The Zoe and Silas Show

Stephanie and my aunt Sue hosted a beautiful baby shower for me last Saturday at Sue's house on Lake Minnetonka. The shower had the cutest rubber duck theme, complete with coordinating punch and cake! Here are the beautiful hostesses. Stephanie put together one of the games where guests were supposed to guess how many baby socks, caps & onesies were in a large jar. Sue came up with cute a "Price is Right" game where you guessed the prices of various baby items and whoever came closest to the total without going over the real cost won. Of course the prizes were Aveda products, so Sandi & Sukoshi were pretty darn excited when they won! We had lots of sunshine, yummy food, good company and plenty of laughs! My Aunt Sally made the neatest crib blankets for each baby. Baby Girl will get the green ladybug blanket and Baby Boy will get the red lizard blanket. We are painting the nursery bright spring green, and the blankets will be used as a starting place for other deco...

Ahhhhh, it was good to be home in Grand Forks this week... Mom's gardens were in full June bloom and were absolutely beautiful. The weather could have been a little nicer, but it sounds like that was true in Minneapolis and Boston this week as well! I did plenty of relaxing, a little bit of working (I have to present all of the Romanian ERP data from the 8-year follow-up at a meeting on June 30th...), and spent lots of good time with both Mom & Dave (and Ebony, who was up to no good one afternoon!). Mom & I spent some time going through the cedar chest one morning. The cedar chest contains lots of family history, including baby clothes that are now being passed down to my lucky babes. I am even coming home with two christening gowns; one that Stephanie wore and one that I wore. Here is a sampling of some of the other clothes that will keep these babies well-dressed! My Grandma Westerlund was an amazing knitter, so there are lots of baby sweaters, booties and bonnets. My Gre...

The first part of my trip home was spent in Minneapolis, and I could not have had a more perfect visit. My air travels were smooth with no delays and I arrived on time around 8:30pm on Friday night. Stephanie and I stayed up talking and catching up far too late, of course! We awoke to PERFECT Minnesota June weather on Saturday morning. First we went to the Sunny Side for brunch and then we hit the Lyndale Farmer's Market. This market is a cross between a flea market, a fair, and a traditional farmer's market. We treated ourselves to chair massages from Shiatsu Ben, which were pretty darn awesome. As we were perusing the market after our massages we came across a table for Flax USA, which is one of Dave's big customers. I think Stephanie should be their new spokesperson... We met up with Jim & Andrew for coffee at Java Jack's in the afternoon which enabled us to extend our enjoyment of a perfect day... There were lots of dogs and kids passing by to keep us entertaine...

I am getting ready to go "home" for the next nine days so I am very excited! I feel fortunate that I have three "homes" (Grand Forks, Minneapolis & Boston), and this trip will bring me to two of them. I fly to Minneapolis tonight where I will hang out with Stephanie & Jim and Dad & Mary for the weekend. Dad's birthday and Father's Day are both coming up so we will BBQ at Stephanie's house tomorrow to celebrate. I will take the Amtrak to Grand Forks overnight on Sunday, arriving at 5am (many thanks to Dave in advance for picking me up at the crack of dawn!). Mom, Dave & I will spend Monday through Friday relaxing and catching up, and we will also celebrate Father's Day, hopefully with another BBQ! On Friday we will drive back to Minneapolis for a baby shower that Sue is hosting for me on Saturday (there will definitely be a post about this next weekend). I fly home on Sunday, arriving in time to also celebrate Father's Day with Der...

We had my 18-week ultrasound this morning which, as many of you know, we were VERY excited about! The scans took over an hour because they check the brain, heart, kidneys, bladder and stomach for each baby. The good news is that at this stage both babies look healthy! Yay!!! And we were able to find out the sexes for both babies.... and we are truly blessed with one boy (Baby A) and one girl (Baby B)! The pictures below are a little freaky because they take 3-D scans. The reason I chose to post these two pictures in particular is because you can see them snuggling up, head to head. In the pictures, the girl is higher up on the right and the boy is a little lower down on the left. The sonographer had a hard time imaging all of the boys organs because the girl was squishing him. "Bossy already, like her mother"...