25 Days Until....

Until MARIN arrives!!! Ok, and Christmas. Burke and I have decorated the home for the holidays!


Here is our tree. We went back and forth with the real or fake tree dilemma. But Garden Ridge had a HUGE sale on artificial trees and so that pretty much solved the problem. I'm actually a little glad we went this route...allergies and bugs (heard some scary spider stories) worried me a bit with a newborn baby on the way. Next year who knows....

But I love it lit up at night! Now we just have to wrap presents/packages and put them under the tree!


And the stockings are hung by the chimney...I mean giant tv...with care....


Some of my favorite sentimental Christmas decorations.....
I love old family photos! These are Christmas picture of me and my sister and then Burke and his siblings. Burke and I are both the babies in the pictures.


My nativity scene from Uganda. I have one friend that collects these from all the countries she visits. I loved that idea but we started collected ornaments from our trips instead.


The basket of Christmas books (stole the idea from my friend Debbie). I love this basket because there are new books and books from my childhood in the basket. We've already started reading them to Marin. The Best Christmas Pageant Ever is one of my favorite Christmas chapter books. I would love for it to be a tradition to read it every Christmas. The children's theatre here is putting on the play and we are going to try and go! So adorable!

Love those Christmas colors!

And now for some of the special ornaments of the year:

Last year we were in Nova Scotia....

This year...(tilt your head to the right)....our FIRST CHRISTMAS in CHICAGO!!

We have several of these picture ornaments of all that we've done in 2010. I have a little Christmas scrapbook and I plan on putting a page labeled 2010 and putting all the pictures from the ornaments in it. Each year, I will add a new page for each year (2011, 2012...) and add the pictures we used for the ornaments in the scrapbook. Then each year we can look through the book and see all the adventures and how our family has changed over the years.

Here is the ornament from MayeMaye to remind us each year that I was big and pregnant with Marin at Christmas time! Adorable! (Sorry so dark...the flash on my camera isn't working. Argh.

Mimi gave us this ornament last year from Washington DC. It's beautiful!

And of course....all the baby's first Christmas ornaments. Hopefully, we will remember to replace random kid's picture with Marin's picture.

And nothing says the holidays like a good cold! Burke is fighting with one now and I am doing my best to prevent one from coming. Colds are horrible and they take forever to go away. This stuff may be a permanent part of our Christmas decorations for a while!

Thanksgiving 2010

When Burke got his schedule last month, he was going to be away for Thanksgiving day. But last minute, he found a day trip and was able to have a Thanksgiving dinner at HOME!!
Cutting the turkey...

Our mini feast...

We had our friends Nori and Aubrey join us. Nori's husband is a pilot as well and had to work. Aubrey loved Burke and playing with the diapers....

So cute!

Here you can see her cute turkey dress!

But we did enjoy dinner and now we are looking forward to Christmas! Today we are decorating the home! Hopefully, Marin will feel the Christmas spirit and decide to make an appearance early. I have a funny feeling though that she will stay in as long as she can because she seems to be sassy like that....

A Christmas Date!

Burke treated me to a little pre-Christmas date last night. Now, this is amazing because it is important to Burke not to skip Thanksgiving. So it was extraordinarily sweet of him to treat me to this date!!

We had lunch/dinner at the Walnut Room next to the beautiful tree.

My handsome date...(he looked real good.....)

In front of the tree after we could not eat any more food....we were so FULL!!!

Marin's "first" picture in front of the tree. We decided to make this a little Christmas tradition.

Then we went upstairs and wrote a letter to Santa for Marin. (Sorry, for some reason the picture won't turn the correct way.)

Delivering our Santa letter!! For every letter written and mailed, one dollar is donated to the Children's hospital.

A family picture at the top of the tree. I realize that I am huge. I thought I could manage to fit into a non-maternity sweater. Hahahahha. Oopsie.

Then we looked at all the windows outside at Macy's. Each window told a part of the story, Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus....

Then to finish the date off....he took me to see A Christmas Carol at the Goodman Theatre. It was soooo good! The stages were beautiful! We both loved it!

Thank you, Burke, for a wonderful evening! I love you.

Sweet Visitors!

My so very sweet friend Heather came to visit us this past weekend. And...she brought this little one....isn't she precious!! Audrey was such a good house guest!

All bundled up for the Magnificent Mile!

A little brunch at Cafe 28 (one of our favorites). Its strange to think that in 5 short weeks, this picture will resemble our little family.

Just love her!

Love her too!!

There is nothing like clean baby smell!!!

Burke was so sweet to play with Audrey while Heather and I had a little girl time. He's gonna be such a great dad.

We had an opportunity to try out a lot of our baby stuff. Good thing because we had to work out a few kinks along the way. Like....how to actually hook the carseat in the car. And how to break down the stroller so it will fit in the trunk of the car....

And we learned that we really don't have good doorways for this little jumper thing. Although Audrey loved it...until she smashed her head into the door frame. Sorry about that...

She's not the first guest to use the crib but she looked cute all snuggled up in there.

Audrey is probably the third or so guest to use the high chair but we learn something new everytime it's used. Hopefully all this practice will help us not look like complete idiots when our little one arrives.

I will admit that right now, I am slow and huge and not the greatest hostess in the world....but it was so very wonderful to see Heather and Audrey!! Thanks for coming to visit!

Northwestern Game...Go Wildcats!

Last Saturday Burke and I went to the Northwestern/Illinois game at WRIGLEY FIELD! It was a lot of fun....even though they lost.


Wrigley Field gone purple...


No more baseball field...


It didn't get cold until 4:30 when the SUN WENT DOWN.

Porch Pooch- 35 Weeks

Here she is at 35 weeks. Sooooo close!!! The doctor appointment yesterday went well. Nothing new to report but she is still looking good and healthy. December 24 is just around the corner...


And we had to stop by and see the Christmas tree at Macy's in the Walnut Room. It's as huge as I am and beautiful!

And Burke is going to take me on a little pre-Christmas date next week!! We will have lunch at the Walnut Room and then go see A Christmas Carol downtown! We can't wait! He's good to me.

Burke made me put this picture even though I hate it.

Hospital Tour

So we decided that we better figure out where our hospital is so that if this kiddo decides to make an appearance early, we would have an idea where we were going!?!? Good idea, huh? (But we thought we were the slacker parents at 33 weeks but there was a lady there that was 39 weeks touring the hospital....she made us feel good about ourselves. So thanks, cute pregnant lady.)

Prentice Women's Hospital is so nice. It's new and very organized and well, the security is probably equivalent to the Pentagon. Thankfully, we had already decided to spend the first two weeks together as a new little family. If not, no one would be able to see us anyways because they do not have security clearance. :o)

We got to see each floor and room that we would go in through the whole process. There are three. The first room is to make sure I'm really in labor. Once they decide that "it's the big day", they send me to another room that is HUGE! It is pretty nice. I won't lie. But that is the room she will make her grand appearance in. And she will do it easily without any complications. Right, Marin? Then we get to go to another room where we will stay for a couple of days. It was a lot of rooms. The two births I have seen, everything happened in one room. The rooms were nice though.

But we've done the registration and have all the paperwork to turn in. So very strange that it is getting so close. Exciting, exciting!

33 Week Appt

We had a doctor's appointment this week and got to see our little girl once more. And, yes, she is still a she. We got a real good view of her 33 week girl parts, so nothing in that area has changed. They still say she is a big one. Apparently at this stage, she should weigh around 4 pounds and their fancy shmancy machines are saying she weighs about 5 lbs 8oz. We have heard every visit that she is big, so this wasn't anything new. She is big. But her size doesn't change the due date though. The doctor says first time babies have their own timing...big or small...so we just wait and see. We do have our remaining appointments already scheduled up until the first of December. Crazy, crazy to think we are this close to holding this sweet one.

Here are some of the ultrasound pictures. She was moving (big shocker) around too much to get any good pictures of her.
This one you can see an eye and a nose but her Burke mouth is covered.

I am getting so excited to meet her. And the Christmas decorations around Chicago are only getting me more excited!!! Counting down.....