Social Peeps!

The past couple of weeks have been a whirlwind as far as our social life goes. Really, the past year we haven't made any inroads as to making new friends and such. We would occasionally go out or have people over, but for the most part we just kept to ourselves. Which isn't a bad thing, really. I think part of us wanted it that way, since we spent so much time apart....we just used the opportunity to "soak each other up", if you will.

That's definitely all changed recently.

I think my depressive state was partly caused by not having really any good friends in this area, and I kept lamenting and longing for my family and my BFF's far far away. By the suggestion of an online buddy, I checked out Meetup.com to see if I could find any groups to join. (Have I mentioned this before?? Not sure....but I'll keep going anyway). Anyway, I've meet some really cool peeps from that group, and actually we had a playdate last week for us and Liam with some really great people - Gina, Jason & their daughter Audrey (who Liam thinks is super cute :) ). Gina and I really clicked, so it was really cool to spend some more time with her.

OK Ok - let me just break down our social calender for the past couple of weeks:
Tuesday 2/19: Girls night at cute little bar from meetup.com
Friday 2/22: Amber and Will came over for dinner, and played scrabble (my new favorite pastime, in person and on Facebook). Amber kicked all our butts to high heaven.
Saturday 2/23: Baby proofing class through meetup.com - We met a cool couple from Muskegon (thanks to Liam's U of M bunting!). Pat also met up with his old college roomate Ben, who lives just about a mile away from us!! They got in touch through Facebook. Who knew how resourceful that silly website would be!
Sunday 2/24: Jason, Gina & Audrey come over for a play date that lasted a few hours! It was very cool!
Thursday 2/28: Gina and I head out for dinner at Fronterra Grill and a girls night downtown at a little boutique bar called NV Penthouse.
Friday 2/29: Meetup.com day at the Museum of Science & Industry (we actually didn't meet anyone there, because we were late, but it was fun trapsing around the museum with Pat and Liam anyway)
Saturday 3/1: Not a particularly social day with other peeps, but we did take ourselves to have Lunch at Buffalo Wild Wings. Liam's first trip there! I tell ya, the smoking ban in Illinois has made it possible to take our little man everywhere!
Sunday 3/2: It was STINKIN' beautiful outside, so we took the opportunity to take Liam for a walk and met up with Ben and his wife (who's name is Keren....but pronounced Karin...how cool is that??!) for lunch/dinner at The Little Mexican Cafe.

*whew* We've been busy! And, let me say, it has made a world of difference in my attitude. Am I still tired - yes. Still a bit depressed - yes. But it almost feels like Chicago is my home now. I'm building a network of friends, getting into a groove with work, and generally enjoying myself more.