The Baby Shower!!!

After months of preparation, the baby shower to welcome little Oliver finally came. On a Sunday afternoon, May 4th, our backyard transformed into a welcoming garden gathering of our closest friends and family.




Chris and I spent Saturday with our friends Luci and Peter decorating cupcakes for the party.


The cupcake decorating team: Ann, Chris, Luci and Peter.



Ann concentrating on decorating the cupcakes for the shower.



Yummy....



We moved the dinning room table into the living room as a sign-in table. The guests were asked to fill in the name tags that read "Hello, I'm Uncle..." and "Hello, I'm Auntie..."



Chris and I hung colorful paper lanterns in the patio and some in the trees in the backyard.



A beautiful spread.



Kristin, Elizabeth, and Corri arriving at the shower.


We hired a coffee/smoothie bar service to compliment our dessert and fruit buffet. (Baristas Johnny and Dave did a great job making drinks for all the guests)


New Dad Steve Czarnecki with 10 day old Lindalee. And Kari (she's expecting too!) and her daughter Kylie.


New mom Rebekah and mom of twins Vanessa.


Michelle, Diana, and Tony relaxing on the couch.



Luci and Peter enjoying their ice blended drinks



Grandma Sandy enjoying the shower after months of planning, and making new friends (Corri)


John and Michelle looking like their on vacation...and Glenn and Nilda sitting by a tree...K. I. S. S. I. N. G.


I get a sample from our fruit and dessert buffet.


Glenn and Nilda will have their baby shower next month!


Steve can't resist picking up the guitar...maybe he was inspired by baby Ollie.



What a lovely afternoon


Ann and Kristin


The Jackson two.


Ann, Steve, and Shari


Heather, Lauren, and little Henry Beck.


Laura and her fiance Gardner. They'll be getting married in just a few weeks! Congratulations!


My feet were so tire, I just had to put on my bunny slippers.


Chris and I under the sun.


Maria (She's expecting twins!!) and Peggy.


Time to open gifts!


Natalie made a diaper cake with the gdiapers and baby einstein toys! So talented!


Oliver is so loved...

The shower was a big success. Special thanks to:

Grandma Dooley for hosting, planning, and for baking the chocolate chip cookies.

Grandpa Dooley and Joan for spending hours cutting up huge bowls of fruits (we enjoyed fruit smoothies for days after the shower!)

Uncle Kevin and Aunt Cathy for the Edible fruit arrangement. What a beautiful centerpiece!

Luci and Peter for baking and decorating the cupcakes. And Peter for helping to move the furniture outside.

Diana for the brownies and her help with the chocolate fondue.

Laura for the banana bread and brownies. (I had the banana bread a with some ice cream and strawberries a few days after...soooo good!)

Nilda and Glenn for the Rice Crispy treats...mmm the Peanut butter ones are insanely good!

Vanessa for the peach cobbler. Are those peaches from your tree?

Lenny for helping to move the furniture back, and Carri for recording all the gifts we received.

and last but not least, Chris, who was so helpful and supportive every step of the way.

I feel so lucky to have so many loving friends and family to share this experience with.

Love you all!

More Babies!!!

Congratulations to Mike and Lisa and their baby boy Taylor Michael Jakab!! Taylor was born in San Francisco at UCSF on April 18, 2008 at 12:24 AM.




Also to Rosali and Matt, and their little girl Marjorie Cecilia Lian, born on April 23, 2008!



2 more to go before baby Ollie's arrival, and one after! Talk about a baby boom.

Getting ready to welcome Oliver

Baby shower invite designed by Chris and Ann


As most of you know I love to plan parties. I love to decorate and create a relaxing atmosphere for our friends and family. This coming weekend, we'll be having the baby shower at our house, hosted by my mother-in-law Sandy. This is part of the reason we wanted to fix up the house, and have a deadline to get the nursery in shape.

Here's a sneak peak. We have few other things to add, but the curtains and paint already makes the room feel like a fun place to grow up in.







****************************

To keep things simple and take advantage of the fresh summer fruits, we decided to have a dessert/fruit buffet and hire a coffee service. Disney have used many times for our photoshoots. They come to your place and set up a coffee bar and makes deliciious drinks. Since we plan on being outdoors, we decided to add a smoothie bar also. And for the food, we've asked a few of our friends and family to help bring their specialty sweets.

My friend Luci who has taken a cake decorating class will be helping me decorate some cupcakes. I tried it out myself for the first time.



We also have a few special things planned for the party that will be a lot of fun and meaningful.

More to come, and hope to see you at the shower!

Lots of catching up

It's been weeks since I logged in to update my blog. I'm happy to say that I no longer hop on the computer right afterI get home from work. Now I spend my evenings on the couch watching my belly move. I've put on about 26 lbs. in the past 7 months. Baby Ollie's movements are getting stronger, and bigger. One night i had the remote control on top of my belly, and he almost flipped it over!

So in the past few weeks Chris and I have been busy fixing up the house. We have been searching and shopping for the right pieces of furniture for our living room and nursery. It hasn't been easy...stressful at times that we can't get it all in time, or find what we like. Our house was so neutral before, but now with a baby boy on the way... we're ready for some fun colors!

The Living Room Before

The Living Room After (

We started by getting new window treatments. The old ones were fading and the hardware was falling down. Then we had the walls patched up and painted. Carlos, who painted our house when we first bought it was happy to see how our lives have changed over the years. We also had a carpenter who took our left over wood from previous projects to make some benches for the back yard.



It took a little while to get used to watching tv in the main living room (which was only used when guests came over) and starting to get to know the old tv room as the nursery. We now are finally using the dinning room table to eat our dinner (within viewing distance from the tv of course.) And with some clever rearranging, we were able to find homes for most of our existing furniture.

***************************

With so many of our friends also pregnant, it seems every few weekend there's some baby related event going on. And the weekend of March 29th, and 30th, I attended two baby showers.

The first one was for my co-worker's friend's wife Rebekah (who just had her baby today! Happy Birthday Lindalee!) It was a lovely shower where the host had us bring a bead with us. Each person had something wonderful to say about the mother-to-be as they presented the bead that will offer her strength and love for the remainder of her pregnancy and into labor. Needless to say there were lots of tears and laughter.

Rebekah in a RubyLove Reflection-Tee, reminding her to breathe.....

Fast Forward a few weeks later...

Congrats to Steve and Rebekah Czarnecki who welcomed their beautiful daughter Lindalee Rose Czarneck on Thursday, April 24th at 11:52am.

The day after Lindalee's birthday, I went with a few co-workers to visit her. It was my first time holding a new born...I was so nervous. I couldn't believe how tiny she is.

***************************

The second shower was for our friend Rosali. It was a fun bbq in the park. The weather was beautiful and the food was delicious. We played a game where we had to guess her waist size. Both Chris and I guessed wrong. : ( We did see a few other babies there who are just adorable.


Ann and Rosali


I'm staying hydrated.


Yummy...

***************************

On April 13th, "Grandma" Sandy came up to LA to check out a baby show at the LA Convention Center.



I found out about the show in a maternity magazine, at the time we were thinking of checking it out to see what to put on the registry...but turns out once we started looking up stuff online, we were able to do most of our research on the computer and made our selections based on customer reviews.

It was still great to check out a few things in person. We were especially excited to see the gdiapers.



Our friend told us about these earth friendly diapers with biodegradable inserts. I've always recycled and have heard about how regular diapers are bad for the environment. So with this option, not only it's made from high quality cotton that's comfortable for the baby's skin, easy to use, and it's good for the earth!

We also got to walk through the Chicco booth at the show, which Chris got extremely excited to see the not-yet-available-in store jogger. I think we kind of scared the sales guy Mark when Chris started introducing us and had me pose next to the jogger. We have already bought the rest of that collection. Chris had put together one of the smaller strollers (super cute!) and we are glad we went with the Chicco because it was so easy to carry and fold up. Little Ollie will look very cute in it I'm sure.





We then ran into a girl we went to school with who had a booth there selling really cute stuffed animals. Turns out she's also pregnant...and due on the SAME DAY I am!!! What are the chances?


Angie and I are due on the same day...but I think I put on quite a few more pounds. I blame that on baby Ollie. Angie is having a girl.

After the baby show we also checked out 2 other free shows at the convention center. One was the LA Fitness Expo where we got some sample health drinks. Then to the Green Living show where we bought Ollie little one-sies made from a bamboo cotton, and reusable aluminum bottles made by Sigg.



The long day of walking ended with us having dinner at the Hotel Figueroa next to the pool. Our feet were sore, but what a productive day we had. (Forgot to mention that in the morning we had brunch at the Grove, watched a Russian water birth DVD at the house, and made some decisions for the baby shower.)