it's beginning to look a lot like christmas!

Luckily we had all mostly recovered from the flu on the Friday after Thanksgiving and so we were able to decorate for Christmas (after cloroxing the house!). We always get our Christmas tree from a lot they set up at Ted Drewes (famous custard place) and so off we went.

Ethan and I are on the tree hunt while papa Pete stopped to get some custard.

Our first family Christmas tree with Ethan!

Grandma Sheila helped to load Ethan back up in the car while Pete and I loaded the tree and wreaths.
While decorating our house I came across Norman's stocking and santa suit we had bought him last year. It is our first Christmas without our bulldog too, which is definitely a bummer. We miss him so very much. In memory of our bulldog here are a few pics of Christmases past:

Our first Christmas with Norman. We had literally picked him up from the breeder like the day before this picture was taken.

We took this Christmas picture on a very cold day in Chicago. Norman was totally shivering the whole time!

Our first year in St. Louis. Norman was always a trooper letting us put him in hats, sweaters, coats and antlers.

And this one is from last year, actually on New Year's Eve. I was tired and pregnant and Norman was always there to cuddle with.
Norman will sure be missed but we are also so very excited to celebrate Christmas this year with our precious Ethan! It may seem a little early to be saying this but Merry Christmas!

how we spent our thanksgiving

It all started on Thanksgiving Eve morning, when I started to get the tummy rumbles. Thinking it was a bout of food poisoning, I took it easy, drank some sprite and ate some toast. I felt worse as the day went on and continued to have "stomach emptying episodes" to put it nicely. We were supposed to host Thanksgiving the next day with Pete's family and so I sent my mom out to the store to buy the last minute food and put her on pie baking duty. Well, things then just went from bad to worse. What I thought was food poisoning turned out to be the stomach flu as it unfortunately had a domino effect throughout the rest of the house-Pete got sick later that night, and then my mom and finally my step dad Dean on Thanksgiving Day.

We cancelled as hosts of Thanksgiving and spent the day in our PJs recovering! Luckily the only one to not get sick was our little man Ethan! I still had to cook the 23 pound defrosted turkey that was sitting in our fridge and so we have been eating turkey now for days!

I did get a chance to put Ethan in his Thanksgiving outfit to snap a few pics. He pooped out early in the morning soon after I had him dressed and so I had to wash it again quickly to get some photographs!


Ethan also decided to take a short morning nap, waking up at 8:30 am and would not go back to sleep after that! I tried putting him down at 10:30, then 12:00, then 1:00, and nothing would work! He cried and was restless - clearly overtired and subsequently wired. So, we did what I never thought I would have to do - we took him for a car ride at 2:00pm. And, within 5 minutes he was fast asleep.

All in all, a Thanksgiving to remember!

mr. & mrs. schmaltz

It's already been a little over a week since Auntie became Mrs. Schmaltz and Russell became an official "Uncle" to our little man. The wedding weekend was a complete blur filled with lots of time with family and friends, good food and best of all the happy occasion of the big wedding! Needless to say it was a packed weekend and we could not have made it through without a lot of help from everyone pitching in to help clean our house, take care of Ethan, cook food, and pick up last minute wedding things. There are way too many pictures from the weekend to post here and so here are just a few snapshots.

The bride to be preparing for her big day.


The bride and her ladies. It was such a beautiful day!


A quick stop on Russell's motorcycle.
Inside the limo.
We were so proud of our little ring bearer, making his wedding debut at 5 1/2 months old!



Here are Ethan and Asher (Russell's cousin's son) making their way down the aisle. I was so proud of Ethan! They both did a great job!
All in all it was a wonderful, wonderful day!

just swinging away

Another first this week - Ethan's first ride in the swing! He was a little tentative about what the heck was happening but seemed to enjoy the few "very gentle" pushes that I gave him for a few minutes. Then the big bottom lip (as Pete and I call it) came out and so we were done with the swing at that point. But, we're excited to try it again soon especially if this nice 75 degree November weather keeps up!

Here we are on our way to the park. Ethan doesn't know what's coming yet!
Swinging away!

We didn't get quite as high as the kid next to us but Ethan was thinking about it...
We sure had fun!

the 5 month mark

Our boy Ethan turned 5 months old on Saturday! We have been "practicing" his roll-overs every day and on Friday the day before his 5 month birthday he finally rolled over all by himself! He went from back to tummy and got a little stuck on his arm but he was over! I wish I could have gotten a few more pics but I was too excited!

What's funny is that now today - only 3 days later - he kept rolling over and then I would roll him back and he'd roll over again. This is how we spent our afternoon!

Anyway, here are some pics of the little man at our 5 month photo shoot:

our little monkey

For his first Halloween Ethan dressed up like a monkey! The Little Gym had a little Halloween event for kids age 4 months and up and so we took Ethan to join in the fun! Once we got there it was pretty crazy - mostly older kids running all over the place. We still had a fun time walking Ethan around in his little monkey suit. He was one cute fella.

Here is Ethan's final prep getting the monkey suit on.

And here he - our precious little monkey!

Checking out the parallel bars and pink bunnies.
Ethan's monkey suit was so warm and toasty that he was getting a little overheated so we let him air out a bit.
Auntie Lindsay and Soon-to-be Uncle Russell came with us too!

Once we came home we were so enamored with our little monkey that we put him back in his costume to snap a few more pics.
You can see Ethan was thrilled.

He kept trying to take a peek at the football game on TV.

All in all we had a great Halloween!