Finally Finished

I never got to put together a nursery before the boys were born. So since we've been here in Chicago, I've slowly been putting together and decorating Andrew's room. A little here and a little there. I really enjoy doing stuff like this. Not the best at it, but I do enjoy it. Now it's finished and I'm glad to have it finally done! Just thought I'd share a few pictures.

I fell in love with this cute elephant theme. After I put it up in his room, I love it even more! Since we're just renting this place, we couldn't do much with paint. So I decided to sew my own curtain since his room gets the evening sun. (Whenever it's not hiding behind the clouds, which is about...oh...90% of the time these days.) The curtains were way easy and fun to make. I think they turned out great and are far better than anything I could have bought.

These two teddy bears have a special place in our hearts. They were given to our boys in the hospital by their cousins, when we knew that we'd be saying good bye to Ethan.  After that, Andrew has slept with the bears watching over him  each night in his crib.

After Ethan passed, we were given some beautiful pictures of Christ with children. I love having this one in Andrew's room along with the"Child of God" sign. We look at it often with it being above his changing pad and sing "I am a child of God." It's his favorite...and mine too!

I love the way this turned out. We received this saying just after Ethan passed. I wasn't quite sure how to display it. After lots of brainstorming, I decided to put it with the first picture or ultrasound we had of our boys together and the last picture of them together. After we took Ethan off the ventilator, he was able to breath on his own for a good 3-4 hours. It wasn't until just after we walked him down the hall to Andrew's bedside and laid him next to his brother in the crib, that he was ready to say goodbye and take his last breath.  I will certainly treasure this picture which captured the last moments they had together on this earth. I'm also very thankful for the darling nurses who just took our camera and snapped away.

Chicago Express

 We live about 5 minutes from the big Sears Center Arena. We drive by all the time and sometimes have to get re-routed, because of the event traffic.  Because we live right in the same city as the Sears Center, we get special deals and discounts. This facility holds a number of different events and this time of year it's HOCKEY season in Chicagoland.  So we decided to take advantage and get some good deals on some hockey tickets.

I'm surprised at how big of a sport this is out here. It was a lot of fun and we had awesome seats on the 4th row to cheer on the Chicago Express. Some people might call us crazy that we'd take a little 7 month old baby to the game, but we had a great night out as a whole family. Andrew did amazingly wonderful, considering it was in the evening and during his bed time. He enjoyed watching the players and didn't even cry or get scared when they scored a goal and all the big sirens went off. We sure had a lot of fun!

Andrew's First Laugh

So we just have to share this...

As we were waiting in the lobby for our car to be worked on this weekend, we got some cute little laughs out of our big boy.  Stephen quickly pulled his phone out and was able to catch just a little bit before he got tired. We've decided we have one ticklish boy! Enjoy.

Our Halloween

It was so fun to celebrate Halloween this year....even though I know that Andrew had absolutely no idea what was happening nor will he remember a single thing that we did. But none the less, we celebrated lots and I definitely got into the Halloween spirit. In the past,  I'd blame the "little kid" in me on being around my school kids each and every day and their excitement would rub off on me.  But this year, I didn't have that excuse. I guess I'm just a kid at heart. Thank goodness Stephen is such a good sport and puts up with me and my big ideas.

We  had lots of fun coming up with our costumes and had a few different Halloween parties that we dressed up for. 

Here is our puppy Toto

 I just have to laugh at this picture. His face says it all...."Why in the world are you dressing me up in this??? Oh PLEASE mom, no more pictures!!!"

 Along with Dorthy and the Tin Man.

Although we didn't go trick-or-treating on Halloween night, we had our traditional yummy white chicken chili and breadsticks and carved pumpkins.
Then we decided to kicked back, relax and watch a few scary movies as we waited for trick-or-treaters to come knocking. In the meantime, I got scared out of my wits and we ate way too much candy. After the first movie, I was a bit...well...I'll admit...scared to go to bed. So, I told Stephen we needed to watch something else to get my mind off of it. So out of the kindness of his heart, Stephen put on and watched Twilight with me. Not that I'm a huge Twilight fan. In fact, I think we laughed more at the cheesy-ness than anything else. But it certainly got my mind off the first movie. Before we new it, it was way too late and we hadn't gotten a single trick-or-treater.
The next day we definitely had a Halloween hang-over.  Guess it was bound to happen. We had a wonderful weekend full of the all the Halloween festivities.