I had the most amazing (or amazeballs as Kelly puts it) weekend ever!!!
Friday we had a wedding gig in Flint for an old high school friend of mine. It was great, got to catch up with some old friends, show off the photo booth, spend time with Mr. Justin and
Oh and did I mention that Friday Justin and I celebrated our 2 year anniversary? How amazing is that?!? Not going to lie there was a moment in time that I didn't think there was any way in the world it would work out. I mean I lived in Seattle and Justin lived in Gaylord. It was exactly 2,143 miles from his front door to mine. Trust me I did the math several times. And the longer I stared at this map the more it felt like an unbeatable feat.
Being the amazing man that he is Justin was calm and confident in the ability we had to make it work. Every time I would have a melt down he would just smile and say it would all be ok. He was right. I flew back to Seattle and we skyped the minute I got home. We spent 3 days skyping and texting and chatting. I felt helpless. He was soooooooo far away. It almost made me more sad to talk to him. On the 4th day he called me at 7 am my time. Yeah, we had a 3 hour time differance on top of it. He worked at Fed Ex really early in the morning and I worked at the bar really late at night. Anyways, he called at 7 am, I answered, and then he tells me that he wants to come out and visit. Of course, was my answer as we had talked about it several times. He then starts to tell me that he had been looking at flights, and really missed me and he would be there tomorrow. Still very sleepy I agreed to everything and told him I was going back to bed. It wasn't until after I hung up that it hit me. TOMORROW!!!!! Justin would be in Seattle the very next day! What! There was no way I was going back to sleep after that. It worked out just like that. He flew out of Flint at 6 am and I was waiting for him at the airport at 10:30 am. How exciting! Little did I know when he arrived that he wasn't planning on going home. He purchased a one way ticket and would leave when he was ready. He never left. It took about 2 months and then we decided he should get a job and stat paying rent. My roommates were huge jerks that hated the fact that he was living with us. They 'didn't want to live with a couple' they said. Mind you THEY were a couple for a while. Give me a break. There are so many things I could say about those two unbelievably selfish and ridiculous girls but I think you've just about got it. Oops off on a tangent. :) Bring it back now. SO yeah, Justin stayed, got a job, we did lots of adventuring and eventually decided to move home to be closer to our families. LOL How did that story get so off topic??
Friday, back to Friday. We celebrated 2 years together at Nic and Kayla's wedding.
Little did Justin know I had a surprise planned for him. After the wedding was over we drove to Kalamazoo to catch up with Nick, a college friend of mine. Then on Saturday we got up and Nick 'took us to breakfast'. AKA Dropped us off at the train station. Justin was so confused. Nick and I got out of the car and Justin stayed in it. Nick told him he had to get out of the car because he was 'going away now'. Thank goodness that poor guy trusts me. He could have been really freaked out about what was going on. Even when we got inside the train station he wasn't really grasping the situation. I told him we were going on an adventure, on a train, to Chicago. He said 'for the day??'. I said nope, the weekend He panicked. Justin was supposed to start work on Sunday so he immediately thought he was in big trouble. I cleared it with his boss before I even bought the tickets. He read my email to Jen (THANKS JEN!!!! You're the best!) and finally got excited about the trip.
This is his confused face -------------------------------> Poor guy.
We got on the way. YAY!!! I should also mention that my best friend Kelly lives in Chicago so it would be perfect to spend it with 2 of my favorite people!!
Those are a few of the pictures I took along the way. The train! I love trains. And traveling by train is awesome. Justin also loves trains but had never been on one. The middle picture is the station in Niles, MI. I thought it was so pretty. The third pic is the screen shot I sent to Kelly of our whereabouts. Our train had some engine problems on the way there so we were about an hour late. Kelly, of course, made friends at the station so she didn't mind waiting for us.
This is Union Station in Chicago. Happy happy happy to be there! Then there is Justin and Kelly. And another shot of the grand hall. It was beautiful. More people should just hang out there. I think I would. If I lived in Chicago I would just go and read or people watch or drink coffee in the grand hall.
After we arrived we took a quick trip to Kelly's apartment to drop off our things and then we went back out to adventure. Kelly lives in Old Town which as I bet you guessed is the oldest part of Chicago. It was adorable! Reminded me more of a little town in Europe than Chicago. We wandered around her neighborhood, stopped in the little shops and had some lunch. They had a spice shop. Which is basically any spice you could ever need in these cute little packages. I bought some lavender. I had been looking for some for quite awhile now. Lavender Honey cupcakes will be in the works soon. :) Our lunch was very yummy. Our server swore more than and server I've ever met before. Caught me a little off guard but we all laughed about it later.
After lunch we went somewhere because Kelly had a surprise for me. It was this - 
A CUPCAKE VENDING MACHINE!!!! ARE YOU SERIOUS??? Brenda, if you are reading this can I have one please please please please please?!?!? I bet it would go over so great downtown. I got a chocolate peanut butter (because for some reason I just can't have enough peanut butter in my life), Justin got a chocolate marshmallow and Kelly got a black & white. They were delicious!! And still warm. MMMmmmmmmm......cupcakes. :)
We were doing that just for the picture but right after Kelly took it I took a huge bite of Justin's cupcake and pulled mine away. I'm so quick! :)
After the cupcakes we wandered around, shopped more, and had our palms read. Turns out Justin is my soul mate, I'm going to have a famous child, and my job is where I should be. Cool!
We walked to the Hancock building and Kelly had free tickets to get up to the top viewing deck. It was beautiful!! It had just gotten dark and all the lights were on around the city. How romaaaaaaaaantic!
I'm full of pictures today. Hope that's ok :)
Then we walked down to Navy Pier to see what was going on with Snowfest. There were lots of snow sculptures. The hand was my favorite. It was done by a group of high school kids. You go Glen Coco! There was also a lot of shopping inside plus a dance party! Dance, dance, dance, dance!!! Well I mostly watched but I did spin around and jump up and down as we were cutting through the dance party to get to the other side. :)
We left Navy Pier and headed towards the Aragon Ballroom where none other that Flogging Molly was playing!! Awesome. The venue was beautiful. It looked like a little village on the inside with little balconies everywhere and a giant mural of the galaxy painted on the ceiling. I couldn't get any pictures of the mural but I did get these:
When the concert was over we went to Bellview? Beachwood?, Bubawallys? Ok, so I don't have any idea what it's called but we went to a bar and got to see Matt, Amy, Brock and Cheryl. That was fun. Haven't seen those guys in awhile. Not going to lie though, by that point we were pretty darn tuckered. Not too tired for tacos tho! Yum! Real, homemade, authentic tacos. Nom Nom Nom!
Annnnnnnndddddddd Sleep!
Sunday AM:
We headed to brunch at Peasentry to meet up with Jenni and Matt! Jenni is another friend of mine from high school. Matt is her husband. They are wonderful people and it was so great to catch up with them. Jenni and Matt are expecting their first little baby in 24 day! It's coming up so quickly. Jenni is adorable as always. And they are so so excited to be parents. You guys are going to be wonderful parents!!
We hit up a couple record stores after brunch and then went to Millennium Park to see the Bean. That was Justins only request for the whole trip. It's always so cool to see. We got to watch the people ice skating too.
After the bean, and narrating every fall that happened on the ice skating rink, we went and got coffee, hit up downtown, bought a record and then headed back to the train station. I owe Kelly a million thank you's for being such a wonderful host, tour guide and secret keeper! Thank you, thank you, thank you Kell!! :)
Our train home was packed!! There must have been hundreds of people on the train. Once everyone got on we were off. It only took about 2 hours to get back to Kalamazoo. Then Greg came and picked us up (thanks again Greg!), dropped us off at our car and we headed north. Once we were on 131 we hit freezing rain. It stayed with us the entire way home. What should have been a 4 hour trip (max) turned into a stressful 6 hour trip. Slow and steady. The ice stuck to the car so every hour of so we had to pull over and break it all off so we could see again. It was nuts.
That was one of 4 pit stops. The ice on the hood was about an inch thick and slid off in one solid sheet. Oy!
Our poor antenna ducky was frozen solid. In between Big Rapids and Kalkaska he doubled in size.
Very thankful and sleepy we got home at about 2:15 am. I really didn't want to get out of bed this morning! We did pass this on the way home and Justin turned around so I could take a picture of it. A Giant Trout! And santa & the reindeer. What the heck?? Believe it or not I didn't corner the market on #rockerduck or #gianttrout on Instagram. I thought for sure I'd be the only one. There are 5 other #rockerduck pictures and 9 other #gianttrout pics. Only 1 is of an actual fish tho. Huh.
This morning I got a wake up call from the most adorable thing in the whole wide world.........
Mom got a puppy!!! She's the cutest, most adorable, sleepiest, most snuggley puppy ever! She doesn't have a name yet tho. We came up with Maggie, Lady, Agatha and Ebony. None of those really fit tho. Any suggestions?
Thanks for dropping by today. It was a long one I know. If you made it all the way to the bottom tho let me know and I'll give you a cupcake or something Lol!
TagLine*MostEpicWeekendEver
I'm commenting because I can. Like a boss. Amazeballs.
ReplyDeletehahahahaha at least you didn't hashtag it!
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