1. Elliora playing on the floor of Brenda‘s living room while we worked on party prep for the Summer Fiesta on Saturday evening.

2. Annalie and Noah were playing companionably in his room. I asked them to smile for a picture. Annalie smiled; Noah adopted an expression that made him look as though he feared for his life.

3. Annalie playing in the supercool fountain in Sonja‘s backyard.

4. Brenda was happy to hold Elliora for me while I went to the bathroom after our arrival Friday night, but the poor baby was so very tired I thought she’d probably cry if I handed her off to someone she hadn’t seen since she was five days old. So we distracted her with keys.

5. Even though it had been a year since these four had all been together, they got along like they just saw each other last week. I love that.

6. Brenda’s cat Aqui had her kittens on our first full day here, the day of the fiesta! She had five total, all gray and white. Mama and babies all seem to be doing really well. We look forward to playing with them before we go home.

7. I took a bunch of photos of the girls in their matchy-matchy fiesta dresses, and they were all so hilariously adorable that I had to Flickr them all, even the ones that were nearly identical.

8. Fish and Elliora.

9. Ready, set, go!

10. Oh man. This is hilarious to me (and probably anyone who knows Madge and Fish) on so many levels.

Whack!

12. Madge brought flan. I had a bite just to try it. I thought I didn’t like flan. Turns out, good flan is delicious. Who knew!?

13. I finally met THE Yara . And she’s awesome, duh.

14. Fish, Sonja, and Madge may or may not have been laughing a little more than usual because there was alcohol being consumed. Probably not though. These three are some of the funniest people I know even stone cold sober.

15. Sunset in the Sticks.

16. A blurry but happy photo, taken by Fish. I’m pretty sure the alcohol had nothing to do with the blurriness. I know the happiness was all due to being with good friends.

More photos in the Flickr photoset goin’ back to Cali 2.

Last week, my friend Rebekah threw a baby shower…for Annalie, who is expecting her first baby sister.

A couple of weeks ago, when we were painting pottery with my mom at our favorite studio’s Ladies’ Night, Bekah asked if I was interested in having a baby shower with our friends in Southern Maryland. I said I’d love that, but I didn’t see how there was time to plan that before it would be getting too close to the baby’s birth for me to be comfortable driving that far for a party. And then it would be December, when everyone is crazy busy anyway. I suggested maybe we could have one after the baby was born.

A couple of days later, I emailed Bekah to confirm that I’d be in her town in a few days for my last pre-baby haircut, and asked if she wanted to go out to dinner afterwards. She replied…and asked if it would be okay if she planned a baby shower for Annalie’s first baby sister for the afternoon after my haircut. She happened to know that most of the friends I’d want invited were free for that block of time, because they’d been talking about possibly getting together for something else on that day. I responded that it was a fantastic idea, that I was sure Annalie would absolutely love it, and I would too.

If you’ve been reading this blog long enough, you might remember that Bekah is the one who, a couple of years ago, invited me to my own surprise birthday party. She knows me well enough to know I don’t really appreciate surprises, and I don’t love being the center of attention. So she read between the lines of my reluctance to plan a shower before the baby arrives, and planned a fun party for Annalie and her friends. Not only that, she did it with about three days’ notice.

We were originally going to meet at a park, but there was rain in the forecast, so we decided to meet at a pizza place with a party room and a kids’ play area instead. That ended up working out just fine (except the light would have been much better for photos at the park, but probably no one cared about that except me), and the food there is delicious, which was a nice bonus.

Rebekah did a great job planning fun games for the kids. They seemed to enjoy themselves a lot, and all the grown-ups appreciated not being made to play corny shower games. There was a match-the-baby-socks game, and a memory game in which Bekah sneakily made everyone think they’d have to remember items under a blanket but asked questions about me instead—what I was wearing, what color were my eyes, etc.—while I hid in another part of the restaurant. There was another game too, where they were passing an item around a circle based on certain words said in a story Bekah was telling, but I missed most of that one because I was too busy talking.

(Yes, I crocheted that flower headband on Baby Ashley in the above photo. Bekah asked me to make a headband for her with a “big ol’ flower” on it, so I did. I’m going to make a few more that are a little bigger, because I underestimated the size of a 4-month-old’s head.)

Thanks again for whipping up one of the world’s fastest baby showers, Bek! It was a fun party for kids and grown-ups alike, and those orange-coconut cupcakes were delicious. I’m glad you know me so well, and I promise never, ever to underestimate your party-planning skillz again!

Guess who just successfully defended her thesis…Erin did! And now she officially has a Master’s degree, woohoo! Most of you probably don’t know or much care who Erin is, but she worked really hard for a long time to get to this point, and I’m so proud of her! So here’s a little dance party in photo form, just for her.

Good job, Erin! Now, would you please come visit us since you have time to have a life again!?

In other news, I really would like to post some photos from my second week in California, and tell you about all the fun stuff we did (even though a lot of the fun stuff was just Annalie running around playing with her friends, while I sat and drank coffee and laughed with my friends) but I am still editing photos. I feel like I’ve been editing California photos for several years now. It’s all good, though. I’ll finish eventually.

So if you need me I’ll be over here, editing photos in between the usual cooking and crocheting, homeschooling and watching Veronica Mars on Netflix Instant, being weirded out at all this movement in my midsection and taking three weeks to maneuver myself from sitting on the couch into a standing position. (I’ll be 28 weeks as of Monday—that’s officially two weeks into the third trimester, and only eight weeks before Annalie was born.)

Just a little taste of the dotty baby shower for you, already blogged by Brenda and Bonnie, and Flickred by Summer and Katie as well. I’ll post many more photos as soon as I finish editing the thousands of photos on my hard drive. (This photo was taken by either Brenda or CC with CC’s camera.)