St. Patrick's Day Weekend

Before I write about my wonderful St. Patty's Day weekend, here are a couple of good pics...

Lyla has been following us as we walk around the room and so we took a picture of her kinking her head back to look at us.  She is a doll!

We have a pond in our front yard and when we first moved here it was pretty much frozen over.  Now that the weather has become warmer, the water has melted the ducks have started to come out and swim in our pond.  Below is a picture of the ducks standing on a still icy part of the pond.  It was funny because they would walk on the ice and then all of a sudden they would fall straight through the ice and into the water and have to figure out a way to get back out.  I thought their struggle was pretty entertaining, rather than sad, because the ducks like to wake us up in the mornings at like 6am. 

Now for the fun part... One of the reasons I love Chicago is because they have a HUGE St. Patrick's Day celebration.  They dye the Chicago River GREEN, they have a huge parade, and everyone gets all dressed up!  We had a BLAST!

Here is Nate and I on the Blue rail heading down to Chicago.  I know Nate is closing his eyes but I still like the picture.

These were rad apartment buildings.  The lower half (or 1/3) is the parking and the rest are the apartments.

Nate and I, happy to be in the city :)

Can you believe how green the river is!?!?!  They had a boat going through to spread all the dye around.  

Nate just took a picture of this part of a building.  I'm not sure where it actually is but it's pretty cool!

The green Chicago River.

Nate and I by the river again.

It was freezing walking in the shadows of all the big buildings and we forgot to pack Lyla her sweatshirt, so we had to do our best and bundle her up in her stroller.  She was such a champ!

Me.

A green (fake) cow during the parade.

I love men in kilts!  Haha! It was awesome to see them marching down and there were even men wearing kilts while playing bagpipes!  I wish I were Irish.

At the parade.

All the guys.

All the girls.

Whenever people started screaming during the parade, Lyla made this face...

...but she then made this face the rest of the time...

Me, Nate, and what looks like our balding baby.  

Nate in front of the "El Train", otherwise known as the elevated train.  I didn't know this but I guess it has been in a bunch of movies like "The Blues Brothers".

The Chicago Theater.

Anyway, we had a blast at our first time in the city and we can't wait to go back!  

Also, we had real Chicago deep dish pizza for the first time and it was everything and more than I could have hoped for.  The cheese is DELICIOUS!  So if you ever go to Chicago, I recommend getting pizza at Nancy's or at Giordano's!