Back Attack!

Hiya. Longgggg time no see.

So i've been MIA for much too long. Every week I set a goal of posting something new on here so i can get back into the habit. Clearly, i have not been doing that.

I've missed all of you so.

I miss my blog community! I've been having so much fun in Austin though. Too much fun.

The picture above is from one of my hiking adventures around town.

That place is only 15 minutes away from my house! I cannot be any luckier at this moment, on this day.

The past 6 months.. oh my! I cannot believe i've been gone for that long.. i really did not mean to be.

These past months have been the happiest, busiest, and at times most stressful months I've been through ever. We have seriously not stopped enjoying the city from the moment we moved here.

I have so much to tell you all about. In the past couple of months we moved to Austin, started new jobs, gone to countless shows, hiked, started working out, visited PARAGUAY, moved the kids up, had a couple of bbq parties, board game nights, lazy days... so much guys!

For now.. HI! I'm back. 

I hope you've missed me as much as I've missed  you.

With all my love,

Pati

Windy City Day 2

Hiya!

Today I thought I would show you day two of our Chicago trip. I cannot wait to go back guys. The windy city is amazing.

So after the long day on Thursday we slept in a little and decided to try to go to a brunch place. Apparently this doesn't work very well on a weekday. Either way we ended up here, at Eggsperience. They had tons of breakfast food items that we could not wait to delve into.

The decor, as you can see, was really lively and bright. Good atmosphere, if you ask me. The juxtaposition of Bob v. me in those two pics is hilarious. 

I decided to go for a veggie omelette with some ham and hashbrowns. It was to die for and super fresh.

Bob had eggs benedict hash browns and also ordered corned beef hash. In the end it was entirely too much food but his corned beef hash was totally worth it. Yum!

After we were done with some munching we decided to go here! The Field Museum. I cannot explain how much reading and learning we did that day. We seriously did NOT get through 1/8 of this place and were there for over four hours. It's not something you can get done in an entire day even.

Amazing to just get lost in there! Loved it.

This is the famous Sue and she greets you as you walk in! Haha.. no guys she's dead. I promise.

She's the most famous T-rex in the world because she's the most complete, well preserved, and largest.  Neat-o right?! She measures 13 feet and is 42 feet long. Insanely large. Can you imagine that running towards you?! "She" is not actually a she.. or rather she could be but paleontologists aren't sure what sex it is. She is actually named for the scientist who found her! Sue Hendrickson, the paleontologist, discovered Sue, the T-rex, in 1990. 

This is Sue's actual head but since it weighs over 600 pounds it couldn't be put on the rest of the skeleton. She's scary and fascinating all in one breath. The head that's on the actual skeleton is a replica.  If you look at the picture above you'll see where this head rests. It's on the second floor behind her where the picture of the T-rex is. 

I thought I would include a map of the three levels of the museum just to show you the size. The level that looks the largest is the main level and where we spent most of our time. We chose to go up to the second level next. Now do you believe me that you can't just go for a couple of hours on one day? It's insane how large it is.

These next couple of pictures are just some interesting artifacts from different peoples of the Americas. I had seen pictures of some of these type of pottery so it was really neat to see real ones. People of the Americas, particularly Incan/Pre-Incan, have always fascinated me. There's not enough information I can have on the. 

All three of the vessels above are depicting different things that these particular people experienced/believed in. For some reason I didn't take pictures of what vessel went with what group of people. Boo. I know the last two are anthropomorphic representation of gods. The last picture of course being a lobster god. How awesome is he? I want to say that the first vessel depicts a battle scene but I don't want to lie to you guys. There was just so much information! If you look at it closely though, you can see tiny little people climbing all over a bigger person. 

The Aztec calendar of course. This is just a replica though. I had no clue it was this huge!

Decorated knives! Some of them have jade inlays and of course heads of different animals.

Our favorite! Dinos!! This room was filled with them and they were awesome. It's funny because Bob was such a weird little kid, just like me, he had a dino book and could name all the dinosaurs and would apparently correct people if their knowledge was faulty. Ha!

This quote was at the end of the evolution exhibit, which the dinos were in. The whole thing was super interesting and you got to walk through our evolving planet from the very inception of life. OH science, you always thrill me!
I'm sure you could imagine how tired we were after that so we decided to get out into the fresh air and make our way to the Willis(Sears) Tower. 

One of the many views you got on the top of the tower. I would've been happy to just take pictures of this and me in front of it. 

Bob of course wasn't. He happily stood on the ledge that they have up there. It's making my stomach turn even thinking about it now! 

He pulled me into the ledge because according to him I would regret it later if I didn't do it. There were people jumping on it and doing crazy things on it. What is wrong with you?! I could barely put one foot on there. EEK. Needless to say I didn't stay on there very long at all.

I did however manage to get this picture of me on it. Happened so quickly that I didn't even pull my camera off of me for it. That's fine. It is documented in time and that's all that matters. I was pretty proud of myself, not going to lie. 

After that thrilling experience atop the tower we figured it was time for what else.. a drink, duh! We're really not alcoholics. I promise. We found this awesome bar/restaurant called Paddy Long's beer and bacon bar. Could this be anymore perfect for us?! I think not. It was super chill and they had delicious food. 

We decided to get the bomb sandwich. There's never enough bacon. YUMMMM! This burger was, wow, there are seriously no words for it. Bacon, Bacon, BACON. That's all I can say. This did not disappoint one tiny bit. 

We of course rounded out the night with a show that Bob had found before we even got to Chicago. Beer, bacon, and bands.. there cannot be a better combination out there. 

All in all it was such a good day! I got my museum fix and Bob got his beer fix.

With All My Love,

Pati

Windy City Shenanigans: Day ONE

Helllooooo! Like I promised here I am spilling the beans about what we did on our very first day in the windy city! I've decided to break it up by day and really pick and choose the best of the best pictures.

I hope you're not completely overloaded with pictures after this post!

I'll also post them sporadically so as not to totally bore you with all of the days consecutively, you're welcome. 

Here we go!! We stepped off the plane, got our luggage, and took the train to our hotel. Everything was pretty easy to maneuver around and we didn't get lost once (thanks love). It had already been agreed that the very first thing we would do in Chicago would be to eat pizza. YUM. We're both so food obsessed i'm surprised we're not 500 pounds. It's all in moderation..

We asked a couple of our friends that are from Chicago or spend tons of time there where to go first. They said this awesome place: Gino's East.

If you have never been there before it's for sure a must go if only for just the restaurant. This was actually not my favorite deep dish, that came from Uno Pizzeria, but it was still pretty tasty. No complaints from this gal. 

The restaurant had a red tinged light inside of it and I decided to just take pictures without completely annoying everyone around me, hence the weird lighting.

We ordered a supreme and here is a monstrous slice. As I was editing I realized I never bothered to take pictures of the actual pizza, d'oh! We had been up since 4:00 and this was somewhere around 1:00 PM, give me a little break. The above is from Bob's IG.

We decided that right after the pizza we HAD to do some walking. We headed towards the aquarium and as we did we realized that we wouldn't have enough time to explore before it closed for the day. The next closest thing(we thought) was the BEAN. I had been talking about that bean since before we left, Bob was more than willing to just take me and get it over with. Haha! 

It was not as close as we thought and ended up walking a good two miles. Instead of taking our time the boy decided to sprint walk. I have little legs.. I'm short... I like taking my time. I was cursing his name but we eventually made it. Along the way we saw these really cool structures that I had to snap some pictures of.

There were a couple of other ones but I was more focused on getting to our destination at this point.

We got there! Hurray!

Bob looks so upset and I'm super ecstatic. Don't let him fool you though.. he thought it was pretty cool. For some weird reason he thought it was a tiny bean. Imagine his surprise when we got there and it was this huge bean. I laughed when he told me what he thought. 

Why would I want to go see this tiny thing? He's such a weirdo and apparently lives under a rock.

It was pretty filled with people but not as many as I thought there would be, which was awesome!

Taking pictures off of the bean was super fun. I have tons more. I spared you! We look like little people. 

With all the bean excitement and the loads of walking we thought it best to find a bar and have a beer. I unfortunately didn't take any pictures of the place but it seriously had two of the oldest bar tenders I have ever seen in my life. They had some awesome stories to tell I BET! We had a few beers and decided to head back to the hotel.

By this point, we had both more than walked off our pizzas and were already thinking about dinner. More food, duh! On Bob's to do list was Kuma's corner a burger joint that was featured on Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives. There was a lot of hype for the mostly metal named burgers so I couldn't wait to try one out.

We were closer to their second location, Kuma's Too, so we opted to go there instead. Same restaurant and I'm sure it was as delicious also.

The atmosphere was awesome and all the waitresses were super rad. They played metal the entire time we were there. It was just a nice place to hang out in.

This is my monstrosity of a burger. It was so darn delicious though. It's called the Absu and it had tomatillo salsa, pepperjack cheese, avocado red onion relish, queso fresco, and some fried chiles to top it off. It was an explosion of flavor in my mouth and I can't complain one bit about it.

I cannot recommend this place enough!

After dinner we headed to some random fancy-ish place for dessert. I felt super out of place there and didn't take any pictures because of it. It satisfied my sweet craving and that's all that matters.

As you can imagine we were completely spent after that. It was finally time to go back to the hotel and rest up for day two. Pffffeewww...

Hope you enjoyed day one!

With All My Love,

Pati

Ps: I noticed that when I uploaded some of the pictures on here that they look sort of grainy? Is it just on my computer? What's up with that? Grr..