here in Chicago.  We spent the holiday with Charlie's friend Jason.  Jason's girlfriend, Sandy, had us and another couple over.

Here's Jason in the kitchen - apparently he pitched in appropriately - though Sandy deserved the most kudos for hosting! :)

Sandy's heat went out earlier in the day - but we made excellent use of space heaters and had a great meal.  Brady loved it as well!

Unfortunately, Brady wasn't feeling too great at the start of the day, and while he perked up when the food came out, we could tell he was pretty sick later on in the evening.  His temperature got pretty high, and since it was a holiday, we actually took him to the hospital.  Everything turned out fine; he was feeling better by Saturday.  Thanksgiving weekend actually wasn't the worst time for him to get sick - we just hung out at home the rest of the weekend and he didn't have to miss daycare or anything. We did have to leave the Thanksgiving dinner a little early, though.  But we had a great time - we're still unsure of what we'll do for Thanksgiving this year, but hopefully Brady will have a little better go of it!

November 2013

We are practically a whole year behind on this blog, but we are going to try to get caught up since we have done all these fun things with Brady and our family - and it will be nice to document it.  We'll try to do most of these posts by month.  This one is for November.

On the weekend of November 9th, we went back to Columbus for a wedding with some KPMG Columbus friends.  One of Charlie's old bosses, Mike, was getting married and it was a blast because our entire old KPMG crew was there.   Katie's parents came up to Chicago to stay with Brady and Griffey.  I wish we had some pictures from this night, but unfortunately we couldn't only find this one.

The next weekend - November 16th - Charlie's parents came up and got us all tickets to the Northwestern vs. Michigan football game.  We got a babysitter for Brady and the 4 of us took the "El" up to Evanston for the game.

All I remember is the weather turned very cold and rainy and it was a close but ugly game.  Charlie had to help with the recap - but basically, we basically neither team got close to scoring a touchdown and Michigan kicked a field goal as time expired to tie the game 9-9.  That meant overtime.  Katie (and even Michigan graduate Leslie!) were really just hoping that the game didn't go into overtime so that we could get out of the rain.  But overtime turned out to be very exciting, and Michigan ended up winning 27-19 in triple overtime!  It was an interesting experience - there were as many Michigan fans there as Northwestern fans, which is about what Charlie remembered from the time he went to an Ohio State game in Evanston.

On the way back, there were a lot of people getting on the El and somehow we lost Tom.   He got stuck behind a group of people and didn't make it on the same train as us.   Luckily, he found his way back home, but we were worried about him for a while.

Brady's First Tee-Ball Practice

Yep they have tee-ball for two year olds and of course we signed Brady up to start baseball early.

He was a little unsure at first but after a few tries, we could tell he was learning and paying attention to the coaches more.  It was so adorable.

Follow this link for the videos that we took.  

Click here to view this video

Visit from Sarah and John - Nov 2nd

We are going way back in time to last fall for this blog post to catch up and document a very fun weekend.  Last November 2nd weekend, our good friends Sarah and John came to stay with us.  Katie and Sarah were roommates for many years before we both got married.  They came in on Friday while we were both at work and walked around Chicago till we got home from work.  One of Sarah's friends from Vet school worked at the Shedd Aquarium so she got us all tickets for Saturday.  This was our first time to the Aquarium and we had a great time.  Brady had just learned walk a few weeks ago so he was loving exploring the Aquarium from a new vantage point.  He loved the penguins and sting-rays and the dolphin show.

(we were still doing some knee walking though at this point :)

Afterwords, we went back to the apartment to take naps and watch the Ohio State game.   Saturday evening, we got a babysitter so that we could have an adults night out in Roscoe Village.  We had a big group for dinner at Piazza Bella , which is a great italian place just a few blocks from our place.  Our other college girlfriends, Kate and Rachel came and one of Sarah's sorority sisters came too.  After dinner we went to the Village Tap bar across the street where one of Kate's friends was having a birthday party.  Great bar with a really good beer list, including a Creme Brulee beer.  We didn't stay out as late as we used to since we had to get back for the babysitter, but we had a great time catching up on old times.