girls' trip to Chicago.

A few weekends ago, Ben headed to a conference in downtown San Francisco. We had checked flights to see if it'd be feasible for me to tag along and quickly discovered that we'd basically have to sell our kidneys to make it happen. Instead of illegally auctioning off vital organs, I ended up taking the train up to Chicago ($54 roundtrip! What?!) the day after Ben left to meet my mom for a girls' weekend. It was a ridiculously fun, short, cold trip!

^^Eataly was a fun Italian market/restaurant/store to explore. My cousin (who now lives in Chicago) lived in Italy for 18 months and she showed us different foods around the store that she had eaten while living abroad. We picked up some pear & goat cheese stuffed pasta to make for Sunday dinner, and I discovered that, although not awful, goat cheese isn't my favorite. ;)^^

^^Days leading up to the trip, my weather app was telling me it was going to snow a decent amount and be frigid all weekend long. However, we lucked out with light snow and not too terribly freezing temperatures! Rain boots would have been nice though. :)^^ 

 ^^Post-church snack. I'd heard quite a bit about Garrett Popcorn, so we picked some up to try. The dark chocolate and caramel was to die for. (How cute is that house in the background?)^^

^^I'm a big fan of Impressionist art, but especially anything by van Gogh, Monet, and Renoir. While walking around, I came across the painting I've had as my laptop background for a while now and that was pretty fun!^^

^^Obligatory picture with "The Bean."^^

Food we tried that you should probably try, too: Garrett Popcorn, Cafe Iberico, The Purple Pig, Rosebud, Giordano's, Grand Lux Cafe (we went here twice for desserts!)