11 September, 2008...Our Ninth Anniversary

To celebrate our 9th anniversary we revisited some of the places we went on the day we got engaged. Quite a lot has changed in the past nine and half years since we did these things and we had a blast.

We took the girls to Brookfield Zoo. When we got engaged it was March. March in Chicago is brutal. It was so cold we spent our visit running from one building to the next. But yesterday the weather was perfect for a trip to the zoo. Not too cold, not too hot. Not even too sunny, it was a bit overcast...just how we like it. Sylvie was so excited to go to the zoo. She's getting pretty good at recognizing her animals and then pretending to be them. She also loves to teach Grace the sign for the animals we know the signs for. Sylvie and Jeremy both liked the bears. We recited "Brown Bear, Brown Bear what do you see?". We all liked the elephant. Sylvie and I had an elephant march. And Grace really liked the rhino. She was really squealing and talking to a lot of the animals, but especially the rhino. One part that Jeremy and I thought was so cool was not such a hit with the girls. There is an exhibit called "Stingray Bay" where you can actually pet stingrays. It was pretty neat. They're pretty soft and slimy. Neither of the girls wanted to go near the water. At first I thought Grace was doing the squeal of delight she does when she gets excited about animals but then it grew to a "Get me away from here, Daddy!" scream.

Of course Sylvie wanted to ride the carousel. So we all hopped on. It was Grace's first time to sit on an animal and she really enjoyed it. She was doing the Squeal of Delight. We also took some time out for some ice cream. Sylvie enjoyed her Spongebob Squarepants ice cream to the max.

That was a full day at the zoo. Quite different than our first visit. We are so blessed to have our two littles. We took the girls home and our friends Chris and Jackie came over to watch them while Jeremy and I continued our date.

We got dressed up and headed to the Signature Room at the 95th Floor of the John Hancock building. This is where he proposed to me in March 1999. I don't typically like going to super fancy restaurants. Jeremy loves to do this. I always feel self concious and as if I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing. However, God had a lot of this planned and I was at ease about going here from the beginning. The restaurant is on the 95th floor, as the name says. It is a most beautiful view of the city. The best tables are on the outside ring next to the floor to ceiling windows. This is where we sat when we got engaged. I was quite excited to return here and was hoping for another chance to sit by the windows. Both of our levels of excitement grew as the waiter walked us to our seat. He took us to the same table we sat at when Jeremy proposed!!! Neither of us could believe it. What a special night. To bring our day full circle we couldn't help but laugh at the menu. On the Chef's Specials page was Sauteed Skate Wing. The same creature we had been petting at Stingray Bay was on the menu!! Jeremy was shocked. I thought it was delicious. ;-)

Thanks for reading about our special day. I will try to add more pictures later. I'm still learning this new software we have so the pictures I rotated didn't show up rotated when I went to upload them.