Weekend in Chicago!

The weekend after Valentine's Day was quite a shock for me. Thursday night, my sister, Keely, flew into town to surprise me. Her husband, Lars, came in the next day. Come to find out David and Keely had been planning this for over a month. Even better, I got to spend some time with my sister and then even more surprises came about. David was taking me to Chicago from Friday night until Sunday morning and Keely and Lars were watching our kids. I could barely believe they pulled this off!

I have to admit it was hard to leave my sister at my house without me being there when I rarely get to see her anyway but I knew she wanted me to have this trip and did a lot to make it happen for me. So, David and I took off to Chicago and decided to go straight there and eat Chicago-style pizza at Gino's East like some of my friends had suggested. It took us longer to get there than we thought considering the traffic - yes, Chicago had traffic at 9p.m. on a Friday night! I began to appreciate Houston a little bit more at this point. By the time we got to the restaurant we were starving - little did we know it takes 45 minutes to bake a deep-dish pizza! But we were game so I thought I would give David MY Valentine's gift. Just to set this up, David was talking about the details of the surprise that he was able to keep from me and then he said, it was my turn to surprise him next. So, I thought I had just the thing...

Side note here: I took a pregnancy test on Sunday, Valentine's Day. I was a few days early in wanting to know if I was pregnant but I thought it would be neat to find out on that day. The test came up negative (David even saw it and confirmed it). So, by the end of the week (three days late now), I was wondering what was going on. My sister came in town Thursday night and while David was at work Friday, I took another test in the morning with Keely there. It immediately came up positive. I was shocked but excited. So, I decided to wrap up the pregnancy test in a box (blue box with pink paper) and give it to David that night at dinner, for my surprise to him.

Here are the pictures from Gino's East where David found out we were expecting... (by the way, he smiled and said, "I knew it!")

David reserved a 5-star hotel right on the mile for our wonderful weekend. Saturday morning we went by Oprah's studios.

Then, we went to the Chicago temple and were able to do sealings for my family.

That night we walked the mile and it was all lit up and really pretty. The weather was cloudy that day so we didn't think the Willis Tower would be worth the view that day and thought we could come back and do that another time.

We ended our night with a fantastic steak dinner at Fleming's. It was delicious!

We arrived back home Sunday morning and were excited to see that Keely and Lars were still smiling. They did such a good job with our kids - I was SO impressed! They are going to be such good parents one day. We gave souvenirs to the kiddos and I was able to spend the rest of the day with my sister and Lars before they left that evening. I can't thank them enough for such a great weekend and for David surprising me like that. It was awesome.