Baby Shower!

My friends Cat, Rachel, and Charity threw me such a perfect baby shower this past weekend. They took the rockets theme of our nursery and really ran with it! There were star and moon filled trays of delicious gourmet food, there were moon pies for dessert and cute little cupcakes that said "Beth is over the moon excited!"

Rebecca hand-made this cute bunny and rocket blankie!

Rachel made a really cute three layer diaper cake with a rocket on-top and Charity even hand-sewed fabric banners to go with all the streamers and balloons!

We played the "name game" where I scored a fantastic 1 out of 15 (I got my name right!). Cat won with over 7 correct I believe.

After opening a ton of gifts (all of my friends were overly generous and thoughtful for our little boy!), the ladies all made pages for a baby book for us. I really can't wait to see the final result! It was such a great idea and I will really appreciate only having to pop pictures in when time becomes a serious delicacy!

I had such a wonderful time and I'm so thankful to have such great friends!

How much farther?

Not going to lie, walking was much easier 8 months ago. Especially long distances. Our weather has been so nice (mid 60s and sunny) and we just couldn't pass up the opportunity to take the girls out for a nice stroll.

We started at the dog park at Chatfield SP (the one by our house) and walked all the way to Aspen Grove along the Platte River. Dave had himself convinced (from the hundreds of times he's biked this route) that it was only 3/4 of a mile or so. That seemed like a good half way point for my bladder, so we committed to that.

Two miles later (and one very uncomfortable Beth!), we made it to the restrooms. Not only were there 100's of walkers, bikers, etc out today; we happened to run into our friends Sarah and Alex JUST as we made it to restrooms. Seconds later, Dave's running buddy (and my coworker), Chris showed up! What are the odds?

After chatting with them for awhile (a nice break!), we made the 2 mile trek back to our car. We made it just in time as the sun went down. It was a fun walk even though I may have over done it just a bit. Not many more of these left where I'm carrying and not pushing baby!

Super Bowl XLV Champs!

After waiting nearly half my life for the Packers to make it back to the Super Bowl, both Dave and I were roaring and ready to cheer on Green Bay in this years Super Bowl.

Since it's a given that Thumper will be a Green Bay fan at least until he's old enough to rebel against us, I opted to decorate one of my maternity shirts with "Cheesehead on Board" (over using face paints on my tummy...). It turned out really well and I give credit to our little boy for the win! It was a nail biter and definitely raised my blood pressure, but it was a great game. Dave even did his famous happy dance! And best of all, the stress and excitement didn't send me into labor. Phew...

Fun Scan - Video

Here's a low-quality version of our Fun Scan. I couldn't make it great quality without exceeding file size constraints, so if you want to see it in high quality, email me and I'll send you a link to download the file. Hopefully you can still get the just of it.

Note: it's a 20 minute video!

Enjoy!

Fun Scan!

Yesterday we had our 3D/4D Fun Scan. It's a 30 minute ultrasound all in 3D (the 4D is time). We got quite a few good pictures and a nice video out of it. The quality of our pictures aren't as good as they could be because of the location of my placenta (tummy-side), but you can still see his features well! Here are a few of our favorite snapshots:

I think that's a smile there! In front of his mouth is the cord. At one point, he held on to the cord!

I love this one with his left hand to his mouth. I should also mention that she measured his feet because we were curious how big they were. Hard to believe, but they measure 7 cm (about 2.8 inches) already!

He was having fun with us-- he kept sticking his tongue out at us! Our tech kept chuckling; she doesn't normally get to see a baby do that as much as our boy did!

And one of him sucking his thumb... again with his left hand.

We think he's quite the cutie!

Baby Shoe Update - 28 weeks

Well we are into the 3rd trimester already (!!) and getting closer to seeing baby every day! I'm currently 28 1/2 weeks (37 weeks is full term; due date of 4/19/11 is 40 weeks). While we had a wee-little-scare earlier this week that sent us in for a NST, everything is looking great with baby.

Today was my follow-up ultrasound and I was ruled "cleared" of the previa issue from two months ago. Baby is still a boy and he's measuring 3 lbs 2 oz (that's the 70th percentile). So he's a chubby little guy with a rapidly decreasing amount of space to play in.

I'm enjoying all of his kicks and jabs-- he's going to have strong legs I think! Dave thinks he's got his nose and mouth. What do you think? (picture below is Dave at birth)

Playful Sequoia

[Warning: the following is what happens when Dave's working til midnight, the chores are done, and the DVR is out]

I decided to pull the camera out to snap a few photos of Sequoia. She loves to initiate play when you get on the ground with her and tonight was no different. The following sequence of pictures takes place over the span of about a half hour. Tonight's session spanned 5 toys. I'm not sure the rationale she uses for selecting toys, but she will spend several minutes with her head in the toy bin selecting each and every one of them. Her attention span isn't the greatest, but she sure loves to show off!

The line of up of tonight's toys of choice

Gymnastics!

Tonight, we went to a Denver University Gymnastics meet. It was against one of the best teams in the country (Georgia) as well as BYU and USAFA. Our friends (and now neighbors!) Brian and Miranda joined us.

I always find it hard when 4 events are going simultaneously, but we still had a lot of fun. Alicia Sacromone was the star in attendance (former Olympian; you may remember her as "team captain" in Beijing).

Can't say we ate very healthy tonight-- nachos, pizza, popcorn, pretzels and cheese. So of course we had to top it off with some Coldstone!

Georgia of course won and BYU took 2nd. Denver struggled on beam and floor and landed in third.

Rockets everywhere!

My parents spent an insane amount of time making decorations for baby Shoe's nursery. They took our rocket crib set and made a set of 3 wall art hangings-- one of which says "Moon and stars up in the sky with rocket ships that go so high!" My mom hand stitched each and every detail of these. Amazing!

My mom and dad took an old lamp and turned it into a really fun rocket lamp! They made a wood model rocket and hand painted it to match the nursery rockets and mounted it with a wooden moon and stars to the base of the lamp. It's so cute!

Finally, my mom took a electronic mobile from Babies'r'us (ironically, one that has a star/moon projector on it!) and removed the mobile items and replaced them with handmade rockets, moons, stars, and clouds. I know she spent an insane amount of time hand making each of these hanging items. The final product is PERFECT! The mobile itself is so nice in that it has many types of sounds, a night time projector of stars and moons, and even has a remote so we can turn it on/off without waking baby.

These items totally make the nursery and we're so thankful of all my parents effort to make it extra special for baby Shoe! We're not quite done yet, but it's definitely starting to look and feel more like a babies' room! We're excited!

Merry Christmas! (2 of 2)

We headed up to Minnesota the afternoon after Christmas to see my family. My brother had flown in from San Diego a few days prior, so it was nice to have the ENTIRE family together (dogs and all)!

MN had gotten record amounts of snow during December such that the deck fence was barely viewable because of 4-5' snow drifts! The dogs thoroughly enjoyed running around their huge yard and pouncing in the snow and on eachother. There wasn't a night that went by that they weren't exhausted at bed time.

My parents went over the top with (homemade) gifts for baby Shoe. I can't believe all of the time and effort they put into the gifts for his nursery. I'll make a dedicated post on it showcasing some of the wonderful items they made.

After opening gifts as a family on Sunday evening, we made the 3 hour drive to Wisconsin to see the grandparents. We are lucky that both my mom and dads parents live only a few minutes apart. We enjoyed my mom's homemade BBQs for lunch with Grandpa and my Aunt Sandy. Grandpa seems a bit lonely and it was hard on everyone not to have Grandma there. We went out to the grave site to put cross wreaths on Uncle Dave's and Grandma's graves. It's definitely most hard at Christmas time not having them around!

We spent the afternoon and evening at Grandma and Grandpa Nimtz's. My Uncle, Aunt, and one of my cousins (Abby) drove in from Appleton to see us. We had a great time being goofy and opening gifts. Grandma and Grandpa got a wonderful Bose wave system that I am sure they will enjoy listening to all of their music on. They also got our annual "Year in Our Shoes" book and a DVD of home videos from my cousin Jeff. I am sure they will love reliving all those memories!

The next two days back in Minnesota were pretty low-key. We enjoyed playing with our new gifts, teaching my parents "May I?" and eating dinner at Culvers while watching the dogs battle eachother all day. We ended the week with our traditional antlers photo [why is it that the dogs never want to cooperate?] before heading back down to Des Moines for one more trip to Hickory Park and one last night at Dave's parents.

The drive back was pretty brutal to Omaha with freezing rain, but we made decent time through Nebraska and eastern CO despite the high winds and blowing snow. We made it back safe and sound just in time to enjoy the countdown to New Years together.

Merry Christmas! (1 of 2)

For Christmas, we trekked across the plains and the midwest to head to Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin for 1.5 weeks. We took the girls with (of course) and had a relatively uneventful drive out. Girls behaved wonderfully, but we had to stop for me 9 times (one of those fun pregnancy benefits). My parents took the girls for the 5 days we spent at Dave's parents house.

It was just Dave and I with his parents for the first few days and we spent a lot of time playing a card came called "May I" and Dave and his dad hit the pool at the Y a few times. Brian, Ania, Jack (our nephew), and Caroline (our niece) made the trip down from MN late on Christmas Eve. We enjoyed playing with Jack and Caroline into the wee hours of Christmas Eve (I can't believe they weren't tired at nearly midnight!).

On Christmas morning, we enjoyed watching the kiddos open all their fun gifts. I think Jack most enjoyed his straw sticks which he made a neat rocket out of with the help of the boys. I think Caroline was most amused with the unwrapping of gifts-- and she was really good at it!

Caroline has grown so much since I had seen her in February and is as cute as can be! She figured out how to open doors and had a great time saying "hi" and "bye" as she would open and close them.

We ended the day with the traditional Shoemaker Christmas dinner to include ham, potato casserole, and green/red jello! It was yummy! We had a wonderful time with everyone and sure wish we got to see our nephew and niece more often!

28 is great!

We did lots of fun things for my 28th birthday. Before we left for MN and IA, we had our traditional birthday dinner outing at Melting Pot (yummmmm). And we capped that night off with a horse drawn carriage ride through downtown Littleton. The streets were lit and it was magical!

We were in Iowa for my birthday and my parents were nice enough to drive all the way down to Ames to pick up our girls and enjoy a lunch at my all time most favorite restaurant in the world-- Hickory Park. It's on Dave and I's old stomping grounds of ISU and it was fantastic as always! I'm so glad I got to share it with my mom and dad!

The celebrations continued with Dave's family down in Des Moines. They took us bowling (eek, I wasn't so good-- I'll blame it on pregnancy!) and out to eat at the Italian restaurant where we had our first date-- Cosi Cucina. We both had this very yummy gorgonzola pasta dish. We capped the night off with the traditional DQ ice cream cake.

It was a really fun birthday! Sometimes it's hard having a birthday so close to Christmas because of all the last minute shoppers and distractions, but it's awfully nice when you get to spend it with family who lives thousands of miles away.