Weekend Update with Roger and Abby

Roger and I had a wonderful weekend filled with time spent with friends we absolutely love, so I thought it was definitely worth blogging about. Here we go!

Friday night we celebrated our good friend Amy Buzbee's birthday downtown Springfield with dinner at Bruno's with a great group of people. Good dinner with really great company.

Saturday morning I attended Meredith's baby shower. Baby Zoe is expected to arrive home really soon! Like at the end of this month/beginning of July! Meredith received so many great gifts....and they had two other showers this weekend too! I think they have everything but the baby at this point. It was a beautiful baby shower with brunch and games and great conversation with people I met at the shower. I even won the game we all played which consisted of matching celebrity parents to their uniquely named celebrity babies. I had the most correct: 21 out of 26. This really impressive feat is basically a result of two things: 1) reading People magazine religiously and 2) being obsessed with other people's babies. Two things I probably shouldn't be overly proud of, I know. Anyway, it was a fun game and my table was impressed with my useless celebrity knowledge.

Saturday night Roger and I had dinner at our house with Matt and Meredith and Jonathan and Becca, two couples we have met since our adoption journey began, two couples Roger and I feel so blessed to have as friends. It was a really enjoyable evening, complete with Roger's first attempt at making sangria that turned out surprisingly well! I think we've found our new favorite summertime drink! It was so yummy we ended up having to make a second.....and third pitcher of it.

I've come to realize how much I enjoy and look forward to having people over for dinner or get-togethers, etc., which is really funny because before I was married that was one thing that made me really anxious when I would think about becoming a wife and what all it would entail. I was a little intimidated and unsure of my abilities when it came to cooking and hosting. Not that I'm necessarily great at either one of those things yet, but I can at least say that I'm comfortable enough with it to enjoy it. It's fun to look back on life and realize just how much you've grown, you know?

Tonight Roger and I took Jack and Jill to Bark in the Park at the Springfield Cardinals game, and boy, was that interesting. We did a little parade of puppies around the field before the game began, and I think Jack tried to start a fight only about four times -- and only with dogs five times his size, of course. He doesn't have a problem with dogs his own size, but apparently he feels he has something to prove when he comes across a Lab, etc. Little Man Syndrome in full force just like I expected. One of these days he's going to get his a** handed to him and it's not going to be pretty. But, regardless, they both loved it and were totally overstimulated with all the people, dogs, smells, sounds, etc. We tried to watch the game with the dogs on our laps, and that lasted not even two innings. Every time the crowd clapped, Jack started barking, along with when they were shooting t-shirts into the crowd with the t-shirt gun. Apparently he could actually see the t-shirts flying through the air and wanted to fetch them. I use the term "fetch" loosely. Jack's version of fetch consists of running to the object and running off with it in the opposite direction instead of bringing it back. And then at one point I had to excuse myself and Jill from our seats because she started barking loudly and ferociously at a Golden Retriever making its way down the stairs in our direction. A whole lot of people got a kick out of that, me and Roger not included. We decided to head home shortly after that and on the walk back to the car Roger announced, "That stressed me out." I asked him what he's going to do when we take a baby to a baseball game and he said, "It won't be that bad." Hmmm. Interesting. He may be stressed out for a while. So, yeah, at least we tried. It was still a fun time while it lasted.

Me and Jack during the "parade"

My attempt to take a picture of Roger and Jill
while Jack was trying to start something with
a yellow Lab

Roger with Jill; me with Kasey, Roger's parents' dog;
Louanna with Jack. Seriously, how happy does Jack look?!