1 more week & party planning

Well I promise more house pictures to come but I have an update unrelated to the house for now.

I am in my final week of maternity leave - seriously how can it be that it's already been 12 weeks?! A few weeks ago I made a list of things I was hoping/planning to accomplish while on maternity leave and can proudly say that I have now accomplished (almost) all of them! But this week I have vowed to spend time with my baby. I am allowing myself to hold her during nap time, spend time snuggling her, play with her on her play mat, read her a few extra books every day, and just enjoy her because I am quickly realizing that life just goes too fast. With our move I don't feel like I had a typical maternity leave where I was able to get to the point of being bored or restless, which is great but I also feel like I missed out to some extent. I felt so busy all the time up until just a few weeks ago. So this week I am just slowing down and enjoying my days with Lily. She is so precious and truly such a wonderful and easy baby - we are incredibly blessed! And then next week the hustle and bustle of work will be upon me - ugh! I can't say I'm dreading my return to work because that's not entirely true but I'm not exactly looking forward to it either:) I am incredibly lucky to be going back only part time and working from a home office but still, it's work and it's responsibility.

Another thing on the agenda for this week is to throw a party! It's Jimmy's birthday on Friday so we are having a little get together at our place on Thursday night to honor him. We are having just parents, siblings and grandparents over but that alone makes up 24 people! So I will be busy making food for that in the coming day or so. I was initially planning to grill but quickly remembered how tricky it can get to get things done at the same time when you are serving lots of people. So we are going with lasagna instead - something that's easier for me to make in large batches and mix up ahead of time. I will be sure to take lots of pictures and post later this week. We also are having a birthday date on Friday night that I'm looking forward to - we haven't been out without Lily since we moved into our place so it's time!