Baby Shower for a future Super Hero

Our very first couple friends, David and Annie (they met each other at the same time as Matt and I) are having their first baby!  We are so excited to have moved closer to D&A and I am so excited to share motherhood with Annie.  They are going to be amazing parents and to celebrate I planned a baby shower with her best friend from New York.  We decided on a Super Hero theme and ran with it.  The day went great and the dry run that I had the week before (yes my "mommy brain" confused the weekends and I had everything ready to go the week before the shower AND I made Matt and the boys drive all the way across town for no reason, yeah me) made the actual day a whole lot less stressful for me. 

The lovely mom to be

 

and my amazing co-host

 The decorations:

 Carrie found all sorts of cool comic books and posters to place all around

 

And I made Henry a wooden star banner and a superhero mobile for his nursery.  I also found and we a cool nursery rhyme comic book  for them to read to him. 

 Orson loved the yard, other kids and the dogs!!

 and Ferdinand loved all the attention

We also set up a onsie making station

 And for dessert I made some gluten free super hero rice crispy pops and peanut butter cookies, Russian tea cakes/Mexican wedding cookies (I added some almond extract to these, they are my new favorite) and Ice Box cookies rolled in red, yellow and blue sugar crystals.

It was so much fun and I can't wait for Henry to join us.

Parties, Bellies, Snow Hunting, Christmas decorations and more!

This has been a pretty busy couple of weeks and as usual I am behind in my blog.
First, Matt and I attended the ICF/Jones and Stokes Christmas party. We were very surprised by how wonderful and fancy it was, of course since we have both mostly only worked for the federal government that we haven't ever been to a company party before. We had a great night and met some new people who will hopefully become good friends. The company also paid for each of us to recieve a professional couple picture...so here it is:

(Not the best picture but hey they were free and Matt looks great)

My belly has been growing by leaps and bounds as you can see in the above pictures....here are a few more. One is the Matt's view and one is mine. As you can see from my view, half of my belly button is now poking out, I call it my ski slope :)














In semi gardening news, we finally decided on our Christmas tree this year after many false starts. The first time we went looking, we ended up with brand new bookcases from Ikea instead. The next time, Matt went in to sticker shock over the price of trees and finally realized why so many people not from Oregon (where the trees come from) buy fake trees. In the end, we brought in my Norfolk pine and decorated it. We also got the lights up outside the house and its beginning to look a lot like Christmas:














Today, after spending the week decorating and cleaning the house, we decided to take the girls out to see snow for the first time. We went "snow hunting" on interstate 50 and found an amazing spot. It was beautiful and it even started snowing again while we were there. Surprisingly, the girls seemed to be in heaven:

Although, I think Chaquita might have duplicated herself (due to some very werewolf like behavior during the full moon the last couple of nights, howling, screaming and breaking the wire that closes the door to her house) and is now living in AZ at a very nice house....as seen in this magazine add below:

(You can barely see it but this dog is as gray in the face as Chaquita)

Last but not least, we finished the baby's room (well almost). I am very proud of it, I even made the mobile myself....

























Oh wait I almost forgot....Cathy and Barbara from Matt's side of the family sent me the best baby shower gift ever!!!!! Fresh strawberries covered in chocolate and a note saying I don't have to share with anyone. They made me so happy that I giggled and laughed for almost an hour straight.

Some times blogger just doesn't cooperate....sorry for the strange layout but I am done trying to make it work!

Baby Shower

My friends and I entered the new century over the weekend. We had a conference call baby shower! My good friend Kelley (also prego) and I were talking many months back about how sad we were that we could not share our pregnancies with our friends because we are all so spread out across the country, when the concept of everyone just calling at the same time to celebrate came up. She took it a step further and threw me a shower complete with recommended treats, decorations and presents.
On Sunday, my friends and family from: Texas, Florida, Dakota, Louisiana, Montana, Minnesota, Iowa and London all called the same conference line inorder to play games, open presents and celebrate. It made me feel so loved and special to know that so many people were out there that loved me and our baby-to-be.
Here are a few pictures of were I sat for the the shower and the pile of gifts that came to my door.

The amount of boxes that came to my house was overwhelming (I love getting presents everyday). It took all of my self control and many, many reminders from Matt for me not to just tear into them when they arrived!
I set up my space with decorations sent from Kelley, a plate of cheese and crackers and a rootbeer!

After the party was over I took a picture of all the gifts so everyone that attened could see how well supplied baby Ewalt was beginning to be.

Last of all, here I am, super pregnant and growing everyday (thank goodness the midwives reassure me everyother week that I am normal and not turning into a big blob)!

Trip to Tampa and Orlando

I spent the week with Anne to celebrate her 30th birthday and to have a small baby shower. We had a great weekend in Orlando partially thanks to Dad sharing his time share with us. We ended up getting upgraded into a three bedroom suite, almost bigger then our house!

They had folded towel animals on the beds

The living area

My bathtub

Friday we celebrated Anne's birthday by attending a murder mystery dinner in Orlando

Then on Saturday Anne threw me a small but fun Baby shower. We woke up early and decorated the hotel suite and then played some fun games.

Anne and Erin making Cookies for on top of the cupcakes
The finished cupcakes
The table all set up (we couldn't decide between Winnie the Pooh and Noah's Ark so we did a little of both)
Anne found some great kids poetry books to hand out as favors.
One "game" was for everyone to create a hand painted onesie for the baby. Some of them turned out really well...our baby will have the coolest clothes around.
We also had diaper races. Erin had never put a diaper on a kid before. She had the fastest time but her diaper would have leaked everywhere so Anne clenched the win instead.
Anne and I finished out the weekend by spending some money at the Disney shops and then heading for Tampa.
It was a great week and lots of fun for me to spend time with family and other girls. I can't wait for Anne to come here next.