So, Tina and I went to lunch yesterday and to finish registering for the baby shower (I had registered for a lot of things when I was home sick several weeks ago). It was so helpful to have an experienced mom! I kept on asking, “do I need this, what about this, I don’t need this, do I?” She had all the answers. It’s so cool to see how Tina has grown over the years. We’ve been friends since we were in 10th grade (over 12 years!) and she went from being a sweet, but sort of crazy and unpredictable character to a good friend, wife and mother to her two children. One thing that hasn’t changed about Tina, though, is her love of shopping! The plan was to go to lunch and to Babies R Us, which turned into lunch at Panera, Babies R Us, Marshalls, back to Panera for a drink, then to Target. She kept on going, but I needed to save some energy and time to grocery shop which takes some time since I go to Aldi’s for most of my items then to Giant Eagle for produce, etc. I had to stop at mom’s in-between because I had to pee, was hungry and needed to rest my feet (go figure) before I could even think about tackling the grocery store.
Any Jason Castro fans out there? My friend Julie at work is OBSESSED with him (almost to an unhealthy level … I can say that on my blog in case she reads it because I tell her this almost every day). However, she has been burning his songs off of iTunes every week and I have to say, he is an amazing musician. Every song is good … there’s not a bad one! Julie is turning 40 in the summer and I told her I am going to throw her a Jason Castro-themed birthday party and buy her a heating pad, as she was saying she needed one for her aches and pains. Something funny about with being obsessed with a 20-year-old and needing a heating pad at the same time. 
Eli is doing good from what I can tell, but he’s the most active little guy in the world and he’s growing like crazy. I feel like my belly has expanded so much in the last week or two. I haven’t developed any yet, but was having nightmares about stretch marks last night. I can’t believe I have less than 16 weeks left! It went so slow at first, but now it’s really speeding up.
Ashlee is going to take belly pictures of us sometime soon. Some people might think this is weird, but I don’t care. I think pregnant bellies are so beautiful and so does Javier and I really want to capture some nice shots for our albums and for Eli’s room while he’s young.
Today Javier and I are working at Kent State Stark’s Annual Earth Day Celebration. Hopefully the weather will hold up but it’s not looking promising. We couldn’t get a Kent State photographer to cover the event, so Javier is going to be the photographer while I’m running all over the place. He agreed to do it as long as he got an Earth Day t-shirt and a name tag so he can “go backstage.” I didn’t tell him there’s no backstage.
We’re going to church this morning before Earth Day and I can’t wait. It’s been a couple of weeks since we’ve been for various reasons, but I can’t wait to go get fed – I need it. I love our church and am so excited that we’re really starting to get plugged in. We met a couple at our small group for the first time last week and discovered that they are big Avett Brothers fans, so we are hopefully going to meet up with them at the concert we’re going to in Cleveland in late May. Two of the other girls in our group are pregnant so it’s nice to be able to “talk baby” and get to know them.
Have a great Sunday, everyone!
