Anniversary Weekend in Chicago

The past year has just FLOWN by!!! Almost every year, Jeff is asked by Trane to attend a National Meeting of Health care Executives, and this year the event happened to be the week following our anniversary, and it was in Chicago. We decided to go together, and celebrate our 1st anniversary, a few days prior to his meeting! We were so pumped for our get away to the Windy City, Grammy and Grandpa M made the 6 hour drive down to Charlotte so that they could take care of Miss Avakins, Ryleigh and Charlie!!!! (Thank you both so much, we had a great time and we know that Ava enjoyed herself too!)

Since Ava has been born, we have a curse following our travel plans!! First, in December we were scheduled to go to Aunt Christine's house for a holiday party, but our flight got cancelled due to inclement weather. Than, we were slated to visit Uncle Mike in Baltimore, and as you can imagine, flights were cancelled due to one of the great snow storms of 2010... but the fun didn't stop there! Sure enough, we made it safe and sound to Chicago, and shortly after we arrived, the snow followed us!!! Jeff joked that if we had scheduled a trip to Jamaica that it would've snowed while we were there!

We made the most out of the trip regardless of the weather! The Van Horn's came out early as well (Chris was attending the work event with Jeff all week) and we enjoyed spending time with our friends from Baltimore. We enjoyed a delicious Italian meal on Saturday night with our Chicago based cousins, Dan, Kristen and Dave. We first met at a local pub to watch the end of the Northern Iowa v. Kansas game. Obviously, by the last few minutes of that game EVERYONE was cheering for NI! We had such a great visit with everyone, and can't wait for Dan and Kristen to make their way to Charlotte in May, when they will get to meet Ava!

Here are some pictures from our first weekend getaway without Miss Ava.