Sweet Home Chicago!

This trip is going by way too fast...needless to say, we are having a GREAT time. Yesterday, Ava got to meet her great-grandparents (my grandparents on my mom's side) and they all enjoyed getting to know one another. Ava is also loving my brothers, her Uncle Mike and Uncle Billy. Craig and I are sleeping in the guest room downstairs and the baby is in the room next to my parents because my mom wants to be the one to get up with her in the morning, bless her heart! I could still hear her when she cried out a few times at night (par for the course, but she's usually just crying out in her sleep) since I apparently have some kind of ridiculous mutant sense of hearing now, but I didn't get up. (Okay, I snuck up there ONCE to check on her at 4am....) It was nice to be able to get almost normal sleep but I don't think I will ever sleep again as soundly as I did before having the kid.

ANYHOW, Craig and I went to Portillo's today, WOOHOO!!! It was heavenly, of course...and all of you transplanted Chicago people, I thought of you when I bit into that chili cheese dog (no onions)...AWESOME. They seriously need to put one in Raleigh, although I guess part of the appeal is that it's Chicago thing and I only get to enjoy it when I'm up here. Oh, I'm also getting a big box of Fannie May candy to take back with me. I'm telling you, NC just does NOT have good food unless you are willing to spend a fortune: up here, you can find good stuff in any price range, and even when we lived in Orlando there were some very good places. Okay back on track--after Portillo's we stopped at Fresh Market to pick up some dessert for the family and nearly got run over by some moron in the parking lot (idiot drivers are nationwide, apparently)...Craig made kind of a "WHAT THE HECK?" gesture at the lady and then motioned like he was talking on the phone (apparently he thought she was on the phone) and she--I'm not kidding--rolled down the window and shrieked, "I WASN'T ON THE PHONE!!!!!" Craig doesn't usually get into it with people, but he laughed at her and said, "Maybe you should have been, dumbass!" (I guess meaning if she wasn't on the phone then what was her excuse for almost running us over, she had come barrelling around a corner and we were crossing at a marked crosswalk.) She replied by shrieking, "SHUT UP!!!!" It was pretty funny, I don't think I've ever heard a grown woman shrieking like that before....um, psycho!!! Maybe Craig shouldn't have called her a dumbass but in his defense, she prety much was. Besides, better him opening his mouth than me...there is no telling what is going to come out of my mouth sometimes.

Anyways....I'll post pictures eventually but it probably won't be until we get home. Tonight, Anna and Jesse and Anna's parents came over to meet Ava but she was a bit fussy, as she usually is in the evenings....we did get a few smiles out of her though, and it was good to see everyone, even if only for a little while! I'm currently in Michael's room listening for the baby because she was having a hard time going to sleep (napped too late) and everyone else is downstairs playing with the new Wii. Tomorrow, Michael and I are going to the Tom Petty concert downtown--BIG WOOHOO!!! I was supposed to go in Raleigh but that fell through, so I was utterly THRILLED to find tickets up here. More expensive but totally worth it--I rarely get a chance go really go out these days and since Tom Petty is my absolute favorite musician, this is a huge deal to me. I have been waiting for this since the last time he came around. You know those people who follow around bands when they go on tour? I'm like that, only I have a career and family and can't follow the band, so I just go stir crazy until they come to town.

That's about it for now, I'm trying to post updates as the trip progresses so I don't end up just doing one GIANT one at the end, because that's a pain.