Wedding...Round One of Pictures

These are the samples of the professional photos by our two wonderful photographers....

Taylor is 30!!! And a snob!!!!

Taylor bit the big one and turned the big 3-0 on September 30th. It was his golden birthday being that he was the age that was the date of his bday, 30 on the 30th so it was extra special. To celebrate, we had a Beer Snob party the Friday before the big day. I set up a blind taste test of 10 beers and everyone had a scoresheet to rate each beer. The 10 tasters were: Chimay Ale-Premiere, Yuengling Original Lager, Asahi, Franziskaner-Hefeweisse, Sierra Nevada-Pale Ale, Miller High Life, Leffe Blonde, Red Stripe, La Fin Du Monde, and Negro Modelo. A nice mix of well-known beer and super snobby fancy beer. Overall, most people ranked Sierra Nevada the highest followed by Red Stripe. Taylor still preferred his favorites, La Fin Du Monde and Leffe Blonde but learned he did not care for Chimay Ale which was very surprising to his snob mentality. Of course I also forgot to take pictures of the occasion but luckily Taylor caught one of the aftermath. It was a really fun party and we'll definitely do it again with other contenders. Oh and we can't fit any food in our fridge due to the leftover beer so come over please!

On Taylor's real birthday, Tom and Stancie took us out to a delicious meal at Bandera. We had great company, great food (I recommend the fish sandwich and the artichoke appetizer) and some maybe-better-than-the-food? margaritas. I'm going to go ahead and say that currently Bandera has my favorite dining out margarita. Taylor still makes the best margarita for my taste but it's good to know where to go when you need a fix. I'm, of course, willing to try many, many other margaritas to make sure I haven't missed a better one.

So happy birthday to my guy! I love you a billion and thirty.

2 months (ish)

Adorable, no? Taylor took these photos with his iphone on 9/5/09.

Calvin Experiences Southern Food For the First Time

Daaaaaaaaaad!

How we met our son...

At 11:30pm on July 9th, I was watching the Mentalist (how cute is that guy?) and enjoying an ice cream drumstick and trying to relax since we had an appointment to induce at 7am the next morning when BAM my water broke! Taylor timed my contractions on the way to the hospital, they were about 2 1/2 minutes apart. We checked in at 12am.

By the time they checked me, I was almost 5cms dilated and the contractions were less than 2 minutes apart. This is that last picture before the real pain set in.

Pretty soon after we got there, the contractions started coming right on top of each other. It was intense. I held out as long as I could before requesting the epidural because I didn't want to slow down the labor (haha...that was so not a problem). So in the 10 seconds between contractions, I asked for the drugs. Hoag hospital was completely full this night and they told me it would be 40 mins before I could get the epidural. You could have killed me right then and there. But it finally came and they checked me again and I was almost 8cms. This is about 3 1/2 hours after my water broke.

After the epidural, my life was fantastic! The contractions were still coming right after each other. They left us alone for a while. Taylor took a nap and my mom came in to hang out. At 5am, they checked me and I was close to fully dilated so they said they'd be in at 5:30 to try pushing. The doc came in and agreed that we were ready. She asked if my OB estimated the weight. I told them she said he would be "normal" sized, 7lbs ish. So we pushed for about 25 mins and out popped our 9lb. 13oz., 21 inch beautiful baby boy. The first words Calvin heard were "Whoa!" No one expected such a big guy to emerge.

He meets his parents for the first time. Sorry kid, you're stuck with us!

We are so excited that he is finally here! And, of course, he's in charge now which is why it has taken a month to upload this post. :-)

Last day of pregnancy (we hope!)

Here is a picture of me today on Week 41 of the never-ending pregnancy! We have an appointment to induce tomorrow morning at Hoag Hospital. We are hopeful that there are beds open (preferably with an ocean view, but at this point I'll take the hallway!) and sometime tomorrow we will be welcoming the newest addition to the family. Taylor will be in charge of updating. You can follow the progress at www.twitter.com/taylorfoss. And if you have no idea what Twitter is, find the nearest teenager and they can explain it to you. We've never used it before so tomorrow should be full of lots of new experiences! Child birth and Twitter all in one day. Whew. I guess I should get some sleep. :-)

The Waiting Game

My bags are packed and I'm ready to go... The nursery is ready for it's little resident...

And yet there he is, still in the belly...

That's Week 39 for you!