Reese's nursery is complete!

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Reese's nursery

Our Community Group continues to grow...

Last night we visited the Brazeals (another couple in our church community group) to see Baby Larkin again and bring them some dinner. Larkin is their 1st child and he is quite a cutie! Elizabeth and Jordan have only been parents 2 weeks, but seeing them they seem to have it all figured out. Glad they'll be around in a month when we'll likely need lots of advice : )

Larkin's nursery is ADORABLE and proves you don't have to find out the sex of the baby in advance to have a cute nursery. I wish I had taken some pics of it, but at least I remembered to get one of the baby!

After our visit, Dana and I went to Asian Mint for date night. I LOVE that place - it's really great Thai food in a trendy atmosphere. The thai iced teas, red curry, pad kee mow and green tea ice cream cake took us back to memories of part 2 of our honeymoon in Thailand. Thailand is probably my favorite country in the world and I would love to go back there some day!

Saturday night we celebrated Ryan Wannemacher's birthday (also in our community group) with bowling at Splitsville "luxury lanes and dinner lounge". Such a cool place!

Picking a name...

Dana and I are quite the Marketers. Rather than keeping our baby name a secret (as most people I know tend to do), we've been trying to do focus groups along the way to ensure we have a winner! While it's impossible to please everyone, we're glad we got some great feedback along the way and we're quite happy with Reese.

Now Reese's middle name has been TOUGH. Why you ask? I have no idea. We just had a trillion names we liked and couldn't decide. We finally narrowed it down to 4 (Reese Ryan, Reese Reyna, Reese McKenna and Reese Elizabeth) and I resorted to a poll on Facebook and Babycenter.com. A bit ridiculous, I know, but really we liked them all and were never going to be able to decide without help!

150 votes later, Reese Elizabeth is the CLEAR winner. I've liked this name all along (since my middle name is Elizabeth and Dana's grandmother was named Elsie - which according to my baby books is a nickname of Elizabeth). Dana has not been a fan (it just felt too "vanilla" to him), but I think the polls have won him over!

McKenna came in 2nd and we really like that name, but we think we'll save it as a strong contender for a first name in case we have another girl down the road.

Love and War

Last night we experienced a dinner we may never forget! We met up with our business school friends, Drew and Kim Fine, at a restaurant called Love & War. It was a fascinating and very fun experience. This place is ALL ABOUT TEXAS. And I mean over-the-top Texas. It's pretty funny. I am actually looking forward to taking our families there in the future because I think it's a memorable place and good for groups.

Dana and I tried Texas antelope, Texas quail, Texas venison sausage... and of course he tried some new TX beers. It was all quite good. They even have honey cornbread in the shape of Texas!

Food & Friends

Last weekend pretty much focused around food and friends. On Friday we tried a new restaurant (Kenny's Italian Kitchen) for date night. I love trying new places, and the Midnight Meatballs were soooo good.

On Saturday we enjoyed a really fun company picnic. The Marketing Dept has a number of events throughout the year, and this one included bounce houses, face painting, a petting zoo, and a DJ. Had it not been over 100 degrees (or if I wasn't 8 months pregnant or if we already had kids), we probably would have stayed longer!

Later we had a fun dinner with Kelley and Carl Loredo - catching up at Coal Vines over some delicious pizza and then grabbing gelato (sea salted caramel - OF COURSE!).

On Sunday Nicole and I had brunch with Haylee in honor of her 3rd baby on the way!

Celebrating Nicole

Tonight the girls celebrated Nicole's birthday at "Painting with a Twist". While I am really horrible at this, it's such a fun place for a get-together. With a lot of sangria and cake balls on hand, we took our stab at recreating a floral painting.


Happy Birthday Nicole!

Fire shuts down the Rihanna concert

Friday night we had more excitement than we had bargained for. I was so excited because we had AWESOME seats to the Rihanna concert - take a look at how close we were to the stage!


On top of that, we had plans to meet her afterwards for a Doritos-sponsored meet & greet. Unfortunately, the concert was shut down abruptly after about 90 minutes when some pyrotechnics set stage equipment on fire and the American Airlines Center had to be evacuated! Here's a pic I snapped before we scrambled out of the building.



I was a bit worried about being pregnant and getting trampled by a mass exodus, but luckily no one was hurt. It was quite an eventful evening and probably my last concert for quite awhile!

Celebrating the 4th of July in California

Dana and I spent the 4th out in Carmel with Ron, Judy and Sam. We had a wonderfully relaxing time with the family cooking great food, enjoying all of our favorite brunch spots, hiking in Big Sur, visiting the outstanding Monterey Aquarium, playing "Ticket to Ride" and "Dixit" and celebrating our upcoming little girl at a baby shower hosted by their dear friends, the Collords.









This was our last plane trip before we become parents (in approximately 7 weeks) and it was quite a nice finale!

My baby shower at American Girl

Today Elizabeth, Stephanie and Lindsay from my Watermark Church community group threw me a baby shower at the American Girl store in Dallas. This store is an AMAZING place for little girls - and it comes complete with a doll hair salon and a bistro (which is where we had the shower).

Sara, my sorority sister who lives in Austin, drove up for the event and Sondra, a high school friend came as well (which was quite a treat because I hadn't seen her in years). We had a great group because Cayce and Lauren (from our original community group) were able to join us as well. It was really the cutest place to host a shower for a baby girl. What a treat!

Co-workers & Cupcake Balls: my work baby shower

2 of my dearest friends (really they're more like family), Nicole and Janelle, threw me a baby shower with 50 of my co-workers. It was so much fun! Nicole made the most amazing cake balls, Janelle decorated her home with beautiful flowers, and I finally got to catch up with many of my closest friends at work that I don't often get to see.