Little angel Aaron

After a tough three-month fight, our sweet little Aaron baby returned home to our Heavenly Father last night. He was such a trooper through all of his earthly trials and I know he is in a better place. He was blessed to have Lisa & Brandon as his parents to take care of him and Ashy-girl as his big sister to smother him with lot's of love and kisses! They are special people to have been chosen by Heavenly Father as the ones to have him. I am so grateful that families are eternal. We'll see him again.

Even though my heart aches, I feel so blessed that Aaron was able to make it through last week so that I could meet him and cuddle him and hold him and love him. Whenever I was in his presence all I wanted to do, and did do, was hold him in my arms and look down at his calm, sleeping face and smell his baby breath. The last moment I saw him, he finally flashed some big smiles my way. :) I fell in love with that little guy immediately and even though I can't physically hold him in my arms now, I am so thankful for those precious moments I got to spend with him that I can always hold in my mind and heart.

We love you, Aaron Michael Jastal!

Craig's visit

I already mentioned that Craig was here and we went to Chicago, but we did a lot after that here in Columbus. We went to German Village, Easton Town Center, Ohio State University, watched several movies, ate at Graeter's ice cream and a really good hot dog place, went through downtown and North High Street area, etc.

We were looking forward to Craig's visit for a while and had so much fun visiting with him, catching up, and doing fun things!

It's a...

GIRL!!!!!!

This baby is squished in there! That's her feet up by her head. Looks comfortable. :)

We are SO excited! I was hoping for a girl and Ryan didn't care either way, so he was just happy that I was so happy. That being said, his first words were "Well, there goes my dream team."

Today when I got home, Craig was at our apartment and I immediately asked "Craig! Are you excited to find out?!" and after a long pause, he stated, "Uhhh... to find out what team is gonna pick Jimmer in the draft tonight??" Ha, I would expect a comment like that from Ryan too.

Anyway, I haven't taken any belly pics yet, mostly because I'm totally in a chunky stage where maternity clothes don't fit and regular clothes don't fit. But, I DO want some documentation of this pregnancy, so here are some pictures of me at 19 weeks (even though I'm a week away, I like to consider it being halfway there. :) The left pic is from the morning, the right is from the evening. I am always smaller in the mornings and bigger in the evenings. In fact, most comments I get in the morning are usually along the lines of how I don't look super huge yet and the people who I see in the evening will make comments such as "wow, you're really starting to pop!" I don't know if these pictures really demonstrate that, but believe me, there is a BIG difference between the a.m. and the p.m. Also, I wore pink today so that if it was a girl I would already be celebrating... good thing!

Also, a couple of weeks ago I was talking with some coworkers and they asked what weird cravings I have been having. In all honestly, all food just sounds gross all the time.... except ketchup. That is the only food that has tasted good and there have been several times that I have made my dinner menu based around what we can have with ketchup as a condiment. So a few days later, one of the sweet ladies brought me a bottle of ketchup!

Dream team...?

I've always joked with Ryan that I only want girls. That may have been a true fact until a few years ago when I decided it would be good to have a mix... but I still joke about it.

On one particular day Ryan got a little feisty himself about that topic and replied that we were going to have 5 boys and their names would be Kobe, Lebron, Shaq, Magic, and Jimmer. And if there was a 6th man, we'd name him Bruno or Ryan. And we would call our kids the "dream team."

Well, tomorrow is the big day when we find out if it's the beginning of our dream team, or the start of something quite the opposite, and I can't wait! I'm hoping for the later, but am trying to convince myself that I will be happy either way. All of my sister-in-laws have recently stolen the family's allotment of female babies for the year, so I'm kind of convinced that our only option is a boy to balance things out. We'll see....

Little Ryan

OR.....

little Brittney (figures I've got something chocolate in my mouth)

Chicago

Ryan's brother, Craig, is here to visit us for a little over a week and since he's the only one in the family that has never been to Chicago we decided to spend a few days there and take him around the city. Ryan and I got off work a little early on Thursday and we drove up that night. The next morning we had a tour scheduled with MARS to go see around their chocolate plant. This is not open to the public, but we obviously got in since Ryan works for the company. At this plant they make Snickers, Milky Ways, 3 Musketeers, Dove chocolate, and Munch Bars. It was so awesome and felt like we were in the Willy Wonka movie! At the beginning, they gave us a "taste test" of each kind of chocolate they use for each candy- and they are all different (and Dove was of course the best chocolate). The best part was that we got to grab chocolate straight off the conveyer belt! Ryan, Craig and I agree that our favorite candy was the Milky Way without the chocolate on it yet. SO so so good!!! We were sent home with three big boxes of candy and we aren't quite sure what to do with it all, but since it was already decorated for this Halloween, maybe we could pass it out in October to the trick-or-treaters?! :)

After the chocolate tour, we headed into downtown for a lunch reservation at the Signature Room on the 95th floor of the Hancock tower. It was pretty pricey to go up to the observation deck in this building, which was one floor below the restaurant. After some research though, I figured out that if you eat at the restaurant then you get to ride up for free. It's a super nice restaurant with amazing views, but we ended up spending less for our lunch than we would have to just go to the observation deck- and we got a food and a better view! We also heard that the Hancock tower is better than the Willis (Sears) tower observation room because you can see the whole lake and city, whereas in the Sears tower you are in the middle and can't see the lake as well or the whole city scape at once. Just a little tip for anyone who plans on visiting there. :)

After lunch, we walked the Magnificent Mile, strolled through Millenium Park and visited the infamous bean statue thing, and the water fountains and gardens. It was the perfect day to be outside- sunny and warm!!

That evening, we took a boat tour through the city to learn about the buildings and the city's history, and then out on to the lake where we got some awesome views of the Chicago itself. Afterwards, we stopped to get some amazing Chicago hot dogs (how could we not?) and a Portillo's chocolate cake shake.

The last day we went to Wrigley Field, and even though we didn't go to a game, it was fun to be there on game day to get a feel for all the craziness of the Cubs fans. They were playing the Yankees that day, so it was a big game and there were tons of people there even 4 hours before game time!

We wrapped up the trip with a leisurely stroll along Navy Pier and then a late lunch at none other than Giordano's, of course.