Family Baby Shower

My sweet mother-in-law and sisters-in-law hosted a baby shower for us at our house on June 28, 2009. It was such a precious time gathering together in celebration of a new life coming into the family. Caden was welcomed with open arms by all and Jason and I were showered with not only a multitude of gifts, but more importantly with love, encouragment and prayers as we are about to begin our new journey into parenthood...



My mom and mom-in-law looking excited about their new grandson's arrival!



My sis's-in-law Chelsea and Natasha giving Caden some love :)











And the winners are Aunt Emily and Cousin Autumn with 11 squares exactly... just like Tasha when she was prego!



This just moments before reading a poem originally written by Jason's Grandmommy (to the left of me here) for him when he was born which she passed along to our precious son. It spoke of the two of us, Jason and I, becoming three, and adding a little darling to our family tree!











It is through all our love as a family that we pray our child will grow to know and love our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. We dedicate him to Him.

"And he took the children in his arms, put his hands on them and blessed them" ~Mark 10:16

Baby Caden's Baby Face

This was taken last Thursday, June 18th, when I was 32w1d pregnant. Caden weighed in at 4lb 12oz and is in the 74th percentile. They think he'll weigh somewhere around 8lbs at birth. Apparently his head is already very low in my pelvis because the ultrasound tech had to search all around the inside of my right hip to find his little face! I'm just too excited that he looks like he has hair! I gave my dad this picture framed for Father's Day and, usually he glances briefly at pictures, smiles and tosses them aside, so I wasn't expecting much of a reaction from him... But he took it out of the box and stared and stared and stared some more... for several minutes. He looked like he was just in utter amazement of what he was seeing. Too precious. He said he thinks his grandson looks handsome and I think he looks like him, so I couldn't agree more :)

Baby Shower!

My dear friends Andria, Jenny and Amy hosted my very first baby shower at Andria's house this weekend. It was beautiful and I was so touched by all their thoughtfulness and creativity-- from the 'fake' Sangria to the wonderful food including quiche, coffee cake muffins, mandarin orange salad and grape salad and last but not least, the monkey cake to match Caden's jungle bedding... loved it!

My wonderful friends and hostesses, Andria, Jenny and Amy!




The Second Baptist Girls! Betsy, Amy, Andria, Gina and Debbie.


The beautiful blanket my mom made for her first grandbaby!


My cousin Erica and my Great Aunt Emily




Me at 31.5 weeks and Gina at 37 weeks! She's due any day now her doctor says!


All the precious gifts showered on Jason, me and and our precious baby boy due in just 8 more weeks! Thank you to everyone who made our shower so special!

Key Largo

Jason and I just returned from our babymoon in Key Largo, Florida! We left June 3 and flew into Miami where we rented a car to drive on to Key Largo via the Overseas Highway~ we arrived at our hotel late the first day so just relaxed and enjoyed a nice dinner. On day 2, in the afternoon, with our newly purchased grocery store snorkels and masks, we headed out to the beach front, right in front of our room...





...and swam around in the aqua marine waters. We discovered all kinds of plant life and little fishies... After a short time in the water, we both noticed our legs were stinging. Turns out the strange plants that seemed to be 'breathing' were actually upside down jellyfish and we were swimming all around them! I didn't get a picture of the actual ones, but here's what they looked like~ Don't worry, we didn't get stung too badly ;) The red marks disappeared the same day!



I decided to brave the camera in a bathing suit in order to document what 30 weeks of pregnancy looked like on me.



And Jason being a model... (I posed him that way ;-)



Day 2 was also our 8 month weddding anniversary, so we went to dinner at a seaside restuarant called the Mandalay. Food was kinda good... there was a better place yet to come ;)

After our fun experience with amateur snorkeling we decided we wanted to do the real thing and go out on an actual snorkeling tour with John Pennekemp Coral Reef State Park. So, day 3, we suited up and headed out. We bought an underwater camera, but I still have to develop the film... hopefully I will be able to add those pics this week and stay tuned, hopefully my barracuda picture came out clear! In the meantime, here's the website so you can see what we saw!

http://www.pennekamppark.com/snorkeling.html

and another random barracuda, but not mine ;)



Here's my barracuda!



Anyways, so after snorkeling, we had a late lunch picnic style at the park and then later that night we decided to try out a fun local pizza place, The Tower of Pizza, family owned for 25 years! The pizza was so good that even though we had no microwave, we decided to bring it back with us. My engineer husband decided the coffee pot was really just a nondescript heating element anyway and thus proceeded to heat up the leftovers in a somewhat unconventional way ;)

Day 4 we decided to lay out at the beach by the hotel. Jason had gotten burned on his back from snorkeling the day before, so he spent most of the day with a towel draped over his head and shoulders. We also had fun with the little beach side activities including a ping pong table... Here's Jason whipping up on some of the hotel guests.




We followed up our day with our favorite place to dine in Key Largo, Snooks!



There was a cool musician guy there who was jamming it up with his guitar and synthesizer keyboard and drums. People were dancing some salsa and calypso... and they closed the night down with a rendition of Sweet Caroline sung by 'Scotty' and his drunk English friend.




On Sunday we decided to head back to John Pennekamp where we wanted to rent a kayak and go through the mangroves (Florida's 'walking trees')... It turns out a kayak isn't best suited for a pregnant woman, so we opted for a canoe instead. I sat in front to steer while Jason gave us horsepower from behind. We brought the video camera along and captured footage complete with boat crashes and surprise ocean creatures ;-) To be continued...



That was our last full day in Key Largo... The next morning we packed up and headed over to the beach for one last sand bag tournament before heading back to Miami. There was a sweet little family sitting near us and they had a 2 month old little girl with them. She was precious and so tiny... It was the perfect reminder, as our babymoon came to a close, of the blessings we have to look forward to in meeting our precious little boy in a few weeks to come.