My Head's Spinning...

Sorry for the radio silence. My head's spinning. Life is overwhelming right now, but in the best of ways. So here's a little catching up...

We had TWO Thanksgivings this year. Rick and I hosted his family as they passed through Chicago on their way to other festivities, and let me just say it was fun, chaotic and made me really glad I decided to invest in a double over in our new house :)


Cam had the best time playing with his Mathews cousins.

And he's definitely obsessed with Kate. He just follows her around saying, "Hi" all day long.

Rick smoked our turkey! It was delicious :)

We then celebrated actual Thanksgiving at my parent's place here in Chicago. Our Voticky family tradition is called Pajama Thanksgiving. Every year, my mom buys us all new pajamas and we wear them for the entire day and eat our dinner in them. It's nothing but fun! Sadly, I took zero pictures. I was having too much fun with the whole gang.


We took some family pictures back in October, and now that our holiday card has been sent, I can share a few of my favorites!

We also celebrated Hanukkah. I have to admit, I dropped the ball this year. It was ridiculously early (Thanksgiving + Hanukkah do not mix!). I was barely catching my breath from Halloween, Cam's birthday and then hosting my first Thanksgiving that we really slacked on our Hanukkah celebrations. Rick and I apologized to each other profusely for our pathetic gifts we bought each other. Cam lit the candles each night and sang "Dreidel, Dreidel" on repeat for days. He also asked for presents nonstop for a good two weeks after Hanukkah was over. Nevertheless, I think I got one cute picture of Cam playing with a dreidel.

Oh, and we closed on our new house. Talk about stress. I really can't complain. It's the best kind of stress. We are so fortunate to get to put our stamp on this house and make it what we want, but it is really, really stressful. Especially pregnant. And taking care of a toddler. And trying to figure out how the heck we are gonna sell our condo. It's a lot. But I spent nearly the entire day at the house yesterday with our contractor and I'm really excited about what he's going to do. I took a ton of before pictures and I plan to go out there tomorrow to check on the demo progress. I'll give you a little sneak peek of the awesome wood panelling in the basement. Are you ready to travel back to 1973??

And the floor. Oh my. So that's what we're working with.


We also took Campbell for a quick visit to Florida to visit my grandparents. We typically go visit them in April for Passover each year, but since I'll be in the midst of newborn craziness, we decided to go now and spend a weekend at the beach. It was a wonderful visit and Cam had so much fun bonding with his Gigi and Papa. We spent some time at the beach, ate a lot and tried to relax as best we could. It was great.

On the pregnancy front, I'm feeling great. Exhausted, but good. I don't sleep at all, mainly due to insomnia, not discomfort. I have too much on my mind and it keeps me up from about 1-5 am. Then Cam is up at 7:00, so yea, I'm tired. I passed my Glucose Tolerance Test which was a relief because I was certain the Halloween Candy Indulgence of 2013 may have made me a diabetic. The belly is growing and at my last appt I had gained a total of 11 lbs. (at 24 weeks). So I think I'm on track for about the same weight gain as my last pregnancy, but for some reason I feel much bigger and much less attractive this time around. She's moving a ton and Rick and I actually saw her movements on the outside while we were on the airplane home from Florida last weekend. We are pretty sure we have agreed on a name, but we aren't monogramming anything yet. :)

So that's that. Tonight I'm hosting book club, then my sister Ashley returns from two months overseas in Asia on Friday! We have a busy weekend planned with soaking in time with Ash and hauling boxes and bins to the new house. I'm pretty sure life will continue to be this chaotic for the next 18 years!