Shout Out

I wanted to send a shout out to our friend who created Ariel's birth announcements.

Sara is the owner of Norwood's Arts, a company that specializes in custom design holiday greeting card, birth announcement, or invitations. She also made our Asian themed wedding invitations.

I highly recommend Sara, as she is a good friend of ours and the quality of her work is unsurpassed by anything you may find in retail stores.

Find some time to visit her website http://www.norwoodarts.com/.

As a baby shower gift, Sara sent us a "Countdown to Baby" box. It works like an Advent calendar, where 10 days before baby, you open a box a day until your due date. This was a lot of fun, especially since I was getting antsy that last part of the pregnancy. When Eric would come home at the end of the day, we'd open a box. Taking the theme from the Ten day of Christmas, I would sing, "On the 10th day of countdown to baby we received . . ." and then we'd open our gift for the day. Genius idea, I tell you. Genius.

Showering Baby Phoenix

Friday night, I went to a baby shower to celebrate the approaching arrival of our friends' (Jow and Angela) baby. They are having a boy and at the time of this posting, the plan is to name him Phoenix. As we have mentioned in a previous post, Joe is deployed right now, but there is a good chance he'll make it home for the birth. They are scheduled to induce labor Tuesday night.

We met at a Mexican restaurant, El Tequileno, and enjoyed some tasty margaritas. There were only a handful of us, so the evening had a very "ladies' night" feel to it.

Angela's mom, Judy, read us this cute story about the baby in the womb, complaining about being bored. He's was tired of playing tag with himself and can't wait to see if his new room has a view. I believe the title is "Ma, There's Nothing to do in Here" by Barbara Part (don't quote me on this).

Angela got hooked up with a ton of baby stuff and I was very happy when we started to chow down on cake.

Joe and Angela have asked Eric and me to be the godparents, so we're super excited to see our new godson.

Good Luck, Cheyenne!

I just want to give a shout out to my girl, Cheyenne, Miss Otero County.

This Sunday was the start of Miss New Mexico pageant week. Cheyenne will be competing for the title of Miss New Mexico and a chance to compete for Miss America. As you all remember, I won the title of Miss A back in 2002.

Last summer, I volunteered for the Miss Alamogordo/Miss Otero County pageant as a Hostess Mom. Cheyenne was my girl and I was her personal support team (not unlike what I do for Eric, except much girlier).

She was amazing and I was so proud that she won. I have never met a woman so confident and self assured. She is more mature than most adults I know.

This young lady is only capable of greatness and I know that she will do well in her first state pageant. Rock the house, Cheyenne!

Zipedee-Zoo-Da

Today I went to the Denver Zoo with my goddaughter, Ysabella, and her mom (my best friend) Stephanie. The weather couldn't make up it's mind. Do I want to be cool? Do I want to be hot? So we got an uneven mixture of both. We would have had the most perfect day, but all the school districts seemed to feel that this was a great day to go on an end-of-the-school-year field trip. The zoo was swarmed with hundreds of ill mannered, rambunctious, little delinquents. They were very draining.

Overall, we had a wonderful outing and I really enjoyed seeing some of my favorite animals. However, it must be mating season for some of these animals. We ran into Steph's sister-in-law and her son and she told us about an embarrassing situation were her son pointed out that the hippos were "hugging" each other. There was also a rhino trying to tear down the door to get to his female. Someone get that guy a cold shower.
Ysabella seemed to like the monkeys and the tropical fish exhibit.

Dinner in Sage City

David, Steph-Ann & Vicki

So as a conclusion to Vicki's visit, Eric and I hosted another get together. Eric's brothers, David and Jesse, and Steph-Ann (David's girlfriend) came over for dinner. We had a lovely meal which consisted of spinach and mushroom lasagna rolls, garlic bread and garden salad. For dessert, I tried my hand at funnel cakes, which suprisingly turned out well.
After dinner, Vicki entertained us with an Ireland slideshow (she went there in October).
We had a great time with the family and can't wait to have everyone over again.