It Was the Best of Times...

So, Katie's Sweet Sixteen was last weekend.  Here is the highlight reel:

Katie & Allison - we all had "katie's sweet sixteen" shirts with monograms

White birthday shirts for the grown-ups - Forest is a good sport, but he drew the line at lilac sleeveless

The crew in the car (Lauren, Grace & Allison from L to R in the backseat). On our way to play golf!

A turtle on the greens!

A break to let some others "play through"

They made it through FIVE HOLES, but then the car arrived to take them to the hotel

We arrived at the Four Seasons at the Lumiere Place Casino

Forest and I decorated the suite...

Custom root beers & cream sodas

...while the girls were chillin' at the pool

The girls went back to the room to get ready for dinner.  This took THREE AND A HALF HOURS, no lie. 

While we were waiting, Forest and I enjoyed some drinks & appetizers on the patio at Cielo

Finally, the girls were ready!

We had dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory

The whole restaurant sang Happy Birthday!

At 12:47 am on June 6th we had cake to mark Katie's EXACT birthday

Sunday morning they got in one final bask in the sun

Overall it was a great success :) Katie has decided she wants all future parties to be at the Four Seasons.  We shall see...

On Sunday we had a family birthday dinner:

Katie & Grammy

Katie & Mommy

Forest & Me

Happy Sweet Sixteen Katie!!!

Then Monday she got her Drivers License!

Times are changing - that's for sure!

Other updates:

• In additional baby making news, the FET is in full swing. A myriad of IM injections are entering my gluteus maxima each night.  We are scheduled to transfer 1 to 3 blasts on Tuesday at 1 pm CST! Wish us luck!!!
• In unrelated, but adorable news, I connected with an old friend from high school on Facebook and she is having a giveaway on her adorable blog.  Check out these AWESOME little hats (that turn into purses!) and register to win one on Emily's blog! Good luck!

EWLE Pics

Sarah proposed an acronym for my wordy (and pretty much only) family tradition: Elf Watching and Lasagna Eating (EWLE) and we all love it - thank you, Sarah! :)

It all started when Elf came out in 2003. Forest and I took Katie (then 9), my niece Lauren (then 16), and my nephew Sean (then 14) to see it. We all LOVED it. We are big movie quoters and this movie is quite quote-tastic.  

The next year Elf came out on DVD so we had Lauren and Sean over to watch it and eat lasagna. We decided to do it the next year and the next...My sister and her husband (Lauren and Sean's parents) came a couple of years ago and I think Forest's kids came another year.  Last year Lauren brought a date and Katie invited a friend.


This year, the 6th annual EWLE, my brother's family from Chicago was in town, my other brother wanted to come, my sister and her husband came, Lauren invited 2 friends and Katie invited a friend.  So, we had 15 people! We have a teeny, tiny house, but a cozy good time was had by all.

A candid kitchen photo

  

Thirsty Katie

Thirsty Lauren

My brother, Michael

Birthday Boy Sean

All the Cousins 
(disclaimer: the next two pics were taken at my sister's house, not mine)

All the Cousins, Part Deux

Anyway, as I said, this is pretty much my only familly tradition and I highly recommend that each of your families start it up.  After all, everyone loves Elf and everyone loves lasagna.  

Just ask Katie:

A (really) personal question

A question for my fellow IVF-ers out there,  if you don't mind my asking (if you do mind, of course, you can just refuse to answer): what was your RE's recommendation for having sex after embryo transfer?  My clinic recommends waiting until after the first ultrasound (when I'll be 5w4d), but there are certain people around here who are getting restless (I won't name names).  Has anyone else's MD been so conservative on the sex front?

Your answers will be greatly appreciated :)

In other news...I have none. Everything is A-OK over here so far. We're busy cleaning the house (um...how is that, Amy, since you're posting a blog entry?) for my nieces and nephews to come over tonight for our Annual Elf Watching and Lasagna Eating (catchy name, huh).  We got an early Christmas present to make this tradition more awesome this year: a 40" LCD HDTV (40" is MORE than enough for our wee living room) with a Blu-Ray player and surround sound (woo hoo!).

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!!!

A Wee Update to the "About Me" Paragraph

The "About Me" paragraph now reads that I am the mother of an awesome 15 year old daughter, Katie.  Today is my sweetie baby's birthday (Woop!).  She is now old enough to get her driver's permit (YIKES!).

Katie is a super great child, and it makes me happy that I can say that about a teenager! I never had a good relationship with my mom; my sister and niece (now 21) have been going at it since she turned about 13. So I am very, very pleased and feel very, very blessed that Katie and I are tight.  In honor of Miss Katie, I thought I would show off her cuteness. 

I've posted this one before. It was taken 15 years ago tomorrow:

Coming Home - June 7, 1994

Arguably the BEST Katie-Mommy pic evah:

Katie (age 3 years, 1 day) & Mommy at Disney World - 1997

Another one from the same trip:

Sean (nephew, age 7), Katie (age 3) and Lauren (niece, age 9)

To see how time flies in the blink of an eye, here is a relatively recent one of the three of them:

Katie (age 14), Sean (age 19), and Lauren (age 21) - Christmas 2008

This was my 21st birthday. We were out for a WILD night at TGI Friday's (or maybe it wasn't so wild, actually!):

Katie (age 3), Mommy & a friend - 1997

I love this next picture because she was so little! She doesn't wear her hair in pigtails anymore and she doesn't hug me like this when walking through museums:

Katie (age 8) and Mommy at the Museum of Science and Industry - 2003

Just 4 years ago she still looked mostly like a little girly:

Katie (age 11) and Mommy - 2005

One, that's right ONE year later, she looked like this: 

Katie and her friend, Grace (age 12) 

Can you imagine having legs like that at TWELVE!?!?! Maybe you all did, but I didn't. Weird.

And here is a present-day montage she made honoring her new great love, Mr. Spock (in case you're not a nerd, LL&P stands for Live Long and Prosper):

Clockwise from top, left: New Spock, Grace, Old Spock, and Katie

I never thought Katie would be this old before I had another baby.  And that's thinking positively.  Alternatively, I never thought my baby-having days would be over at 17.  Life is awfully unpredictable, huh? No matter what life hands me, one thing will always be true: I am wonderfully blessed and happy to be Katie's mom.

Happy Birthday, Katie! Live Long and Prosper!