Let the Madness Begin!

MARCH MADNESS 2009

I am really not at liberty to disclose too much regarding the annual Friday drinkathon March Madness that takes place every year since I was not there. But I do have some pictures! hehe
Chris, Sam, Kurt and Rooster met up for breakfast at Nookies and were off to meet the rest of the world at Messner's on Southport. They rented out the upper level. And probably the biggest mistake was taking up Messner's offer of an additional two hour drink package from 3-5pm for $15. That is where it went downhill.

Here is Chris helping Cricket keep tally of his shots on his hand.

I thought this picture was too funny not to post especially how smiley Sam is! LOL.

Chris, his long time high school friend - Maria and Petersen

You can tell this is in the beginning of the day :-)

Around 5pm I was tucking myself in my sheets on a peaceful Friday evening before the storm hit and Chris would be home. I was looking forward to the luxury of watching my shows from the week. As I pull the comforter up my cell phone rings and it's Chris asking me to head up to Messner's, have a beer with him and grab some dinner. Unfortunately I agreed, and when I met up everyone was pretty much a different person and many brain cells had been sacrificed. I strayed Chris away and we were off to Cafe Laguardia for dinner (yes again! We love this place and realize we ate here the weekend before!)

You Scream, I Scream, We all Scream for iCream!

I read in the latest CS magazine about a new ice cream/yogurt place that was on Milwaukee in Wicker Park called iCream. AND then I saw it in US Weekly or OK! or one of those magazines so we had to go! Most people know we are YoBerri and Starfruit freaks so another unique ice cream place is right up our alley! This place is called icream and they use nitrogen oxide (or I think that's what it is) to create your very own customized ice cream concoction from liquid form to ice cream right before your eyes in the KitchenAid mixers. That is all the dry ice looking stuff in the picture.I will say they have quite literally a bazillion toppings and different ingredients to make your specific iCream. And if you hate ice cream like I do they have frozen yogurt. The cashier trys to assist with your ingredients so you don't create something that is disgusting. We liked it so much we went back again and I had the warm chocolate pudding - SO good! I added graham crackers and it was delicious!

Chris LOVES when I make him pose for blogging picture purposes :-)

http://www.icreamcafe.com/

Dance Show + St Patty's Day

I'm doing a month of March recap b/c I am very behind on my blogging. I like blogging but I def don't love it or am really good at procrastinating w/ it! We'll start with St. Patty's Day weekend. On Friday Chris and I went to the ballet! Not a regular traditional nutcracker boring type of ballet, but this was a "jazz ballet." And I will admit when he first asked me to go, I was hesitant and was thinking I'd rather see what Jack was up to on 24. But since we didn't have anything else going on and we got the tix through his work so we knew they'd be good seats and better yet - free. IT WAS SO GOOD. A cross between "So You Think You Can Dance" (which I cannot wait for stupid Am Idol to be over when SYTYCD starts) and Cirque du Soleil. And to make the night better we had fish & chips at The Gage on Michigan Ave before the show. Perfect night!

The next day was the marathon St Patty's Day drinking fest with Chris and his side of friends at O'Donovan's. This is the same place we went to last year and is a great place b/c it's not super crowded and you're not fighting your way to the bar to get a drink. We were home by 11pm and stopped at our new favorite restaurant on Armitage, Cafe Laguardia on our way home. Here is Chris w/ everybody's favorite sisters, Liz & Allison

Chris w/ Mr. St Patrick CRICKET!

St Patty's Day 2009

St Patty's Day 2008

1st Birthday!

This past Saturday was Donna's baby, Edie's first birthday! The party was at the boat house in Glen Ellyn and although the weather was not the greatest we had fun! It was a short and sweet party! But great food! Donna made all the salads herself! I thought the picture above captured Chris at his best when it comes to babies, he's not a big fan of babies because they "scare" him and he doesn't know what to do with them. Here is Payton, Liz and Billy's baby scared to death because she "knows" the guy holding her is not good with babies, haha! J/K, we had just ripped playdough from her hands because it was heading for the mouth :-)

All our friend parties these days are doubled in attendance because of all the new little people, hence the photo below! The moms, birthday baby and Elmo made an apprearance at the party!(Ann was excited to pretend she was a mom that day)

A few more party attendees!

Jill, Tiffany, Tamie (+ Frankie & Sydney) and Heather

Parents in training, YEA right! Well the Petersen's are but Team Cogski is NOT! :-)

This was towards the end of the party and birthday girl had changed clothes and was running around in her diaper, scandalous! So many kids and they're all getting so Big!

Happy Birthday Edie!

Off to Grandma's House....

On our way to the airport to head back to Chicago we had to stop at In-N-Out my FAVORITE that I can only get in Vegas and California. Open one in Chicago for cryin' out loud!

I know it seems I am visiting California a lot....I went in September with Chris, December with the family and I just got back yesterday visiting my Grandma and Aunt Diane with my Dad. But the flights were cheap so we thought we'd take advantage!

Grandma's good! We got in on Saturday and landed back in Chicago Thursday night. It was a nice, VERY laid back relaxing week. We ate a lot of bagels, drank a lot of coffee and tea, watched a couple movies, I got a pedicure, we visited my grandparents house they used to live in, ate sushi one night, got cold stone creamery, ate a lot of Ben&Jerry's creme brulee ice cream (which I'm not a big ice cream eater but this is the best!), cooked in a lot, sat outside a bit relaxing, talked a lot and I got my aunt and grandma into the Bachelor. Lucky for them they only had to subject themselves to the finale and After the Final Rose - but they were hooked!! haha....

Was a great visit and I'm sure we'll be back again soon since the flights are so reasonable these days.

Here's a pic of Grandma in front of her house she used to live in in Escondido. One of our outings for the day. I told her to ring the bell so we could go in and see the house again but we chickened out. She wishes she still lived there....

Where it All Began....+ a 30th Birthday Celebration

Ok this is gonna be a long one. Mainly because of the pics but the odds of this many of us treking down to Carbondale where we all became friends may not ever happen again so bare with me....I have to recap.

Mid February Ann, Tamie, Liz, Heather and I travelled down to Carbondale to visit Nina at her parents home. Where we met up with Jessica and BIRTHDAY GIRL, Meah who came from St Louis to gather together and celebrate Meah's 30 year milestone. We started a "30th Birthday" gift tradition since 30 is a biggie. As a group we purchase the David Yurman cuff bracelet with the colored stones on the ends. Here's birthday girl admiring her new jewelry celebrating her birthday!

And here's a pic of birthday girl celebrating her 21st birthday! Haha sorry Meah :-) Couldn't resist!
Whoa Meah...one too many shots on the ol' 21st huh? You can't even keep your eyes open, LOL
For some unknown reason we felt the need to write all over Meah with marker to help her celebrate her 21st birthday. We were obviously young and dumb and it must have seemed like a fun thing to do at the time? Poor Meah can't keep her eyes open, probably doesn't know her own name and then everyone who claims to be her best friend is writing all over her....

Here's a great shot below I'm sure towards the end of the evening at Gatsbys, marker on her chest and she looks like she's ready to go home, I'm about three sheets to the wind as well. Of course Ann is all smiles ready to take on the night!
More of the group from Meah's night out that started at Tres. Kelli, Me, Rebecca, Meah and Jill
Ok enough pics down memory lane, back to my post. Most of us met back in 1997 when we pledged Sigma Kappa and have remained great friends ever since! Below is a pic circa 1997, I took the liberty of circling those who are in the pic further down circa 2009! Kinda hard to make my purple circles out but you can if you look close. We have all agreed we look WAY better in 09! In 2019 we may beg to differ but this year lookin' good ladies! I must note in the 1997 pic we are still very close with Lindsay Barr who is front and center with the short blonde haircut and Donna far right second row. They were unable to make it down for the birthday weekend :-(

1997

2009

Our first night of the weekend we gandered down memory lane with a night out at Pinch Penny Pub and Copper Dragon, two ol' great hangouts of ours back in the day. Tamie used to work at Pinch and was glad to be back at her old stomping grounds, she even scored a Pinch "alumni" sweatshirt which she was very "happy" about, haha (inside joke).

I thought this pic below was hilarious and so typical, everyone "posing" but SO funny that Mandy is looking the other direction "saying hey! why are you all looking that way, aren't we posing this way?"

The next day we took a visit to the Sig Kap house and had a photoshoot of everyone in front of their old door. We all at one time or another lived in those wonderful but tight quarters, but we were together EVERY single friggin' day so we loved it. I put in three years of living at that "lovely" home. Here below a pic of my old door and my other room I lived in upstairs, and low and behold Heather and Ann have lived within the same four walls as well. A tradition was to write your name, year and pin number somewhere within the door frame to stake your claim that you did the duty. That is what we are pointing at....

After our Sig Kap house visit we were off to our favorite pizza place, Quatros and settled back in at Nina's house in their theater room for a movie!

Next on the agenda was dinner at the Global Gourmet for Meah's Birthday Dinner, after dinner we couldn't do another night out because we are old ladies so we went back home got in comfy clothes, talked and played games.

Here's the girls in the 30 club so far (missing Donna), Guess who's next?