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.