Our house

Our apartment is the nicest apartment we have ever lived in. Granted its also the most expensive so I guess that makes sense. We don't live downtown, but we live close enough that you can see the city at the end of all the major streets. Ethan has about a 25 minute commute including a train and walking. A train station is only about a mile away and it stops at Union Station (THE train station in the middle of the city) From there he only has about a 2 block walk to his office.

Our neighborhood itself is very cute and clean. All the houses have gates in front of them and the street is always lined with cars. That being said, parking is never an issue. The houses/apartments are all very narrow but very tall and go really far back. Some people have bought multiple lots to give themselves a yard. Our house is set back away from the street so we have a front yard which I absolutely love. Behind every building is the alley where people put their garbage cans and the dumpsters. And there are trees everywhere in the neighborhoods. Its beautiful. We have a grocery store about 3 blocks called Mariano's. Its exactly like Safeway but a little more expensive :) There is a parking garage on top of the building which is super helpful because then I don't have to walk or try to find parking with Kelsey.

We are very happy here and feel like this will be a great place to live for the summer.

 The view from the street

 

 

inside the gate

 a view from the porch

 the porch

 the front "hall" Its super narrow. I can put my back on the door and touch the wall

 

the view standing in the "hall"

 two steps in

 this is two steps in and two steps over. That door is Kelsey's room.

 

standing in the corner of the front room

inside the door way of Kelsey's room

standing in the closet

sitting on the bed

 standing in the doorway between the living room and dining room.
To make it clear, the couch faces Kelsey's room

 the dining room. That open room back there is the kitchen. The door with the orange shirt on the door knob is our room and the other door is the coat closet.

inside the coat closet

the open door is the bathroom

 

here's inside the bathroom

 the view standing in the kitchen doorway

Our bedroom. Yup that's it. And thats a full. I am literally standing in the doorway!

 Our closet

 Standing in the kitchen doorway between the dining room and kitchen

 the kitchen from the doorway

 the kitchen from the very corner (look how close our neighbor's windows are!)

the kitchen from the back window

now I want to show you our laundry room. See in the first picture the closed door through the kitchen?

 see how its open now. That's where we go to go into the basement where the washing machine is

 we go down these creepy stairs that smell like mold and wet dog

 go into this creepy hallway

to end in this creepy room with ceilings so low that even I have to watch my head. No complaints though because we have a washer and dryer. Hooray!! It just a little creepy

 the street

Chicago Part 4: CHICAGO!!!!!

We arrived in Chicago at about 1pm their time and went straight to our new home. Not gonna lie, the first sight of the city was terrifying. I didn't have any excitement. Just pure terror. I was missing my Provo bubble. To make things worse we drove through a rougher part of town to get to our house because we didn't know any different. All I saw were the stereo typical inner city things that you see on tv that are super scary especially for this Utah girl. I say Utah girl because lets be honest, I moved from Washington when I was 18 and have lived in Utah ever since. WOW!!! That's weird to actually think about. I 've been in Utah since 2006!!! WHAT THE?!

 We finally made it to our neighborhood and what a difference. Our neighborhood is beautiful, our apartment is beautiful and super nice, and our landlady is genuinely the nicest person I have ever met. Once we got inside, unloaded, and walked around, and things got better. We really live in a beautiful neighborhood that is super quiet and very clean. Chicago is just funny in the sense that there isn't a bad part and a good part of town. There are pockets of everything everywhere. You just have to know what pocket to be in. We live in a good pocket but drove through a bad one. And when I say bad, its not even that bad. Through my Provo eyes it was a lot worse than it really is/was.

We were finally here. After 6 months of talk, 6 months of anticipation, 6 months of planning, we were here!! We made it as Kelsey would say

Chicago Part 3: Milwaukee

The Mid-west is beautiful. So green and just beautiful. I am so glad that life made me come up here (in the summer). I had no idea what I was missing. I never got tired of looking out the window as we drove from Minneapolis to Milwaukee. It was just farm land after beautiful farm land. Our trip was only five hours this time so it was pretty uneventful.

We did get pulled over by the cops which was lame. He pulled us over to tell us that the law in Wisconsin is to move over for cops. Apparently we didn't. I don't know, I was asleep. I mean I'm in favor of that law but the way he worded it, it just seemed like he was bored on a Sunday.  He literally said "Do you know why I pulled you over? I just wanted to tell you that you need to move to the right hand lane when approaching a cop" We only got a warning but it slowed us down. Whatever. Ethan gets pulled over for the weirdest things. No tickets though so we can't complain.

We stayed with the Rasmussens in Wales Wisconson but they had church until 4 so we couldn't arrive at their house until after church but had to check out of our house by 10 so we had some time to kill in between. Enter Wis Dells.At the half way point very close to Madison is a place called "The Wis Dells: Wisconson Dells." Oh. MY. GOODNESS!!! This place was CRAZY. Like insane. Obviously pictures can't do it justice but imagine Las Vegas in the middle of Wisconsin but instead of hotels you only can see water slides. It was crazy. Not like crazy cool, but not like crazy bad, just like WHAT THE?! There were cars EVERYWHERE, people EVERYWHERE, dogs EVERYWHERE, and just stuff. Let me give you a list of some of the stores we passed on the street:
How to Catch a Wizard
Bavarian Village and German Glockenspeil
A haunted house (yeah, no one was there)
Noah's Ark
Pirates Cove etc
and can I just add all of the stores had music and smells blaring from them. It was hilarious! 

So all of the water slide pictures turned out awful. You'll just have to take my word for it.

The best part about the Wis Dells was that it was along the Wisconsin River so behind all the chaos of the street was the river. We spent most of our walking time there. Kind of sabbath appropriate right?

It was crazy hot in Wisconsin that day and the humidity was really high. We needed to use a bathroom and stepped into the visitors center for help and once we did, we didn't leave for about, um, and hour! We honestly stayed so long because we couldn't get Kelsey out of the center. In the middle of all the information, they had toys and books. It had been a long time since she had really played (AND she missed Nursery) so she was dying to play with toys. Once she saw all the toys, we couldn't get her to leave.

After a nice long break we decided to make our final 2 hours of the trip. It was just as beautiful as ever and it started getting really exciting when we saw our first road sign with Chicago on it!! WHOO HOO!!

Kelsey was such a trooper  and everything is better with Rella shoes on anyway. 

At 5 we arrived at the Rasmussens home. Talk about beautiful. They had a beautiful home and lived in a beautiful area. They live in the woods. Like set back from the road, can't see other houses, woods. It was super fun. Jentri always told me that she grew up in the woods, but I just couldn't imagine it. It was a lot like the neighborhoods around the Little Spokane on your way to the stake center, but instead of pine trees there were Oaks and Elms. It was beautiful. 

This is their drive way

We had a really good time with the Rasmussens. Being in their home just felt homey. Having real food, and real meals, and real company was so nice. Kelsey even called them Grandma and Pappa because she missed her own so much. It was super cute.  We got to do a lot of fun things while staying with them including a bonfire, owl watching in the front yard, walking along the path to the train park, and my favorite, kayaking on one of the 5 lakes within 10 miles of their house. They made me really LOVE Wisconson.

Kayaking started out as an adventure. Kelsey was so excited to go see the water and boats,  but then she realized that she had to get into the boat and then, well it got a little less fun. She was so nervous to get into the boat. Like so nervous! The life jacket didn't help anything because who likes a life jacket,  but we really wanted to go so basically we threw her in and took off.

Once she gained her trust and confidence in Ethan, Kelsey started having a great time. Its impossible to tell because the life jacket is pushing her face up so much, but she really is having fun. She was even singing Let it Go because we don't really sing anything else now a days.

Kelsey started having so much fun that she even wanted to help Ethan row

After we kayaked all around the lake and the shore, we decided to make a quick stop at one of the islands. When we got there Kelsey was out! The boat was so relaxing that she just fell asleep and stay asleep for like an hour or more.

When we left the island, the sun was beating down so much on Kelsey that we were afraid of burns. We put her hat over her face so that she could still breath, and then put a towel over her to protect her from the sun. It looked super torturous, but I promise she could still breath. And she woke up super happy so it all worked in the end

After kayaking was a tour of Wales. Our first stop was lunch at a local favorite called Le Duce's. Talk about amazing custard and burgers.

 *For days following kayaking, Kelsey kept telling us all about her kayaking experience. I have tried over and over to get it on tape but I still haven't. Here is Kelsey story in writting and I'm not kidding
"Boat" "Daddy" 'Scared" "Sad" "Snack" "Happy" Ducks" Doggies" "Birdies" "Fun"Out boat"Happy"

Translation: She got in the boat with daddy and she was scared and sad. Jackie gave her a snack and it made her happy. Then she saw ducks and doggies and birdies and it was fun. Then she got out of the boat and she was happy. It is like the cutest conversation I have ever had with Kelsey. Kayaking was on May 26th and on June 1st she still breaks into this story (just not on command)


Afterwards we drove to an amazing park to play, but right when we got there it started raining. Sadly we couldn't get out and play at the park but it was still cool to see it.   I have to say that's where the tour ended for me because that's when I fell asleep in the car. I'm sure Wales is awesome because when I woke up I saw a beach, but then I fell back asleep. Sorry Jackie, I promise it wasn't you. I have even fallen asleep on dates. Its sorta my thing

Look at miss cutie with her humidity hair! I hope it lasts all summer. 

 just cute...

After our tour we went on a walk around the neighborhood and it was so humid and so green. I seriously could live in Wisconsin if it didn't have winter. The night concluded with a delcious salmon dinner and packing. Our trip in Wales was short but it was the most relaxing we have felt since South Dakota.

I din't think this day would come, but Tuesday May 27th finally came: the day that we were going to drive into Chicago. We left Wales early in the morning and decided to stop in Milwaukee. We wanted to get going and so it was more of a drive by but we saw it. Gotta say, I wasn't too impressed. It was kinda eerie and kinda dirty looking. That's not too fair because we didn't get out and we had just come from a beautiful place, but still. There was so much fog and mist that it you couldn't see too far past any of the bridges making driving really scary. There was also construction and so I kept getting us lost which was annoying.  Just a whole lot of reason to keeping going on to Chicago.

Ethan was a champ driving in all of these new cities. He handled all times of day and all sorts of conditions. I don't know if you can tell, but behind Ethan is one of the freeway  spaghetti bowls he had to navigate. We are not known for our sense of direction and so I was really proud of him.

I also know that we were incredibly blessed this whole trip for so many reasons but especially in our driving. We hardly ever got lost, we never ran out of gas, we never had ANY car problems, and so on. We were incredibly blessed.
  While we were driving out of Milwaukee a flash rain storm opened up and dumped buckets on the freeway. I kinda wish I could have filmed it because without seeing this storm there is no way to describe the terror it presented. It was like driving straight through a black rain cloud while raining, with 8 giant semis also trying to get through the same storm 1 foot away. It was especially scary because it came so suddenly. I don't know if that was a norm for Milwaukee and we were the only ones who didn't know how to handle it, but it was terrible. Windshield wipers did nothing for us. We couldn't see anything and neither could anyone else. We couldn't see car lights, we could't see cars right next to us, and we couldn't see the lines on the road.  I have never prayed and cried so quickly in my life! Ethan again was a champ and got us through and within 30 seconds the storm left.As soon as we got through the storm, we started laughing. Like hard! It was the only way that we could cope I guess. It was awful and so stressful.

Wisconsin impressions: BEAUTIFUL, super green, farm land after farm land after farm land! and lakes everywhere.
Wales impressions: It was a lot like Rapid City. Very spread out with lots of highways. I think I could live somewhere like Wales and Rapid City, but I've never been there in the winter.