Shopping and the City Life

As promised, I'll share a little more of my road trip last weekend to Wisconsin and Chicago. Even though the trip was inspired by my desire to honor the memory of a relative, there were some pleasant moments along the way.

On the way back to daughter E's home on Saturday evening, K and I stopped in Delafield, Wisconsin for a little retail therapy. This quaint little town is home to the Lang Companies. Several years ago we lived just a few miles from here. There were several nice stores and restaurants then, but there's been a lot of renovations and new construction and it looked like there are a lot more now. We found a few after Christmas bargains at The Lang Store but since it was getting late we didn't stop at any of the other cute shops. One more stop at a local grocery store for cheese curds and beef sticks and we were back on the road.

Sunday was a fun day. E, K and I started the day with breakfast at Wildberry. Then E drove as we headed toward downtown Chicago. After three straight days of driving, I was glad to let her especially since she's much more familiar with "big city" driving! Our first stop was a certain Home Depot - E was in search of a new paint from USG called Michelangelo and very few of the stores carry it. It is a new single coat faux finish and the plan is to try it in her half bath. I'm anxious to see how it turns out. (Have you started yet?) I might try it in our dining room if it works out for her. Trouble is, we'd have to go to Chicago to pick it up! Another stop in the same area was The Land of Nod. (If you like Pottery Barn for Kids, you might check this store out) As a future grandma (nana?, mimi?, mamaa? need some other suggestions here!) I'm finding new places to shop !

Next stop was Michigan Ave. We had tickets for a musical at 2:00 so didn't have time for a lot of exploring. So we just stuck with a few places near the theater. Lush, H & M, and Lucy . E was able to find half price tickets for Altar Boyz at the Drury Lane Theatre in the Water Tower Place. Very fun show! It is a story of a fictional boys band of the praise team variety and their quest to save the souls of everyone in the audience. For a solid hour and a half, five very energetic and talented actors danced and sang (and perspired!) their way through this funny, entertaining show. It was sad that the theater was only about half full, but maybe that is typical for a Sunday matinee in January. Anyway, we enjoyed it.

It had been a long time since our big breakfast so we were ready for dinner at The Grand Lux Cafe. As with most restaurants anymore, our dinner portions were way bigger than we could eat. E has plenty of leftovers in her fridge for the rest of this week! I had the barbeque salmon with mashed potatoes and succotash. (Pretty potatoes !)

Then we shared this hot apple pie. Yum.....
And a glass of wine! Thanks E for a nice weekend!

After dropping K off at the airport on Monday morning, I was ready to head back to Southern Indiana. No problems with traffic, or bad roads on the way home. In fact, probably one of the fastest trips back from Chicago I've had. I really didn't mind the drive and I love my BMW. I listened to some of my playlists on the ipod/iphone and didn't even make it all the way through them. If it hadn't been that we wanted to attend Bill's memorial service, my sister and I probably wouldn't have made the effort to get to Chicago and spend some time with E, even though we've been talking about that for awhile. A little over a year ago, we spent some time in NYC with one of her girls. Now I guess we'll have to plan a trip to Dallas to see S!!