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.

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.

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.

Happy 4th of July

This year we were not quite sure what to do because we wanted Brady to see his first fireworks but we were not sure if he could stay up long enough...but who were we kidding, this kid is a trooper.  Our friends Bryan and Kristen came to Chicago to visit Bryan's parents out in the suburbs and invited us to come out there and hang out.  They have a son, Will, who is 1 year older than Brady and a recent addition to their family, Kate, who was 6 months old.  Brady and Will seemed to have a great time.  Bryan's parents had lots of fun toys that Brady could not get enough of.  They had borrowed a pink cadillac from a neighbor that had a motor and a real stereo.  Brady thought it was awesome.  He couldn't reach the pedal, so the neighbor girl came over and took him for a spin.  He loved it until he looked back and saw how far he had gotten from mommy and daddy and started screaming to get out.  The fire truck was also a favorite and had no chance of scaring him.

   After dinner they had a dance off on the patio...which we all enjoyed.

After we ate some hot dogs and burgers, we sat outside and there were lots of neighbors setting off fireworks.  These were Brady's first fireworks because at only 11 months old last year, he definitely couldn't stay up this late.  We would point them out to Brady and soon he started mimicking us and pointing and saying "oh firework" each time he saw one.  It was a really nice evening and we stayed till 11pm with Brady just relaxing on mommy's lap.  He crashed in the car and luckily slept in alittle bit in the morning.  We are so blessed to have such a great little boy.  Overall, a great 4th of July.

Chicago Marathon - October 13th

As mentioned, we got really far behind on the blog - but we're hoping to catch up eventually!  Katie did a few posts of more recent happenings with Brady, who is getting really close to his 2nd birthday.  Maybe that's a good goal - get caught up by the time Brady turns 2.  We'll see.

Last summer, I (Charlie) spent a lot of the warmer months training for the Chicago Marathon.  I had run 2 marathons previously, but the last one had literally been over 7 years ago (the 2007 Cincy Flying Pig Marathon).  I didn't know if I'd ever run a marathon again, so it was a fairly daunting task.  I joined a group called Team in Training (TNT).  I raised nearly $1,500 for the Leukemia and Lymphoma society - thanks to everyone who contributed!

The night before the marathon, TNT had a pre-marathon dinner with the standard past type fare.  I got my carb loading out of the way and also got to play with Brady as he was learning to walk.  He was still in the midst of the "knee-walking" phase at this point, but he was now to the point that he could walk with you holding one of his hands.

The dinner itself was very inspiring.  There was a slide show and a number of cancer survivors spoke to get us pumped up for the big day the next morning.

I woke up at 4:30 in the morning and got all my stuff ready for the run, then took a cab downtown.  Even at 5:45 when I got down there, it was already very crowded downtown.  Being a part of a group like TNT has its benefits for an event like this - they had a spot allocated at a downtown hotel.  The weather was pretty close to ideal for the marathon - but at 5:45, it was still pretty cold.  It was also nice to be able to leave a bag of extra clothes there and not have to worry about finding it later.  We took a group picture and around 6:30 I left to go out to the starting line.

I had a long sleeve shirt on and a bunch of "gu" packets for energy.  I had an old long sleeve shirt on to keep warm that I discarded right after we started.  It was actually an old Winking Lizard shirt from back in my Columbus days!  I won it from drinking a certain number of different craft beers over a few months at the bar back in 2005 - so trading it in for a much more healthy endeavor seemed appropriate.

As I mentioned the weather was close to perfect - a little chilly at the start, and it never got too warm during the run.  I started off at a very conservative pace.  My goal was to run under 10 minute miles, and I started out much slower than that - my first 5k was at about 10:30 pace.  It's extremely crowded early on, and I was sure to get a water or gatorade at each chance - I think they had 18-20 water stations throughout the course.

The race was really fun.  Around 45,000 people ran, which dwarfs the 5-8,000 that ran the Cincinnati and Columbus marathons I'd done previously.  It's literally crowded the whole time.  Even at mile 20, you're practically shoulder to shoulder.  In some ways this is frustrating - I had to do a little more zigging and zagging!  But it's also great for energy, and I needed that.  I didn't stop the whole run, though I really had to fight it around mile numbers 23 and 24.

Katie and Brady went downtown to watch the race with Brady's buddy Eli and parents Rachel and Pete.  Rachel is tall - so that was helpful as I was able to spot them from the crowd.  They were right at the halfway point, and I stopped over to give Brady a quick hug.  He seemed fairly confused with the whole endeavor!

Ultimately, I finished in under 4:20, 4 hours 18 minutes to be exact.  That's about 9:52 per mile, so I was pretty happy with that!  It was a great experience, and worth being sore for the next few days!

Happy Mother's Day

Two weekends ago was Mother's day and I (Katie is writing this one) had a fabulous weekend, the weather was gorgeous and above all I had lots of quality time with my favorite boys.  Sunday morning we all woke up and went to breakfast at one of our favorites here in Chicago, the Southport Grocery and Café.  We got there extra early trying to beat the rush, but this place is so popular that there is even a 45 min wait at 8:30 in the morning.  We brought some snacks for Brady and he enjoyed walking up and down the sidewalks and climbing on the benches.  The food was delicious as always and towards the end Brady was getting restless so Charlie took him outside to walk around while Katie finished up.  This apparently was all part of "the plan" though, because when Katie went outside to meet the restless toddler and daddy, Brady was walking towards me with a big bouquet of flowers.  I wish we could have gotten a picture of it, but believe me it was too cute for words, he was so proud of himself carrying this big bouquet of flowers and was running right towards me giggling and smiling ear to ear.  After our big breakfast, the three of us went to the Lincoln Park Zoo.  This was actually our 2nd annual Lincoln park zoo on Mother's Day and this year was even more fun with Brady pointing at all the animals and making his newly learned animal noises and running up and down the sidewalks.  He knows that cows go "moo", ducks go "quack", birds go "tweet", the polar bear goes "rooaaaarrr"  and when in doubt every other animal goes "roooaaarrr" as well.   We tried to get some pictures, but this kid was so excited and didn't want to stand still very long.  It was such a nice afternoon and after words, we all went home and took a nap.

Becoming a mother has been the best part of my life so far.  It seems like each day I love him more and more.  I am so appreciative to have such a happy and healthy little boy, an awesome and supportive husband who helps out so much with the baby chores, the best and most supportive grand-parents who have helped us so much and the best most ferocious watch dog any one could ask for. 

Here are the only pictures that we could get from the running toddler and since we couldn't get many pictures, here are some older pictures of Brady and his two wonderful grandmothers.

And since we couldn't get many pictures with the running toddler, here are some older pictures of Brady and Manny (that's what his "mommy" sounds like) and his two wonderful grandmas.