Eli's a handsome feller'

Jill, Mike's mom, came over to visit and brought a baby picture of Mike's dad (you can click the photo to make it bigger and you can see the photo in the background). There is some resemblance there to his Grandpa Dave!

Meet your family!

Mike's side of the family (from Eli's perspective): Aunt Angi, Cousin Lex and Grandma Jill





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My side of the family: Grandma Pam, Grandpa Tom


Aunt Sissy (Yes, although I'm nearing 30 years old, I still call my sister "sissy" so I couldn't imagine Eli calling her anything else. But Eli's going to be confused because Mike call's her Aunt Wendy :)

Original date: September 7

Grandpa Dave

Elijah David is named after his Grandpa Dave. We lost him back in September 08, so we knew it was special when Eli was to be born in September as well. Mike's middle name is David too, so all there generations are tied together in a very special way.

You can't see it in any of these pictures yet because Eli always has a hat on, but he totally has Dave's hairline! Mike says all the time how much Eli's profile and hair looks like his Grandpa Dave's.

Original date: September 7

Shower Power!

On August 8th, my mom and sister threw a family shower for Peanut and me. The invitations had an elephant and were really cute. They found some fabulous elephant decorations! There was an elephant diaper cake (including a bib that said "Little Peanut!"), elephant baby book (which I never even thought to register for one), they baked elephant sugar cookies, and even had an elephant gift bag. They also had a clothesline of baby clothes – Peanut even has some new threads to wear next summer!

We played a few games and got to visit with some family we hadn't seen in a while. They also made the diaper cake themselves! It took a long time to dis-assemble so I can't even imagine how long it took them to make it.


We got lots of great stuff, including some hand-made blankets. One of them was from my cousin Maria. It's a football blanket and orange and blue for the Bears (Mike's favorite team). She also made a special pillow for us to put in Peanut's room. It says "Lots of love from above" and "Love Grandpa Dave" on the back. I had asked her to make something special from Grandpa Dave.


This is Mike's sister Angi and his mom Jill with the pillow.


My mom and sister did such a great job making this day special for me. They even had a craft of decorating onesies which was really fun!

Lunch at Ricks

Mike's brother Jason, wife Angie and son Spencer came to visit a few weeks ago. We had not been together for quite a few months so it was nice to see everyone. Since we were at Jill's condo, near Eagle Creek, we dined at Rick's Cafe Boatyard. We sat out on the deck and it was nice. The weather was strange that day, it was cool, but when the sun came out (our table didn't have an umbrella) it was really hot!

As we were looking out at the tree line of Eagle Creek, Mike spotted a funnel cloud! Mike is very familiar with them (once, when he and my brother-in-law Dan went fishing, they saw a funnel cloud that then turned into a tornado and they were pretty much in the middle of it in a boat on the lake). Anyway, we kept an eye on it and couldn't believe what we were seeing! When we got home, they mentioned it on the news. I guess it was a cold air funnel cloud or something, it was different than a tornado funnel cloud, but it looked just the same to us.

We had a great time together visiting and soaking up the sun on the deck. They had a live band playing and it felt like vacation.

Surprising Grandma Shumaker

Also during the trip to Rensselaer, we got to visit Mike's Grandma Shumaker, who is in a nursing home (which used to be a hospital and was where Mike was born!).


We haven't seen her in a very long time. Most of the time for the past few years, she doesn't know who people are and she can no longer talk. So it makes it difficult. But this time was special. After Mike woke her up from a cat nap in her chair, she looked at him and then dosed off for a few seconds more. Then, when she woke up again, we could tell that she knew who we were. She had a glisten in her eye and they welled up with a few tears. Even though she could not talk, we knew she was there.

We told her all the new things going on with us – the dogs, the business, and our big news of Peanut. We showed her the photo album of our ultrasound pictures and also pointed out that Peanut had the Shumaker nose!

A little later, we asked the staff if we could take her outside to meet the dogs. They said we could even bring the dogs through the halls. So Mike went and got them. At some point, we would love to be able to do visits and therapy with the dogs and even though not many of the residents wanted to pet them, they did a great job walking through the halls.


The rest of the family joined us and we were able to visit outside with her. It was really great to see her and even more special that she was understanding us. We could also ask her yes and no questions and she would nod with her answer. I couldn't believe how lucid she was, it was truly a blessing to have these moments with her!

4th of July

Every year for Forth of July, Mike's family goes back to Rensselaer to celebrate. We have a family reunion for Jill's side (Mike's mom) and we also celebrate Dave's birthday (Mike's dad). This year would have been his 64th birthday. And this year, the trip was obviously different than past years.

We went to the cemetery to see the headstone. Those take months to get in and we had not seen it yet. The cemetery is the most beautiful and peaceful one I have ever seen. It's way out in the boonies, along an old dirt road. There is an old school house along the way that Dave and Jill attended elementary school in. The cemetery has woods around it and it is so quant and beautiful.


I was a little worried because we had the dogs with us and I didn't know what to do with them. The cemetery is fenced in and there was no one else around, so Mike let the dogs go and they ran all around – free as birds, and loved it. After about 2 minutes of that, Bear ran over to us and laid right down in front of Dave's headstone. It was as if there was no place else he wanted to be. He wanted to say hi to Grandpa Dave. It was such a cool thing to see and made us feel very comforted.


"Shu" fly, don't bother me!
Another funny thing happened during our visit. Bear had a pesky fly that would not leave him alone. The fly would land right on the back of his neck, just in the perfect spot to where he could not reach it. It drove him crazy and he jumped, scratched and danced all around trying to get the fly off. It was hilarious and we know that Dave was entertained by it too.


Most people would think that this would have been a very somber experience, but it was quite the opposite. We picked the perfect time to go since it rained the rest of the day (we only had a few sprinkles when we were there) and with the dogs there, it really helped. It was nice to visit Dave and we miss him dearly. We were also glad that Peanut David got to visit too.

I love IKEA!

A few weeks ago, my mom, sister and I went to Cincinnati to go to IKEA! It's my favorite store ever and we try to go once every year or two. It's an enormous store of modern, stylish stuff at a reasonable price. And when I say enormous, I mean REALLY BIG! We were there for 5 hours!!! It ended up being only 1 of 2 stores we had time to go to; our whole trip was pretty much planned around this place! I was really excited to buy stuff for baby peanut there. It was hard to narrow down what I wanted, what I needed, and what I should wait to buy until he's older.

A play gym I wouldn't mind leaving out!


My favorite purchase was this baby play gym. Most baby stuff is so bright, tacky and obnoxious that I can't imagine starring at it in my living room all the time. I am determined to find stuff that doesn't make me want to hurl it across the living room! So I couldn't wait to get this play gym. It's flexible, bright, but still appealing to my creative eye and best of all, we can fold it up and throw it behind the couch!

Some assembly required
When I got home, I couldn't wait to put my new purchase together. Because IKEA is an international store, most of their instructions are pictures so they don't have to translate into a million languages.

I didn't really even look at the pictures, because come on, how hard could this thing be to put together? All I had to do was unzip the outside circle and jam in the 2 flexible forms to complete the circle base. The only problem was, they were missing the zipper pulls! I tugged and tugged and couldn't get them to budge. I thought they must be caught or broken and I drove all this way only to get a defective product! Since I wasn't strong enough, I had to bust out the pliers. I yanked and tugged some more, squirming all around with it. By this time, I was sitting on the floor, mad and sweating up a storm! How could they do this to me? It's my most exciting purchase and I just wanted to see it in all of it's glory!

After 20 minutes and sweat on my brow, I was about to give up. Then I thought of something, when your zipper pull is broke, you are supposed to use a paper clip. But surely that wouldn't work because even pliers couldn't budge this thing.

So I put the paper clip on in a last stitch effort... with success! It unzipped around that circle with such ease. I was still mad that mine was defective and didn't come with a pull until I flipped the thing over, only to see that one of the picture instructions had a paper clip in it. Are you kidding me? I was just beat by my new kid's toy! And all I needed was to follow the pictures and grab a paper clip to get the darn thing together. I had to kind of laugh at that point.

All was well in the end, I put it up and admired my hard work. Then I folded it in half and through it behind the couch, out of site! It will be so handy!

Sharing the news - Grandpa Pete & Liza

 

We stopped by Grandpa Pete and Liza's to share the news before we went to a friends house. They were so excited and it was neat to see Grandpa was so touched!

Sharing the news - Laura's Family

We had to think for a while on a creative way to tell my family, but we finally figured something out. We didn't want them to catch on, so we waited until we were already planning to get together to celebrate birthdays (Mike's, mine and my nephews). For our plan to work, we had to wait until after we opened presents. Normally, it's at the end of the evening, but we were excited when my sis suggested we do it before dinner. My nephew went first, and he got a game, which the rest of the family played.

Mike and I patiently waited for our turn to open presents, knowing that really it was so we could share the news. By the time they were done with the game, it was dinner time. It was great and I had a million helpings, so I was really full. Then we had my favorite cake, which I ate, even though I was about to bust. Then everyone hung out talking at the table. It felt like a million years before we got up to go to the living room.

And then we waited some more. By this time, it was much later in the evening and I knew my sis and her family would have to leave soon to put the kids to bed. She mentioned we should finish gifts so they could get going soon.

It was finally our time! I was so nervous the entire night I felt sick (not to help that it was a little morning sickness and a ton of over eating!). Mike opened his gifts first, which I didn't think would take long. He was excited to get some nice fishing line, but he and Dan (my brother-in-law) kept talking about it and going on and on about it. I whispered out of the corner of my mouth to Mike to hurry up, I really thought I would throw up if I didn't get our news out soon!

When he was done, I opened my presents quickly and handed Mike the camera for him to catch the next part. Then, for the moment we had been waiting for. We said "Well, we actually have a present for you guys, but it's on back order until September 28th. I have pictures of it though." Then I handed my parents a small photo album with our ultrasound pics in it. My sister instantly said congratulations, but my mom didn't realize it until she looked inside the album and saw the picture. Dan was pretty confused, he kept saying "Wait, don't you mean March or April, it can't be September!" Mike said his face was priceless, but I was too busy hugging my mom. We really got him good! (I was really confused when he shared the news creatively with their first, and I didn't understand it at all either!).











It was pretty fun, but I was glad when it was over b/c I felt so sick the whole night!