Oh man, I'm so bad about keeping this updated! Sorry guys. Let's see...4th of July was a lot of fun. Got to watch the t-town fireworks and the ones the yahoos next to us decided to bring. It was awesome. Um, let's see...I don't know. July has been kind of a blur, so let's just skip it and go into detail about this weekend. Okay? Okay!
SO this weekend my wonderful amazing friend Dan Gerber got married to his equally wonderful amazing fiance Cassidy. As soon as I found out about it I knew I needed to get myself to Chicago to be a part of it, so Roger, Hisham, Matt and I coordinated and decided to all go. I drove up to Birmingham Friday afternoon, only to find my plane had been delayed two hours. It's basically par for the course at this point for my flights to be delayed. So instead of taking off at 4:55 we took off at 6:45. I made it to Midway around 8 or so and met up with Roger, who had been waiting for an hour and a half. Sorry! So we got my checked bag, went to get the rental car, then decided to find a pizza place to get some deep dish pizza (of course!). We ended up at a little place called Positano's, a sort of sketchy but pretty delicious pizza place a few minutes from the airport. We ate and caught up. It was a tiny place but it was fun. After that, Hisham's flight had landed so we headed back to the airport to pick him up. From there we headed to Matt's place in Evanston.
We stayed up for a few hours catching up and laughing at pretty much everything. I was exhausted so everything was funny. Matt's condo was nice. He definitely needs to learn how to cook. Boys living by themselves are hilarious. So anywho, while we were hanging out chatting we all realized that it was stupid to come all the way to Chicago just to fly back out early Sunday morning. So we all changed to later flights so we would have all day Sunday to explore. After that, we crashed.
I woke up way too early Saturday so I got ready and just waited for the boys to wake up. I would totally have cooked a bunch for Matt if he had any food in the house. haha. Once everyone was up and ready we decided to find a fun place for breakfast/brunch. We found this place called m.henrietta that was amaaazing. Roger and I split two things so we could try them. Mmmm fried egg sandwich and blackberry hot cakes. Yum! Definitely worth driving a few minutes in the opposite direction of where we needed to go. After that, full and happy, we headed over to the hotel to check in and get ready for the wedding. It was a nice hotel and only like 5 minutes from the wedding site.
The wedding was definitely one of the most wonderful I've ever been to. The ceremony was outside overlooking the sand dunes and the lake and Dan and Cassidy looked so overjoyed to be getting married. So many couples get caught up in the little things of the day and don't spend enough time focusing on each other. Dan was grinning the entire time and Cassidy looked absolutely flawless. Her dress was lace and beautiful and so amazing. They centered their ceremony about their commitment to God and letting Him lead their lives and it was so inspiring. It's so great to see two people who are so perfect for each other. :)
Okay, enough mushy stuff. At the end of the ceremony they were both surprised by a bag pipe player that neither of them had any idea would be a part of it, but you could tell they loved it! It was a lot of fun. After that the reception was nice and relaxed and I think everyone had a great time. YAY CASSIDY AND DAN GERBER!!!
Sunday morning everyone slept in, except me. Curse you, internal alarm clock! So I got up, got ready and went down for breakfast. Then I waited around for a while and still no one woke up. Eventually they all got up when I said they had 15 minutes til breakfast ended. ha. So we all got ready, packed up and headed to Evanston to drop Matt off. It was so nice to hang out with everyone again. It's weird to think we aren't all getting back together in t-town in a month. So after that Roger, Hisham and I headed to downtown Chicago for Taste of Chicago. I accidentally missed the turn for parking and we ended up going several miles down the road before I was able to turn around. I'm so glad we did though because we ended up seeing the zoo and museum and beach and farris wheel aaaaand Soldier Field, which is apparently where the Bears play? Woo? Anyway. That was really neat. So we eventually turned around, parked in an underground parking deck and headed into the festival madness. It was hot and crowded but I loved it. The food was good, the atmosphere was fun and it was definitely an awesome experience. We found a place giving away free water bottles so we hit them up a few times. I spent my tickets on so many random things; fried plantains, sausage, tiramisu, breaded steak, a chicago hot dog, SO many things! It was great. I bought a few souvenirs (duh, tourist, hello?) and then we went back to the car.
We still had some time to kill before we had to get to the airport, so we decided to drive around downtown and see the Sears (now Willis) Tower. Driving in Chicago was awesome. I felt seriously BA in my moderately-sized SUV weaving in and out and making my way around. It reminds me a lot of New York except a little less crowded and with friendlier people. We eventually found the tower, paid a dollar for ten minutes of parking and got out to look around. Got a few pictures, got kicked out of the lobby (did you know it is not open to the public?) and then headed on our way.
Chicago is a seriously cool place. I'd love to spend more than just a few hours there. So from there we headed back to Midway, got gas, dropped Hisham off, returned the car and made it back just in time for Roger to board his plane. Mine got delayed (common theme...) so I hung out and eventually made it back to Bham around 10:45 and back to Tuscaloosa around midnight.
It was really seriously one of the best weekends I've had. I got to spend it with awesome people, seeing awesome people get married, in a place I've never been before. What's not to like?
