February

February was BUSY!! We celebrated Rick's birthday, Valentines Day and put our house on the market all in the space of 4 days.  This sign went in the yard on Thursday, surprisingly without any snow.

Some sweet and very generous friends of ours offered to watch the kids overnight for us on Friday so that we could have a night on the town in Chicago.  Let me tell you, it was wonderful!!  I planned it so we would put our house on the market and then all five of us would immediately leave so that the house would stay clean, at least for the first weekend for showings.  

We stayed downtown and walked to our dinner reservation at RL Grill.  It was one of the most beautifully decorated restaurants I have ever been to.  Gorgeous!!  The food and company was great too.

 I had to sneak a picture of the dining room while we were eating.  Just too beautiful!

While we were walking back we passed this sign.  Hello...SCARY!  I have never seen or noticed these signs before downtown.  I have never even thought about giant ice sickles falling from 100 stories up.  Yikes.
We had such a nice time together and it was nice to get away.  Other than being at the hospital while having Will, it was the only time we had spent a night away from the kids in almost four years.  Rick had been traveling so much that he needed a little break too.  It was perfect and completely distracted us from people looking around our house.

The next day we took the kids to the art Museum in Chicago, which is always a treat.  What treasures they have there.  We all had a good time and again distracted us from people looking at our house.
Monday was Presidents Day, so naturally we slept in a little later than normal.  I was getting the kids breakfast and Rick was in pj's working in the office.  At about 8:30a.m. there is a knock at the door and a realtor and a family of four is unlocking my front door and about to walk in.  They see me through the window in pj's.  After running through some scenarios in my head about how I can get out of opening the front door and asking them to give us about 10 minutes to get dressed, I realize it's the only thing I can do.  They were nice about it (we hadn't gotten any call about the showing) we got dressed as quick as we could and left.
They came back the next morning and we had an offer an hour later.  It was an unexpected blessing.

Ben had his first Pinewood Derby in February too.  He had fun making his car with Rick but he didn't appreciate not winning.