Chicago: The Wedding Extraveganza

Mr. Rogue and I got to sleep in which is nice, sleeping in for us on the East Coast simply means that we don’t have to wake up at the butt crack of dawn. Everyone decided to meet for brunch across the street at the Lux Bar at a nice reasonable time of 10:00 AM, yes and thank you very much!

Of course I would have liked to have gotten up before brunch to get my work out in for the day OUT of the way however too many martinis the previous night at the bar kept me hitting snooze on the alarm. So I slept in with Mr. Rogue and we managed to get to brunch relatively on time. Going out to eat for every meal is going to be tough, I want to make good choices at restaurants but there are so many BAD choices that look so wonderful. In the end I decided not to get what I wanted, cream cheese stuffed crepes and instead got what was healthier, an omelette with a side of fruit. Being good is hard to do.

After breakfast the people not in the wedding party opted to stroll down the street to do a bit of sightseeing. Oh how I wanted to go, instead I said goodbye to my man went back to my room, put on my gym clothes and went to the gym. Not as much fun but if I had gotten up earlier like I had originally planned then I would have been able to go. I reasoned that I was staying after in Chicago for a few days and I would be able to sightsee then. I got to the gym, which was just a regular sized room they converted to a gym and was happy to see not only a few treadmills but also the same brand of elliptical that I have at home. Hurrah no trying to figure out a new machine. Since I knew those martinis and pizza last night, plus all the yummy food tonight was going to add up and since I already was out of the sightseeing I decided to do a whole hour. GO ME!!!



After working out I went back to the room, grabbed a shower and then even had some time to take a nap. The time we were going to leave kept getting wrangled all around and in the end I was not happy, I ended up with a half hour LESS time to get ready and had to scramble. Mama does not like to be rushed. We made it to the lobby in time and got a cab to the church, I was super loving my navy blue and pink outfit... pretty!



We were the first ones at the church, sigh, but at least that gave us plenty of time to take photos. I got to sneak into the chapel early and then we posed for a few family portraits. With everyone all dressed up it’s the perfect time to get some nice shots of the fam.









The service was lovely, short and that bride I think was the HAPPIEST bride that I ever saw. She even teared up a bit during her vows, which reminded me of my wedding; I ended up crying so hard I could barely get through my vows. She made it through hers, got to the kiss and then the grin that took over her face as she walked down the aisle was PRICELESS; that was one happy beautiful bride.



While the bridal party went adventuring around Chicago for some photos we all made our way to the reception at a nearby restaurant. Everything was very classic, navy blue and white with candles all aglow. I really liked how they had the tables laid out.



This is the first wedding that I have been to in a while where I am not either the bride or standing up in the wedding and I was READY to have fun without any responsibilities. Of course I took a ton of photos in between sips of my red wine. Kids and babies playing on the dance floor, flower girls spinning their beautiful spinney dresses, it made me think of weddings when I was a kid. How much fun we had scurrying between the adults legs, being carried around the dance floor in the arms of our family, laughter bubbling in between notes from the dj.



We laughed and hung out with Mr. Rogues sister and cousins. All of us with glasses in our hands and smiles on our faces, all of us learning more about the rest, catching up on jobs and travels, babies and plans. Makes me wish for parties like this more often, makes me wish our family lived closer.



Appetizers were circulated before dinner and we were starving. Mushrooms at our table were all passed to me, I was the only one at the table who would eat them, and the bruschetta was SIMPLY divine! But finally dinner was served, speeches were read, glasses were raised in countless Champaign toasts and the groom gave a hilarious tribute to his blushing stalker bride. We all laughed and I will forever look at her and joking think stalker.



I keep saying it again and again that this bride seemed like the happiest bride I have ever seen. Her smile did not leave her face the entire night. They were so much in love. It is hard to find your soul mate out there. She had to wait a little longer for her prince charming to appear. But it is worth the wait to have a smile like that on your face forever. I am so happy for them both!



Much later in the night, the kids were all put to bed, the alcohol flowed a little more freely, the music got a little louder and we all danced. The dj played the best songs, after a while the girls all kicked off our shoes, the boys all loosened their ties. We danced and danced and danced, I must have burned a thousand more calories, and then we took a break for a drink only to get pulled on the dance floor again.





At the end of the night I managed to get the bride alone for a second. I just wanted one photo with her before the magic of the night all ended. One of the best weddings I have ever been too. Congrads on your special day!

Chicago: Here We Come

Of course it started off with a VERY early morning, last minute items thrown into bags. And then the second before we race out the door I have to weigh my bag one more time. 48.9 pounds on the dot... just to be sure it is under the 50 pound weight limit. We got to LAX with a good hour and a half to spare before our flight. There is nothing worse in my opinion than being rushed, maybe even having to run to the flight... so not cool. Eating right on this trip I knew was going to be hard, I didn’t want to blow all the hard work that I have been doing over the past month. I packed some trail mix and a banana for the actual flight but when Mr. Rogue stopped at Berger King for a yummy croissant sandwich and hash browns I almost caved. I was proud of myself, I walked away and instead ordered an oatmeal. I managed to get to Chicago eating well.



So we flew, on our way to a new adventure. It’s my favorite part of a trip, all the possibilities are out there, and I am on the edge of something new, high above the world, my face pressed against the glass, my man’s hand curled into mine. I LOVE TO FLY!!!



We arrived without issue in Chicago, found our bags, grabbed a cab and headed to our hotel. We adored The Sutton Place Hotel. It was located in the heart of the Gold Coast where a ton of fun restaurants, boutique shops and galleries were. It was totally my kind of place. The hotel was modern, elegant yet unpretentious... a perfect urban getaway. After we checked in we headed to the lobby where Mr. Rogue’s extended family was already congregating.



Hugs, meet and greets and exclamations of happiness at finally being all together were exchanged and then we headed around the corner for the rehearsal dinner. Out of town family were invited to Lou Malnati’s one of Chicago’s famous deep dish pizzeria’s. Of course pizza is never on anyone’s diet list, and it for sure isn’t on mine, however Chicago is KNOWN for its amazing deep dish pizza and I couldn’t help but have part of a slice... Mr. Rogue finished the rest. Thank goodness they also had the best all you can eat salad and veggie platter. I nibbled at my small part of pizza and instead filled up on the veggies. YUMMMMMMM!



In the middle of dinner I grabbed my camera and walked around the four large tables snapping shots of the happy couple (lower right), cousins, aunts and uncles and friends. Mr. Rogue’s cousin was the bride and she met her husband to be at Starbucks; in fact two Starbucks in the same day. She is a teacher and she often grades her papers while sipping her favorite coffee. She had seen him and even pointed him out to a friend, but before she could go over and say hi he left. All day she thought about him and bemoaned the fact that she didn’t say hi and then later, at a different Starbucks they saw each other again. Not one to give up on a second chance she waved, he came over and well it was smooth sailing from then on. What a beautiful couple.

P.S. Did I mention that pizza was INCREDIBLE!!!



I had a great time re-meeting much of Mr. Rogue’s family that I had only seen one time before at our wedding years ago. With all of us scattered across the United States weddings it seems will be where we can catch up on all that has happened. And sometimes look I can remember to give my camera to someone else so I get in the pictures sometimes!



After dinner, and after we closed down the restaurant the kids, hahahaha yes we are still called kids, headed over to the Whiskey Bar and Grill. We all weren’t ready to go to bed yet, the night was young, it was after all only 9pm our time. Mrs. Painter and I spent time catching up; she was sans husband and sans kids. What happens in Chicago... stays in Chicago. Oh what happy memories!



The bar was cool, we miraculously managed after repositioning a few couples, to wrangle seats for our party of 15 and then proceeded to order quite a few martinis and margaritas. The bride didn’t stay long preferring to have just one drink before smartly taking herself to bed. We don’t want bags under the bride’s eyes. I got hooked on the oh so delicious chocolate martinis. When they are done right they are incredible. YUMMMM.



However my favorite part of the day was the fact that Mr. Rogue was with me all day long. He has been so busy with work lately that I haven’t seen much of him. A whole three days with my best friend at my side was simply perfect. LOVE this man to pieces! Yeah Chicago trip!

Our 30 Day Challenge Gave Birth

This morning was a busy mess. Not only did we have to make it out of the door by 7am in order to get to the airport in time for our flight to Chicago, not only did I have to shower and get dressed and not forget the million and one little things you have to do before leaving for a week, I also had to work in an extra half hour to exercise. Yup that’s right, this morning is the last day of Ms. Pool Shark and my 30 day elliptical challenge and I was NOT going to lose. I wiggled my time in and whisked off my text to her! Successes and OH IT FEELS GOOD.



What started out as a simple challenge became something so much more. Ms. Pool Shark and I have become competitors and allies in fighting our weight. This week proved how competitive we can get. If you look at the above chart on day 26 I did two hours and Ms. Pool Shark did a WHOPPING four hours. So then on day 27 I had to one up her with four and a half hours. WE very clearly have issues. However my point isn’t our combined neurosis, in fact my point is that we push each other, and the even greater point is that we challenge each other.

Case in "triple point", a few days before I was talking about how the end of our exercise challenge neatly coincided with my departure for Chicago and how I was going to relish not exercising and eating a ton of yummy food. For those of you shaking your heads don’t worry Ms. Pool Shark smacked me upside the head. She very correctly stated that we weren’t going to get anywhere unless we make these changes matter at home and WHILE WE ARE PLAYING IN DISTANT LANDS - including my trip to Chicago. And although I dont like to admit it often (because Ms. Pool Shark already has a big head) she is absolutely right. So this whole conversation finally led us to talking about extending our little challenge three months, six months, maybe even a year. For now we agreed to six months, and I agreed to attempt to fit in exercise and smart eating where I could in Chicago.

Exercising on vacation... that will be a first for me.

In other news Ms. Ivey and Mrs. Dancer may both join our little exercise challenge. Yea to more players entering the arena! GAME ON and may every woman win!!!!!

And two more things. One I bought myself some pretty new exercising clothes as a reward for getting through the first 30 days. Pretty clothes make me feel happy and I adore these.



And lastly I decided to keep a spreadsheet of the distance that I am going and the time I am ellipticalling. And I was SHOCKED... SHOCKED at how much I did. Now I cannot wait to see how far I go after six months! GO ME!

total distance 89.53 miles
total calories 16,590
total time 34 hours and 42 minutes

Shop Till You Drop

I decided yesterday that the dress I had picked out for the wedding Mr. Rogue and I are going to in Chicago just wasn’t going to work. So after therapy Tuesday I went looking for a new dress. I don’t have a problem at all just going shopping, but when you need something specific it drives me nuts. I ended up going to six stores (and spent a good amount of time in each of those stores) and still couldn’t find THE dress.

Of course I found a bunch of things that weren’t the dress. Distractions damn you for taking me off course.


A BEAUTIFUL PRINT DRESS WITH A GREEN BELT, A PAIR OF HEELS ON CLEARANCE, AND THE PERFECT MAKEUP REPLACEMENT BAG

And then at the seventh store I finally found something that I loved. Although it was a dark navy blue and I was hoping for a bright colored spring dress I couldn’t help but fall in love with it. Besides I reasoned I could make it pop with the right accessories.



OH if I had only known how those accessories would take me on such a merry little ride. I simply wanted a beautiful bright colored heel to contrast with the navy dress. SIMPLY was the part where I got it wrong. Over the next two days I spent time in every single mall in the general facility, five malls to be exact. While I was searching for my perfect shoes and purse I found a few things that I thought Mrs. Fruit would like for her dress. Since she was on lockdown at home with her two kids and busy packing I found her a belt and a perfect purse to go with her dress.





Despite my tenacity I didn’t find EXACTLY what I was looking for. Instead I started getting desperate and just started buying a bunch of things that were almost right. I figured I would just bring them all home, try them all on with the dress and then take back the ones that didn’t work. Four pair of shoes and three clutches later I went home.

Mrs. Dancer came over and I put on all the choices. In the end we decided to go with a pretty pink pop of a shoe. The color is so beautiful and the clutch I bought along with a pashmina that I borrowed from Mrs. Dancer completed the outfit.

MAC it UP!

Over the past few days I have been to quite a few malls and often I am tempted by all the makeup. Normally I just turn the other way and keep walking. I don’t often wear makeup or when I do I will just apply a little. Some mascara, a tiny bit of nudish eyeshadow and maybe some lipgloss. Badda boom badda bing. However I have a wedding I am going to this weekend and since the sirens call of the MAC counter became louder I gave in.



I adore that you can get a makeover, and even though I didn’t have anywhere to be that day I thought I would just have someone show me a new way to do my eyes. Now I like to stalk the girls working behind the counter from afar. I want to find out who’s makeup I like and who’s I don’t, which girl seems nice (because who wants to be uncomfortable while learning something) and who the OTHER girls turn to for guidance. Once I locate the girl that has it all I walk up and wait. Most of the time they are the busiest but the wait is always worth it. And while you are waiting you can look at all the pretty colors!



I ended up picking the manager and she was FANTASTIC. I told her I wanted something for a wedding, something that could work for day but also for evening, and something outside my normal comfort zone. We discussed colors and my skin aversions to any makeup with perfume in it and she brought over a few options to try. Most of them were just the bronzy blush colors that I normally wear but one option had a beautiful rusty gold, a creamy yellow and a black. BLACK EYESHADOW… gasp never before on my eyes… unless it was Halloween.



I let her drive the car often deferring to what she preferred and I was so happy with the results. It was a nice punch up from my normal look but not so far off that I felt odd. She even toned down my lip color with a nude wash which made my eyes pop even more. LOVED IT.

Sorry about the crummy quality of the photo I was using my cell phone under florescent lights but you can at least get an idea.

The Power of Love

Needed a good cry today… found my fix on youtube.

Sunday Skinny: The Most Important Meal of the Day

Well technically according to the scale this morning I am the same weight that I was last Sunday HOWEVER I did eat a terribly horrible meal of 3700 calories at Mastro’s and I was on track before that day to lose my two pounds this week. Therefore I am hoping that I can be back on track by next Sunday with a big weight loss. With that being said, as Mrs. Pool Shark and I keep saying to each other:

‘You do the crime, you do the time.’

In essence I ate a bunch of food that was AMAZING (the crime) but now I have to work out extra hard (the time). I worked out three hours today on the elliptical. I didn’t want to but Mrs. Pool Shark set a bar, and well I had to follow.

Lately I have been working on breakfast. I sometimes grab a small breakfast, I know small isn’t the best but usually I am not hungry yet and I always rationalize to myself that I should just save the calories for later in the day when I am really CRAVING something. So I generally grab a small bowl of oatmeal, or two slices of toast, or a bagel and cream cheese, or even a bowl of cereal sans milk (yeah I know it’s weird but I am quazi lactose intolerant and not a huge fan of milk anyways). On the weekends as a treat I might make pancakes or some French toast smothered in syrup. And then occasionally, if I am feeling particularly adventurous, I will add some fruit in there. What I find is that sometimes when I eat breakfast I find myself hungry an hour or two later, it seems hardly worth it to eat breakfast at all. Oftentimes I wake up and start my day, too busy to slow down and eat anything, inevitably a few hours later I am starving and eat a gigantic (bad for me) lunch.

I have been trying to figure out my patterns around eating and trying to work in healthier habits. Although I have charted in the past what I have been eating so I can count my calories eaten for the day my therapist suggested something new. Over the past two weeks I have been charting what I have been eating AND what I have been feeling as I eat.

What I have found is that certain things give me a sugar rush in the morning and then I am on this crazy craving roller coaster all day long of blood sugar highs and lows. Bottom line is that I have found that my breakfast choices of the past are too full of empty calories that don’t keep me full. So I have been working (with the help of Ms. Yoga) on what breakfasts give me a little food and that keep me satiated longer.



I found my perfect breakfast; two hard boiled eggs mixed with a half a tablespoon of mayonnaise, a serving of fruit and an ounce of nuts. It’s about the same calories as my past traditional choices for breakfast however the combination of fats, protein, minerals and vitamins keeps me full for a good four hours, much better than the one – two hour I would get with my empty carbs.

Oh and Ms. Pool Shark and I are still going strong on our thirty day elliptical challenge. Only four more days to go – WHOOO HOOOO!

BBBS 53: Frozen Stairmaster

I had told Ms. Little in October that I would take her back to the snow this winter, but that promise was made before we had such mild weather. This winter has been terrible for the lovers of snow; mild, calm, not many major storms and just too warm. So this weekend before what LITTLE is on the mountain is gone I decided to wrangle up the girls (Ms. Little and her twin sister) and take them to the mountains.

This is a whole day affair. It takes at least two and a half hours to get there, two and a half hours back and then because we are going to be gone so long there is the stop to eat, oh yea and all those bathroom breaks. No no we don’t stop for the girls; I am the one with the gerbil bladder.

We got up to Big Bear and I was relieved to see that there was snow. This is the girls second time seeing snow and they ADORE it. What kid doesn’t? We rented our inner tubes and got down to the business of having FUN. Of course when I talk about fun I mean the mad screaming excitement of racing down a snow covered hill. That however only takes a moment, in one breath we are tipping over the edge and racing down to the bottom of the hill.





That is the fun part. The real work is picking yourself off the icy ground, and girding your loins to carrying your tube back up the hill. Once, twice, three times not so bad… after an hour I am ready to trade all the shoes in my closet for an escalator thingy to take me to the top of the hill.





We took several breaks and the girls even got creative during one of our rest periods by making mini snowmen. The snowman was so tiny and so cute, she was super happy with it and I was too until she asked me to ride down the hill with Mr. Snowman. Oh and while you are doing that don’t drop him M’kay!

















After taking our breaks we would get back up again and start climbing that damn hill again. Oh but the giggles and the laughter and the fun we had made up for all the hard work. At least I got a ton of exercise. Although maybe next year I will take Ms. Little skiing where they have chair lifts to get you back to the top.

Sorry for the shape of the videos, I am a much better photographer than I am a videographer. Oh and yes I know I scream too much. I am gonna have to work on both of those in the future.





After we were exhausted we turned in our tubes, changed our clothes and headed on the long drive home. The weather wasn’t cooperating. A horrible fog came in and it started to rain. After only 15 minutes both girls conked right out. Driving home with laughter still ringing in my ears, two little sweethearts slumbering away… LOVE IT!