Baby Shower #2

The second baby shower that Doc and I (and baby girl!) were honored at was one hosted by my coworkers.  Surprise, surprise - I forgot my camera again.  I'm going to start blaming this on pregnancy brain!  Seriously, why can't I remember to bring it with me?? With the triple shower, I was able to snag pictures of all the people, but not many of the details.  This time it's the exact opposite.  When I saw all the decorations in the room, I quickly grabbed Doc's cellphone and tried to get pictures of everything, but I have zero pictures of any people.  Shame on me!

Even though I don't have any pictures of any guests, hostesses, or me and Doc, I still wanted to post these pictures of the details.  I have to tell you that my coworkers went all out!  At our workplace, we try to have a shower for anyone getting married or welcoming a baby but they are not typically elaborate parties.  We have a conference room on our floor that we book for the last hour of the day, a few people volunteer to bring light food, and there's minimal - if any - decorations.  But, like I said, this time they went all out!  Especially when you consider they had to drag all this stuff to work and I didn't see any of it in advance!

The theme of the shower was Baby E's Sweet Shoppe.  They definitely geared it towards my wicked sweet tooth!  Here's the table that I saw when I first walked into our Boardroom.  (It wasn't even in our typical conference room location; we went to the penthouse for this shower!)

My sweet friend Allyson made the backdrop out of crepe paper.  Did you know that when you sew two streamers of it together it ruffles up like that?  I sure didn't!  She sewed lots of streamers together and then attached them from some kind of board she picked up at Home Depot.  She made the banner to go on it too, and I hear she had sneakily had our intern cutting out the letters to attach to the fabric triangles!  And all this time I thought they were over there working on Fixed Assets...

The food table was chock full of all the best sweets.  Mason jars were filled with all kinds of pink candy.

Every Sweet Shoppe needs a tray full of cookies.

There was also lots of cupcakes from my favorite local bakery - Muddy's.

On the other tables were bottle vases filled with flowers.  Maybe they've been reading my blog??

Also on the tables were the cutest bowls of ice cream I've ever seen!  This is not the best picture of one of them, but they were small plastic bowls with scoops of ice cream made out of baby onesies and blankets topped with a cherry and spoon.  Super cute!

I really, really hate that these are all the pictures I have from the shower.  I'm sure this may not seem like a big deal of a shower compared to what other workplaces do, but my friends put so much effort into this and I really hope they know how much I appreciate it.  All the little details that made it so "me" did not go unnoticed at all!  Kim and Allyson - since I know you two were probably in charge (and the only two reading this), thank you both so, so much!  Everything was perfect!

I guess I should say that while completely adorable, the decorations are not the only reason I loved the shower.  I genuinely appreciate that so many friends took time out of their day to celebrate with us and shower our baby girl with gifts.  Trust me when I say that Doc and I are very aware of how lucky we are to work with people that care about us and our little girl and her well-being.  We are so very, very grateful.

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!!

Playing Catch Up

I know I've already told you were in the midst of a very busy season, and I'm assuming from my lack of posting over the last week or so you can tell that it hasn't let up any.  Things are still crazy and hectic and there's no sign of them slowing down anytime soon, but tonight I've decided to park it on the couch, watch the Olympics, and try to get caught up on blog posts.  My body could use a night of minimal movement, anyway. I'm going through a lot of pictures and since I like to try to stay in chronological order on the blog, I'm going to be back-tracking a couple weeks.  But first, I thought I'd just write up a quick update with where we are now on several things.  I've already told Doc that I'm not allowed to go to bed tonight until I've written at least 4 blog posts for this week, so get ready to do some reading this week!

First update, and probably the biggest one, is the house situation.  When I last wrote about it, we were awaiting an inspection and we had that done a couple weeks ago.  The inspection came back almost perfect - the first "easy" thing in this whole ordeal - so we were still on to purchase the house.  I think the sellers only tried to back out one time since then, but it's all a little hazy at this point.  The good news though is that we finally closed this past Thursday!  The house is ours!!  We had some last-minute negotiations about taking possession (they didn't really think through the whole your-stuff-has-to-be-out-at-closing part in advance so we gave them a couple extra days after closing) and so right now we're just twiddling our thumbs until 3:00 Monday afternoon when we take possession.  Not much longer!

We aren't planning on actually moving in until around the 17th of this month so we can get a few things done first.  We'll be replacing the carpet in a couple bedrooms and are putting up a plank wall in the nursery.  The master suite and nursery will also get fresh coats of paint.  I've got to get busy picking out paint colors and carpet!

For those of you who have asked about our current house, we have no immediate plans to sell it.  We have met with a rental company and plan on renting it out probably at the beginning of September.  This has really worked out well so we can move out at our own pace (for me these days, that means slow!).

As far as packing goes, I've completed just two rooms: the kids' bedroom and playroom.  They won't sleep at our current house again so I was able to jump on those two rooms first.  Unfortunately, nothing else has been touched.  It will all get done in time though.

While I haven't packed anything, I did take the time to go through each room and pull out stuff to get rid of.  The less junk we have to move, the better.  We had a yard sale at my parents' house this morning to clean out a few things.  We only had one big ticket item - our kitchen table and chairs - and still managed to rake in over $850.  We did way better than I expected us too!  And we didn't even sell out of everything - multiple bags of stuff still got donated.  Also, please learn from my mistake: do not hold a yard sale in the August heat when you're 7+ months pregnant.  It was pretty miserable.

We also sold our kitchen rugs along with the table and chairs, so our kitchen is currently feeling extra spacious and echo-y.  I guess we are officially not inviting guests over anymore!  I've also sent the chair and storage cubes from our bedroom off to be reupholstered so its feeling kinda empty too.  I've stopped putting things away after using them.  Instead, I end up laying them on the floor in our bedroom so they can eventually be packed.  Hopefully we'll be able to stay sane while living in all this chaos over the next couple of weeks.

Non-house-related things have been happening too.  We've had two baby showers already which have been great!  We're getting close to finishing up the two pieces of furniture we're redoing for the baby's room.  Last Sunday Doc (and my dad, brother, and nephew) sang in the choir at church in a special all-male performance.  It was wonderful!  Doc has also done a little bit of traveling and my work continues to be busy.  We helped celebrate the birthday of a friend with a surprise party last Friday night.  I was sick a couple of days this week (self diagnosis: dehydration and possibly a small bug) and am slowly getting my energy back.  Also trying hard to stay hydrated!

I'm sure there's so much more, but that hits most of the highlights!  I am ready for things to slow down a bit but realize it might be a while before that happens.  In the meantime, I'll just keep crossing things off my ever growing to-do list in hopes that one day it will be complete!

Preggo

Hello!  I'm back from a short blogging break with another update on the ol' pregnancy.

• As I type, I'm 31 weeks plus 6 days along, which means...

• Eek!  We're down to single digits!  Tomorrow the 9 will change to an 8 as my due date gets closer and closer.  I'm not going to lie, I'm getting kind of nervous!
• At this past week's appointment, Baby Girl's heartbeat clocked in at 142.  The doctor said that was good.  I also got the devastating news that I put on TEN pounds in just 3 weeks.  Yikes!  Guess I took celebrating passing my glucose test a little too far.  Let's hope I don't keep this pace up or I'll be the size of a house by the time she arrives!
• I am now taking an iron supplement with my prenatal vitamins.  I'm just a few days in taking it and already feel a little bit better.  I was SO tired before.  I'm glad to have a little more energy back but could definitely do without the side effects that come with taking iron (if you've taken it before, you know what I'm talking about).
• Things are beginning to get uncomfortable.  I know I have two months left and shouldn't be complaining since it will only get worse, but I already feel like I'm running out of room for this little girl!  It's hard to imagine how I could possibly get any bigger.  Physically, I could be ready for her to come on out.  Mentally, I'm definitely not ready yet.  Logistically, she just has to stay in a while longer.  There's way too much to do before she arrives!
• I hesitate to say the restless legs are getting better because they are definitely still there, but I'm figuring out ways to manage them so I can get some sleep.  I've researched home remedies so if they start bugging me, I do lots of stretching and muscle flexing.  I also have another fan by the bed (that makes 3 in our room total now) because I've figured out they're not as bad if I'm cold.  Actually, it's impossible to get me cold these days so I guess I should say they're not as bad is I'm less hot than usual.
• I'm still taking weekly pics and they're still pretty embarrasing and awkward!  Here are the ones I shared last time.

 

 

• And here are more recent pics of the bump.

 

 

• From the pics you can tell that A) the bump is growing, B) I need a tan, and C) I need a haircut.  Apparently I've decided I can't get my hair done while pregnant. (???) I guess I only have 2 months left, might as well hold out a little longer.  Maybe I'll get it all chopped off after she arrives.
• We have already been spoiled by many of our friends at two different baby showers.  I'm working on getting the pictures together for those posts, but trust me when I say Baby Girl is racking up some really cute stuff!

I can't think of anything else to update you on so I guess I'll call it quits.  If you were almost 32 weeks pregnant, what would you be doing to prepare for the arrival of your baby?  (Assuming you weren't packing up a house, planning a yardsale, and moving in the next couple of weeks...)