the next thing

I thought we would stay in this apartment for a really long time. Tim and I have never enjoyed a living space as much as this one. Before we found this apartment, we fiddled with the idea of buying a home and quickly found out that we would have extra hoops to jump through on account of being self-employed, including proof of a growing income for five consecutive years...and we hadn't even been out of college for five years yet. So we decided to be happy renters until further notice. We found this place and settled in. It's enough city to keep us entertained and enough suburb to let us sleep through a quiet night. I renewed our lease for 2013 without thinking twice about it.

And then Liesel came along and changed our priorities in the way that babies do, and when I started seeing the world through her eyes, I realized that there are a lot more friendly places we could be raising her. We had started getting serious about being smart with our finances when I was pregnant (things like retirement savings and life insurance) and at some point I added up how much we have spent on rent. Knowing we'll never get any of that back was disheartening. Of course there are risks in home ownership, but when stacked against the assurance of losing money in rent, those risks seem less daunting. 

As someone who has moved at least once every two years since I was 18, the prospect of being tied to a piece of land makes me shake in my boots. There is a sad side to it too...neither Tim's nor my parents are within 1,000 miles from here, and buying a house looks a lot like a nail in the coffin of "we aren't moving closer to you". We did a lot of soul searching on that one. We imagined our business in Florida and in France, we even pushed on some doors, but nothing opened, and meanwhile we kept getting requests to shoot Chicago weddings in 2014. That looks a lot like job security and an invitation to stay and grow right where we are.

So we started looking toward the West Suburbs to see what there might be for us and doors just started flying open. Part of this whole process involves us going to a new church, and that bit is just an upheaval. Church community is really important to us, so to leave one church and start at another was a hard decision, but in the last two months we have felt a lot of confirmation that we are going the right direction. Through the whirlwind of June, we found ourselves connected to an amazing realtor who found us a surprisingly perfect house, and we cautiously approached a recommended local lender to see how they would deal with us and our self-employment situation. Three hours later, we were pre-approved for a home loan. We couldn't believe it.

That was a big moment for Tim, and I am still reveling in pride for him. Because when you decide to start a business when you're 22, it's one thing to actually make a little bit of money at what you do. And then it's another thing to be able to feed yourself doing what you do. And it's another thing and another thing to add a wife and then a baby and be able to take care of them with what you do...and then to turn over your tax returns to a bank and ask them to trust you with, um, a loan for more money than you can make in a year, and they say yes--quickly-- that means that you pretty well made the transition from a dreamer to a doer and the world has looked at what you can make out of nothing and says they need that thing on a regular basis. He skipped down the sidewalk that day and I wiped away a couple of tears.

So we're buying a house and moving to the suburbs. It's a nice house with a fenced in yard with lots of trees for a swing and shade for playing. It's walking distance to a little elementary school that has amazing community reviews and good test scores. It's close to our friends and our new church. It doesn't have a fireplace, but we did find hardwoods underneath the carpet. There are rosebushes in the back yard and hydrangeas in the front yard. We're really excited, and we close in three weeks.

Liesel at 4 months

Liesel's mornings

Someone recently asked Tim what changed the most about his life with fatherhood and he replied: "I love mornings now."
It's true. We used to lolligag around our mornings and desperately reach for the coffee to wake us up, but now we have Liesel. I get up once during the night to feed her in the nursery, but when she's ready for her next meal at about 7am, Tim gets up and brings her into bed with us. We have our sweetest times together when she first wakes up.


Liesel's Morning from Tim Tabailloux on Vimeo.

That's Tim playing the background piano music, by the way. While we were dating he wrote me this lullaby called "Berceuse pour Bethany" (lullaby for Bethany). Still makes me all swoony.

Tablife busynesses

September is busy for the Tabs, you guys. We have a record number of weddings on our roster, so we've been spending our every weekday waking hour mesmerized by computer screens and our weekends beholding lots of pretty weddings. We shot an especially sweet one last Saturday. 

Sometimes we'll zone out of the computer glare long enough to realize that it's been a few days since we stepped outside and we need some air. 

I'm learning, slowly, that to step outside my front door while living in Chicago is to step into a swirl of controversial political activity. Whether it's our governor being thrown in jail or our mayor making the whole city angry or our cops getting convicted for murder or our teachers going on strike or the gangs killing each other, or, or...it just never ends. I keep waiting for a peaceful week in this city and I haven't seen one yet. The rhythm and the wind don't stop. I'm trying to get used to this part.

And yet, for all her faults and wounds, Chicago still dazzles me. She is adored by her cantankerous people. She's too pretty to break up with. 

So. We have the constant motion of our work and the restless energy of our city to keep up with, which is more than enough to think about...and then there's me and my condition. Me and my baby. Already changing our lives in every way. 

I finally started keeping a health journal so I can keep track of the varied array of symptoms and side effects I have every day, because the changes are so close and quick that Tim and I both live in a constant state of confusion over what's happening and how to fix me. Nausea, headaches, exhaustion together with insomnia, extreme hunger, sore joints, heartburn, forgetfulness, swollen blood vessels, frayed emotions. It's all there each day and, praise God, it's all normal. Nothing about it is predictable, and nothing is out of the ordinary at the same time. It is hard, but it is beautiful and good at the same time. Even as I sit here quietly right now, my heart is pounding so hard I can hear it and feel the drum beating throughout my whole body. It has more work to do than normal. The baby bounces and turns and kicks my belly visibly out in dramatic motions that shake my shirt. I pass the mirror on my way into the shower and am shocked to see bright blue lines tracing highways under my skin, expertly navigating an extra 50% of my normal blood supply through me and to the baby. It's all incredible, and I have never been more thankful for my health or positively sure that my body is fearfully and wonderfully made, and a divine creator's power alone is effortlessly building another body deep inside mine and this new person already has a soul and life purpose for the outside world. 

I'm sure of that, and I'm sure of how bad my feet hurt.

Tim has been an incredible source of strength for me. I am not carrying this baby alone, ever. The man is a saint. He rubs my feet and washes endless dishes and when I'm restlessly trying to get comfortable next to him at 4am he reaches his hand over and says: "you've had a hard night, babe." I never have to fight for justification.

And for goodness sake, he goes and gets me things. Is it not the most annoying thing in the world when someone asks you to go get them something? A glass of water from the kitchen? The laundry from the dryer (which is down 4 flights of steps in the basement of our building)? Dinner from the takeout place? A very specific piece of clothing from the basket of clean laundry that he washed and I have yet to fold? Can you just get that for me, babe? He always says yes, letting me save my energy for the important things. He's amazing.

And whenever I have the energy, I try really hard to be amazing back to him. I was domestic in the kitchen and productive in the office today. It felt really good. Life is good. 

on the job. together.

I never thought I'd be the type of person who could work with my spouse. When Tim first broached the idea of me joining him in his business, the idea was intimidating. I told him I wouldn't do it.

There were lots of factors playing into the situation. One of us had to move to be near the other, and we decided together that it would be in the eventual best interest of both of us for him to not give up or displace his business (we knew we were probably getting married). That meant I had to quit my job and move to Chicago. Coincidentally, all this happened during his biggest year yet in his wedding photography business, and he needed help. All signs pointed toward me working with him, but I was resistant.

In the world of wedding photography, it's pretty common for couples to work together. But I wasn't in that world yet. It wasn't the idea of working with him that scared me, it was the idea of working for him. I loved boundaries and independence and earning my own wage and dropping it in my own bank account.  I also loved catching my own mistakes early and fixing them before anyone else saw my error. I knew I would have a lot to learn and I would be putting myself on really shaky ground by having my boyfriend be my boss and letting him teach me a new trade and give me a paycheck. It didn't sound safe. 

As we made plans for my move, I started applying for lots of jobs. Looking back, I was ultimately acting on distrust for Tim and pride in myself and fear of failure as a photographer. I wasn't getting any job offers, and Tim was patient and intent on proving himself to be trustworthy. He kept letting me know that he wanted me to be happy in whatever job I chose to do, but his offer stood open in case I wanted to work with him.

Then he asked me to marry him. There's a lot packed into that question. It's really a question of many questions, a whole book of questions, and one of them is: "will you trust me to take care of you?". Also; "will you allow me to provide for you?". And I said yes to him, so some strongholds that I needed to survive being single had to fall away. I agreed to work with him.

So, Tim works from home five days a week. This I knew. This meant that we would be together all the time. Forty plus hours per week of time together spent on work alone, not to mention free time and wedding planning time and dating-each-other time. We'd never even lived in the same city at that point. It was going to be a steep transition, and I was afraid of conflict. But we moved forward. I cried tears of loss as we drove away from Kansas City with my life packed in my car, and cheered for the joy of a new beginning when we saw the Chicago skyline. The next day, we started working together.

He handed over client communications to me first, and I mean really handed it over and let me do it all without looking over my shoulder. For a girl who majored in Interpersonal and Public Communications, and who was also planning her own wedding, I couldn't have asked for a more well-suited job than emailing with brides to put them at ease about our part of their wedding day. I loved the work, Tim had hated that part, and suddenly he had about 20 more hours per week to work on editing pictures. I could see the immediate difference I was making in improving his workflow and stress level, and I loved it.

And then he put his cameras in my hands. I didn't even know how to use them (I had plenty of experience being an amateur with my own DSLR, but none with his professional grade equipment) but the clients were only paying for Tim's services, so whatever I added to their wedding pictures was gravy and it was a low-pressure environment to learn. It was kind of like getting thrown in the deep end of the pool with a couple of arm floaties. On our way to our second wedding together, Tim told me that he would usually get that pitted feeling in his stomach right before every wedding, but with me by his side he wasn't nervous anymore. I started to realize that he wasn't measuring the support I brought to him from a purely monetary perspective like I was.

I shot twenty weddings with him that first season, all for free to the clients so I could learn all that I needed before we added my second-shooting services to his new contracts. I learned so much during that time and gained a whole new confidence in myself as a worker in a new field. I started calling myself a photographer. This didn't feel like dependence, that icky word I feared as a single person. It felt like partnership. 

We've been at this for over a year now, closing in on our second wedding season together, and we've gotten really good at being a team. I can tell when he's under pressure and I know how to help him. He can tell when I'm struggling with a new technical situation and he always has the answer. 

And we have so much fun. If I had any idea how much fun this job would be, I never would have resisted in the first place. This is a no alarm clock job. We get to attend dance parties every week, we see people at their very best and happiest (...usually). Even when it's hard, it's still fun. We work until we're so tired it's hard to make it up the stairs at night, but we like working hard and we like working a lot.

We gets lots of different reactions when we tell people we work together, and they always make us smile. We know we've got a unique dynamic going on here, but it's perfect for us and if we wanted to change it, we would. 

It takes humility and gentleness to make this work relationship work. All that we do on the job is on display to each other and that can be hard, because we can't hide our mistakes when we make them. I get grumpy when I get tired, and he gets grumpy when he gets hungry, and being tired and hungry is part of almost every wedding day, so we get stretched and have to work not to hurt each other's feelings, and then be quick to apologize when we do.

But as long we keep putting our client's and each other's needs ahead of our own, working together doesn't cost our relationship anything, it only adds to it. All the time we get to spend together--have to spend together--is a good thing. My fears of not being able to survive without copious amounts of alone time (classic introvert here) evaporated somewhere along the way of settling into our marriage and work arrangement. 

And some people still think I quit my old job and didn't pick up another "real one". And that's okay. I am a stay-at-home wife just as much as Tim is a stay-at-home husband. We're just usually doing the above all day long at our stay-at-home job.
Except when we're busy trespassing and such :)

One year!

Today is our one year anniversary! We're not really sure how to celebrate an anniversary because we've never had one before. And we ate the top layer of our wedding cake the last time we were down in Florida visiting my parents. We needed dessert on a particular night and I couldn't exactly pack a frozen layer of cake in my suitcase back to Chicago, so you know.

So far today I've gotten a haircut. I bonded with a new stylist named George (or Georgie?) whom I might call my own from now on because I love my new hair and he's very kind and gave me a hug on my way out and called me sweetie. It's so great to have someone you trust cut your hair, no? Was I supposed to be focusing on my anniversary?

Anyways, then I stopped by Trader Joe's on my way home and bought Tim all his favorite treats. Meaty lasagna (I don't make lasagna from scratch. takes too long), frozen pizza, chocolate raspberry candies, and those mochi Japanese ice cream things that I don't like. While I was standing in the frozen aisle, my dad called and sang me the anniversary song. It's an original. 

I got some excitement and kisses out of my guy when I got home because I have hot new hair and his favorite treats. Happy anniversary, baby. Then we started working and now the day is escaping so we need to go out and do something celebratory. Oh, and we ordered our crib! Super great.

I couldn't resist posting some wedding pictures because I'm reminiscing a lot today. Our wedding is a beautiful, beautiful memory. 

 It's funny though, the ritual and celebration we performed one year ago today in front of 80 people was nothing compared to being launched into the work and joy of marriage that we've been privately experiencing since then. It's so very, very good. This year has seen us wrapped in a cocoon of safe and gentle transition into marriage. We are better at loving each other now than we were a year ago. I thought he was amazing when I married him, but he's so much better than what I was aware of even then. Marriage too. It gets a bad wrap a lot and I was scared of it a little, but marriage can be a profoundly good thing and I'm very glad I'm signed up for life. I want many more years with my Frenchman.

a post about AC units

This summer has been rough on our love affair with our apartment. Remember our perfect apartment?

When we were deciding to live here, I spent not one second contemplating the fact that it didn't have central air. It just didn't occur to me. It was winter, and this place had beautiful light pouring in from huge windows in every room and offered free radiator heat. Free heat! In Chicago! We were going to save thousands.

And we probably did. From February to May, life here was so comfortable and our monthly bills are a fraction of what we used to pay to heat and cool a townhouse. But then, summer set in early and weather records starting getting broken with the heat. Right around the same time, I started to get sick. At 5 weeks pregnant, I was nauseated and depleted of energy and started getting very sensitive to temperature and odor, and then we had a couple of 100 degree days.

It was a bad mix.

We went out and bought an air conditioning unit, and it was $150, which is fine for one AC unit, but we weren't going to buy any more at that price. Tim installed it in our bedroom and for the whole month of June, I spent my days and nights in that room working on my laptop and napping and vomiting and generally being pregnant. Tim toughed it out in the office (where we used to spend all of our working hours together) until he could stand it no longer and bought another $150 AC unit to give him some relief. Those two little units allowed us to work and sleep, but didn't improve much else at home. Call me cheap, but I wasn't willing to spend any more than $300 on improving a situation in an an apartment that we might not even live in next year. It would have cost us another $600 to outfit the rest of the rooms in our apartment with new AC units, and that was neither appealing nor in the budget.

Leaving the protective igloo of our air conditioned bedroom to run an errand or even go to the bathroom brought on a wave of heat, which brought on a wave of nausea, and I was so miserable. Those beautiful big windows in every room ushered in the full heat of the sun, and being on the top floor only increased the temperature as heat wafted up through the floorboards. Turning on the oven to cook dinner brought the kitchen to over 110 degrees, so we ate sandwiches. I left windows open to try to catch a breeze, and with it came extra dust that coated the floors. By the end of July, I was talking about moving out.

I was so mad at the situation. How could my life be made so difficult by the absence of one modern invention? Tim and I both grew up without air conditioning (albeit, in a cooler climate) and we survived. I hated the feeling that buying more really expensive stuff would make me happy, and had resentment that being pregnant was turning an irritating situation into an unbearable one just because of hormones and the fact that my body was changing outside of my control and couldn't take the heat. The absolute worst part of all this, the part that made it all plainly sad and unlivable, was that when Tim would reach for a hug, I couldn't return the affection without an inward grimace. He's just a big, warm man, and I was forever overheated and pukey.

And then last week, salvation came. We saw our downstairs neighbors packing up and moving out. Soon their kitchen window, which we had to walk by in order to get to our car, was bare and displayed a totally empty apartment save for 4 AC units grouped on the tile floor. We acted immediately by leaving a note on their door asking if we could PLEASE buy those units from them? And they called back and said yes, we could have all four for $100.

I don't have a moral to this story. Life in my home is livable and enjoyable again, and it's because of stuff. I don't know where we'll put them in the winter when we need to seal our windows again, and I don't know if we'll be able to recuperate any of the money we spent on these when we eventually move out, but I can cook a meal in my oven and eat at the kitchen table with my husband and hug him for a long time without having to pull away. So.

Oh, life.

Today, Tim and I met with a potential client in a coffee shop. The meeting went well and when it was over, I looked around me and noticed all of the other patrons in the shop who were sitting alone at little tables being so studious. They were buried in their head-phones and laptops and textbooks, all silently going hard after big things in life they really wanted, and for a second I remembered exactly what that was like and I deeply missed being in their shoes.

I had 6 years of that season of relentless pursuit. For most of that time, I worked a full-time job while taking a full-time load of coursework, and it was so hard. It felt like it would never end. Tuition ate up all of my money, but I could somehow always afford a cup of espresso to get me through the next studying session at the coffeehouse, even if it came from scavenged quarters and dimes dug up from under the seat of my car. Those days were glorious. They were full of questions that weren't light and I cried so many tears for the not knowing and being alone, but that work it did on my character was profoundly good and I am proud of those years. They felt long at the time but they're a vapor now, and I had no idea they would end so darn quickly and everything would change.

I wouldn't do them all again, but I'm not a "do it all again" kind of girl. I can't forget the bad stuff like the details of the heartbreaks and the not having enough money for haircuts or new tires with winter snow fast approaching. But still, they were good years.

Now I'm in a different place that feels more like coasting on all the stored up energy I worked up when I thought I was getting nowhere. And it's nice. Truly. I'm not discounting the fact that I get to travel and love my husband and start a family. This was the point of all that work.

I just never thought that wooing clients, sealing a deal, and making money would for a moment seem less fun than working my arse off to get a diploma and try to find myself by thinking existential thoughts fueled by coffee.

Oh, life.

Wherever you are, don't wish it away.

finding out

We found out on April 26th, 2012.

I was all excited to take my first pregnancy test, which I did on the earliest possible day that the package told me I'd get an accurate reading. It turns out that all the romantic notions I'd had about taking a pregnancy test and waiting on the results with my husband kind of poofed into thin air. You have to pee on a stick, which is kind of medical and gross, then wipe the pee splatters off the stick before your husband sees it, and do you peek at the results before you leave the bathroom? Is that allowed if you want to 'find out together'?

We sat on the bed together and waited for three minutes, and then looked. And it was negative.

And that was ok. I had worked hard to not build up hopeful expectations while I built up hopeful expectations anyway. It was only the first month. I really couldn't expect to get pregnant that fast and there was probably nothing wrong with either one of us. Except that I was well studied on the subject of fertility and my own body and I knew for sure that Mars and Venus had crossed paths at the right time...so...still, it was fine. Maybe next month.

I had been feeling a little weird and thought that meant I was pregnant. I had cried easily a couple of times over sentimental things and thought it was a sign. I had a few mood swings and thought that was a sign too. I tried to put all of that out of my mind and Tim and I went to run errands.

We walked into Whole Foods and the smell of the produce section hit me wrong. I had this clear moment of knowing that is hard to describe and I assertively walked over to the vitamin aisle and selected some prenatal vitamins and tossed them in the basket. I told Tim I should have started taking them a while ago. A week or so went by and I stayed in this limbo of thinking my body was telling me I was pregnant, but remembering the test results. 

We had a photographer's social planned at our house for a Thursday night, and that afternoon I got testy. I had a list of things to do to get the house ready for our guests and I was feeling overwhelmed. Tim was helping but at one point when he wasn't doing some household thing my way, I snapped at him and he retreated to the kitchen to wash dishes. 

I felt mean, and I hated that. I didn't feel like myself at all and I was tired of being denied that something real was happening to me and throwing me off kilter. I grabbed my last pregnancy test and snuck off to the bathroom to get my final answer, which I expected to be another negative result.

It wasn't. The horizontal line popped up immediately, no three-minute wait required. 

And then I realized that I was all alone in the bathroom with the weight of this realization, which was heavy, and my thoughts surprisingly weren't fairy-dusted or sunshiny. This is happening? And it's permanent? And I was just mean to my husband and now I have to go tell him I'm pregnant?

I made haste to the kitchen. Tim had his back turned to me as he was washing dishes and I reached for a hug first, which he immediately returned, and then I said; 
"I just took this pregnancy test..."
"WHOAH! I knew you weren't acting like yourself!"

He was so excited, which reminded me that I could be excited too. And then it all turned sweet. We forgot about the chores and the people who were coming soon and the food we needed to make and everything else, and we just held each other and rejoiced and lived in the moment for a while. In my heart, I fell to my knees and thanked God for giving us undeserved grace to be able to get pregnant so easily. It wasn't lost on me then, and still isn't, that I was spared the pain of what I could have gone without. 

stay online, dear.

Tonight Tim and I were hanging out in a Starbucks in two easy chairs pushed towards each together, my feet propped up on his lap, talking easily about big and little life things.
Eventually, as is normal for us, we talked through everything we had on our minds and then turned our eyes to our iPhones and starting scrolling through our various social media apps.

"Did you see this picture so and so posted to Instagram?"
"Listen to this quote an old acquaintance retweeted....do you think that's true?"
"This blog post is so riveting..."
"Ha! ______ is so funny on Facebook."

And this is how it goes for us. We use technology to explore new concepts and ideas and art and music and articles, and then we share them with each other and talk at length about what we're seeing. It's so normal to us that we've stopped thinking about the process. We do this at home when we're not working and when we are working. Now that I think of it, we have a specific type of work-related social media study and discussion that we usually do while Tim is editing photos and I'm taking care of administrative tasks. We do this in the car a lot too. I hate battling Chicago traffic, so I scroll and talk through what I'm reading on my phone, entertaining Tim while he drives. We do this when we're out to dinner or coffee. We don't so much do this when we're with friends. The phones stay in my purse and his pocket when we're connecting with other people.

So why do I always hear criticism about how time spent on social media is bad for the relationship health of couples? It's no longer a new argument, yet I see a reference to a new article written on this topic (usually by a major world news publication) almost weekly.

I know that a major reasoning for social media bringing hardship and separation to couples is the opportunity to connect with new crushes or reconnect with old flames, and I know this could be a big temptation for a relationship that's already in trouble...but it's not like cheating was impossible to do before the internet. Divorce rates (and marriage rates, for that matter) started falling before the social media age and have continued to fall as the internet takes over.

If anything, my own family experience has proved otherwise: that the internet brings couples together. My sister and I both met our husbands thanks to the internet. You'll have a hard time convincing us this is a bad thing.

I think that the internet and social media are neutral mediums (kind of like money) that anyone can use as a tool for good or harm. We use it to learn new things every day, adapting to a world that's changing faster than we can imagine. Somewhere along the short line of our new marriage, Tim and I unconsciously created some social media boundaries that work for us and help us to benefit each other with their use. I did a little brainstorming and came up with a few to share:

• No hiding. Our phones and computers are not off limits to each other. Our computer screens face each other while we're working and we're constantly switching phones throughout the day to look up different information. This happens naturally, no spying necessary. He could scroll through my text messages to look for a picture or lost phone number we need to look up and that wouldn't be weird or uncomfortable for me.
• We know each other's passwords. I can't remember how this happened, it just did. He asks me to answer his Facebook messages for him sometimes because email is a pain to him and enjoyable to me. This is normal for us.
• We're connected on every social medium. Facebook friendship, Twitter/Path/Instagram following...basically everything but Pinterest because he's just not that into it. Whatever I'm looking at, he can see the same thing.
• We routinely delete Facebook friends if it's someone of the opposite sex whom we just don't need to be connected to anymore.
• No lonely vacuums. As I mentioned before, we talk about what we read online. We don't disappear into our solo internet worlds. We keep the connection to each other open. 

All this is not to say that we don't have private conversations with our same-sex friends. We've just found an easy balance between being private and being secretive. Privacy means you can have access if you respect each other in the information that you want to know. Secrecy is different and not applicable to our relationship. Unless it's what I'm getting him for Christmas. 

What do you think? Is social media getting a bad rap in your mind or should couples be on their guard and spend less time interneting?

Tim's wedding day text messages to me. Photo cred.

January recap + first impressions of Oak Park

Well. where did January go?
We got on a plane to leave France on January 10th and landed directly into a whirlwind of activity that has only recently settled down. Moving mostly looked like this:

I thought we'd be able to make a quick job of it, but I was wrong. As soon as we got back to the States,  the busyness of high booking season swamped us. For a solid week, I did nothing but email with potential new clients and arrange meetings to talk to them about shooting their weddings.  

Friends and neighbors who may ever consider hiring a wedding photographer: don't wait until the second week of January! This is when EVERYONE else starts their wedding vendor search for the coming year and dates fill up so fast.  Also, September is apparently the new June when it comes to prime wedding dates. I am sad to be missing two very dear friend's weddings this year because we already had their dates booked, but we're also feeling extraordinarily blessed to have a full year of work ahead of us. 

More on that later. 

What you need to understand right now is that we lived in that chaos pictured above for about 10 days longer than originally planned because clients and meetings trump packing and moving. And I only had one tantrum about it.

I've picked up a few easy transition skills due to my nomadic tendencies, and this is one pictured above is a favorite. The first belongings I bring to a new house are always very dear to me. It helps me form an attachment to my new home and feel like it's my safe place. This is the "Je t'aime" (I love you) print I got for Tim for his 25th birthday last April and it also served double duty as decoration at our wedding. I know I'm long overdue on telling those stories, but just love me and forgive me. I'll get back into it soon! 

Tim, iPhoning on the office floor before furniture got there. Do you know how dangerous it is to iPhone this way? If you get too relaxed, you're liable to drop your iPhone onto your face, which HURTS and you can guess how I know this to be true. I still do it this way, though. Tim too. We like to live on the edge. 

Snow and 20 degree temps doesn't stop us from asking 6 of our closest to haul our shtuff up to the 3rd floor. Look at these troopers. 

Just look at them I tell you! Amanda (in the red scarf) is 8 months pregnant here--not that you could tell because she's still looking so fine-- and she even helped haul in boxes and load up my new kitchen.

Side note: when Tim got dressed that morning, he specifically said he wanted to wear his yellow hoodie because Peter always wears his own identical yellow hoodie when he has to do manual labor and then they'd match. That's what best grown men friends do I guess? 

Seriously--our friends worked so hard to help us get settled. They got all cold and sweaty and bruised and sore just so we can live comfortably in our new apartment. That was such a gift. 

Our first breakfast in our new apartment. We take breakfast pretty seriously, if you can't tell. 

The view from our new office. 

We are seriously loving Oak Park. It's the perfect blend of city and suburb. We can walk to a grocery store or walk to the El stop and take the train downtown. The architecture is amazing and keeps me so inspired. It's quiet. It's old. It's diverse. It's almost perfect. 

One of the most refreshing aspects of it for me has to do with race relations and city planning. I lived in Kansas City for 5 years before coming here, and as much as I loved that town, it was hard to deal with the after-effects of racist city planning that took place in the early 1900's. Even now, Kansas City people and neighborhoods are very monochromatic and there is little overlap and interdependence between the black and white communities.  Every day as I went from school to work to church, I passed back and forth between two opposing worlds that had such a hard time intertwining. I thought this was normal in the MidWest, but Chicago is proving otherwise to me now.

Especially Oak Park. It turns out that while Kansas City was tightening their hold on segregated neighborhoods, Oak Park was making concerted efforts to integrate the community and enforce fair housing regulations. I can really feel this missing tension when I walk around the Lake Street shopping district, meet my apartment neighbors, or sit in a pew at a neighborhood church on Sundays.  People look each other in their different colored eyes and smile around here, and it's made a wonderful impression on me. 

Have a wonderful Monday, you dear people.