The Final Stop and Updates Since

I was doing a really great job of updating my blog while my mom and sister were here and then we decided to have the laziest Christmas Eve/Day ever and that meant no typing up my psychobabble for you, lovely person (hi Dad! I know you're reading this because you've been harassing me to write it).

The Hot Cocoa Crawl ended on December 23rd. We were in a bit of a rush that morning but we found out that Mindy's Hot Chocolate (our last stop) would be closed on the 24th and we couldn't end the crawl without going there, so we made the trip to Wicker Park. Although Mindy's does brunch, we got breakfast at Kanela Breakfast Club because I'd been there before and loved it. They have the best monkey bread ever -- except on December 23rd, when we went there specifically for said monkey bread and they were out. So, instead of getting that, we ended up getting mac and cheese as an appetizer (brunch is the perfect time for mac and cheese, obviously).

I was pretty torn over what I wanted for my entree, but ended up going with the banana walnut pancakes as they seemed both sweet and hearty (I decided against the chocolate pancakes since I knew that there was hot chocolate in my future). The pancakes were monstrous -- not the largest plate of pancakes I'd ever encountered, but close. I couldn't eat half of my plate and eventually decided against my rule of never taking pancakes to go (they always end up soggy and awful). (These pancakes actually didn't end up awful when I took them to go, so it was a worthy exception).

Even though Kanela is pretty close to Mindy's, we decided to take an Uber between locations since we were in a rush. It was the worst Uber of our lives. (I actually think it was a Lyft, but now I can't remember). It was too hot, too loud, and the guy didn't even know where we were going (hint: down the street).

So much chocolate.

Mindy's was a mad house -- they were doing a Christmas brunch so we couldn't get a table. We got our final cup to go (we also got my dad a little Mindy's gift package with a mug, hot chocolate mix and marshmallows -- Happy Hanukkah, pops). Spoiler alert: if a restaurant has Hot Chocolate in its name, you're in for a treat. This was the obvious winner of the Hot Cocoa Crawl. I didn't plan on saving the best for last because I had no way of knowing, but it all worked out for the best.

After that, my mom and sister got the pleasure of the holiday classic, Tony N Tina's Wedding. They loved it. They were two of the most active audience members -- some people in the cast didn't even know they were related to me and just thought they were two cool ladies who were fun to interact with. My boss even gave them a free drink (on me -- I get free drinks at work but I never use them so he passed them along).

And then it was Christmas Eve where we did just about nothing. We ended up having a marathon of the three Santa Clause movies starring Tim Allen and then Easy A for some reason. Christmas Day was just as lazy, with more movies and such.

On Monday, it was time to say goodbye, unfortunately. I started to miss them from the moment I had to close the door and watch their Uber drive away. Since then, it's been a week of cleaning and such, although I did a last minute temp gig yesterday. Things shall be picking up today when I head to the theatre for a sold out performance of TnT.