Fun and Sun in Florida, March 23-26

Last weekend we visited Leo, Nikki, their daughter Amelia (the cutie pictured here) and their dog Lainey in St. Petersburg, Florida. Klas met Leo several years ago playing tennis in Chicago when Leo and Nikki lived there. Leo and Nikki inspired us to run the Chicago Marathon in 2003. We've really missed them since they moved to St. Pete's a couple of years ago so we've tried to visit them each year.

We walked around downtown and went to the DaliFest at the Salvador Dali Museum, the guys played lots of tennis, and we went waverunning where we spotted several dolphins around us. And we ate really healthy with Nikki's gourmet organic cooking (yum) and tried some interesting bars of chocolate that wove in subtle tastes of wasabi, ginger, olives, etc. It sounds weird but I highly recommend that you try this chocolate if you haven't already. Visit http://www.vosgeschocolate.com/.

Trip Down Memory Lane, March 3-7

We left Chicago to drive to Columbia, Missouri, where we spent a couple of days with Amy, Pete, Luke and Jake Waldron (first photo). We played college tennis with Amy.

Then we drove to Martin, Tennessee, where it all began for us at The University of Tennessee at Martin 12 years ago. We stayed with Gina & Marty McClure and their dog Rugby (last photo). Klas was a freshman on the tennis team when Gina played her senior year. Gina was the assistant tennis coach during my (Melissa's) time at UTM. We spent time with our tennis coach, Dennis Taylor (middle photo).

This little trip brought back many good memories from our college years. Click here if you'd like to see more photos from these visits, including more of Pete and Amy's kids and Gina and Marty's horses. Now we're in Houston, Texas for a few weeks, staying with Kylie and Jon.

Leaving Chicago

The last two weeks in Chicago were filled with parties, parties, parties - and anyone who knows me (Melissa) knows how much I love parties. We finished work, the movers came (finally) to pick up our stuff to ship to Australia, we stayed with friends, and Kylie and Jon flew in for my surprise birthday party. Then we closed on the sale of our condo, went to a work farewell party, and said 'goodbye for now' to close friends and Chicago.

This picture is taken outside Amy and Brian's place just before we left Chicago the morning of March 3.

For more photos from the birthday party, meetings with friends, and farewell party, click here.