The Shiner

Sawyer has a shiner. Not his first, not his last. I did get a picture of this one though. Apparently, he was "fluffing his pillows" in the dark and knocked it on his windowsill. Did I mention that the kids sleep next to each other? It's pretty adorbs. They have their own rooms in this lovely little aparment but they were crawling into each others beds anyway so we made one room the sleeping room and one room the play room. :) They are truly best friends. Inseperable, even in large playgroups.

We picked up some Notre Dame gear for the kids. I feel a tad like the person in Oklahoma who never went to OU or OSU yet goes to Wal Mart and decks themselves out in gear from head to toe. However, it's ND.....I think it's okay if it's Ivy League. Right?

I also did another "girls night" this week. These are a vital part of my sanity:) I've met SO many great girls here already and seem to have a pretty full social calendar. No matter where we live, God has always blessed us and surrounded us with great people. This week we did a Wine Walk in downtown South Bend. No, this did not involve exercise. At all. It involved 12 fancy restaurants downtown, 3 pours of wine at each and 3 pairings of food. Great fun!

On a whim last weekend we jotted down the road to Chicago for the day. We took the kids to Navy Pier. We got hot dogs, ice cream, fancy popcorn and rode a few rides. Somehow I was conned into riding the ferris wheel with Claire. This is no ordinary ferris wheel my dear friends. And I am TERRIFIED of heights. The second we left the ground the bottoms of my feet started going numb. Seriously..terrified. I had a death grip on Claire too. I took pics with my phone and tried my best to keep my mind that we felt as high as an airplanes cruising altitude.We ended the day after a shopping stroll down Michigan Ave at Ginos East...a famous local deep dish pizza joint. It's been years since I had been there. Definitely great pizza but I still think Giordanos is our fave (we are deep dish fanatics in case you didn't know!) Erik was at a Cubs game a few weeks ago and even got one to go for me...that's LOVE.

Saugatuck, MI

Some of the benefits of living here being just a hop skip and a jump to the Lake Michigan area..literally, a very short car ride. Lake Michigan is not what I expected. It's practically an ocean in the middle of the country. I am used to the Oklahoma area lakes which are wildly popular but small and somewhat dirty. We journeyed to Saugatuck, MI a darling little artsy town that would rival Martha's Vineyard in charm and cutenss. Seriously...who would have thought? The quaint little town abounds with art festivals, boutique hotels on the water, tons of restaurants and some of the best shopping I've seen yet! We had a great time. In other news we were supposed to have inspections on the new house on Saturday so we went over with the kids all excited to see the house again ( it had been on the market for 5 days when we put our offer in and we only saw it once!) And the inspector didn't show up. Nice, eh? However, we got to spend about 2 hours with the previous owners who walked us through the entire house and showed us the ins and outs of it all. The landscaping alone is going to possibly kill me! It's Ah-mazing and it abounds with about 10 hydrangea bushes and 4 peony bushes...my two FAVES. My wedding bouquet had both:) Anway, they currently pay a gardner once a week to come in and maintain it all...So, now inspections are this week. We have been busy pouring over ideas for how to redo the kitchen and paint colors. Anyone want to paint? Anyone?? The couple has lived in the home for over 30 years and raised their 3 kids there. They have meticulously maintained it and it's so apparent how many memories they hold there. Very sweet. Enjoy a few pics below of a few happenings!

I'm sure you reconginze our sweet friend Maggie by now:) This was her 4 year old "princess birthday party"