Father's Day: Resurrecting an Old Friend

This morning is the 4th of July and we have some awesome things planned that I can't wait to share  but first I realized I never put up our pictures from father's day weekend.

One thing I just love about the summer is the constant stream of fun events and get togethers! Friday night we spent at my parents house and since it had been nearly 7 weeks since we'd been there we had lots to catch up on. When Saturday rolled around my mom and I took to shopping. I needed a few more maternity tops and we had to resurrect my dearest friend Sammie. 

When I was 9 years old my mom took me to build a bear and Sammie became part of our family. I have a few different stuffed animals from build a bear but Sammie has always been special. She has been on countless vacations, traveled miles across the country as my copilot, moved with me to college and grad school, watched over me while I spent long nights completing homework, and cuddled with me through all my heartbreaks. Ok. I know she's a bear but I seriously love her. Whenever I am having  a bad day or one of my crying fits (I promise I'm a joy to live with) Devin will carefully tuck Sammie into my arms and squeezing her helps calm me down. 

So given all the important duties Sammie has been assigned over the years she was a little dirty...and her polar bear white fur had turned an unfortunate dark grey. So my mom had the great idea to unstuff her, clean her, and get her restuffed. 

So I reluctantly left her behind when we visited in May and my mom carefully unstitched her, pulled out all get stuffing and gave her a bath!

But she made sure she saved the heart (obviously) and some of the original stuffing. 

When we got to build a bear to restuff Sammie we presented her original birth certificate, and she became a little celebrity! Since Sammie is almost 16 years old she is a lot different than the current bear options. Mostly she is much bigger! Current build a bear clothes don't fit her and all their tshirts look like crop tops on her. So lots of employees came to see her and were amazed that we still had her birth certificate. Ummm you don't just discard birth certificates of family members. 

Then it came time to stuff her. The main reason this all came about was because of the baby bundle that is on her way. While I'm not ready to relinquish ownership of Sammie completely I wanted her to be clean and new when baby cakes gets here.

Here is Sammie getting refilled. We also added back in some of her old stuffing. Then we did a few very special things. First I made a new wish on her heart. If you have never been to build a bear before you put the heart in you make a wish and kiss it. I can't imagine what I wishes for when I was 9, but it was nice to update the wish and put her heart back in. Then we added in some of her old stuffing and kept a little bit for when baby goes to get her first build a bear. Next we added a second heart, I wanted to add another because right now there are two hearts inside of me. With the second heart the lady helping us had me go through the whole routine where I got to rub the heart on my head for knowledge, heart for health, and other places for good mojo. Then I made another wish and in it went. 

The last thing we added is perhaps the most special of all. At our last ultrasound appointment Devin and I took a recording of the baby's heartbeat. The cool thing is that now at build a bear you can record a sound onto a little device and put it in the bear. So we transferred the heartbeat recording to a little device and put it inside. So now when you press Sammie's paw you hear the baby's heart beat! If you aren't aware of what it is it sounds a lot like a washing machine but we know and that makes it special. 

Then they sewed her back up and I gave her several squeezes to make sure she was ready to go. 

This huge smile is so genuine I can't even pretend I don't have an unhealthy love for this inanimate object. 

I know she's just a bear, and Devin mocks me relentlessly for our "relationship" but maybe it's not so terrible to have something that links you to your childhood. And hey at least one of the seemingly frivolous things my parents spent money on for me as a child was money well spent! 

That night we had a very yummy dinner of ribs and chicken and I made these carrot cake cupcakes because it was Father's Day and these are my dad's favorite. And I don't want to toot my own horn but they are pretty amazing cupcakes. I also made lemon cookies for Devin and while they tasted awesome getting them off the pan was a nightmare and I was so pissed off with them that I took no photos.

The next day I made a enchilada breakfast casserole accompanied by Devin's famous breakfast potatoes. My brother also adopted a dog from California and while we were in town she arrived so we spent some time getting to know Bandit who is amazing!! I would have taken her if my brother didn't seem so fond of her. Here are Cindy and Bandit getting to know each other, Bandit is the black one and she has one eye! 

Then we lazily spent the day watching tv until we left to go to Chicago for a concert! We planned to have a picnic in millennium park since we had lawn seats at the Pritzker Pavilion but the place I planned to take us for sandwiches was closed Sundays so instead we decided to wait until after the show to grab dinner. 

Both Devin and I love iron and wine so the concert was really amazing. We laid in the grass and watched the clouds and let the tunes of Sam Bean roll over us. 

I can't stand how much I love this city and I can't wait to bring our daughter here and show her all the best things the city has to offer. 

For dinner we decided on Greek in Greektown and it was fabulous.

Here is Devin being so annoyed because I am taking a picture of the last bite of saganaki instead of when it came out on fire. I was so starved though that I didn't think of it until the last possible moment. It was phenomenal though - you can't go wrong with melted cheese. 

Then here is our dinner platter which is also partially eaten because this isn't a professional food blog and you get what I've got. We had meatballs, gyro meat, and spinach pie. All really tasty especially the spinach pie. As I mentioned before Devin and I are all about gyros so we love trying gyro meat wherever we go in search of the best. While it didn't top our favorite that we found in San Francisco it was pretty darn good. 

Also I felt like such a rebel because we got to the restaurant around 9 which is usually close to my bedtime. That's right we are still hip. We even ordered a lemonade to share, I know we got a little wild for a Sunday night.

Then Monday before we came back to Iowa we went and saw Jurrasic World with the family - which I thoroughly enjoyed and got some lunch at a local family restaurant. We are slowly bringing back the baby stuff that has accumulated at my parents' house and here was the first batch of many stuffed into our back seat.

Yipes.

Overall a fabulous weekend - now let's get this 4th of July on the road!