A shower for the birds

This post is dedicated to two of my favorite people, my dear friend Sarah, and my most amazing sister in-law (who I have mentioned many times before in this blog) Andrea. Yesterday, I hosted a baby shower for Sarah as she is due with her first baby in 5 weeks (don't say that too loud or she starts to hyperventilate). I'm really excited for her and wanted to do it up in grand style, especially because if you know Sarah, she would tell you to send out an e-vite, throw some pizzas on the table, and make presents optional (which she did tell me,btw) . Plus, I have to get her back for being so adamant about not finding out what she is having. It's driving me crazy.

Anyway, knowing I wanted to throw a good party, and knowing that creative genius is definitely something I was born without, I called Andrea...'cause she Einstein when it comes to creative genius.

Here was Andrea's challenge - figure how to throw a cute shower that was gender-neutral and something that didn't involve lots of cutesy pastel colors - Sarah just isn't a pink and light blue kinda gal.

The result? Andrea of course came through it with flying colors. Amazing!

Here was what she came up with:

Notice the banner in the window and the birdhouses hanging from the mantle.

The guest(s) of honor.

Cute, huh?

I don't really have any good pictures that do it justice but she did a Mama Bird, Baby Bird theme with different colors of blue and red. It was so cute. Andrea was the mastermind and I was the worker bee (along with other members of Jevan's family - thanks guys!) The birds are handmade, stuffed with rice that sat in lavender for a really long time.They smelled wonderful. They were also the party favors. We had a banner, birdhouses in wheatgrass, menu cards with little bird cutouts....no detail was spared..down to having more little cutouts pasted onto the cups. We had sandwich wraps, salad, fruit, several types of gourmet chips and Andrea topped it off with Cherry Almond cupcakes. Yum. We played pictionary with celebrity kid names which turned out pretty funny. My favorites? Moon Unit, Banjo, and Rocket Valentine.

All in all, it went really well. We only had one small issue involving someone wearing someone else's shoes home....it turned out pretty funny. She had to come back to return the shoes and the poor barefoot lady just said she was happy to know she had good taste in shoes.

SO, thank you Sarah for having a baby (sure life's gonna change, but I have seen your toughness first hand and I know you can handle it. You will be a great mom, and will have this cute little pal to accompany you on all your outdoor adventures) and thank you Andrea for a wonderful shower!

Better Late Than Never??

So it's not looking to good for me, folks. I'm already slipping on those resolutions...and I think it's a bad omen when you end up making your obligatory "Christmas Festivities" post in the middle of January. No good at all. But that is fair warning at just what this post will be so if you've read enough of these, feel free to move on.

The Christmas season was crazy-busy as it is for everyone, full of Christmas concerts and family and friend parties and some unexpected visitors (have to read on for explanation)...and of lots of fun moments. Here be the highlights of our Christmas.

1. Christmas Jammies (of course). Both Jevan's family and my family do Christmas jammies for all the grandkids. Jevan's mom made the cute set with their monogram on the shirt. My family was all about the plaid.

We were going to arrange them and spell a word, but Allie is the only vowel. Can anyone spell something out of "HCCSJA"?

No letters here, just lots plaid-clad little girls.

2. Christmas Eve: This year Christmas Eve was with my family (we alternate families every year) and we had two unexpected visitors this year. One was Santa (my awesome uncle) and the other was Barak Obama. No, really, he came to our house to celebrate. He was even in the Nativity Play as one of the wiseman. He did a fine job, too. We didn't tell him he was actually a part of a practical joke my brother was going to be playing on one of his staunch republican friends later because we didn't want him to feel unappreciated....and that he was a big joke. Actually, my family really does like him so we were quite pleased...and I hope I still keep some of you as friends after that admission.

Jane loved being in the Nativity with her cousins and did a fine job as an angel. Well, except for that she kept falling over all the time. After the shepards came in and saw the angels and were "sore afraid", one of them dramatically fainted in fear. Jane found that amusing and did that too...over, and over, and over. Jane, the fallen angel. The rest of the night was all my favorite things, ending with my dad reading a christmas story while we all ate chocolates and drank bubbly. Allie of course wandered like the wild woman she is.

Jane loved her visit with Santa. Of course, I'm pretty sure that if it were Freddy Krueger and he offered a ginormous Kit-Kat she'd go sit on his lap...

Jane showing off her halo.

Allie showing off her cute smile, and a smashing hairstyle.

I'm pretty sure that Barack's appearance in the family nativity was my favorite moment from Christmas Eve. I'm also glad we weren't struck by lightning.

3. Christmas Day: Why is it that you pile presents in front of your kids and they end up fixating on that one dinky thing you got at a dollar store in order to fill their stockings? Everyone has stories like this, right? What is that about? Honestly. Our obssession of choice were the cheap Cinderella cell phones. Jane did like her other presents, and it was fun to watch her because she practically swooned over everything she opened (that's the kind of reaction that makes parents want to spoil their kids..) but in the end, she opted for the cell phone. Allie too. Actually, Christmas was completely lost on Allie. We had to convince her that her presents were more interesting than her SHOES, for crying out loud. No really. She started to bring every one of her shoes into the front room, and got really mad when we tried to distract her with Christmas stuff. Maybe she thought her shoes needed to be front and center for all the fun..I have no idea. But the day was wonderful and we spent the whole of it in our jammies.

Yay for Christmas Morning! Double yay for shoes!!

Jane and Jev making breakfast. Making is, of course, a relative term, as that's a Pillsbury explody-cannister thing you see on the counter.

The highlight for me that day was ...
(drum roll) DA DA DA DAAAHHH.......

4. My Present!! Whoever said true love can't come in the form of a vacuum does not know me at all. This lovely made it's debut after Jevan purposely spilled flour while making breakfast and told to me to get the broom out of the closet. And lo and behold, there she was: an Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle! Ok really it was a Dyson DC25 Ball-Mounted HEPA Filtered Tri-Cyclonic Animal Vacuum. A real serious vacuum. I can't tell you how many curse words have streamed through my head (and sometimes made their was out of my mouth) as I used our old vacuum. When you have a dog that sheds like mine, you need serious firepower. Jasper would just look at our old vacuum wrong and it would lose all suction. Oh, how I hates it. But it is no more. Now I have this beauty. Works like a charm. (All except for the attachment which is a bugger to use...does anyone else have this problem?)

I now use this baby to vanquish dog hair and other such carpet villains.

5. SNOW! We played lots in the snow. We went sledding the day after Christmas and actually lasted a good 45 minutes on the hill. This means we may have actually broken even in the amount of time getting ready vs. being in the snow. A rare phenomenon. Allie, suprisingly, outlasted Jane, despite all the snow being thrown in her face from the sled as we flew down the hill. Tubing with my family was another highlight. We do the tubing hill up at soldier hollow where they tow you up to the top. Allie was sick so I had to stay home, but Jevan took Jane, Tasha and Thomas up for a good time.

Sledding! Allie loved it. We were surprised that Jane got cold before she did. Good times.

Jane posing for a picture. She loved to stockpile snowballs in her tube to throw at Jev on the ride up, the little stinker.

Thomas, Tasha, Jevan and Jane.

6. New Years: We have no pictures of this but suffice it to say that BOTH my children were STILL UP at 3:30AM...while most all other kids at the party slept. That was exciting.

7. And last but not least...REVENGE OF ALPHIE THE CHRISTMAS TREE! I'm not sure if it was our inability to remember to put water in our tree, or if it had heard some how that we had impaled some of its little forest creature friends on our cranberry decorations placed on it's distant cousin, but for some reason, by the end of Christmas, it had it out for us. It was so angry and so dry that if you just breathed on it, a shower of needles would fall on you. Would you like to know what it looks like when you try to take a tree like that out of the house? Oh, something like this:

Jev is convinced he got the better of this battle. That may have to do with the fact that he didn't have to clean it up...

Yeah... next year I have to remember to water the tree. There are seedless oranges, can't they make waterless trees?

We will find needles in places you wouldn't dream of from now 'till Memorial day. Just reminders of a good Christmas, I guess.