Merry Christmas!

Tommy did so well this Christmas! I was very worried that the change in his schedule would throw him off but he really did great! Saturday morning we went and saw Santa since he had been sick the previous two weekends. We actually got a great picture too! The guy taking the pictures kept trying to get a better picture because Tommy wasn't looking straight on but I loved this one!Then we went home and wrapped presents and spent time, just the three of us. After that we went to 4:30 mass with my family. It's a mass that's geared toward kids so there's lots of music and it's not super long. Tommy was awake the whole time but did really well.

After mass, we went to my uncle's house for dinner with my dad's side of the family. Tommy had a slight melt down at 7 but after some soothing, he was wide awake and happy to be passed around to my family members. Around 8:30, he was exhausted and went to sleep. We decided to go home at that point and Tommy slept pretty well that night.

Sunday morning, we opened presents at our house and Tommy had a ball ripping the wrapping paper off of the presents! Then we got dressed and went up to my parents' house and opened presents there with my sister and Granma. From there, we went up to my Granma's house to spend time with my mom's side of the family.

Then we went to Bill's mom's house where we spend a few hours with Bill's mom and her husband, Bill's dad, brother, his girlfriend, and sister. Tommy only took a few catnaps and was a little fussy at this stop but nothing too terrible.

We left Bill's moms at 5:30 and Bill went home to go to bed since he had to work at 4am on Monday and off Tommy and I went to another one of my uncles' house to spend time with my dad's side of the family again. We only stayed there until about 7:30 and brought Tommy home to get him to bed close to his normal bedtime. He went to bed very easily and slept through the night! He must have been exhausted.

Overall, the two days were wonderful. It was so nice to spend so much time with all of our family and to celebrate Tommy's first Christmas.

I hope your Christmas was wonderful as well!

Weekend

Today is Bill's first Saturday off for which he did not have to use vacation time in over 7 years! He started his new job on Thursday and it seems to be going well. He has to get up super early (like 2:30 or 3:00 am) and works long days, 12-14 hours but he's only working 4 days a week and has weekends off! This makes both of us happy. So how are we spending our Saturday? We're going to the mall to buy him a suit...ugh. It will be like pulling teeth but he needs an all black suit to wear for his mom's wedding on July 30th.

The problem with buying Bill clothes is that he hates to try anything on. He prefers to buy things off the internet and rips the tags off before he puts it on to wear for the day. If it doesn't fit right he'll either wear it anyway or just donate it. It makes me CRAZY! Suits really need to be tried on and he's been made aware of this. He also hates bargain shopping. He'll find a suit that fits and he likes and will just buy it, not even looking to see if there are others that he likes that are cheaper. Basically, I go with him to keep him in line. Wish me luck with that!

Then this afternoon, he's working the Valley Field Days which is a small carnival in our neighborhood that the Valley Men's Club (of which Bill is a member) puts on every year. It's pretty cool, they have food and rides and carnival games. They bring in a couple of local bands and will have fireworks tonight. Bill and a few of his friends joined the club last year and my dad and uncles are also members. My grandfather (whom we lost last September) was a long time member and had such pride in the club.

Me? I'm going to hide my my parents' air conditioning and my mom is going to paint my toes for me since I get out of breath after just one toe!

Tomorrow is my family baby shower!!!!!!! So excited!!!!! I can't wait to see everyone, eat good food, and of course, open presents. I've been getting very anxious lately wondering what we will still need to purchase ourselves. I appreciate any gift that we are given but my nesting instincts are starting to kick in big time. I need to know what we have and what we need to buy so we can get this place baby ready. After tomorrow, I'll be a happy girl!

Enjoy your weekend!

Shopping Spree

I mentioned recently that part of my birthday present from Bill was a small shopping spree to buy some fun things for the baby. Well, we went today! Babies R Us was having a pretty decent sale on baby clothes and I had a couple of coupons that we could use. We went and looked through the clothes but they were pretty picked over. There really wasn't a lot left and I got overwhelmed trying to decide what size to get anything in so we just decided to get toys instead! The first thing we got, Bill picked out:It's the Ocean Wonders Musical Bubbles Activity Center. You can hang it on the side of the crib or it can be a floor toy. It's super cute and plays fun songs.

We also got the book, Peek-a-Who. It's so cute!Then Bill picked out a nice, big, squishy baseball since Bill's a huge baseball fan:
I got a fun rubber ducky that tells you if the bath water is too hot:
And I couldn't pass up a nice lightweight SwaddleMe SleepSac in sage:We also walked around and visited some of the things we registered for like the glider, Pack N Play, and the swing. We're so excited to really get ready for the baby and waiting for the shower to receive gifts (or not, so we know what to buy) is starting to kill me! We are fortunate to have extremely generous families and friends and know that if we wait until the shower, we'll receive the vast majority of what we need. There will be some things left for us to buy but it's smart to wait and see what we really need to spend our money on. I can't wait for the shower to be here but until then, we had a blast buying some things today and that should hold me over for a while!

Registry and Baby Shower

Back about a month ago, my sister offered to throw a baby shower for me and I was greatly appreciative. She mentioned the idea to my mom and my mom told her it wasn't necessary, that my aunts had offered to throw it and to leave it up to them. 3 weeks later, I hadn't heard a word about a shower from any of my aunts and was starting to feel very anxious. If there wasn't going to be a shower, I wanted to start buying things that we need when they were on sale and when we had coupons. Finally, last weekend, my sister called my mom and told her that the aunts were taking too long and that she was going to organize the shower. If any of them wanted to help her, great. If not, she'd handle it all. My mom agreed with her and offered up her house as the venue.

Cue a big sigh of relief from me! My sister has jumped right into the planning process and the shower will be held July 17. She even offered to invite all of Bill's family and have one large shower since my mother in law had also offered me a shower but hasn't said a word about it since. In her defense, she is getting married July 30 and is kind of overwhelmed with all of the planning that goes along with that.

I also have a work shower being planned by my co-teacher on June 21. I'm so lucky to work with such generous people since this will be my second shower in one school year! They threw me a shower back in October for our wedding but insisted that it wasn't a problem to have 2 in one year.

Bill and I registered a few weeks ago and I've been slightly obsessed with checking the registry to make sure everything is still available and to see if we are missing anything. I got into an awful habit of stalking our registries when we got married and definitely ruined a few surprises (did you know that JCPenney not only tells you what has been purchased but also who bought it?) so I promised myself that once things started to be purchased from the baby registries, I'd stop looking. That wasn't a problem until this morning. I checked the registries this morning and our travel system was purchased! I don't know who bought it so that will still be a surprise but that means that I can't look at the registries anymore! Bummer. Let's see if I can keep my promise to myself!