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! :)