Heading to Wisconsin!!

Ryan and I have birthdays three weeks apart from one another, and we decided when we got married that each year, we wanted to take a trip of some sort near our birthdays, just to get away, refresh, and enjoy each other. {If you've missed our past fun, you can read the posts from this page.} The first year we went to the Creation Museum AND ziplining. The second year we went to the Holland Tulipless Festival, which proved to be an amusing and frigid getaway. Last year we headed south to warmer climates and trekked through Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg.

This year, our trip was quite different in that it was a pleasure-combined-with-work trip. Last fall, my friend Olivia called to see if I would be interested in having my name submitted for speaker consideration for a conference hosted by her church. I already knew that God was calling me to more of this line of work, and this seemed like a wonderful opportunity. I also knew I wanted Ryan to go with me, but he has such limited time off work that I knew there would be no way he could accompany me to this and still have adequate time off to go on another adventure, so we combined them.

After the incredibly mild winter we had and the early, warm spring, you'd think that going to Wisconsin in early April would be most pleasant, weather-wise.

Or not.

We left home last Friday morning, on a yucky, cloudy, is-it-gonna-rain kind of day.

 I should mention that Ryan came home from work the night before we left, miserably sick with some sinus mess, so our backseat was packed with luggage, pillows, maps, computers, and his mobile medicine cabinet. Bless his heart, he really tried so hard to be an amazing trooper through the entire weekend, but I know there were times he just wanted to curl up and sleep for days.

We stopped for frozen Cokes - a treat for me, since that's not on the clean eating plan, and a soothing treat for his fiery throat.

I spent most of the first part of the day editing our podcast - extra fun to do when the roads were so loud that I sometimes had to hold my laptop up to my ear to hear it well!

We drove through every imaginable weather condition, from rain to sleet to snow, and Ryan hung on for dear life against the maddening WIND! We spent a couple of hours getting through Chicago. Sigh.

Stopped for a quick lunch and got back on the road with an initial destination of Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. I drove the last leg of that part of our trip so Ryan could sleep.

I wanted to stop in Sun Prairie, because a couple of years ago, I had the opportunity to interview Lindsay Sherbondy of Lindsay Letters {back when I was still at WBCL}. Lindsay is an artist who has designed the covers of books for Shauna Niequist and Myquillyn Smith {The Nester} - and she was one of my most favorite people to interview when I worked at the station.

I'd read on her website that she'd recently opened a storefront called Letters on Main, and I wanted to visit it! I checked ahead of time to make sure they were going to be open, and it so happened they would be on that day!

You. Guys.

This is the cutest shop EVER!! I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

She sells her own things and also the creativity of some others, and it was just a delightful, inspiring place to be. And even better...when I met her in person, she was just wonderful in every way. She was so kind, gave me a hug, agreed to a picture with me, and even sent me on my way with some goodies for free. {I can't wait to show you what I bought, too!}

It was such a lovely little stop. I'm so glad we went. If you're ever in the area, GO. And if you're not, check out her online shop. CUTE, CUTE, CUTE stuff.

There happened to be a little local coffee shop around the corner, so Ryan and I felt it was only necessary to stop for a fresh brew and to split a pumpkin scone because...well...vacation.

And then back on the snowy roads we went, with a destination intent of Chilton, Wisconsin.

Before we'd been there very long, this was the ground:

Ummm, come on, SPRING!!!!!!! What in the world!?!?!?!?!!

{In case you've never heard of Chilton, it's just northwest of Milwaukee, a little south of Green Bay, and on the opposite side of Lake Winnebago from Osh Kosh. It's just a little town in an agricultural community, but my goodness, did we EVER feel loved and welcomed while we were there.}

Olivia is a friend of mine from YEARS ago; we went to church together and I mentored her for about 10 years starting when she was 16. She's married now with two of the cutest kids you'll ever see {and you will see a LOT of them over the next couple of days}. It was my first time to meet the littlest one, and I am pretty sure by the time we met, we made a couple of little friends for life!

Olivia had made us a home-cooked meal that night, healthy and everything! {Learned I like Brussels sprouts...who knew???} And before we went to bed, we went to the high school where the conference was held to do our technology check with their tech guy.

It was a long, but wonderful day!

Anniversary Misc.

Last year I started a tradition of recreating some of our wedding pictures! We did it again this year - right outside our hotel. Wanna see?

We had so much fun doing those!!!

And here are a few other random moments from our trip!

Ryan and the gorilla print...

 The gorilla is huge in every way, but I do believe both Ryan and I have him beat on the nose!!!

Posing outside WGN Radio...seemed appropriate.

 Ryan's twin: Michael Jordan.

 Ryan's other twin. HA!!!!!!!

 Hotel breakfast creations. I think it was the Dagwood of brekafast sammiches.

 Ryan's favorite thing about the hotel: the huge staircase.

Thanks for putting up with our anniversary tales!! Hope you enjoyed them!!!

In Which We Go to Dinner

Oh my dear people. Grab coffee. Sit back. This is a tale and a half.

So yesterday I left you after we'd visited the Willis Tower and the observation deck. We needed to get down toward the Magnificent Mile for our dinner reservation and in any other season, we would have just scurried right over on foot, but it was SO COLD, so Ryan was a darling and got us a cab to get the mile or so over that way.

{The Shaffers in a cab.}

Remember these? Nik Wallenda walked the tightrope between them, blindfolded. My main observation was that if I had to back my car into those spots, well, things would really not go well. {All those lower floors are parking, if you can't see.}

We made it to the Magnificent Mile and began window-shopping.

Literally.

That, my friends, is my husband sitting in the window display in Crate and Barrel, right there in downtown Chicago.

Not kidding.

It was SO COLD, so we walked for a bit and then ducked into a store to warm up and then back out into the cold we went and then into another store...you get the idea.

By this point in the day, I was NOT feeling well at all. I realize that this may not be a big deal to YOU, but when my eating and sleeping schedules get off kilter, I just start to feel really sick. And we we had been keeping a weird schedule, and then in and out of the extreme warm and extreme cold - I felt so sick to my stomach and just wanted to go home! But we had dinner reservations, so that was not going to work.

Ryan felt so bad for me that he called the restaurant to see if we could move the reservations up at all. They could take us at 6:30, so we stopped and got me some medicine and then decided to head toward the restaurant so we could take our time.

We braced against the bitter wind and headed into it, walking through the city. We passed a park, and Ryan asked if I wanted to stop for a photo shoot.

No. 

WHAT?!?!?!?

That's when he knew I was serious about not feeling well. But as we passed the park, I happened to catch a little glimpse of something that looked familiar to me.

The bean!!!

It's actually called Coud Gate, but I think more people call it the bean. {Obviously. I mean, look at it!}

It was really cool to be there right when we were, because not many other people were milling about, and the nighttime view in the thing was spectacular! More pics:

After we got done with this, Ryan and I continued on our merry way, so we could get to dinner, which by this point was just a half hour away. I was so cold, I couldn't even feel my right thumb, and only TRUSTED it was still in my glove.

And that was when....we discovered we had been walking the wrong direction the entire time. We were now a mile and a half in the wrong direction with 30 minutes until dinner.

I. Am. Not. Even. Kidding.

So there we were, the hicks from the sticks, tearing through the streets of Chicago, power-walking and full-on running around people, zooming through flashing red hands at intersections, and doing our best to make it in the freezing cold to our building by 6:30.

We made it.

Know where the building was?

NEXT DOOR TO WHERE WE STARTED WALKING THE WRONG WAY.

I. Am. Not. Even. Kidding.

Our reservations were at a place called The Signature Room,and it's on the 95th floor of its building.

I should back up and tell you that when I found out we had reservations, I asked Ryan about the attire we should wear. I didn't want to dress up to walk around the city in December - but neither did I want to haul around a bag with a change of clothes! He said we could wear nice jeans and dress shirts, so that's what we'd done. And we wore walking shoes. :)

So we arrived at the building and got put on an elevator to go up 95 floors with 234289347298347923 other people. Our gigantic noses were bright red and running, we couldn't feel any fingers or toes, and I had hat hair.

We tumbled out of the elevator and the woman who greeted us invited us to check our coats around the corner.

Yeah, well, that cost a dollar a coat, so we, the cheapies, kept our coats! They led us to our table, and we traipsed past all the ladies in their cocktail dresses in stilettos, still wearing our coats, draped in our tour-the-city-cinch sacks, and padding along in our walking shoes and jeans.

Classy, party of two.

They seated us by the window, and y'all, check OUT THE VIEW!!!!!! {Oh yes. I whipped out the old phone-aroonie and started taking pictures.}

 The city {above} and the lake shore {below}. STUNNING.

ALMOST like the beach of two years prior...except not really.

The waiter brought our menu and I opened mine....

YOU GUYS!!! He had it personalized for me!! I cried. No one has EVER done anything like this for me before. I felt SO SPOILED and SO LOVED!!!!!

So this place was pretty much out of our price range, but we enjoyed the chicken we ordered. So good.

I so cherished this time with him. It was lovely. {And for the record, a guy came in after we did, pulling a suitcase. So I started feeling better about our little backpacks and our coats!!}

I couldn't eat very much because I still didn't feel well, but Ryan took care of our dinners, and right about the time I asked for some coffee, the waiter appeared with my second surprise of the night:

AAAHHHHH!! How is he so good to me?????

It was white chocolate mousse cake.

Y.U.M.

So it may have been the dinner with so many comedic moments, but oh my word, what a treasured memory. I was in awe of Ryan's sweet display of love that night. He treated me like a princess, and I did not take it for granted. I appreciated the sacrifices he made to make this sort of thing possible for us. Probably won't get to do anything like this again for a really long time, but what a treasure it was!!

After dinner, we took a cab back to Union Station. We'd run enough for one day.

 Made it back to Schaumburg without incident!!!

And that was our anniversary!!!