First Anniversary!

Sorry that it has taken me so long to post anything! We made it through our first Chicago winter (hopefully it is over!). Lauren and Andrew King came up to visit us in January. We had a great weekend with them. We wish they would come visit again soon. We had Missy and Andrew's wedding at the end of February. What a fun wedding weekend!! From the texas style rehearsal dinner to the bridesmaid luncheon at belle meade and finally the beautiful wedding...everything was absolutely perfect. We were so happy to be a part of the celebration! Then jonathan and i were able to go to Orlando to see julie, stephen, ellie and kathryn for his spring break. it was a much needed break for both of us and we had such a great time. i'll post some pictures from the trip soon!
Two weeks ago we celebrated jonathan birthday. we went to eat at yoshi's cafe in our neighborhood..which was delicious, and then we went to see Andrew Bird at the oprea house. the concert was great. He is probably one of the most talented musicians i have heard lately!

and today we celebrated our one year anniversary!! Actually we have been celebrating since yesterday when jonathan surprised me with reservations for dinner downtown at Catch 35 and then a room at the Sofitel hotel!! Dinner was delicious and it was so fun to stay downtown at the Sofitel. Then tonight he surprised me again with tickets to see Mary Poppins! We just got home from the show and it was so entertaining..it was great!! i don't want this weekend to end!!
it is crazy that a year ago today we were getting married at rosemary beach. This year has gone by so fast! so much has happened this year and it has been an amazing blessing to have jonathan as my husband and to share our lives together. i am truly blessed by him every single day. today has been a very special day for us and we have been able to reflect on the wedding and all of our friends and family that surrounded us as we were married a year ago. we love you all dearly and can't thank you enough for your love, prayers, and support this year.
last year...

-20 degrees

the wind chill here today was around -20 degrees. i have never felt this kind of cold before!! it is going to be a long winter!!
also, last Tuesday when I was driving home from work in the blizzard (6-8inches of snow) going about 10 mph I hit a small bump in the road and my driver's side window just fell out of my car. yes, thats right...the whole window fell out of my car. I was a little frazzled and wet and freezing! I picked Jonathan up at school and we drove (in the 18 degree weather during the snow storm) to the grocery store to buy saran wrap. Jonathan bought red saran wrap by mistake and we wrapped it around the window using mailing tape. I had to drive the windowless car to work the next morning and although the saran wrap was really loud, cold and red, it kept all the snow out and stayed on the entire day! Thankfully there is a glass and auto place right down the street from us. We were able to get the window fixed on Thursday. Needless to say it has been an interesting transition into the Chicago winter!!

thanksgiving!!

I had to work Thanksgiving day and the Friday after, so we weren't able to go home this year. Jonathan and I were both sad not to be with family during the holiday, but we had a great first Thanksgiving together. We celebrated on Wednesday and cooked a huge feast!! Jonathan made his mom's dressing and Mimi's spinach and rice. We bought turkey and gravy, and I made sweet potato casserole (aunt Mary's recipe), creamed corn, green beans, and a chocolate chess pie. We cooked all day and everything was delicious! It was so nice to be able to spend that time together and reflect on our blessed life.
Oh and we had one minor disaster during the cooking marathon...I made the sweet potato casserole first and I peeled about 8 sweet potatoes into the sink or garbage disposal!! Needless to say the sink was completely clogged with sweet potato peels, and we had to cook everything else using only one side of the kitchen sink. We couldn't fix the clog on Wednesday, but Jonathan somehow managed to fix it while I was at work on Thanksgiving (not exactly sure what he did, I think it involved taking the disposal apart??) Jonathan also went to Hunter and Shannon's on thanksgiving day to eat another feast! We are very thankful for our friends up here!
Then, Friday my brother came in town for the weekend. We had a great time. I ended up getting to leave work early on Friday and I met up with Reed and Meredith downtown on Michigan Avenue. It was insane...so many people!! We shopped for a little while and then met Jonathan at Giordanos, Jonathan's favorite deep dish pizza place, for dinner. Saturday we ate breakfast at Ann Sather, shopped at urban outfitters and anthropologie, and went to Mickey's in Lincoln Park to watch the Alabama vs. Auburn game. That night Reed treated us to an amazing meal at the Chicago Chop House. The food was so so good! After dinner we walked to the John Hancock building and went up to the observatory to see the views of the city.
We all had a great time that weekend!! So glad you could come up Reed!
Here are a few pictures of our Thanksgiving feast...

Birthday Celebration

Sorry that i haven't written in quite a while, alot has happened since August! Kristen and Chris Parker were in Chicago at the end of September for his job and we met them for dinner at Mia Francesca, a great Italian restaurant in our neighborhood. It is always so nice to spend time with our Nashville friends! After dinner they came back to our condo and we all watched the Presidential debate. It was such a fun night. We are excited for baby Mason to get here!!
The weekend of October 3 I flew home to Nashville for my grandmother's 80th birthday party, and Jonathan flew to Pensacola for Ed and Forrest's wedding. I was sad to miss the wedding but the pictures looked beautiful and jonathan had a great time. Grandma Jean's Birthday party was very nice, so many people came by to see her. All of her grandchildren were able to be there, and it was great to see my cousins from California and Atlanta. After her party, i went to the Vandy vs. Auburn game with Reed. It was awesome!!! All of his friends had a big tailgate, and I had fun meeting his friends. Reed was a nervous wreck during the game. It was hilarious. He kept saying," I'm not getting my hopes up," but when the game was over he went crazy. I had so much fun getting to hang out him.
Then the next weekend Jonathan's sister Nicole came up to visit us for her birthday. She was here a whole week and even though i had to work pretty much every day she was here, we all had a fun week! We got to spend the day of her birthday, October 14, together. I met Jonathan and Nicole at the Giordano's downtown for a birthday pizza. Then Nicole and I shopped on Michigan Ave. while Jonathan went to class. Before going back to our condo, we stopped by the Ghirardelli store for a birthday sundae...and it was the best sundae i have ever tasted!! That night we met a bunch of Nicole and Jonathan's friends from college for dinner at Cafe Mundial, a delicious restaurant in Pilsen. It was a great day!
Here are some pictures from the dayJonathan and I left that Friday to fly to Nashville for Lindsey Howard's and Kyle Felts' wedding. We had a great time! It was wonderful being home and getting to hang out with our friends.
This weekend Megan, Jonathan's younger sister, came to visit us and sadly, I had to work Friday, Saturday and Sunday. However today I got a call at 5am this morning, and it was the hospital calling to see if I wanted to be "on call!!" so I got to spend all day with Jonathan and megan, and last night we went to eat at the Chicago Diner, a vegetarian diner. The food was very interesting but delicious! We were sad she had to leave today.
Sorry this post is so long. We have been pretty busy over the last two months! I can't believe that it is almost November. I also wanted to let everyone know that the high here tomorrow is 41 degrees with a chance of snow!!! I am never going to make it through the winter!!!

MISSY MORGAN!!

This past weekend was great, even though I had to work Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday :(  Saturday night we had our first overnight guests...Missy and Andrew. Missy was in town for her sister's birthday weekend and Andrew flew in to explore Chicago with Missy and propose!! I'm sure Missy will fill everyone in on the details...but Sunday night he took her to a beautiful, quiet garden in the park and proposed. Then, they came over to our condo to meet us for dinner. It was so exciting! They were both really happy...Missy didn't stop smiling the entire night. Her ring is beautiful and so sparkly. We went to Think Cafe, a quaint american/italian restaurant and had a wonderful dinner with great food, and a yummy dessert! i forgot my camera...so i don't have any pictures. but the night was wonderful and jonathan and i felt honored to be able to celebrate with Missy and Andrew. Congrats!! Let the wedding frenzy begin!!!

I am almost finished with my first week of orientation at the University of Chicago Medical Center. I will be working at Comer Children's Hospital on the 6th floor, which is a general and hematology/oncology pediatric floor. I could not be more excited! It is a great hospital and so far it sounds like it will be a great place to work. There are some wonderful incentives for working at the University of Chicago. For example, they will pay 100% of my tuition to go back to school and get my masters degree...anywhere I want to go! So hopefully while Jonathan is busy in law school, I will get to go back to school, but for free this time! Also this week, I have learned many interesting things about the hospital...A couple years ago Jonathan and I watched a show on the discovery channel about this woman who had a 200 lb tumor growing on her body. Because of the huge risk no doctor would remove it, but she finally found a doctor who would help her. The show documented the amazing successful surgery. It was really unbelievable!! Anyway, I watched that same documentary during orientation because....the surgery was performed at the University of Chicago!!!! You can read about it here.
In addition, I went on a bus tour of the area surrounding the hospital and got to see Muhammad Ali's house and Barack Obama's neighborhood. Those are just some random tidbits from this week...
I will start on the unit next week and have an 8 week orientation (and considering I graduated from nursing school 8 months ago...I will need every minute of it!). This week has been really busy and I am pretty exhausted. I have been at the hospital everyday from 8-5 (which means I leave our condo at 7 and don't get home til after 5). After working that schedule this week, I am really looking forward to working 12 hour shifts 3 days a week.
Jonathan's classes don't start until August 22, so he has been busy working on his thesis this week. He is getting to be the domestic husband for the next few weeks...and it has been really nice! He actually cooked dinner for me Tuesday night, and it was delicious. He cooked fresh corn on the cob, salmon with a garlic, lemon, butter sauce, and sweet potatoes. I could get use to this!
We are finally settled here and our condo is starting to feel like our home. We are so blessed!

CHICAGO

Jonathan and I moved to Chicago on June 13!! After we got back from our honeymoon in late May, we started working on our stuff. We gathered up the wedding presents, went to a few garage sales, and even had a garage sale of our own. Jonathan ended up having to have outpatient surgery to remove the screws in his pelvis, so we also took care of that before we left town so that he could go to his surgeon at Vanderbilt.
So, on June 12th, we loaded a U-Haul with our stuff, which my parents graciously offered to drive up here, and made to 7 hour drive in my car. We hired movers in Nashville and in Chicago because I can't really carry all that much and Jonathan can't carry stuff and navigate stairs very well at the same time. It was definitely a better way to move! We closed on our condo Friday morning and then waited to get the key so that we could begin moving in. Even though it looked like it was going to rain the entire day, it didn't and with the help of movers (who broke Jonathan's beloved desk), we were able to move everything in that night. Both of our parents came up to help with the move. It was nice to have them here for the weekend.
We spent the next week unpacking and getting settled and then we left on Tuesday June 24 for Hunter and Shannon's wedding on Bald Head Island in North Carolina. The whole week was wonderful and it was really nice to make a vacation out of it! We came back to Chicago for a few days and then left again for Nashville for 2 weeks. During this time we went to Mississippi for Jonathan's cousin's wedding, Springfield, TN for Laura's wedding (one of my good friends), and then to Barren River, KY for Jonathan's big family reunion. Our summer has been pretty busy so far!
After returning to Chicago last weekend, we have been exploring our neighborhood and trying to finish decorating our condo. Since Jonathan and I are attempting to merge our 2 different styles, it has taken us a little while to furnish and decorate our 800 sq. ft. condo!! Jonathan is very particular about his organized kitchen cabinets and wants to hang artwork and photographs everywhere. I don't want to overload the walls, but I have a tendency to leave little piles of clutter and clothes around the condo. We are having so much fun and really enjoying being in Chicago! We hope to have visitors soon!

To see all the pictures of our condo and the moving weekend click here