The Summer of Brick Begins!

A couple of blocks away on the Riverwalk.

     Well we spent our first weekend in the city and the "Summer of Brick" has official begun, kinda.  Since we are only going to have the apartment for two months it was a little bit of a treat to be able to get in a few days early and to get a taste of city living over the Memorial Day weekend.  So back to the suburbs to finish off the school year and then we can pretty much stay downtown as much as we want.  However, I was loading events into my Outlook Calendar for the month of June and it is going to be hectic.  We have graduation parties to go to and to give, school orientation, weddings, etc. so the Sienna or "loser cruiser" as my son likes to call it might be logging the same amount of miles as it would without the move.

Entertaining our first guests.

   
      We are fortunate in that the apartment that we are renting is furnished but we still had to move in some essentials like a t.v. and extra bed so our first day was the typical logistical nightmare of getting a van's worth of stuff up a small elevator to the 51st floor.  In reality it made it feel much more permanent and less like a hotel stay so I kind of enjoyed it.  This woman I know works only 3 blocks away and so it's not a completely unknown neighborhood to us, but we did spend the rest of the day orienting ourselves and locating grocery stores and the fastest beach access routes.

I have a picture of the two of us
in front of this fountain when we
were on our first date.

     On Sunday we went back out to the suburbs to go to church and then turned back around so that we could entertain our first house guests.  Or actually they stopped in long enough to change and head out to eat and then go to the beach, but still nice to get to show off the apartment and the rooftop sundeck.  Then we did some walking and some more exploring.  So far our eating has been limited to fast food places like M Burger (4 of 5 bricks for their burgers and strawberry milkshake) and I have an absolute weakness for Qdoba's breakfast chorizo burritos (they serve breakfast in the city but not in the suburbs) which I had Sunday morning before church.

People we don't know
kayaking the river. 

     Monday was awesome!  We got up early and walked/jogged eight miles along the lakefront.  We saw Navy Pier, the Planetarium, McCormick Place, Soldier Field, Buckingham Fountain, the skyline, but mostly the people. I can people watch all day long.  I think this is going to be the thing I like most about this summer, just walking around a big city.  A quick shower and we went back to Lisle to make sure our house was still standing (it was) and then we went to DeKalb to watch the girls softball team play in the Super Sectionals, unfortunately they lost.


     So now a busy week finishing off the school year and then back to the city.  I'm very excited.

Beautiful skyline, beautiful woman I know.