Shower the ones you love with love

Corissa's younger sister Cristina was born to be an event planner. Cristina has been calling dibs on planning Corissa's baby shower since she and Spencer were married. She finally got her chance and she did an amazing job with help from Grandma Lori, Nicole, and Angelica. These lovely ladies all helped make this an unforgetable day!This was the fabulous red velvet cake made by Corissa's cousin Stephanie. Not only is it super cute but it was absolutely delicious!

Yummy yummy food!!
Check out the diaper wreath too! Cute and useful.. nice!

There was a scrapbook table set-up for guests to design their own pages. Now Corissa just has to fill them in with pictures of lil Ellie!

Corissa and Cristina
- thank you Bean for the best baby shower ever!! XOXO
Corissa's mom Lori

Corissa and Julie

Gal pals - Lori, Angelica, Nicole and Erin

Corissa's favorite pregnant chic Ashlea

Baby Tess is due in September so Ellie will already have a bff!

Best buddies - Nicole and Corissa

More gal pals - Katee, Krystal and Jenna

Opening presents was so fun!

Ellie will be one well dressed little gal!

THANK YOU

to all who came for your love and support!!

Babymoon

We decided to take a babymoon to California to enjoy the cooler weather, go to Sea World and just relax! It was fabulous and we both had a great time together. We did have one small hiccup - we lost all our pictures from the trip. To this day we aren't sure what happened but Spencer did some searching and found a site that would allow us to recover everything on our SD card and no cost... Hooray! Now we have pictures to post!

The Shamu show was really cool. We were brave/crazy enough to sit in the soak zone but got lucky and didn't end up needing the Shamu poncho we bought. We thought about trying to sell it to other tourists at a discount rate but neither us of were brave enough to offer haha!

The whole time we were in Hawaii we wanted to find a place to crack open your own oysters and keep the pearl. We had a couple chances but passed them up thinking the next one would be better. Needless to say we left Hawaii with no pearl. Spencer was determined not to let that happen again. Corissa picked out the oyster and turns out it was a good choice!

The pearl is beautiful. They drill a hole in it so now we have to find a jeweler who will mount it for us.

Since this was our babymoon we needed to take a belly pick.

This is Corissa at 30 weeks

Back to the sea animals... CREEPY eels... yuck!

Pretty star fish

We were allowed to pick them up.. it was funny to feel them start to suck on your hand.

Corissa holding a sea snail

Dori!

We found Nemo!

The shark exhibit was really cool. Too dark for pictures but here we are in front of a shark jaw!

The sea lions show was the most entertaining. The animals and cast were really funny. The skits was called Sea Lions Live and they did parts of shows like Dancing with the Stars, Survivor, CSI and SNL. So so funny!

Check out that Walrus! HUGE!!
Corissa loved this fluffy penguin. He was just chilling posing for the camera.

We saw the polar bear for about 5 seconds and managed to get one picture. He was not being sociable at all.

After Sea World we met Spencer's brother Jacob for dinner at La Pizzeria Arrivederci. It was delicious! Corissa's current craving was pizza so we had pizza at different places 3 of the 4 nights we were there.

Before we headed back home we did some more sight seeing. The Mormon Battalion history center was just remodeled to we went to take a tour. They dressed Spencer up in the gear that the Mormon soldiers had.. he's such a good sport.

Light house at Point Loma

Last but not least we shopped. We stopped by the Hotel Del Coronado. It was so pretty. We found some cute stuff for Ellie, some yummy fudge, and a shirt and some jewelry for Corissa.

Time to head home.

We had a great time together just being able to enjoy each other. We are beyond excited for Ellie to join our family but having one last trip without her was nice too :)

Growing bump!

So many changes... so little time. Corissa is now in her third trimester and still feeling great. Our little Ellie is an active girl! She likes to stretch out in mommy's tummy and stay that way for a little while. Last week she wore mommy out with all her moving, kicking and stretching. Mommy loves every second of it!!28 weeks
30 weeks

Nursery

Corissa has had an idea of what she wanted our little girl's nursery to look like for a while now and with the help of her parents this past week Ellie's room is just about ready for her arrival. (not that we want her to come early, but we are more prepared now than we were before) We have 3 bedrooms - our room, a guest room and a computer/storage room. With Ellie on the way we needed to consolidate the guest and computer room for her to have her very own nursery. It took a lot of cleaning, organizing, storage bins, labels, and a trip to Goodwill to get the rooms ready but we finished just in time. Corissa's parents came down and spent 2 and 1/2 days (their days off work) with us to work on the room.

BEFORE

Spencer had great foresight and had the whole house painted in a very pretty tan color. This has been great but not what we wanted in the baby's room.
The closest has never had doors... until now.

Testing the paint... looks like we got it right on our first try!
Apple Tree (green) and Moon Dance (yellow)

Time for primer!
Corissa's brother Christopher also came to get in on the fun and work on his newest niece's room.
Moon Dance looks good Rob!

So does the Apple Tree!

The room is ready for chair rail. Corissa got the idea from their friends house where they did chair rail high up and used it as a border instead of the usual chair rail height.

The chair rail turned out great!

Finally closet doors!

Here's a before and after shot.

They even made time to paint the guest bathroom.

It looks so nice and fresh!

BIG

THANK YOU TO LORI & ROB O'LEARY

and CHRISTOPHER too!!!!

We really appreciate all the work you did for us!

Ellie has a happy place to grow, sleep and play!

Still growing... and growing...

Ellie has been quite the little kickboxer lately in mommy's belly. Corissa said that yesterday she felt like Ellie was about to kick so hard that her belly button was going to pop out! Mommy and daddy love to feel Ellie moving and can't help but stop everything just to see her or feel her one more time. Her heart rate was up to 170 today at the doctor's visit. She was really working hard in there. Ellie measured in at 1 pound and 6 ounces (give or take). Mom and baby are both doing well and both are continuing to grow.

What's in a name?

Now that we know we are having a baby girl we can start the name game. We both tossed out some names we liked but now it's time to get serious and pick one. Who knew this would be so difficult?! It's a lot of pressure.... this kids got to live with this name forever, or at least until she's 18 and can change it to Princess Consuela Banana Hammock (Friends reference for all those who don't get it). Corissa's number one pick was shot down by Spencer but with no real alternatives. That means it's back the think pad or at least back to Corissa's sticky notes with names. Then we found it... ELLIE It means noble, exalted, sun ray, and shining light. It's perfect for our little girl!! Now for a middle name. This one's easy. We both wanted a name that meant something to us and so Corissa suggested using the middle name of her best friend Lindsay who is also the one who introduced her to the Gospel. Done! LOUISE We loved the way the names sounded together and Corissa even cried when she pictured holding our baby girl and calling her

ELLIE LOUISE

We love it!!

For our 22 week update - Ellie is kicking up a storm and Spencer was able to feel her for the first time today. It's fun to watch Corissa's belly move! She has a hard time sitting still and not giggling while Ellie moves around. Corissa felt her for the first time a few weeks ago at church but the past two days have been really fun and active. Corissa is feeling great and her belly has really popped out. We'll take a profile shot of the bump at our next doctor's appointment.