Hodge Podge

First, this is what we woke up to this morning....

LOVE IT!!! So beautiful and it is still snowing!

Second, we saved some of our gift cards from showers to make sure we had everything we needed for Marin closer to time. Well, it's closer to time. And we waited until Cyber Monday to catch a great deal on our rocking chair!! With the deal and our cards, we got our glider for $50! It came today and Burke did an excellent job putting it together. It is so comfortable!

It feels like her room is complete now.

Practicing...

(Bill and DeeDee, I am wearing the UPS sweatshirt in honor of you.)

My friend, Brooke, from Austin sent Marin some Longhorns outfits. So adorable!

Basketball and Porch Pooch

Here is the 37 week Porch Pooch. I took my coat off for the picture but it was COLD! We woke up to snow again today and it is so beautiful! I love it even if waiting for the train is a bit chilly now. The doctor's appointment went well today. I am not dialated any but she could feel Marin's head. Yikes. They changed up the adjective today and instead of saying "big baby" she went with "solid baby". Burke asked her to feel my stomach and tell us what body parts we were seeing/feeling. She felt Marin's behind and that's when she said, "Yeah, you've got a solid baby here." We laugh.


You can't see the snow but here is a beginning of winter-ish picture of our street. I'm sure we will see a much better view of winter on our block soon.

Burke and I went to the Northwestern/GA Tech game Tuesday night. We thought we should try and squeeze in a game before the little one arrives. It was a lot of fun and I forgot that I make weird noises and jump a lot during basketball games. But don't worry, Burke was quick to make fun of me. And....Northwestern WON!

(Heather, I can post a lot because I'm not teaching like you are. I have a family that is slightly obsessed with this thing. And I don't write deep thoughts like you....I just post pictures with captions. I'm lazy.)

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.