when the wrights are in town,

we play.

first a trip to lincoln park for lunch, cookies, and the chicago history museum. i had found this fun, retro cookie shop -- the cookie bar -- in a local parenting magazine. little girl and i had already been once before and thought it'd be a delicious stop with the wrights while we were in the neighborhood.

little girl and mr. wright took a seat (mrs. wright took photos), while i chose a few flavors. this round we tried oatmeal cranberry, potato chip chocolate chip, lisa marie presley (a peanut butter cookie with chunks of peanut butter cups, chocolate chunks, and banana chips), and minty num-num (a minty, chocolate cookie). they have a great selection of unique flavor combinations.


next, a stop at the chicago school of HOT YOGA. (you know, to burn all those cookie calories.)


how about finishing the day with a ride? it was nice of our landlords to lend us their bikes, so the wrights had some wheels. we headed down to the lake and then to our favorite cupcake shop (which turns out to be closed mondays. but, don't worry. we went back on tuesday and wednesday!)



little girl always likes it when we head to the beach. she has a thing for rocks, and they're are lots of them there.

day two: a trip to one of our favorite BBQ restaurants, smoque, followed by a tour of frank lloyd wright's home and studio in oak park.

but all this running around takes its toll. i love this shot that mr. wright took on our way home from oak park. we played hard. and had a lot of fun. mr. and mrs. wright, when do we get to play again?

let's go out

little girl and i spend a lot of time around our town running errands, hanging at the library, playing at the pool or park. this week, i thought little girl and i should have ourselves a little adventure.

so we headed down to lincoln park to visit the peggy notebaert nature museum. i had heard that the nature museum has a butterfly haven with more than a thousand butterflies fluttering about. i thought, "maybe little girl would like to see all those butterflies."

and she did. although she liked seeing the stuffed animals on display much more. i was so glad to find this little treasure. this will be a favorite spot for us, especially during the winter months.

new books

last weekend, mr. pike, little girl, and i met some friends at the newberry library for its annual book fair.

the library had more than 100,000 books for sale -- from paperback mysteries to grade school readers. and we found nine to add to our collection.

• an economic history of england - printed 1947
• ancient times: a history of the early world - printed 1916
• mace's school history of the united states - printed 1904
• essays, poems, and addresses of ralph waldo emerson - printed 1941
• american citizenship - printed 1927 (we bought two copies of this one. one for us. one for a certain history-loving brother.)
• australia, asia, and africa: a geography reader - printed 1931, 1912, and 1930 respectively

we were so excited to have a few old reads to add to our shelves. i think the history and geography books will be especially interesting to read -- to see how information has been portrayed and changed over time.

we've already marked our calendars for next year -- july 28-31. would you like to join us?