Seattle Baby Shower

I'm a lucky pregnant girl and am being spoiled with TWO baby showers to celebrate this bundle. The first one was in February and was thrown for me by my mom and my best friend Rachel Vangstad at my moms house in Seattle. I have so many family members and friends still in Seattle, it was important to me that I get to see everyone while I was pregnant and I could't have asked for a better shower! It snowed in Seatt

le a few days before and the white blanket was still covering the whole backyard by the day of. So beautiful!

Rachel and my mom coordinated all the colors to match the theme for Brielle's crib bedding and it turned out amazing. The house was covered in purple tulips and black ribbons and bows and even black, purple and white balloons shaped like pacifiers! They had Panera Bread Catering come and even got special baby themed cupcakes and a "top tier" cake that said "Welcome Baby Brielle". My mom and I wrapped the cake just like the top of a wedding cake and hope to get to eat it on or around Brielle's 1st birthday.

When I was really little a friend of my parents from church who is a spectacular painter used photographs of me and Jarin to make these plate paintings that he used in series. The one of me was called "Little Mother" and is a precious picture of me about 4 years old, complete with blond corkscrew pigtails, sitting in a rocking chair, feeding a baby doll. My mom had it on display during my shower.

Brielle got sooo many cute things to wear from all my friends and family! I've had a hard time even walking into baby stores because the clothes are so cute, I can't help but buy stuff and her closet is now PACKED with the most adorable little outfits I've ever seen. I can't wait to play dress-up with her and send pictures to everyone of her in the outfits they bought for her! Thanks for coming everyone it was so great to see you all :) Can't wait for you to meet our little bundle!

Maternity Shoot

Kris and I were all set to do one of those mall studio shoots because we'd had a hard time finding a good photographer in our price range. A girl at my work suggested Malia Dadez and I'm so thankful we found her when we did. She photographed our maternity session and will be our newborn photographer too once Brielle gets here. She's so creative, easy to be around and just an all around great photographer! We couldn't have been happier with our experience!

Our photo shoot started out at Malia's house where she has an in home studio. We did a few outfit changes and some intimate bare belly shots. Kris is always so concerned that his smiles look fake in pictures so I was trying my hardest to make him laugh! Ended up that he was the one making me laugh for most of the day and you can really see the fun we were having in the pictures. We were so at ease with each other and I loved giggling and smiling with him all day long.

After the studio, we went to Encinitas and walked around. My favorite picture of the whole shoot happened right outside of First Street Bar & Grill. It's where Kris and I first met and it was so unique to be able to capture where our lives together began and where they have taken us so far, in one picture.

We ended our shoot on the beach where we got some other great shots and even got a little wet! It was freezing, but worth it :) We had SOO much fun!

New Baby, New Life....New Blog!

Having a baby on the way brings out all the pregnant and parenting experts. Don't do this, do that, NEVER do this, ALWAYS do that. Surprisingly, our parents have left us well enough alone to discover this amazing journey in our own way, in our own style, in our own time. We've only really gotten one demand from our families scattered up and down the West Coast ...."We better get to see that baby more than anyone else!" And rightfully so! With the exception of baby Walker Tillery (Natalie's step-brother's 1st baby, born 1/11/11) the birth of Brielle will kick start the transformation of our very young, very vibrant and very energetic parents into...Grandparents (who ALL look way to young to be grandparents, mind you). And these new Grandparents are so excited about this little baby coming into the world they can hardly stand it! Since our families are so spread apart, we want to make sure that everyone gets the FaceTime, Skype Time, FlipCam videos and pictures that they need to hold them over until they get to be with us in person. So this is our blog. It will have pictures, videos and stories of our life with a new baby, so no one misses a thing, even though we can't always be together!