No, Seriously!

I talk a lot about how I have a bad memory, but I get the feeling people think, "Yeah, yeah... so does everyone!"

But seriously.  I have a TERRIBLE memory.  Ask my husband.  It's awful.  

Soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo..... our hard drive crashed some time in August or something, and we hadn't backed up the pictures we took between June 19th and midday August 2nd, Ava's birthday, plus all of Ava's birthday videos except the one I uploaded to YouTube.  The pictures we took after that, up until the computer crashed, were still on the camera.

Personally, I have no idea what happened between June 19th and August 2nd, other than my mom came to visit and we went to Chicago to see the bean and to Chinatown to get dim sum.  Yep.  So, if you'll bare with me, we can do some sleuthing à la Nancy Drew, only 21st-century-like.  

FIRST:  Facebook (FB) statuses.

SECOND:  Cell phone pictures.  Yep.  We actually DO have some pictures from the time in question.... they're just nowhere near as comprehensive, and most of them are pretty bad quality!  Sorry about that!

So if you'll ignore my apparent stupidity and the bad pictures, let's start with the end of June..... *cue flashback music*

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Photo - June 18 at 7:17pm:  Jason and I ordered a thin crust pizza from Papa's Pizza just down the road.  We got a family-sized Papa's Special.  I was SHOCKED at how much it cost.... but it WAS pretty huge!

Photo - June 20 at 11:16pm: Just hanging out on the bed.  Ava LOVES to be on our bed.

Ava and Josie

FB - June 22 at 11:17am: "There's a beautiful breeze coming in through the windows! Now if only our bedrooms had screens on them, so the kitties wouldn't escape..." - This is a reference to the fact that we didn't have screens on our windows for like 2 months after we moved in, so we couldn't open the windows on the bedroom windows to cool them off.  It got PRETTY HOT in our rooms.

FB - June 22 at 2:38pm: "CRAP. I just washed our light blue bathroom rugs with the new GREEN kitchen rugs, and now the bathroom rugs are a dirty pale greenish color. BLEGH...." - Self explanatory?  I tried rewashing.  I tried bleaching.  They're still just really dirty-looking now!

FB - June 23 at 6:48pm: "Making Yorkshire Pudding.... I think they look like the pictures.... :)" - I had a lot of eggs and milk I needed to use, so I made those!  I haven't made them since.  :P

FB - June 27 at 2:11pm: "Oh boy... Ava has started throwing food she doesn't want on the floor for the dogs. :P" - WOW!  I thought she'd been doing that since the beginning of time!  She still does this, for SURE!!!

Photo - June 27 at 7:13pm: Jason went out to some fancy dinner paid for by work.  Some kind of fish and rice, plus inedible garnish....

Photo - June 28 at 10:19pm: Ava having fun at story time!

Photo - June 29 at 2:38pm: My mom sent us this cute baby doll stroller.  Ava used it for about a week, then started walking and forgot about it.  Well, that's not TOTALLY true.  There's a little bear on top (her right hand is on it) that plays music, and she likes to push the button on its tummy and then dance to the music.

Photo - June 30 at 2:38pm: Ava and mommy shopping at Walmart.  She likes to sit in the front of shopping carts, but she usually ends up facing backward.  She's only sideways here!

FB - June 30 at 10:07pm: "Yay! Ava has FINALLY learned how to clap her hands! Next: walking." - How exciting!  See how fast she was growing up?  And she'll take her first steps in 2 days!

Wasn't that fun?  Stay tuned for the next couple of posts, where we figure out what happened in July! :P


Sara


PS - I found a picture of Ava at the aquarium on my phone.  I added it to the end of the last post.  Check it out!

With the Fishes

Our first adventure into Chicago was to go to the Shedd Aquarium with some other ladies and babies/toddlers from church.  (Jason was working...)  It's usually quite expensive to visit the aquarium, but most of the museums, zoos, etc. here have a few free days each month.  Those are VERY busy days, because so many people take advantage of them!  During the school year, I think they make field trip days free days so that people with memberships can avoid the huge crowds.

It didn't take as long to get downtown as I thought it might, but traffic gets heavy pretty quick when you're heading that way!  It was surprisingly easy to get there, too.  You just drive down I-55, until it tees into Lake Shore Drive... You go left and drive down 2 or 3 blocks, and the aquarium, museum, planetarium, and Soldier Field are all over on the right. Parking costs $16 for under 4 hours, $19 for longer!  OUCH!  Carpooling is recommended!

On the way from the parking garage to the aquarium, we passed the Field Museum of Natural History, and the very first legit hot dog stand I've ever seen!  :)  I didn't get one.  In fact, I haven't had a Chicago dog in the 4+ months I've been here.  Here, they're all about mustard, which I d-e-s-p-i-s-e.  A lot.  Blegh!  In fact, the only topping on a standard Chicago-style hot dog I LIKE is tomato.  So yeah, I'm sticking to the pizza.

Left: Field Museum — Right: Shedd Aquarium

Look!  A hot dog cart!  Like in While You Were Sleeping!

The line was QUITE long, so I had time to snap some pictures.  The Sears Tower has been the tallest building in the United States, at 1451 feet, since it was built in 1973, surpassing the World Trade Center towers.  It was the tallest building in the world until 1998.  And YES.  That includes those two white antennas.  (And yes, I think that's cheating.  Sorry, Chicago!)

Bottom Left: Former Sears Tower (now "Willis" Tower...dumb!)
Bottom Right: That's a great lake—Lake Michigan!

Ava was having a lot of fun being admired... :)  The kids we were with thought she was really cute... and I tend to agree with them... :)

Left: Ava was very popular with the kids we were with.
Top Right: Ava and Mom in front of a fish fountain.
Bottom Right: The only picture mom took of Ava "with" a fish... Oops!

We finally got in, and I took quite a few (mostly bad) pictures before my battery died.  I left the spare in the car for some stupid reason.  Grrr!  I didn't even take a picture of Ava INSIDE the aquarium!  The best I got was a picture of her in the reflection of one of the exhibits (above, bottom right).

There were a LOT of fish and other critters.  Some were huge, some tiny, some uglier than sin, some beautiful, some harmless, some deadly.  Some weren't even aquatic creatures.  There were monkeys!  !!!  I was like, "Ummmmmmm.... guys?"  No, but seriously, there were parts of the aquarium that showed different ecosystems, and one showed everything from the treetops to the lake bottom.  Make sense?  Yeah... I thought they were stretching...  Oooh... I LOVED the blue frogs!  SOOOO pretty, but seriously poisonous!

Top Left: Some kind of very large lobster; Top Right: Big Turtles
Bottom Left: A monkey............ at the aquarium..............
Bottom Middle: Very pretty and very poisonous frog.  Do not touch.
Bottom Right: "Morning Sunstar"... My dog has that toy in green.  :P

There were pretty things, like this.... ummmm...  errrrr.... *googles* Okay, help me out!  I'm spacing on what this stuff is called!  Apparently googling "pretty underwater stuff" isn't specific enough!  :P

Pretty... stuff....!

And there were CREEPY things....

Can you say ANACONDA?  Scary!

Overall, we had a fun day!  Ava didn't really "get it," but she likes riding in her stroller, so that worked!  I wish I'd had that extra camera battery though!  I didn't get any picture of the beluga whales, the dolphins, or the sea lions!  And I would have LOVED to take a video of the jelly fish!  They were beautiful and totally transfixing...  We'll have to go back soon for more pictures... The jellies exhibit goes through May 28, 2012!

For more info on the museum:  http://www.sheddaquarium.org/

Free day schedule:  http://www.sheddaquarium.org/discounts.html

EDIT:  Found this picture of Ava on my cell phone!  See?  I DID take a picture of Ava at the museum!  (Please excuse the TERRIBLE quality.  I hadn't gotten my new phone yet...)

This is the first time Ava ever
fell asleep in her stroller!  CUTE!

At the Park

Illinois has a TON of parks.  There's lots and lots of green around these parts.  One of our first ventures into the nearby outdoors was to a little park near our house.  We could see it on Google Maps, but things are always different on the ground.  The weather was PERFECT, and it was a cute little area!  And the first time Ava had ever crawled around on grass!  She had a ton of fun!

Ava climbed on Josie a bit...

Jason and the dogs hung out...

And, of course, Ava managed to find all sorts of exciting things, like dead leaves and a stick!

It was obviously very fascinating...  She's studying that stick like it's a science experiment...

This park is really just a little green area surrounded by some condos... like maybe the developer was required to have a certain amount of green area included in his plan, so there's a communal park for the residents to walk their dogs or whatever.  There's a little playground, a "sand" volleyball court, a couple of picnic tables, and the green area with a gravel-ish path around it.

Down the street about a half mile are a couple of even bigger areas with these huge fountains that shoot a ton of water straight up in the air in the middle of man-made stock ponds (pic below), big pavilions you can use for various reasons (I've seen family and church BBQs and kids birthday parties complete with bouncy castle), and REAL dog-walking paths.  One of them has this HUGE HILL that is used as seating for an amphitheater.  They had live music every Wednesday all summer...

I took this picture in October, so pretend the trees are green...
We walk around this pond all the time!  SO pretty!

We looked around (online) a LOT for places to live, and we're pretty stoked we ended up in such a nice area!  Plus, we're just down the street from the police station (which is attached to the amphitheater), so hopefully people wouldn't be stupid enough to break in/steal stuff in an area where the response time is under a minute.  :P  We FEEL safe, anyway!

And did I mention that we're half a mile from the beautiful, brand-new public library?  :)

Yay!  :)

Upside-Down Pizza

So, before Jason had to start work, we had to try this so-called "deep-dish" pizza that Chicago is known for.  I did a bit of research and found that there were two big popular franchises: Gino's East and Giordano's.  I checked both of their websites, and found that there were a couple Giordano's pretty close to where we live, so that was the plan.

So we get in the car and I'm setting up the Garmin... I search for pizza places, and what should pop up, but a Gino's East location closer to the Giordano's we were going to go to!  Sweet!

So we're driving, driving, driving on roads we've never been on.  Yeah, it wasn't that bad.  I mean, we had a GPS telling us where to go, and we're way out in the suburbs... It's not like it was downtown Chicago traffic or even interstate traffic headed toward Chicago (which is a lot more intimidating than it sounds)!  We turn into the shopping center that Gino's is in, and circle around the parking lot about 5 times looking for this place.

Yeah, as it turns out, you should trust a the company's website over a Garmin.  Apparently you have to pay money to get the info on those things updated!  How rude!  (My in-laws gave it to us just before we drove to Illinois, so I knew pretty much zip about the thing.)  So we gave up, and kept going toward Giordano's.  And I have to say, I'm glad we did.  I still haven't been to Gino's East, but Giordano's was yummy!

When we got there, and were happy to see they had lunch specials! Only $6.00 for a personal deep-dish pizza (they're QUITE expensive, in case you didn't click the links and look at the menus).  I think a drink came with it, too (I can't tell if that's Sprite or water)... But more importantly, we got to pick our own kind of pizza.  Jason ordered sausage and I ordered the spinach (which Jason hates)!  YUMMM!

Deep dish pizza takes a while to cook, so while we waited, Jason had some "fun" with Ava...

She agrees with everyone else in the world.  Lemons are sour.  This is the only picture I have of her making a face.  I think she might have liked it.  Are babies' taste buds completely developed at 10 months?

After that, we fed Ava actual food we'd brought for her... Some jar or something or other, I'm sure.  After a while, they brought our pizza out.

This is the face Jason makes when his food looks suspicious: in this case, when he sees tomato chunks right on top.  After 8 years, I still can't believe I married a guy who doesn't like tomatoes...  After picking them off, there wasn't much sauce left.  That didn't make him very happy.  But Ava loved the tomato chunks.  (That's my baby!)

I thought it was delicious!  And I was fascinated by the upside-down-ness of it all!

As you can see, the crust itself is actually very thin and crispy.  They put the "toppings" on first (my fresh spinach), then a THICK layer of cheese, then the sauce on top.  Funny, huh?  It was GREAT.  I had no problem downing the whole thing.  If I remember correctly, Jason had leftovers, and I think he let me eat them, as he wasn't terribly impressed.

Since then, we've also been to Lou Malnati's, which has a location just down the street from us.  It was good, but I didn't like their crust as well.  Plus, they are take-out only... which would have been great to know BEFORE we went there to get food.  Oops.  But that gave us an excuse to go check out this Walmart-like store they have up here called Meijer ("meyer").  It's better than Walmart, but carries the same very large variety of products.  I really should shop there more often, but Walmart is SO CLOSE to my house....

Anyway, like I said before, deep-dish pizza is really expensive, so we've only had it 3-4 times.  (We also tried a local thin-crust pizza, but that definitely wasn't as good AND it was crazy expensive.  I was shocked.)  So in an effort to save money, I've made deep-dish pizza twice.  The first time was bad.  It tasted fine, but trying to get the crust to work was really really really really really really really (etc.) difficult.  It worked better the second time.  What I learned: don't try to roll out the crust, just press it around the pan.

HERE is the recipe I used, from allrecipes.com:

Mine did NOT look this good (looks like they've added a bunch of stuff), but it was yummy!  I left out the fennel seed, because it's gross and the Italian sausage up here doesn't have any in it that I've seen!

So whether you've had authentic Chicago deep-dish pizza or not, this is a great way to change up pizza night!

The Move

I created this blog in June (I think), but I haven't written a real post yet... and now that I am, I'm going to keep you all in suspense about our lives at present and start back at the beginning.... *cue flashback music*  (NOTE: I just figured out I can pre-date each post, so I'm going to have the dates correspond to when these things actually happened.  I guess that means if there's something I want to blog about NOW, I can!  So perhaps not as much suspense as I originally intended?)

I was born on cold November morning in Utah at 2:30 am... ok, ok, that's true, but I'm kidding, of course.  I wasn't even a Ferrell then!  (Be honest.  Who didn't see that one coming? Srsly.)

What I really meant was my husband, Jason, FINALLY finished school!  After 4 years at BYU and 4 years at Texas A&M, during all of which we were married, he finally walked across the stage in all his fancy-schmancy robes and got a diploma tube... and it was over!  Now he is officially a veterinarian!  WOO!

Not even huge robes can make
Jason look fat.  He sucks.

This year, he is doing an (optional) internship at a couple of large emergency clinics near Chicago!  He's worked like a dog for pretty much a dog's salary.  (yay.)  Suffice it to say, this is a pretty big change from Texas!  So, I thought our drive up would be a good place to start.

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I was a bit worried about driving cross-country with a 10-month-old, and she DID cry a bit, of course.  But for the most part, Ava was a TROOPER!  And when I say "trooper," I, of course, mean "sleeper."  She slept for almost 2 days straight, including at night in the Motel 6 in Springfield, MO.  Here's a picture I snapped over my shoulder while I was driving... hence the stellar quality.  Be impressed.  Be very impressed.  *snort*

Lethargic babies are the best babies...

We saw some surprisingly beautiful scenery.  I say surprisingly because, having never been to this part of the country, I wasn't expecting it to be so green!  Although much of it looked like a tornado would hit at any moment.  Maybe they filmed Twister in southern Illinois?

Top Left: Beautiful Sky in MO
Top Right: Southern IL Farmland (à la Twister)
Bottom Left: Best Picture I took of the St. Louis Gateway Arch, MO
Bottom Right: Long story.  The arch is behind the 20 MPH sign.  See it?

Sorry I didn't take a picture of the Motel 6.  I'm sure you're heartbroken.  We had a few snags along the way:

1. There was a huge chunk of the tread missing from one of the trailer's tires, so we had to get a tire changed before we left my parents' house.
2. At one point, when we stopped for gas, Jason couldn't get the U-Haul started again.  Note: It's best to start a U-Haul when it's in neutral, not in gear.
3. Jason got a ticket in Oklahoma.  Stupid speed traps.  He was coasting down a hill in a massive vehicle.  Of course he got going a bit too fast... but it's not like he was going to even be able to keep that up on level ground, weighed down like he was.  That was super-frustrating... Moving costs enough as it is!

Anyway, we got here, met the landlady and our ward-member/real-estate-agent lady and signed the lease and a bunch of "village" paperwork (we live in a "village"... *eye roll*).  Then a few minutes later, a bunch of the young men from the ward, their leaders, and the missionaries came over to help us unload.  After a bit of a delay getting the car trailer off the truck, I swear the 17-foot U-Haul was unpacked in 15 minutes.  If I hadn't seen it, I wouldn't believe it.  Make a mental note: Wednesday night is a great night to move in!  Some of the leaders and the elders even stuck around to help us put a couple of our Ikea furniture pieces back together, namely the crib.

Speaking of cribs, I noticed that our local Ikea has stopped carrying cribs.  I believe this is because they are SO UNBELIEVABLY HARD to assemble, they probably figured it just wasn't worth it...

Anyway, soon the pets were getting settled in.....

Top Left: Lucy and Josie, curled up together on the dog bed
Top Right: Mr. Kiggerz inspecting the local water supply
Bottom Left: Mr. Kiggerz: King of the Closet
Bottom Right: Dogs interrupted by Ava and her Cardboard Box of Toys
Noticeably Absent: Samurai Jack... Dork kitty.

Oooh, and speaking of closets, check out the built-ins in ours!

Be jealous.  I just wish they were ours to keep, not just to rent.  They're awesome!  They extend all along one side of the bedroom.  This is my side of the closet, and it extends to the left with another set of double-fold doors for Jason's side.  His is the mirror of mine, except he doesn't have the tall skinny section (for dresses), just more area divided in half like the right side of mine.  Then to the left of that is a smaller linen closet.  It's awesome.

It took us a while to get to feeling settled.  It helped that Jason didn't have to start work until a week-and-a-half after we got here.  It gave us a chance to get things set up (like the internet) and buy things we needed... like 3 more floor lamps.  (What's up with not having central lighting in the living room and bedrooms?)  We still have a few boxes around... and no pictures on the wall.  I think it took us 9-12 months to put pictures on the wall in Texas.  We'll see if I even bother here!

Oh.  One more thing of note.  We moved from a duplex with a fenced yard to a condo with no yard.  And we have 2 dogs.  We would have loved to find a place with a yard, but by moving into this place, we're saving over $300 a month in rent alone.  So that means (1) I get to take the dogs and baby out every 3-5 hours to go potty (which actually isn't as annoying as I thought it was going to be), and (2) we have new dog kennels to keep the dogs in when we're not here, so they don't destroy the place.  Ava really likes to climb in them.  All the time.  I don't get it, but it's better than her splashing in the dogs' water bowls.  Plus, it's great incentive to keep the dog blankets clean!

Awww!  I forgot that when we moved here, Ava
wasn't walking yet!  What a cute crawling baby!

That's it for this episode.  Tune in next time when the Ferrells brave Illinois traffic, find out Garmins sometimes lie, torture small children, and eat some Chicago-style pizza.  And I'm only sort-of kidding about the torture!  Muahahahaha....

Sara