Tuesday, September 27, 2011

The Force is Strong With This One

He's here! Luke William Bryan Nguyen was born on September 16, 2011 at 7:54am. He weighed 6 pounds, 2 ounces, and measured 17 3/4 inches long. He has a little bit of dark blonde hair, and really long limbs, fingers, and feet. He is absolutely adorable! Here are a bunch of pictures highlighting his first 10 days of life!

Welcome to the world, Baby Luke! We are so happy to have you!
We love you so much!
♥ Mom, Dad, Ellie and Julesy

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Ellie's First Day of Preschool

Rich and I dropped Ellie off today for her first day of preschool. She is only going for a couple of hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but it will make the house just a little bit quieter (in a little-bit-of-a-sad-way) until Luke's arrival in about 2 weeks. Here she is in her first-day-of-school digs.










We love you, Ellie! Hope you have a great first day!

*Update: Ellie's first day was great! She seemed to have SO much fun. She told me all about a rabbit in class that was white with a pink nose and pink ears named Wookie. Well, Ellie says her "l" like a "w" so this needed some clarification. I asked her if it was Wookie, or Lukie, like her brother's name...and she said Lukie, like her brother. And then I wondered whether or not it was a real rabbit or a fake one so I asked her and she told me that it was alive like our dog Sadie. I still was a little wishy-washy on the whole thing, so I texted Melinda for the reality of the class pet. It turns out that the rat, not rabbit, is a puppet, not alive, named Mookie, not Wookie or Lukie. The whole thing cracked me up so much that I had to post it here so I would remember. She also told me that two boys cried during the class, that they went outside for a little bit because it was still raining, and they sat on the circle rug. I also took a picture of what she calls her polka-dot paint artwork.


I think the day was a complete success and I know she is totally looking forward to her next day of school.

"Star Wars Kids" Infant Car Seat

So I have been sewing lately. When we found out that baby #3 was a boy, Rich was ecstatic at the thought that he would finally have his little Luke Skywalker. Naturally, Star Wars was the theme for the nursery. We enlisted the help of our graphic-designer friend, Mike Nixon, to help us come up with a mural for the nursery wall. The mural ideas evolved into a series of prints that Mike designed that could be framed and hung on the wall of the Star Wars characters as kids, doing fun-kid-things (www.nixongraphix.com/swkids.html). Then, Melinda and I had a crazy thought...what if we could custom fabric printed of his graphics to use in the nursery? Well, we found spoonflower.com and the rest was history. Mike turned his prints into a fabric for quilting and a coordinating patterned fabric that can be purchased at spoonflower.com. How amazing!

Then, after many hours of unpicking and ironing, cutting and sewing, and following this carseat recovering tutorial, Melinda and I turned the old carseat (sorry I didn't take more "before pictures of just the carseat):





into this work of art ready for our little Luke to make his debut!






Friday, August 5, 2011

May the Force Be With Us.

We went down to Houston to visit Rich's family the weekend of July 9th and decided to visit the Houston Health Museum where they were showing a special Star Wars exhibit of actual costumes and models from George Lucas's collection. It was pretty cool! Needless to say, Rich was in heaven.




Daddy and Ellie with Yoda (definitely the girls' favorite!)


Nana strikes a pose like Padme


Julesy got up close and personal with the Wampa


Mommy and Chewbacca


Darth Vader


Stormtrooper




With Leia, R2-D2, and C-3PO


"Naked" C-3PO


The view from inside of Vader's helmet


Anakin's prosthetic hand


Luke's prosthetic hand


Obi-Wan and Count Dooku's Lightsabers


Rich with Han and Chewie costumes


Ellie playing with a robot demonstrating the difficulties of robotic walking


Luke's actual landspeeder


Actual Millennium Falcon model


Actual X-Wing model


Anakin and Obi-Wan costumes