The New Jersey Baby Shower!

Yeah! All of these pictures were taken by Baby Cooper's Aunt Kelli! Now we can share with everyone what a great shower it was! Doyle's family really went out of their way to just give us the nicest shower and we really had a great time and appreciated it!

Here is Aunt Kathy & Diane (G-Ma) getting ready for the party...

And here is Ma and Chip

Here we are arriving at the shower. The room was decorated really cute with balloons. The theme was "Bee's" as that is the crib bedding that we are going to use.

I even had a "bee" corsage to wear.

This is Aunt Debbi, GMa, Mom Mom, and Kelli, just hanging out while people start to come in.

This is Baby Cooper making his first appearance!

The clothes line and basinette were such cute ideas for a baby shower. I had never seen either of those done before.

Here is Pop Pop and Andrew

And we were so happy that the Hildebrandts (Chris, Melissa, Connor and Katerina) and Brian Plessinger, some really good friends of ours, could make it to the shower!

And here is a picture of our cake. The bees are so cute!

And here is baby Cooper's cousin Tyler

And we had fun putting bows on Doyle's head while we opened the gifts.

Okay, so I finally was able to add more pictures to this website. It definitely took a few nights of trying! I'll come back later and add some more pictures too.

Love, Aimee

The toaster oven event

Okay, so have you actually ever had your toaster oven catch on fire before?? Well I can say I now have! Yesterday morning I was getting ready as usual, making some peanut butter toast for breakfast to take with me to eat on the way to work. It's all about multi-tasking these days.

So anyway, I put the bread in it and turn it on and then get Kit's water and food dish ready and sit it outside. I was already fully dressed and ready to walk out the door at this point in the morning. All I needed to do was make the sandwich and go. So as I'm coming back in from saying goodbye to Kit, I immediately smelled smoke. Uh-oh... so I go into the kitchen quickly and instantly see the small fire going in the toaster oven!

I unplugged it immediately and tried blowing out the flames. Which did work, but only for a second because they came right back. It wasn't until the 3rd attempt did the fire actually stay out. By this time, the smoke was billowing out of the thing and I realized I didn't want the smoke alarm to start going off in the kitchen. So I finally turned on the vent under the microwave and opened the kitchen window. I also realized that Kit was barking in the back yard. He must have sensed something was going on in the house because he never barks for no reason. So I'm trying to fan the smoke towards the window and yell out towards the back of the house to Kit that everything is fine.

I'm sure it was a site to see. Eventually I get Kit settled back down and get most of the smoke out of the kitchen. Luckily, the smoke detector never did go off. Which makes me think I better have Doyle check to make sure it still works when he gets back from training.

So I close the window to the kitchen and make a peanut butter sandwich on untoasted bread to take with me... blech. It just wasn't the same to say the least. So I grabbed by purse and head out to the car. Once I get to the car I think... you know, maybe I shouldn't have left that toaster oven in the house just in case it catches fire again. So I throw my things in the car and head back into the house. I decide to put it out front behind the pillar so the neighbors can't see it. Then I walk back to the car.

Once I get to the car, I think to myself... I wonder if I shouldn't have opened the door to it to let the cool air hit it just in case it decides to catch fire again. So I turn around and walk back to the front door. I open it and then think to myself... maybe I should keep it in plain site so the neighbors can see it... just in case it catches fire again. So then I move it in front of the front door and for the last time, walk back to my car.

Talk about a morning! As I'm driving to work... I realized that I totally smelled like smoke! I had also scheduled a 7:30am interview for an open position I have and I thought I would still make it on time. Well, of course, there was an accident on my way to work which backed traffic up. As if the rest of my morning was going to go any other way!

I ended up only being a couple of minutes late and was able to conduct the interview, although my mind was obviously preoccupied with the mornings events!

The moral of this story... is that when a product says not to leave it unattended while in use... they mean it! I hope you have a great rest of your week. Hopefully mine will only get better!

Love, Aimee
:)

Our Christmas Tree 2006

Not a big post today but I wanted to get the pictures of the Christmas tree on here. Doyle took these pictures of me last weekend and I forgot they were on the camera still. You can tell this camcorder doesn't take the best pictures in low-light conditions. Doyle isn't really wanting to buy a new digital camera right now but as you all know me and pictures... I'm going to have to have one before the baby gets here! :)

The rest of these pictures I took just a few minutes ago. You can see Snickers under the tree where he loves to be this time of year!

The above shot was taken from the kitchen doorway.

Then I took this one from the dining room doorway.

By the time I took this third shot, Snickers had his eye on me... and you can see that plain as day! Is that hilarious or what?

I still want to get more of the bigger bulbs this Christmas while in Ohio. We've made it a family tradition to go to some really nice Christmas stores whenever I'm in town. I have no idea how long we've been doing this. It's only been the past few years that Doyle and I started a tradition of actually buying Christmas ornaments while there. This year since we are driving, it will be much easier to bring them home. Taking them on the plane was definitely risky in the past but luckily we haven't had any break. That one red one looks like it's glowing but it's really not. We'll have to make sure we got some more of those!

Last night we were invited to dinner at Ruth's Chris by my boss and his other direct employees. I'm pretty sure I've mentioned that he is being promoted to CFO on January 1st. So he wanted to take his direct reports and their spouses to a nice thank you dinner. He also surprised everyone by giving us really nice monogrammed portfolios. It was a really yummy dinner and we were absolutely stuffed by the time we walked out of there. We got up this morning and neither one of us was hungry at all. I kind of had a not so perfect stomach all day. I think I just over did it with the food last night. I know I had much richer food than I normally do. So that's probably the culprit. It felt nothing like the morning sickness, so it's really not worth mentioning.

Talk about a quick weekend. I feel like I blinked and the weekend was over. I had brought work home with me only to realize today that I must have not put it in my satchel to bring home after all. Oops! Oh well, I just got to relax for another day!

I hope you enjoyed your weekend too! Happy Christmas shopping if you aren't done yet! :)

Happy Thanksgiving 2006!

We hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend. We sure did. We kept ourselves VERY busy. Today is the first day we actually had a whole day of downtime.

Thursday we got up and I got the turkey ready. Doyle did a very good job of helping me in the kitchen when necessary, like putting the turkey in and out of the oven. I really hadn't had the time to spend making a grand Thanksgiving Day menu. Luckily we pretty much had everything we needed. Since I make a big turkey every year, I pretty much just went off memory. I did stuff the turkey the same as last year, putting carrots, celery and onion in it. They turned out just as crispy crunchy as they did last year. I think I'm going to make that an annual tradition.

We also had creamed spinach, stuffing, citrus cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes and gravy and rolls. It was all really yummy. We have really enjoyed eating the leftovers.

When I picked the meat off the bones... I went ahead and made 2 bags for the freezer. We can have more leftovers a little later down the road. I knew it would take a while to pick all the meat off and I really wanted to be comfortable, so Doyle threw down 3 towels on my chair/ottoman so I could sit there and do it. I wasn't alone...

Kit watched me very intently the whole time. Well, he wasn't really watching me... but rather had his eyes on the turkey the whole time! He was a good boy though. He just sits and watches and waits... plus licks his lips here and there just hoping that you will throw him a piece or two. Which I did of course, after all, it was Thanksgiving!

Over the course of the rest of the weekend, we did so some shopping. We didn't do the 'get up at the crack of dawn' black Friday shopping though. To summarize the weekend, we were gone from the house almost 4-5 hours each day running errands for this and that. The biggest spur of the moment purchase was a new bedroom set for us! This actually is the first matching bedroom set I've ever had. It got delivered over the holiday weekend too. So Doyle got to pull all the furniture out of the bedroom and steam clean the carpets all before it was to be delivered. One of the night stands was damaged though and they said they will deliver it on Tuesday. So I'll be sure to take pictures when the room is done. We went to several stores looking at new bedroom lamps. I found one for the longer dresser, but still haven't found anything I really want for the night stands. We went into 4 stores and spent hours looking too. I'm sure we'll find something eventually.

Doyle also went to Babies-R-Us to pick up all the big gifts we had received at our baby shower in New Jersey. Unfortunately, my camera went on the fritz about halfway through the event and still won't turn on correctly. So I don't have any pictures myself of it. I'm hoping everyone that took pictures will email them to me so I can post them. When I get some, I'll put a whole seperate blog post for it.

Okay, so you are probably wondering how I took pictures of our Thanksgiving meal if my camera was broken right? Well, last month we bought a camcorder to have for the baby. I didn't remember until we got back from New Jersey that I could have taken still shots with the camcorder. Duh!!! So I did use it to take pictures of our T-Day meal but it didn't cross my mind to use it during the shower. Argh!!! I'm sure the pictures that we did take are still on the memory of the camera, so I'm going to have to ask my Aunt Ila and Uncle Butch to download them for me when we are at their house for Christmas. The whole baby shower was just gorgeous and nice! We were really surprised that Chip & Diane went all out setting it up for us. And everyone was so generous in giving us gifts... we were on overload at opening them all! Luckily, we were able to bring everything but the big items with us on the plane checked as luggage. The rest of the items we just returned to the nearest Babies-R-Us in New Jersey and then picked them back up at the store here in Jacksonville. I'm so glad I thought of that instead of having to pay to have all those items shipped. I'm sure that wouldn't have been cheap!

Let's see, what else did we do. Last night we finished putting the trimmings on the tree. We both REALLY like the tree with all red lights. As soon as we finish putting everything else up and put the boxes all away, I'll take some pictures so you can see it. I'm thinking next year I might want to do all green lights. Changing it up every year is like having a brand new tree! Last year it was all blue lights. This is just the 2nd year for using our new artificial tree. My allergies really appreciate it too!

What else am I missing? It must be alot because we ran ourselves all over town and all over the house getting it ready. Oh yeah, Doyle also picked up the combo/changer for the babies room. I'm telling ya, we didn't have a slow minute until just today. Right now Doyle is in the bedroom studying for his next training event so I thought I would hop on here and give an update. The babies room right now is just a mess. Tons of boxes of gifts. The guest room has all the baby clothes on the bed. I need to buy some dreft and wash them so that we can put them away. Doyle still needs to buy and put up the new closet arrangment in the babies room so that I've got more space to hang the clothes. I don't know when he's going to have time to get that done. We just have so much going on it's crazy these days!

The baby is kicking away a TON too. While we were watching the game on TV, I pulled my shirt up and we could literally watch him kick! My skin was moving all over the place. I'm much more used to it now. This is getting really exciting!

Okay, I'm going to go ahead and wrap this up for today. I'll get pictures of the baby room, our bedroom and the living room posted just as soon as I can.

Happy Thanksgiving again!

Our First Baby Purchases!

Okay, so last weekend we headed out of the house to run some errands and saw someone in our development had a yard sale going on. I saw some large baby toys sitting out and proclaimed loudly that I wanted to stop. So we did and I found 4 little outfits that I just thought were too cute not to buy. She only wanted $1 for each. I wish she had had more! Here is my favorite... and I'm sure you can tell why!

All four of these outfits are labeled 3-6 months, but they still are all different sizes. I guess I'll be getting used to that soon enough. Here are the rest of the outfits.

And the weekend before that, while Doyle was in Columbus for training. Oh wait a minute, I don't think I ever have mentioned that Doyle found a great job! He'll be flying for NetJets and be based out of West Palm Beach. The benefits that he's talked about so far seem really great. It sounds like a great company to work for. Hopefully he really ends up liking it! He'll be flying a corporate jet, hauling around head honchos, celebrities and stars. Let's just say he better not ever fly around Patrick Dempsey or I'm going to be jealous! :)

Okay, so anyway, back to my original story. So when Doyle was doing his training in Columbus for that, I decided to do some maternity shopping. Penney's was having this door buster sale so I got up and got there Saturday morning around 8:30am. I found a few things and walked up to the cash register. Well, the lady ended up telling me that I was $1.05 short for getting $10 off. At first I looked through the pajama section to see if I could find something there but I'm certain they will all be too short in the legs. So I decided to hop on over to the infant department. There I found this funny bib. It was only $3 I think. So it totally worked out.

We also bought a glider I want to say... maybe a month or so ago? Diane sent us a coupon booklet and that's when we say they had this one on sale. We couldn't beat the price so we went ahead and bought it. Let me just say, we got this before we found out it was to be a boy. I'm telling you, we both just knew it was going to be a boy! And if it hadn't been, then I was going to recover it.

Next on our purchase list was the crib! We had already decided we liked the one at Target. Well, when I went to order it online it said that shipping charges were going to be $120 or so for each piece! So I thought... well that might just change our minds about liking this one better over the black one from Babies-R-Us. So one day at lunch I printed out a list of all the Target's in the Jacksonville area. It was a good day for me because the 2nd store I called, had it! They set it aside for us and Doyle picked it up later that day.

We have decided to keep it on this wall but have moved it a little farther away from the side wall. I want to make sure I can get on the side to help change the sheets. I hear that's just going to be a lovely job. Poor Doyle didn't know he needed to put the crib height on the highest level. So he fixed that yesterday. This is also a convertible bed. It will turn into a toddler bed with little side rails for the front. And then you can remove all rails in the front. And eventually it turns into a standard size bed.

Back to when Doyle was in training. Since I've been used to having my husband prepare our meals, I figured I had better make a couple of big items to eat off of while he was gone. Two of the dishes I remembered to take pictures of. The first one is Baked Ziti. I ended up freezing most of this because it made so much. Doyle actually just took one of the frozen bags out this week and ate it for lunch. He really liked it too.

The 2nd meal I made was Chicken Enchilada Casserole. I really loved this. I've decided I can convert the recipe into a crockpot meal and take it to our next potluck. I've got some of this frozen in the freezer still too. I know Doyle is going to love it when he tries it.

Okay and last but not least... I've had SO many requests for pictures of myself so everyone can see my belly progress. Well, if you ask me, when I look at myself naked I would swear that I'm ready to deliver at any moment. Seems you put clothes on me and it isn't quite as apparent. I've been told by many that I'll get much larger which I'm sure I will.

And here is more of a side profile...

Also appearing in the picture is the turtle we bought down in St. Augustine on my birthday. Doyle painted it a metallic blue to bring color to the pool area. I really love this turtle. He's so cute! So as you can see in the pictures, I think my arms and legs have gotten even skinnier and obviously the weight is shifting to my belly. Last night I was getting dressed for bed and Doyle busted out laughing that I reminded him of National Geographic. We both laughed so hard! Kit hasn't seemed to notice but Snickers constantly wants to sleep right on my stomach. I'm not sure if he can smell pregnancy hormones or if he just likes sleeping on the highest perch. :)

That's all the news I have for today. Have a great rest of your weekend!

The McCowan kids!

The day after the Delta Chi dinner we got to spend just a little bit of time with Claudia & the McCowans newest arrival... Vanessa! Claudia was being very bashful and then Uncle Doyle went and scared her and she pretty much didn't want to have anything to do with him after that. Here are just a few pictures we got of Claudia before she went into hiding. :)

And here are a few pictures of Vanessa. She was pretty much all smiles the whole time we got to see her. Vanessa definitely looks to be taking after Erica while Claudia looks much more like Steve.

Is she not adorable or what?

And here is Uncle Doyle getting his feet wet with holding a baby...

He did pretty well, but a few minutes later he was ready to hand her over to me.

Here's Erica with her two beautiful girls... Claudia was just beginning to come out of hiding.

Almost anyway...

I was finally able to get Claudia out by reading to her.

It was a really good visit!

The Delta Chi All Florida Founders Day Dinner

I am getting behind again on updating this blog. A couple of weeks ago we went to Orlando for the Delta Chi's All Florida Founders Day Dinner. I was able to get off work early so we headed down to Steve & Erica's. We had enough time to hang out for a little while before getting dressed and heading downtown to the dinner. Here are just a few pictures we took there.

Steve, Doyle & Jim

Erica, me and MaryAnn

Doyle, Eric, JT, Jim & Steve

Steve & Erica (cute couple!) :)

Doyle and myself (before I started showing too much!)

It was really good to get to see everyone again. There were more people that we got to see but just didn't get their picture taken. We'll definitely try and make more Delta Chi functions in the future.