Recap

My last week of teaching summer school is this coming week, and then I have two weeks off before starting up again full time mid-August (still should be pretty low key because the kids don't come back until after labor day). I cannot believe the summer has flown by so quickly. Even though I love my troublemakers, I don't think I'll volunteer for summer school again. Teachers need their vacations or they would go insane!

Since I am experiencing a healthy dose of morning sickness (or should I say evening sickness?), I thought this would be a good time to catch up on some belated blog postings.

I'll start with the monstrosity of a baby shower. This shower was for my dear friend Aja (mom of Bentley) and baby Bella. The colors were pink, white and brown with a Sister Bear theme (the Berenstain Bears were Aja's (and my!) favorite childhood books. It was huge shower (around 40 people) and we went ALL out! I was lucky enough to have Aja's friend Mandi (who just happens to be a wedding planner) as a co-host and we are both about equally anally retentive, so I am very happy with how it all turned out. Enjoy the pics!

The entry featuring a cocktail table, the candy table and the guest book. There were more cocktail tables outside.

The guest book table.

The candy table had a banner that featured "Too Much Junk Food" which is the title of a Berenstain Bear book. We had cupcakes, rice crispy treats, strawberry jello squares and all sorts of pink, white and brown candy. We also provided clear favor bags for guests to take treats home.

The chocolate fountain. Guest could dip marshmallows, oreos, pretzels and fruit into the chocolate. The kids were obsessed with this!

The snack table. Thank you, Costco, for having the best party food ever!

The drink table. We had raspberry lemonade (spiked with champagne for the non-preggies) and water. I took the labels off of all the water bottles and McSexy and I made new labels out of beautiful pink papers. I am so glad I have a man-slave.

My favorite decor piece (besides the candy table) was the custom straws. I printed little labels to go on each straw and they were so cute! We served the drinks in canning jars which were cheap, reusable and a little bit rustic. Please don't even ask about the last minute fiasco involving NO ONE selling pink straws (I heart you, Walgreens!)

The food table, chocolate fountain and drinks. Mandi's dad made a gorgeous backdrop for the drink table involving hanging canning jars filled with flowers and candles. It was beautiful!

The gifts! We secretly collected baby pictures of Aja and her hubby Eric and framed them above the fireplace. MY IDEA was to take their baby pictures, use that website that lets you find out what your progeny will look like, morph Aja and Eric's pictures and BLOW IT UP over the fireplace as the centerpiece to the whole shower. That was nixed by Mandi but I swear, it would have made the whole shower. At least for me.

Faithful secretary Becky recording the gifts. We had each guest bring a treasured children's book (in place of a card) to build baby Bella's collection.

Super fun game where you chug liquid through a baby bottle. May the best girl (Laurel!) win! (Might I also point out that all the participants were teachers! Teachers will do anything for fun!)

Pacific University ladies. Some are my grad school girlies, most are my ELC co-workers including THE-BEST-BOSS-IN-THE-WHOLE-WORLD Shelley. We put an insert in the invites asking everyone to wear pink and white so everyone would coordinate with the decor (did I mention anally retentive?) which looked BEAUTIFUL!

Mommy Aja and myself. Thank you, Aja, for being such a caring and devoted friend. You are going to make the best mother EVA and I love you so much!

The shower was a blast to put on (you can see all the pictures here)! I have done showers in the past, but they have been pretty basic, so on this one I wanted to go all out with detail and impact! I think we succeeded! Now that I have done one monstrosity, I think that the next ones will be easier to do as I know exactly which details make the party and which ones to leave out. Though McSexy has made me promise to not commit to hosting any showers for quite a while because I think it almost put him in the grave!

Next post, I'll talk about some of my mini-vacations this summer!

What is a fetal pole? Can we dance around it?

Such was the response of my dear friend Becky when she received this text message from me at around 10 this morning -

"yay! 126 bpm heartbeat! lots of growth, fetal pole!... VERY GOOD NEWS!"

So we received our answer. Nugget is growing (must have been all those extra tacos I've been stuffing myself with) and has a strong heartbeat. I gasped when the ultrasound tech immediately flipped the screen around and pointed to a small flicker on the monitor. IS THAT MY BABY? I was not expecting anything at all, but I am so thankful for seeing growth and a tiny heartbeat.

I am also thankful that my St. V ultrasound was a much better experience than in the past and not just because the results were positive. In the waiting room, I was starting to have a little panic attack, immediately around the corner came the sweetest therapy dog (Gladys) that I have ever seen (besides Woodykins of course). Her owner brought her over to me, and as I began to pet her, I IMMEDIATELY felt calm. Gladys seemed to intuitively know my turmoil and she literally put her paw on my shoulder and nuzzled into me neck. I was covered with a wave of PEACE and knew I could make it through. In addition, the ultrasound tech was a guy and he was 5 million trillion times better than any u/s tech this far (remember PHILLIPA? rrrrrr). He talked us through everything, said how good it looked and how excited he was for us! I loved him and am thankful that God knew I could not handle another sullen, annoying woman.

I sincerely think that the progesterone saved baby Nugget. They are dating me at 6 weeks 4 days. So on or around March 21st, we are expecting little

Noah Jackson

or

(tentatively) Delilah (Lilah) Kate

Thanks be to GOD (and thank you all for your fervent prayers!). Today is a good day!