Hello friends! I feel like I've been neglecting you - I can't believe I let a whole week go by without a single post. If you follow me on
Instagram, you know that I've been traveling a lot this last week, which was the main reason for my absence here.
I went to Chicago during the first half of the week for a 2 day training for work. I arrived Monday evening around 9, too late to really do much with an early morning the next day. One of my coworkers from Houston also attended the training so I had a buddy to do some sightseeing with, which we did Tuesday night. I had been to Chicago a couple times before, but I never gone to Millennium Park to do the touristy pictures in front of the Bean and Buckingham Fountain. So that's exactly what we did. :)
The inside of the bean was trippy.
Unfortunately that was our only night on the town. We had to travel back to Houston Wednesday evening. Our training was let out about an hour early so we decided to head straight to the airport to beat the traffic. Little did we know that we were in for a long night. There had been some severe weather (and tornado warnings, yikes!) in the north mid-western part of the country earlier in the day which caused massive flight delays and cancellations. We were not immune - our flight was first delayed by a couple hours and that quickly turned into 4 hours. Coupled with the fact that we had arrived at the airport 2 hours ahead of schedule, we were looking at a 6-7 hour delay. Fun. I was glad to be traveling with my coworker and not alone. We could at least entertain each other. We walked around our terminal looking for a place to sit - I don't think I've ever seen an airport this crowded before - and there was not a seat to be found. Even the walls were full of people sitting on the floor. We had traveled to the airport with a coworker from Boston that we met at the training and he was in a different terminal, so we asked him how things were over on his side (he also had a very long flight delay). He had miraculously gotten a table at a small restaurant, so we decided we might as well trek over to that terminal to hang out since we had 6 hours to kill. We watched the World Cup game that was on at the time and chatted away the time. Finally we were down to an hour so we headed back to our terminal. There were so many people still stranded at the airport at that time that they were putting out cots for those who had to sleep there overnight. As awful as having a seriously delayed flight was, I was very glad it didn't get cancelled. After about 3 gate changes in the last hour (and trudging from one end of the terminal to the other each time) we finally were able to board our flight and head home. We still weren't in the clear though. We ended sitting on the runway for about 45 more minutes (I think that is about average at O'Hare though, ha). We finally arrived back in Houston just before 2am and by the time I got home and in bed, it was about 3am. I definitely slept in and went into work late after a night like that! What an adventure!
The very next day I headed to San Antonio with my friend Carly and her adorable 5 month old baby, to meet up with our bestie Melissa for a girls weekend and to celebrate her birthday. On Saturday we checked out the different missions in the city. It was neat learning about the history and how they lived back then and the old buildings were beautiful. The weather was ridiculously hot, but that's Texas for you in the summer! Carly's baby was a trooper and was so well behaved despite the heat. We finished up the afternoon with a late lunch on the Riverwalk. It was a fun day.
We headed back to Houston Sunday afternoon after a delicious brunch of red velvet pancakes. It was a fun weekend, but I was happy to get home and relax after being away for so much of the past week.
Has anyone been following the World Cup? That tie was such a heart breaker for the USA in the last minute of the game on Sunday. Luckily we will still be able to advance if we beat or tie Germany on Thursday. I'm excited to watch the game! :)
