A Shower and a Farewell

My baby shower was sort of a bittersweet day for me. 

We'll start with the sweet. :)  

My mom, some friends, and my sister ( who couldn't be there, but provided some awesome designs for it ) created the most perfect baby shower for me.  I, with the help of my oldest step son, came up with a robot theme.  Mom took it from there.  It was adorable!

Mom made all these completely awesome robot centerpieces out of junk she collected.

My dad made this super cool robot lamp.  If you look closely, you'll see a small robot drawing done by little man's oldest brother. :)

My Mother-in-Law brought her gift all decked out like a robot.  So cute!!

And a friend made this adorable and delicious strawberry cake!

I'm still waiting to see the pictures take than day.  I only got these few from my phone.  So many wonderful ladies came to celebrate with me though.  I felt so loved.  :)

I wish I had a picture of the yummy meal we had!  We did a nacho bar with all the fixings.  It was soooo good.

And now for the bitter. :(

The day of my baby shower was also the day I had to say goodbye to the home I grew up in.  My parents closed on their house two days later.  It was really hard to say goodbye.  Dad says it's just a house, but I don't think that's true.  It was home for me for about 16 years.  I have so many memories there.  I'm sad that my son will never get to enjoy it.  He won't get the fun of fishing off the dock or learning to swim in the pool.  I know he will have other wonderful memories, but it's hard to think they won't take place in that home.  When I left the shower, I sobbed half-way back to my house. :'(

I'm very thankful for the years I had there.  It was a wonderful place to live and have people come to visit.  I'm also very glad that I can look back on the memory of having my wedding reception there.  I'll miss that place.

And A Baby Carriage

I said there was more news to come. :)

Here it is.

13 Weeks....Gender still unknown at this point, but seriously, look at that tiny, adorable hand!

19 weeks.  It's a boy! 

 I'll spare you the money shot. You'll just have to take my word for it. ;)

37 Weeks!

Little Man, name to be determined, arriving sometime around October 1st!

Love and Marriage

Ack, almost a year later and yeah....so life has changed a bit in that time!  

 Guess who got married!
May 31, 2014

I love my ring. :) Check out those teal diamonds.  That was D's idea, and I think they are amazing.

We got married in a little church close to my house.  It was a small, short ceremony, 50 people including guests and wedding party, but I loved it.

The reception was at my parent's house.  I'm so glad we ended up having it there.  It was perfect!

My mom made me a teal lace for the back of my dress.  The wedding was all teal and ivory.  My Aunties came to help make everything beautiful, and they did a wonderful job.  

 As teal is not exactly a natural flower color, I decide to go with something for my bouquet that looked more like I had just picked them from a garden or field.  When my flowers died a week or so later, I was so sad, but I certainly did enjoy them.

 My aunts, grandmothers, and I made these ribbon sticks for people to wave at us as we came out of the church.

And these very special girls all came to celebrate with me.  I don't know what I would have done without a single one of them. They kept me calm.  They helped with anything that needed doing.  They were amazing.

Of course, the best part about my wedding was knowing I get to spend my life with this guy...

 ...that and maaaaybeee the cheesecakes. :D

More news to come!

Halloween and Tardis Dress

 I LOVE my TARDIS dress.  I LOVE LOVE LOVE it! I could never have done it without the help of my Auntie.  I helped cut and pin and such, but she did the VAST majority of the work on this dress.  I did add the finishing TARDIS details though.  I made the belt, "PULL TO OPEN" sign, and light hair clip. Below is a crappy selfie, but it shows the glowing light.  I used cut up glow sticks to light it up.  I totally enjoyed my blue hair clip ins as well. :)

Halloween night started out a bit nutty.  Everything went wrong as I tried to leave my house.  Work stuff went crazy and I kept remembering other things I needed to grab.  I had various things the boys needed for their costumes and things I needed for mine.  I was a bit of a wreck by the time I finally left the house.  Then, about halfway to D's house, I realized that I'd left the face paint for N's costume sitting by my front door.  It was pretty necessary, so I had to stop at a costume store on the way.  Of course, EVERY OTHER PERSON ON EARTH was there too.  I stood in line FOR-EV-ER.  I did however make a fan while I was there.  This teenage girl a few people in front of me in line turned around, saw me, gasped, and squealed to her mother, "I LOVE HER DRESS!!! SHE'S THE TARDIS!!"  The whole time we were in line she kept turning around to stare at me, wave, thumbs up me, and grin.  It was pretty funny.

I finally got out of there and back on the road.  I pulled onto D's street only to realize that his van was not in his driveway.  I was totally confused for a moment and then it hit me...CRAP! I bet I was supposed to meet him at his parents' house where we would be trick or treating later.  I called him, and yeah...somehow that got lost in translation.  By this time I was frustrated and stressed and on the verge of a panic attack.  It took me the whole drive out to his parents' to calm down, but by the time I got there I was feeling much better.  

We had dinner and got the boys ready for trick or treating.  

I cannot even tell you how many hours of work went into these costumes.  It was a lot.  I think they turned out awesome though.  S was Megaman and N was Lion-o from the Thundercats.  N's hair was a blast to do.  I teased it like crazy and sprayed him down.  It was so much fun, and I think it looked great.  Everyone seemed to enjoy it when we were trick or treating.  Between his costume, saying "Trick or treat. Smell my feet.  Give me something good to eat" and his amazing way with people, he managed weasel about twice as much candy out of people as the other kids got.  I wish I knew his secret.

Spooktacular Symphony!

 A couple of weeks ago the local symphony did a family Halloween event.  The boys had never been to the symphony, so I thought it would be a fun way to introduce them to something that I love.  The first hour of the event was trick or treating and getting hands-on with the instruments.  The boys had a blast getting to play on the cello, violin, trumpet, bassoon, harp, and some of the percussion "toys." The various members of the symphony were dressed in Halloween costumes and were giving out candy, so of course they enjoyed that as well. 

 

Many of the children who came to the event were also dressed in costumes, but we hadn't finished this years costumes a that point, so the boys had to go without.  

During the actual performance, the children were invited to come and sit up on the stage to listen and watch.  It was fun seeing all the kids up there in their costumes.

The concert itself had it's ups and downs.  I enjoyed most of the music they played, but I think they could have made some better, more exciting choices for something directed toward children.  I think if you want to get kids excited about music, you need to give them interesting music to start out with.  A few of their choices were fun and appropriately spooky for the theme, but much of it was a bit of a snooze...even for me. Still, we all had a wonderful time, and I loved seeing the boys get excited about the different instruments.

I hope we have the opportunity to go to another event like this in the future. 

Michigan Vacation Part 6

Monday was less go-go-go than the rest of the trip.  It was the last day for both Aunt L and myself, and we didn't really plan anything exciting.  I woke up feeling pretty crappy.  At first I thought it was just pain from the bed I'd slept on, but it seemed to get worse as the day progressed.  I never actually took my temp, but I think I may be been running a low-grade fever.   Somewhere around mid afternoon, I broke down and took some pain killers.  The day greatly improved after that.

Gramma had to spend a couple hours in the morning and evening at her church's food pantry, so the rest of us went along with her.  Her church is the church where I grew up.  Before I was born, my parents and a few other people started it.  When I was little, we met in a house that they had converted into the church.  As the church grew, my dad and others added on to the building, and made it into a very nice facility.  I attended there until we moved to Florida in 1991, and even then, I considered it my home church for many years.  We would spend the summers and often Christmas in MI, and we always attended that church.  I had many close friends there...people I still get to occasionally see or talk to.  

It was a strange feeling to walk around the building.  It was so familiar yet different.  I guess it was kind of like going back to your childhood home.  The walls and windows and memories are all still there, but the life you had in it is gone.  I walked all through the building.  I saw the rooms where I was cared for as a baby.  I saw old Sunday school classrooms and the gym we would play in on Wednesday nights.  I walked through the bathroom and went up in the balcony.  I walked up the ramp that I once was carried up as a spewed forth purple, grape juicy, projectile vomit (you are most welcome for that mental image.) 

 The church basement, where I used to be in nursery, Sunday school, and Kings Kids, is now used for the food and clothing ministry.  I remember spending the night with my sister and Gramma in the room in the top right picture once.  She would clean the church at crazy hours of the morning, and for some reason we ended up having a little sleep over there.  We rented Little Women and The Secret Garden I think. 

Once, in the gym (on the bottom right), a bunch of our friends got together for a big sleepover.  This was after we had moved to Florida, but we were "home" for the summer.  I guess we would have been in our early teens at the time.  We watched Newsies and stayed up all night talking and playing and being silly.  I have so many wonderful memories in that church.  Revisiting them made me a little homesick for my childhood.


In the afternoon, between shifts at the food pantry, I took a walk with my Aunts.  There were several pretty trees on our walk.  Have I mentioned that I love the colors of fall?  I have? Oh well.  I LOVE FALL COLOR!


Our evening at the food pantry was interesting to say the least.  Many of the people who help her there have various mental and physical issues.  I think their families bring them over there to give them something to do.  I'm glad they can have a place where they feel welcome and needed.  I must say though,  they would make for a good cast of characters on a TV show. 

When we finished at the food pantry, we went out for Thai food.  The four of us shared a curry fried rice and an order of Pad Thai, and had we could have fed another person on the leftovers from just those two meals.  It was delicious though.  

Monday night we played a quick game of dominoes and then all headed off to bed.  Tuesday morning Aunt L and I had to be at the airport around 5. 

I'm so glad I took this trip.  There are a lot of places and people that I want to visit, but I felt like I needed to go see my MI family.  I had been looking forward to it, but I'm happy to say that it turned out to be even more fun than I had expected.  It was also nice to be able to have the job flexibility to do it.  I was able to take my work with me.  It meant a lot of late nights and a few stressful daytime interruptions, but for the most part it worked out really well.  Thank goodness for WiFi and mobile hotspots!   :) 

I wonder where my next adventure will take me...