Where does the time go? Last time I checked it was my mom’s birthday, and now the month is almost entirely over! Thinking back it is easy to figure out where the time went. In the beginning of the month Eric flew home to visit his family for the weekend. While Reese and I walked around the house whining, Eric soaked up some quality time with his family. Although I missed him, I was able to get a lot of little things done around the house while he was gone.

The Friday after Eric got back we flew to Chicago for a part weekend getaway, part HR training trip for my new position. Since Eric can fly so cheaply, my company had no problem with him coming along on the trip with me (don’t worry- they even brought up the idea before I considered it.) We stayed at a really cool hotel that was right in the middle of downtown- within walking distance of the train and Michigan Ave. and all the other fun things. When we got there on Friday we immediately bought a three day train pass so we could easier go all over town- and did we ever! WE went to the Shedd Aquarium, ate Indian food in Little India, went to a few different pizza places (I am still craving Lou Malnati’s heavenly butter crust!) and, best of all, saw the musical Wicked! Here’s the story: Sunday morning we woke up wondering what we were going to do that day. We had already eaten a lot of really good food, walked and hung out on Michigan Avenue, and visited the Aquarium (the only touristy thing we didn’t do while my parent’s lived here). Everywhere you look in Chicago there are advertisements for Wicked. The ticket prices were a little too high for what we wanted to spend, so I called our concierge to find out if she knew about discounted tickets. She told us about a drawing they have everyday at the Borders next to the theater. Each day they draw 10 names out of a hat for front row tickets. The drawing allowed the winner to purchase the front row tickets for $25 each (as opposed to the full price amount of $90 per ticket.) We thought, hey, lets walk over there- it was three blocks away- get some books, cozy up with a cup of coffee, and see what happens. All this time Eric was very confident we were going to win, but as each name was drawn, my hopes dwindled. BUT, the second to last name called was Eric “FKS” from Austin, Texas (luckily my husband’s horrible handwriting didn’t disqualify us!) We were thrilled, but not as happy as some of the other winners who broke down in tears! We didn’t really realize what a big deal this was until we saw the winners crying, and the 100+ losers sulk away begrudgingly. An hour later we were sitting in the beautiful theater, front row center, looking down on the orchestra pit. It was so unbelievably cool! It felt like they were performing just for us. I highly recommend the musical to anyone- Eric loved it too, even though he isn’t really into musicals typically.

On Monday I had training and Eric went to a local coffee shop to code. During training I got some bad news that doctors had found a clogged artery in my dad’s heart. Miraculously, after an exhausting Monday and Tuesday of traveling and then getting back to work, and then a day full of tests and procedures, the doctors said my dad’s heart had healed itself, and it should continue to work perfectly for a very long time. Thank God! That scare really made Thanksgiving special this year.