The first girls weekend

My first of two this year! Cara and I had planned months ago to have a girls weekend or girls day this past weekend. (Phillip was in Houston at the Sweet Sixteen and Elite Eight so don't think I just left him at home by himself!) Then, about a month ago, I was offered a shower at my parents' church in Abilene. Naturally, I said yes...but this was the only weekend we could do it. So, to Abilene we went.

We spent much of Saturday looking through my baby clothes...the ones my mom had kept for the past 30 years. It was fun looking through them and remembering some of the people who had given those clothes to us. As we looked, we sorted what could possibly be used for a boy, should we have a boy. We found some, though, obviously, not as many as we found for a girl!

Sunday was the shower. My good friend Dianne and her husband Bobby own McKay's Bakery so guess who did the cake!

(yes, I know some of the pictures are duplicates, but you can't do just 5 pictures!)

Dianne also hosted the shower at her house and put on a wonderful party with some fun decorations!

And finally, guests and loot! Seriously, the shower was loads of fun.

Two of my favorite gifts were sentimental ones. I'll share them here, but have tissues ready. (Mom, you should probably stop reading here!)

Grandmommy, my mom's mom, passed away in August 2006. For many years she knitted afghans. Sometime before she died, she made baby afghans for her great-grandbabies who were yet to come. I only found out about them just a couple months ago. Mom took my stack of four up to Granddaddy and had him pick out which one he wanted to give this baby. Below is the blanket and the card. (Mom made the card, but Granddaddy wrote in it.) Needless to say, there were few dry eyes when I read the card in front of Granddaddy. We both miss her terribly, but as one woman said...Grandmommy already knows if it's a boy or a girl! (And, just so you know, my dad's dad and Phillip's paternal grandparents are up in heaven watching too so they're in on the secret too.)

The other gift is a matted picture of two special gifts.

When my mom was pregnant with my sister, Grandpa, my dad's dad, made a changing table for her. It was Jenni's changing table, then mine, then used as an entertainment center/storage shelves in my mom's study for years. When Jenni moved to Dallas, she brought it with her and used it as an entertainment center, extra storage in her bedroom, and finally storage shelves in her garage. When she found out I was pregnant, she offered it for its original use...a changing table. My parents graciously had it sanded and repainted for us for our baby.

(This is how it looked for Jenni's nursery. I don't have pictures of it redone yet.)

When Jenni was born, Grandmommy & Granddaddy purchased the crib that Jenni & I both used. Now that the next generation is here, Mom & Daddy also had this refinished (mostly to take care of the teeth marks that were so prevalent on the end!).

If you can still see the screen through your tears, I applaud you. I teared up as I wrote it!!

The first shower

Today, Phillip's school hosted a baby shower for us. I was overwhelmed by the number of people who came. We had a great time and received lots of great gifts.

Cloth diapers

When we found out I was pregnant (and maybe even before), Phillip and I talked about using cloth diapers for at least part of the time. What we're planning to do is use them at home and use disposables when we're out and about (and traveling) for the sake of convenience and not having to carry around dirty diapers. I had done some research online and found out that there was WAY too much information about cloth diapers out there. Someone suggested that there was a store in the metroplex so I looked and, sure enough, there are two!

We went to Babies Bottoms and More in Farmers Branch today to find out more information. I had done a lot of research and kind of knew what options there were, but Phillip didn't know anything about them, so we asked Diana to go through everything. She spent about 30 minutes with us showing us the different options we had and helping us decide what we needed to buy. We decided that, for our newborn, we would use prefolds and diaper covers. Later on, we can use the prefolds in a pocket diaper for more absorbency. (And, yes, much farther down the line, we can use them as dust rags...as my mom still does to this day!) So, we purchased 24 prefold diapers and 4 covers, enough for about 2 days if cloth diapering full time. We may buy more in the future, but I know I can get them used online as well. We're excited about this and it was actually less expensive than we were planning so that's even better!

28 Weeks

I apologize for the tardiness of this post, but we had a virus on our computer so I've spent the last couple nights trying to clean it off. All is well now so we're back on the world wide web. :-) Yep, that's baby starting to show!

Weekend review

What a weekend! Saturday, Phillip & I had two more elder couples over for dinner. That meant a day of prep work for me. Fortunately, I thought to wear my maternity support belt. Boy, did that help!!! I was on my feet more than I should have been, but I don't seem too worse for the wear. I made onion pie (for dinner) & rolls (for Sunday's potluck), cracker crumb chicken, Delmonico potatoes (really good, but took longer than I expected), cinnamon apple ice cream topping, and carrots. It all turned out pretty good, but the rolls didn't rise much. I seem to be having trouble with rolls lately, even from different recipes. Maybe one day I'll get it!

Sunday, I crashed after the potluck. I slept for an hour and a half! It was wonderful!!! Then, I spent the rest of the afternoon doing stuff around the house before Phillip & I took Oso for a walk. Every time we do that, I say we need to do it more often. Now that it's light later, maybe we can. It'll be good for all of us.

Proud owners!

We are the proud new owners of TWO vehicles (not just one, as we had been for the last year). Yes, that's right, we have PAID OFF my Pilot!!! We got the title in the mail yesterday. We're still not completely debt free, but we are well on our way with some physical things to show for it! YEA!!!

Names

Last night we posed our problem to our Life Group. We asked them to write down baby names (both boy and girl). We also asked for names we shouldn't use. We had quite a time (at Life Group) going through them. That was some serious laughter for 30-45 minutes! In the end, we did come away with some the whole group liked (and we liked some of them too) and a stack that got trashed at Life Group. They were just that bad. Names like Chester, Rutherford, and Shanequa were shot down after some laughter. Anyway, we thank you all for your help!! (And, we'll still take any suggestions you might have!)

Help...

See Phillip's blog for our request (and just his blog in general).

Phillip's getting some practice in!

At one point, I was holding Jackson on my lap (or, rather, he was holding on to me). It was time to eat pizza, but my hands were obviously occupied, so Phillip fed me while Cara fed Jackson (while his hands were occupied too--he's a messy eater if his hands are free).

Fun (but busy) weekend

This weekend was fun, but very busy, with lots of driving.

Friday night we met Cara & Justin for dinner at i Fratelli. Wonderful food!!!

Saturday morning, after taking Phillip's truck in for an oil change, Phillip and I volunteered at Skillman's first Angel Food Ministries distribution. Because it was our first distribution, we learned some things, and they were appreciative of Phillip's & my input since we've been customers at two different locations before Skillman.

Then, we spent some time at Target adding things to our registry and doing a bit of grocery shopping. (We were already there, so why not?)

We came home to unload the Angel Food that we had ordered and eat lunch. Then we were off again. We went to Babies R Us to buy the Pack 'n Play that Phillip's parents and grandparents are giving us. Since it was temporarily unavailable online, we just went to the store to buy it and saved on shipping. Now that's sitting in the box in the nursery just waiting to be put together. Yes, Phillip, it does require assembly!

We picked up Phillip's truck then headed home for a bit of rest before driving to Keller for Zachary's birthday party. He turned 2 last week so we went to a great park to hang out and have cupcakes and visit with Cara & Justin (yes, again) and their families. It was a good thing we didn't do dinner with anyone that night because we didn't get home until 7:45!! Fortunately, we'd had pizza at the park so we weren't starving when we got home.

Yesterday was church as usual then lunch at Jenni's with my cousin Blake, Lianne & Andrew (what a cutie!). The spaghetti was wonderful. I may have to use that for one of our elder dinners!

Phillip had gotten an email yesterday morning from Circuit City and some of their camcorders were on sale (online only, we discovered) so on the way home, we went by just to see and hold the ones we had picked out. Comparing them in the store, we decided which one we wanted so we went home to order it. As we were ordering it, we found that they have free in-store pick up. So, we placed our order then headed back to Circuit City to pick it up! But, by doing that, we were able to save almost $200!!! So, we have a new toy, a Sony Handycam DCR-SR42.

Finally, we got to rest for the evening. I got to sew on our Christmas tree skirt (my goal is to have it finished by Christmas...we'll see how close I get!) and walk on the treadmill and just spend some time at home with my sweetie!