Weekend of Home Improvements

Last week/weekend was our home improvement extravaganza. It started on Wednesday by having our deck pressure washed. Thursday, the deck people came back and stained it. Attached are the before and after pictures. It took some getting used to (for some reason it appears kind of orange), but you can’t really tell in these pictures.

Before

After

The projects continued on Saturday, we had our air ducts cleaned, which isn’t that exciting but something we needed to have done desperately. When Luke got home from work we ran out to the Grass Pad and purchased a tree. We got a Cleveland Pear tree (they don’t really grow pears). J The Grass Pad workers were very helpful in answering ALL my questions. Sunday, Luke and Tony (our neighbor) went to the Grass Pad to pick up the tree. Luke worked diligently for over an hour trying to dig a huge hole for the tree, our soil is the consistency of cement, and progress was slow. Tony decided to come over and together they finished digging the hole and got the tree planted.

It looks so nice!!!

Lily LOVED to stick her head in the pot. She did it about 15 times...

Chicago!!!!

Since Luke had class last weekend, I took the opportunity to have some fun. I flew to Chicago Friday night and stayed for the weekend. I had a great time visiting with Kirsten and being a tourist for once. We went to to the Bean at Millennium Park, a German Festival in Lincoln Square, which was a ton of fun. We made 2 new friends that were 55+ and worked for the Chicago Police Department in the Homicide Unit. They were quite interesting, to say the least. After the German Festival we ventured to Mickey's (an Ohio State bar) for the Ohio State football game. It was a lot of fun to be in a bar full of Buckeyes, even if the game was disappointing. Sunday we went to Shedd Aquarium which was awesome! After spending several hours at Shedd we worked up an appetite and headed to Lou Malnati's - which has the most fabulous pizza! It is probably better than Gino's! Here are a few pictures from the weekend!

Shedd Aquarium

Chicago skyline from Shedd

Buckeyes game at Mickey's!