Love it. Love it all!

It’s official: I totally heart Chicago!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The city is beautiful (and not TOO cold!) and the people are amazing! I am having the best time!

My day has been craaaazy and I am so tired right now but I wanted to share with everyone my travels thus far. I miss you guys when I take a break from the blog (I think it’s been like 14 hours?! Haha). First of all, I almost missed my connection from Atlanta to Chicago because my flight was an hour later….so no TCBY for me. I snacked on a peanut butter cookie larabar and then once I was safe and sound in Chi-town, I grabbed a quick nonfat decaf peppermint mocha:

Once I landed, Kath and I found each other easily as we had earlier planned and we rode the “L” together (!!!) into the city. I felt so cool taking public transportation! It was easy and cost $2 versus $50 for a cab.

When we got into the hotel, we found a HUGE bag of goodies for each of us from Quaker!!! I got a new camcorder!!!! whoopie!! Kath and I are in the process of making a movie of our weekend as we speak!

Let’s just say they are MORE than generous!

At 6:30, we headed downstairs to the bar where a special VIP table was awaiting us:

We had drinks and tapas, which served as my dinner because they were pretty heavy and we had to skip out on dinner anyways because of our super cool blog reader wine bar event! I had a glass of organic pinot noir (which I sipped veryyyy slowly to make it last) and here are some of my eats:

Hummus! I had about three pita wedges with hummus and carrot sticks

Contrary to how it might appear, this pizza slice was actually quite small. It was an appetizer portion and was SOOOO amazing! Those are buffalo chicken bites next to it.

Chicken bites plucked from an asian lettuce wrap.

Another slice of the amazingggg pizza!

And here are some pictures!!!!

Kath and I headed out to walk to Bin 36 around 8:15, where we were meeting about 19 of our fabulous readers!! Love you guys! It was a gorgeous walk and wasn’t too cold. At the bar, I had a 2 1/2 oz pour of a california zinfandel and then just chugged three glasses of ice water. Traveling makes me feel incredibly dehydrated and the bloaty foods I ate for dinner didn’t really help!

We had a BLAST though and it was so wonderful to finally put some faces to names of girls that read the blog! Here are some picture highlights:

Love you girls! And thank you so much Anne for baking these amazing looking chocolate chip pumpkin bars!!!!!! I can’t wait to try one!!!!!!!

Tomorrow is jam packed. I have to be downstairs at 8:30 and we are going over to the Quaker Headquarters for a day of conferences, interviews and oatmeal competitions! I will be on my laptop all day and checking back with the blog periodically to update on what I learn, so definitely tune in!

This tired girl is headed to BED!!!!!!!!