Thanksgiving, Christmas, and a New Baby

We had a great trip home for Thanksgiving. We got to Chicago late Saturday afternoon and spent some time catching up with family and trying to stay awake for as long as we could to facilitate changing 6 hours. Sunday we went to church and then got to spend the afternoon out at Ryan's grandpa's house. Sunday was Ryan's birthday too, so we had a cake that afternoon. We had dinner with friends and had another cake to celebrate then. It was a lot of fun catching up with friends Sunday night, so our plan to drive up to MI that night kept getting pushed back. We decided at 10:30pm or so Chicago time to still do the drive up to MI that night, just to make sure we messed up our circadian rhythms as much as possible. We got up to my parents' house in Spring Lake around 2:30am and finally got some much needed sleep. When we woke up there were about 4 fresh inches of snow on the ground. It was beautiful! And it made us very glad that we had driven up the night before.

White morning in Spring Lake

We had Thanksgiving dinner Monday night at my grandma's house and got to see my uncle and aunt and cousins too. It was so nice to see everyone. Far too short of a time to spend with everyone! We got to see our puppy at my parents' house too, so that was a lot of fun. We miss having a dog around.

Random picture from Thanksgiving with grandma, dad, uncle doug, aunt cindy, and rachel

Scout living it up at my parents' house

We stayed in Spring Lake until Wednesday and then drove back to Chicago. Ryan's brother and his family drove down from MI on Wednesday too, so the whole family was together. And we got to meet our 6 month old niece Sadie that we hadn't met yet. Thanksgiving started with church, followed by another Thanksgiving dinner with the whole family plus Ryan's grandpa and his aunt.
Thursday night we switched from Thanksgiving to Christmas and did Christmas gifts with Ryan's family. Christmas celebrations continued Friday with Ryan's parents' gift to all of us--a trip to the circus. Mom babysat Sadie, but the rest of us went downtown and saw the Barnum and Bailey circus at the United Center. It was fun and it was especially fun to watch our 6ish year old niece Natalie enjoying it.
Friday night Ryan's brother Mark and his family left and we started the big pack up getting ready to leave on Saturday. It was fun to go through a lot of our stuff that we hadn't seen in a year. We came to Chicago with very light suitcases and left with them at the weight limit.
Our other news is that we're pregnant! We had our first ultrasound yesterday and everything seems to be fine. The baby has limbs and a head and a beating heart, so we can't ask for much more than that at this point. I'll try to answer the most popular questions: I'm due June 22. Our baby unfortunately will not be a British citizen since they have the rule that the baby has to be born in the UK and one parent must have the right to live in the UK without restrictions. We'll have to apply for US citizenship for the baby once it's born. We are planning a trip to the states for a few weeks at least in August to spend some time with family with the new baby. I have maternity leave of 18 weeks with full pay and can take an additional 8 weeks half pay if I want, so that seems quite good.
That's all the news from here!

Baby DuBois