Oh Boy!

Last night was the first of two baby showers that have been planned for Calvin and me!  My wonderful visiting teachers, Amber and Lindzee, planned it and hosted it at Amber's.  It was so sweet of them!  I forgot to take pictures when I got there, but they decorated it so cute!  Everything was yellow, grey and different shades of blue.  There were lots of little sail boats on the banners and signs posted all over.  I'll add pictures later of the decorations they gave me to take home, but until then here's what the invite looked like:

How cute is that?!  The decorations and colors for the party pretty much followed the same theme. :)

There were about a dozen ladies from church who showed up to help celebrate Calvin's upcoming arrival.  We started the evening with a yogurt and donut bar - yumm!  They had these cute little paper bowls with blue or yellow chevron patterns on them that we used to build our own yogurt parfaits.  There was plain and vanilla yogurt that you could top with granola, toasted coconut, sliced almonds, mini chocolate chips, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and black berries.  Yogurt has been one of my "go to" pregnancy snacks - especially vanilla Greek yogurt with fruit and cereal - so I LOVED having a yogurt bar there last night!  There were also little homemade lemon and chocolate donuts that were so good - I think I ate like half a dozen of the lemon ones... :)

After we all chatted and enjoyed the goodies it was time for some games!  For the first game, Amber took me out of the room while Lindzee handed out a questionnaire to everyone asking questions about what I was wearing.  Once everyone was as finished as they could be with that I was allowed back in the room and we went over the answers to see who got the most right.  The winner this round was my wonderful mother in law!  Way to go!
The next game we played was a guessing game of sorts.  There were brown paper bags set up as a banner that read "BABY SHOWER".  Each bag had one of those letters on it and then an object inside that started with that letter and had to do with babies.  We passed all the bags around and made our best guesses as to what was inside each one.  After we were all done writing down our guesses, Lindzee opened the bags so we could all check if we were right.  Briana and I ended up in a tie, but she guessed the most difficult of all (O for Oral jel) so she won the tie-breaker.  That was a pretty fun game and I'll definitely keep it in mind for any baby showers that I might host in the future!
We also played the game where everyone gets a pacifier necklace and if you get caught saying the word "baby" you have to give up your necklace to the person who catches you.  Elizabeth ended up winning that one, I think she ended up with 6 or 7 necklaces!  She was all over that one! :)

After games it was time for me to open gifts while everyone else filled out little slips of paper with their wishes for Calvin!  I got so many wonderful things for little Cal - he is so loved! :)  I'll come back later and post some pictures of the cute things he got!

It was a great evening and I'm so thankful for the wonderful ladies in our ward who took the time to plan or attend the shower last night to show their love for our little boy!

I have another shower tomorrow morning, and I'll try to be better about getting some pictures from this one so I have some pictures to share!

Keep giggling!
Michelle

Getting Up to Date!

I've said it before, and I'll say it again - I'm not very good at this blogging thing...and I'm willing to bet that my blogging frequency is not going to drastically improve anytime soon.

For those who don't know (which should be nobody since anyone who reads this is probably also on facebook or is family), I'm pregnant!!  Brent and I are expecting our first child in June!  Calvin Barrett Gunnell should be joining our family sometime around Father's Day - my due date is Friday, June 13th.  I just hit the 34 week mark on today, so only about 6 more weeks until we get to  meet our little boy!  We are so excited - and slightly overwhelmed!  There is so much we still need to get done to prepare for his arrival...it makes my head spin sometimes, or maybe that's just a symptom caused by all these extra pregnancy hormones?  So many random things are explained away by hormones...stuffy nose, carpal tunnel, forgetfulness, the list goes on.  It's all worth it in the end though, right? :)  Here's a few of the pictures that I have so far (I didn't take very many at the beginning since I was so sick...nobody wants to see how pathetic I looked anyways, I promise...).

We announced our pregnancy to my extended family (and then Facebook) with delicious cupcakes!  Who doesn't get excited about cupcakes AND babies?! :)

We've had the name "Calvin" picked out for a long time, so when we went in for our gender ultrasound we brought Hobbes with us, just in case!  Good thing we did, he certainly was happy to help us announce the exciting news! :D

This is my most recent bump picture.  April 11, 2014 - 31 weeks!!

Other than growing a human being, I haven't really been up to much the last 7 months or so.  Brent, on the other hand, has been working super hard in school and at his job!  He's pretty much amazing. :)  He's been at his job since March 1st of last year and he's worked his way up a little on the totem pole.  He is now the night shift supervisor/team captain.  He still does valet, but now  he mostly is the cashier and directs things on the drive at the hotel.  This position came with a little bit of a raise and is full time!  Full time = insurance = we can have a baby! :)  He also just had his annual performance review and pretty much rocked it!  He got a small raise and was told that if he's interested in moving up into management in the next year or so to just let his bosses know!  Way to go, Brent! :)  He works so hard for us and we are so blessed to be able to get by on his income alone!  Heavenly Father has really been taking care of us and helping us to start expanding our little family. :)

I'm almost to the Dr's appointment every week phase of pregnancy, so we do lots of trips up to South Hill for that.  We started our Childbirth Preparation Classes (or as we like to call them, Baby Poppin' Classes) 3 and a half weeks ago.  We meet every Tuesday evening at Valley Medical Center with about 14 other couples.  It's a seven week course with a reunion after all the babies are born - probably sometime in late July or early August.  I know a lot of people say that the classes aren't worth the time or money - the baby is coming out whether you're prepared or not - but, I'm really glad we've been able to work Brent's schedule around this so we can take them together.  It's nice to be able to at least pretend that we'll have any idea what's happening when we head to the hospital, lol.  So, that's where things stand for us right now.  We're just making sure we're registered for all the things we think we need, I'm getting ready for my baby showers next week and we're just working on getting things ready for Calvin's arrival!

Keep giggling!
Michelle