Birthday Weekend

Brad turned 26 yesterday! And in honor of that momentous occasion, Tom and Lori got to come out for the weekend and hang out with us. It was really great to see them, and even more fun to show them our new little life out here. I love that now they'll have a visual picture when we say we're going to church or walking past Wrigley Field. It was a great weekend of just hanging out.

Friday we wandered downtown and went to The Gage restaurant for dinner (found a Bien Nacido Merlot to drink, which was pretty fun since my old winery also sources grapes from the Bien Nacido vineyard). Saturday we went to Ann Sathers for some huge breakfast food, we got to go to a Cubs vs D'Backs game at Wrigley (see pictures and video below), thanks Mom and Dad and Tim Chelgren!, then we played an epic game of Settlers that Tom came from behind and beat us all at, then we went to a local brewery and watched USC mercilessly beat Cal. Sunday they got to come with s to our first-ever church-wide celebration downtown, where all four congregations came together for a big celebration of what God's doing through Holy Trinity. It wasn't quite the small church feel, but it was an awesome time of vision and community.

All in all, very fun! Thanks for coming out parents! Brad had a great birthday full of friends calling and Facebooking, and capped off with some Margie's ice cream shakes with some friends and staying up way too late with them. Awesome. We are praying for God to keep doing great things for Brad this next year. It's going to be a year full of new decisions and new ideas, and we hope that Brad keeps finding new ways to show Jesus through his art. But man, 26 just sounds old! (And I'm still a fresh, young 25 for another 6 months...)

Here are some fun Wrigley Field stadium pictures. It's a great place to watch a ballgame. And we got some great seats, right behind home plate, so we could really see the whole thing.

The Cubs ending up beating the Diamondbacks pretty badly, and it was fun to see the whole crowd get really into it. The raised the W (for win) flag high after the game and everyone sang the "Go, Cubs, Go!" song, which was really funny.

And here's just a few more pictures of us enjoying the game, Brad was being a good photographer so he isn't in them, sadly.

To finish it all off, here's a great video of the Seventh Inning Stretch, a classic Cubs tradition. The guest of honor singing it was legendary Cubs player Ryne Sandberg, which was pretty cool. The Cubs' fans are really pretty fun to see. We had a great time!