Color, Color Everywhere

Maybe another reason why my baby shower is in such a happy place in my memory:

THIS is what we did right after!  

Yes, fill up on yummy and delicious food, get presents for baby, chat it up with lots of friends, and then go throw neon cornstarch on complete strangers...can you think of a better way to spend your Saturday?

We watched the "timed throwing" from afar (which is good, because it looked like an atomic bomb testing site - we would have asphyxiated I am sure) But as soon as we showed up people started decking us out before we could even get our own bags of color.

I'd been to the Holi Festival of Colors about 5 years before and I was amazed at how it had changed - last time they really focused on the religious aspect of it - for example, we dumb spectators could peek into the temple, but only worshippers could enter the mystically peaceful room.  This year they let people enter the temple to hoop, holler, and dance around.  It was a little sad to see, along with the colored handprints on the temple walls (yes, they will wash off, but it is a site of worship!).  I guess when the attendance grows by over 5,000 every year you can't help but let some commercialism creep in.  

Not gonna lie, though, we had a BLAST ourselves!

The most memorable moment must have been when two females absolutely drenched in colors came up and started exclaiming over my belly - and then insisting to draw a heart on it. And then a smiley face, and then... you get the idea.  We heard lots of comments, laughs, and congratulations about our baby-on-the-way.  Some people were surprised to see a seven-month pregnant lady there--but I was more surprised to see people carrying infants around the festivities - glad our little baby was breathing amniotic fluid and not incense-spiked powder.

It...mostly came off.  I had a pink arm pit and a blue arm pit (TMI???) for about a week until it wore off, as well as a bright pink scalp (but most people assumed it was a bad sunburn, so it wasn't too obvious except to other festival of color veterans).

Good times--great life:)

Baby Shower

Somehow, I think it's a lot more fun to post on my blog than to study for my finals/write the papers that I am supposed to be working on (and have been working on...almost...faithfully for the past 2 hours).

Especially because what I'll be writing about ended up being a lot of fun!  I've done showers before - getting married ensures that - and had yet to really enjoy it.  Not that I don't like getting gifts (who doesn't?), but it was hard showing my excitement about kitchen appliances and bathroom supplies without feeling like an idiot--even though most gifts were things I really wanted! And I was still not excited about the whole getting-married experience yet - that took quite a while (like maybe the week before the wedding...ah, to go back a re-live those days and actually want to plan everything out!  

My poor mother!)

This time, it was different.

1. Baby stuff is so much cuter than house and bridal stuff - so much easier to ooh and aaah over - and everyone else wants to ooh and aah over it as well!  Also, it was more like I was opening presents at someone else's birthday party - a lot less self-centered and a little more like a mom helping her 0 month old open her first gifts.  Weird perspective, I know, but so much fun.

2. I actually had things to talk about with the people who came.  It's rough going to a bridal shower and all people ask about is "are you so excited?!" and "what are our colors?" and "I can't believe you are getting married finally!" and you have no replies to any of them - really kills a conversation.  This way we could talk about baby, plans for her colors, excited grandmas-to-be, other things going on in my life, and (*gasp*) the lives of the people who came and I wanted to see--really, the whole point of the shower was to meet a bunch of my friends after months of MIA.  

3. The food: maybe it's because I am pregnant, but food tastes SO GOOD - and my sister and mom (and awesome friend Chaucie) made the most delicious things for me to eat as much as I want!  Actually, a large part of the menu were treats I had served at my wedding reception, but the line was so long that I never got to try any of them...so Emily (thank you!) and Mom made food heaven for me right inside my living room.  It really can't get any better than that.

 

Still, showers (gimmie, gimmie!!!) are still not ranked on my top ten (twenty, or one hundred) favorite pastimes, but I have to say, I had a lot of fun at this one!!!!

My three awesome sisters - the oober-excited (and gorgeous) aunties-to-be!!!

Fun Times

Poopy Water on my Floor...

Do you ever have "one of those days"?  You know, the kind where you think you really are going to lose your mind?  This was almost one of those - and it made me appreciative that the little details of life (like toilets flushing properly) usually just somehow work out.  Lucky for me the past week or two has only been getting better :)

I'm not going to go into details on this one, just suffice it to say the toilet and what was in it didn't agree.

It was quite a violent disagreement, and then the back of the toilet decided to come apart so that the water kept coming...and coming... and coming...

And yes, the poopy water overflowed until it was more than a 1/4 inch deep on my bathroom floor - the upstairs bathroom that could run into the carpet and down the stairs and...don't even want to think about it....

Luckily, we had towels (too bad a lot of them were the nice ones from our wedding - we've since stocked up on raggedy towels in case another such occurrence takes place in our home) nearby that I frantically grabbed and blocked the door - raising the water level in the bathroom quite a bit but successfully blocking the carpet from the wave of destruction.  Then I had to jump into the mess in order to block the air vent from turning into a waterfall... and THEN finally getting the toilet to stop gushing... oh dear, so much for not going into details.

I could only handle so much mayhem, so I got the toilet back on track and sopped the water up - and left the disinfecting for my superman husband to do - which he did happily for his distraught pregnant wife.  Seriously, is there a better way to say "I love you" than to say "Sit down, Honey, I'll clean up the rest of the poopy mess" ??  Definitely have the best husband ever.

And now our house is disinfected, clean, and running according to the normal laws of household appliances.  Thank goodness!!!!!!

Third Trimester!!!

I'm getting fat...

February brought official preggo pants to replace the awesome rubber band that had been holding my jeans together.  This is much more comfortable:

We are well into third trimester now.  Baby Girl Fuller loves to kick and most of her aunts have felt her now-but she kicks best for Dustin.  She likes to sleep when grandparents get their hands too near my stomach - hopefully a trait she keeps later on!  I definitely look pregnant now and I feel like I waddle. Can't imagine what I'm going to look like in a month from now...

Mardi Gras

So, Mardi Gras has come and gone (but Lent stays with us for weeks and weeks - I should have chosen something less near-and-dear to my heart to give up then Sudoku) as has the king cake we made to celebrate our "Fat Tuesday":

And yes, we made this from scratch.

Lesson #1: Cooking from square one takes ETERNITY.

Lesson #2: Baked goods NOT from a box taste like HEAVEN

Yes, those are homemade sprinkles and glaze.  Don't expect this every week.

Can't wait until next year :)

Valentine's Day

I hope everyone had a wonderful Valentine's day.  This was our second V-day together and the last one with 'Just us' - and it ended up being chill and wonderful.

Of course, anything with dark chocolate is going to be good :)

We followed my craving and had yummy Costa Vida after Dustin surprised me with roses and chocolates.

We have sure loved our life together thus far and look forward to the rest of it - so lucky to spend it with my best friend...and an awesome husband (what other husband consistently does the dishes and sweeps the floor?).  I've had a lot of moments this month to stop and realize how great Dustin really is.  

Glad he'll be here to ensure that our daughter grows up sane and at least semi-normal!!!

Disneyland

Our family is soon to expand to three.  Dustin and I have done so much traveling as just the two of us that we wanted to fit in one more big one before adjusting to "family road trips."  Dude's work decided to send him to an HR conference...AT DISNEYLAND!!!  His flight and hotel paid for--what better time for us to get back to 'the happiest place on earth'?

The last time we were there together was 2005.  We were seniors in high school.  It was the first time we ever held hands.

Dustin's conference met in the Disneyland Hotel. I relaxed by our hotel pool, aced a take-home midterm, and enjoyed the 70 degree sunny weather. 

The next day was Disneyland.  And word to the wise--if you go for the last 8 hours (4-midnight) you get a lot more time to ride rides - the kids all start going home and by 9 or 10 o'clock there are NO LINES!

Of courses, there were some rides we had to avoid, me being 6 months pregnant, but we still managed to catch most of the good ones - and some of them multiple times (and we still ended up getting soaked on Splash Mountain just as the sun was going down...).

But walking around for eight hours with a huge belly makes you really tired and sore (as you can see in the pictures) all night and the next day...but that didn't stop us from having fun!!!

Perhaps the greatest thing we accomplished on the trip, however, was not the conference or the relived memories, or even the AWESOME Captain Kidd's buffet right outside the park.  Check out Dustin's score--that's right, ranked 31st out of the whole park on BuzzLightyear's Astro-Blasters.  We definitely know which ride is our favorite.