Josh and I were unwrapping and putting together some furniture this afternoon.  I left the room for a minute and came back to this:

Josh:  I dub thee “Saran-Ass.”

Holly: Da-aaaad!

It was such a gorgeous day, we decided to walk over to the park for a bit.  Tragedy nearly struck when Holly’s beloved squirrel flew right over a barbed-wire-topped fence.  Luckily for us, Holly has seen enough prison break movies and knew what needed to be done:

She was even kind enough to take a break and pose for me.

Aren’t they pretty?

After checking into our hotel, freshening up, and enjoying a bountiful breakfast at The Original Pancake House, (potato pancakes and bacon pancakes and dutch babies, oh my!  You’ll soon realize that we devoted most of our trip-planning research to our meals.  What can I say, we love good food!) we decided to hit the streets and as you can see, Katie instantly picked up on the fashion style of the windy city:

That night we had a fantastic tapas dinner at Cafe Ba-Ba-Reeba, (tapas are fun!  And delicious!  Except for the fried green peppers.  We do not recommend those) where sangria proved to be too strong for Katie:

After dinner, we headed to The Second City theatre, where they seated us practically onstage.  Really.  I am pretty sure I was resting my elbow on the stage in the picture below.  Thankfully we had the opportunity to relocate to a less neck-craney section before the show started.  The show was hilarious, and we were treated to an extra session at the end where the cast tried out new material.

The next morning, we got up, walked down the street from our hotel (Hotel Indigo) and ate breakfast at The 3rd Coast. (Their Eggs Benedict were fantastic!)  Then we headed over to Navy Pier and took an architectural river boat tour.

It was interesting and maybe just a little too long for our tastes, but was pleasant enough.  Apparently the Katies got bored and started posing while I continued to give the architecture the attention it deserved:

Next was the ferris wheel which was way higher than it looked.  This is me being nervous:

Ah, solid ground, much better!

Then we headed to The Signature Lounge in the Hancock Building to take in the view and enjoy some cocktails.  The view from the ladies bathroom is supposed to be one of the best in the city!  (we hear the mens room has no view at all!):

We finished up the day with a meal at The Home Bistro, a restaurant we will forever be indebted to for introducing us to the brilliance of bacon wrapped dates.  Seriously.  Go wrap some bacon around some dates.  SO good.

The next morning we went to Wrigley Field, where Katie realized her dream to play in the majors (I think really she might just want a statue modeled after her):

We decided to take a tour of Eli’s Cheesecake World, where we answered cheesecake trivia and won approximately 8 billion individual slices of cheesecake.  And an entire cheesecake.  Seriously, we were giving cheesecake away.  Our cab driver got a slice (which was inadvertently thrown AT him through the cab divider by a well-intentioned Katie,) our waitress at Kuma’s got a slice, random passersby got a slice.  We had more cheesecake than we knew what to do with.  Lots and lots of cheesecake, I, I guess… I guess would be the main bullet point of this presentation.

As if we weren’t full enough, we further punished ourselves by eating lunch at Kuma’s Corner, which from here on out will be reverently referred to as the Home of the Best Hamburger I have Ever Eaten in my Life.  SO GOOD.  If you go to Chicago and have only one meal, make it this one.  The Katies and I split a Make Your own Mac & Cheese and the YOB (Smoked Gouda, Bacon, Roasted Red Peppers, Roasted Garlic Mayo on a Pretzel Roll) and it was divine.  I want it RIGHT NOW!

After we rolled ourselves out of Kuma’s, we hit the scary glass boxes at the top of Willis (Née Sears) Tower where some awful person decided to jump up and down to test the glass we were standing on, oh, 1,353 feet off the ground.  (We survived.)

On our last day we ventured out to The Museum of Science & Industry, where we visited the Harry Potter exhibit (Katie elbowed her way to the front of the group to be the first to get sorted- Gryffindor, of course,) watched baby chicks get hatched, and made lots of weird faces.

Chicago, you were funny, delicious, and exhausting.  Let’s do it again sometime.

We did have a crazy-busy fall though.  (I realize that doesn’t really account for the current season, considering I am typing this on the last day of February, but help me out here.  Edit:  Okay, I am a moron.  TOMORROW is the last day of February.  Right?  Right???  I mean please tell me it’s not a leap year or I’ll have to edit my edit.)  We had weddings to attend/participate in almost every weekend in October!

First of all, I was the maid (Josh: ahem, MATRON) of honor in Jen and Clint’s wedding.  I didn’t get a whole lot of snaps as I was kind of tied up trying not to fall to my death while holding Jen’s train as we navigated a beautiful but terrifying spiral staircase of doom  (I may have added that last part) but I did take a few while we were getting ready:

The next weekend we headed to Georgia, for an old college buddy’s wedding.  The wedding was gorgeous, and isn’t Dorothy’s dress amazing?

While this isn’t the greatest, composition-wise, or terribly creative, (and highlights nicely my tendency to scatter things across the floor, willy nilly…hmm) I love this photo because it was taken in a dark room in my house where I have never been able to get good photos before.  Love this camera!

Holly would like you to know she does not work for free:

She works for Snausages.  (Excuse the blur, I just love that wild, Snausage-loving glint in her eye.)

Here she is saying, “Just throw it all ready!”

Our neighbor’s dog could hear us through the fence and did not appreciate our backyard ruckus!  So I hopped up on the fence and snagged a shot of Mr. Grumpy himself.  He looks sweet here, but I guarantee you he was pissed!  Good thing I didn’t have to get to close with the new 85mm!

]]> http://www.erintracy.com/blog/2010/02/10/snow-day/feed/ http://www.erintracy.com/blog/2010/02/05/cathy-and-ryan/ http://www.erintracy.com/blog/2010/02/05/cathy-and-ryan/#comments Fri, 05 Feb 2010 19:34:28 +0000 Erin http://www.erintracy.com/blog/?p=413 Cathy and Ryan can do more than get dressed up and jump. They are also fabulous models.  This was my first time shooting at Rhodes and I loved it!

Ryan takes his modeling very seriously:

After Rhodes, we headed downtown to grab a few more shots before hitting the roof of the Peabody.  Of course we couldn’t leave out the Gambler!  Isn’t he pretty?  That intense look in his eyes?  Thank the squirrels of Memphis for that one.

But alas, Josh and I had a hard enough time squeezing in an engagement session, and we did not have the time or resources to make it happen, so it became just another idea gathering dust in some corner of my brain. Until now! We finally had the willing participants, wardrobe, and the opportunity to make it happen! Totally worth the wait!

I’ve also got lots of great photos from Cathy and Ryan’s engagement session so stay tuned!

Update: Forgot to mention, as usual Katie and I collaborated on this one!

I had vacation blinders on and spent way too much to obtain this tacky vacation photo, but come on.  When you have the opportunity to get a photo with a guy in a dolphin suit, you just gotta do it, right?

(Josh thinks I need a refresher course on aquatic animals as I kept referring to this as our “shark picture.”  He also said next time maybe he will just rent a dolphin suit–it’s probably cheaper than what the gift shop charged us!)

Yayyyyy beach-side margaritas!  You can’t tell but this drink was so tall I had to take it off of the table to drink it. Josh took this one, isn’t he getting good at this?

I have lots more, but I’ll have to post the rest sometime in the future.  For now, I’m just happy to be home, sleeping in my own bed again, and snuggling with my Holly:

Katie got this one, and it is one of my favorites from the whole day!

Haley had such super-attentive bridesmaids!

OMG.  Would you LOOK at those baby elbow dimples???

It was SO hot, these girls couldn’t help but take a mini-dip in the pool!