chicago, and other things

catherine-

hi love! we all had a great weekend…mama with her girls, daddy with his boys, and catherine with gigi. she is most def one of your favorite people. while i was in chicago, every single phone conversation i had with gigi included some discussion of your poop. is catherine constipated-does she need miralax-well go ahead and get the prescription just in case-oh good she pooped so don’t give the miralax-oh wait she looks like it hurts when she poops so we’ll give it anyway-oh man that was runny-OH MAN she pooped all over walmart-how long does miralax stay in your system-is there any way to reverse the effects of miralax-feed her more constipate-ey foods-what are some constipate-ey foods…..it went on and on. shelly and robyn were oh so kind and patient in hearing about your bowels. so are the readers of this blog. let’s move on.

so when i wasn’t discussing your poo with gigi, i was having SO MUCH FUN with auntie robyn and auntie shelly!!! and acting like 12 year olds, by the way. i’m pretty sure you won’t be proud of these pictures i’m about to show you. granddaddy already told me one of them is the worst picture he’s ever seen of me. granddaddy might be my biggest fan in the entire universe, so i promptly deleted it. because if he told me it was bad, it’s gotta be really bad. if you’re lucky, you too will have some we’re-28-but-act-like-we’re-in-elementary-school friends. i actually pray this stuff for you. you’ll thank me later. we didn’t do too many typical chicago tourist things this time. we’ve done that before and basically we were all pretty giddy to just be together. on one particularly windy day, we did go running along lake michigan and then laid on the beach just long enough to realize we had sand all over our fruit and filling up our ears. we also ate at giordano’s, and that concluded my list of chicago-ish things to do. we watched “the blind side” and i questioned again why josh said i remind him of the mom in that movie….but in the end i still decided to take it as a compliment. shelly has this amazing new apartment and we marveled at the story of how she got it. we helped paint her bedroom and had more than one dance party in her living room. around 7:30 one night, during one of those said dance parties, her downstairs neighbor knocked on the door asking us to keep it down because he had just put his kids to sleep. he apologized and apologized for having to ask us to be quiet, and shelly apologized and apologized for being so loud, and then he brought up a glass of wine to prove that he was not, in fact, angry, but just wanted to keep his kids asleep. can you blame him? we could not. we were much more embarrassed for ourselves, the grown-up women having a dance party for just the three of us, than we were for him. i may or may not have run into the other room to hide when we heard the knock on the door. none of us could figure out why i felt it appropriate to run away. other than the dance parties, my favorite part of the trip might have been sitting in shelly’s living room with the windows open enjoying the gorgeous weather reading and talking and eating and taking naps. well, that’s a lie. my favorite part was realizing how far God has brought the three of us. both individually and as a group of silly girls. robyn and shelly met in 4th grade and robyn and her family are a huge reason why shelly loves Jesus today. and then i came on the scene around 8th grade and the rest is history. we’ve all had some pretty incredible highs and heart-breaking lows (please ask all three of us about those when you’re older…God’s sweet mercy and grace run rampant through these stories and you should definitely know them), but i cannot express to you how amazing it was for me to sit back and soak up where He has each of us right now. i was overwhelmed and so thankful that He has allowed us to be a part of each other’s stories. i guess i should mention that i also read donald miller’s new book on this trip-he is one of my two absolute favorite authors-the other is cs lewis...and to be up there with cs lewis is a pretty phenomenal compliment. anyway-the book focuses pretty heavily on a person’s story and emphasizes really living it. “really” as in taking risks and getting out of your comfort zone and challenging yourself and truly loving others and allowing them to love you. so forgive me as i run on a rampage of being ever so thankful for the people and God who make my life so rich. we went to her pastor’s house and listened to her practice with a few other girls who were leading worship for a women’s retreat. and then we went to church with her at the chicago tabernacle the next morning. it's safe to say all that music absolutely knocked my socks off. there are some seriously talented people in shelly's life. the music, and her sweet friends, ministered to me in a pretty gentle and surprising way. man i love them. a lot of them had prayed for you because shelly told them what was going on when i was pregnant and soon after you were born. the pastor's wife had me come up and testify to the choir (they were practicing before the service) about what your little journey has looked like and how well you're doing now. i can't help but love somebody who loves your story. so i love chrissie=) and i was completely honored to be able to share what's going on with sweet little you. these people have, unknowingly, taught me more about prayer than they could imagine. i'm so thankful for them, and for those few days i just got to spend in chicago. it was a pretty perfect girl weekend, to say the least. mama and auntie robyn and auntie shelly are bff.

boys are boys and they take no pictures and don’t say much about what they do together, so i don’t know much about daddy’s weekend at the conference with josh and jeff. what i took away from the seconds-long conversation i had with daddy about it was this: josh was “josh” which probably involved some kanye west or diddy song, they had dinner with jeff’s sister-in-law who is very pregnant, and they all did well on their poster presentations. sounds like a blast, huh? oh, and they also laid out by a pool one day, which I’m pretty sure was josh’s idea. that actually does sound like a blast.



um, girlfriend. you have already reached the goal we had for you when you started the feeding clinic! halfway through and you're already off the g-tube during the day. you're taking 4 meals of at least 4 oz during the day so you just need about 12 oz at night. i started crying a little when they told us that. you're pretty amazing little one. i'm so proud of you. chowing down like a big girl.



i feel like there's lots more i wanted to say but i'm sleepy and need to go to bed. so here are those pictures i was talking about. i'll try to choose the ones that are least embarassing. for both of us.

oh one more thing i remembered. shelly tackled a dog on saturday. a bull mastiff, to be exact. and then she went on to tell us about the time she gave a different dog cpr. the story's better if i just leave it at that, so there you go=)

my plan here was to take a picture to send to daddy, but this is what we ended up with.

robyn shakin what her mama gave her

your mama groovin to the music

still groovin. most girl weekends involve dancing and scarves. not sure why.

yep. there's not a lot to say here.

the one and only normal picture we took all weekend.

that's more like it.

shelly has light-up lord of the ring glasses. yes she does. you have my permission to make fun of her for that later.

am i lucky or what?? this is what i get to come home to=)