just heard

ben: thanks!
me: what?
ben: she bit this fruit in half, chewed it up a little bit, and then put it on my shirt

Yes! Spring stuff at the store make me happy

MSI

Yayy for a fun morning with the O'brienim at the museum of science and industry!

Aba did my hair this morning

friday morning

~*~ fun facts ~*~
- ella is wearing Peter's socks. and pants.
- it's Ella's black/yellow toolbox (aba has one in a Large size). it was entertaining watching them walk out of the store with their matching father-daughter toolboxes.
- gray scrooge was denied grapes but stayed for the possibility of a tummy rub.
- this photo was taken and uploaded from my iphone. expect more meaningless posts as blogging just got that much easier!

hair

yayy! igulim!

we didn't touch the footage!
you should have seen Ella's face when she picked up the 1st circle (just before i leaped up from the floor, grabbed the camera and started taping) and found out it was a picture of Tuta! her face lit up and she exclaimed "Tuta!!!!"

thanks for the amazing package, everyone. i'm writing this post while Mozart is playing in the background :D

cookie

Sorry, this space is taken

as the streets of Chicago are still buried under mountains of snow, residents who bother to dig out their car and clear out its space also try to make this effort worth their while by putting a piece of furniture as a place holder. also spotted: armchair, construction cones, laundry bags, and a drawer.

winter visit to the zoo

it was a nice and warm day, temperatures almost reached freezing, so we decided to spend our sunday morning at the brookfield zoo.
Ella was in a "i'm so independent" mood, didn't want to sit in her stroller (which she insisted that we bring with us), and most of the time didn't want to even hold our hand. she liked spotting her new favorite animals -- crocodile (or maybe it was an alligator?) and hippo. they were both sleeping.

a visit to the zoo in the dead of winter is highly recommended. we practically had the place to ourselves, and there are a lot of indoors animal houses. do not plan on getting your lunch at the zoo: we had the worst hot-dog in history there. seriously, how is it possible to ruin a hot dog?!? just bring a sandwich next time.


"Tropic World". right.




the fast moving blur of brown is an otter. this guy was zooming back and forth in its aquarium.





above: Gorilla's island; Ella finds her pockets; and a sleepy tiger.

more blizzard pics...

Ben went on a run this afternoon, and took some pictures on Lakeshore Drive

here

snowpocalipse

last night's ginormous storm hit pretty hard. just walking from our office to the car was a battle with strong wind gusts, and icy snow pallets attacking our faces.
this is a video that ben took outside our building. from home we were unable to see across the street, even the museum was invisible.

once again we felt lucky for not living on the north side anymore, as traffic on lakeshore drive was down to 4 miles per hour in the afternoon. the poor sobs that were still on the road when the storm peaked, got completely stuck and had to wait hours to be rescued. luckily all of our friends made it home before the storm.

[picture from chicago tribune]




this morning the storm was going on and off for a few hours, and finally died down and the sun came out! we put our winter gear on and went out to take some pictures. the roads are empty, most of them still covered in many inches of snow, and people walking in the middle of the road (yes, even the freeway!). it felt a little like Yom Kippur, only i should be wearing skis :)

the lake seems frozen and a bunch of people tried walking on it. we decided not to..