One Final Hurrah

This past weekend, Nathan and I went on a small extravaganza down to "The Americanas" in Glendale. We went to celebrate his birthday a week early and also have one more big date before little baby fogde comes :) It had been rainy all week and Friday had finally cleared up...so we thought. No, we expected rain, but probably not as much as we got. We did drive through sleet and some snow (I guess that just goes to say how much we wanted to get out!!). We got a little dressed up and headed down for a night out on the town which included a movie, then dinner and dessert. We did start our little adventure the right way with a stop at Sister Sister Coffee House. Once that necessity was taken care of, we headed down to the Americanas (a place very similar to the Grove, but newer and not as far away). We walked briskly (I waddled as brisk as I could) to the movie theater. It was raining and we were both trying to fit under this small umbrella which was definitely intended for 1 person. We saw "The Book of Eli" and then went for dinner at The Cheesecake Factory. It had been many years since either of us had been there, and we had only gone for dessert, so this time we went for dinner and dessert. We had such a great time together and despite the unsatisfactory travel conditions, the weather did eventually clear up and we got to meander around for a while after dinner. Here are a few pics from our excursion... our last hurrah before our lives are changed and BLESSED dramatically.

Sister Sister was a very intricate part of this date.

Plus it had already been a busy day, so we needed a little "pick-me-up"

or "nap in a cup" as I like to call it.

It's so sad...Nathan's drink is in the way of his cheesecake. He ordered a peanut butter something cheesecake, and I (choco-holic that I am) ordered a chocolate cheesecake with chocolate mousse... of course :)

Showered with Blessings

This past Saturday, I was blessed to have my baby shower. To be perfectly honest, I'm not really even sure where to begin posting about this because I was truly blessed beyond what words could even describe. But I will give it a shot. I feel like my shower was a little out of the ordinary in that because Nathan is on staff here at Wayside, my shower was open to all of the ladies at church. That is where the blessing part begins...dear sweet Bethany asked me about planning/hosting my shower. She knew that it would involve planning/hosting for any lady from the church who wanted to attend which made the scale of everything a little bit bigger. More room was needed, more snacks were needed, and overall more organization was needed. Good thing she is the queen of organization :) She gathered help from many willing hands and the shower was just the most precious time for me. The theme at the shower was ladybugs to go with our Nursery theme. There were ladybugs everywhere, a ladybug cake, black and white and red balloons, super cute signs, ladybug themed table decorations etc. Everything was so absolutely cute I felt like it was impossible to capture all of the moments! I cannot express how thankful I am to Bethany for spearheading everything as well as all the girls who helped out. There were a good 7 or 8 girls who were all participating in pulling this event off. If that's not enough blessing, there were about 50+ ladies who came and went throughout the time of the shower. It was a drop-in shower so ladies could come and go as they pleased. I was truly showered with many gifts all of which I know will be so helpful. I got many many many cute clothes, several items for bath time, photo albums and frames, and loads and loads of diapers. I think we have enough diapers to get us through the first few months that baby joins the world :)

I am constantly overwhelmed with the love and generosity of our church. It seems as though anytime there is anything going on (good or challenging) someone is there pouring love out on you. Such was the case again at the shower and I don't know how I can truly express how thankful I am to all of these women and their families for everything they have done for us and given us. We are so excited to welcome Baby Fogde into the world whenever she decides to come join us. And we know that she will be showered with love as she gets to meet everyone at church.

The Lord has continued to bless my pregnancy even through the increased discomfort of the last 2 months or so. Everything is still looking great and its just a matter of waiting now until she is ready do come. I'm sure there will be more updates to come as we go to the doctor every week now... and hopefully before too long there will be pictures of Baby Fogde!!

This was the first of many faces of extreme excitement and "Oh my goodness... cuteness!"

This little outfit which is for 0-3 months is dying to take the place of what we already picked out to bring baby home from the hospital in... I'm inclined to stick with what we bought for her but this one is so cute it is quickly gaining ground on the other outfit and may just win in the end.

I will post some more pictures of the decorations when I get them. My sister took lots of candids for me, and I'm going to get some more of the decorations from the party planner extraordinaire... Bethany.

Lets Recap, Shall We?

Let's back up to Christmas, or Christmas Eve I should say. Christmas Eve marked my 34th week and we started our morning with a routine check-up. That phrase makes it sound like something exciting happened... but alas no. It was truly only that... routine. I was back to measuring right on and they said "we'll see you again in 2 weeks." In the evening we had our Christmas Eve service which was packed out with almost 500 people there. It's always so fun to see every one's families all together and spend some time together as a church body remembering the birth of our Savior and praising Him for coming into our world to ultimately receive the punishment for all our sins--all so we can have a personal relationship with Him. That is such a wonderful truth to dwell on as we focused our time over the Holidays. After the service, we made the long trip (all 15 minutes) down to Nathan's mom's house for Christmas Eve dinner and a few presents. It seems inevitable that one of the nieces or nephews in Nathan's family gets some kind of music gift and typically Nathan ends up playing with it more than the kids do. Here is evidence that Nathan is completely entertained while our niece, Emma Fogde, just sits and looks at him.

Nathan playing with Emma's gift.

I do have video of this, but will have to upload it later.

Christmas Day we had a lazy morning (oh so wonderful after the busyness of Christmas musical etc. at church). We hung around our house and eventually opened a few presents we had gotten for each other. Nathan got me a really cute and comfy nightie and robe from motherhood maternity that is made for easy nursing during the wee hours of the morning :) He also got me some body spray and lotion--it was really special because the scent was what I started wearing the day we got married and whenever I wear that scent the smell brings back memories of our wedding. Aw :) I got Nathan 2 sweaters and a body spray that he had said he liked. After we opened our gifts, we spent the rest of the day at his dad's house hanging with the rest of the family.

Us in front of our Mantle

Let's fast-forward to New Years (aka Board family Christmas). New Years Eve we headed up to my parents. Our family had decided to do Christmas together over New Years. Typically my family eats Mexican food on Christmas Eve, but since a few of us were with our in-laws for Christmas, they waited and we all had our big Mexican meal on New Years Eve instead. After that we did our traditional gift exchange with our cousins--there were 17 of us total. It was, as always, super fun with lots of laughs and much envying. Just kidding, but there was a whole lot of stealing going on. Nathan and I ended up with a game called "The Last Word", a Starbucks gift card, and an Olive Garden gift card. After much conniving, we each managed to steal the gifts we wanted and have them frozen so no one else could steal them.

17 gifts for 17 people... let the fun begin.

I would say this is when everything was all said and done, but my brother had that drill stolen from him, so this was not the end. I think the whole process of picking gifts and stealing gifts lasted about an hour anda half.

New Years Day was the Board Family Christmas. We again took it easy for most of the morning as some of my family scurried around trying to finish wrapping gifts and such. We watched A LOT of football (good thing we all like it!). Then we got to some gift opening. Baby fogde received some very cute and very comfy things that I am sure she will enjoy! After the gift opening was finished, I'm hoping what we did next will turn into a new tradition. We had a "build your own Calzone" for dinner. We had all the makings for delicious calzones and we all made our own. There was supposed to be a contest, however, the process of transporting the calzones from put together station to the cook them station was quite rough. Consequently some of our calzones turned out looking very mangled... good thing that was not an indicator of how they tasted. It was tons of fun and I really hope we do it again in the future!

Emma decided to play us a little tune on the piano :)

The beginnings of Build Your Own Calzone...

whoever thought of this was a genius! (my mom)

Nathan's finished product turned out pretty well...

it didn't look quite as mangled as some others did (like mine).

He was very proud because he truly did it all by himself

including rolling out the dough and sealing it all up in the end.

Good Job Honey! Now you can make them at home :)

It's tricky to all eat together when there are 8 calzones to cook and only 1 oven so some people BBQ'd theirs. They were just as tasty with a bit of a BBQ flavor to them.

Preparing to enjoy all of the finished product.

Overall, we had such a wonderful time with both of our families enjoying the different traditions of each side. We were blessed to have it work in our schedules to be with both sides over the holidays. Here we are now into a new year, and we have very exciting things on the very near horizon!!