ALI TURNS TWENTY FIVE, FINALLY!

I've been trying to turn Ali 25 for 3 years now.
[this entry is post dated.... ]
I don't know why it always seemed fitting to wish her a Happy 25th, on her 22nd, 23rd and 24th, but this year I can say it legitimately. Twenty-five for the win!

The birthday weekend started yesterday, when Damanji and I arrived in from the STL & Cinci Metros, respectively. Today was the real start of our Chicagoland weekend to celebrate one of our best friends.

1 | BREAKFAST! 
.: Eggs. We went to Eggs. No, seriously, the place is called [just] Eggs. It sounds like a broken sentence, but that's the name and that's the place and it was fun. I don't, however, recommend that you order the Georgia Peach Crepe, unless you like the combination of sourdough, cottage cheese and canned peaches... warm... together. Otherwise, it was definitely a fresh little vibe and I'd go back and try something else on the rather extensive menu.

metiiiculously unfolding the carry out bag
#militarybagfolding ;) 

2| NAPERVILLE
.: Ali's job as a live-in nanny has her living here, so she's become acquainted with several of the local shopping spots, etc. etc.

on our way! 

The highlights of this outing include but are most definitely not limited to:
DAVIDsTEA. Who do I talk to about getting one - or more - of these in Cincinnati, like.. yesterday?! Sorry, but.. Teavana, who? Cincinnati, you need a DAVIDsTEA, and that is that.

davids tea | naperville, il
so. much. yesssss. 

yesssssss! 

We hit the NVille outlets, as well; the birthday girl was loaded down with giftcards to use, and the plunder was bountiful: Sephora, Kate Spade and Pac Sun on the top hit list. We even managed to spot an interesting story parked in the lot outside: 

shark attack?

3 | NANNY LIFE
.: We stopped at Ali's "house" after our downtown Naperville tour, where she lives as a nanny. It should come as no surprise that it's practically a castle in a neighborhood of other castles, that has heated floors, awesome decor, a retractable cover and a fluffy dog named Lola:

oh ya know... 

if this was my house, i'd live in this room alone. 

ya'll already know.. where there's a dog, there's cori.
#sheissofluffffyyyyyyy

4 | BUBBLE TEA
.: This makes the list because I haven't had bubble tea since I lived in Illinois, which, if you've been counting, was over 3 years ago. I think the universe was savvy to this fact as I ordered [and paid for] one "taro with lychee," but received a taro and a lychee. Was I mad about this? No. Was I probably over-hydrated? Yes.

twofer.. and asian for the win! 

5 | CHICAGO! 
.: After our adventures in Naperville, we made our weekend ascent into Chicago, where the city lay waiting for 3 more tourists to take advantage of all is has to offer within a 3-day span. We checked into the hotel, and within half an hour, Ali's friend Lindsay rendezvoused with us to start the city celebration.

'ello, chi!! 

Our first stop: Happy hour at Howells & Hood!

quick stop before dinner! 

calamari.. yes please... 

The meat of the evening was dinner at Bar Siena, where our reservation awaited us. We changed, put on our evening faces and made our way out to an incredible dinner to thank Ali's parents for her existence :).

happy 25th birthday, beautiful friend! 

damanji! 

Things on the menu that we ordered:
Kale & cranberry salad
Roasted peppers
Corn ravioli
BAKED POTATO SOUP + MAC&CHEESE: 

leave me alone i need a moment....... *drool. 

cori. ali. lindsay. shawn.
♥♥♥♥

6 | CHICAGO AFTER HOURS :)
.: Ali only turns 25 once, at least legitimately... so naturally it was off in search of some spirited fun. We're in Chicago, so it wasn't hard. Thanks to Lindsay's guidance, Uber and a stellar tender at HVAC, we made the evening shine in special honor of Ali!

stop #1

stop #2

stop #3, with candid faces.. kinda ♥

A lot more of the pictures I have from tonight are blurry... but I suppose that's bound to happen when standing still is less fun than dancing until your feet want to remove themselves from your body entirely [current mood]. 

Good night, Chicago. You're beautiful. See you tomorrow! 

xo | cmd

Random Outing....

Rob tried bubble tea today. Haha. I don't know whether or not he actually liked it, but I had a great time and I definitely can't complain. We thought to take a trip over to St. Louis and wound up at St. Louis Bubble Tea, right in the midst of what was apparently a campus-wide ice sculpture festival.

I did find some cool sculptures...

abbey road! beatles ice sculpture | st. louis

Rob and I were definitely on Zumiez mode today; I realized that when we walked out of two different aisles in one of the campus shops and looked like brand reps from the Z. Haha.


zumiez addicts......

We'd burned most of the daylight out of the day and still hadn't made it back down towards Belleville. We decided to stop by Alton and found ourselves at Fast Eddie's for a few hours. We ran into some new people and made ourselves quite comfortable chatting it up with some random folks until we found some sunglasses on the floor [love that...]. Yeah, Rob still has them in his car.

rvca, a rum runner & some floor shades. call it a good night (:

One of the things I so appreciate about Rob is that he's about as spontaneous as I am, and when the agenda consists of a blank slate, it comes in handy. We had no plans one second, and the next we were off on our way to Collinsville to catch an appearance of Aaron Kamm & the One Drops. I totally dig barefoot guitarists, so this was a perfect way to round out the evening.


aaron kamm & the one drops | johnny's sidebar - collinsville

Ahhhh, hello weekend (:

xo | cmd

Bubble Tea Fail

Joe really appreciated not having to wake up and dress in blues today. Instead, we took our sweet time getting moving and eventually meandered across the state lines to drop Eric off at the airport. I have to admit, I do like having houseguests, especially when they’re good friends from home.

Once we were back in the car, we decided to try and hunt down a bubble tea place that was within reasonable distance from the airport. That in itself proved to be an easy task, but we [meaning I, really] were disappointed to find that it first of all didn’t open until 11:00am, and it was open every day except Monday. So there we were, on Monday, and it was barely 10:00am. Double fail.

boba / bubble tea

SO, home it was. I had a few errands to run and then it was back in the car for the 40ish minute drive back through St. Louis to the opposite outskirts for another Express meeting. It certainly went well, and I left again feeling positive about the experience, even if the drive ends up being out of range for what we feel is conducive for right now. We’ll label this a networking call if all else fails.

Good news: On the way home, I talked to Kalyn for the first time in a few days’ time. She and Sam will be stopping through here this next weekend for an overnight and then the D90 and I will be joining them on the road through Colorado, New Mexico, and their final destination of Arizona. I can’t wait. As we decided before when we checked out the wall map, we’re only a hug away, right? Haha. I’m excited!!

measuring ohio to arizona :(



Back at home, we had a few hours to kill before church softball. Since each game is a double-header, there was plenty of time to sit and chat with some of the other bystanders. Towerview won both of their games, so that meant a quick post-celebratory bite with Lorne at Panda Express…. C’mon, who doesn’t love Panda? We’ll work it off this week.

church softball | joe & lorne discussing game tactic :)

Joe finally goes back to work tomorrow, so Sydni and I have free reign over the household chores and errands. Guess we should get some rest.

xo | cmd