Front Porch Makeover

Our front porch/mud room has needed a make over for a while. The curtains were sun bleached, the bench was too small, the furniture "kinda" matched and everything needed to be sorted and organized. As the case usually goes, I started this project by looking for a shoe cabinet, and this caused a domino effect of redoing the whole room. I gotta say, I'm pretty happy with it!!

The old set up...

The new set up...

Here is the shoe/boot cabinets (I bought 2 and put them side by side). Found baskets at the Dollar Tree and put names on them (for winter gear). The second picture shows the boots and a few hodge podge items.

Since the shoes had a new home, I was able to free up the floor. Now the front door can open wider!

We went through all of the coats, shoes & winter gear and condensed down to the ones we actually wear! No more Coat Tree, no more wicker baskets!

Last touch for the room - new curtains and artwork. I printed some of our travel pictures, ordered curtains and picture frames, found some tabletop pieces for the cabinet and viola!!! 

I've really enjoyed putting the room together. I found a few more pieces for the top of the cabinets that I love! I can't wait to put the Christmas tree up to see how everything glows!

Cubs Game!

Matt & I were blessed to attend a Cub's baseball game on 9/11. One of Matt's best friends had texted one night and asked if we would be available to go to a Cub's game on 9/11 and then proceeded to tell Matt that the tickets were a gift from them. We were very excited, to say the least! 

Fast forward a few weeks - we left for Chicago, found our parking spot and then headed in to Wrigley. When we found our seats, our jaws hit the ground!!! We were LITERALLY 3 rows from the Cub's dugout! HOLY COW (as Harry Carey would say). I was in heaven!!!

Here we are checking out the field and David's waving to the camera, ha!

We found one of the ushers and asked him to take a picture of us - he promptly positioned us where he could see the old scoreboard and most of the field in the picture - I'm guessing he's taken his fair share of photos over the last few years!

While chatting with our usher for a minute, we noticed his World Series Ring. He loved showing it to us.

Due to Covid restrictions in place, we weren't allowed to bring in any bags (that would need to be searched). We did bring in a grocery bag full of water but no camera bag. I hated being this close to the action and not having my big camera! Matt did take a lot of pictures with his cell phone and most turned out pretty good!

Our first sighting of Kris Bryant - he had been traded to the San Francisco Giants on July 30th. It was great to see him again - sad that he wasn't in a Cub's uniform anymore, though.

Since it was 9/11, there was a wonderful tribute done before the game. There were numerous military, police and fire personnel on the field while a beautiful rendition of our national anthem was sung by a woman from the Chicago police force.

Time to play ball!!!

The first inning gave us a glimpse of hope - we scored a run and held the Giants to zero. Unfortunately, they scored 5 runs during the 2nd inning and another 6 in the 5th. This pretty much put the nail in our coffin. 

We did enjoy seeing all of our players up close though!

It was heartwarming to see KB again - bittersweet, for sure. He received a standing ovation when he walked out on to the field during warm ups(see earlier picture) and again during his first few at bats. 

Patrick Wisdom's bat was on fire this season (he came up to the majors in May) and fans quickly realized that he would be a strong player for our team. By the time that August rolled around, fans were starting to realize that he may break the record for most homeruns hit by a rookie (within the Cubs organization). Ironically, this record had been broken by Kris Bryant in 2015 with 26 homeruns. With Wisdom sitting at 25 homeruns before this game, we were very hopeful that we would see him tie and/or break KB's record...unfortunately we didn't. 

I love this picture that Matt got of KB & Wisdom chatting at 3rd base. I'm guessing that this is what was happening at the moment...

Quote from Wisdom: "I knew I was close, and then when we played the Giants [this past weekend], I thought it would have been pretty cool to tie it with KB there," Wisdom said. "When he got to third [base], we were just chit-chatting and he said, 'when you break my record, congrats on everything.' So that was pretty cool."

We caught a glimpse of Pat Hughes in the radio booth - no Ron though.

It was a long game - lots of pitching changes for the Cubs (Giants used 2 pitchers all game - Cubs used 7!). When the score is 15-4 with 9 pitching changes...yeah, it was a long (just short of 4 hours), hot (rather boring) game. Here is a recap of the game (from the pre-game ceremony to the end of the game).

We left Wrigley and made our way back to the parking garage. We were thrilled to be sitting in the air conditioned car again! We finished our time in Chicago by introducing David & Jennifer to Lou Malnati's Chicago style deep dish pizza. It was a wonderful way to finish out the day. The only thing that the day was missing - Flying the W!

Much thanks to David & Jennifer for the wonderful day in Chicago - for driving and for surprising us with the amazing seats! Even if they didn't win, we will remember this day for many, many years to come!