Chicago- Top 100 Award

Todd and I had the opportunity to travel once again.  We were recently informed that his company, Heart 'n Home Hospice, had placed in Modern Health's Top 100 Places to Work in Health Care... in the NATION!"  We were super excited, but this meant traveling to Chicago to attend the awards ceremony where we'd receive the actual award and find out what place we took.

Having spent a fair amount of time traveling recently- (Rachele's wedding, her reception in Alaska, my annual girls getaway, San Antonio with Todd, etc) and ESPECIALLY much of it being apart from the kids, I was leery of leaving again.  We tried hard to find someone who could watch the kids at home for the days we'd be gone.  I didn't like leaving them again, but especially not pawning them off to friends.  They feel shafted enough!  But, it was too short notice to find anyone who could do that.  Finally, Todd pointed out that as much as we'd pay to have someone stay at the house watching the kids for several days, we could almost pay to fly my mom down to watch them.  I called her, she had just taken a temporary 5-week job in the Halloween dept. of a store and couldn't take time off.  But she said my dad would love to.  So, we booked his flight and it was set!  Todd always feels a renewed appreciation for the amount of energy and work it takes to play mom at home all day when I'm gone, so my one concern was that my dad may feel the same.  But of one thing I was certain, my kids would have a BLAST!  So the fast approaching trip to Chicago suddenly weighed less heavily on me.

Sure enough, the kids were in Heaven.  They went to the Corn Maze, a movie, Pizza Hut, fed the ducks, played on the trampoline with Grandpa, even got invited to dinner to their other grandpa's house and had lots of grandparent time for Sunday Supper.  Ashton really enjoyed listening to Grandpa play his guitar- my dad says Ashton's itching to learn to play now.  Awesomeness.

Here we are in the "Windy City", wind-blown hair and all.

Pretty much all we did was shop, eat, sleep, and work out.  For a couple of days until the awards ceremony.  Here we are: myself, Amber, and Cindy shopping 'till we dropped on Chicago's Magnificent Mile.  Our hotel being on that mile as well as the awards ceremony, we never left a 5-block radius the whole 4 days we were there!

Eating at Micheal Jordan's Restaurant, only open for 2 months and already he's been there 5 times!

We had a bit of a battle of the phones on this trip.  I own a Droid, an HTC Evo Epic and Todd owns a snooty iPhone.  We each took pics of most of the same things and I think the proof is in the puddin'.  We'll just say all the good ones are mine :-)  No, really, they are!

As I'm told, you can't go to Chicago without eating Chicago-style pizza!  Here we are at Gino's Pizza.  I hadn't eaten pizza in over a year.  It doesn't really agree with my stomach.  Surprisingly, I didn't do too bad with this, but even if I had, this pizza was to die for.  Incredible deep-dish pizza.

We all went to the new movie, Footloose in theater. 

The night before we left was the awards banquet for Modern Healthcare's Top 100 Best Places to Work (in healthcare).  Here we are at the Social before dinner started.

They placed #69 in the nation!  Woo hoo!

Here are Kris, Cindy, and Todd accepting their award.

I don't normally dress... up.  For lack of a better word.  I'm normally more a jeans and T-shirt kind of person, mostly because that's just how most people dress in small towns unless work calls for otherwise.  So I had to mention, that I found one of the things I really liked about being in a city was how everyone dressed so stylish.  It was different- fun to people watch and we ladies often caught ourselves checking out every one's cool shoes and jackets and what not.  I found myself wearing sweaters instead of t-shirts and boots instead of.. flip flops and sneakers!  And then, of course, my eye was drawn more to those kinds of things in stores.  Anyway, I was excited enough that I had to get pics of my favorite buys while I was there.  These three sweaters, boots, scarf, skirt, red heels, and ADULT jeans.  Yes, I actually found my first pair of big girl jeans in the WOMENS dept. that really do fit!  And I love them!  So in thirty+ years I've VERY slowly evolved from boy jeans, to teen jeans, to these!

OK that's all for our trip.  We came home to very spoiled children.  They had the time of their lives.  And the house was clean and my dad even made us dinner that night- moose burgers and raspberry milkshakes, which were mouth-watering.  Thank you, Dad, for everything!  I love you!