Richard Turns 35 and Hat Cake

Happy Birthday Richard!!!!

We celebrated with chili and cornbread and game night. Here are a few pictures.

Whoa, that's a close up of Craig! He looks upset because he didn't win.


And Jon is celebrating his high point score.


Evelyn was helping too. At least she was helping the rest of us by distracting Stacy.


I also made Richard a Cub's hat cake. He loved it!


I even tried to make the little cub on the back of the hat so it matched Richard's hat exactly.


In case you were wondering, it was a cinnamon streusel layer cake with cream cheese frosting. MMMmmm my mouth is watering just thinking about it.




Everyone seemed to like it!



Happy Birthday Richard! I love you!!

Gabriel's Baby Shower

I have to brag. I have such wonderful friends! They did an amazing job throwing a baby shower. It was held at Rachel's house, and we sat outside in the wonderful warm and sunny weather of Southern California.

Here are some pictures of how things were decorated.



Beautiful flowers made by Marlene's sister Rose. She painted them blue!



This is Pig-a-choo (Pig + choo choo). Danielle painted him and thus named him.



He is filled with quarters to start off Gabriel's college fund. Oh, if quarters was all it took!



I was very impressed when I saw this amazing cake Danielle and Marlene made! As their teacher, I am so proud. Although, they may have surpassed me. This cake was awesome!!



The California license plate has Gabriel's initials and his due date.







This is Erin holding Stacy's baby, Evelyn. Evelyn was too cool with those sunglasses.



The two happy prego ladies.



And our babies saying hello.



One of the games we played was guessing how many times you can wrap a roll of toilet paper around my belly. Can you guess? It was double ply toilet paper. To help, here's a profile shot of me.



OK. The answer is... 22 times! Lysken actually guessed the exact number!



Another game was drinking kool-aid from a bottle. Whoever finishes the fastest wins.



They gave me a bottle with the cap still on, so I couldn't drink anything! And after we all started drinking it, we realized they forgot to put any sugar in the kool-aid. It was so sour!



Jill was the winner!





And of course there were lots of gifts.









I had a wonderful time at the shower. Thanks to the hostesses to put it together (Lauren, Sarah, and Veronica couldn't make it)



Thanks everyone for the great gifts! Gabriel is almost here!!

Work Shower

Last week, my friends, Chantee and Jill, put together a shower at work for Richard and I. We got a couple pictures of us and the cake. Thanks for the shower!

Belly Shot

Here's an update on the profile/belly shot. The first picture was taken when I was 1 1/2 months pregnant.



This picture was taken a couple days ago, and I am 8 months pregnant.

A Trip to the Hospital

The doctor has told me I should be feeling the baby move every 2 hours. Yesterday, I hadn't felt the baby move the entire morning. Then I started to get some stomach pains. Not feeling too worried yet, I called the doctor around lunch time and explained what was going on. Once I said I hadn't felt the baby move since the night before, they asked me to go in to the labor and delivery part of the hospital to be monitored. This is when I started to get scared. I called Richard in the middle of a meeting and started crying when I told him I needed to go to the hospital. We both rushed out of work and drove to the hospital right away. The whole time I kept drinking water and paying attention to my belly, but still felt no movement.

Once we got to the hospital, the nurses hooked me up to a monitor and we could hear the heart beat. Then they gave me a button and asked me to push it whenever I felt the baby move for the next 20 minutes. That's when Gabriel decided to wake up and make me feel better. Not only did he start moving around, but he got hiccups too. I started pressing the button so much my thumb was hurting. But I was fine with a sore thumb, since I knew the baby was OK. Richard took this picture of me when I started to feel better.



So the baby is fine. Maybe he was just playing a little trick on us. Today we are 4 weeks away from Gabriel's due date. I hope the next time we go to the hospital is for the delivery!

Preparation for Chilbirth

Wow we haven't written in a long time! Our holidays were filled with fun stuff to share, but we were so busy having fun that we forgot to share! I'll see if I can post some photos later this week. For now I'll just give a quick update.

Today Richard and I took an 8 hour Preparation for Childbirth class. It was a lot of information at once, but such a great class! Most of the other couples were about as far along as we are. By the way, I'm 5 weeks away from my due date! Crazy, I know! I would say I feel pretty comfortable with the whole labor and delivery thing now. Enough studying and classes have made me feel like I know what to expect.

My last day of work in this Wednesday. I've already been thinking of all the stuff I can get done around the house when I'm off work, but Richard keeps reminding me to relax and put my feet up.

The status of the baby's room is, well, not very good at all. We have a crib that's partially assembled, a dresser that's pretty empty, drapes that need to be hung, and Thanksgiving and Christmas decorations lying around that still haven't been put up. If we're this poorly organized before having a child, I can't imagine how folks get through it with a child and both parents working! They must be superheros.

Guess that's the update. More to come...