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For Mark’s birthday, July 17th, we took a few days off to hang out with his Aunt Donna and his mom at Donna’s house around the Chicago area.  We spent most of the time in and around her pool in her backyard. There are most definitely not going to be photos of that in this post (which I’m sure all will thank me for).  I ran a few miles, played with Donna’s adorable dog, Guinness, and we watched a few movies.

Did I mention that I drove the whole way?  Not trying to make Mark feel guilty — just pointing out that my leg injury from the marathon (3 years ago!) is finally at the point that I can DRIVE for a few hours at a time (namely, six).

Beautiful.  The only time we actually went into the city was to go to The Needle Shop — which is NOT a tattoo shop.  It’s actually a really amazing fabric store around Damon Ave..

[Mark drove there. I suck at real city driving.]

[my amazing finds — mostly Habitat]

On Mark’s birthday we trekked over to his favorite pizza place. We were going to see Harry Potter, but since it was the first weekend it was out the show was sold out for the rest of the foreseeable future.

Um … odd sign in Elk Grove Heights.

LOU’S.  aka the promised land of Chicago Style pizza.

Mark is pleased. It’s the first piece he’s had (besides the frozen pies his dad occasionally gets) in over a year.

I had a slice too.  And by a slice, I mean a few slices. The epic stomachache I had afterwards was so worth it.  I had the Lou’s — spinach  + tomato.  YUM.

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A week later, but oh well.

Last weekend Mark and I trekked to western Illinois to a beautiful little town called Galena. I’d been there several times before and we were really just looking to find somewhere nice to go and get away from things.  It was his birthday on Saturday so we planned a couple of things, but really, we just wanted to chillax.

We stayed at the Captain Harris Guest House in the Honeymoon Cottage. And yes, everybody thought we had just gotten married. But really, it was just the one we found in our price range out of all the Galena B&Bs that had all the things we wanted. A lot of B&Bs didn’t even serve breakfast … which is weird. Are they just considered Beds?

Anyway, the house we chose was apparently the 2nd oldest home in Galena and the oldest continuously lived-in home. The inside had been refurbished in the craftsman style in the ’20s and there were some lovely Frank Lloyd Wright windows.  But, we actually stayed in what used to be the pigeon coop. Which, obviously, had also been refurbished and furnished with a fireplace and a hot tub. It was cozy.

We spent a lot of time watching movies, playing games and just hanging out in our room. We didn’t choose Galena because of the stuff to do there. We chose it because it was close to my hometown and I had to find somebody to watch my doggie (ie. dropped him off at “grandma’s”) and I’d been a lot of times, so I knew what the area was going to be like.

Here are some adorable photos.

Our room …

Adorable ribbon embroidered pillow

A view of the parlor in the house

the gorgeous bay window view from the table

here’s a closeup of the label of the fabulous wine that I picked. honestly — I picked it for the label, which is usually a bust. But it was gorgeous. And it had sciencey drawings on it, so it was perfect for Mark’s b-day.

Friday night we ate at what we were hoping would be a hole-in-the-wall restaurant called Durty Gurt’s … not so much. It was good, but it wasn’t the dive we were hoping for. It was more like a Friday’s.

Did I mention that there was a classic roadster convention going on that weekend? which worked out nicely. Mark loves cars, but isn’t really into classics — this is kind of where we overlap. I love classic cars.

we spent a good chunk of time playing chicken foot — which is a reallly fun domino game.

Saturday night we ate at Fried Green Tomatoes … which was good, but I wish we would have done Vinny Vanucci’s instead because Fried Green wasn’t anything too out of the ordinary — except for their prices. This is the namesake dish. Yes. There are tomatoes under that cheese.

All in all, it was a pretty great trip. We spent a few hours in the hot tub both days we were there … I went for a run and ran up an epically steep hill … we ate a lot of naughty but delicious foods … finished off 2 bottles of wine … smoked a stogie … and had a great time!

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