lots and lots of water...

and not in the awesome Brad Paisley song way. on friday, we had a HUGE storm come through and pretty much the whole chicago area flooded. lots of things shut down - people's electricity, the eisenhower expressway (the major east-west highway to the city...picture 66 being shut down from the Beltway to DC), the kennedy expressway (north-south highway...so add portions of the Beltway shutting down and maybe even 270), and even my parents' sump pump.

that's right, we awoke to about 3 inches of water in our basement saturday morning. bummer. although we had nothing compared to some folks - my office got 18 inches in the basement, the company down there lost all of their computers, and our AC is broken (80 degree office on a monday is also a bummer). then, when alex and i took the train into the city for a work event saturday, we saw people in row boats going down their street. that's right - row boats. some underpasses even became swimming pools for children of irresponsible parents. it was chaos.

here's a picture of the street in front of my office on saturday afternoon.
thankfully, it's all clearing up now and people are starting to recover. you can tell by the streets lined with old carpet for the garbage folks to grab :)

starting the "honey do" list

recently alex and i decided we were totally bored of the cream walls and white trim throughout our entire condo. since he's got some time before the wedding, we decided that we (meaning he) would get some painting done before i move in!

we've had lots of fun picking colors, and some of the names are really creative - so far he's painted the bedroom "mineral water", which looks like a pretty robin's egg blue, and the guest bathroom will be "grass cloth", a nice soft green.

any suggestions for our living room?? that's the next project we think :)

engagement pictures are up!

our photographers for the wedding are a young local couple that we've really enjoyed getting to know. they're fun, creative, and you can tell they love what they do. anyways, as a part of our package, we got an engagement session with them, which we did about 3 weeks ago. well, the pictures are edited and some of the photographer's favorites are up on her blog! check them out here and see what you think :)

as a side note, stephanie actually found these guys first and used them for her wedding, so keep that link to see some of her wedding pictures when they get posted (hopefully soon!).