Windy (city) Weekend

the blurry ass picture of an awesome poster of the various neighborhoods in Chicago in
Laurel's apartment (her apt was in Ravenswood)

Friday I hopped in my friend Meg's jeep, Gardetto's & white chocolate truffles in hand (they are her favorites!) and settled myself in for our mid-rush hour trek into Chicago. This trip would Meg's second trip into the city, with her first being a 3rd grade class field trip to the Shed Aquarium. Having driven into Chicago many, many times myself I readied myself for the inevitable crappy, clogged up traffic and a-hole drivers. Meg did great, considering the a-hole drivers... Grrrrr... So, as we were about to pay for our 3rd toll (I had said that I would pay for them all because she was using up her gas), Meg asked me if I was sure that I wanted to pay, ya know since I had bought the tickets to the concert we were on our way to...... Wait......... tickets? TICKETS!?!?!?! I, in common Janell fashion, had left the tickets at home on the printer, a good hour and a half in the other direction in even worse traffic... I sat there for a minute before I told her, my stomach feeling like it had a dumbbell sitting in it. Meg, being as sweet as she is all the time, came up with about 5 resolutions to our problem. It turned out that I was able to re-download them offline so it was all good. 

We made it to the Ravenswood neighborhood, where her friend Laurel lived and parked outside of her apartment building. Got ready. Got on the train. Walked to this mind-blowingly good burger place called Burger Bar (I ordered the Fa-Getta-Bod-It burger which consisted of a burger, prosciutto, a fried egg, mozzarella, tomato, & basil mayo.... magnifique!). Made our way, slowly but surely with very, very full bellies to Joe's on Weed Street for the big event : Reckless Kelly in concert. We made our way through the crowd, closer to the stage. I stood there in awe that we were actually seeing the band that was the soundtrack to our college career together at ISU. Meg and I looked over at each other at some point with giddy 5-year-old smiles plastered on our faces and jumped up and down in place like school girls. It was a great concert....... despite the portly skin-headed redneck from southern Illinois that somehow thought we were his life long friends and proceeded to bother us the entire time. But he was entertaining to watch so it wasn't all bad. Concert came to a close, but not before they played my favorite song of theirs, "Crazy Eddie's Last Hurrah". It sounded a lot like this.....

perfection :)

left-burger bar, top center-periwinkle pancakes, center bottom- Angel Food Bakery, right- Reckless Kelly concert

Top: Me & my amaretto stone sour fueled goofy face (i ruin pictures by  being a goof all the time)
and  Meg waiting for the L, Bottom: Laurel & Sarah @ the breakfast joint

The next morning, Meg's friends Laurel & Sarah took us to a little corner bakery/breakfast joint called "Angel Food". The interior was painted the most lovely shades of light blue and delicate pastel green and the shelf along the top of the wall all around the place was lined with vintage Easy Bake ovens and children's cooking toys from every era. Pretty awesome, if you ask me. I had the periwinkle pancakes because I couldn't resist such a cute name. They were just grand. So if you are catching on, I usually judge a trip by the food. And of course I brought my camera along, and again in common Janell fashion, I left it at Laurel's apartment. So do enjoy the grainy, low res. shots my iPhone made happen.
That afternoon I was due back home for a family portrait session with some old friends. A little over a year ago Lynette asked me if I would want to take some engagement pictures for them, since she knew I had a nice camera. They were getting married about a month later and she wanted to get some done while they were still "engaged". That day helped me realize that I loved photography, like maybe enough to try and make a career out of it.

So snapping pictures of Lynette, her husband Nick, & their little man Hunter was kind of sentimental to me. It was windy and a tad bit chilly, but the little guy was a trooper. After we were done, Hunter took a nap on my shoulder for about an hour and it melted my heart. Oh, babies.....