Ethan Outruns Cancer!

We've had a busy, busy weekend full of family fun! We celebrated Eric's birthday on Friday evening since he'll be in Florida on his actual birthday. Mom cooked up a surf-and-turf meal, Eric opened some presents, and we topped it all off with a yummy Oreo ice cream pie! Saturday, we woke up early to meet Grandma Graebe at Hoosiers Outrun Cancer. This is a wonderful event held every year to help support cancer research - and extra special this year celebrating Mary beating breast cancer!! We've all marveled at how gracefully she's handled fighting cancer this past year. She had her reconstructive surgery last week and is well on way to a full recovery. Hoosiers Outrun Cancer has always been a special event for me as I used to walk in memory of my friend, Jenny. Now, it has even more meaning and was so thankful I got to share it with Eric and Ethan for the first time (Ethan slept through the whole walk)! We also got to visit with Uncle Jeffrey, Aunt Kristen, and Jayden this weekend as well. We are loving all their trips home lately!

Sunday, we had to say goodbye to Daddy as he left for his training. Whew, talk about water works. I don't think Eric had any idea how hard it was going to be leaving Ethan. I knew it was going to be a long two weeks for him so I made a little care package as a surprise and snuck it in his suitcase. He has an envelope to open each morning that contains either a picture of Ethan, a card, a note, etc. When I talked to him tonight, he said the first envelope is already waiting by the sink so he can open it as soon as he wakes up =) I know we'll all be just fine, but this is the longest we've been apart from each other since we got married two years ago. We will have lots of Facetime/Skype dates this week and I'm already looking forward to picking him up from the airport on Oct. 12!!

Earlier in the week, Eric and I celebrated our second wedding anniversary! Ginka and Papaw watched Ethan while we went to Gratzi for dinner. We had a couple people tell us it's okay if all we do is talk about Ethan - which of course we did! How could we not! He's such a blessing and we will never get tired talking about how cute and perfect he is. I was in such a rush to get home - every time I'm gone, I picture him screaming and crying and giving the grandparents grief. But, after a couple text messages from my mom reassuring me he was okay, we came home to a baby still sound asleep after a four hour nap! =)

We had our check-up at the doctors on Friday which went great. We knew Ethan must've been going through a growth spurt because he was an eating machine last week!! He was eating more frequently and never really seemed satisfied. Well, that definitely proved to be true when we put him on the scale and he now weighs 6 lbs. 7 oz!!! He gained 9 oz. in 8 days! We were so proud!!

We are looking forward to the month of October - it'll be a busy month! We've got a lot to look forward to with Ethan's first IU tailgate, more walks outside in the beautiful fall weather, most likely heading to Chicago for a wedding and our first "big" trip, and so much more!