Scanning the Day Away....

My very cute sister is pregnant and due in September. My mom, sis and I went and registered the baby at Babies R'Us this weekend anticipating the questions of "what does she want/need". Way back when, when I got married and had my girls, you had to write down all the sku numbers, the price, the color etc... It was a process!

Now?

They hand you a scanner and let you go to town. Once I pried the scanner out of Karen's hands, I went crazy! She will be very surprised when people say, "I got it off your registry!". She was painstakingly deciding over what bottles to get, when I snuck into the toy aisle and pretty much registered the kid for toys that will get her through the 1st grade. I might have registered for a few things for my own girls. (Hey, they really like soft blankies....)

The thing that stopped me in my tracks was this

My mom: "Why are you taking a picture of that?"

Me: "Oh, there's a blog post in here somewhere."

My mom: "Oy"

This is how the website described it

For parents wanting to give their baby the very best experience during bath time..

It has a whole demo and everything. It has a shower nozzle and a whirlpool spa with claw feet on the tub. They promote the shower nozzle by saying it, "provides a clean rinse to wash away the stresses of the day." Let's see..... what are some stresses a newborn could have?

My mom didn't get my bottle/boob out fast enough.

I was in my vibrator chair 2 minutes too long.

Change me now! I pooped!

I think the company would be better off making a claw foot spa tub for the MOM! From experience, I know that the mom feels a lot more stress during the day than a baby.

And no, I didn't put that on her register.

Mom's Birthday

It was a significant birthday for my mom this weekend and we decided she was worthy of a party! Of course, this family would throw a party if you changed your shampoo, but we made this a "surprise" party which is one step beyond regular party. The girls and my sister started the decorating....

while my brother's girlfriend and I went to the grocery store. After talking to a few people, she asked me if I knew everyone in there. Well, it is kind of a small town.

My mom's friend brought her back from lunch to the tune of "suprise!". There was lots of laughter, food, drinks and pictures. Here is a very cute one of my parents....

And one of the whole fam.....

Nice palm tree, right? I guess my brother, the man in charge of decorations, wished we were partying in the bahamas!

Finally, my sister let me take a picture of her belly. She's half way there and looking cuter than ever!

I love this picture of she and her hubby. She/They look so happy :)

Happy Birthday, Mom! May you have many, many, MANY more!

Love you :)

Friends....

I will post about friends tonight and post about the last few days, complete with pictures, tomorrow. A message to my friends that live here on the Cape, I love you and cherish every moment spent with you, to my bloggy friends... you have opened up a whole new world for me, one which I am loving and learning new things every day...

This week, I was able to spend time with "old" friends. One friend from Grad school and 3 friends from college. It is so unbelievably great to get together with friends that you have had for (oh, God, ) almost 20 years----how can that be????. You have history with them and things are easy. You pick up where you left off. The winter is not a great time to see or keep in touch with people, but come spring, we always try to get together. It's so easy to walk around Karen's kitchen and make lunch for our 5 kids, or to chat with Becky like we had spoken the day before or see Jen's kids and have them remember me from last summer. Becky's girls, when asked what their relationship with my girls is, say, "Um, they are more than friends, kinda like cousins, but not blood relatives...." We talk, drink wine, help each other out, catch up and of course, tell a few stories. For instance, there was Quisinnaire's Rod from Grad school. We were taking a class on math for early childhood education and were talking about Quisinnaire Rods. They are a measuring device that help kids with 1's,10's, 100's ect.. Well, one day in class,(with Matt Damon's mom as our teacher) our friend Elizabeth said something about Quisinnaire's Rod which sent us into a fit of giggles. Of course, we were in grad school and you would have thought we were a bit more mature, but evidently not. And we still laugh about it today.

We talk about our kids and what is going right or wrong and we can say anything and be assured that we will not be judged from one another. We can eat mucho ice-cream like it has no calories because it didn't when we were in college. Or maybe because we were athletes then, it didn't stick to the thighs like it does today. Either way, we just don't care.

Our kids get along together like long lost cousins. If we had to live on a commune together, we would all manage and get along swimmingly. There would be plenty of laughter, too. We definitely wouldn't be wearing dresses from the 1900's like in some other sects, but we would work as a team. Anyway, being home and finishing up a fabulous vacation week visiting "old" friends, makes me a little sad that my "old" friends are an hour to 3 1/2 hours away. Luckily, the Cape is a big draw for people in the summer and I am assured that they will all be down once school gets out!