We had a lovely couple of days here for Christmas Eve and Day. But first, I wanted to share a funny series of beard photos that John and I saw at the Chicago Athletic Association when we were downtown at the Art Institute. OK, so back to this post, Liam…

John and I went downtown today and kept remarking on despite not being in Sydney this year, there’s a lot to enjoy about Chicago for the holidays. Especially with the clear skies and very mild temps that we got today! Here’s our big decorated tree in Millennium Park. Note John…

Readers who haven’t heard Maddie play piano or sing are in for quite a treat! We were invited to her piano concert and choir Christmas show last weekend, and she really did a great job! Saturday was the piano recital at a college chapel in Naperville. Maddie played three songs,…

We’ve featured the CTA holiday train before, but it’s been a few years. There’s a full train that they decorate at Christmas, with passenger cars and a flatbed car with Santa in a sleigh, and the train rotates between different el lines. This year a friend of mine from work…

Just a few more Thanksgiving photos from Mom’s camera. Here we are before dinner in the kitchen: On Friday John and I took a walk to Wicker Park and back around on the 606. It’s always fun to see a new (or new to me) mural. We went into Challenger’s…

Liam and Kat had plans to spend Thanksgiving dinner with her family, so we arranged to have them come over for a Thanksgiving breakfast, not a typical tradition but with the dinner plans under control made a very nice start to the day. We had bagels with tomatoes and smoked…

Thought I would get this holiday off on the right foot by posting incrementally rather than in one huge post! Miles flew in from Portland on Tuesday evening and is doing great. Here he is getting into the car when we picked him up from the el station. He’s looking…

Sunday we woke up to a completely clear day, with clear in the Bay Area meaning no fog. Saturday had seen some fog at the northern end of the Point Reyes peninsula, so with the clear day ahead we decided to take what we’d heard was a hike with amazing…

This morning we rented a car and drive to Point Reyes north of San Francisco. We went on a short but interesting walk called the Earthquake Trail that is right on the San Andreas fault. Like ON IT. The two fences above are 16 feet apart and show how when…

John had two back to back work trips to San Francisco so I decided to join him for a long weekend. Thanks to Liam for minding the piggies back in Chicago! I arrived Thursday evening and we went to dinner with friends Matthew and Patricia – readers will remember them…