Birthday Weekend In Chicago: Our Adventures + Mishaps

Hi, sweet friends! First, THANK YOU, THANK YOU for all of the birthday love you sent my way over the weekend! You guys sure do know how to make a girl feel special. I read every message and comment and I truly appreciate it! ALSO – there is still time to enter my birthday Kate Spade handbag giveaway! I’ll be announcing the winner on here TOMORROW MORNING, so be sure to stop back to see if you’re the lucky one!

OK. Let’s talk #momlife. It ain’t no joke, right? And you know what makes it easier? Knowing that we’re all in it together and that the next mom doesn’t have her shit together, either.

So, here’s the thing. I have a lot of cute photos from this weekend. I could share them, along with some outfit links and write that we had a wonderful weekend in the city. Done and done.

And while YES – it was wonderful, it also went wonderfully wrong. Real #momlife happened, and shit didn’t go exactly how we had planned. We forgot necessary items, the almost 4 year old made a huge scene in Chanel, the baby was a Stage 5 Clinger and we all slept in the same bed, (More below.)

BUT. Isn’t that where the good stuff is? The messiness? Would we remember this weekend in 10 years if everything had gone according to plan? Probably not.

Before I met The Mister and got married, I always said I didn’t want to find someone I could live happily every after with. I wanted to find someone I could live a messy, complicated, unhappy at times, REAL life with and still be happy.

As I begin my year of being 38, I’m grateful for this imperfect crew of mine, who remind me constantly that living a perfect life has nothing to do with things going right, and everything to do with laughing and loving each other through it all when things go wrong….

(Also. Don’t ask a 95 year old man to take a photo of your family and call it day. Check to see if he actually took any photos. Because he didn’t.)

(This post contains affiliated links.)

tank | cut offs | slides

My favorite big girl and me.

You see that cake? I ate most of it. Actually, I just polished off the last piece and a half last night.

Checked into the Ritz and ready to conquer the city.

(And by “conquer the city” I mean go for a walk, have dinner at 530pm and be in bed by 9pm.)

stroller (The best twin stroller ever. If you walk a lot, you probs need it.)

My crew.

Family selfie fail #1.

Scout: riding in the bottom of strollers since 2014.

Also, I forgot to bring his harness and leash. What could go wrong with an unleashed, completely deaf, 15 year old dog in the city??

My future fashion blogger.

This is where the fun started. We decided to pop into Chanel just for the Chanel of it. (Ha. Get it?)

I was hesitant to bring our whole circus into such a high end store, but we threw caution to the wind, put our heads down and pushed our double stroller right on in. And it went well! For the first 5 minutes…

Despite telling Harper not to touch a thing, she couldn’t resist the draw of Chanel. I mean, I get it. It’s Chanel.

While I was test-driving a Boy bag (drool), I heard a giant crash in the other corner of the store, quickly followed by a very familiar voice saying: “No! Harper! Watch out! Are you OK?!”

Ummmmm. Oops.

She had gotten a little too curious. She sneaked behind the counter and attempted to “pet” one of the fur bags that was on a huge plexiglass display. Yep. It all came tumbling down.

The entire store stopped and looked. Salespeople rolled their eyes at the annoying family. I was mortified.

Let’s just say they weren’t sad when we left 30 seconds later…

She’s already too cool for me.

The Mister and I had some of our wedding photos taken on these stairs, so we thought it would be cute to pose on them with our girls. Not as easy as we thought…

My girly girl.

(Who looks like she’s on house arrest because she won’t take off that ankle bracelet. Also. Don’t you dare ask her to pose for a photo. Don’t do it.)

dress | sandals | bag

A quick outfit shot before our family photo because we’re all dressed up and we look cute.

Except. We don’t have a family photo because we asked a 95 year old man to take the photo and of course he didn’t know how and he kept pushing the home button instead of taking the photo, but we didn’t realize that until later because we didn’t check the photo. Oops.