Our Chicago Trip
Doug and I went back to Chicago last week for his cousin Stefanie's wedding. It was a really lovely wedding and it was also great to see everyone!
Because we were flying out for the wedding anyway, we tried to pack in a bunch of other fun things!
We went to Next Restaurant with my college friends Aaron and Emily. The menu was "the Hunt" and it was all "foraged" and "hunted" food. Possibly my favorite menu yet!
We also saw Book of Mormon! We had tickets for a February showing since last year, but once we decided to move to Hawaii, we had to sell those tickets. Thankfully BoM opened more dates, so we just bought tickets for a day during the week we'd be home. It was such a funny show! We both loved it - and Doug isn't a huge musical fan.
We ate at our favorite casual dinner place - Taco Joint.
Also we packed up our POD to the brim! Or rather, we hired professionals. We wanted every inch of space used if possible. We used The Professional Movers for the second time. I would recommend them to anyone in Chicago - they were fast and pack everything in safely and tightly!
Also into the Pod went brewing supplies! Doug loves homebrewing and is really trying to get more into the hobby by trying all-grain brewing (as opposed to a mix of grains and extracts - it is more natural and flavorful to do all-grain). Unfortunately, most grains do not grow in Hawaii and it is really expensive to ship huge bags of grain here. So we went to a homebrew store in Chicago and bought 200lbs of grains to pack in the POD. Doug says that will make about 100 gallons of beer - or 1000 beers. You can see some of his grain bags in the bottom left of our POD photo. While we were at the homebrewing store, we saw their really cool kegging setup.
Basically, they have a chest freezer but they raised the lid using a strip of wood on all sides. Then they drilled the taps into that. We really hope to copy this set up (on a much smaller scale) for the bar area on our deck. On the inside they have a separate regulator for each keg and a really smart labeling system.
We also went furniture shopping for a living room set. Unfortunately in Hawaii, there just is not a very wide range of furniture options. We would order it online, but we really wanted to sit in everything first. So we went shopping at stores that would deliver to Hawaii and "test sat" a bunch of stuff. Here are some photos of the pieces we picked!
We should have at least the leather couch and the chair in about a month! We are so excited to put our living room patio furniture where it belongs and get some real couches.
Last but not least, we hung out with a bunch of friends and family. It was so great to see everyone and thank you for squeezing us in where you could - it was a hectic week!
Overall, although it was awesome to do all of that fun stuff and see everyone when we were home, we missed Hawaii! We didn't realize how much we hate the traffic in Chicago until we moved to a sparsely populated island where there is hardly any traffic. Also, we missed the trees and the weather in Hawaii. And most of all we missed our Bruce dog!
It is good to be home.