30 weeks at the Rose Garden

Here I am at the Point Defiance Park in North Tacoma. Luke and I strolled over there a couple of nights ago to visit the duck pond and see the Rose Garden, one of my favorite places! Can't believe that I'm at 30 weeks already. Time is moving faster than a pregnant lady towards a bowl of ice cream! Lots of kicks and squirming is coming from the baby these days, and most mornings it wakes me up at 4:30 a.m. and is ready for breakfast. I can see how easily my child is going to train me (wink wink).

Graduation, Crib Assembly, & Shower "oh my!"

It has been such a busy June already! Luke graduated from UW Tacoma with his Master of Ed. on June 11th. The hooding ceremony was on June 10th. There are some quick snapshots of us at the hooding ceremony with our friend Jesse, who went through the same program and also graduated:

More pictures from graduation to follow. We took several lovely ones with Luke's parents the day after commencement. (Due to the size of the class of 2010 and the commencement location-Tacoma Dome-we weren't able to get many great shots during the ceremony.) We held a small open house at our apartment right after graduation and welcomed family and friends alike to come and help us celebrate Luke (and Jesse's) achievement. It was a fun time, and we are so thankful to everyone who showed their support--it's been a lot of work and we couldn't have done it without our friends and family and church family.

Also happening that weekend was the baby shower hosted by the members of Mount Cross Lutheran, our home church. Again, more photos to come from the shower. I didn't get any on my phone or camera because I was otherwise occupied during the festivities! We received so many beautiful and generous gifts including: 3 bouncers/baby-rockers; a stack of blankets a yard high; over 15 onesies; sleep sacks, crib sheets, teddy bears, lots of books and board books, 2 Baby Bjorn carriers, a sling carrier, a gender neutral diaper bag, a towering "cake" made of diapers, bottles, binkies, booties and rattles, about 20 different rattles and toys, a large blow-up rubber ducky bath/pool, baby legos, a Boppy nursing pillow, 3 bath sets including a miniature bath robe that is so cute it breaks my heart, a first aid kit and lots of other delightfuls as well. The two large group gifts given at the shower were 1) a $400 gift card to Babies R Us (WOW!) and 2) $645 towards the cost of moving a vehicle out from Michigan this summer so that I can have my car back! It was so overwhelming and so exciting. We feel so blessed to have received so much. There are too many people to thank. (We tried, and fell overwhelmingly short of expressing our true gratitude.)

One special gift from the "grandparents" otherwise known as Luke and I's parents, was our Crib! During Luke's open house we were presented with the crib, and Luke was so excited about it that we had it set up the next morning. Here are some pictures of the set up (he took the wise advice to set it up in the room where it will live--often people set up their cribs in other rooms, go to move it in to the nursery and then find that it won't fit through the doorway! We fortunately didn't have that issue!):

Birthday fun and another belly shot!

A lot has been going on since our last post, and I'm sure it's just an indication of the many busy times we've got ahead of us. At the end of May we celebrated Memorial Day weekend by enjoying a lot of quiet time around the apartment and taking a day trip to Olympia. We had a great time walking in Olympia; the sun came out and we haven't ever really gotten to spend much time there. As a cool and unexpected bonus, we found this statue titled "Motherhood" and I just had to get my picture next to it!We also found this pretty little garden near where the Olympia farmer's market normally is. It's a garden that is kept and maintained by the botany students at the Washington State University Extension program. I was ready for a break anyways, so I took full advantage of this pretty little bench in a quiet resting spot. Plus, it had been kind of a long time since I'd had so much sun on my face, so I rather enjoyed it.
June came and we started to get ready for all the excitement and activity that it brought with it. I have two showers in June, Luke graduates with his Masters of Education from UW-Tacoma, which his parents are coming out for, and it was my birthday at the beginning of the month. Here's a lovely shot of my chocolate raspberry cake with curly-cue candles before I tore in to it with a vintage cake cutter. The cake cutter was the high-light of the evening, as it looked like a large, straight, thickly pronged comb (or as I pointed out at the table, "worst toothbrush ever!"). I think I figured it out though, and by the third or fourth piece I had worked my technique perfectly for slicing and thumping each over-sized piece of cake on a plate. There were many jokes around the table about this--you know me, always good for providing a laugh (usually at my expense somehow!).Although it was cloudy and drizzling on the day I celebrated with my family, my actually birthday turned out to be a pretty sunny day, and it was a good thing, because we spent he evening at the ballpark here in Tacoma. We had a staff outing planned for all the church staff and their families to attend a game at Cheney Stadium to watch the AAA league Tacoma Rainiers face off against the Reno '51s. This turned into a double-header due to the rain the day before so we got two games for the price of one (only one hot-dog though...). Here's a shot of us between games. Notice that it looks as though I've stuffed a football under my shirt (I'm already at 26-27 weeks!)