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.

Turning 2!

Two years ago, baby Brayden was born after nearly a full day of labor!  It's been amazing and special watching him figure out the world over these past 2 years!  Happy birthday, Brady - mommy, daddy and Griffey all love you!

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!