I am exhausted. We spent the weekend in South Bend, Indiana, cheering for our beloved Notre Dame.  Hotels are no fun with kids, so we rented a house with our best friends Laura and Dan (who have three kids the same ages as Evie, Mack and Vivian).  The house was awesome, but none of the […]

With my cousin Monika visiting from Poland for the summer, we’ve all had fun reconnecting with our Polish roots. Chris grew up with a Polish father and Polish grandparents, so he’s been practicing speaking his very rusty Polish with Monika, much to her amusement. My Dad asked that I learn how to make a traditional […]

We recently took a big old fashioned family summer road trip.  Chicago to Windsor, Canada…Windsor to Toronto…Toronto to Niagra Falls…Niagra Falls to Connecticut…Connecticut straight through to Chicago. We covered nearly 2,000 miles in a week. Because we live in a big city, we don’t drive very often.  Just about everything we need is within a […]

Ahhhhh…mid August. The last gasp of summer. The final push to check off all the “to-do’s” we put on our list back in June. It always comes to an end too fast, doesn’t it? We’ve had a wonderful summer, but I still feel a pang of guilt. Kids only get a few summers as children, […]

During the past few days, I’ve seen several links to this film by Warner Herzog.  What finally prompted me to click on it was a Facebook post from one of my friends. She implored all of us to watch it, telling us about the mother of one of her daughter’s preschool friends.  The mother was […]

For Evie’s birthday this year, my parents gave her a Micro scooter.  Hot pink, of course.  As soon as Mack saw it, a not-so-tiny spark of jealousy ignited.  All the kids in our neighborhood have one, and now his sister did, too.  He wanted one!!! Mack’s birthday passed a few months ago, but I wanted […]

  Sweet little Evie celebrated her birthday a couple weeks ago. Summer birthdays are the best – warm sunshine, windows open, cute little dresses.  I was born in January…in Chicago…and 30+ years later I still hate the winter! So, I love celebrating Evie’s special day during the warmer season. My parents came over for a […]

One of the best parts about living in Chicago is access to beautiful Lake Michigan. There are days when its color matches the Caribbean, and the lake is so vast that one could easily mistake it for an ocean.  Plus, I think the world’s best tasting drinking water comes from the Lake via our kitchen […]

As I’ve written about before, I work-out a lot. At least five mornings a week I’m at my fitness studio for an intense 60 minute class with cardio and weight-lifting intervals.  I love the natural high that follows a hard-core work-out! Chris is borderline obsessed with his Cross-Fit work-outs.  He also goes at least five […]

My sister Caitie recently hosted a super fun birthday party at her house for her son Danny. Despite a bounce house, cupcakes, toys galore and kids everywhere, little Vivian spent the entire party playing at a water table.  It was filled with little rubber duckies that kept her laughing, and by the end of the […]