1/21/09

I'm staying home from school today because I was up not feeling well ALL night long! Ugh... I hope those kids at school didn't give me the stomach bug that's been going around! I only got a couple hours of sleep so I decided to go ahead and take the day off to recover. I'm not feeling great, but much better than I did last night. I really needed the sleep though. So I figured I'd finish writing about the weekend now..

My mom, Patrick and I went woke up and went to The Woodlands early Saturday morning because my mom had never been there and I wanted to go look for a dress to wear to the baby shower that afternoon. We went to Gap Maternity (their clothes fit me the best!) I found a few dresses to try on... luckily they were having a sale too! I ended up getting a really cute dress for only $13!!!! What a deal! Then we looked around a little bit and went to Borders and my mom bought a TON of baby books for Collin! :) They are all so cute! She was specifically looking for "Pat the Bunny" (which she found). I think it used to be one our favorite books when we were little. As we were checking out we saw they also had a bunch of books in the bargain section so I went to look for one, and they had a little box of baby books about little sports characters that I knew Pat would love reading to the baby. I got them and when we got in the car and I opened I saw that one of the characters (the football) was named Collin!! With 2 Ls!! How cute is that?? The book is all about good sportsmanship so I think it will be a keeper!

When we got home my aunt, cousins and grandmother were here at the house waiting to see the nursery. I think everyone likes it!! It's come together really nicely! I hurried and got dressed for the baby shower that started at 1. It was so convenient because it was at my friend Stacey's house who lives literally 4 houses down the street, so we just walked over there. It was put on by my friend Kristy as well. When we got up to the door they had put a big wooden stork outside in the yard!! It was adorable! Then inside they had decorated soo cute! Everything was decorate in brown and baby blue polka dots. Kristy had gotten a ton of party favors that were personalized. She had hershey bars that were wrapped in blue wrappers that said "It's a Boy" on the front and the back had nutritional facts like "Serving Size: One Bouncing Baby Boy" and " Hammers & Nails 20%, Baseball 20%, Hugs 20%, Sweetness 20%....Love & Joy 100%." There were also little boxes with mints inside that say "Jessica R. Daniel's Baby Shower January 17, 2009: Thanks for celebrating our Special Delivery" and then a little bundle of Hershey Kisses wrapped up with a tag that said "Ten Little fingers, Ten Little toes, Oh how fast baby Collin will Grow!" Haha... I thought that was so cute. Stacey had hand made a diaper cake also that was adorable! It has 3 tiers. The top one has all newborn diapers and then they go up in size on the next tiers. It was wrapped in brown and blue ribbon and has baby socks, bibs, etc hanging from it and then topped with baby blue shoes. It's too cute to even take apart for the diapers!! There was a TON of food too! Kristy handmade chocolate covered strawberries that were sooo good! And they had turkey spaghetti and salad and a really delicious punch made with ginger ale, grape juice and punch. We played a game where everyone had to wear a necklace and if they said the word "baby" they had to give away their necklace or take it away from someone who said it. I think Steph won at the end with the most necklaces. We also played a game where they had to guess the size of my belly!!! I thought they were going to actually get out a tape measure...but they passed around a roll of streamers and each person had to pull out as much as they thought would fit around my belly. My friend Gabs was really really close, and then it got around and Julie was the last person's paper to be measured and she was SPOT on!! It wasn't as embarrassing as I thought it would be. Haha.. The day was really fun!

Later on that night, my mom, Steph, Sam (her b/f), Pat and I went to eat at Buca di Beppo because Pat needed to carb load for the half marathon he ran in the next day. We were all pretty exhausted and went home to bed after dinner.

On Sunday, Pat and I woke up at 5am so I could take him down to the start line of the marathon. He hadn't really trained at all, but I knew he would do great. The plan was for me to just go back to meet him at the finish line and pick him up, but I dropped him off and when I got home I was too excited to see the race and go see him run that I got dressed and went to find him at mile 9 on the course. I finally saw him! It gives me a boost of energy to see people I know while I'm out there running, so I thought I would surprise him. I took him some orange slices knowing that at that point it gets pretty draining! After I saw him I went straight to the finish line. I managed to squeeze my way in (huge belly and all) to the front of the gate so I could see him as he was passing. I yelled out his name as he was coming, and he managed to come give me a high five just before crossing the finish line! :) I'm so proud of him! Me and my bright ideas signed up for 2 half marathons last year, not knowing I'd be pregnant, and Pat ended up taking them both over and doing great in BOTH!! Right after the race we had to rush back home to get ready to go to my other baby shower at my mother and sister-in laws'.

We got to their house at 12:30 when the baby shower was supposed to start. It seemed like everyone got there right at the same time! We had a really good turnout! As you walked in they had cards out for people to write down their advise for me as a new mom. I haven't gotten to read the cards yet because they are putting them in a book for me, but I can't wait to see what everyone says! Hopefully people gave us some really good advise! I feel like I can use all the help I can get right now. They had a bunch of food set out also! We all started off the shower by eating and then started playing games. The first one was a sheet of paper where there was a list of different animals and you had to guess the name of the baby animal. I was sooo bad at it! I made a lot of mine up! Like an armadillo?? Who the heck knows what a baby armadillo is called?? I wrote down roadkill. Haha... That was what the majority of my answers looked like. I only knew like 8 out of 20 real answers. :( After that we played a word jumble game where there was a list of scrambled up baby words and you had 5 minutes to unscramble them and figure out what the real words were. I did a little bit better on this one... like 12 out of 20. Haha... I didn't win either game.. or even come close! After the games we opened gifts and ate cake. There were soo many gifts!! I loved everything we got, but my favorite thing we got this weekend was a photo shoot with the photographer from our wedding for 4 different sessions when the baby is growing up throughout the first year!! My mom gave us a box and I opened it and it had a few different things for bathing the baby, and then there was a card. I opened it and it had one of our engagement pictures on the front and said "You've come a long way, Baby!" And then inside it says the gift is for 4 photo shoots : when the baby is 1 week, 3 months, 6 months, and 1 year old. We will get to pick 10 pictures from each session and then they will be bound in a leather book for us to have. I can't wait!!!!!! Besides that, we got soooooo many nice gifts this weekend! THANK YOU SOOO MUCH to everyone for their amazing generosity!!! We are pretty much set for Collin to come! Now he just needs to decide when he'll make his appearance. Hopefully sooner than later!!!!!