Little Women

It's hard to believe that almost 11 years ago my Mom & I drove to Cincinnati to visit our first baby, my niece Christine (10 going on 15...I know, such an "Aunt" thing to say). It's harder still to believe that our second little nugget, Trinity, was just 6 months old when I graduated from high school, and now she's finishing the 2nd grade. Trinity expressed her amazement at this, saying "And 8 years later you're still in college?"

Although I can't believe these little ladies are growing up so fast, I am certainly enjoying their maturity! Last weekend "Uncle Butters" and I hosted Christine & Trinity for the Memorial Day Weekend. I should also mention that I am thoroughly enjoying our proximity to the girls now that we live in Chicago...The "half way point" where we met my Brother to pick up the girls is just a 3 hour drive away.

From the Blue Corner...

Saturday we got up early & enjoyed a Pancake Breakfast care of Uncle Butters. We had originally planned on going to the Lincoln Park Zoo & Millennium Park, but it was raining so we decided to walk to the nearby Belmont Music Festival. The Music Festival features vendors of all sorts of things, including some wrestling masks Trinity was intrigued by. There's also a stage where a number of live bands play throughout the festival. We made our way down to the stage, and the "other Meghan" lead a charge to dance in the rain (which was steadily picking up of course). We got drenched in the rain, but we enjoyed our time dancing, libating & taking in the sights, sounds & tastes of Chicago festival season! We ended that day with a nice long walk to Wrigley Field & a surprise live band across the street, which we enjoyed from our front yard.

Riding the Train

The next morning we had an early appointment at J.Crew Bridal to try on some Wedding Dresses (Eeeep!) and some Bridesmaids dresses. The girls were really excited to ride the L downtown. They were comparatively less excited about dress shopping, because although I'd hoped they'd have some things for C & T to try on, they didn't have anything on hand. Coop & I had fun trying on our dresses nonetheless. Coop has yet to meet a Bridesmaids dress that doesn't like her...stay tuned for March 2012! As a reward for the girls' patience, and because I wanted to spoil them a little, we did some shopping downtown. They each picked out a few things they liked for the summer, and we all had a great time shopping together. Naturally, it pored the ENTIRE time, dashing our hopes of making a Lincoln Park Zoo & Millennium Park visit...we added those things to our "next time" list. We settled for Jenga & Uno back at home with Uncle Butters & the pups.

Later that night we hosted a BBQ for some of our Chicago friends (to show off our bright, kind, talented nieces). Christine & Trinity wore their favorite new outfits & charmed everyone to pieces. Trinity held her own with the boys in several rounds of Uno, a few of which she won.

On our last day together, Memorial Day, it was 90 degrees in Chicago & the girls had been patiently waiting for the sun to come out so that we could go to the beach. We weren't able to spend as much time at the beach as we would have liked (we had to get on the road toward home!) but the girls got to frolic around in Lake Michigan for a little bit.

I'm so proud to be their Aunt! I'm looking forward to many more summer visits to Chicago (among other places I'm sure) & lots more proud moments with these two.

Here are some more photos of our fun weekend!

Bursting with pride,
Meggo