Pasta and Pumpkins

While I had a chance, I wanted to share some pictures from this last month.  Some of them are just because, others show some new things she has been doing.

She loves snuggling with her Daddy, especially in the morning after her morning bottle.

 While my sister had her hair trial for her wedding, Kalea was hanging out with Pat while Sara's cat Charlie enjoyed his resting on his leg.  I love that face she is giving.

 Here she is trying to crawl again with quite an expression on her face.

 She is really good at scooting backwards and getting stuck with her legs under the couch.

 Ready for some Saturday football with Daddy

 She is learning the "8-clap", she hasn't figured it out yet, but she will be a pro by next season.

 She has had pasta a couple times now, but this last week she had it for the first time with sauce on it and the ability to feed it to herself, and to her Dad.

 At first she was having difficulty getting the slippery pasta to her mouth so she pulled it to the edge and put her mouth to the tray.  A little bit later she took a big clump of it...

 and shoveled it to her mouth!  She loved it and got really good at feeding herself.  She loved playing with it.

 Investigating the pasta...

 It finally got a little bit colder so it is time to break out the boots and pants.  She is wearing jeggings and her new furry boots from Gramma and Aunt Sara.  The boots are a little big still and she really enjoyed playing with her feet in the air.

 Finally, we went to the pumpkin patch for her first pumpkin this last Sunday.  She is ready to pick out some pumpkins!

 Pat found his first

 This pumpkin patch in Fallbrook has all kinds of fun pumpkins to look at and a great selection of small, different ones for decorations.  Kalea loved this small one so we brought it home.

 Daddy and kalea with our haul.

 Kalea with her first pumpkin!

 Time to get ready for Halloween!  

Kalea at 10 months

My husband pointed out last night that it was the last day for us to say that our daughter was an age of a single digit (at least in months).  10 months old today and I am amazed at how much our little baby is turning into a toddler.  

She knows exactly what she wants and loves to explore everything around her.  She is so, so close to crawling; I know it seems like I have said that before, but I know she will be a crawler by the time she turns 11 months.  She gets on her hands and knees and is able to move her knee forward.  She hasn't gotten the idea yet of moving her arms forward after her legs, but she is able to get to things she wants on the floor by scooting or rolling.

She is very vocal, she has started to imitate pretty clearly on the word "hi" and sometimes it sounds like she says "Dad,"  among other sounds we can pick out.  She doesn't like to sit still for more than 15 minutes, getting very loud and vocal if it has been too long.  She has become very good at feeding herself and she loves to play with and feel food, especially when it is new.  For dinner tonight she shared our quinoa, salmon and pieces of avocado and tomato.  We try to share our food with her at every meal if we can, and she loves it.

We are almost ready to switch her from her infant car seat to her "big girl" permanent one.  We recently ordered one for each car and when we took one out of the box, she was really fascinated with her new seat.  She kept trying to get closer to the seat so that she could explore the buckle and feel the new fabric.  

Last, but not least, she had her two top teeth pop through on the same day.  She has taken to grinding her teeth every once in awhile, and we are doing our best to keep her from doing it.  She is so cute with a small gap between the top 2 front teeth, apparently it is a trait of Pats moms family.  There are a couple pictures of her below that show her new teeth.  

Please enjoy the pictures we took earlier today.  Some of them are a little blurry since it was overcast today and I couldn't take them until I got home from work, so the lighting wasn't ideal.

 I love this one, too bad it is blurry!  I had to share it regardless since it is so cute.

 Looking at her Daddy.

 Here is a good one of all 4 teeth with a beautiful smile

 Playing with the blanket

 If she is on the ground at all, she usually ends up in this position pretty quickly.  She has gotten really good at it.

 Hi Mommy!

 Trying to move, she is pretty determined to make it happen.

 Taking a break, striking a pose.

 She decied to reposition her head band, I guess in a more stylish way.  It is super cute I think and all done by her!

 Happy 10 months Kalea!!!

Sara's Bridal Shower

My sister's bridal shower was a couple of weeks ago, the day after her Bachelorette, which I recently wrote about.  The inspiration for her shower were hearts, wine, and things Sara loves.  

We went with the colors of purple and green to represent wine since she is getting married at a winery and used wine bottles as part of our floral decorations.  Sara and her fiance, Adam, have always shared random pictures of hearts found in random locations.  It became their "thing" pretty early on in their relationship.  

For things she loves, my mom and I focused on her favorite foods to help focus our plan for food.  We served bite-size, appetizer portions of all different kinds of food.  Our menu included:

Spinach-Artichoke dip in puff pastry shells

Fruit with a mascarpone cinnamon dip

Mini tacos in puff pastry

Lasagna bites (her favorite food)

7 layer dip

Caesar Salad in pancetta cups

Drinks:

Sangria

Blueberry acai iced tea

Strawberry lemonade 

For dessert we had:

White-chocolate Raspberry cheesecake (we bought a cheesecake from Cheesecake Factory-we had to go easy some where)

Home-made caramel with apples

White Chocolate macadamia nut cookies

With so much stuff to plan in a short amount of time, I was lucky enough to have some very wonderful bridesmaids who helped out with some planning.  Our cousin Jacque made adorable invitations for me and took care of having them printed.  Our cousin Katie helped with planning some games for the shower, luckily her mom Teri had some pretty good ideas (and took care of setting them up and the prizes!)   It was amazing to not have to worry about what we were going to do, especially since the ideas I was coming up with were going to take a lot of time to make it work.

After everyone enjoyed the food, Teri helped get the games going.  I love her "teacher" bell she used.  The first game was a candy themed game where names of various candies were matched to wedding themed events/people/things.  For example, "the wedding night" was matched with a "Skor" candy bar.  

Every one took the game very seriously.  There were some very fun/amusing matches in this game.  

The second game was a take on a shower game where you have to write down everything you remember seeing.  The twist for this game, however, was in the instructions given by Teri to take notice of every thing you see, without specifically mentioning items on the tray.  Once Sara left with her tray of kitchen goodies, Teri then told everyone to write down everything they noticed about what Sara was wearing.  Once that was done, then we switched and had them write down what was on the tray.  

Here is our cousin Katie and her adorable son Talin.

Kalea hanging out on Jacque's lap with Jacque's daughter Aydan.

My mom made Sara a cake platter that will actually be used for the wedding cake.  So pretty!

Our family tradition of giving the bride-to-bo a quilt turned out amazing!  9 women on my mom's side of the family each cross-stitched a square and my Grandma put together the entire quilt.  Green and Blue are colors Sara and Adam both love, and are part of their wedding colors.  Notice the two hearts intertwined.  The cross-stitch squared were each a different kind of heart design as well.

The dessert table and the heart garland.  I forgot to take a picture of the food tables before the party started, so the dessert table is pretty empty at this point.

Here is the banner I made "From Miss to Mrs"

Sara's work friends.  I took a couple pics since I caught them eating their desserts in the first one.

Our wonderfully crazy cousin Colleen, she loved the caramel we made (it was sooo good!)

My dad's cousins with Kalea.  Teri is on the far right, the wonderful game planner!

Katie with Talin again and her sister Megan holding Kalea.

My mom enjoying some Kalea time as the shower was wrapping up.

Sara with both moms.  I am pretty cheesy and made my mom stand on the "miss" side and Adam's mom stand on the "mrs" side.

Overall, the shower was a great success and Sara was really happy with it all.  My mom and I did our best to make it a surprise for her, especially since she loves to be involved with planning things.  I tried my best to come up with things that she had not seen, and I think we managed to surprise her with a few things (thanks pinterest for lots of great recipes!).  It really was a fun shower and I am so glad we were able to make it special for her, because she really deserves the best.  

We are just under 3 weeks away from the wedding (wow!) and I need to get going on my Matron of Honor speech.  Wish me luck!

Sara's Bachelorette Party

My sister's wedding is fast approaching, and with that comes two great events; the Bachelorette and Bridal Shower.  Since my brother's wedding and her wedding are within 3 months of each other, it worked out best to have both events over the same weekend.  

For her bachelorette, she wanted a relaxing day so I planned a day of wine tasting, a picnic lunch, and then dinner in Temecula.  My mom did a great job making some mini-mouse bridesmaids ears to go along with the bridal set my Aunt Carol bought for Sara.   Here is the bride-to-be with my mom and Aunt.

Colleen is taking a lot of these pictures so she is only in a few of the shots.  Here is Jacque, me, and Kristin ready at the first winery, Leoness (our favorite of the day by the way).

Jacque is ready to drink!

My mom and I

At the second winery of the day we had a great picnic lunch with way too much food.  We had quite a spread with various cheese, meat (salmon and salami), spreads, bread, and crackers.  Here is the entire group with Colleen again behind the camera.  This winery was nice, we just didn't like the wine as much as the first.

The last winery we solely chose for its name and setting.  It is called "Briar Rose" and it looked like a cute little cottage.  Sara is a big fan of Disney (obviously with the ears) so we just knew she needed to see it.  The wine was a bit disappointing, but still very fun for the atmosphere.

Finally a picture of Colleen!  We were having such a great time.

The bridal party minus Katie.

and the entire group.

After wine tasting we made our way over to "Yard House" for dinner.  It is one of Sara's favorite restaurants.  We were supposed to have surprised her earlier in the day with our cousin Katie arriving for the weekends festivities, but her plane was delayed for well over 5 hours, traveling with a 1 year old.  She was able to arrive in time to meet us at the restaurant so when Sara arrived, she was already waiting to surprise her.  This is the best picture I could get of her surprise.

Towards the end of dinner, Jacque decided to buy Sara a shot with a dirty name.  

She took it like a pro!

Katie bought the table a half yard of a beer for us to share, but Sara had to give it a try first.

Sara and Katie enjoying the festivities.

The waiter treated Sara to a "congrats" dessert.

Finally, we had a chance to get a shot with all of the bridesmaids and Sara.  It was a great day focused on showing Sara a good time.  We would have continued a little longer, but after a day of drinking, we were ready to head home (plus we still had quite a bit to do to get ready for the shower!)  Love you Sara!!!