The beginning of the showers

Sunday after lunch & baby shopping, we went to Battle Creek for our very first baby shower. The girls soccer team that Phil coached a few years ago (they are now all in high school) and their moms decided they wanted to throw us a shower.

So we spent the afternoon playing fun games including smelling “poopy” diapers, eating baby food & some game the girls made up called mannequin. Which ended up with a broken light bulb. Anyways, it was really fun to have the girls together again and to spend some time hanging out.

They were so generous with their presents so we ended up with a car full going home.

Here are some pictures from the fun. I think they tell the story better than I can.

Phil with all the girls (not the whole team was there, but a good showing). Notice he has his hood up so they wouldn't write on his neck (so he claims).

Phil & the poopy diaper... they were all chocolate candy bars of some sort.

Baby food testing & diaper smelling....

Here is Phil after he tried one of the baby food flavors. Take a look at the lovely face he is making... this one must have been bad!

Baby Filled Weekend

This weekend was filled to the brim... which was also very exhausting. Friday night we went to dinner and a movie (He's Just Not That into You) with our friends Jon & Erin. Yes the boys even went too... we were the only people in the movie theater so they were able to make whatever remarks they felt necessary to get them through the movie.

Saturday morning we woke up early & headed downtown to the hospital for our first baby class. This one was all about labor & delivery and included a tour of the hospital rooms. It was very informative, sometimes a little too much information. We learned all about the stages of labor, positions, breathing, and watched a few videos that were mildly disturbing. We had fun with it and learned a lot! But by the end, I think everyone was ready to go home. It was a very long day and especially hard to sit still with a giant belly, a hard chair and a very small bladder. But somehow we all made it. While on the tour we were pleased to learn that all of the labor, delivery, recovery & mother & baby rooms have Stryker beds & Stryker tables. Nice work Bronson!

Sunday we met mom & dad and Grandma for lunch at Red Lobster. After lunch we trekked over to Baby’s R Us where we investigated the baby furniture & where Grandma was so gracious as to buy our crib for us. THANK YOU GRANDMA!!!

Here is a picture of us in front of the crib (you can’t really see it, but once we get it set up I will post more pictures of it). Grandma does not smile for pictures, so this is the best we could do.

Power Outage

Tuesday night I come home to discover that we have no power. Now, that is not an unusual thing to happen at our house. We are used to losing power, however not very often do we lose power in the winter.

Tula and I trekked out to check out what was going on & saw the Consumer's guys working on a pole near our neighbors house. Assuming they were taking care of it, we went on our merry way thinking we would have power again soon.

About 7:30 as we are eating our take out dinner by candle light (not even close to as romantic as it sounds... but it's better than the Wal-Mart dinner we had last time!), there is a knock on our door. After a few minutes of Phil talking to the Consumer's man & Tula hiding behind me in the hallway, we found out that we were the only house that did not have power. Apparently a transformer blew on the post that is in our yard next to the driveway. They replaced the transformer & there was now power to the pole, but we still didn't have power.

They checked the box on the side of our house & decided that some where between the pole by our driveway and the box on our house, there must be a problem with the line. So they spent about 3 more hours trying to determine where the issue was. Eventually they gave up and just ran a temporary line from the pole over the top of our house and down the side to hook into our box.

Anyways, long story short, we have a very long electric line running over top of our house & into our side yard and there is potential that they will have to dig up our driveway (as the original wire is buried underground) to find the real problem. Ah the joys of home ownership!

Here is where the wire hooks into our box on the side of the house. You can see the wire running right above the roof and connecting to the tree.

They police taped the area so that we would stay away... of course that makes Tula just more interested in that spot.

Frost Bite 5k

This weekend was the first annual Frost Bite 5k run in Vicksburg. Vicksburg has been trying to start a winter festival for the past few years and this year decided it needed another event. So my wonderful sister got roped into organizing a 5k run as part of the festival.

Since this was the first year, she was hoping for about 100 people but when the night before there were only 50 registered, we got a little worried. Most of my family showed up to help out and/or run in the event. I was one of those helping out. Aunt Laurie, my mom, even my friend Jess came over from Detroit to help out (along with a long list of others). By the end of EARLY morning registration, we have 127 runners registered! We were all very excited.

Overall the day was beautiful, the race went smoothly and we all had a great time. We even got to enjoy some of grandma's cupcakes.

Thank you to all of the participants & volunteers for helping out & supporting our cause! We appreciate it!

Since I was busy registering & recording the race results, I didn't get a chance to take many pictures. But here are the ones that I did get.

Jess recording race results. Nice work!

Annie & Sue Dornbos (one of the many volunteers).

Maggie (yes she got up early to come help out!), me & Jess... don't we all look lovely.

Sister's Weekend

This weekend was our first (of hopefully many to come) sister's weekend. We all congregated at my house, after of course we kicked Phil out, to do some painting & craft projects and of course have some serious sister bonding time.

My wonderful sisters spent the weekend helping me paint the baby's room and my mom even made a guest appearance to help with a wall art project.

Friday night we saw Slum Dog Millionaire at my sister's request & I actually really liked it (even though I had not even heard of it before we went). We had dinner & celebrated Annie's birthday with an ice cream cake from Cold Stone. Saturday we started early priming, painting, eating, jamming to our cousins CD and of course just being ourselves.

The room was painted a soft yellow (which was not so soft at first and almost gave me a panic attack). My sisters got creative by the end of the night & decided that the ceiling needed something extra. So we ended up with polka dots on the ceiling in all different colors (which I LOVE).

My mom and I spent most of the time working on our wall hangings (see below) that actually turned out pretty well, thanks to my lovely mother's artistic ability & my ability to paint in the lines.

Overall it was a very successful weekend! Although next sister's weekend I think should be less productive!

Annie priming the walls.


Mom with the beginnings of the wall art.

Everyone look at the polka dots on the ceiling.


The dogs were very little help (but you can see the bassinet & bouncy seat we got a good deal on at the second hand store).


Mom with the finished project... I think we need one more... maybe later!