The After Party

After the triple shower a couple of Saturdays ago, we made plans to hang out again later that night.  Like I mentioned in that post, a few of our friends had traveled from out of town and it had been a while since we'd all seen each other.  (Now that we're all married, we don't have showers and weddings every other weekend for us to catch up at!)  The baby shower was a good excuse for us to plan a low-key hangout night so we could all visit.  Thanks to Jenny and Darrin for offering your house for the get-together! Like most of our coed gatherings, we ended up with the girls in one room and the guys in the other.  I don't really have much commentary for the evening since we mostly just talked and hung out, so this post is mostly going to be just pictures.

Emily and I have a difficult time taking pictures together.  I can't tell you how many outtakes I have of this where at least one of us is doing something stupid.

Work that bump, Lydi!

I tried to get a shot of each couple there but couldn't catch some of them together at the same time.

These two = never serious.

We had to take a girl picture before ending the night.  The two shorties of the group - Allison and Darbie - took their normal squatted position down front.

And then Doc, our photographer, told them they could probably just stand up and everyone would still be seen...

We tried to get a group shot with all the husbands too.  Poor Lydia offered to take the picture - her hubs wasn't able to make the trip.  She should be glad she wasn't in it, though, because everything about this picture is awkward.

And then things just got weird.  The guys decided to squat in front of the girls (no clue why??) which I guess was fine until Emily decided to ride her preacher husband and Darbie mounted Kendall... Yea, I don't know.

That was probably the sign that it was time to call it a night.  :)

Triple Baby Shower

Almost exactly two years ago to the day, I wrote a post with this exact same title.  It was about a baby shower I hosted at my house for three of my college girlfriends that were all expecting babies.  It was the first round of babies for our group and they were all due in September.  This time, the post is for the exact same thing, except this time I wasn't the one hosting, I was an honoree.  Once again, there are three of us in our group that are all due in September! Here we are - Dana, Me, and Lydia.  Dana is due first, around the 7th.  Lydia is next on the 20th, and then I'm due on the 24th.  Of course, two years ago the due dates were spread out like this too and all 3 babies arrived within 24 hours of each other.  So who knows, it could happen again!

We brought our baby bumps with us.  (And I guess I didn't get the memo to wear coral!)

You would think that for my first ever baby shower, I might remember to bring my camera, right?  Well, I didn't.  Blame it on the pregnancy brain, I guess, but it sat on the counter at my house during the whole shower.  These pictures are all courtesy of Lydia's mom, Gina, and I'm so grateful she shared.  But that means I don't have all the detail shots that I would normally take, but oh well.

I was so excited that this shower fell on the weekend that Doc's parents were in town, so that his mom, Pat could join us.  It was fun to have both of my moms there!  I love this picture - especially because it looks like someone just told my mom we were gonna get to leave with lots of free stuff.  Yesss!

Here's the food table.  Our hostesses - Emily, Jenny, Sarah, and Darbie - did such a great job with everything.  Especially considering two of them traveled for the shower.  I did hear about a mishap with a tray of deviled eggs rolling all over the floorboard of a car, but no one at the shower knew they were missing!  Please ignore the look on my face here; I have no idea what I was looking at outside the window.

Sarah whipped up the petit fours herself and did a great job!  They're little baby blocks and tasted awesome!

I think Jenny was in charge of all the flowers (a job she takes very seriously).  This is just a small vase from the coffee table but they were all very pertty!  (Also, in the top background of this picture, you can kinda see the cute little alphabet cards that Emily strung up around her house.)

After filling up on all the delicious food, the three of us mamas took our places to start opening gifts.  We really racked up, too!  Here I am opening up the gift we all three received from the hostesses.

This isn't the best picture of it, but you can kinda tell what it was as Dana opens hers.  We all got the sweetest pair of tiny pink TOMS for our little girls!

Here's Lydia with another gift we all got - cute little bloomers.  Hers and Dana's were both monogrammed and were so precious.  I guess if we ever decide on a name I can have mine monogrammed too.

One of my favorite things that I brought home that day is this chalkboard sign that Dana made.  It's made out of a cabinet door insert and she painted it to match our nurseries (Lydia's is purple, mine is grey).  Be on the lookout for it to show up again in a nursery post one day!  (Not sure who I'm pointing at.  Maybe this is when I told my mom she should open a daycare?)

Another fun gift we all three received was a Hello Kitty quilt that Lydia's grandmother made for us.  I have a little niece that will probably try to claim this as her own if she ever sees it!

I won't bore you with a picture of every gift we received, but trust me when I say I left with a car full of goodies!  From things like daygowns and girly outfits to practical items like bumbos, boppys, and diaper bags.

The party didn't end once all the gifts were opened.  We still had some betting to do!  Just like at the last triple shower, we had a baby pool to guess when each of the sweet babies will arrive.  For a dollar a guess, you could purchase a day on each of our calendars.  I didn't win for any of the births last time, so I'm crossing my fingers I have better luck this time!  (And trying not to hold a grudge about all the purchased days that fall past my due date.)

Before leaving, we made sure to get a group picture of all the college friends that were there.  I loved spending my Saturday with these girls!

For those of you reading that were there, thank you so much for spoiling me and baby girl!  We are so blessed to have such great friends that care so much about our little baby already!!

Catherine's Bridal Shower

My friend Catherine has been engaged for a looooong time.  Why so long?  Well, her fiance, Roberto, lives(d) in Belgium.  Talk about a long-distance relationship! Catherine and Roberto (Catherto? Roberine?) have been trying for a long time to get his fiance Visa approved, and finally, in June, he was able to have his interview and get approved!  Now, I don't really know all the details here, but I'm pretty sure once he got approved, they had a short timeframe to actually tie the knot.  Maybe 90 days?  Eh, I coulda made that up.

But, Catherine's a teacher and decided she wanted to go ahead and have the wedding while she was out for summer break.  Plan a wedding in a month and half?  Sure, why not!  And you know me...I smelled an opportunity for a party.

So, after some quck back-and-forth emails between me and Catherine, we set a date.  A week later, invites went out and a week and half after that, it was party time!  Like I said - short timeline.

I ordered the invitations from this etsy store and they set what little bit of "theme" I had.  (Sorry for the smudging.  Gotta stay safe!)

Basically, mason jars + pink flowers is what I was going with.

I was pretty pumped about the mason jar part because my dad had just purchased this for my mom for Mother's Day and I was itching to borrow it.

It's a wire rack holding three mason jar-ish vases.  The best part is that the lids to the vases have that nice little grid that makes flower arranging so much easier!  Obviously, when Dad gave it to Mom it had a pretty arrangement in it (and I didn't even help him pick this out!).

I picked up a bunch of fresh flowers from the Farmer's Market the day before the shower and went to town making arrangements.  I would not say this is one of my specialties, but I had fun with it.

I used Mom's triple vase as the centerpiece on the food table.

I popped more flowers into new, old, and antique mason jars to use everywhere else.

Up on the mantel...

In the kitchen...

 

And on the coffee table with another jar full of pink candy sticks.

Since the shower was right after lunch, we didn't go overboard with the food.  We had salami roll-ups, fruit skewers with fruit dip, and spinach dip with pita chips.

April, my cohost, made the most delicious chocolate chip cookie dough cupcakes for dessert.  Ohmygoodness, they were so good it was almost sinful!

I made a few pink and white cake pops to go along with the cupcakes.  (Too many sweets?  Nah!)

And of course, we washed it all down with pink punch.

Keeping with the theme, straws and utensils were displayed in mason jars.

 

Enough with the decorations, let's get on to the actual party!  Catherine was excited to get to open some gifts.

Remember how I said Roberto had to be interviewed before his fiance Visa was approved?  Well, April and I decided he shouldn't have to do all the work, and that Catherine should be "interviewed" too.  Before the shower, we came up with a list of questions about Roberto that he answered in advance, and then we all took turns pulling out a question (from a mason jar!) to ask Catherine.  She had to answer the same way Roberto did to get to open the next present.

She got stumped a few times!

 

Luckily, we had enough questions that she eventually got to open all of her gifts.  She got some good stuff too!

The guest list was all friends of ours from college.  It was so nice to have a small group, and some of these girls I hadn't seen in a long time!

Baby Hayes tried to steal the show a few times.

I tried to hide from the camera but Catherine insisted on one last pic of her and the hostesses.  My version came out blurry so I hope April got a better one with her camera!

For being a last-minute shower, I'd say it was a big success.  We all had a lot of fun catching up and Catherine went home with a car full of goodies.  Not too much longer now til those lovebirds officially tie the knot!

Busy Saturday

Happy 4th of July, everyone!  I hope you are either staying out of the heat or staying in a swimming pool (or lake, beach, etc)!  Doc and I just got home from spending the afternoon at my brother's house, where we hung out at their pool and enjoyed a delicious, festive meal.  Last night we celebrated our country's independence with all of our friends at a cookout.  I'm sad to say I have zero pictures from both events, but it's still been a nice holiday.  I plan on finishing it out on the couch, and maaaybe going to see some fireworks tonight if I can muster up the energy. While I don't have any Patriotic pictures to share, I do have pics from last Saturday.  Sometimes I decide to document a whole day with my cell phone, and this was one of those days.  It started really early when Doc got up to play golf at 6:30 and I couldn't go back to sleep.  I laid in bed contemplating what all I could do around the house before remembering that my mom had my niece and nephew at her house for the whole weekend.  You know what that means?  Saturday morning pancakes.  I hopped out of bed and rushed to get dressed and Lolli loaded up in the car; I was nervous I would miss breakfast!

When I arrived at my parents' house around 7:30, I peeked in the windows in the back before going in.  The house was still dark so I assumed they were all still asleep.  Score! I hadn't missed breakfast yet.  But I also knew my mom would kick my tail if I unleashed Lolli in the house and ended up waking the kids up too early, so I stopped short of opening the door and decided we better head out to the shop for a while.

I spent an hour or so out in the shop, getting a good start on some frames I'm working on, before walking back to the house.  This time I could see a small light on in the living room and knew my mom must be up.  I told Lolli to keep quiet and we headed in.  Mom was surprised to see me so early, and even more surprised when I told her I'd already been there for a while.  We chatted a while waiting for Bren and Jett to wake up but it never happened.  Do you know I had to finally go wake those little stinkers up at 9:45...I was starving!!

It was worth the wait...those pancakes were goooood.

After getting the kids dressed and cleaned up, we went for a quick shopping trip at a local consignment shop.  I was looking for a piece of furniture to use in the baby's nonexistant nursery, and I was lucky enough to find a piece I liked!  The store was about to close so we laid down the seats in the car and crammed it in.  The kids were excited to ride seatbelt-free.  (Don't worry, our drive was less than a mile.)

Mimi got to cram in the back with them too.

This is the beaut we brought home.  I have big plans for it and have already begun working on it.  Hopefully I'll have pictures to show you soon.

So I could get some work done in the shop, I put Brennie to work vaccuuming up sawdust.  If you ever want to keep a 3 year old busy for a while, might I suggest a shop vac?  She loved it! And she took her job very seriously.

 

 

That afternoon, we spent a couple hours at the neighbors' pool.  Doc thought he'd lay out on a raft and relax.  I'm not sure he expected to have so much company on his raft.

We had plans that evening so we left the pool early.  Chris and Allison had invited us over to their house for dinner.

Jenny and Darrin came for dinner too.

Meals prepared by Allison and Chris never disappoint.  For this dinner, they had prepared brisket (in a green egg), homemade cheese grits, and greens.  I think everyone at the table went back for seconds.  Dessert was equally as delicious...first we had a plate of cupcakes and cookies to choose from.  (This picture was taken early because I definitely filled my plate up with more than that.)

Then we had blood orange sorbet in champagne (sprite for me)!

We made it home around 11:00 and were completely and utterly exhausted from the long day.  But it was a good day - both productive and relaxing - and spent with people we love to be around!

Gender Revealment Party

Last Tuesday I had another monthly doctor's appointment, but this one was also for the "big" ultrasound.  Doc was joining me but he was running late and so of course, they called me back early.  Go figure, that never happens!  I walked on back with the Ultrasound Tech as she assured me that they would send him back as soon as he arrived.  Inside the room, I told the Tech that we didn't want her to tell us the gender, and instead, I gave her this card to fill out.

I knew Doc was going to try to peek at the screen and try to figure it out on his own, so it worked out perfectly that he was late.  After several minutes of the baby's legs being glued shut, the Tech finally found what she was looking for.  She printed the picture, checked the box, and sealed both the card and the picture up in an envelope.  Doc arrived right as she slipped the card into my purse...perfect!

Don't worry, he still got plenty of time to see the rest of the baby on the screen.  The baby was positioned so low that the Tech couldn't get a good measurement on the head.  I spent about 20-30 minutes laying at an incline, tilted towards my head, before she finally got the measurement.  We had a quick checkup with the Doctor who said everything looked great and sent us on our way.  (By the way, at my doctor's office, if the mama doesn't know the baby's sex, then the doctor and nurse don't get to know either.  I was so nervous one of them would let it slip but they both assured me that had no idea!)

From the doctor's office we drove straight to a local bakery and handed over our sealed envelope.  They would open the card and, depending on which box was checked, bake us either a pink or blue cake and then cover it with icing so we couldn't see it until we cut into it.  Our revealment party wasn't scheduled until Wednesday night so we had about 24 hours to wait.  Several people commented to me that they didn't know how I could wait so long, but once I handed over the envelope I really had no choice.  There was nothing for me to peek at even if I wanted to!

The plan was to just invite our family over for a small cookout and cut the cake.  But then I invited a few friends here and there and before you know it, it was more of a party.  I decided to make it a brunch because I had a few recipes that I'd really been wanting to try out.  The decorations were kept really simple, just a few pink and blue balloons...

...and some flowers for the table.  I figured I'd have to do white since you can't normally find blue flowers, but good ol' Kroger had these pink and blue hydrangeas.  Score!

The centerpiece was easy - it was the cake we picked up from the bakery.

Doc and I stuck with the theme and both wore pink and blue.

Thanks to some poor planning on my part, we had a good bit of time to kill before dinner was ready.  Some of our friends that were there...

...took it as an opportunity to practice their surprised faces.

Others entertained themselves with noisemakers.

Like I said earlier, we had both friends and family there.  Even though I'm sure it's somewhat awkward for all of them, I love it when all a good portion of the people we love are in our home.

Speaking of mixing friends and family, this is probably one of my favorites from the evening: friend Matt holding nephew Ramer.  We could probably have another "Caption This" contest.

So the food was finally ready and we ate.  Let's fast forward to the point of the party.  Oh but first, here's one more picture.

My grandmother passed away shortly after Doc proposed to me.  When the time came for us to clean out her house, I found the cake cutter pictured above.  I snuck it in my pile of stuff to take home with the intentions of using it to serve cake at our wedding.  Our wedding day finally rolled around and I completely forgot to take the cake cutter with me to the venue.  I was so sad afterwards when I realized I'd forgotten it.  But we were getting ready to cut another important cake so I remembered to grab it.  Yay!

Oh, and one more thing.  We all placed $5 bets on what the gender would be.  Doc opened the envelope of guesses and read the results: 3 votes for boy and 9 votes for girl.  I was the only person in the family to go with boy...even Wyatt, who I just knew I could count on for a boy vote, wrote down girl!

With Doc's parents queued up on Skype and everyone gathered around, Doc and I took our positions by the cake.  He let me do the honors of cutting it.

Can you believe that after the first cut, there was not a single crumb that came out on the cake cutter?  Seriously, we couldn't see anything!  So, I went in for another cut...

Still nothing!  So I wedged my cake cutter underneath the sliced piece and lifted it out.

Pink cake! We're having a baby girl!!

I'll admit, my first thought was probably, "Dangit! I just lost my money!"  But $5 is a small price to pay for a sweet baby girl.  I have been pretty dead set from day one that we were having a boy, though, so I've had to get my head wrapped around it being a girl.  So much for mother's intuition.  I kept staring at the cake like maybe they'd gotten it wrong when we remembered the sealed envelope with the revealing ultrasound picture.  You guys? We're definitely having a girl.

The party wasn't quite over yet.  Since we were all gathered, we brought out some birthday cupcakes for my brother Ben.

I seriously have no idea what was going on in the picture below, I just thought it was funny.  Maybe we were all really proud of Ben for blowing out all 3 candles??

My sweet friend Allison had brought a gender neutral gift with her - a cute Farmer's Market onesie.  A perfect gift that will always remind of Allison since she's the new director of the market (read an article about it here!).

After all our friends left, Doc and I still had one thing left to do.  We snipped off all the blue balloons and headed outside.

Sayonara, blue!  We won't be needing you in our nursery!

Special shoutout to all of our friends and family that were able to join us - thank you so much for coming to celebrate with us!  We are so lucky to have so many people that care about our little girl (!) already.  Also, special thanks to my mom for helping me cook and to Allison for taking pictures!