Chicago 2026

Earlier this month, we took a quick weekend trip to Chicago, flying there on Friday night and flying home on Sunday night!

While we are happy for any reason to visit Chicago, as we lived there many moons ago, the purpose of the trip was to visit Indiana Dunes National Park. While you might be wondering why we hadn't ever been there if we lived so close by, but it was officially designated as a National Park until 2019!

Between our trip to Texas last month, this trip to Chicago, and the road trip we did last weekend (I'll be writing about that tomorrow!), you may have picked up on a theme: our incredible National Parks. While we've always loved visiting the National Parks - Crater Lake NP is my very favorite place I've ever been on the face of the earth (and given how many amazing places I've been privileged to visit, that is really saying something!) and our Grand Canyon NP river adventure is one of the best trips we've ever taken - we've decided to make the National Parks a focus of our travel over the next two years.

Indiana Dunes NP was our 42nd National Park so far! Out of how many, you ask? Until recently, the answer to that question was 63, but now there are officially 64 National Parks! We have currently mapped out trips to all of the remaining parks on our list and the newest, Chiricahua NP, fits in perfectly with a trip we already have planned for next fall! The immortal words of my brother continue to ring true: "You guys really do love a checklist!"

Indiana Dunes NP (or I as was hilariously calling it, Indiana Jones NP - ask C if that joke ever got old LOL) was beautiful and its biodiversity is really the star of the park, along with the spectacular shoreline! We had extraordinarily wonderful weather for hiking and exploring and highly recommend this special place that's a quick and easy drive from Chicago!

this pic was not the result of me being
a mean wife - it was his idea bc he is hilarious!

We love Chicago and enjoyed stopping at a few of our favorite places before heading to the airport on Sunday evening, even though we would have loved to spend even more time there!

our favorite pizza:
stuffed spinach from Giordano's

Oberweis is a must for dessert

we had to evacuate the hotel in the
middle of the night due to a fire alarm

still dreaming about these pumpkin pancakes

visited our former apartment...

...left a little piece of Avalanche there

visited our other former apartment...

...left a little piece of Avalanche there, too

spent some time at a lovely park
not far from where we once lived

our last stop before our flight home
was a second dinner at Giordano's

Happy Tails to you!

My YaYa

Two weeks ago, we lost one of the people I loved most on this entire planet. My YaYa. He was almost 97-years old; someone I looked up to and always wanted to make proud. Someone who was happy to listen to us talk about our travel and heartily encourage us when we shared places we'd still like to see with an enthusiastic, "Go! Do it! Go! Go!"

If you've read other posts I've written about him, you already know how much he meant to me. How much he meant to both C and me. We always enjoyed visiting him when he lived in California whenever we traveled there, and when he relocated to the east coast when he was in his 80s, we were within driving distance, which was wonderful. As adults, we've loved every chance we've had to hang out with him, share holidays with him, talk with him, and be the happy recipients of his heartfelt hugs. He is the reason I'm a Dodgers fan and the reason I love Huntington Beach.

He welcomed C from the first time they met and over the past 35ish years, they grew to be amazing buddies, teasing each other and laughing uproariously. They talked about anything and everything...business, sports, technology, family, and travel. I loved watching them together all these years and I am so grateful for the bond that they shared.

I've been thinking and thinking and thinking for two weeks of what to write; how to capture what this man meant to me. I still haven't found the right words.

But I will share two memories that maybe provide the tiniest glimpse into the impact he had on me.

The first memory is from when I met him. I was an awkward Caucasian ten-year old who unexpectedly found herself part of a Chinese family. I was nervous and a little scared and quite unsure about how I was going to fit into this new family and its unfamiliar culture and customs. We flew from our small city in northern Ontario to glamorous and exciting southern California during summer break and from the moment I met him, YaYa accepted me as one of his own. I will never be able to articulate how it felt to be welcomed into this new family. Decades later, my heart still swells when I think about that. From that first trip to California, I had a YaYa. And he loved me.

The second memory is much more recent. In December 2023, we went to visit him in NJ and even though the staff at his assisted living residence knew we were coming and had planned to have him up and ready so we could take time to lunch, they hadn't been successful. When we arrived, he was still sleeping in bed, so I went over to him and when he opened his eyes and saw me, he loudly exclaimed, "My granddaughter! My granddaughter!" and threw open his arms to me. If you didn't spend the formative younger years of your life in any kind of family turmoil, this might not seem like much to you. But at 94-years old, to have him be so excited to see me, to know who I was even as his memory began to fade, and to hug me with such strength and energy was almost more than my heart could handle.

As I've shared before, he was technically my great uncle, not my grandfather, but he'd been like a father to my dad, so therefore, he was my grandfather. My dad adopted me, and I will be forever grateful for that. But my YaYa didn't adopt me; he could have decided to be polite and cordial and nothing more. I wasn't biologically part of the family. He could have kept me at arm's length and viewed me as an outsider. Instead, he chose to love me. Wholeheartedly and without reservation.

I miss him so much and I will miss him for the rest of my days. I'm heartbroken that he is no longer with us.

But I am so damn proud to be his granddaughter.

Happy Tails to you...

Life Lately September 2026

This is going to be a short post because I've pretty much already posted about the interesting things that happened in September: our Disney Cruise, our trip to El Paso, and our trip to WDW. It's nice that the weather is finally getting cooler because we're able to stay out longer on our walks with Avalanche and the NHL season started, so that also makes these two Canadians pretty happy!

Husky shedding season is upon us!
I ran my hand down his leg and this
was the result...his fur is everywhere!

Honestly, the sheer volume of fur
that he deposits wherever he goes is pretty insane!

We bought two new rugs and this one for our
deck door has a cool Star Wars design on it!

The one for the front door
has Mickey silhouettes on it!

we saw this incredible beauty on one of our walks
with Avalanche (unfortunately, immediately
following this picture, it flew into the air
with a dead squirrel in its talons, which was
both unexpected and kind of gross)

I chopped off six inches of my hair!

Despite the length of this post, it actually was a busy month, mostly due to travel, but that is just about my favorite kind of busy, so no complaints here!

Happy Tails to you!

WDW September 2026

We took a quick weekend trip to WDW and had the best time! We not only made it over to Disney Springs, we also went to all four parks, and even though we admittedly did not spend much time in any one place, it's pretty rare for us to get to so many places on such a short trip! We flew down on Southwest, ate at two of our favorite places (Via Napoli and Beaches and Cream), enjoyed our stay at Dolphin (I still stand by my review from last May - it's a really beautiful hotel with a hard-to-beat location, though I wish there were more Disney details!), and lucked out with lovely weather! We also experienced two new attractions: Soarin' Across America (I already wasn't a fan of Soarin' Around the World and this new version is even worse than that...the original will never be beat!) and Zootopia: Better Zoogether! (a pretty cute show!).

Compared to some trips where I've taken hundreds of photos, I have a mere 33 this time, mainly due to trying to cram as much fun as possible into a such period of time!

Happy Tails to you!