Celebrating Baby Colton

Last Saturday we threw a shower for my sister-in-law Amy, who is expecting her baby boy Colton in September. Amy is doing a Noah's Ark theme in her nursery, so we went with an animal theme for the shower. It turned out super cute!

Most of these pictures are from my camera, but of course, my camera battery died mid-shower and I only got pictures of the food and decorations, so I am snagging a few from Amy's facebook.

There was a LOT of food!

Baby bath tub makes a cute Noah's Ark!

I love these little penguins.

Dessert table

I was in charge of cupcakes, cookies, and cake pops. I got my
friend/co-worker Gloria to make her famous cake pops in the
shape of animals. They turned out really cute
and even resembled animals in an ark (except there are
more than two of each).



I made the cookies and cupcakes.
Note: This is what I should have been doing Thursday night when I was at
the Harry Potter party! But it all worked out and everything got done.

Animal print cupcake wrappers were easy to make thanks to my trusty Cricut.

This was my gift to Colton...

and this. :)

All the fun gifts

Bailey and Nana

Poor Colton has two older girl cousins waiting to boss him around.
(At the moment, Bailey wanted to eat and not take a picture.)

Andrew and Amy, the proud parents-to-be

We're all excited to welcome the newest member of the family soon!

Bailey Potter

With the release of the final Harry Potter movie last Friday, we (I) decided we should join in on the Potter-mania. On Thursday morning, we found out about a party being held at City Centre that night before the midnight showing at Studio Movie Grill there. The outdoor plaza was going to be transformed into Diagon Alley, and they were trying to set a Guiness World Record for the most people dressed as Harry Potter in one place. Honestly my first inclination was not to go because I was pretty tired by the end of the week and had things I needed to do at home that night, but then I decided that since I'd never been to a release party for any of the books or movies (I was a late Potter-bloomer and not that big of a geek) and this would be the last one ever, and since Bailey would make one heck of a cute Harry Potter, why not? That day I went a little crazy trying to put together a Harry costume. After a little imagination and improvisation, this is what I came up with:

Cutest. thing. ever.

Now, I suspected this would be cute, but I honestly did not expect the reaction we got from people. They went NUTS! I think just about every person there must have come up to us and asked to take her picture. They really thought she was a boy. We were interviewed by three news stations, plus a guy who had no camera, just a microphone (I am thinking maybe he was doing a podcast?). We were on at least two of the news channels on the 10:00 news that night (they didn't show my interviews, thank goodness, just shots of Bailey) and she was in some picture slideshows on their websites.

Click here to see the slideshow on the KHOU website and here to see a video.

I saved this picture from one of the news websites.

The hat is my favorite part!

The girl in the purple pants was Luna Lovegood with her lion headpiece

Too much excitement makes Harry hungry.

All the Harrys standing together to try to set the record.
I think they were 40-50 people short, though.

Holding up wands

On our way out, we stopped to get a picture of Harry and Voldemort

Playing at home in her hat.

There were also lots of people dressed as other characters, including Bellatrix, Snape, Malfoy, Hedwig, Luna, Voldemort, and the house elves. We also saw one other baby, another girl, dressed as Harry. It's funny how much people get into this. We had fun participating in the craze for the first and last time, and I'm glad we went. We did not stay for the movie as it did not start until midnight and that's way past our bedtime, and it had probably long since sold out anyway. I have yet to see the movie, but that will change soon.

How I made the costume:
I made a mad dash to Party City to try to find a scarf or a tie or something that she could wear, but of course they were sold out of everything HP except a full costume, which I wasn't going to spend that much money on and wouldn't have fit anyway. So I improvised and went to Ross and found a plain red tie for $10 (I wanted to get a little boy's tie but they had none so I had to get an adult one), then went to Joann's and bought a roll of gold ribbon and some safety pins. I cut pieces of ribbon and wrapped them around the tie to make stripes and then pinned the ribbon to the back of the tie. I also bought some party hats and a black square of felt and wrapped the felt around the hat and hot glued it together and then glued it to the hat. I have a black short-sleeve button-up shirt that made a perfect robe, and she wore a white onesie that we already had underneath. I went online and found images of the Hogwarts crest and Gryffindor crest. I cut the Hogwarts crest out myself from a yellow file folder (it was the only paper I had that was stiff enough) and drew the "H" on it by looking at the picture, and pinned it to the hat. I printed out the Gryffindor crest, glued it to a manilla folder (again for the stiffness) and cut it out, and pinned it to the "robe." I also found a printable template for the glasses that I printed and cut out. For the wand, I just rolled up a piece of paper, making it a little bigger at one end, taped it together, and colored it with a black marker. I drew the lightning bolt scar on her forehead with black eyeliner. And, since owls became somewhat of a theme of Bailey's nursery, we aready had several stuffed owls, so I picked one that was a good size and she carried it. It wasn't white, but it worked. I spent maybe $15 total, and the whole thing turned out better than any real costume I could have paid more for.

Houston, We Have a Crawler!

Yes, that's right. This girl is on the move, which has made her life easier and ours harder. For weeks she has been getting so frustrated because she has wanted so badly to just go on her own. Now she is finally getting the hang of it, and quickly. Suddenly we have to be very aware of things that are within her reach that we never had to worry about before. She is also starting to pull herself up on things. I guess the dreaded "babyproofing" stage is soon to follow. I have a video, but, of course, Blogger is not cooperating...grrrr.

We recently took a trip to California (B's second plane ride) for Phillip's cousin Elizabeth's wedding. We went to the San Francisco/Oakland area. It is really a beautiful place.
We visited Sonoma Valley where we went to a few wineries and took in the beautiful scenery.

Some of the wineries also make olive oil.
Here are a bunch of different flavors that you could sample. I love the different colored bottles.

Taken on a tour of one of the wineries.

Then we went to the Jelly Belly factory in Fairfield, CA, where we got to take a tour to learn how Jelly Bellies are made.

Also on our agenda was a visit to Alcatraz Island. We took a tour of the prison and learned about its history and the history of the island itself.

Driving in to San Francisco - view from the Bay Bridge

Alcatraz

Riding the ferry to the island

Golden Gate Bridge in the background

Sightseeing will really take it out of you.

The island is a protected habitat for many birds and plants.

These guys attempted to escape and made dummy heads to put in their beds to fool the guards.
After they escaped, they were never heard from again. No one knows what happened to them.

 

This is what the guards would have seen.

Bailey having lunch while waiting to ride the ferry back

Afterwards we walked around the boardwalk at Fisherman's Wharf. This was literally one of the most colorful places I've ever seen. Part of what added to the color was the beautiful pots and hanging baskets. Actually, pretty much everywhere we went while we were in California there were beautiful plants and flowers. Even driving around the residential areas, all the houses are surrounded by lush, green plants and gorgeous flowers. Also just alongside the roads and highways, seemingly growing in the wild (but were probably purposely planted there) were beautiful plants. There was also plenty of lavender everywhere, which made the air smell good. We found out that the beauty and ideal weather in this area of the country are some of the main reasons that people live there and brave the traffic, congestion, and the high cost of living.





Fruit stand at Fisherman's Wharf

This is a drive-by, moving shot, so it's not great, but you can see the foliage all around the house.

We also drove across the Golden Gate Bridge and then parked and walked across part of it. Bailey loved the wind in her hair.

The wedding was at the Sequoia Retreat Center in Ben Lomond, CA and was very beautiful. We stayed for the weekend in a cabin at the site. It happened to be unseasonably warm, and the cabins have no air conditioning because they don't normally need it. Fortunately we had fans that were helpful.

Check out these trees. And these aren't even the really big ones:

These pictures remind me of Troop Beverly Hills:

Bailey got to meet some of her relatives:

Meeting her Great Uncle David, Great Aunt Deb, and Great Aunt Brenda

Phillip and his grandma decided to trade shoes....

One day we drove in to Santa Cruz and ate at the Santa Cruz Diner. Apparently this place was once featured on Guy Fieri's show Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives on the Food Network.

And here are some shots of Bailey, just because they're cute:

The wedding/reception - I didn't get many shots but here are a few:

Beautiful centerpieces

Sharing embarrassing childhood stories

And of course we had to stop and eat at the famous In-N-Out Burger.

And yes, the double is mine. :)

On July 4 Phillip, Bailey, and I went to a San Francisco Giants baseball game. Again, just beautiful. It's a super nice stadium, and it sits right on the San Francisco Bay. There were several boats pulled up in the water next to the stadium. We sat about 4 rows down from the very top, which turned out to be great seats because we got a good view of the stadium and the bay, plus we were underneath the overhang so we were out of the sun. They played the San Diego Padres. We left about the 7th inning because we were worried about roads closing for 4th of July activities, and we needed to get to our hotel. But I believe the Giants ended up winning. We did see a homerun get hit into the water and a man jump out of his kayak to get the ball and then get run over by another guy in a kayak trying to get the ball too. He was OK, but seriously. The things people do to get a silly baseball. (See here and here.)

Bailey had a habit during the trip of falling asleep at all the fun activities.

Finally, here are a few shots of Bailey on the plane ride home:

We got back late Tuesday night (the 5th) only to find that our house was 94 degrees inside because our air conditioner had broken! Luckily we only had to sweat it out a couple of nights (it got down into the 80s, which was bearable with a fan) before we were able to get it fixed. No AC in the middle of summer in Houston = no good.

I also celebrated my 29th birthday on Friday without too much excitement. I guess I am saving up for the big one next year! My family came in town so we got to spend time with them, which is always fun. We'll probably be making a trip to visit them in the next few weeks.

More updates to come soon!