My Surprise Work Baby Shower

What I love most about my career is the people I work with. Not only are they brilliant, driven, and often times hilarious people, but they have incredibly huge hearts. We're practically like a family. Still, I never in a million years expected them to secretly plan an amazing surprise baby shower for me! I thought, maybe, on my last day of work they'd get me a cake (which I was REALLY looking forward to eating). :)

Well, Thursday, March 13th came around and it had been a grueling, exhausting week of meetings all day, every day and multiple senior management reviews. I was ready to take Friday off completely to recuperate! At the very least, I needed to work from home Friday so I could take it easy, switching up positions as sitting at a desk all day in an uncomfortable chair quickly becomes painful when you're 31 weeks pregnant!

Come to find out my boss issues an in-person, urgent meeting for Friday afternoon (the very next day)...great, work from home plans...down the drain.

I think I slept walked my way out of bed Friday morning, and I'm really not sure how I got to work, I was that exhausted. At least I took the time to shower. :)

1:00pm came around - time for this big important in-person meeting. Yet again, another grueling day...I hadn't eaten lunch yet, so I grabbed by lunch, my huge 33 oz water bottle (baby gets thirsty lately), and my laptop and followed my boss to a conference room. I noticed as we approached the door, that there were people in our room...I rolled my eyes and thought...super! now I have to carry all this heavy stuff to another room far away. I think I even said to my boss "oh, great...people are squatting in our room." Ha.

He then said to me, "oh, it's okay, I'll kick them out because I have it reserved." He swung the door open and there were about 20 of my closest past and present co-workers yelling "surprise!" I glanced around the room and saw all the smiling faces, adorable pink balloons and decorations, the cutest cake I've ever seen, and a bunch of presents. I couldn't believe it! How in the world did they plan this?

This pic isn't the best quality, but this was taken from inside the conference room right when the door was opened...you luckily can't see my mouth gaping open in surprise :)

My boss was kind enough to take the laptop from my hands...

They even made arrangements to have Dee there, and Teri was sweet enough to scheme with his boss to make it a surprise for him too! Many benefits to having your spouse work at the same company, but I still never expected this to be one of them! :)

We were told that all our co-workers (even those remote in Texas and Puerto Rico) chipped in to buy us gifts to get us started with baby Ava....extremely generous gifts. We are so humbled by everyone's generosity. We were given some adorable clothes and shoes that we can't wait to dress her in, and they also bought us our Uppababy stroller and Video Baby Monitor!

We spent time talking with everyone, sharing in our excitement of becoming parents and enjoyed some delicious chocolate strawberry cake!

It was an extremely special memory than neither Dee nor I will ever forget. We are so grateful to our amazing co-workers who planned this and gave us the opportunity to celebrate the most exciting time in our lives with the people we work with...who are truly friends, and many like family! We are just so incredibly blessed.

Baby Shower - Celebrating Baby Ava!

This weekend was an incredible weekend celebrating baby Ava with family and friends. We were so blessed by our dear friend, Teri, who threw the incredible shower, so blessed to have so many family members travel from afar to attend, and so blessed to have so many friends and co-workers come celebrate as well!

It all started Friday afternoon with my aunts, my mom's two sisters, flying in. We went to lunch at Boundin and then went to get pedicures and manicures - so much fun!

Later that afternoon, we went to the airport to pick up my mom and my mother-in-law. That evening we ordered pizza and had a fun night in catching up and laughing a lot! Our house has never had this many guests at once, so it was a lot of fun hosting!

Saturday morning, we set out to have breakfast, and went to our favorite - the Waffle Barn...home of the most amazing strawberry waffles in this world, which baby Ava has been craving non-stop (the strawberries....not so much the waffles :)

After eating a TON of food, we went home and got ready for the baby shower! Before leaving, we took a few nice pictures in front of our home...

With my beautiful mama...

And with my amazing mother in law...

The shower was amazing - a memory I'll cherish forever! Teri had to have baked forever to create this amazing dessert table. The cake balls were my favorite, but every item was delicious!!

And the diaper cake was so incredibly cute!!!

 

 

We played some fun games, and then I spent an eternity opening everyone's generous gifts...baby Ava is already insanely spoiled!!!

 



Something I absolutely loved was that Teri had each guest write out advice to me, which I read in between opening each gift - it was so meaningful to me to have them as memories from the shower, and I'm already thinking of crafts I can do to save them forever in some way.

I was so touched by everyone's thoughtfulness...I even received a number of handmade blankets, which were just so touching (and all of which were pink!)

My very talented mother in law made this blanket and car seat canopy...

My dear friend Debi made this incredible blanket, incorporating my two favorite things: the color pink and hearts! I can only imagine how much time this took her - it's so special!

And my mother is well on her way to spoiling her grandchild rotten...not only did she get us the BOB stroller and the pack-n-play with infant sleeper and changing station, but she bought Ava the most adorable clothes, shoes, and even a swimsuit for Hawaii later this year. Here are some of the clothes...

 



Aside from Teri herself being pregnant too, our friend and mutual hairstylist is as well. And all of us are having girls! So looking forward to all of us getting together for play dates in the future :)

It was so special to have my friend Jeanne there, and her baby Elysia who is as cute as can be!

And some pictures from the end of the shower, when Dee stopped by too...

It was such an incredibly special day, surrounded by all the amazing women in my life. I am so very blessed, and baby Ava is already so very loved. I still can't believe how perfect and beautiful Teri made everything - baby Ava and I are very blessed to have such a special friend in our lives!

Valentine's Day & A 3-Day Weekend

We had such a nice Valentine's Day this year. The actual day was a Friday and that evening we had our weekly bible study, so we celebrated Saturday instead. It was so nice to have it coincide with a 3-day weekend!

I attempted to let Dee sleep in for the first time in probably a year and got the puppy up on my own. That benefited him all of about 23 minutes until she barked and woke him up :) it's the thought that counts, right? We made delicious huckleberry banana whole grain pancakes for breakfast and then took the puppy on a 4.5 mile walk around our neighborhood - probably the last time I'll be able to do that, as I could really feel the affect of walking that much with all this new weight my back and hips are trying so desperately to support! Needless to say we came back home a enjoyed a nice long nap - whole family including puppy and kitty together.

That night we decided to splurge on a really nice dinner, and really savor this being one of our last date nights absent kids. We went to my favorite place - The Melting Pot. And pretty sure we both ate for 5....I'm still full!

It also gave me the opportunity to wear my favorite piece of maternity clothing - a beautiful dress my mom bought me. I'm so glad Jessica Simpson decided to make maternity clothes - she's the only designer I've found that knows how to make a huge pregnant woman that feels like a whale feel pretty while not breaking the bank on something you can only wear for a short time. I wish so badly we got a picture of the two of us together - Dee looked mighty handsome that night. But, he took a picture of me and peanut instead...

The rest of the weekend we spent working away on the nursery - no pictures yet as we want to wait until it's finished to share anything, but the walls are the most adorable shade of pink, and Dee hung the most gorgeous pink shaded chandelier. We also ordered the last pieces or furniture we needed. Even though the room is still an absolute disaster zone with boxes and paint sheets everywhere, I find myself going in there every day, turning on the light and just standing in there for a moment thinking about the precious little girl that will be in our arms soon - growing up in this room. :) only 11 more weeks!

We also started researching childcare options for our precious bundle of joy. Boy is that the least fun thing to do ever. It's hard enough to envision anyone other than one of us taking care of our baby during working hours, but then you need to decide between many different options and a wide span of costs. We're praying about for now, and in the meantime I'm so thankful to live in CA where I get nearly 5 months of maternity leave to think everything through.

We hope everyone had a nice weekend. Working at the same company now, we're so blessed to get the same days off for vacation.