Shower Weekend

Last weekend, our soon-to-arrive baby girl was absolutely showered with love and generosity. I had two showers; one Saturday, one Sunday. And to say that both were just exquisite and lovely is the ultimate understatement. So much love, thought, and effort went into planning both, and boy did it show!

The Saturday shower was given by my best friend, Laura, and her mom, Diane, who was basically my "second mom" growing up through the years. The photos I have from my camera pale in comparison to the ones Laura took on her fancy Nikon. They came out so beautifully, capturing me with all the attending guests. Laura's going to give me a CD of all those photos and I promise to share them as soon as I receive them.

It was all so wonderful, and I got to reconnect with so many friends from my life growing up in St. Joseph. I miss them all so terribly much and it was so special to be showered with love by them all!

As if I didn't already feel special enough from that first shower, then I turned around and the next day and had another equally lovely and special shower in the town of Greenville, MI, where Matt grew up. There I was also reuited with so many wonderful friends who we rarely get to see now that we live on the eastern side of "the mitten." 

This shower had an owl theme, and oh my goodness, was it adorable! It was given by my dear friends Lynn, Jalene, and Aunt Joyce. These same ladies threw one of my bridal showers and let me tell you, these ladies sure know how to put on one amazing shower!!!

{Oh by the way, please don't judge me. I wore the same dress to both showers. You've gotta give a pregnant lady a break, right?!}

With soon-to-be Grandma

Well see if this little girl inherits my weakness for shoes.

She has to accessorize!

We received gift upon endless gift for our little one; the generosity was overwhelming! We really could never thank everyone involved enough for how loved you made us feel.

One very sad part is that I sent all the shower gifts from both showers home with my mom and Matt's mom for the short term while we are packing up our apartment. It was so sad to return home empty-handed! I just wanted to look through everything again and again. But it was too overwhelming to bring back so many gifts to our tiny apartment in the midst of packing up. We'll have it all again shortly, as we'll be moved into our house in approximately ten {count them, TEN!} days!!

A Very Merry Perry Christmas

A belated Merry Christmas to you all! I hope you had a lovely, memorable few days celebrating the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ.

As always in the Perry household, this Christmas was delightful, fun, memorable, and a little bit crazy! It never fails that when Matt and his brothers get together, they seem to revert back to little boys. It's pretty darn entertaining, let me tell you.

Here are a few snapshots of the joyous celebrations:



These are just the gifts for Matt and myself. And there were actually more than this! See how spoiled we are? (Though next year all the spoiling will go to the baby!)

Our strange little Annabelle who loves wearing clothes.



She has no sense of how ridiculous she looks.



Perfect tee for Aaron, as he already refers to himself as "The World's Greatest Uncle."



The Perry boys plus cousins posing for a sophisticated 'stache portrait.
(And yes, Matt is showing off his tattoo sleeve)



The Perry brothers at their finest.



Me and Jennie--showing off our baby bumps. Cousins by the Christmas tree!



Our family of three...soon to be four!

Tomorrow we're off to Ohio to my parents' and then to Indiana to see Dan and Erin, having an extended Christmas and New Year's Celebration. It'll be our last trip out of state before our baby girl arrives!

And by the way, I'm 33 weeks today. Little lady is doing great and I'm so amazed at how she (and therefore my belly!) continues to grow and grow. So very thankful to feel her strong movements throughout the day. She will be here so soon!

Oh, hey there! Let's catch up on life, shall we?

Oh my, it is SO GOOD to be writing here. I have sincerely missed it. Just writing about my thoughts on life's happenings--it's my own little creative outlet, and I have been so neglectful as of late. Well here I am again to update you on the last several weeks, as so much loveliness and craziness has happened.

A gift from our dear friends Justin and Jenna

If you remember from my last post {which seems like ages ago!}, Matt and I are currently house-hunting. It's been really exhausting to be quite honest with you. We've been spending all our weekends and many evenings after work running to and fro, seeing this house and that. We've actually offered on two homes and been rejected on both. But we are on the brink of offering once again...so prayers appreciated, friends!

We also squeezed in our all-in-one-day childbirth class, which included the hospital tour. You better believe it...this little baby girl of ours will be arriving in just over ten weeks!! Between work, house-shopping, and the busyness of the holidays, there has barely been time to breathe. In a few short weeks {just before Christmas}, I will be leaving my position as the Unplanned Pregnancy/Adoption Counselor with the adoption agency I work for. As sad as I am to be giving up doing such an amazing job, I am equally relieved that I will have several weeks to focus only on getting ready for the arrival of our little girl! I need that so much--I still feel so unprepared. And of course, if moving into a house is in the cards also...well, heaven knows that with my OCD tendencies, I will be absolutely out-of-control with the "nesting" phase of pregnancy!

Thanksgiving was just spectacular. We went to my Grandparent's house in Ohio like last year. This year was very different in that it was our first Thanksgiving without Grandpa Moss. His passing in August is still very fresh in all of our minds and hearts. After we enjoyed our lovely, delicious Thanksgiving dinner, we ventured out to the cemetery to pay him tribute.

Photo borrowed from my dad

My sister brought a fun craft {thank you, Pinterest!} for all of us girls to create. We each made our own adorable Sock Snowman:



Proudly on display in our apartment 

I did manage to squeeze in the time to put up our little tree and decorate the apartment this past week, and now everything feels all cozy and festive, ready to welcome in the Christmas season.

My sister Erin was here this past weekend for a visit and she was a huge help to us in our baby registering process, since we hadn't managed to squeeze the task into our crazy schedule this past month. It was wonderful "sister time" with lots of shopping, girl talk, and eating out at yummy places like California Pizza Kitchen and our favorite local Mediterranean restaurant.

I dearly hope that with work winding up for me, and the possibility of our house offer getting accepted {more prayers, please!}, I may actually have time to blog more regularly this month. And we all know there is so much joy to share in the Christmas season, but this year even more so for us as we eagerly anticipate the arrival of our first child.

Happy start to December, everyone!



Summertime, Bicycles, and Drive-Ins

Michigan summertime is in full swing. This afternoon was too hot for my liking, so Matt and I spent a few hours bicycle shopping. We each found one we loved in our price range, so we headed home and geared up to take them for a spin.

My Birthday Bike

S is for Schwinn. I couldn't decide between this one or a different teal Schwinn.
Clearly teal equals summertime to me!

It was almost six pm, and we were getting pretty hungry, so we decided to ride to an old-fashioned drive-in diner near to us: Eddie's Drive-In, to be exact.

The weather was absolutely ideal as we sat and ate our dinners. Eddie's is right across the road from the lake and we enjoyed a warm, balmy breeze coming off the waters.

Warm summer evenings are so lovely. I can't wait for all the evening bike rides Matt and I will enjoy this year! Welcome summertime, welcome.

Birthday Goodness

A few more pictures from the fabulous birthday weekend...

Couldn't get enough of my Baby Will.

My mom made the most delicious birthday brunch, and I got to open gifts right after!

{Non-Birthday-related} I adore this portrait of my very lovely Great Grandma Proffitt.

Holy decadence {at the Cheesecake Factory}

My birthday dinner: lightly breaded chicken with a garlic cream sauce on a bed of pesto angel hair. Cheesecake Factory's gigantic portions allowed me to eat exactly half and have just as much deliciousness for leftovers--Yay!

*Birthday treats*

Oh, Sis, you always give gifts that are so perfectly "me."

Chocolates from Hungary courtesy of the Steiner family!

 As if all that weren't enough, I received gifts from my other two families who "adopted" me into their own during my eight months in Hungary.

Oh and I almost forgot...the other part of my birthday gift from Matt will be a new bicycle! He wanted me to pick it out and we'll be doing that shortly. I also told him that if I get one, he has to get one too--so we can ride together, of course!

There simply could not have been a more wonderful birthday to kick off the final year in my twenties. I feel so loved!!

I Digress

"I pledge to read the printed word"--this phrase has always been displayed on the bottom sidebar of my blog. I am a book-lover to the core and will always remain so.

Now, I have nothing against Kindles, Nooks, or any e-readers out there. The Lord knows I really should have invested in one before I went to live in Hungary for eight months; I literally filled my carry-on suitcase to the brim with books and books alone. But to be perfectly honest, these e-readers make me a little scared--scared that books will slowly fade away and perhaps even one day cease to exist in society.

Because I can tell you that there is little more I love in this life than books. I love books so much that I have now accumulated a ridiculous amount of them. I love everything about them--the way they feel in my hands, the way they smell {especially old ones}, the sound of turning a page. I love libraries--I even signed up to be a student librarian in middle school just because I loved the idea of stamping a library card with a date stamp and cataloging books in their proper order.

And even more than I love fresh, new books, I love antique ones. Antique books are the first thing I search out in antique shops. I love to keep these treasured books out where I can see them, away from our main library of books.

You'll find many of my books filled with quotes and phrases I have underlined or notes I have written in the margins, and I've been known to re-read my favorite books over and over again.

So deep is my affection for books that I would never dream of abandoning them. And though I think the invention of e-readers to be quite useful, I just never saw myself owning one of them.

But several weeks ago, I received an email in my inbox from my Dad. I always love getting mail from him; he often writes just to tell me how much he loves me and misses me. Imagine my surprise when I opened the email to find him asking if I'd like to have his Kindle! Dad recently purchased the latest iPad and now uses that as his e-reader, so he felt he no longer needed his Kindle. Hmm--a free Kindle? One already loaded with lots of books? I just couldn't say no.

As delighted as I am to have this beautiful new-to-me Kindle, I must admit that I have yet to read one of the books on it, as I am currently in the middle of reading two "real" books. In the meantime, I am thoroughly enjoying playing the "Every Word: Crossings" puzzles. It's kind of like Scrabble and I'm positively addicted.

I was very excited to learn that I can "check out" books from our local library for my Kindle. The selection is very meagre compared to a real-life library, but I found a dozen or more Classics that have been on my To-Read list for some time. Plus my dad has so many great books on Faith and Christianity on the Kindle and I'm itching to read them all.

I have owned my Kindle long enough to tell you with the utmost confidence that while I think Kindles are handy and quite fun, nothing, I repeat nothing could ever replace a real book for me. I plan to grow my library until my dying day, hopefully one day achieving my dream of owning a vast and wondrous library filled wall to wall and floor to ceiling with that most marvelous of objects: the book.

Tea Time, Gramma, and Will

These three words adequately describe the wonderful, memorable Mother's Day weekend I recently spent with my family in Ohio.

Sadly, Matt was unable to get time off of work {the downside to his having a job where only so many people in the office can be "out" at any given time}, so I made the trek down to my parents' home with Annabelle in tow.

My Grandma Dorsey, or "Gramma" as we spell it, was out visiting from Portland, Oregon. Since I don't see her often, I of course HAD to make quality time with her a priority. And then there was the fact that I hadn't seen my sister, brother-in-law, or nephew Will since Christmas. That fact alone was horrendous to me, since Will has just turned nine months old and has changed so much since we last saw him!

On Saturday, my Mom, Gramma, and I visited a "Tea Cottage." I found every single detail to be utterly delightful! We all loved it and made such a great memory together.

Ivy trails on the steps--oh yes, please!

There was even clotted cream for our lemon and rosemary scones. Oh, how clotted cream makes me miss England and the many tea rooms I visited there, sipping on my Dorset cream teas...

Every bite was even more delicious than it looks!

We opted for a photo with some of the many hats the tea room offers to it's guests. We didn't wear them during our "high tea"--I think we'd have felt a little silly.

And then there was time with my sister, brother-in-law, and darling nephew Will. Gramma just couldn't get enough of her Great-Grandson!

Will has grown so big! Look at what a little man he is now--feeding himself in his adorable overalls!

And I mentioned before that I made breakfast for Mom and Gramma on Mother's Day. It was just a simple little breakfast before church:

{There was bacon, too!}

And then, just because my Mom loves me so much {and in light of my recent posting of an Irish Soda Bread recipe}, she presented me with this beautiful Irish Soda Bread plate. The plate actually matches the Claddagh tea cup and saucer my parents gave me for Christmas. What a wonderful surprise!

It has been so long since my sister, my mom, and I have all been together on Mother's Day, and to have my Gramma Dorsey there as well made this one of the best Mother's Days I can remember. If only Grandma Moss could have been there, too...