Two Years!

Our two year anniversary was July 29th! It was a simple celebration this year! Josh made a really good dinner, which was Curried lentils with rice and chicken!!! Yummy! He also made brownies which are in the background with our cake toppers in them from the wedding! If you can't tell, they are "R & J" That was kinda a small theme at our wedding. Well, they were the cake toppers and on the invitations. If it's on the invitation though that counts as an official wedding theme! He also bought me chocolate milk, which I love!!!!

We are very thankful for each other and all the blessings we have had in our short marriage so far! First being that we feel like we have a healthy marriage and we strive to work at it everyday together. Secondly, we have Norah. She has been such a wonderful baby and we could not be more thankful for her. She is so much fun and she brings us such joy!

Speaking of, we had a special guest at our second anniversary dinner!




Here was her anniversary dinner...



You never thought Cheerios could be so romantic!

Norah is really moving up in the food world. She loves to eat Cheerios and we gave her spiral noodles tonight which she devoured! We usually have to pick up a few handfuls from underneath her legs and put back on her tray, but she shoves it in.

Crawling!!!!

Norah started crawling yesterday! It's not the real deal crawling, but she can up on her hands and kness and inch forward! It's really fun to watch!

We went to the beach on friday after I got home from work. The picture above is from then!

New Header...Midwest....

Josh made a new header for me and I love it!!!! Don't you?

I told him awhile ago that my blog looked so boring and he surprised me at work today with a text message that said he changed it!

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I meant to write about the "Midwest" the other day so here goes.

So I live in the "Midwest" now. It's so weird to say because I still think I'm on the "East Coast." The other day we were at the bank talking to the funniest guy I've ever met and we said we moved from West Virginia and he said, "Oh I used to live on the East Coast." I got all excited and was waiting for him to say Pennsylvania or DC or something and he said, "Yeah, North Carolina, I love it there!" I thought to myself, "That's not the "East Coast." Your "East Coast" is like 12 hours away from my "East Coast."

Turns out no one else thinks Beaver Falls, PA is the "East Coast" expect for me.

Now onto the Midwest. First I need to complain that Illinois roads are terrible!! I mean terrible. I can't tell you how many times my cd stops playing because I am just driving and slowing down often to try not to hit a big pot hole. I cannot get over how bad the roads are. There are so many people that complain about PA roads but those are nothing compared to here.

I am having to adjust to the accent here too. I have to have people repeat themselves all of the time. I feel bad because once I realize what they are saying or spelling it's like, Adam Smith or apple...back to the basics for Rach here in the Midwest!

Anyways, I know this post was not anything to write home about, but I wanted to share my thoughts!

Work, Apartment, the Midwest, Visitors and 7 Months!

This will be a long update! Sorry it took so long to get pictures of the apartment up. First, I started my job on Monday! I only worked until yesterday, Wednesday. I have Thursday and Friday off! The first week of work was good. It was a lot of reading orientation manuals and taking little quizzes on the info. If you have ever worked in a hospital or medical type setting the orientations for those places are always usually similar and long. I am still not finished with it all, but have a huge chunk done.

Everyone I work with is so nice. I will be working between two hospitals that are about 10 minutes apart. I have only been at one of the hospitals so far though. I am a Patient Ambassador, so I basically make sure that patients are comfortable and pleased with their rooms and care for their rooms. I work in the Environmental Services department. My office is in the basement of the hospital, so no windows. Fortunately I will be on the floors of the hospitals alot, so that should balance that all out nicely. There are times I like to be in a dark room organizing! :)

I've done pretty good being away from Norah. The hospital has a thing where they play a lullaby over the loud speakers when a baby is born, which is nice, but I instantly tear up and have to distract myself so I do not start to cry.

Ok, on to our apartment! I put up a bunch of pictures so I will just start going through them and explaining.

This is from the door, you walk in and look right and this is the kitchen/dining room.

The cupboards are much bigger than we expected and we can get a lot of stuff in them. We actually have a lot of bare space, so we could not be happier.

This is our baker's rack which has proven to be well worth the money.
We have used it so much in the last two years!

This is the dining room looking into the living room.
Hopefully our wireless will work soon so we do not have to sit at the table!

This is Norah's seat that she eats in, her play pen which is not usually there, but has been helpful for dad when he needs to get a shower during the day while I am at work. :)

This is our living room area. It's a nice little area to be in. We actually do not use the AC too much because there is always a nice breeze. Unless it is near 90 then we turn it on.

This is the entertainment corner, lots going on, but fun!

This is the beginning of the hallway where the pictures are. We put tons of pictures up of family and friends so we think of you all often! That is also a free desk that we got, but we will be replacing it down the road as it does not meet our decoration appetite!

On to Norah's room! This is her shelf that Josh built that holds all of her goodies!

Here is her bed! She loves her crib. She slept in the pack n' play from the time she was born because we were all in one room in Wheeling. It's nice for all of us to have our own rooms!

This is a handmade mobile made by dad for Norah! She loves watching it blow in the wind!

This is a close up of the carpet we got, which I love! We had received something from Pottery Barn Kids that we returned and once we moved out here to Chicago we bought a carpet for Norah's room that I think goes perfect!

The other side of the room!

Here is Norah sleeping in her swing while I take pictures!
(Yes, she has a mohawk in case you are wondering. We will get to that later.)

This is Norah's closet. The closet's are huge! You will see our bedrooms in a minute. There is also one in the hallway by the door, but I must have forgot to upload that picture. It took me awhile to get all of them organized the way I wanted.

Here is the bathroom. The window freaked me out at first, but now I like it because it airs out the bathroom really quick after you take a shower.

The bathroom is very small. I am still trying to figure out my "getting ready" routine. I just cannot lay everything out in the order I use it, so I get frustrated. I'm working on my attitude! :)

Here is our room!

Corner bookshelf which we love and were glad for the tall ceilings.

Here is another purchase that was well worth it! We have an elevator, so this laundry organizing cart is awesome!!! I really love it more than I probably should. :)

And the big honking closet! I moved stuff around so many times in that first week we were here. Josh would have to see what I did each day and be questioned as to whether he thought the space was being used to the best of it's abilities!

The End of the tour!

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This past weekend Tim, Marisa, Grandma and Grandpa Elek and the best of all Bailey came to visit! Now you may ask yourself, why would you put a little baby on a German Sheppard?! Well, you don't know Bailey, she's very calm and well behaved and Norah loved her!
They both gave kisses all weekend to each other! Baily just has better aim!

Well, Norah got a mohawk from dad yesterday! He was so excited about it!
Norah didn't seem to mind either!

Happy 7 months Norah!!! Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad!!!

Angry Baby/Happy Baby

We went for a bike ride yesterday morning to do some errands. While Josh ran into the bookstore I sat outside with Norah. She just sat there in her bike seat and looked very angry for a long time. I took a picture of her and then said, "Angry baby!" in my best angry voice and she quickly changed her expression and I captured it too!

"Angry Baby!"

"Happy Baby!"

I'm sure most of you do not care, but I thought this was so funny! I love my little girl!

P.S. We just got Norah's crib from Grandma and Grandpa Elek. I took a video of our apartment to upload on here, but am having some issues. If I can't figure it out then I'll just kick it old school and take some pictures and upload them!

Family Bike Ride, Navy Pier, Visitors!

We went on our family bike ride on saturday! It was alot of fun! We ended up going 15 miles! We biked all the way to Millennium Park downtown. It was a beautiful ride. Lake Michigan is amazing!

Below is a picture of our new bikes!

Norah loves riding and looking all around at people and buildings.

This little wind suit that Norah is wearing was originally cousin Cora's. My dad bought it when he was in Oklahoma for training for work. It's the Oklahoma Sooners gear that we pass around for all the cousins to wear. I should have put Norah in it sooner because she is almost too big for it. I figured it was the perfect time for her to wear it in the Windy City!

On Monday we decided to go downtown and to Navy Pier. Here we are waiting for the Metra. We waited a long time because we did not have a train schedule.

We went to the Lego's store downtown and saw all of the big lego displays.
Norah was dwarfed by the Lego kids!

There was a Lego man sitting in the middle of the mall so of course we had to get a photo with him!

It took Norah forever to fall asleep while we were downtown,
but finally she did and was oh so cute!

This is a view of downtown from the back side of Navy Pier!

Today we checked our e-mail and saw that our friend Joel Daniel Harris was in town for the day with his friend Lindsey. We jumped on the Metra and spent a few hours downtown with them. We got free M&M's ice cream treats!!!

So that has been the last couple of days!

We arrived!

Sorry this post took so long in coming! First it was because it took a long time to get our internet set up. Second, it takes so long to upload photos that I really wanted to get a bunch of pictures up here so that people really enjoy their visit after so long! :)

I'll walk you through the last two weeks!

Saturday, June 7th, Josh and I left for Chicago with our friends Jay and Wendy Oldaker and Adam and Carrie Babcock. We left from Canton, OH. Norah stayed with Grandma and Grandpa McCowin and they drove her up on Sunday, which was awesome! Norah was getting over a cold and I think it would have been a lot harder had she been with us.

Here we are in Canton, getting ready to leave....

Anyways, the drive went really fast and our friend Branden Mast met us at our new apartment building with our keys! He had come the week before to get them for us so that one of us did not have to fly in during the week to get them. The guys unloaded and the girls started setting things up and the truck was empty in an hour! We all put things away, put shelves together and started showering so we could go downtown for dinner.

We went to Giordano's for famous Chicago stuffed pizza! Here we are enjoying it....

(L-R--Wendy, Jay, Josh, Branden, Adam, and Carrie)

Now, on to some important things! The apartment was clean when we arrived, which was nice! Now after being here for 24 hours I notice that some things are not to my liking! I'll let you see if you can tell which of the four things below where cleaned by me and which were not! The picture is not a great one, but I think you'll be able to see a small example of my work!

Next comes our "junk drawer." Well, I guess there is not a lot to say about it, but I thought I would include it in our tour here!

(Pictures of the apartment will come soon! We may just do a video with our camera and upload that!
Not sure yet! Check back!)

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In case you are not aware, I am a triplet. Most of my time as a 6-12 month old was spent in a laundry basket. You see it was simple crowd control for my parents and I'm sure my older brother David did not mind the peace of mind either, even as a 5 year old! :) Norah spent some time in a laundry basket the first couple of evenings here as we tried to set things up and organize. She also spent a lot of time in only a diaper because it was so hot!

This is the view out of our living room window. It's nice that there is not a building right up against our windows.

Norah had a bath and spent some time in her robe! She looked so cute!

Our friend Katie made us this wrap and this was the first time we used it. Now this is definitely not me at my finest hour, but it was hot and we needed to walk to CVS to get Norah a fan for her room. Thanks Katie! It works great!

And Yes, I am wearing Umbros!

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We have beaches here in Chicago in case you didn't know! When we came two years ago to visit Tim and Marisa here, I was really surprised to find that there were beaches here. One day last week we took a long walk to the 57th street beach. Norah loved it! The water was cold and I could not stand in it for too long, but it did not bother her at all.

I thought this was cute!

My sister-in-law Heather's sister Suzy let us borrow this cute little bathing suit for the summer since their daughter is too small for it! It fits Norah perfect! Thanks Suzy!

Here is Norah enjoying her book from Aunt Heather. She can't put it down!

She got stuck in her little box.

For Father's Day we got all dressed up and went to try out our first church in Chicago! The funny thing was that the church we choose was a bilingual church-Chinese/American. We had no idea. The people were so nice and we really enjoyed it! We were the only ones there that did not speak Chinese. We might go back after we look at a couple more churches. This outfit came from cousins Jason and Lyndsey and we love it!

Later on Sunday Branden came to visit. He lives very close to Chicago, so we made dinner, but while it cooked we went to a Japanese garden close to where we live. It was built during the World's Fair in 1893, which I'm sure Josh will blog about soon because he read a book about it and the World's Fair took place in our neighborhood, and we have been going to some of the places that are still around from it.

Norah started holding her bottle! Yeah!

Norah and Daddy playing the guitar together.

Our friends Jenny and Matt who we know from Wheeling gave us a box full of clothes for Norah before we left. We pulled this outfit out the other day and thought it was so cute. We took Norah around on some errands in it and she drew all sorts of crowds.

If you have never used Craig's List or Freecycle in your area you should! We got some old school bikes yesterday and a child's seat for Norah for super cheap! Today we got her the smallest helmet we could find and it is a tad to big, so we have to put a sun hat underneath it....this picture is just a preview of the first Elek Family Bike Ride which will take place tomorrow (friday)! We can't wait and we promise to post pictures!

OH Yeah! I got a job! I start on June 30th. I'm working at a hospital south of where we are. I'm not going to put too much detail here, but feel free to ask questions about it. I'm really looking forward to getting started. I will be working closely with patients and that will be fun! It is not a social worker position, but similar to a social work position in a lot of ways. The great thing is that I will be interviewing for a manager position soon. They asked me if I would be interested and I haven't even started! I owe lots and lots of thanks to my friend Betsy who recommended me! Thanks Bets! More to come later...

One more thing...I figured out how to add e-mails to a list so that you can get an e-mail everytime I update my blog. If you want me to add you send me an e-mail and let me know!

And!!!! We live 4 1/2 blocks from Barack Obama!!!