On Sunday, March 25th, Melissa’s mom threw her a surprise baby shower as Melissa & Gabe are expecting their first baby. I had received the invitation a few weeks prior and almost said something to her, when I realized she may not know anything about it. So I decided to play it safe and ask if she knew about one. Melissa hypothesized it would be in April or May, but April might be difficult as she has a few weddings to attend in Texas then… Then as it gets closer, she starts talking about her Aunt’s 34th anniversary party on Sunday (the 25th). Apparently this aunt missed a big birthday party so her daughter was throwing her an anniversary party instead. Melissa even bought a huge lawn ornament gift and everything! She had no clue…!

Boy, does that kid have a bunch of admirerers already! There were so many gifts, way too much food, and the cake - can we say WOW?!?! Huge and beautiful. Friends, family, and friends of family all waited in anticipation for the guest of honor to arrive, her husband dragging in the lawn ornament gift for the aunt! It seemed everyone had a great time.

Congratulations, Melissa & Gabe!

This Saturday was Emily’s “Pampered Bridal Shower” which is essentially a Pampered Chef party thrown in Emily’s honor. Since Pampered Chef sells a bunch of kitchen supplies, Emily had a wish list and all the guests were able to purchase from her wish list, instead of bringing a gift ahead of time. Guests also brought recipes from our personal stashes to build Emily and Eddie’s recipe stash. I volunteered my Jelly Breakfast Braid Recipe. The Pampered Chef consultant pre-made a Barbie dress cake (the cake was Barbie’s skirt) and Emily had to use the cake decorating tool to design her dress, including the large bow in the back! During the demonstration, the consultant made Spicy Shrimp Ceviche cups (without so much spice), and a Lime Torte. Emily’s mom and all of her sisters attended, as well as a lot of family friends, an Art teacher Emily once had, a some friends of hers from college. I think I counted 27 people, although I cannot be sure! Congratulations, Emily!!!!!

This Saturday, Matt & I went on a quick day trip to Richmond, VA so I could attend Emily’s Bridal Shower. As an added bonus, I also called Melissa, a fellow VT Chemical Engineering graduate friend of mine since she lives in Richmond. Luckily she and her boyfriend/unofficial-fiance Trey were both free to visit with us after the shower. I’m not quite sure how I met Melissa the first time. I think it was either in the dorm, sorry “Residence Hall”, or through my friend Stephanie. Since we were the same year and major, we eventually had quite a few classes together as well. I did the co-op thing so Melissa graduated a year earlier than me, and we’ve kept in touch via email since then. The last time I saw her, also when I met Trey, was our wedding. Melissa & Trey just recently got a new puppy named “Milley” and I was dying to meet her too! We ate dinner with Melissa & Trey at Outback while Milley took a nap, recovering from a 4-hr play date with another puppy, then we got Milley and took her for a walk in a local park. Since it was close to 70 degrees, it was a beautiful and fun way to meet Milley and continue visiting with Melissa and Trey.

As some of you may know, I’m really into scrapbooking - which goes pretty well with the whole photography hobby too After getting some really good tips and page ideas from various websites, I decided to document my pages and post them online in the hopes they will inspire others as much as those I found did for me. In addition, this lets everyone see my creations - those who may never have the chance to hold my scrapbook in their laps, haha! This is also a good way to store them digitally in case something should ever happen to ruin the book (like Little One stepping on a page last night while I was trying to take pictures of them… and creased the darn thing!). I hope to continually update as I make more pages, so check back often!

Gallery of Cindy’s Scrapbooks

Cindy ordered a new faucet on-line via Ebay a few months back, but we had not had enough time to do anything about it. This week, we finally got everything that we needed and installed the new faucet in the downstairs bathroom. As you can see, this faucet it a little different than the one you probably have in your bathroom, but that is what makes it special. Basically the water comes out of the middle column and is allowed to flow down and over a glass ring, creating a waterfall effect. It really is quite pretty. The biggest problem that we have noticed with it is that the faucet is very high and so the water travels some distance down to the sink (about twice the distance as a normal faucet), thus causing more splatter from the water. This occurs even more when you do not turn the water on all the way. We have already been considering replacing the counter top with a vessel type, basically one of those sinks that looks like a large bowl sitting on top of the counter. We are in not rush for this, so we will just leave it the way that it is for now and see what happens later.

Some sample images of the faucet can be seen here and here.

-Matt