A Visit From the Momma

My wonderful Aunt Brenda and cousin Brooke threw me a baby shower on Tuesday night. They planned it during my mom's spring break so she would be able to come out for it. I was so excited to see my mom! She arrived Monday night and took Jeff and I out to a delicious dinner at Red Robin. We had a great time chatting and catching up - spending a lot of time talking about the baby, of course. Unfortunately, I sickened myself by eating and drinking too much too fast, but I recovered in plenty of time to go on a very exciting shopping trip to Babies R' Us. I'd had to refrain from buying anything aside from two cute little outfits up until then and I was SO excited to do some baby shopping! My mom insisted on buying us one of the larger more expensive items we needed, but that's not all we came away with! We found a great jogging stroller with a matching car seat. They were perfect! We knew Jeff's parents had considered buying us a jogging stroller so we called them to make sure they hadn't already gotten us one. Renita had been researching them, but hadn't made a purchase yet. Since we liked the one we found so much, she generously put the money for the stroller into our account. Next, we picked out a cute umbrella stroller. Finally, we thoroughly enjoyed looking through all of the adorable baby boy clothes in the store and picking out five precious little outfits for our little guy. At the checkout Mom insisted on paying the entire hefty bill! Jeff and I are so grateful for the help! I don't know where we'd be without the support of our incredibly generous families!

Our beautiful new jogging stroller! I can't wait to use it!

The stroller with the car seat inside.

I love this little stroller! So cute!

The next day, when my class got out at 4:15, Mom picked Jeff and I up at school so that we could drop our Jeep off at the shop. We had suspected a problem with the transmission for a little while and having my mom in town to drive us around when necessary provided the perfect opportunity to get it fixed (Sadly, we ended up with a $2000 bill, but it was almost exactly the amount of our tax return so we can be grateful for that! And grateful for my wonderful father-in-law and his tax expertise). On the way to drop the car off, I snacked on the candy in the cute Easter basket my mom had put together for us that morning. She's the best! After dropping Jeff back off at school, Mom and I went to Wal-Mart to look at baby swings. We found a great one to spend most of the money Greg and Renita had deposited into our account on. And since I was using my own credit card at check-out, I even managed to convince my mom to let me pay for the few groceries we got too. She always spends so much on us when she is here! She is so selfless! She loves spending the hard-earned money she makes teaching English on her kids.

The cute baby swing. It has 6 songs and 2 tracks of nature sounds. I'm so excited to put all of these exciting new things to use when our little man gets here!

We had a delicious spaghetti dinner with Brenda and Stacy and soon it was time for the baby shower. A lot of people couldn't make it because of work and other conflicts, but plenty of awesome friends and family came and it was so great to see them! Aunt Brenda bought one of those huge, insanely rich chocolate cakes from Costco. We all enjoyed that along with yummy vegetables and strawberries (Brooke brought plain and chocolate dipped strawberries. I stuck to the delicious dipped ones.) while we talked, opened gifts, and played a couple of games that Brooke planned. We played a game where we got points for having certain things in our purses (Mom won that one) and one where we had to guess how much baby products cost. I did rather poorly at both games, but even though I didn't win any of the awesome prizes, I got to keep all of the baby products from the second game and got plenty of great gifts! Everyone was so generous and everything I got was so cute! Jeff and I are VERY grateful!

Katie, Brynne, Aunt Brenda, Amanda (I work with her husband Jon every Saturday and she comes and hangs out with us almost every week), and I

Mom, Aunt Valerie, Tiffany, and Aunt Chandra

Aunt Brenda made me the most beautiful baby quilt! I love it so much! It makes me smile every time I walk into our bedroom and see it hanging over the side of the crib.

After the shower, Ben (Brooke's husband) showed up with their three cute kids. Here is my mom reading Austin and Shawn a book. Looks like Shawn got to try a piece of that chocolate cake!

Jeff and I have gotten so many great gifts for the baby from friends and family that we can barely fit it all in our little apartment! Somehow we've managed to make room for it all. Although we've had to put some of the excess things in and under the crib!

This is the beautiful dresser my grandma sent us. We love it! And I've loved filling it with all of the cute baby clothes we've gotten! On top of it is the adorable Snoopy diaper bag that Aunt Debi and Uncle Russ sent us. They sent us that and Monsters Inc. on DVD. Good gift!

Here is my wonderful, handy husband putting the dresser together a couple of weeks ago when we got it in the mail.

The cute and fantastically cheap crib bedding we got at Wal-Mart yesterday. The matching mobile is currently out of stock, but it's very cute and we'll get it eventually. After all of the generosity of our family and friends (plus some of the people who could not attend the shower have promised to drop off MORE gifts!), this was the only semi-large item we had left to purchase on our own! There are only a few smaller things that we have left to get before our baby boy gets here and we have saved up enough Amazon money from using our credit cards to pay for all of them! So thank you, thank you, thank you everyone! We love you!

Wednesday night, Jeff and I took my mom out to dinner at Pizza Pie Cafe (all you can eat pizza, pasta, and salad) as a feeble thank you for everything she does for us. She almost didn't even let us pay for that! And the next morning she headed home. I loved getting to see her so much over the few days that she was here so it was sad to see her go, but I already had a flight booked for a visit less than three weeks away so it was bearable! Jeff is going to present at a conference in Baltimore with a group from the BYU Mechanical Engineering department from April 20th-23rd so I will be spending those days in California. I can't wait!