Chicago June & July 2008

I traveled to Chicago to see my sister, Kiki, with my friend, Tracy in June. We spent one day exploring downtown Naperville and having lunch at our favorite luncheon spot, Hugo's Frog Bar. They serve a $1 blue cheese wedge salad and other tiny lunch selections for small prices. We always get the goat cheese appetizer too. Our other favorite thing to do is stop in the Tasting de Vin for a wine tasting. It's the tasting room for Lynfred Winery. We love the gift shop and always enjoy tasting the newest releases of Lynfred's wines. On Saturday, we took Tracy to downtown Chicago and walked the Magnificent Mile. I think we walked about 8 miles that day considering how much our legs ached. We did a little scrapbooking together and enjoyed some wine and had a splendid girls weekend.

May 2008 Perdido Key Florida

We spent a wonderful week in Florida with Kylie and our friends, Todd and Kathy from Georgia and Dave and Sue from Preston, England. Rene' flew down and joined us for the first 4 days. We built a nice size sand castle and first full day and the next day we rented a pontoon and went out on the bay with the jetski. We spotted dolphin and had Kylie doing her "dolphin call" and the little buggers swam all around our boat. The kitchen at the Villa Belvedere beach house made cooking fun and easy so we grilled fish one night and steaks another night. Other evenings we had dinner at Louisiana Lagniappe which provided everyone with a nice Cajun seafood experience, and of course we had to visit Lulu's in Orange Beach. This is Jimmy Buffet's sister, Lucy's restaurant/bar. Live music, dancing, pitchers of Blue Moon and Fish Tacos made the evening complete. Perdido Key, Florida is located just east of Orange Beach, Alabama right at the Alabama/Florida state line. There's beautiful bays on the other side of the key which is great for jetskiing and boating. It has officially recovered from Hurricane Ivan and is looking beautiful and serene once again.