What A Great Week!!

So many awesome things to share!! Where to start, where to start!!.... Well, let me jump back to Monday....

MONDAY, MONDAY...
Since my son had Monday off from school, I decided that we would go meet up with my wonderful friend, Heather, so that her and I could talk and the kiddos could have a bit of play date. Her kids are a lot younger than Tyler so sometimes that's a bit hard for because he wants to do things that they can't. But the way I see it, that will give him good practice for being a great Big Brother!! :-) Heather was so wonderful as to make us some PB & J sandwiches with some sliced apples and baby carrots on the side. And then, of course she spoiled us with brownies sprinkled with Reese's bites on top. They were so good! Unfortunately, I didn't bring my camera and have no pics. Such a disgrace to the blog world!! In addition to this wonderful-ness, Heather has also been blessing us with lots of baby stuff that they are no longer using. And the beauty of this stuff is that it is well taken care of. It's almost like getting brand new stuff. Here's some of the stuff she's already given us. She says there could be more but she doesn't want to overwhelm me.

Thank you Heather!!!

AWESOME LUNCH
On Wednesday, my friend, Jessica, invited myself and two other friends to her place for a home-cooked lunch. It was so absolutely delicious! I was about 15 minutes late (which I had already expressed that I would be) so when I got there everyone else was doing their part to help cook. Jessica is so funny because she under estimated how long everything would take to cook so we all ended up helping her which was fine by me because that just meant more fellowship time. YES!! The only thing I don't like about it is that I always feel lost in someone else's kitchen. But other than that, good times!!! Here's some pics of the chefs. They did WAY more work than me since I was late. Somehow, I FAILED miserably to get a picture of the host. I am such a bad blogger!!I partly blame it on my hubby's camera cause he changed all the settings and I had to get it back to normal for me, which took a little bit of time. :-( So, only pics of Veronica and Grace.

The food was SO good. Jessica decided to make this Chicken Chili recipe and it turned out SO delicious. I was going back for more even though I know that I shouldn't have. Here's a pic of the recipe with picture in the cookbook of how it is SUPPOSED to look. I personally think the chili Jessica made turned out WAY better than the picture looks!:

Here's the pics of all the goods: (And I somehow managed to not get a pic of the chili in it's serving dish all alone. I really gotta get better at this!!) Chicken Chili, Homemade whole wheat bread fresh out of the bread maker, with veggies on the side. Mmm!!!!

Here's my first serving. I, of course, went back for seconds (but no pic).



And we certainly can't forget about dessert!! Jessica made some mini brownie bites which were quite delicious. I'd like to say that I only had this one that I took a picture of... but... I had many more. Not good. She also put a whole bunch of Hershey kisses for us, which I stayed away from since I already had so many of these little brownies. Mmm!!

After we were all stuffed, we had some good time fellowshipping. It was so great to be there. Jessica has been living out of California for a couple of years and it is SO good to have her back. This was day was kind of like a flash back in time. What a blessed time!!


TRIPLE THREAT THURSDAY
Thursday was a big day for me. There were 3 great things that happened. First things first.... I had my regular doctor's appointment for the baby. Baby checks out absolutely healthy and everything looks good. Yippee!! I am now 36 weeks pregnant. I'm really starting to look the part now, huh? .... finally. :-)

I also found out at my Dr's appt that I could potentially find out the sex of the baby. Since one of my glucose tests (out of three) turned out to be a little bit high, they want to have another ultrasound on March 4th to check the weight of the baby. If I wanted to, I could very well find out the sex of the baby at this time. This is a tough one for me. I have already waited this long so I kind of tell myself that i could just wait until the baby is born.... BUT..... then there's that part of me that says "The information is RIGHT THERE!!! Just find out!!". What do you guys think I should do? It will be hard not to find out. :-)

The second thing that was great about Thursday was that I got to have a one-on-one lunch with my WONDERFUL friend, Grace. She was at lunch with us on Wednesday, which was wonderful, but I ALWAYS love my one-on-one time with people. We decided to go to Baker's, which is a classic, favorite of ours. We've been going there together since high school. It's not the healthiest but we always find things that fit in to our budget. :-) Sorry no pics! So busy chatting it up that I didn't even think to take a pic. :-(

And now the third thing that was great about Thursday.... We went to the playoffs. Thursday was our first (and last) game of the playoffs. We had such an amazing game! The other team was by far better than our team but our girls probably played one of our best games of the WHOLE season!! I was (and am) SO proud of them! While I am a little relieved that the season is over (cause I'm exhausted), I am really going to miss the girls. They all such amazing personalities. I never went to a practice or game without one of them making me laugh. :-) So, thank you to Natalie, Lydia, Jillian, Mariah, Jamie, Caley, and Tiffany for making this season such a wonderful experience for me. And thank you to Matt McCormick (our head coach) for asking me to assist him and join the journey. It has been a great ride!! And I leave Triple Thursday with some great pics from the game last night - compliments of Mrs. Bobbi! :-) First pic is of me and Matt, the wonderful head coach. And the second pic is of both teams praying at together at half court - gotta love that!!! Enjoy the rest of the pics!!

Congratulations RAVENS!!!
T.G.I. Friday!!!
And now it is Friday! Woo hoo! While it has been a great week, I am exhausted and glad it's Friday. And for Friday I have a bit of great news.... I just got hired as an Instructional Paraprofessional for the Redlands Unified School District!! And they don't even care that I am 9 months pregnant and I will be on maternity leave within a week. How awesome is that!?!?!? Another thing that is great about this is that I substituted in the class that I will be working in for about a week before getting hired and I already know that I get along with the teacher I will be working with and I already know what to expect (for the most part) from the job and the students. YES!! That pretty much wraps up this wonderful week.... but unfortunately with all this GREAT stuff, the week ended kind of on a bummer....

Taylor and I were planning a surprise "Big Brother" dinner for Tyler tonight and we were gonna make one of his favorite dinners, which would be spaghetti with garlic bread, salad, and some fruit on the side. And I was going to make a cake and decorate it for the big brother. We also bought Tyler this shirt that we thought was really cool, which says "Big Brother" on it. Tyler is still quite insecure about his place in this family so we want to make sure that he knows that a baby joining the family is a good thing and that that does not put him out of the family. But then something unfortunate happened..... Tyler's school called me at almost noon to tell me that Tyler was sick and needed to be picked up. So, Tyler actually ended up being sick in bed for the rest of the day and we didn't do the Big Brother dinner. It's a good thing that he didn't know about it or else he would have been REALLY upset. But here's the pic of the shirt we got for him. What do you guys think?

So, that is my wrap-up of my wonderful week. What is in store for the weekend??? Who knows... Guess it depends on how Tyler is feeling but we will definitely have to keep it low-key so he can get some rest. Have a GREAT weekend everyone!!

For The Friend On The Deserted Island!! :-)

Hello All!!

As you know I have a friend who is also pregnant but she has been on bed rest for quite some time. And since she was unable to come to the baby shower, I told her that I would post lots of pictures so that it would feel like she was there. So, now I am FINALLY getting to do that... so sorry Teresa for not getting to this sooner. So, for anyone who was not able to actually be at the shower, I hope you all enjoy these photos. As nervous as I was about the shower, I actually really enjoyed it and thought it turned out well. :-)

Enter baby shower! Decorations & Party Favors! :-)

Now, on to some food! Mmmm!!! It was so good!! My mom was awesome and cooked everything (with the exception of fruit trays and desserts). But the REALLY good stuff was all my mom!! And it was all filipino. Everyone's tummy was happy! :-)

This is the food table. I wish I would have taken pictures before everyone started devouring the food but... live and learn :-) And then, of course my plate. Mmmm.... Goodness!!!

This is Ashley. She is one of the teacher's assistants in my son's class. Apparently they tell me that she never eats anything but on this day she piled a mountain of food on her plate. I had to get a pic of her chowing down!

And the wonderful cake! Got it from Stater Bros. Marble cake with chocolate frosting. Mmm! I enjoyed it very much! :-)

And here are the guests! These aren't the greatest pics but I tried. I should have asked someone else to take pics so I could mingle.

Top: A mixture of people. A friend from high school, some ladies from my dad's church, and a lady that I work with (I mean... worked with. Cause I'm now on maternity leave! Woo hoo!!)
Bottom: My wonderful mother-in-law and sister-in-law. Aren't they just so cute together?? :-)

Two more pics of mixtures of people from different parts of life. Amazing the things that bring people together. :-)



Top: The mom of a couple of girls on the basketball team I coach. And a mom and her three daughters, a family that I know from church.
Bottom: My mom-in-law and sis-in-law again. My mom (in the red top) finally gets to eat. She spent most of the beginning of the baby shower cooking and making sure food was fully stocked. And there is a couple more ladies from my dad's church, Annette and Kris.


Top: A few girls from the basketball team I am coaching. ** By the way, we made it to the PLAYOFFS!! ** These girls are great.
Bottom: Some ladies from my son's school... two of them are teacher's assistants and one is a parent who volunteers in the class a lot. And then there is also Bobbi there at the table who helped me get the coaching job.

Now, on to the winners of the games. Everyone won a gift card.
1. Vickie - She won the Starbuck's gift card for winning the game for making the most words out of the letters in BABY SHOWER. She got 32 words!! Amazing!!
2. Bobbi - She won the Jamba Juice gift card for winning the game "How well do you know the mommy-to-be?" She got a total of 12 out of 14 points. I was quite impressed.
3. Daylie - She was able to catch the most people crossing their legs and saying the word "baby". I've never seen this girl so quite. She was watching everyone like a hawk. She won a gift card to Cold Stone.
4. Beverly - She won the diaper raffle. (Horrible pic, I apologize) Her prize was a dinner & a movie fun pack, which included a gift card to Chili's, two passes to the Krikorian Movie Theater, and some good movie snacks.

Now. we get to the presents. I really did not like this part. I felt like there was a huge spot light on me and I was just burning up. But I was definitely blessed by all the gifts that everyone brought. It was AMAZING!! So, I'm just going to download a bunch of the pics of the gifts. I don't think a caption is necessary for each one. The first one is me in front of all the blessings before I started opening the gifts, and the rest are all pictures of some of the gifts.

So, I know that is not pictures of ALL the gifts but I hope that makes you feel like you were at the shower. I know it's nothing like being somewhere in person but I hope that you enjoyed the walk through the baby shower! :-)