Auntie

Michael and I met each other in November 1996.  We started dating in January 1997.  Michael's brother, Raymond, got married to Jennifer in May 1997.  They had their first baby, Bryant, in August 1998 and their second baby, Cameron, in October 2001.  Michael and I got married in December 2001 so I was an aunt from the very minute I said my vows.  Alyssa joined their family in June 2007, just 10 weeks before Spencer was born.

 

Unfortunately, our time with our nephews and niece has been very limited (insert sad face).  In the last 17 years they have lived in Alabama, Tennesee, North Carolina, Germany, North Carolina again and now Florida.  We were there when Bryant was born in Tennessee, they visited us in 1999 when Bryant was a baby, they came to our wedding,  they came for a visit in 2005, we went to see them in Germany in 2006, we spent time together in Vermont in 2010 and they were here for a few weeks the summer of 2011. 

 

This was the summer of 2011 at our old house.  I was pregnant with Elliott, although we didn't know he was Elliott yet.  I think we found out a few weeks later. This is the only picture I could find with all of us together.  I'm glad we took them!

I am very happy to announce the I am an Auntie again.  And this time I get to be a blood relative of the baby.  Yay!

 

My brother and sister in law became the proud parents of Isabella Grace at 11:47 pm on May 19th.  She was born in Tampa and weighed 9 pounds 1 ounce and was 21.5 inches long.

 

She was less than 10 minutes old here.

Kendra texted me these pictures today.

 

Isabella was meditating on the way home from the hospital.

 

Being born and coming home is hard work!  Time for a nap.

 

I cropped it so I could see that sweet little face closer up. 

 

I have no idea when I will be able to meet this little buttercup, but hopefully it will be sooner rather than later.  It's weird and saddening that both my nephews and now both of my nieces live in Tampa.  Florida and Arizona need to move closer together.  Nobody needs Texas anyway (no offense Jennifer and Janet).

Stock the bar and BBQ party

Monica and Rick took a trip to Hawaii last summer.  Even before they left I told Monica that when they got engaged and set a wedding date I wanted to host a wedding shower for her.  Well, Rick didn't want to be ordinary (as if getting engaged in Hawaii is ordinary!) so he didn't propose on that trip.  He waited a few months and did it in October.  Monica asked me to be a bridesmaid and they both asked Spencer to be their ring bearer and I again told Monica that I wanted to host a shower for her.  We picked the date of May 17th for the shower way back in January.  It seemed like it was so far into the future.  But somehow time kept on ticking and it has now come and gone.

 

This is a list of what went wrong during the shower:

1) I forgot to put out the food label cards for the main course.

2) I forgot to add the parmesan to the 1st batch of caesar salad.  The second batch got the cheese, but I ran out of tomatoes.

3) I never took pictures of the food once the main course was presented.

4) I forgot to put out the extra bottle of BBQ sauce for the BBQ beef sandwiches.

5) I never took pictures of the dessert course.

6) I never got a posed picture of me and Michael together or Monica and Rick together.

7) I never took pictures of the tables outside.

 

And that's it.  I included that list so that you could see that all the things that went wrong were really quite minor in the grand scheme of things.  It was a great party!

 

One of Monica's other bridesmaids, Sarah, brought cute little decorations and flowers.

 

I re-used the gold glitter candle jars from Spencer's Golden Birthday Party.

Monica's mom gave me the little pig watering can to thank me for hostessing.  He was so cute I added him to the decor.

 

The appetizers 

 

Cheesy spinach and bacon dip

 

Bacon and parmesan shortbread

 

BBQ pineapple meatballs

 

Mini roasted peppers filled with goat cheese and drizzled with pesto

Monica's step-sister made the barbie cake.  And that's supposed to be Rick in the pink convertible.

 

The guests

 

Rick (in black) and one of his groomsmen

This is the place where I should have pictures of dinner.  We had BBQ beef sandwiches, a big fruit platter and caesar salad.

 

I was busy cleaning up after dinner and setting up dessert so I had Monica's cousin's wife take these pictures.  The "theme" of the party was stock the bar and stock the BBQ.  I sent a big list of gift ideas with the invitations.  It was really fun to see how creative people were.

 

This is Monica's cousin's son.  He was the only kid at the party.

 

We gave them little fishie wine glass charms and a set of multicolored highball glasses.

Dessert, again, not photographed, was a huge make your own ice cream sundae bar.  I had 5 different flavors of ice cream and a million toppings- chocolate syrup, peanuts, sprinkles, graham cracker crumbs, sugar cone pieces, oreos, frosted animal crackers, cherries, chocolate chip cookies, brownies, whipped cream, and a bunch of different kinds of cereal.

 

We also cut the barbie cake.  Poor barbie.

At least I got 1 picture with Monica.  It's also the only picture of me from the whole party.  At least I can prove I was there!

Now we just have to make it through 5 months of heat and we'll be ready to party down at the wedding in October.

Pre-party

The couples wedding shower is done!  It was a total success and I had a blast hosting it, but I'm glad that it's over.  Now I can focus on the end of the school year, Spencer's graduation, Michael's birthday and Father's Day.  It's going to be a busy month.

 

I will, of course, be writing an entire post about the party, but before that I wanted to talk about a few end of the week last week happenings.

 

Spencer had a crazy hat and sock day on Friday.

I made a double batch of cookie dough for the party.  This particular recipe is made with melted butter and must be refrigerated in order to bake correctly so I made it ahead of time.  I thought the tub-o-dough was funny.

Elliott was 2 years and 5 months on Friday.  We had a really busy day and didn't remember to do pictures until after dinner.  Spencer wore his crab shirt for his picture this month and I thought it would be cute to have them match for the month.

 

He was not enthusiastic about sitting in the chair.

 

So he sat on the deck.

 

And stood.

 

But then we bribed him with a chocolate egg and got him to sit in the chair.

 

Official 

May 2014

Spencer (6 years 8 months on the 6th) and Elliott (2 years 5 months on the 16th)

 I was prepared enough for the party ahead of time so I was able to attend my girl's get-together on Saturday morning.  I actually planned the party menu so that I would be able to do this since I knew months ago that both would be on the same day.

 

We met at the Japanese Friendship Garden in downtown Phoenix.  It was beautiful, but with a high of 104 degrees on Saturday, even at 10 am it was a little toasty. 

 

 

Lauren and I were faux posing for Senior pictures. 

After the gardens I made my 100th trip to a grocery store for a few more party things.  Then I rushed home because Michael's parents came up from Tucson to retrieve our children and they were leaving soon.

 

This was pretty much the best idea I have ever had in my entire life and was about 80% of the reason why the party was such a success.  A few weeks ago I decided that everything would go so much more smoothly without children here while we prepared for the party and held the party, so we sent them to Tucson.

 

All Elliott could talk about was driving in Grandma and Papa's new red car.  They were both very excited.

They left right around noon, which gave us 5 hours to get everything ready.  Things went so smoothly I was even able to sit down at 3:00 and have a snack and rest for a bit.  It was amazing.  I was totally ready for everything when the party started.  That hasn't happened since before Spencer was born.

So, since Elliott was sleeping in Tucson and not in our bed, we were able to put the rails down on our bed, make our bed and actually take nice pictures of our room.  I don't think I've ever shown pictures of our master bedroom because first, we didn't have drapes for a long time and second, even after we got drapes the bed is always so ugly and messy looking because of the rails.

 

So here you go.  Our bedroom, with drapes and no bed rails.

 

Yay!  Up next, the party!