Memberable March

As a new married couple, we are often given the advice of distinguishing between needs and wants. This is great advice that we are trying to follow, but Mrs. Bluth splurged. Well actually she splurged for Mr. Bluth. As many of you know, Mrs. Bluth's mom makes her famous dried apples that EVERYONE loves and devours, but being so far from home makes it difficult to receive them and Mr. Bluth can eat a bag in a week. To justify, we used leftover money from Bed Bath & Beyond and purchased our very own food dehydrator which is completely a want.

Dried apples are the perfect snack and we are also experimenting with drying bananas. The only problem is that we can't make them fast enough, but are looking forward to the fall and apple picking. We are foreshadowing a great family tradition.

Now what did you all do for St. Patrick's Day? Did you die the milk green or make green eggs?

Well living in Chicago allows us to celebrate St. Patrick's Day at a whole new level. Now if we drank alcohol we probably would have been drunk by 10 a.m. on Saturday like most Chicagoans.

We wandered along the river and stood with everyone else that lives in Chicago and watched rowers and boats travel along.

We contemplated purchasing some holiday wear because EVERYONE was sporting green and Ireland.

And of course we watched them die the river green.

We also fought through the crowds of people and found a good spot to watch the parade where we saw many plumber associations, irish dance groups, the St. Patrick's Day beauty queen, and of course bag pipes.

It was a great day filled with green, kilts, Irish flags, and an assortment of many other things. It was 30 degrees, but nothing was going to stop the celebrations.

There are so many things to do and see and we also found this awesome sign.
Now moving on to March 18 which was the first day of spring break for Mr. Bluth and we started the day early by going to the Shedd Aquarium for a free day. We are so glad that we went as soon as it opened because the place got packed with everyone cramming to see all the sea creatures. This aquarium is huge and they have a largge selection of creatures from all over the world. We just could not capture everything we saw with our camera.

Our last stop at the aquarium was the Caribbean Reef.
This was very appropriate because five hours later we left our apartment to head to the airport to go to the Dominican Republic.

This is what you look like leaving 30 degrees and heading to the Caribbean with only a backpack. We got a few looks on the train, but our excitement was so overwhelming that we could not feel the cold.

Our trip to the DR was amazing, but this post will be continued at a later date. We are spending our Saturday night babysitting, and there is just too much to share about our journey to write at this moment.

"This is a mild winter"

Too many individuals have mentioned that this winter has been a mild winter and that worries Mrs. Bluth.

On a more positive note... we have learned the true way to wear a scarf. Mrs. Bluth was once the girl that wore her scarfs in a more fashionable way.

This winter, the only way that we wear a scarf is the more traditional turban look. The trick is to cover up as much of your face and neck as possible. The fierce wind attacks your skin and you find yourself searching for any protection.

Maybe next year we will invest in some of these:

We did enjoy the snow storm last week as we went out in the evening to get Mr. Bluth a haircut. Chicago is great with cleaning their streets and sidewalks so it is kind of hard to notice the severity of a snow storm. It never stopped snowing all day though, but luckily by the time we went out the snow was gently falling down.

Twinkle Twinkle.

This past weekend Mr. & Mrs. Bluth had Stake Conference and their Stake President reminded them that no matter how long they are planning on being in this area, that they are assigned to work here. Chicago is not a resting or temporary place until you can really take root and grow. Church History shows that Saints gave all that they had to build a community and to further the work here in Illinois and they eventually left everything behind to move to their next assignment, but what they did in Illinois was just as important.

There are a lot of stars to wonder about, but why we are in Chicago at this time is becoming even more clear.

This past week we enjoyed more cold weather, a few temp jobs, and Lou Malnati's.

Thanks to a nice birthday present and instructions to take the wife out to dinner, we ventured over to Lou Malnati's for some Chicago style pizza with our friends who just moved to the big city. We enjoyed our carb load-up for the next month and especially enjoyed the time spent with friends.

Mr. & Mrs. Bluth extend the invitation to all to come join us for some delicious pizza and any other type of food that your taste buds desire.

Almost forgot to mention that we accomplished a very hard puzzle. The pieces are almost all the same size and cut and one night we had to go to bed with three pieces left. To stop working when you are so close is unheard of, but we had put other pieces in the wrong place and had to figure out our mistakes before we could finish. This puzzle will one day make a nice analogy and it is true that you can't always take shortcuts to make the most complete and beautiful creation.