What is your dream vacation?...

...African safari! Specifically, seeing baby animals, a stalk and kill, and a cat in a tree =)

Back Story:  Of all the trips I've been on, my very favorite was a trip to South Africa and Zimbabwe. And, Africa is the only place that I've wanted to get back to (as soon as I can find the time and money)! When you go to London or Paris or Sydney, you know you'll see Big Ben, the Eiffel Tower and the Opera House. When you go on safari, you never know what you'll see!

When I went to Africa in 2008 with some friends, we flew to Kruger National Park and stayed at the Djuma Private Game Reserve. The staff, cooks and guides were the best! We did two game drives a day - - one at sunrise and one at sunset (complete with a stop for "sundowners"). We saw buffalo, giraffe, zebra, elephants, a leopard, a cheetah feeding on a kudu it had killed about an hour earlier, rhinos, "Friendly" (a hippo that our guide had his own special language with) and, on the last day, lions!

After that, we flew to Victoria Falls, on the Zimbabwe side. It was beautiful, but sad. The inflation was out of control (I got $100 billion of Zimbabwean currency for $1 USD) and no one was exporting food or goods to Zimbabwe, so the meal options were very limited. We went on an elephant ride and white water rafted down the Zambezi River...I was sore for days after the climb in/out of the gorge!

From Victoria Falls, we flew to Mana Pools National Park for a canoe safari. We were in a teeny tiny plane that flew into a dirt runway - definitely no airplane terminal). We had to abort our first landing because there were warthogs on the runway! On the first night, we stayed at a quasi-permanent camp site. The next two days, we canoed our way through TONS of hippos and went on several bush walks where we got pretty close to some elephants and also saw a couple of lion prides and hyenas. Back in the canoe, we narrowly avoided a hippo that had been lounging on the land until we interrupted him and he decided to splash into the water right in front of us (we had to back paddle and our guide went for his gun)!  The other two nights, we stayed in tents, but were fortunate that the staff put up the camp for us while we were canoeing, so we didn't have to do anything except holler when we were ready for them to fill up the water bucket for our shower!

Hippos...yes, we canoed around them!

The Shower

Our last stop was Cape Town. It was a beautiful city, but it was just that - a city. No animals. While we were there, we made the most of it by going to Robben Island and Table Mountain. I remember how fabulous it was to see the very last of the sun set into the ocean at what seemed like the tip of the earth!



Aah...what great memories! My friend Jeanette also went on a separate trip to Africa that same year and loved it as much as I did. She promised to go back every 5 years, which would mean another trip in 2013. I'm still planning on it, but Jeanette has a baby on the way, so I guess I'll have to find someone else to go with!

So, what's your answer? What is your dream vacation?

If you had to move to a new city, where would you move?...

...Riverwoods? No, really, New York City for the Broadway shows or Nashville?

Back Story: It's pretty hard to find a better place to live than Chicago, but the commute does get annoying. There are some really nice houses in Riverwoods, where I could just walk to work, but they're out of my price range.  I can only imagine a 5 minute commute! With an extra two hours a day, I would like to think that I'd work out and cook at home on a regular basis. I'd definitely have to come up with something else to fill those extra hours since none of my friends live out there (if they're not in the city, then they live in the western suburbs).

On the other hand, I've always thought that I'd like to live in NYC for just a year. When I first moved to Chicago, I made sure to regularly take advantage of all it has to offer. If there was a show I really wanted to see, I would go by myself if I had to. That doesn't happen so much anymore. Maybe it's because after spending 10 hours in a car each week, I don't want to waste time on a show that might not be 100% worth my time. I know that NYC would get old after a year or two, but that first year would be filled with lots of new experiences, including fabulous theater and restaurants (and no time in the car)!

Then again, if I HAD to make one more move for the rest of my life, I'd choose to move closer to my family. Nashville would win out over the other big southern cities close to Huntsville (Atlanta or Birmingham would be the other options). Not sure I could handle the "Rocky Top" anthem, but Nashville's also the home of Country music AND Christian music - my faves! On second thought, though, Atlanta is home to the headquarters of Chick-Fil-A...hmm.

So, what's your answer? If you had to move to a new city, where would you move?

What surprised you today?...

...how few Peanuts/Charlie Brown Christmas decorations people in Chicagoland have...only 3 in 100 miles of suburbs.

Back Story: Last Saturday, after spending some time with Megan, Tim, Barrett and new bundle-of-joy Audrey, I met up with my friend Cindy in Lombard to drive around and look at Christmas displays. She had quite the journey planned out based on google searches, a Christmas lights app and word of mouth. I thought we were just planning to look at lights in general, but about an hour into our adventure when we finally saw our first Peanuts inflatable, I realized that Cindy and I didn't have the same goals in mind! How could I have thought we would be looking for anything else (a nativity scene, maybe)? Her friends lovingly refer to her as a Peanuts hoarder - she has Peanuts decorations for every ocassion (including 6 nativity scenes with Woodstock as baby Jesus) and every birthday and Christmas card I ever get from her has Charlie Brown or Snoopy on it.

The first house we saw (in Lombard) was a good one: they had programmed their lights to the beat of Christmas songs that you could pipe through your car radio. From there, we drove north, past a house with a plastic Santa army (a little creepy if you ask me, especially at night). Then, we drove 20 miles to Juniper Lane in South Elgin. Pretty much all of the houses on that street went all out with their displays and we found TWO Peanuts decorations. However, one of them wasn't lit, so it didn't count. After that, we drove another 20 miles through South Barrington and Barrington to North Barrington (pretty, but no Peanuts).

We decided to forego the read-about home in Gurnee (which would have been another 20 miles) and turned south to make our way back to Lombard via Arlington Heights. By that time, we'd been in the car for almost 4 hours and hadn't seen any Peanuts decorations in 3 hours. Alas, as we were driving down Arlington Heights Road, I thought I spotted a Charlie Brown decoration (but thought it could have also been a snowman). We turned into that neighborhood and made it our mission not to leave that neighborhood until we saw something Peanuts-y! We drove around that neighborhood for about 30 minutes before finally going back to the place where I thought I saw a Charlie Brown. Sure enough, I could have gotten to bed a little earlier that night if we'd just gone straight to that one house! And would you believe that on that same street, we saw another Charlie Brown decoration!

So, now I'm constantly on the lookout for Peanuts Christmas decorations everywhere. Imagine how excited I was when I got to work on Monday and my coworker was wearing a Peanuts Christmas tie! Then, I was doubly excited when I spotted a big Snoopy from the Edens expressway near Touhy. Needless to say, Cindy and I will trek up there this Saturday after we see A Christmas Story, The Musical!

Long Time, No Post!

My friend Missy just started a great blog (http://www.theperfectbitekc.com/) and it inspired me to start up my blog again.

To ensure more regular posts, I'm going to start posting at least one thing I've written each week in my new Q&A a day 5-year journal (get yours here)! I saw it at Anthropologie in September and then proceeded to order it off Amazon because it was cheaper and I got to use my Cashback Bonus because of the new partnership between Amazon and Discover!