Hello from Chicago!

Hello family!
Our apologies for being a little bit terrible at meeting our allotted update schedule! We love reading all of the posts and seeing pictures from everyone. 

I (Katie) think it was pre-holidays last time Andrew posted, so here is a super belated photo of us at Christmastime. My family usually goes to a fancy dinner at the country club (where we had our reception) each year the week or two before Christmas. It's a fun excuse to dress up!

We have been busy so far this year with work, I have been travelling on and off, most recently to Jackson, MS and Jefferson City, MO. The trips are nice to go meet with clients face-to-face and talk about our projects and accounts, but they are usually less than 24 hours long so it's a fair amount of travel for a dinner and a 3-4 hour meeting.

Missouri Capitol from my 8th floor hotel room. The flowering trees were all starting to bloom!

We are currently in the process of renovating our basement. We had a half-bathroom down there and have decided to expand it to include a shower, and then add a real laundry room in the corner of the basement. The washer/dryer were sort of floating in a closet in the middle of the room before, which just meant clothes were always all over the basement! Andrew has been great and done most of the demo so far himself (with very minimal help from me). We are now framing out the walls and the plumber should be coming in the next few days to install the shower and hook up all of the lines so that we can do laundry again. We have been without for about a week and a half and we are both running a little short on clothes...

The original layout of the basement. Half-bathroom through the door, laundry in the middle of the room. The door on the right is a walk out to our backyard.

Demolishing the bathroom. Every wall and ceiling had stucco on it. So much dust!

We had a plumber come and change all of the underground piping so that we could install a shower and move the vanity. 

Working on the walls that will surround the shower.

The weather here was very warm in March and the daffodils bloomed in late March, which is really early for Chicago! Sadly, the last few weeks have gone back to the 40s, with lots of cloudy days of sleet. Not quite the April showers we were hoping for.

The next thing we are looking forward to is that we are leaving in two weeks to go on vacation to visit some of our friends in Europe! My bridesmaid, Kate, lives in Madrid and we are going to meet up with her and her boyfriend, Roi, in Lisbon, Portugal for four days. I always wished I had gone to Lisbon when I studied abroad in Madrid, so I'm very excited to finally go 8 years later! Then we will fly to Zurich and stay with Andrew's Peace Corps site-mate (and also one of our groomsmen), Theo and his girlfriend Nadine for five days. It's a little bit of a random vacation itinerary, but we are really excited to see new places and old friends. Not to mention take a little break from work and the dusty basement!


Hugs to all! 
Katie & Andrew