the weekend before easter, i attended my lovely friend flo’s baby shower <3 it was a beautiful saturday afternoon in concord and flo's sister janina and good friend lynn turned her backyard into the perfect garden setting for the tea party-themed shower. the centerpieces and other decor were très adorable!

and don’t get me started on the food! i could have eaten the entire plate of those fried bananas. luckily i restrained myself … the shower was very intimate and i’m sure more than one person would have noticed ;)

after eating, sipping iced tea and socializing, it was time for games. shower games are always fun, but they usually frustrate me because i often get SO close to winning i deserve a prize but i don’t get one because, hello, second place! i’ve gone to so many showers and gotten second place in so many games it’s kind of become a syndrome. argh!

but flo’s was the shower that changed everything (thank you, baby trapp)! i didn’t come in first place in just one game … i came in first in TWO GAMES! ok, there was a tie-breaker for one of them, but i won! two games! april 16th will go down in history as the day i became a winner :D

first we played my new favorite baby shower game, one i’d never played before. we were each given cut-outs of different parts of flo and brian’s faces and were told to put together a single face made up of the features each parent hopes the baby will have.

i didn’t win (i didn’t even come in second, awww), but i did guess several of the features right and it was the most hilarious game ever. notice claire’s incredible attention to detail with the bow in the hair (third from right, below). baby trapp is a girl, after all :)

we also played how big is mommy? and the price is right game where you have to guess the cost of specific baby items, but i sucked horribly at both of those per usual :)

and now, since you’re dying to know, the games i did win: guess how many stars and the don’t say baby clothespin game. i couldn’t believe i won the guessing game because i’m usually terrible at those. i *always* guess a number at least 100 over. it’s embarrassing. so when janina said 108 and i realized the number i had guessed was 108, i almost peed myself! ok, not really. but i was pretty excited. i had just won my first baby shower game EVER!

the second game i won came down to a tie between me and the incredible mandy. we each had a whopping 11 clothespins. for those who don’t know the game, each guest starts out with five clothespins. if you say the word “baby” and someone calls you out, you have to give them one of yours. the person with the most clothespins at the end of the shower is the winner.

luckily janina had a few questions ready in case of a tie. the tie-breaker? what is the most number of times flo has gone to the bathroom in one day since she’s been pregnant? i won’t share the answer out of respect for the privacy of flo’s bladder ;)

mandy guessed six less than the correct answer and i guessed two more. i was closer, so i won (it probably wasn’t completely fair since i’ve gone through a pregnancy and remember how often i had to go to the bathroom, but mandy graciously accepted second place and i wondered incredulously at the fact that i had won first place in not one shower game, but two)!

after gift-opening, picture-taking and a little more socializing, it was time to call it an afternoon … and a truly enjoyable one, at that. we came, we saw, we ate, we drank, we played, we laughed and we showered the mommy-to-be with love and well-wishes.

thank you for including me in your special day, miss flo! i had an amazing time with you and your lovely friends, no wine necessary :) what a lucky little girl your daughter is to have you as her momma <3

with our zoo membership we got a one-time pass to bring another family with us and get them free parking and admission, so we decided to invite lily, auntie carerra and uncle travis. after all, it would be lily’s first zoo trip and we totally wanted to be a part of that <3 we'd been planning the trip for weeks, but every day we tried to go it was either threatening rain or actually storming. what the heck, spring?!

FINALLY, last sunday, the sun decided to make an appearance for us, so off to the zoo we went.

ellie was kind of a handful (as she tends to be during the appropriately named “terrible twos”), but we all enjoyed seeing the usual suspects, especially the giraffes, zebras, elephants, and carerra and travis’ favorites, the baboons :)

after we made our way around the park, we stopped at the top for a little lunch. ellie was doing great until she had a mouthful of too much food and gagged, resulting in vomit everywhere. nooooooooo! it permeated her shirt, skirt, leggings and shoes. needless to say, we headed straight for the car and she rode home in her hooded sweatshirt and diaper.

regardless of the messy mishap at the end of our visit, we had a wonderful zoo day with la familia. thanks for joining us, guys, we love you! <3

ellie only has one first cousin (so far) and her name is lily. you may remember me mentioning her many times before! well, she is now a big girl of nearly six months old and cuter than ever. case in point:

we were lucky enough to receive a visit from lily and her mommy a few weekends ago. grandpa geoff came, too, because it was a big weekend for college basketball and the guys wanted to watch it together, father and son. awww. of course us girls cared more about playtime on the floor.

and the award for best picture of the day goes to…

…because ellie can’t handle being closer than two feet from another kid, whether it’s a family member or not! we’re going to love having that hilarity to pass around at holiday celebrations when they’re all grown up :) love you, cousin lily!

last weekend was filled with events surrounding tiny humans, one who is scheduled to arrive in early december and another who has only been on this earth for 27 days.

on saturday we went to lafayette for a small gathering with the garner family in honor of their second baby boy, brandon, who is due on december 11th, exactly two days after his big brother momo’s 2nd birthday :)

it is always nice to see the garners and to watch momo and ellie interact with each other. momo did a lot of jumping around and tossing the football while ellie played with balloons and told the dogs, kobe and gumbo, to “go ‘WAY!”

this is my favorite picture of the kids from that day. they’re tickling the ivories! :)

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we spent the next morning at the park and then drove out to manteca in the afternoon to visit our favorite niece/cousin, lily grace. oh, and her beautiful mommy and daddy, auntie caca and, for a little while, grandpa geoff, grandma rodi and abby <3 lily slept most of the time, but she'd take a peek here and there just to remind us how cute she is :)

ellie was pretty good with her, and by that i mean she ignored her most of the time ;) at one point she acted like she wanted to hold her, so we tried sitting her on the couch and putting lily in her arms, but it didn’t last long … she looked uncomfortable and kinda pushed her away abruptly because she doesn’t understand yet what it means to be gentle. that was enough of that!

right before we left to head home, ellie became really fascinated by lily’s little hands. luckily, lily didn’t seem to mind or even notice! … zzz. by the way? when they created the phrase “sleep like a baby,” they were talking about baby lily :)

thanks for having us, sibs! we love you <3