Half Birthday.

My half birthday was on August 10.  Look what my sweet husband surprised me with!

Mrs. Barnett : )

Chicago Chocolate Tour.

If you walk around the city, you will eventually see someone walking around holding a sign that looks like this...

I have seen it many times and knew it was my destiny to eventually go on a tour.  Luckily, some sweet teacher friends of mine got me a gift certificate for my birthday.  I thought the perfect time to use it was with Jen and Kathy (they have seen the sign also...)

The tour took us on 6 different stops.  At each stop, we were given something made with chocolate,  learned about the spot, and gained some knowledge about chocolate.  We walked from spot to spot and they were all local except one.  Enjoy the pictures below from our tour!

 

 

And as if that wasn't enough...we added in a trip to Sprinkles!

If you are making your way to Chicago at some point...I highly recommend checking out one of the tours.  They even have cupcake ones now...which I will have to go on!

Mrs. Barnett : ) 

I Love my Friends.

Two of my very best friends came to visit the last weekend in July.  They came the last weekend in July last year also, so we are going to try to make it a tradition!  It is soo nice to have people around you that you have such history with like Jen and Kathy.  I miss being around people like that!

I decided we were going to be tourists for the weekend!  We started out on Friday going to Ravinia for a concert.  It is an outdoor amphitheater, but is more of a lifestyle around here.  It is so pretty with all of the lights in the trees and you bring a picnic with your dinner.  We had fun to just listening to the music and being together.

We love Skinnygirl!

This picture doesn't give it justice!

On Saturday, we headed to Milwaukee!  We went up to see my friend from ASU, Brandon, and his girlfriend Andrea.  Our first stop was to a brewery for a tour and a reserved tasting paired with cheese.  I didn't realize there were soo many different kinds of beers!

After the tour, we headed over to the Brewers game.  Brandon and Andrea planned the tailgate, and the food was so so good!  Much better than my version of a tailgate.  It was soo very hot, but we made the best of it!

After the tailgate, we headed into the game.  We sat realllly high up, but it was a great view.  We were still so hot.  The people around us were definitely interesting and pretty drunk!  Fun times.

After the game, we headed back to our hotel.  Even though the drive is only about an hour, we thought it would be fun to spend the night.  The next day, we stopped at the Mars' Cheese Castle.  David can not drive by it without stopping in.

After the cheese stop, we went downtown for a chocolate tour.  I am leaving that for another post though...

Mrs. Barnett : )

Weekend Trip

You may remember that David and I were going to go to Kohler, WI for our anniversary weekend, but plans fell through at the last minute.  We were able to re-schedule the visit and went last weekend.  It turned into somewhat of a last horray before school started!
The hotel was gorgeous and the whole weekend turned out to be very relaxing.  We mainly just took things easy and had some nice meals together.  We did go to the beach (Lake Michigan) and up to Green Bay to see the Packer's Stadium.  It was only an hour north, so we decided we needed to go when we had the chance!

They were known for these chocolates...even Oprah likes them!

It was the home of the Kohler factory.

The hotel.

It was like an old mansion.

SUPER yummy ice cream.

Champagne toast!

You can't see, but we found this on a walk.  It was Grace St. and School St.  Right up my ally!

One of the golf courses.

The factory.

Yes, we took a tour!  It was actually fun!

Another golf course where we ate dinner...this picture does not do it justice!!

Me with the chocolates.

A dessert we ordered, Baked Wisconsin, soooooooooo good!

It was so nice to get away for the weekend.  It reminded me that we need to do things like this more often!

Mrs. Barnett : )