Dinosaurs!!

I know you're thinking, "Two posts...in one day?!" And, "What's with all the titles ending in exclamation points?!" I'm an enthusiastic person, what can I say.

Last night Mom and I went to a show called "Walking with Dinosaurs" at the Sundome. It was freakin' amazing! I was a bit afraid because after all I was the 13 year old who went to Jurassic Park and watched it with my hands over my eyes. We had bought the tickets quite a while ago and got some of the highest priced seats, cause if you are going to see a show you might as well get a good view. So we get there and we are ushered down fairly close to the front of the arena and then told to climb up to row U. Really...row U...as in starting from A.... So we climb and climb and soon we're getting lightheaded from the low oxygen, but we find our seats. I look at Mom and ask "We paid how much for these seats?" and she says that they guy on the phone said for the best seats we wanted to be about eye level with most of the dinosaurs and she tells me that some of them come close to the tops of the lights. What?! These are full sized, part animotronic, part puppetry dinosaurs that move and breathe and blink and sound just like they predict each species of dinosaurs would have. Again Freakin' Amazing. The show started with a paleontologist taking you back to the Triassic period and then you moved through the Jurassic to the Cretaceous period. My favorite was the Brachiosaurus and they were huge with their heads almost hitting the lights. Of course the last dinosaur out was the T. Rex and I admit I cowered a bit when it came by and screamed at us. They let us take photos without flash so I put in the least blurry pictures I got. I would totally go see it again!

Baby Shower!

Well, the baby shower was two weeks ago yesterday. But what with work and life taking up most of my free time I hadn't gotten all the pictures onto my computer, and what's a blog without pictures. (Still a blog, but not a very interesting one...) So here's the baby shower scoop.

On Friday, Nicole drove up from Oregon with her friend Renee and they stayed the whole weekend at our house. Mom and I ran to grocery stores for all the fixings and then off to Good Friday service as they had planned to get to our house late. Mom baked the cake from scratch that night so it would be ready to frost the next day. Saturday morning we got up and had a big breakfast and I started the decorating. I had planned on a tea party/garden party theme but with it being early April there were no flowers blooming or trees leafing out. I bought flowers instead and we had enough to give it the garden atmosphere. I also made favors that looked like daisies in glass flower pots with a candle in the middle and I set these around with tealights on the tables. Nicole had shown me a "diaper cake" that you could buy and she thought that if they had added wash cloths or burp cloths it would have been better. The "cake" was too expensive but I googled around until I found one website where the person gave me the number of diapers that was in the cake (insert evil laughter "Mwaaahahaha"). I was going to buy burp cloths for the middle layer, but they were quite pricey too, so I bought some flannel at the fabric store and Mom made them. We put it on the coffee table as the centerpeice and it turned out pretty well if I do say so. Mom spent the morning frosting the cake. I had gone to Wilton.com and found this amazing cake that you use fondant on. We had never tried that out before so I bought all the items to do this cake from Wilton. We made the bow on the top a few days before so it would be hard and then did the fondant on the cake that day so it would still be soft enough to cut. Thank goodness my mother takes all my great ideas in stride because I think I would have been frustrated with the fondant. But never fear, she did it all and it turned out fantastic. While she was cake decorating I was making the food. I did it all as "baby" finger foods. We had cucumber sandwiches, scones with butter and jam inside, parmesan balls, creme puffs with chocolate and triple berry sauce, a veggie tray, a fruit bowl and of course strawberries dipped in chocolate. I also had a punch bowl and bottled water.

Nicole's mom and dad came over early and were thinking of leaving before the party but after guests started arriving they stayed. There was about 11 people at the party and we had a very good time. When they arrived everyone was given a bracelet with diaper pins and pacifiers on it and anyone who said the word "baby" had to give up one of their items with the person with the most at the end winning. We also played "diaper bag memory" where a diaper bag full of stuff was passed around and they had one minute to write down as many items as they could remember was inside. Nicole got the diaper bag as a gift at the end. Then we played "Guess how big Mommy is" where a spool of ribbon was passed around and everyone cut off a length they thought would fit around Nicole's tummy. The person who was closest won. After all the games Nicole opened her presents and was very suprised at all the gifts, especially the last one which was the stroller/car carrier system she had on her registry. Overall it was an excellent day and Nicole could hardly fit all the gifts into her car to take home.

Is it really April already?

So somehow I sort of missed March... I shouldn't have because it's my birthday month and all but life suddenly got ridiculously busy. I have been planning a baby shower for my best friend Nicole and was hand making the invitations. Great idea right? I mean if Martha can do it why can't I? Well they started out with a really cute stamp on the front that I was going to color and lots of borders. Well after making the first one I didn't really like it. And I was going to have to do this 15 more times. So I had purchased a Cricut that was sitting on the floor collecting dust and decided to look through the images that came in the two cartridges that were included. There happened to be a cute little baby in a blanket and a stork that went together on the front very nicely. So back to Craft Warehouse for more cardstock and away I went! That Cricut is sweeeeeet. It's so fast and all I did was cut and paste. The invitations went together freakishly fast and I got them sent out in time. I thought I had saved one to take a picture of for this blog but I can't seem to find it and randomly remember one more person being added to the guest list. I will try and get a picture from Nicole of hers. **Update: I finally got pics of the invitations!**

Then my birthday came! Happy Birthday March 19th as a relative of mine would say. I worked that day and everyone that found out it was my birthday was like "why didn't you take it off?" Cause then I wouldn't get all you people telling me happy birthday...duh. Mom and I went out to the Olive Garden for dinner which was very tasty and then I opened presents! I got a portable personal DVD player (which is pink!) for the plane ride to Hawaii and then I got a Kromski Harp loom. It is a rigid heddle, which means there are only two "sheds", up and down. With different colors and actually holding up certain strings you can make designs, but if you want just a really easy way to weave it's very nice. Here are the pictures of my first project I call "Pacific Sunset" cause of all the different blues you see on the ocean as the sun goes down in pinks and reds. More to come on trips and the baby shower!