All Work No Play

Now that Amelia has turned 18-months and summer has arrived we decided she needed a little more direction in her life. She has been very busy with:

forced family photos at the Botanical Garden,

dance parties with G

grocery shopping for the family,

cooking her own meals,
cleaning up trash along Lake Michigan,
getting her morning exercise and
making sure daddy gets his exercise.

House Guests

Apparently if you tell enough people that you really do love having house guests someone is bound to finally give in. In May two people gave in so we were treated to weekends with both Auntie M and Carla. Hm, they both gave Amelia all kinds of attention and left Mark and I with empty wine bottles....

Just in case anyone is wondering Auntie M kind of likes her namesake and so far it looks like the feelings are mutual. The pictures of Auntie M's visit look like the weather was nice but it was really freaking cold so we spent a lot of QT with take out and our pajamas. The girls have to wait until the 4th of July to be together again. Boo hoo. I miss you sister!

Carla is homeless so we took her in last weekend. As she prepares to make her move west she is living out of her suitcase thus we were happy to provide her a comfy floor to spend her weekend on.

It is hard to imagine more fun than Auntie M and Carla but they might get a run for their money. Next weekend brings us GranAnn, rumor has it that Mrs. Duffy is making an appearance in early June AND Father's Day weekend will bring us Papa! Between Grandma and Grandpa Lang being back in Chicago for the summer and our doting (over Amelia at least) house guests I don't think Amelia will be deprived of attention..... In all seriousness we LOVE house guests and bought a larger place for a reason so bring it on.

My First Architecture Baby

The College of DuPage Health and Science's Center aka COD was my first architecture baby. Once at a luncheon one of the speakers explained how watching your first building go up brings you the same joy as your first baby. Well I don't agree with her as a building could NEVER be more rewarding than Ms. Amelia but COD still holds a pretty special place in my life.

I began working on COD when there was nothing more than room square footages on paper and worked on it full time for three years until there was a building to move into. In a way I/we grew up with COD as during my COD tenure Mark graduated law school, passed the bar, clerked for a judge and then moved onto a "real" job and then onto another "real" job. During the time I took my licensing exams and became a legitimate architect. Personally we got engaged, planned a wedding and got married. And finally I continued to make site visits until the Thursday before I had Amelia.

A day does not go by in my professional career in which I don't pull from my COD experience. In summary we have a building the client loves and did some cool sustainable/environmental things with the building which I am proud of. I won't bore you with examples of these lessons as well frankly I realize very few of you actually care to hear architect talk.

As for personal lessons I learned that I am not cut out for suburban Chicago car commutes. Boy was I grumpy when I got home on Thursdays after my 2-hour bumper to bumper commute. Mark as a rule of thumb didn't talk to me until I had had a healthy serving of red wine. I also learned that hard hats on women will NEVER be cute, cool or stylish. Why do they make us wear them? Ms. Hughey Quinn told me once that as long as I didn't wear my phone on a clip on my belt she thought I could still be stylish in the "field". I'm also proud to report that I have never or will never wear my cell phone clipped to my pants.

I am well into my next architecture baby but just got around to saving pictures onto our home computer so I thought I would share.