Surprise Shower!!

Last night, Wicks and I pulled off a successful surprise shower for Leslie, who is due in mid-April with a sweet baby boy (whose name she will not reveal to us, thus the shower we did not reveal to her :)).  We had lots of fun planning/preparing for the shower and even more fun once everyone was there! 

For the menu, we made bellinis, sliders (aka "baby hamburgers"), buffalo chicken dip, white chocolate dipped pretzels, cream cheese & pepper jelly, cupcakes and brownies.  My favorite things were the pretzels and buffalo dip!  And of course the bellinis!  Yum!

For the decor, we used a diaper cake (also our gift) centerpiece along with some simple baby shower decorations courtesy of Party City.  In the rush to get everything finished in time for our guest of honor to arrive, we missed getting too many pictures of the decor and food table, but everything looked really cute!!

Here are some pictures to recap the evening...

Our first diaper-cake-making experience - a success!!

One of the many yummy foods - pretzels dipped in white chocolate dyed blue and rolled in chocolate sprinkles!

Successful surprise!

Cute baby boy clothes

Barkema (& Hawkins) ladies

Bible study girls

PS - thanks to my sweet husband for letting me take over the house two nights in a row (tonight, Jefferson has a "play date" with Breezy, a 100-lb lab, while my friend Ruth and I will have a chance for a long-overdue hangout time :))

Bard Wedding!

A couple of weeks ago, we had the great pleasure of heading to St. Simons for a wonderful wedding weekend for a close familiy friend, and we had such a great time!  It was a long-overdue break from our unseasonably cold weather (at least for our neck of the woods) and a fun time spent with my family, the Bards, and several of my brother's UNC baseball teammates (one of whom was the groom). 

We stayed at the beautiful King & Prince Resort in a room with a large balcony looking onto the ocean, took a couple of long walks on the beach, hosted a Beachcomber BBQ lunch for the guys, and had lots of good food and drinks, not to mention a really fun time enjoying the great wedding band, Party on the Moon. 

Here are some pictures from the weekend...

The King & Prince Resort

View from our balcony...so nice to see palm trees in the winter!!

Beautiful church

Mr. & Mrs. Daniel Bard!!

The fam

Bryan & Kristin

Billy & Me

Kel & Me

Baseball Guys

What a fun weekend with family and friends!!  We were so excited to celebrate with the Bards and everyone else there on this special occasion. 

On a side note, we also discovered the Tibi outlet on St. Simons, where I got a super cute beach coverup for $25! 

Sweet husband

For my birthday, Billy gave me the sweetest present...he and Patrice's husband, Jeff, teamed up and sent us to The Homestead for a girls weekend for our birthdays, which are 2 weeks apart.  So fun!!  I was really surprised, since we weren't even doing presents this year at all, and what better present than to have a fun weekend away with one of my best friends!  Patrice and I met up in Richmond, where I left a car (thankfully it wasn't towed!), and we headed west to the wonderful resort. 

Hotel Tower

Grand Hall Lobby

Cozy Fireplace

View from our balcony...loved the snow!!

Still decorated for Christmas

"Hot Springs" pool outside of the spa

In lieu of a relaxing, luxurios massage or spa treatment, we grabbed our bathing suits and headed to The Jefferson Pools.  Now, we didn't have too much of an idea what to expect from this historic site, but we were definitely not expecting it to be in basically the same shape in which Thomas Jefferson enjoyed the pools :)  When we got dropped off by the shuttle driver, we felt like we had entered the scene of a scary movie, with the rundown building in the middle of nowhere.  The experience was well worth it though...we were laughing the whole time, and the pool was actually pretty relaxing.

We were a little scared pulling up to this place :)

Men and women have to soak separately (due to the "clothing optional" nature of the place...fortunately, everyone we were in there with had on a bathing suit - haha!)

Steamy pool area

Women's pool

Men's pool (we had to take this to show Billy and Jeff what they had missed out on :))

After getting back from our little excursion, we realized we had missed "tea time", so instead we opted for cocktails in the lobby...more fun than tea, I suppose!  We ate in the restaurant which we later decided was the kid-friendly place, but the food was still good, and we hung out in the President's Lounge afterwards for another cocktail. 

The next morning, we ate brunch in the Dining Room, walked around the resort, and visited by the fire in the Grand Hall lobby area.  It was such a fun weekend of relaxation, catching up, and having fun with a sweet friend!  Yay for our husbands' thoughtfulness (and for our wonderful friendship)!!  We're hoping this can be a yearly tradition :)

Happy New Year!

So 2010 has proved to start out just as busy as we ended 2009!  We had a great time in Atlanta for Christmas with my side of the family...there's always a lot going on when we go there, which I enjoy very much.  Jefferson had an especially good Christmas, as my parents now have two black labs (Sam, the 80-lb two year old, and Annie, the 30-lb puppy).  They played nonstop, which was so cute and proved to be very helpful during our 8-hour car ride back, since he slept the whole way!  We continued our tradition of Christmas Eve at The Varsity with the Withers and Darbys, went to the Meaders for Christmas Day brunch, and had 25+ at my parents house for oysters and tenderloin later that day.  So, it was a great time with lots of family and friends getting to be together and celebrating our Savior's birth! 

Here are some pictures from the week there:

Common sight during the week :)

The Varsity!

Possible Christmas Picture (except I'm looking at a different camera)

Girls Picture (including sweet Annie)

Billy and I took our Christmas picture the night before we left for ATL so I could attempt to get our Christmas cards out somewhat close to the 25th...As you can see, we LOVE getting creative with our Christmas card pictures and spent a couple of hours and lots of laughs on our photo shoot with Jefe. I'm glad I married someone who is just as obsessed with our dog as I am :)

Our Christmas Picture with Santa

This gives a whole new meaning to "Jumbone"

Where are the milk and cookies?!?

Heading up the chimney :)

Looking for his reindeer

We actually did have our dog on the roof of our back stoop, but in our defense, he really wanted to go up there, and when he got closer to the edge, I held his "handle" tail.  Also, this $9 Walmart special Santa suit was completely worth it!!