30w2d

It's been a while since I posted a new belly picture. Sorry it's blurry. The camera battery was about to die so Jon had to take it fast. You get the idea.



Last Saturday was my shower in Austin. It was a blast and I have a bunch of pictures to post, but they're on Ann's camera at the moment. As soon as she gets a chance to upload them I will post a re-cap. I do have a couple of pictures of the awesome diaper/gift cake made from scratch by my sister-in-law, Jen. Yeah, she made this:


Front


Back


Each diaper was individually wrapped with a piece of ribbon. That is some serious attention to detail. You would not believe how excited I was about the pizza pan that made up the base of the cake. See, I've got this addiction to Tombstone Pepperoni Pizza that started way before I was pregnant and I've never had a real life pizza pan before.

A Very Austin-y Weekend

The thing to do on the weekends when you live in the Austin area is to take your boat out on "the lake" along with a bunch of friends, a bunch of beer, and 10+ gallons of sunscreen. Most often, "the lake" refers to Lake Travis.

Funny story about this terminology. When Jon and I were engaged in 2004, I took a trip to Minnesota without him over the 4th of July holiday to scope out wedding reception sites with my mom and sister. During one phone conversation with him, I told him I was bummed out and bored because all of my friends were up at the lake for the holiday. He said, well, why don't you just go to the lake and find them? I started laughing so Jon says, what's so funny? I told him, in Minnesota, the term "up at the lake" refers to any of 15,000 individual lakes, not just one lake like where he grew up in Austin. I would have been driving for weeks trying to find all my friends at their respective lake cabins.

Jon's parents were kind enough to let us take their boat out last weekend and we had a great time.


Captain Jon.


Sean and Tyler with some delicious Lone Star beer given to them by fellow boaters after the guys drank all the beer on our boat.


In Texas, you are never more than a stone's throw from the nearest BBQ joint. Brisket y'all?


Please refrain from asking if there are whales in Lake Travis. That's just pregnant me and Jon hanging out in the boat while Sean took the helm for a bit.


This picture gives you a small sense for how popular this lake is. We parked for a while in an area called Devil's Cove (might be the same thing as Devil's Hollow on the map link above). This is basically a long and narrow inlet where everyone parks their boats and ties off to the boat next to them. Then it's just one big party until the food and drink run out. This is just one row of about 50 rows of boats that were packed into this little area. Crazy.


I swore I wasn't going to subject our readers to yet another nursery post, but I can't help it. On Friday I received a package from mom containing the long-awaited window seat cover. I am in love with it and can't wait to hang out in the window seat and read stories with our little guy:

Third Trimester (and a How-To)

Third trimester already! As in home stretch. As in three months left. As in let's get some crap done before baby boy gets here! (Yeah, that's his name, Baby Boy. No, we don't have a name yet. No, we're not going to tell when we do. No, I don't want to talk about it, but thanks for your concern, we love you, really).

Two things we accomplished this past weekend were to hang a room-darkening shade in the nursery (thanks mom!) and complete the window valance. I thought I would share with you how I painstakingly created this masterful work of wondow art.

How to Create a Window Valance

1. Take old window valance and have mom iron on some ribbon when she's visiting you.
2. Decide you need a second one to make it look fuller.
3. Purchase window panel that is "pretty close" to the same color at Target since first window valance has been discontinued.
4. Set up sewing machine.
5. Get overwhelmed and ask mom to do it next time you are visiting home state. Tell her you thought it would be so much more special for Baby Boy to have something made by grandma.
6. Hang second valance and curse when it doesn't match the first. Decide to make second (now third) valance out of remaining window panel fabric.
7. Set up sewing machine.
8. Get overwhelmed and ask mother-in-law to do it next time you are visiting her. Tell her you thought it would be so much more special for Baby Boy to have something made by grandma.
9. Iron ribbon on both new valances.
10. Hang valances and brag on your blog about your ribbon-ironing-on abilities.


New valance. Check out the ribbon. I did that.


New room-darkening shade. It works so well in fact that I need to add some sheers for when we want some diffused sunlight in there.