Chicago!! The Friday!

Where to start with such a fantastic weekend I had in Chicago with the most amazing group of girlies! This weekend had been planned for so long that we had been counting the days for like 6 months lol! Jana was our hostess for the weekend and organised everything - negotiated great room rates at the Hyatt Regency and made sure we were all ok. She was AWESOME!!

Soooo, I flew in to Chicago and got there around 11am on the Friday morning and went to look for Joan who had arrived 20 mins before me! Of course we spotted each other straight away and it was just so amazing to see her in real life! We hugged and kissed and chatted away whilst waiting for Susan who was next to arrive! Same with Susan - all 3 of us hugged and kissed! Amy was the next to arrive but she was getting into a different terminal so we got into a taxi to go pick her up! She was waiting for us and it was amazing to all be together. The taxi driver must have thought we were total loonies because we chatted the whole journey lol! Got to the hotel and checked in and went to find the others who had arrived Thursday night and earlier on Friday morning. Of course we spotted them - they were all huddled in a circle yakking and laughing! Never heard us as we kept shouting for them lol so we approached them and stood right behind and said "Helloooooooo"!!! OMG - the screams and laughing and talking and hugging and kissing!! They were Jana, Jessica, Liv, Deb, Laurie, Tori, Jeanne, Lisa (Latz) and Shell! It was like we had all known each other all our lives! What an amazing reunion!

All 14 of us decide to go walking to get something to eat. You can imagine 14 women cackling and laughing and loaded with fantastic cameras taking photos of everything and walking at snail pace! And not to mention making sure we didn't lose anyone! I wish we'd had a video camera to capture the atmosphere but as we didn't here are some photos! Remember to click on each photo to enlarge it!

Soo, walking, yakking, laughing, taking photos, stopping and taking more photos we ended up in a Mall! Some went shopping, others just window shopped! Then headed back to the hotel to get showered and changed ready to go out for dinner to a beautiful restaurant called Fultons on the River. But before then we all met up for a drink in one of the bars of the hotel, courtesy of the lovely Shell who got the round! Oh yeah, Lisa and her DH Todd arrived in the evening too!

Dinner was delicious and such a beautiful place - thank you so much Jana for organising it! We then headed back to the hotel and all got together to talk and some lovely speeches with a lot of tears (nice tears). Jessica gave us each a beautiful goodie bag, Liv also had some lovely pressies and I gave out some London and Windsor key rings, and Laurie gave us each a Green Chillie Stew pack!

OK, that's it for the first installment! Next post will be Chicago Saturday's events! Ohhh yeah, some of the photos are mine but I have borrowed photos from the others for this blog - hope its ok, if not shout!