The Return of the Hutsons

Johnny and I graduated from Wheaton College outside of Chicago over five years ago.  And aside from a short jaunt back to Wheaton for his sister's graduation, we haven't been back to Chicago since we packed up the Uhaul and skee-daddled to Philadelphia.  We wanted to get away for a weekend this winter, so we decided to revisit the town of our glory days.  We dropped off the kiddos at my parents', hopped on a plane, and arrived to this:

Ahhh beautiful.  Just as I remember it.  Freezing cold, wet feet, wind-burned face...the place I could not get out of fast enough.  It all came back to me.  Time seems to smooth over the truth.  I exaggerate.  The weather actually wasn't as horrible as it could have been.  The snow stopped right after we got there, and the temp stayed in the 30s and 40s.  Lovely.

One thing I love about Johnny that you might not know about him is that he is really good at planning vacations.  Exceptionally good.  He does all the research and finds great activities and restaurants that you might not normally come across.  This is good for me because even after living in Philadelphia for two years, I'm completely terrified of and stressed out by public transportation and I also tend to just want to eat at Chili's all the time.  He's the ying to my stay-in-the-hotel-and-watch-TLC-yang.

So one of the first things that we did upon arrival was go to The Driehaus Museum downtown.  It's an old mansion that has been turned into a museum.  It was gorgeous, and the tour was really interesting.

Instead of refurnishing the upstairs bedrooms, they made them into exhibit spaces.  Right now they have an exhibit on Louis Comfort Tiffany's stained glass.  All of his famous lamps and such.  It was really impressive.  I definitely recommend this museum especially if you've already done the Art Institute and the Field Museum.  You should also join the Army because they give you free admission if you do.

After the museum we scurried on over to Lou Malnati's, one of our favorite deep dish pizza places.  Just delicious.

After pizza we made the first of THREE attempts to go to the Christkindlmarkt (yes I spelled that correctly).  We went here every year in college and never had a problem getting in or walking around.  I don't know if the cat's out of the bag or what, but it was so extremely crowded that we couldn't even elbow our way into the "open air" much less buy anything.  It was insane.  I'm all about traditions until they're a pain in the butt, so we took a bad selfie and called it a day.

Ok so this day is going to seem really long because it was.  We took the 6:30 am flight, which gave us a large amount of time to fill.  So after attempt number one at the Christmas market, we hopped on the train to the suburbs and reunited with WHEATON! I threatened Johnny that I was going to say hi to all the students we passed in order to help us look like we still fit in.

We visited the student center, said hi to one of my old professors, bought some Wheaton paraphernalia for the bebbies, explored the fancy shmancy new science building, and then realized that we had nothing else to do on campus.  We were going to meet one of my old high school students and his roommates for dinner, but we had something like two hours to kill.  So we decided to do something we could have never done in college: drink alcohol in downtown Wheaton!  The mulled wine was delicious.

We decided to have a bit more relaxing day on Saturday.  We ate breakfast at a place called Pittsfield's, tucked inside of an old Gilded Age high rise.  The mimosas were a good start to the day.  In college, I had always wanted to go to Shedd Aquarium, but never did (ie I was waaay too cheap back then), so we Ubered on over there.  It was great! Definitely a must see if you're heading to Chicago.  They have Baluga whales and those sharks that look like they have a saw for a nose and jelly fish and 4D movies and cute penguins.  The only thing I don't recommend is the live show.  They had people playing violins in the water and whales swimming and Frosty the Snowman and it was just a total mess.

That night we ate at Farmhouse, THE best restaurant I have been to in a long time.  They had a fabulously fun drink selection and the most delicious cheese curds in existence.  I would seriously have eaten them until I died right there...which wouldn't have taken very long I'm sure.

Sunday morning we woke up and had cappuccinos and croissants at one of our favorite Philly-based coffee shops, La Colombe.  We were then thirty minutes late to a church service at a tiny little PCA church called Cityview.  It was nice to be back in a city-based church that had such a heart for the people around it.  I definitely miss that aspect of our lives in Philadelphia.

After a tasty brunch at Yolk (did you know you can make quinoa just like oatmeal?) and another attempt at the Christkindlmarkt (I'm sure the girls will forget about our promise to bring back an ornament) and a nap at the hotel, we ventured out to the Chicago Cultural Center which used to be the Chicago Public Library.  I remember accidentally wandering in here in college looking for the library.  They have more amazing Tiffany stained glass, particularly this huge Tiffany glass dome.  Johnny and I have already figured out where we're going to have our next wedding.

That night we had tickets to go see a comedy show at Second City, so we stopped for an early dinner at The Purple Pig.  They don't take reservations, and we were lucky to sneak in at the bar.  They bill themselves as "cheese, swine, and wine," so basically all things that are good.  We got some wine and a charcuterie platter and all was well in the world.

Second City was super fun.  We got to see a lot of talented people perform, and we're saving our programs so that in ten years when they're on SNL we can say that we helped them get there,  You're welcome, comedians.

Aside from the 6:20am flight we had Monday morning to leave Chicago, we had a wonderful time.  I absolutely recommend everything we did, save the violin/dolphin show.  The only thing that has really changed about Chicago is that it's easier to navigate now that we have these new fangled smart phones.  Using the Uber app to get rides was amazingly easy and cheap, and we never had to wander around hoping we would find a coffee shop other than Starbucks.  There are seriously 17 of them within walking distance of each other.

I will say that coming home from vacations is a lot easier when you have this waiting for you.

Eight Years

Eight years ago today, Johnny and I went on our first date...so did five of our closest friends.

If I Die in Raleigh At Least I Will Die Free

When we were dating in college, I always went to visit Johnny in North Carolina for the Fourth of July.  We thought we'd continue the tradition and take the girls to visit Grammie and Grampie this year.  Now, for some odd reason there are no direct flights from Kansas City to Raleigh, so we had a connection in Baltimore.  Not a big deal, thought we.  

We got to the Kansas City airport around 10:30am for our noon flight.  Got a nice coffee, a blueberry muffin.  You know, just living the life.  I will interrupt here and say that Johnny told me Olive was dressed like a clown for this flight.

We arrived in Baltimore around 3:00, preparing to get on the quick 45 minute flight around 5:30pm.  Lila and I decided to stand in line at the airport Chipotle while Johnny and Olive held down a table for us, making friends with an elderly couple going to visit their grandkids in California.  While in line, Lila informed me, "Dat yady yooks pretty in her hair brush."  I translated for the woman, "My daughter thinks your hair is pretty."  We ate our dinner, and checked the departure monitors, noticing that our flight was delayed an hour.  Bummer, but no big deal.  We went to find our gate and settled down for a bit.  At this point, it started hailing really hard.  I suppose that should have been a red flag.

Rumors started floating around the gate area that there was a bad hurricane along the East Coast. Fabulous.  Before we knew it, the flight was no longer delayed until 6:30 but was now 8:30.  A girl sitting near us was growing angry and decided that she was going to go rent a car and drive to Raleigh.  "Anyone who wants to can join!" she declared. Johnny and I thought about it briefly, but then decided the five hour drive wasn't worth it; our flight would get in around the same time anyway. Ba ha ha! It's funny, now.

So about three hours into our layover, Lila was really doing an excellent job.  She traded off her time between playing on the iPad, pretending with her Disney princess dolls, watching cartoons, and running around in circles.  Johnny decided to take Olive on a walk to see if he could get her to take a nap.  While he was gone, Lila was squatting on the floor, looking at something, and then whined to me, "I have to go tinkle!"  Now this was odd because Lila is not totally/anywhere near being potty trained yet, and she had a diaper on.  So I kind of said, "Ok well just go," but I looked at her and realized that she had just gone and it had somehow come out the side of her diaper and completely soaked her leg.

I asked some nice ladies to watch our stuff, and I ran Lila into the bathroom.  Johnny had taken the diaper bag and the stroller, so I literally had nothing to cover Lila's butt with.  I stripped her down and held her as covered as a could and waited at the entrance of the bathroom in order to flag Johnny down.  He showed up pretty quickly and handed off a new Pull-Up.  Unfortunately, all of Lila's clothes were in a checked bag getting rained on outside (Fast-forward: I'm OCD about packing and put all of the girls clothes in labeled Ziploc gallon bags, so even though their suitcase was COMPLETELY soaked, all of their clothes were dry.  Take that Southwest...and the hurricane.), so Lila had no clothes.  Johnny then went on another walk around the airport with the new mission of finding child pants.

Meanwhile, Lila ran around the airport in just a Pull-Up.

After about 30 minutes, Johnny finally returned with the only child pants in the entire airport.

"Crabby in the Morning"

Though happy with our new pants, our happiness was soon dashed when we realized that our flight was being pushed back to 10:30 and then 11:00.  We continued to hang out at our gate which was conveniently located by one of the airport bars.  This location provided interesting companionship in the form of old people who had had too much to drink.  Remember the old couple from dinner?  Well that man sauntered over from his Bud Light at one point to check on Olive and actually kissed her on the head.  Now I'm not overprotective of my kids with strangers, but I think that might have been a step too far.  There was also an older woman who insisted on holding Olive for a few minutes while regaling Johnny with tales of her bad back and bronchitis. 

By 10:00, we had one diaper left between the two girls, Olive still hadn't slept, and I was entertaining Lila by walking up one moving walkway and back on the other one ("Tick tock it's yike a clock Mama!").  It was at this point we realized that if we had rented a car at 4:30 we would have been in Raleigh already.

We FINALLY got on the plane at 11:00 and took off around 11:30.  Both girls slept on the short flight, thankfully, and I was patting myself on the back for surviving a harrowing layover without a single meltdown, Lila or Mommy.  As we landed and I was pridefully unclipping my little angel from her carseat, Lila totally lost it.  I mean went bananas. It was almost one in the morning, and she was completely hysterical.  She sobbed from the airplane to the baggage claim to the car, "I don't want to get in dat white car! No fank you! No fank you!", to Grammie and Grampie's house.  It was almost two in the morning by the time I got her in her bed.  At this point Johnny and I are whisper yelling at each other about where the other one put the diaper bag and so on.

Long story short: we survived.  So if you ever have a two year old and a baby on a flight that connects in Baltimore, I suggest you bring an extra pair of pants.

Daddy's Home!

After 15 not fun days, Daddy's home!

I was really surprised by what a hard time Lila had without him.  I expected her to miss him, but she was really sad about her Daddy being gone.  She popped into her cozy coupe the other day, and I asked her where she was going.  "To Daddy's house," she responded.  In hindsight, I probably shouldn't have rented The Lion King for her for the first time last night.  "The Daddy is just sleeping! Let's skip to the next scene!"  And now that I'm writing this, I am realizing why she was worried that Daddy was sleeping in this morning.  

And Daddy has finally realized that my last name may be Hutson, but I am an English at heart, so that means he needs to bring me presents, and they should usually be of the chocolate variety.  I have no idea where they all went.

Thank you to everyone who helped me out while Johnny was gone! You have no idea how helpful you were!  But we're not quite out of the woods yet.  Even though Johnny is home, he is spending every waking minute studying for his fourth actuarial exam on Monday at 5:00pm.  He's been studying non-stop for the last six months, so we really want him to pass this one so that we can get our Daddy back for good...or at least until exam five comes around.

Father's Day 2014

(I will interrupt myself before I've started and say that I almost titled this "Father's Day 2013" but then I remembered that it's not 2013 anymore.)

Our girls are missing their daddy today.

Lila got to video chat with Johnny today and just kept saying "I missed you today," over and over again.

We love you, Daddy. Thank you for working hard for us.

Night One Without Daddy

Lila: But where's Daddy?

Rachel: Remember he's gone at Army.

Lila: But I miss him!

Rachel: I know; I miss him too.

Lila: Do you want me to make you feel better?

Rachel: Yes please.

(Big hug from Lila with lots of pats on the back.)

Waitin' On the Love of a Travelin' Soldier

When we were at Wheaton, Johnny was on a ROTC scholarship.  When we started dating, we knew that most likely he would graduate and then be deployed, serving four years of active duty and four years inactive to pay back his scholarship.  That's how we convinced my dad that we needed to get married in January before we graduated.  "But we love each other!" "We won't get to be together!"  Worked like a charm.  Anyway, around the time Johnny had to make his final decisions for where he'd be going after college, he realized that he could serve the eight years that he owed through the National Guard.  He could still have a civilian job and then serve one weekend a month and two weeks in the summer.  Perfect, we decided.  (By the way, look how well-rested we look in this picture. Anyone else have children in their bed during the storm last night?)

So Johnny graduated as a Second Lieutenant in the Army and has since served in the National Guard, first in Philadelphia and now in Topeka.  It's been fairly uneventful.  He was called up once during a blizzard in Philadelphia.  He had to drive around in a Hummer to shut down all the highways, but the roads were so bad that he had to walk to the armory to get to the Hummers.  Sorry he's wearing the same outfit in all these photos, by the way.

After the blizzard event, he spent four months in Augusta, GA doing some training.  Since then he's moved up to First Lieutenant and now Captain.  He goes to Topeka one weekend each month and then for two weeks during the summer he goes somewhere for more training.

This year he's going to Fort Riley, and he leaves tomorrow.  I'm never happy when he has to leave, but we've been extremely blessed that in five years of serving, he has never been deployed.  Johnny comes from a huge Navy family with four close family members currently serving Active Duty, including his sister and her husband who have to live apart and his cousin whose husband is deployed.  I'm thinking about them all as I'm packing up Johnny's ACU collection.  It's true that we've all consciously made the decision to have our families serve as military families, but that doesn't mean that it's an easy service...and Johnny and I are on the way easy end of it.

With the 4th of July coming up, don't forget about all the military families who are serving, especially the people who are currently deployed and are being greatly missed.

The Hutsons Watch Frozen for the First Time

Lila: I wonder what's going to happen to Frozen.

Rachel: I don't think the princess's name is actually "Frozen."

Rachel: Wait, I missed it. How did the parents die?

Johnny: They froze to death.

Rachel: Really?

Johnny: Yeah, it's called Frozen.

Rachel: Are you going to dream about snow tonight?

Lila: Uh huh and talking snowmen.

Rachel: I wonder when they're going to make it into a musical.

Johnny: They will probably let it go for a little while.

Pause

Rachel: Ba ha ha.

Broadway Kids!

Rachel: Look at the CD my mom got Lila for her birthday.

Johnny: They look like you.

Johnny's Back Porch Method

Johnny's home brew has been loving the cold weather.

The Last Five Years

As of today, Johnny and I have been married five years.  In honor of our anniversary, Johnny lost his wedding ring and I broke my engagement ring in half.  I'm assuming this is just as good of a sign as the unity candle not lighting at our wedding ceremony.



















 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Happy Anniversary Husband!