Sunday, December 19, 2010

Baby shower and family wedding















Hello,

It's been while since I've posted. This weekend we're enjoying our first laid-back weekend in a few weeks. Two weekends ago, I hosted a baby shower for my friend Ruth at my house. She is due February 15, right around Willow's birthday. The shower was a success, if I do say so myself. Here's a couple photos of Ruth with her gifts.

















You might have noticed the large breasts behind Ruth on the window. That's because we played "Pin the Baby on the Boob", a game we also played at one of my baby showers. Here's the boobs once the game was over. Not every baby made it this close -some were also off of the paper and on the wall or window.















We also tie-dyed onesies, burp rags and socks for Ruth's baby, which was fun, and they turned out great:















Here's the cake I made for the party:















Our new fireplace got installed just in time for the shower. It was the final step in our remodeling project! Here is the "after" photo, along with the "before" again so you can see how much of an improvement it is! We are very happy with the results.

















Then last weekend, we went to my cousin Matt's wedding in Minnesota. We left Wednesday after work and spent the night at Andy and Sharon's in Duluth. This is a great way to break up the trip. I was bad about taking pictures and didn't take very many. But here are a few.

This hotel had a great pool area. I think the first day we stayed there might have been the best day of Willow's life. She was grinning ear-to-ear for like two hours straight. She loved the pool. Of course I didn't get any pictures of her...just this one of my relatively un-cute (sorry dudes) brother and Dad:















Here's Josh, my dad and my two uncles by the pool. You can see by the mess on the table that we had lots of good food and a lot of beer.















Here's Willow zoned out in TV-land in our hotel room. We don't have TV so she really liked watching it there. We also let her watch some DVDs in the car. We had a total of about 18 hours of travelling and she did really well, thankfully.















The night of the wedding, we tried to get a picture of the three of us all dressed up by a Christmas tree n the hotel. This was the best one we got...not that great since Willow's not smiling.















Willow had a great time at the reception. Here she is with my aunt Karen. Karen's been an avid blog-follower since the beginning.















She also had a great time dancing! I did get some good shots of that. Here are a few...I couldn't decide which one was best so I'm posting them all:




















Willow loves to dance and she is still a singer. Here's a video of her dancing to a song Josh has been singing to her lately. He makes up the words as he goes. It takes her a while to get warmed up so keep watching. I bet you didn't know Josh was such a talented songwriter!



She is absolutely obsessed with the moon these days, which she calls "na" for some reason. Every evening when it starts to get dark, she says "na" and points to the window. Then we have to go look out the window to see if it's there. If it's not, she runs around the house to look our all the other ("da-doe") windows hoping to see it. It's been cloudy a lot lately, but when it is clear enough and we can find the "na", it is an exciting moment indeed. Here's a video of her finding the moon outside our hotel in Minnesota. It was literally like 10 below this night. Willow didn't care as long as the "na" was there.




So, we've been gluten-free for about three weeks now. It's been sort of a challenge making sure she still gets enough calories and carbs without gluten, but I think we've been doing a pretty good job. (We brought a huge bag and a cooler of food with us on our trip). I don't think she's grown much though. We did take her to a pediatrician for a second opinion. This doctor didn't seem concerned with her size, growth or liver enzymes. She also said she wouldn't have recommended the gluten-free diet, but admitted that it's a topic that many doctors and people disagree on. I think it's sort of a new area with lots of different research and studies coming out, so there might not be a consensus among the medical community. Anyway, we decided to go ahead and continue the gluten-free diet for the two months, just to see. We're just starting to get used to it so may as well just finish it out.

We're heading back to Minnesota this week to the Jenson's for Christmas. I hope everyone has a happy holiday!