We heard that Miles’s birthday celebrations kicked off, of course, in Sydney where everything happens earlier! Rory and Colette sang happy birthday along with granny and grandad on Skype.  Other highlights of Miles’s last day being 15 included his first trip, solo at that, to the state of Illinois building…

I have been meaning to get into a regular blog update schedule and while I can’t promise this is it, I can try for a post. It’s a start!  John’s birthday was lovely today, starting with riding bikes to yoga at the Garfield park conservatory. We’ve had a ton of…

After some symptoms I’d rather not go into in this forum, we took Roux to the vet last week. Turns out the poor little guy had a urinary tract infection and was prescribed an antibiotic and a medication to make him more comfortable, to be taken every day. I was…

I’m just finishing up a business trip to Cape Town, so I thought I’d share a few photos of my time there.  It was FCB’s global conference, lasting from Friday to Thursday, with a couple of days/afternoons off, so I didn’t have to spend the entire time in a conference…

We had a lot of coming and going this week. John left for a work trip up Cape Town on Wednesday, and Debbie, Jeff and Maddie arrived for a visit on Thursday.  So far all good for John in SA, and Miles and I are having a lot of fun…

We have had a very unseasonably warm spell for Chicago in February! This inspired us to take my bike in to get gears (hopefully I can go a bit faster with them!) and then for me to cycle to work today. There was fog on the lake tonight in the…

Sorry for the long break between blog posts. Our trip to Australia was the biggest family news item that went uncovered and we are working on ideas about how to retroactively post about it. But in the meantime I thought I’d jump right in with other household news… rats in…

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! We had some changes to the usual plans this year but hope that everyone enjoyed the weekend in the end. First, our usual Thanksgiving companions, the West family, went to Ohio this year but will be back in future years! Next, Nana and Grandpa were set to…

It’s been way too long since we updated the blog, yikes! I have a few photos built up to share and a big happy birthday shoutout to Colette (it’s still your birthday here!) and best wishes to send to Colman as he runs the NYC marathon tomorrow! He’s with a…

The last day of our trail was quite fun, lots of mile markers, the Mason Dixon line, the Eastern Continental Divide (Every river east of this flows to the Atlantic, every river west flows to the Gulf of Mexico) the state line separating Pennsylvania and Maryland, and after a long…