Time to celebrate

Recently I made friends with an incredibly talented girl named Emily who just happened to be a graphic designer. At the same time my fantastically amazing friend Molly offered to throw me a baby shower to welcome this little guy to the world.

When two awesome people like this come together, this is the kind of thing that happens:

The front of quite possibly the cutest invitation I've ever seen

And the back.


Seriously, I could not possibly love how these turned out more. What did I do in life to warrant such a totally rad demonstration of affection?

Update

 This weekend was SOOOOOO productive! One of the best parts of my job is that I have every other Friday off. Those off Fridays absolutely save my sanity. I woke up early Friday morning and decided that it was the day to clean up the mammoth weeds that have cropped up in the yard. I put on my favorite yard work shirt (graciously donated from the ear doctor's old wardrobe) and got to work.

After 3 hours of digging, pulling and hauling I decided I needed a quick trip to Home Depot. Just before running out the door I snapped this picture. I wanted my dad to be proud of the scary, dirty, rag tag outfit I decided to wear out in public.

Red face and all! I try to make him proud.

Saturday afternoon we crossed a major milestone off our baby preparation list...we picked out a chair! I have spent the last 4 months scouring the internet for the perfect chair to welcome the arrival of this kid. I wanted something clean lined and modern, but wasn't willing to sacrifice comfort. We don't have an official nursery room, so this chair is going to be part of our main living space so it couldn't be to juvenile. The arm rests had to be at the right height and really soft and cushy. After rocking my niece and 2 nephews to sleep in my sisters big overstuffed chair I knew how necessary this feature would be.

On Saturday we found it...at the LaZBoy store:

And although, this fabric would look fantastic in my mom's house, ours has more cool tones than reds. We decided we needed to make it custom with our own fabric. At first I found this fabric and fell in L-O-V-E:

 

That is...until I realized it would be $1000 more for that fabric. So then we found this much more affordable option:

Wait, you can't really tell the texture on it. Here's a close up:

 And even though I knew we coudln't justify spending $1000 extra I really loved the medallion fabric..don't you?

The ear doctor got a little tired of my hemming and hawing...

But in the end we made the choice and ordered the chair. It'll take 8-10 weeks to get to us so it'll be a race between the chair and the baby who gets here first. I can't tell you how thrilled I am just to have a decision made!

On Sunday we decided to host a little end of summer dinner party for some of our closest friends. I spent an hour or so in the morning clipping flowers from my yard and arranging them into centerpieces for the table. As I sat on the floor and stuck flowers into jars I remembered my mom doing a similar thing. Putting the spoils of all her hard summer yard work into something just beautiful.

It was an awesome night, the food was great, the conversation sparkling and the weather just perfect. 

Making the most of the moment

Last night the ear doctor and I decided the time had come to put together the crib his parents lovingly bought for us. I was excited about this since it kind of seemed like one of those pre-baby "moments" that can really mean a lot. I was also worried that we'd open the box and it was explode with a million tiny little screws and pieces that would take 5 hours to figure out how to assemble.

 That was not the case. There were a total of 5 pieces and 8 bolts to get the thing together. When we first started taking things out of the box Roscoe got really scared. He's terrified of our ladder and anything that remotely resembles it, so the side of the crib was terrifying for him.

We decided to put it together in our front room since there would be more space there for us to work. The thing went together in under 10 minutes.

 However, when we attempted to move it from the front room, through the kitchen and into the "nursery" (AKA mudroom) we were a little shocked to see that the doorway cut in 1923 wasn't big enough to enable to passage of the crib through the room. Oops.

At this point all we had to do was take on of the sides off to get it through the doorway.

 We thought we were home free until we tried to slide it back into place. The crib fits EXACTLY in the back of this room. And I mean EXACTLY in this room. There was no way we could fit it in the room partially built.

So we had to totally dismantle the thing and rebuild it again in place.

And it was about a million degrees in this little room yesterday.

 Once we finally got it put together, it was time to get out the mattress and put on the pad and sheets..

 Put the mattress in place...

 Stepped back...

 and whipped out instagram...

Once it was all set up we stood back and both stood there looking at the empty crib. It's all ready. We're ready. Our son has a place in our home.

Indugling his fantasies

This weekend there was a big BBQ festival in downtown Denver.

Have I mentioned often enough how much the ear doctor loves BBQ? He L-O-V-E-S BBQ. With a smouldering passion that has softened the connective tissues of his heart and allowed the deep smokey flavor to penetrate it, enacting a basic, fundamental chemical change therein.

He reads about BBQ, thinks about BBQ, talks about BBQ, and I'm sure dreams about it, so when we heard they were having a showcase of some of the country's best pit masters in our fair city I knew we'd be going.

Saturday afternoon we found ourselves taking a behind the scenes tour of the smokers and talking to the masters themselves. We learned the tricks to a perfect brisket and ate more meat than two people should be allowed.

We sampled it all and even got me a banana pudding...my favorite part of southern cuisine.


We went to bed that night with satisfied smiles and full stomachs.

And the smell of smoke lingering in my hair only woke me up twice in the night. 

Week 27

How am I feeling?


HOT!

 

and craving sour patch kids like you wouldn't believe!