Welcome baby party

Last weekend just was a busy weekend for us. In addition to Doug's 2-day birthday (see blog below!), on that following Sunday Reagan had a Welcome Baby party! Doug and I came over earlier to help clean up and decorate the party. Doug was then able to go and have lunch and hang out with his mom who came down to visit him. Devonna and Joe had HiCee cater the party (at least I think that's how you spell it?) with really good barbecue meat balls, pork, potato salad, and a southwest bean salad. There were about 20 people there so we all just hung out, ate, held the baby (who was rather fussy that day), and they opened some presents. I didn't take any pictures during the party, but this was the atmosphere:

One wall of the apartment is just a mirror so I stuck balloons and banners all over them

The suckers say "It's a boy", of course

Dangling stuff across the windows

Reagan's cake! Poor kid couldn't have any, but it was really good.

That's it. I had just realized that I hadn't put anything up about it, so I thought I would. Now go enjoy the other recent posts!

Halloween and a very fun Birthday.

So for the past month or so Rochelle and I have been looking forward to Halloween. Because with it comes the classic, costumes, candy, carving pumpkins, scary movies, and of course my Birthday. So on Friday we decided to have a laid back day and stay home and watch scary movies. Since I've spent my last two birthday's working and going to six flags I figured it would be fun to stay back with my Fiancee and enjoy the night relaxing. She went out to the store to get dinner stuff and we met back up at her place to cook one of my favorite meals: steak, potatoes, bread, broccoli, and a nice dinner salad. She asked if i could help her out with preparing the steak, since she's never done it I figured it would be fun to teach her. So we had grill lessons and how to prepare the steak.

Chelle working the grill.

After all the food was done we set up the table with everything we had prepared and enjoyed an amazing meal. In the amidst of dinner we were lucky to have Reagan come over so Devonna and Joe could spend some quality time together out with out having to have the little guy tag along.

The set up! Yeah, it was that good

After dinner we decided to dress up the dog in a fun costume, be ware of bride-zilla!!!!

Bride-zilla! Comes complete with veil, garter belt, and blood stained teeth

for your viewing pleasure

On Saturday I was surprised to see that the gang had set up the house and surprised me with a party with a bunch of people. Here is the cake Rochelle made from scratch, it was soooo Good.

The sad news two days later it was attacked by ants so we ended up losing half of it.




The cake looks like its on fire, yes, I am that old. All in all it was a really good weekend.

I love being an Aunt!

I absolutely love being an aunt. I love just holding Reagan and taking a million pictures of all the faces that he makes. Doug and I got to babysit him on Halloween and I just held him for about 3 hours. He left with mommy and daddy though for Colorado for a couple of months. We'll miss all of them.

Reagan with his pumpkin shirt that Doug got him. He also has a matching hat and socks.

I got him the blanket. You can't really see it, but it says "Boo to you!"

Sometimes when he's really upset the only way you can really calm him down is to lay him down on his stomach against you. He falls asleep pretty quick. He's a snuggler

They had mini pumpkins at the pumpkin patch that they ended up just giving us. So Reagan got his own pumpkin

Pumpkin head

Reagan came over yesterday when Devonna came to grab some stuff to pack for Colorado and to hang out. I watched him so she could go through some stuff. He was a bit fussy but he liked my waterbed, as you can see below:

Pumpkin Guts

We finally were able to carve pumpkins last night. We were supposed to last weekend but I got sick. So on Saturday we went to the pumpkin patch and picked out our victims. The pickings were slim though. Doug found a really good one but it was heavy so he left it on a haystack while I looked for mine and it got taken. So he had to find one again.

We called our friends Kaity and James who were gonna carve pumpkins with us last weekend too. They hadn't carved theirs yet so they came over.

Before their demise

Us gutting the pumpkins. Kaity doesn't like to do it, so she had James do it for her. We saved the seeds and hopefully will be able to roast them tomorrow night. Yum!

Kaity and James with their pumpkin creations

All of us with our pumpkins

Lights on

Lights off

Now hopefully they'll last till Friday. We're looking forward to passing out candy to trick or treaters and watching movies. Aaaand....It'll be Doug's birthday!

Caramel Apples and Sick Days

The Caramel Apple Experiment

So Last week Chelle and I wanted to get in the Fall mood by making some Caramel apples. We tried using the old fashion cubed Caramel and the tiny ball sized Caramel on five apples each. We were afraid that the old fashion would be too hard or the tiny ball sized ones wouldn't work. So we tried both.

Before



Rochelle Dipping an Apple


Stirring the Caramel



After! Bam. They looked great



A few days before that we made some awesome halloweeny treats. Its all about the pumpkin bread and cookies and the Coco Pebbles rice crispy treats.

Sick Days....:^(

Last Saturday Rochelle wasn't feeling well at all. At first look it either looked like a flu or just really bad dehydration. We ended up not eating any of the apples because I didn't want to enjoy the experience with out her. It wasn't till later on this week when she went to the Doc's because her symptoms hadn't gone down. Ends up she had a stomach virus which would last till at least the end of the week. Unfortunately we missed a wedding and a Hume Trip. But it was ok because we can see Hume again. Plus side-we did get to visit her Uncle Keith while he was in town. Pray that Chelle feels better soon and that she is able to keep up on the missed school work. As for plans for the wedding nothing new yet. We'll keep you posted as soon as something pops up.

God Bless and take care.

Doug

Welcome baby!

On October 6, 2008 at 11:53 pm Reagan Warner Wolfe Giardiello was born. I, Rochelle, am an aunt! My sister went into labor around 5:30 that evening and had him six hours later. It was a fast labor, but it wasn't an easy labor. Doug and I got the call from Reagan's daddy, Joe, around 8:30 that night saying that it was time and that they'd meet us at the hospital. We had been at our ballroom dance class and I had left my phone at home on accident, so I didn't get the message till 10:30. So we quickly got ready to go and headed for the hospital. When we got there and went to the labor/delivery area they said that Devonna hadn't come in yet. That worried us a bit, especially neither she nor Joe answered their phones (Not that I blame them, I mean, she was in labor!) She had decided a while ago that she wanted to labor at home and then during a transition drive to the hospital. The problem was that she never really transitioned. I guess her doula had been worried that first she would have him at home, and then in the car, and then in the parking lot. Doug and I, meanwhile, waited in the waiting room, watching ESPN since we couldn't change the channel. We waited for about an hour and then called Joe again to see where they were. When Joe picked up the phone and we asked where they were he said, "Yeah...he was just born." Devonna had him 8 minutes after she arrived at the hospital! Completely natural too! After a little bit we got to go in and see Devonna and baby. He's a snuggler. Devonna was super tired though so we didn't stay for too long. We visited her twice while she was in the hospital and then they went home. I went to visit them yesterday and took a few pictures. He's so cute. You can just stare at him for hours...

He changes position a lot in his sleep!

Hi Reagan!

Stretch!

Half a smile

More smiles

Aunt Rochelle!

He does stuff like this in his sleep all the time. So adorable!

It's finally Autumn!!!

So with Fall being our favorite time of year we were excited that it's finally October. The Fall decorations have gone up around the house and we even decorated the dog, Edelwesis.

See?

She didn't like it much, but she was rewarded with a pig ear afterwards. We had fun though. The paint will come off her fur within the next few days.

Earlier in the day we took her to the park. It had drizzled a bit all throughout the morning, so the slide was a little slick. Usually she'll just try to walk down it, but she couldn't really do that this time...