A couple weekends ago, we attended a Valentine’s Dinner party with friends in Berkeley the evening before Valentine’s Day. We had a great time with our couple friends — the catered food was amazing, the games were entertaining, and the decor was so cute! A big thanks to Ann Helen and all the other ladies who organized it. Here are some photos…
The lovely table set-up.
Dinner from Ann's Catering - it was so good! I took advantage of some furikake that someone snuck in.
Red velvet cake with ice cream for dessert!
For one of the games, the gentelemen had to get blindfolded by their partners, and the girls each threw one of their shoes onto the floor. The boys had to then crawl around the floor, trying to find their partner’s shoe relying on touch alone. It was pretty hilarious to watch….
Poor Dan… It took him a while, but he eventually got it. haha*
But then the tables turned, and it wasn’t so funny anymore when it was the girls’ turn to find their partners’ shoes.
Crawling around with the weight of my big belly did not help in the search for Dan’s shoe. And mens’ dress shoes seem so similar; I think the ladies definitely had a more difficult time with it. I think someone ended up having to hand me Dan’s shoe because I was one of the last ones left searching for the shoe. Major wife fail….
We also played a couple rounds of what was sort of a spoof of The Newlywed Game. 🙂
They even had a little photo-taking area set up! :) I was a little self-conscious about having photos taken with my now-giant baby bump (“bump” is no longer an appropriate name for it… it’s more like a mountain!), but I’ll leave you with this one of us, taken in our typical dork fashion:
Happy (belated) Valentine's Day from Dan & Misono ♥
My lovely friend Julianne has been in Palo Alto this past week, and we drove down to grab lunch with her on Saturday afternoon before she left to go back home to the Seattle area.
We gorged on a delicious dim sum lunch at Tai Pan in downtown Palo Alto, and indulged in sweet desserts at The Prolific Oven right next door. Thanks for the wonderful recommendations and for lunch, Juli! We hope you had a safe and smooth trip back up to Washington, and that we’ll see each other again soon. ♥
We’ve been very fortunate to receive a lot of the babygear and essentials as baby shower gifts and hand-me-downs in the past couple months, but I feel like one thing we can never have enough of are baby clothes! There are so many cute clothes out there, but babies outgrow things so fast, and buying everything brand new can get pretty expensive! That said, we don’t have a lot of friends nearby who are already parents, so there’s not many chances to borrow/receive hand-me-downs. As the due date has started to close in on, I’ve started to check out some of the local baby stores in the area for some good deals on cute baby clothing, but I’ve found that it really racks up! Just when I was feeling overwhelmed about all the baby clothes I still needed to buy, a package arrived yesterday from my cousin Yuko in Arizona.
Back in January, when we spoke on the phone for New Years, Yuko had told me she’d be sending a package my way in a month or so, but I had no idea the package would be so big! We opened it to find that it was brimming with baby girl clothes and other infant-related items.
Accompanying the package was a sweet card from Yuko, with words of encouragement for my last couple months of pregnancy. Yuko worked during her pregnancies, too, so she can empathize with the challenges and exhaustion of being a working expectant mother. She shared about all the hope and excitement she had for our baby, as if it were her own. 🙂
The package contained a whole bunch of adorable hand-me-down clothing that Yuko’s daughters (Beni and Sakura) had outgrown. She had already given us a lot of gender-neutral baby clothing back when we had visited in September and didn’t know the gender of the baby yet. After we told her we were expecting a girl, she collected all her girl clothes that were still in really good condition to send to us — some were even unworn, with the tags still on them!
From super-sweet floral prints…
to colorful plaids, stripes, and polka dots…
to the girly pinks…
…and accessories. Look at that tiny swimsuit!
Also included were some kimono-style wraps that you can only find in Japan:
My favorite is this one… how adorable is this jinbei?
I can’t wait to wrap our baby girl in it! ♥
There were also some adorable bibs, which I hear you can never have enough of!
Yuko also sent us a few additional Japanese children’s books and a lullaby CD. 🙂
As a congratulatory gift, she sent us a scrapbook kit to fill with photos and memories of our baby, too! I love scrapbooking, so I can’t wait to use it! 😀
Also in the package were some very practical items like babyfood dishes and breastmilk storage bags — all of it will come in very handy as we welcome Baby Allen in a couple months. We’re so grateful to Yuko and her family for all the hand-me-downs and gifts! We had already received so much when we visited them last September, so we were incredibly touched by their generosity once again — we can’t thank them enough!
Happy New Year! Dan and I just got back to California late Sunday night after spending ten days at my parents’ home in Northern Virginia. We arrived early the morning of Christmas Eve, and I spent Christmas Day/my 28th birthday quietly at home with my family. It feels strange to think that this was my last Christmas and birthday without a child, and that future Christmases will probably be a lot noisier and hectic!
We had a memorable week spent with family, friends, and enjoyed a much-needed break from work during the holidays. My mom kept Dan busy half the time, enlisting his handyman skills to repaint the kitchen. (He did a great job and the kitchen looks like new! My mom is ecstatic.) Meanwhile, I indulged in stuffing myself with my mom’s home cooking, getting pampered by my parents, and treasured the time that I had to catch up with the friends back home whom I missed so much!
Two of my dearest friends and college roommates, Hanna and Yoon, threw us a baby shower the day after Christmas to celebrate the upcoming arrival of our baby girl! Since baby showers typically aren’t thrown until well into the third trimester and since I wouldn’t be back on the East Coast again before the birth of the baby, we initially hadn’t thought that we’d get to have a baby shower with our East Coast friends. We were so touched that they went out of their way during the busiest time of the year to still plan and organize a shower for us! Our friend Brian generously offered his house to host the celebration, and the decorations were absolutely adorable and the food was delicious! The girls planned some fun baby shower games and we were humbled by the generosity of our friends and by all the gifts. More than anything, though, it was just nice to see so many of our friends again, and we felt so blessed and fortunate to be able to celebrate the new addition to our family with them. Our baby (currently referred to as “eggplant“) is the luckiest girl in the world, to be surrounded by so much love before she even comes out!
Here are some photos from the baby shower…
The adorable set-up! I couldn't get over how cute it was.
Classic Pooh + Burt's Bees diaper cake! Yoon did such a great job making it!
Shower favors: beehive candles!
Guess Baby Allen's Arrival Date!
Homemade cupcakes: double chocolate and cheesecake-flavored. Delicious!
Loved it!!!
Pat and I with our baby bumps! We're both expecting baby girls in April, only two weeks apart!
Thanks Greg for stopping by!
All the yummy food!
Snacking around the table.
More snacking! 🙂
The Dirty Diaper game! My sister Miwa, my brother Ted, and his girlfriend Elisa.
Jina and Luice won the game. I missed these ladies!
Matching the candy to the baby phrases.
Guessing belly measurements
Thanks for coming, Jina!
Time to open presents!
The baby's first Hokie gear - a VT bib! Thank you Auntie Windy. 🙂
Dan testing the softness of the fleece baby blanket.
Adorable headwraps from Auntie Erri!
It was Luice's birthday that day - Happy Birthday! 😀
With 3-year-old Audrey. She's the cutest!
So good seeing Liz again!
Ashly and Helly - I missed them so! Seems like yesterday they were just freshmen, and now they're all grown up!
With Erri and Audrey. Erri is my closest friend who has kids, so she's been giving me so much priceless advice. I can't thank her enough!
And of course... my lovely roomies! 501-A reunited! Thank you for throwing me a baby shower I'll never, ever forget. Love you girls so much!
For more photos of the baby shower, click over to the photo album.
(Special thanks to Pat & Theo for many of the photos!)
Some of my friends couldn’t make it to the baby shower, like my best friend Debbie, who’s back in Seoul with her family for the winter holidays. The night before we left for Virginia, we had received this very generous gift from Debbie and our friends Mimi, Michelle, and Stephanie, who all pitched in to get us the Beaba Babycook that I had been raving about a couple months ago! Dan and I were stunned when we received it, because although we’d put it on our baby registry, we were prepared to eventually buy it ourselves because it’s so pricey and we didn’t think anyone would actually get it for us. It’s such a great investment, and we can’t wait until the time comes for us to use it! 🙂
The Beaba Babycook! Thank you Debbie, Mimi, Michelle, and Steph!
We celebrated an early Christmas and Dan and my birthdays with Dan’s family yesterday, since we are leaving this Thursday for the East Coast to be with my family back in Virginia. We enjoyed a delicious dinner cooked by Dan’s mother, a nice gift exchange, some classic board game fun, topped with a red velvet birthday cake for the two of us. It was a delightful evening spent with family. 🙂
I loved this Christmas ornament that Dan’s sister got for us — usually you would get an ornament to commemorate the baby’s first Christmas, but since ours is not out yet, she still got us a handmade, custom ornament to celebrate her anticipated arrival….
She also got us some adorable baby goods: a Baby Soy onesie, matching no-scratch mittens, and a pair of cozy fleece-lined Crocs! Too cute!!! Our baby girl is already getting spoiled by Auntie Hyo! 😀
We’re so glad we got to spend some time with Dan’s side of the family before we took off for our annual trip back East. Merry Christmas from the Allens! 🙂
