Danny & Brooke's Baby Shower

"Nest" Themed Baby Shower


For this gender-neutral couples baby shower, I chose neutral colors of browns, orange and green, and incorporate woodland accents like branches and tree trunk discs.



The tables were dressed in white linens with burlap table runners.  The napkins were wrapped in a burlap strip and fastened with a peach colored wood bird button and mint green twine.





The parents sat in the lounge area, which was great for opening gifts.  Behind them on the fence, I made the sign below, which is various patters of card stock on twine.







The Centerpieces (below) were flanked with candle collages wrapped in burlap, jute twine and dried flowers all setting on top of tree trunk discs.





The centerpieces were a single branch with a nest holding a large peach peony, solla wood flowers, and a small bird.



For the party favors, I tied a tulle pouch of white Jordan almonds with burlap twine.  I got the nest stickers and raw paper tags each on Etsy.com and colored the eggs mint green.





The cakes were from NothingBundtCakes.com and VanillaBakeShop.com.  I accented them each with one of the peonies.  And tiered them in height on various pedestals.

Labor Day Weekend

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What a great weekend Bobby and I had in Michigan over the holiday. Friday started with a reception at Michigan Stadium for a re-dedication of the new and improved stadium. It is amazing as you can see from the pictures above. They didn't skimp on anything. Our premier club seats are incredible. I hope you all get the chance at some point to go.

After the re-dedication and tour of the new facility, we met up with Glee for dinner at the Chop House on Main Street. The food, wine and company were all fantastic. All those years of waitressing paid off as the restaurant treated us to 1/3 off our entire bill!

We then retired to La Dolce Vita with the intent of having more dessert, but it turned out to just be more wine followed by a trip to Conor O'Neills, which we closed down. We got the opportunity to meet Glee's new beau, who will fit nicely in the group as long as we don't scare him off. ;)

The next morning, Glee treated us to brunch at Cafe Zola before we met up with Brian and Amber at the MI tailgate. The four of us then headed over to the game and marveled at all the activity. 113,000+ people got to watch a great season opener. We were so glad we got to attend and see MI back to the team we once knew.

After the game, we had dinner with my old V-Ball coaches, Bill & Karen Abbott at West Side Grill. It was great seeing them, reminiscing about the old days and catching up on the new. After dinner, we headed to Mark & Sasha's newly redone 5 bedroom in Concord. We arrived so late, that we ended up retiring and regrouping in the morning.

Sunday sped by rather quickly. After hanging with Sasha for a while, including a ride in the Baby Bronco with Mark and Caeden, we headed to pick up Glee, Kevin and Mike (Glee's man) to go to Ted's concert at Pine Knob. Aah, the old days. Made me really feel old. It, was however, nice to see everyone, including Doug and Toby.

We headed back to Ann Arbor just before the concert concluded, which only took us about an hour given Kevin was driving 100 MPH! We stopped into The Black Pearl (one of Kevin's local haunts) for drinks and fish tacos, yum! Then we headed back to Kevin's for more food and wine. Thank God we got to sleep in!

Next morning, which was supposed to be sunny and in the low 80's, ended up being rainy and in the high 60's. But we were able to take cover under umbrellas outdoors while we had brunch once again before catching our flight home.

We were happy to see the kids once again, but definitely enjoyed the weekend away. Can't wait to see the MI crew again in October!

End of the Summer Weekend

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We had a busy fun-filled weekend. Saturday, the 5 Thomason grandkids had a ball at the Loyola Alumni BBQ (see link above to pics) followed by an "end of summer" BBQ at Bill and Mary's. Teri & Brian moved in to their new house and we toasted to celebrate.

After swim lessons on Sunday morning, we headed to the Jonathan Club for a Members-only day. The theme was Monster trucks. They had a remote control race track, Cars-themed inflatable slide, bounce house and Monster Truck that was about 18" tall. Caoilin had a birthday party in the afternoon while Cael took a monster nap. We ended the weekend with takeout from Pitfire since the kids were a mess having played outside all day. Caoilin also had to hit the hay early becuase she started school today. She was so excited. That left time for Bobby and I to actually sit down and watch a movie. I can't remember the last time we did that.

Bobby and I are off to Michigan this weekend for the holiday. Can't wait!

Anniversary Weekend Recap

We kicked off our Anniversary weekend by joining friends at the Magic Castle in Hollywood. For those of you who are not familiar with it, the Magic Castle is a private club & hotel that has been around for more than a half century. It has a restaurant, several bars and various private rooms with entertainment. Other than dinner taking too long, which limited our time to catch the entertainment, we had a great time. The performances we did see were fantastic. I would definitely go back if the opportunity presented itself.

Saturday was our actual anniversary (6th year of marriage). After grabbing coffee at the Venice Grind, I played with the kids while Bobby ran errands. When Cael went down for his nap, Caoilin and I tackled her June Community Service Project. (June was so busy, especially with guests, we had to do 2 in July). This month's project was cleaning up our local Library. The Library happened to be having a book sale that day and one of the volunteers invited Caoilin to pick out a book to thank her for cleaning up the Library. As you can see from the photo below, we picked up a lot of trash & recycling.

Bobby and I had dinner plans to celebrate that night, so we couldn't take Caoilin to the Circus at the Staples Center. However, our friend Heather was taking her 2 kids and offered to take Caoilin with her as well as keep her for a sleepover. So, I took the kids over to her place in the mid-afternoon for a play date. Caoilin stayed and Cael and I headed home in time to get him fed and to bed.

Below are some pictures of Caoilin. Their seats were on the floor! It was almost as if they were in part of the show. They had a fabulous time and it was worth every penny!

Rocco, Sasha's little brother, was our sitter for the evening. Cael was asleep by the time he got there, so it was a pretty easy task. Bobby and I headed off to the Jonathan Club for a nice dinner and bottle of wine. The weather was great for dining al fresco. I was pooped when we got home and wisely headed straight to bed.

Sunday was busy out of the gates. Cael (my built in alarm clock) slept in and I had to race to get the kids to swim class. I first had to drive to the Valley to pick up Caoilin before heading to swim school. After we got home, Bobby took Caoilin and her cousin Drew to LACC to hit some balls at the driving range and putting green. They were treated with milk shakes before heading home. Then we packed up the kids and headed to the beach for a couple of hours. Cael keeps us moving. He is all over the place now that he is walking. I can't count how many times he climbed up the play structure and went down one of the various slides, only to ask for "more"! Needless to say, the kids passed out for their later than usual nap. They both slept 2 1/2 hours! Once they roused, we packed them up once again and headed off to Pitfire Pizza for our Sunday dinner ritual. Due to their late nap, they didn't get to bed until 9, which is really late for Cael. But they slept great and woke up at their normal times this morning. I, however, feel like I've been hit by a Mac truck! I can't stop yawning today, despite what I would expect was a night's sleep.

4 more days and counting until we are back at it again. We have another busy weekend ahead of us complete with dinners, the beach, guests and family time.

Hope you all are having as great of a summer as we are!!

XOXO

Weekend of May 14-16, 2010

This weekend had many unexpected turn of events all starting on Friday. Bobby and I had to drive out to Agora Hills (on the way to Santa Barbara) to have dinner with our main sponsors for LA Country Club (David & Mimi Wood and Denny and MaryAnn Kristen). Uncle Bob and Aunt JoAnn joined us too. While at dinner having a fabulous time, our nanny called to say that Caoilin was throwing up. There goes our Saturday!

Caoilin managed to feel fine the next day and slept well Friday night, but we didn't want to risk getting anyone sick. So we stayed home from French Class and the afternoon birthday pool party and canceled our dinner/play date with the Goods. While sad to miss all the fun activities, we managed to have a pretty nice day despite it all.

In the morning, after walking to the Venice Grind for coffee, we stopped in Earl's Gourmet Grub right next door, which is the new sandwich shop our friends opened up on Mother's Day weekend. I tried their breakfast salad, which was quite tasty. They seem to be getting a steady stream of business, which is great. I think it's a big plus being right next door to the Coffee Shop, which has it's own very loyal following. I then had to run a bunch of errands, including going all the way to the Valley, while Cael napped and Caoilin took it easy. She hadn't quite gotten her energy back.

On the way home, I stopped once again to Earl's Gourmet Grub, but for lunch this time around. We ate lunch as a family, which was a nice change of pace. Then we decided to take the kids on the bikes to the Airport park. We literally got 1 block from the airport when Bobby's back wheel locked up! The bike wouldn't move. What's worse is that we were sitting in the center left turn lane amidst tons of traffic going both ways. We had to get the kids, the trailer and the bikes all off the busy street. What a nightmare! Bobby then took my bike home, picked up the truck and came back to get us. We drove straight to the bike shop (next to the Coffee Shop where Grandpa got Caoilin her helmet) to have them take a look. $300 later, we have a new brake system on order. Ouch! I guess the weight of the kids trailer and the baby seat (with kids and stuff) was too much for the bike's brake system.

While we were waiting for the diagnosis, we popped into Floyd's Barber Shop to get Caoilin an ever so needed trim. We splurged and got her a shampoo to go with the haircut. She had a ball. It was so funny watching her. She had to sit on a booster seat of course and had a hard time keeping her head still. But the lady managed to do a great job and her hair looks great. I'll download the pics from Bobby's iPhone to the web soon.

I love the convenience of our neighborhood, where you can get coffee, breakfast and/or lunch, repair your bike and cut your hair all on the same block! Pretty soon, there will be an organic market added to the mix of the added hardware store, post office and notary public! Our neighborhood is getting better and better.

So, while we didn't make it to the Airport Park, we still had quite an adventure. We were all pretty pooped that night, so I made steaks for dinner and we settled in rather early that night. Good thing because Sunday was really busy!

Sunday, Cael officially started swim classes. He was so cute and seems to be adapting very well. I had to hide while watching him because he would start to get sad if he saw me. But so long as I was out of sight, he was happy as a clam. I hadn't officially changed Caoilin's class time so that they could be back to back, so we hung out in the courtyard after Cael's class until Caoilin's class.

Caoilin actually had the best class I've seen her take so far. She was really improving on her kick and listening to her teacher really well. The sad thing is that with her new class time, she has to have a new teacher. We are going to miss Nathan. He's been so great with her. The nice thing though, is now the kids have back to back classes with the same teacher first thing in the morning. That gives us the rest of our day for whatever.

After swimming and naps, Caoilin and I ran to Home Depot to pick out paint samples for the Condo (our tenants move out at the end of the month and we are readying it for the market). Then we visited a friend who had a baby a while back before zipping home to pack up for our next meeting. We went to Patrick & Dorothy's for more swimming. Above are some picks of Cael in the pool with Bobby.

After swimming, we headed over to Jimmy & Brooke's for a BBQ with the Klein side of the family (it was Bob's sister's birthday). The kids had a ball (pictures to come towards the end of May).

Good thing I was smart enough to pack the kid's pjs because Cael fell asleep in the car on the way home. I managed to get him into bed and back to sleep without a lot of effort and he slept straight through to 7 am! This 1 nap per day seems to be working a bit better for his sleeping habits.

This morning was chaotic. Our new French Nanny, Nadia started today. This afternoon, Bobby and I have our final interview with LACC. Fingers crossed! Hopefully the next time you out-of-towners visit, we'll be able to treat you to some golf!

XOXO

Looking forward to seeing all of you Michiganders next week!

Aubrey

Mickey & the Beanstalk (17 photos), by Aubrey Thomason

Here's a cute little photo shoot I did of Caoilin while she was watching Mickey & the Beanstalk. This is only a handful of the pics. It's so funny to watch her facial expression change from moment to moment. She was hilarious! She also looks so old to me in these pics. I can't believe she's already 4.


I'd like to share my Snapfish photos with you. Once you have checked out my photos you can order prints and upload your own photos to share.
Click here to view photos

4\30 Date Night (16 photos), by Aubrey Thomason

So, on Friday, Bobby and I were supposed to do dinner and a movie. However, I was so exhausted from ViaCommunity Day, that I knew I wouldn't make it that long. I really just wanted to do something relaxing and low-key. Bobby suggested dinner on the beach at the JC. It was a little chilly, but such a beautiful night. Glad I brought my camera. Take a look at the pics...


I'd like to share my Snapfish photos with you. Once you have checked out my photos you can
order prints and upload your own photos to share.
Click here to view photos