Baby Shower

Our friends Erin and Sandor are baking up a little buddy for Pumpkin, so she and I were very excited to help with their baby shower.

We came straight from seeing the Easter Bunny, note that Pumpkin still has the egg in her hand ... she didn't let it go for four hours and even dunked it in the dogs' water bowl. (At four hours she discovered the balloons.)

I was excited to make the desserts - mini rice krispie "cupcakes" and yellow buttermilk cupcakes with vanilla frosting. I thought they turned out pretty cute (and yummy!) if I do say so myself ;-)

Erin and Sandor are always helping us out in one way or another and take good care of all their friends, so we know they are going to be terrific parents.

Sarah, Erin, me and Pumpkin

Me, Erin and Julie

We had a great time celebrating the soon-to-arrive baby girl and are looking forward to meeting her!

Buddies

Earlier this month, we enjoyed a visit from Jeremy and Andrea who came from D.C. for a late holiday visit with family and friends. We were pretty excited that they brought Pumpkin's little prom date with them - their new addition was born in September but is is quickly catching up to Pumpkin, he's such a cutie and very strong!

This is their first meeting, at Jeremy's mom's house.

The next morning, we hosted brunch at our house and Kat and Matt, college friends of Andrea who have now become friends of ours, joined with their little one, who is already 14 months!

The adults had a great time visiting and catching up, and the kiddos had fun getting to play together. We look forward to many more of these gatherings.

Tailgating

Last weekend was the rivalry UNR-UNLV game and so we thought it would be fun to go hang out with our friends and take Pumpkin tailgating. We didn't stay for the game, which probably would have been a little too much for the little one, but the cannon did stay blue!

Here's Pumpkin all dressed and ready to root for the Pack!

Pumpkin and Momma

It was nice to see our friends Vickie and Kyle who have been living in Maryland and New Zealand, respectively, for the last two years. Kyle just returned stateside with a job in Colorado.

The girls

The fam

Baby Boom

I had no idea when I was pregnant that little Pumpkin would be a part of a little Baby Boom for the QHS Class of '97, but there have been six other babies born to my classmates since December and two more who are expecting - and those are just the ones I know of. I guess nine babies maybe doesn't make a 'boom' - but considering that my graduating class had less than 90 people in it, it sure seems like it!

On her first trip to Quincy, Pumpkin got to meet the daughter of my friend Kasey, during lunch at the Polka Dot ...

And later that afternoon, she met the son of our friends Jed and Nicole. He has already asked Pumpkin to the prom ...

And last weekend, she met her new BFF, daughter of friends Chad and Theresa, at the Rib Cookoff ...
Hopefully she will get to meet some of the other Class of '97 offspring soon! Not to mention, the babies recently/soon-to-be born to several of our Yuma buddies! Pumpkin is in great company.

There in Spirit

I like it when the people that I love like each other. Like, when Chris can hang out with my friends from high school and college, even when I'm not there. So even though it's kind of a bummer that our good Yuma buddies the Nevins and the Volkmanns get to live just an hour and a half away from each other on the east coast while we are still out in the wild west, it is nice to know that they get along quite famously with my sister and Miguel and they can all hang out. It's always fun to get picture texts or phone calls or have Skype dates when they are together ...

It's kind of hard to tell in this photo, but Michelle and Olivia joined my sister Marina, Dad and Deb for lunch and a day of sightseeing while Dad and Deb were visiting D.C. in May. Later that night, Benny and Miguel joined the group for dinner.

Marina and Olivia share the same birthday. This was the first time they met!
Sisters! Chris's sister Alison met up with Marina while she was in D.C. for work in July.

Marina and Miguel met up with Jeremy and Andrea in August to help welcome Jeremy into the 30 club.

We hope to take Pumpkin to visit all of these faces soon!

This and That

After all of our shower company left, we got some more company for a few days ... Scoop's best buddies Sierra and Warren came to stay while Erin and Sandor went to a wedding. Scoop thought it was pretty great. Even though there were enough beds for all the dogs to have their own, she couldn't bear to sleep that far away from Sierra.

On Saturday, Chris and I took what is most likely our last little trip before the baby arrives and spent the day in Quincy. I went to a baby shower for my friend Julia while he hit some golf balls with some of the other husbands. Julia, another friend Jenny who co-hosted the shower and me are due in back-to-back-to-back months. I haven't seen the picture of the three of us yet, but I did get a picture of a deer as we left the shower. After that we had dinner with Mom and John and John's sister and brother-in-law who were visiting. The day before was my Mom's birthday - Happy Birthday Mom! The trip was too short to see everyone I wanted to see in Q-town, but hopefully we can go back with Miss G later in the summer.

We were also treated this week to a quick visit from Andrea on her way to D.C. by way of Elko. We had girls night on Monday and it was great to visit. Chris also got to see her before she left at lunch on Tuesday. It's always a good time hanging out with my old roomie and it makes me a little sad we won't see her and Jeremy as often now that they'll be on the other side of the country. Especially since our little ones will be so close in age (in the picture, I'm 36 weeks and Dre is 22). I am happy that she will get to be so close to the V-Team and my sister, though!
I guess that just about sums up our last week or so. Chris and I have spent this evening out on our patio, where I'm writing this now. It's been really hot this week but the evenings are cooler and right now we can see all kinds of stars and hear crickets chirping. It's really nice and I'm looking forward to many more nights out here.

Showered with love

We had our Reno shower last weekend, and it was amazing. My Mom came, and my Dad and Deb, and my cousins ... and best of all, my sister surprised me by flying in from DC! Everyone kept it a secret from me, and I got a little suspicious on Thursday but I really truly thought Chris was going to play basketball when he left the house Thursday night and had no idea he was going to the airport to pick Mena up.

Saturday was the day of the shower, and Scoop greeted everyone in her new T-shirt.

Mom, Deb, Mena and Dad did a really great job with food and decorations and I didn't have to do a thing. My cousins helped set everything up, too, while I was getting ready, and I came downstairs to a room full of 100 balloons! It was great. Lots of friends came over from the shower, from here and from Quincy, and I know I've said it before but it's just overwhelming how much support Chris and I have had and how much love there is for Miss G already. She is going to be one lucky baby.

Isn't the welcome sign cool? It matches the invitation!

Cousins! Niana, me, Mena, Lindy and Tanya

Mom, me and Mena

Chris, me, Dad and Deb

We had such a great time seeing everyone and are so thankful for everyone who came to celebrate with us! We are now less than 5 weeks away from the due date - can you believe it! So exciting!

Birthday Cupcake Cookies

I have been reading the Bake at 350 blog for some time now and got it in my head that I needed to make some pretty cookies. Since I received some cupcake-shaped cookie cutters as a gift, I decided Na's birthday was the perfect excuse to try them out. I used this recipe for the cookies, and followed these and these tips for decorating, however I cheated and bought a royal icing mix at a local baking supply shop. All I had to do was add water and extract (I chose almond) - easy peasy.

The hard part was the decorating. I definitely need more patience and practice outlining the cookies, but I thought flooding would have been much harder than it was.

The best part was, they were delicious! And they tasted good throughout the whole week.

Na planned a girls night for her birthday, so I brought cookies to share with everyone. We first went out to dinner, and then to the Eldorado to see Illuminaire. The show was really cool - it was amazing what the performers could do and I would definitely go see it again. (Shout out to Tyler who hooked us up with great tickets!)

Here is the birthday girl with a couple of the performers following the show.

And, all of the girls :-)

Happy Birthday, Na!

Easter

Did everyone have a lovely Easter? Chris, Scoop and I headed over to Erin & Sandor's for Easter brunch with friends. (This is the first Easter Chris and I have spent together since we've been married because of baseball, so that was a treat).

After seeing them online somewhere, I made Cadbury Creme Egg Cupcakes for the occasion. Pretty easy - mini Cadbury eggs + yellow cake batter. They tasted pretty good, I thought.

There was quite the spread of yummy food - egg strata and coffee cake and fruit and muffins and all kinds of deliciousness. The dogs all got to come, too, so Scoop had fun playing with six of her best buddies.

I neglected to take any pictures of people. Whoopsie. We had a fun time eating and visiting. I hope you had a nice Easter, too!

Yuma friends, Reno friends

We were very excited this week that Andrea and Jeremy came to visit Nevada during Andrea's spring break. Our Yuma buddies (who now live in SoCal) are going to be moving to D.C. soon, so this was likely our last visit with them before their big move. We are lucky to be living in their home state so that we got to see them on their trip home, and it was great to see them three afternoons in a row before they headed to Elko. (Jeremy's family is in Reno, Dre's is in Elko). Highlights included lunch at J.J.'s Pie Co (a tradition when Andrea is here), and spending some time shopping at Target with Dre, just like when we were roomies :-)

On their last day here, we went to the Aces game. Chris took the afternoon off from covering the game so that he could hang out with the rest of us in the stands.

After we left the game, we Skyped with the V-Team - something that has become a tradition every time we see the Nevins since Benny and Michelle moved to Okinawa.

Now, Benny, Michelle and Olivia are in Maryland, so I have a feeling the next time we have one of these Skype conferences it will be Chris and I on one end and the Volkmanns and Nevins on the other. I would be lying if I said I wasn't a little bit jealous that they will be living so close to each other and my sister. I think a visit to the East Coast will be in our future once little miss is big enough!

Frosting can fix anything

Tuesday was Erin's birthday, and I wanted to make her a Rainbow Cake, which I had seen on many a blog and thought it looked pretty. She threw a barbecue on Sunday for pretty much everyone she knows who has an April birthday, so I made the cake for the occasion.

Because I thought it might be a little time intensive (especially since I only have two round cake pans) I decided to go with a boxed lemon cake mix instead of from scratch (one less layer to color!) I mixed one box, measured it to a little more than four cups and decided to use one cup per layer, making cupcakes with the remaining batter from the second box.

Red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple batter.

The yellow layer was the first one I tried to take out of the pan, and this is what happened. I was a little worried, but a little frosting and all was right again. (I did a much better job getting the other layers out of the pan.)

Cooling cake

Frosting, frosting, frosting

Done!

And, the reveal!

Pretty and yummy!

Happy Birthday, Erin!

Aceball is Back

On Friday, the Reno Aces had their home opener. Of course, Chris was there to cover the game, so I went with our friends Chris and Tyler and we ran into many other friends throughout the evening.
One of the new menu items this year is The Big Cheese. It's a garlic cheese focaccia, and it's huge. And delicious. (Don't worry, even though I'm eating for two, I split this with Chris and Tyler.)
It was a little cold and windy, but it's great for baseball to be back in season in Reno. The Aces won the game, and fireworks followed! I'm looking forward to many more games before baby arrives.