NICU stay + emery's birthday weekend.

this has been quite the blogging hiatus! for those that don't know me personally, our little peanut, that was due May 17th, decided to come April 4th!

{emery's first time meeting cooper!}

FEB 22nd - i went to the ER {at 28 weeks} with a sharp and increasing pain in my side that had been happening for 3 days. I thought the dr's were going to laugh at me and send me home, but apparently i was having the pain with contractions i couldn't feel. i was in the hospital for 5 days - we stayed longer than we needed to because of a snow storm. 

i came home on bed rest and our amazing church and family took great care of us for 5 weeks.

MAR 25th - my water broke at 32 weeks and 3 days. after chilling in my luxurious hospital room for almost 2 weeks, cooper decided to finally make his appearance {the day before they planned to induce me}.

{easter sunday!}

APRIL 4th - he's here! 4 lbs 3 oz of pure sweetness.

{photo therapy
for a few days}

he never needed any oxygen, they took out his IV after 2 days, and he nursed like a champ after a week or so.

however, the stinker decided to hava bad apnea the day before we were supposed to get discharged. for those that don't know, each time they have one, you can't leave the NICU for 5-7 days.

after 3 attempts to go home, cooper finally decided he was ready after 5 weeks in the NICU. we decided to come home on an apnea monitor, which is bitter sweet. i love the security of knowing when he needs help, but man oh man, i'll be glad when i don't have to lug the thing around everywhere and make sure i'm near an outlet to plug it in while i hold him. 

{explaining the monitor to emery}

and, not gonna lie, i do not miss having to drive 15 minutes, ride an elevator, sign in to the NICU, and scrub my hands for 3 minutes every time i want to feed my baby!

my math oriented husband just realized last night that either cooper or I have been in the hospital a total of 54 days. and praise the Lord for insurance, these bills are unbelievable!

+  +  +  +  +

the day we got home we had a super small ice cream birthday party for emery with some left over decor from her party last year! she was just as giddy about her party as she was for cooper to be home :-)

emery and andrew are ice cream addicts. my parents got me an ice cream
maker for christmas and i'm so excited to be making
healthier dessert for my sweet tooth family!

emery and cooper picked out presents for each other {;-)} ahead of time and exchanged them on sunday.

cooper got emery a stroller for her baby dolls!

and emery got cooper a toy for his car seat and an elephant rattle!

monday was her actual birthday - since we'd been dying for months to have some fun family outings, we decided to brave Deanna Rose Farmstead and were thankful both kiddos did great! emery was most excited about the chickens, because she was hoping to see baby chicks, but sadly there weren't any :-/

we let her push her baby doll around the farmstead
and she loved it! cooper knew just what she wanted ;-)

i was super impressed that she wasn't scared!

we're loving being under the same roof! emery smothers cooper with hugs and kisses, constantly asking "hold you? hold you?" can't wait for them to play and interact together as he gets older! 

hoping to get back into a routine with blogging! now you know why i've been MIA

love and 4 pound babies, 
amber

DiY banana invitation.

it has been a season for babies in my family and i love celebrating with mommies-to-be! while sitting on the couch this month, i had the chance to do a little prep for decorating a monkey themed baby shower! here's a peek into the festivities!

good ol' pinterest led me to this gem. i knew it was The One when i saw it - i'm not good at making cute traditional style cards on the computer and i didn't want to spend much on invites cause we had a tight budget. these cost 50 cents + cardstock i needed to buy anyway.

there was no tutorial on the site, just a picture, so i thought i'd do a step by step just for fun :-)

• first, i found a banana image on google and copied it into word. i used multiple text boxes to add the necessary info and make it curve with the shape of the banana. i added a monkey picture for good measure.  no worries if the text box takes away part of the lines - you're going to cut them off anyway.

• next, i printed off as many invites as a needed + 1. i cut out the extra banana OUTSIDE the black line and used it to trace the banana shape on the pieces of felt.

 

•  i cut out all the rest of the paper bananas INSIDE the black line, to be the actual fruit. i glued the bottom half to the felt, centering it on the felt peel.

•  once dry, i cut the peel in half, starting at the base of the stem.

how's that for cheap, easy, and adorable? gotta love pinterest.

love and soon-to-be babies,

amber.

sports themed garland.

one of emery's favorite buddies turned 1 the other day. we absolutely love him and his family and were super excited to celebrate such a big occasion with them! 

when his mom, kim, told me what she had in mind for his party, i was even more excited! she took the idea from the sewn garland post and gave it a sports twist! i love everything about this party!

she made a sewn garland with his 
name and little footballs!

she created all the circles into different
sports balls before sewing them together!

she used a few extra balls as
labels around the drink table

 

she filled this with
ice and water bottles

one of my favorite tricks i
learned from my aunt -
draw different pictures
on the caps of water bottles
so you can tell drinks apart!
with 40+ people at a party,
this comes in handy!

 

the birthday boy!

kim made tommy this super cute sports shirt!

time for cake!

 

love and first birthdays,
amber.

psych party.

this is the number 1 post that makes me sad about my lack of photography skills. i love this party with my whole heart, but the pictures i took do not make it look like the dreamy, wish-you-were-here party that professional photographers capture. 

oh well. 

a friend from church is a psych enthusiast, who married her equal. naturally, a psych-themed wedding shower was born. this was by far my favorite shower to do - my "homework" involved watching as many psych episodes as i could to get ideas and get the exact quotes i needed! 

because there were a lot of people coming that had never seen the show before, i didn't want them to be totally out of the loop, so i made sure EVERY.SINGLE.DETAIL. had a printed quote to "explain" the method behind this seemingly random decor.

side note: the budget was only $60 so i had to be super frugal with what i got and resourceful with what i had. 

oh, and ps - sry about the weird layout, i wanted the pics extra large for this post so you could read the quotes, but for some reason all the pics are centered weird...{i'm probably the only one that notices...}

creative idea #21: psych party.
idea sparked by: um...psych. all ideas are actually original this time around, except for the framed quotes about gus. those came from an etsy shop, but the link is broken now.

DRINKS:

for the drink table, i used butcher paper from Michaels, markers, army men from the dollar store, embroidery hoop from hobby lobby, and yellow post its from my friend to create the air hockey table/battle scene reenactment.

i picked up cups from starbucks to serve coffee in.

we just had water and coffee, but looking back, there should have been pineapple punch too...

this was the backdrop to the drinks table, to cover up a white board in the youth room of our church.

FOOD:

with shawn and gus being the food enthusiasts that they are, i was pretty pumped about the food table.  i asked a few people who had already offered to bring food if they wouldn't mind making specific things to go with the theme. the awesome ladies were happy to do it!

most of the food table...

i sprinkled the table with plastic gold coins. i would have gotten the chocolate coins to fit the quote better, but i ran out of money and already had these on hand from my preschool days. the plastic coins can be found at hobby lobby, and the chocolate coins can be found at party city.

i splurged on my favorite detail - see the giant wedding ring at
 the base of the bouquet?? $10 half price for 4 of them at hobby lobby. 

"and this is my partner," frames from michaels.

"Gus, don"t be..."

all 3 of these napkin patterns are from hobby lobby - 

2nd favorite detail of the party - i went to the preschool i used to work at and dicut the exact numbers for pi. favorite.banner.ever.

 

you can't host a psych party with out offering cinnamon pie. good gracious, it was yummy. the pie expert that made it though mentioned it should be baked a little longer than the recipe calls for. recipe can be found here. you are so welcome.

i have never loved the Dietzel family more than when they made these amazing mini pineapple upside down cakes. judging by the fact that they were pretty much gone by the end of the party {i think 2 people split the last one}, i'd say they were way better than the ones shawn made. {it could maybe be due to the fact that the Deitzel's used a real oven.} here's the recipe. oh and bonus points for life for my friend that let me borrow her prized possession easy bake oven.

GIFTS:

please don't laugh at me. i tried to free hand the leaf...

this just took 2 pieces of poster board and some safety pins.

THE MAIN ATTRACTION:

i should have brought an iron... 

another lady from church let me borrow her flag, and a friend copied the font from the american duos episode onto construction paper to help me make this backdrop. i especially love it because it's a bridal shower...american duos...get it?

in hindsight, i should have hot glued the cards to the yarn, and had less gaps. i don't like that you can see the yarn...

you can't forget a pineapple...and what better decoration than the actual show?? 

we also had water here

with a small selection of fake mustaches from hobby lobby

they look just like lassie...

lassie as a  baby...

so there you have it, my favorite shower ever.

love and fake psychics,
amber.