Visitors and outings between the holidays

The days between Christmas and New Year’s Day got a bit blurry, which actually feels kinda nice since the rest of the year can be pretty tied to weekdays vs weekends and all too easy to keep track of. So in summarizing the fun things we did, I’m not even sure if I’ve got these in the right order but also don’t really want to spoil the feel of the week by tracking it down too much.

A real highlight of the week was when Maddie and I went to have pizza and see the movie Migration in Naperville. We had planned to do an outing like this to celebrate her birthday earlier in December, but had to postpone because we were both getting over very drawn out colds. Yummy pizza, funny movie and great company, Maddie! As a bonus I also got to see a lot of Naperville’s Christmas lights – wow!

While there, I also saw the gingerbread house that Maddie and Debbie made, with the mushroom and gingerbread boy from the yule log in the front garden. Very nice house and re-use of those elements!

Maddie completed the Lego London architecture model very handily.

Also during this week, John and I went to the MCA to see the Faith Ringgold exhibit which was really great. I was busy taking in this artist’s decades of work and didn’t get any photos of the work, but did snap this shot of the entry of the gallery space after we’d been through. There was another exhibit there that was a big surprise – a wall with small holes cut and when you looked inside there were kaleidoscopes built in. Very cool. We also enjoyed an exhibit of Puerto Rican artists (see the flags image below) and then walked down to the loop to the theater box office to get tickets to a Conor McPherson play that will be here in February. And later that evening we met Miles, Max and Caroline for dinner at Parson’s. (More on their visit below!)

The next day or so, we went to Northerly Island for a really nice walk. We’re continuing to walk along the new-to-us path along the west side of the island. Noting that although it’s called an island, it’s a peninsula. Haha.

And on the last day of 2023, we woke up to snow! Very exciting, since there hasn’t been snow to speak of this winter and it just seemed to make things a teeny bit right in the world, for a minute, with snow falling here in winter. Back in May, most of you met (in person or on the blog) Miles’s Portland friends Max and Caroline – they are visiting and staying with us this week and it’s so nice for Miles and us to have them here! On NYE, we had a nice time hanging out with them as Miles made a delicious baked eggs dish for them and they made plans for later in the day, and then they went downtown to do some sightseeing.

In the afternoon, we skyped with Colette, Rory and Colman in Melbourne – great talking to you all 🙂 Bruh!

Here are some more photos of the snow that we saw on our walk to the park today.

And while I may have a few more photos later today, I’m feeling a bit of a year-end vibe in this post. This morning while swimming at my gym (seen below and deserving a shoutout as my go-to swimming place) I was thinking that wow this was a really amazing swimming year. From the swimmer’s paradise of so many swimming sites in Sydney in January, then on to swims in Mexico, beaches along Lake Michigan, at the Chicago St Regis(!), Chicago Park District pools with a short but really great summer season, the Gulf of Bothnia (best body of water name for sure) and Baltic Sea in Finland, and in Quebec City spas, it was truly amazing. I feel very fortunate! Happy new year everyone and wishing you all your equivalent of a wonderful swim year in 2024!