My baby shower

My baby shower, on Saturday, June 30, was awesome. I was extremely honored that so many friends and family members came to celebrate our newest addition. We had about 25 people there! My mom and sisters hosted the party at sister's house. It looked so nice!!

Gorgeous food setup

Cute little fruit baby!

Diaper cake - so cute, and still in our nursery today

Outdoor decor

Cousins

Sabrina had her baby girl the next day!! Our babies are going to be BFFs, at 3 or 4 weeks apart in age.

Sisters and Mom

We were given tons of adorable, thoughtful and generous gifts for baby - I felt so incredibly loved!! I'm sooo grateful to my 3 beautiful shower hostesses for all their effort, and to every guest who came to celebrate with us!

My quarter century birthday

Thursday was my big 2-5! I have a feeling I'm always still going to feel young for a long time, because I'm the youngest in my group of friends - not to mention that hubs is 7 years older than me. This week was tons of fun celebrating my quarter century of life.

Tuesday

My thoughtful hubby surprised me with these roses after work, because he knew I'd be busy the next two days.

Wednesday

We went to dinner at J's coworker's house. Thank you Kim for the delicious meal!

Thursday

My coworker and friend gave me with this wine glass gift - how perfect right?! Thanks Sabrina!!

"Hooray for Chardonnay!"

For lunch I went to Zen Sushi with my coworkers. Yum!




Kohaku Roll

Then after work several friends joined me for happy hour at Cafeteria. I think we had a good dozen people there and it was a lot of fun. We even somehow convinced J to go to Faces with us for a bit. That's one for the record books!

My older sister brought balloons and my younger sister gave me a beautiful framed collage of all my favorite wedding photos :)

Saturday
I did some shopping in the morning. Among several other things, I got this dress. It was originally $70, on sale for half off, plus I had a $10 off coupon. $25! I'll probably wear it to a wedding next weekend.

We had dinner at Chicago Fire (my fave) with my parents and sister, then headed to Raley Field for a River Cats game. My mom brought this beautiful bouquet of flowers from her yard when we met at our house beforehand.

Sadly, I forgot my camera that night. We witnessed one of the most beautiful sunsets ever, and of course I always love going to the game on Saturday nights because they have fireworks afterwards! All the little kids around us cheering, screaming and jumping for joy at the fireworks display was hilarious!

Sunday
This wasn't for my birthday, but we went refrigerator shopping and then spontaneously decided to drop by a granite and tile warehouse to get ideas for our future kitchen and bathrooms :) It was sooo much fun and we came away from it with an agreement on colors and styles we like. I told J it was one of my favorite dates we've ever been on - I LOVE home decor/renovation stuff and I can't wait to get started!!

Overall, I really felt the love and was so honored that family and friends were sweet enough to give me a gift, a card, a text message or come spend time with me!

24 was a great year for me.

• The best thing that happened was that I married my husband. He's perfect for me!
• My parents also moved to this area, which I have loved loved loved.
• We hosted our first tacky holiday sweater party, a dream of mine for far too long!
• We started house hunting and while we're not quite there, we're in a good place when it comes to our future home.
• I had many great times with fabulous friends - most of which I didn't blog about, unfortunately.

As my 25th year begins, I have some great plans for it!

Girls night out

My friend Andrea planned a girls night out for our group of friends, so on Friday night we went out to dinner at Kupro's Bistro, drinks at Dive Bar, and dancing at Social and Badlands. We had a blast and one too many Washington apples!

I used to have nights out like this allll the time a few years ago, but I hadn't in a long time. Honestly these days I'd rather hang out with my friends at one of our houses. However, once in a while it's great to change it up and do something different.

I am so thankful to have found a great group of friends. I have very few friends from college that I'm still close with, and only one from high school [actually first grade!] that I still actually see regularly. 

All of these ladies [and their boyfriends/hubbies] I met since graduating from college and I finally have that group that I can picture our kids growing up together. Okay some of us... and some of our kids will babysit the others' kids in a really, really long time ;) Haha ♥

Wine tasting in Placerville

I wanted to share some photos of a wine tasting day from a few weekends ago - we were celebrating my sister's birthday and hit up some yummy wineries in the mountains!

Our group included myself, mom, sister and three of her friends. Lots of fun! Thanks for driving Mom! And thanks for taking the photos Kelly... I totally stole all of these from Facebook.

There was snow as we got higher up, and it was even snowing when we first arrived. This is a big deal to me because I hardly ever see snow :)

Tacky holiday sweater party!

On Friday James and I hosted a tacky holiday sweater party.

10 of our friends joined us... it was so much fun!

We had everyone vote for the tackiest male and female sweaters - the winners got an ornament and gift card to Old Navy. Dave (in the green above) and Megan (second from the left in white below) won... they both made their sweaters! Actually there were a lot of homemade ones, which was cool.

 Here's everyone!

We'll absolutely be doing this again next year!

Mini golf

I meant to post this a week ago, but our Internet was down at home for the better part of the week...

A few weekends ago I went mini golfing with my aunt, sisters and the husbands. I had fun even though I came in last place!

That evening we went to a friend's house to drink wine and play games. Somehow we ended up staying until 1 a.m.!

Halloween/wedding weekend

This weekend was spent in Fresno for the wedding of James' friend John. Remind me to never pin my bangs back again, mmmkay?

I forgot to bring my flat iron so this was my only option :(

John and Ana are two of the nicest people we know, we're so happy for them! James was actually a groomsman.

The ceremony was my first ever Catholic mass,

and definitely different than what I'm used to.

The reception was at a beautiful golf club.

We stayed Saturday night in Fresno and came home Sunday afternoon.

I bought extra Halloween candy this year since we always run out... we have SO MUCH left over! I don't know where all the trick or treaters were.

Tangent: As I type this, the Giants just won the World Series about 30 minutes ago. James is the biggest Giants fan I've ever known,and I took the most hilarious video of him screaming so much that he lost his voice. I think he's too embarrassed to let me post it though ;)

Our last weekend as an engaged couple

This last weekend before the wedding was a busy one! And not even with our own wedding stuff... there was just lots going on.

Friday night after work I ran into the downtown plaza mall to pick up a few things - a tie clip for James and a dress for me. Before Macy's I looked at Forever 21 and another teenage girl store. I feel weird and old there! Totally don't fit in anymore. Anyway, I found a great dress at Macy's on clearance for $25 - regularly $99. I also found a tie clip on sale at Macy's, so it was a successful trip.

On Saturday we went to a lamb BBQ at Scribner Bend Vineyards, hosted by some friends of ours. It was so much fun! Delicious wine, fab food and awesome people - we had a great time.

Sunday morning I did a lot of packing for the wedding. This is what the entryway to our house looks like! Almost everything we're taking to the wedding, from candles to wine. We still have to pack our clothes for the week.

Last night was the wedding of two friends of mine, Michelle and Adam. It was held at The River Mill in French Camp - beautiful!

Here's my gameplan for the coming week:

Today/Tomorrow: Working and packing.

Wednesday: I'm working a half day, then we're off to Santa Cruz!!

Thursday: Shopping to stock our beach house with food for the week, plus a mani/pedi.

Friday: Assembling flowers in the morning, rehearsal at night.

And throughout all this I have to try not to catch James' cold. Yes, the groom is sick!! I'm just hoping he's better by this weekend. I don't think I've ever not gotten a cold when he had one. I'm taking airborne, drinking lots of water and getting enough sleep. I don't know what else I can do but I'm open to suggestions!

Bachelorette party

My bachelorette party was yesterday! We had the best time!

Five of us met at my house in the morning,

then headed to Sonoma for a day of wine tasting.

Rose surprised me with all of this bride gear.

She is the best Maid of Honor!

Our first stop was Roche in downtown Sonoma.

After our tasting there we had a picnic outside

with lots of delicious food!

Next was Roots in Sonoma.

They have these awesome giant adirondak chairs and we took way too many pictures with them!

Then we went across the street to Gloria Ferrer, where we split a bottle of champagne. They have a great view of the valley.

Cline Cellars was next.

And the last stop was Jacuzzi Vineyards. We drove back to Sacramento and invited the boys to dinner at Mikuni.

Sake bombs! Probably one too many... I felt it today.

I had such a great time with my friends, sister and mom!

I'll be honest: I was really disappointed that more of my friends didn't make it. Some people cancelled last minute and it sucked.

But in the end I had an amazing time and a group of 5 was the perfect size for wine tasting.

20 days until the wedding!