Baby showers and am I really that short?

Tracie and I - shortly after this photo was taken my belly exploded.

The proud parents to be.  This is the most Christmas-ey background we will likely experience in 2009.

The future parents and delightful aunties.

A really nice baby shower table.  I am trying to hide my Christmas socks underneath.

Us and Grandma Darke.  She crochets like nobody's business and made Kumquat this awesome blanket.

Video baby monitors.  Yay!

Happy Parents, Aunts, and Grandparents.

Matt and I trekked back to America recently to spend Thanksgiving with our families.  Work has been mayhem for both of us upon our return so the timing of our trip was remarkably good.  My family in Atlanta were great.  Ava is speaking now which brings a whole new dimension to our auntie-niece relationship.  She asks how you are doing by succinctly saying "How doing?"  My BFF Nicole came down from Boston and we spent some quality time eating around Atlanta, including going to Ria's Bluebird and having the best pancakes on the planet.  We also got to see Paul and Larry and their amazing house and for a brief moment I was hoping to be their neighbor and borrow eggs.  We then headed to Wisconsin, where we met with Matt's amazingly large and close family.  We went to hockey games!  We ate lots of cheese curds!  I was cold but never felt like major appendages were going to fall off due to frostbite (hello Christmas 2008!).  I saw snow (which makes 3 for 3 of snow during Wisconsin travel) but it didn't stick.  I realized people in Wausau still read the paper to find out what is going on, and the community is a larger and more important topic than the country or the world.  And that was great.  Really really great.  While we were in Wisconsin Matt's brilliant family threw us two baby showers.  It was so amazing - everyone was so wonderful and gracious.  I have never been part of a large family (or one where we kept up with our extended family well) and it was so just incredibly nice to be part of something large and wonderful as an extended community of family.  Below are pictures of one baby shower.  I brought along my little point and shoot camera which died upon its first use (bloody old batteries).  Many thanks to Tracie, Matt's amazing cousin who is due any day now for providing these awesome pictures on her swanky new SLR.