BABY FEVER

The baby shower was a success!

I plan on doing individual posts for the invitations and the cake, but the actual shower was AMAZING!!!

Jessica, Karina, and I spent all morning working our butts off making the diaper cake, putting the real cake together, baking cupcakes, making brigadeiro, setting out fruit trays, putting up decorations, cleaning, heating up nuggets, and more. We were still running around like chickens with their heads cut off when the guests started to arrive at 2.

But that's okay because it went smoothly afterwards!

The cake got lots of oohs and ahhs from everyone:

And the cupcakes were a pretty big hit too, especially the little baby booties.

The coolest thing, I thought, was the diaper cake Karina put together. Karima won't be needing to buy newborn diapers until her second child with all the diapers we got her!

Isn't it so cute??? It was my favorite decoration in the whole party!

And the party was also filled with babies! Baby Victoria will be the 4th baby born to a CFA team member in less than a year's span, and all of the three other ladies brought their babies. They were born in boy girl order too! There's me and baby Ariana. We played together for a whole 30 minutes and then she knocked out... I hope that someday my kids will be that easy!

Other than diapers, Karima got lots of goodies. She received a ton adorable baby girl outfits! She also got a few bonnets, bibs, teethers, shoes, socks, gloves, onesies, towels, and blankets. In the gifts there were also a plastic duckie, wipes, a comb, a brush, and a little thing to hang on her crib that says "The princess is sleeping." This little girl is going to be so cute and fashionable, you'll know she's my adopted niece!

I can't wait for Karima to have the baby and for me to finally meet Victoria!

Happy Cow Appreciation Day!!!

So today was Cow Appreciation Day!!!

It's an annual, national holiday in which all Chick-fil-As across the country serve deliciously yummy food for free to anyone who shows up dressed as a cow!

Of course, as a Chick-fil-A team leader, I ended up working all day. And by all day, I mean 5:15AM-8:30PM. It was a brutal day.

However long and ridiculously, outrageously busy the day was, I can't deny that we had a ton of fun!

All the team members had fun dressing up as cows!

In the front, and in the kitchen!

Jessica and I even did our nails, cow style, just for the occasion!

And we had the Chick-fil-A cow out all day long. He played with countless kids and waved at an innumerable amount of cars. It was pretty awesome!!

I got to help blow up all those balloons while someone else made the arc, and at the end of the day, I got to help pop them all!

Not before taking an awesome picture with the balloons though!

It was a really long and stressful day, and my feet hurt like crazy, but it was also a ridiculously fun day with lots of oohing and ahhing over the little kids' costumes, and laughing at the crazy adults that went super all out!

Share some of your CAD pictures with me while I put my feet up and get some rest!

BABY SHOWER!!!

I am officially in charge of planning Karima's baby shower, and I could not be more excited!!!

She gave me a date and a theme of pink and butterflies. Now watch me go Pinterest crazy!!!

I have to make Save The Date Invitations, and a cake, and plan games, and make decor, and so much more!!! It's time to start practicing my event planning! I am beyond excited!

As of right now we are going to do it at Jessica's house and since she has a professional camera, you know we're going to have some awesome pictures!!

The baby shower is tentatively planned for the eleventh of August, so stay tuned to hear about how that goes!!!

Can you tell that I am SUPER excited?????

The Worst Fourth

I definitely wasn't expecting anything grand out of my Fourth of July this year.

Last year I worked all day, got a flat tire, set off a few fireworks with Alexa, packed for my upcoming drive to Florida/flight to Nicaragua, then set off fireworks in Luis's backyard with a bunch of his friends. We crashed early because we had to leave for Florida in the morning (I promise to explain my love for Nicaragua on a later post, because it will be a loooooong post)

This year, it was a little more.... exciting, for lack of a better word.

Once again, I worked, but only half the day. Then I headed on to Kennesaw to shower and get ready for a, hopefully, fun Fourth. I felt terribly sick and we had zero plans, but I demand to be fabulous anyways.

Then I went over to Luis's house, and guess what? I got another flat tire!!! I seriously hope that this isn't about to become some perversely tragic Fourth of July tradition for me, because I simply can't deal with that every year.

Lucky me, I was probably less than two miles away from Luis's when it gave out. So I just pretended to ignore the extremely bouncy drive to his parking lot. Finally, I got there and he stepped out to look at the car. Oh, did I mention that it was raining??? Last year too.

Check out this flat

How does that even happen??? I didn't hit anything or run over anything. I was just driving (at a safe speed too) and boom, all of a sudden the bumpy, uh-oh-I-think-I-have-a-flat driving started.

Anyways, the story gets better. Luis goes and tries to change the tire himself (because he's a man and for some stupid reason, men refuse to call professionals to fix things when needed, regardless of the pretty dime I pay my insurance company for unlimited roadside assistance) and he spends probably over an hour playing with the lug nuts and different tools.

Finally, Rodrigo and Jessica show up. Jessica and I leave the boys to their play mechanic games to work on an essay, and eventually, after another hour of playtime, they come back in defeat. Apparently, one of the lug nuts is 'stripped' (whatever that means) and normal tools can't get it out. So FINALLY, the boys let me call Geico to get this thing sorted out.

I explain to the insurance lady exactly what the issue with the bolt is and everything. The man she sends had no idea that the bolt was stripped before coming and he didn't have the tool for it. He leaves, being of no help other than to tell me to curse out my insurance lady (but she's so sweet I could never. Plus, call center people are only human! They make mistakes too!). I call Geico back and explain to the lady again everything that happened. This time she calls the companies around and asks about my specific problem. None of the companies do what I need. Great.

At this point my only option is to get a tow to a tire shop to fix my poor baby Lulu. The only problem? It's past 10 PM on a holiday. So I just get a reference number and leave it to deal with later. We finished the paper then went to Waffle House (because nothing is more patriotic in the South than Waffle House at midnight). It was too rainy to enjoy fireworks, so we settled for just listening to the loud bangs outside.

Yesterday morning I left for work with Luis's car. After work I come back and we tow the car to the tire shop, wait for a good 45 minutes in the lobby, and pay 9 bucks to find out that the bolt wasn't stripped at all, it was just differently shaped. Great.

So now I'm driving around on a spare until I have time to go to a used tire shop, because I have two more tires that look like they're about to give out too so I might as well replace them all.

Yay for car troubles, which I apparently have way too many of.

Shopping With The Ladies

Jessica, Karima and I went shopping... Again!

We actually just went to the mall with the intentions of getting our nails done, but as you should know by now, one thing led to another and money got spent.

Our first stop was Charming Charlie's because they just opened at Cumberland a month ago and we hadn't been yet! And there's a Michael Kors opening up soon too. Exciting!

I went craziest here because they were having a buy one get one FREE sale! Look at all the goodies I got without even spending $35!

The wallet was my favorite by far

Look at that adorable bow! (For some reason I couldn't get it to face the right way...) It's blue, my favorite color, and has my beautiful bow on it. Plus it opens up to this:

iPhone case and wallet all in one!!! I've been dying for one of these wallet cases, and now I finally have one! It was so cute, I bought it full price!

Then I went crazy on the earrings

They were so cheap, plus buy one get one free, I couldn't help myself when I saw all these adorable bows!

Who cares what else came in the set as long as I now have a bow earring in 3 different colors?

And on this last one, it was the Eiffel Towers that won me over. I'm still not sure what those circles are yet...

And it would be wonderful if my pictures cooperated with me again.

I also got this lovely shirt on the buy one get one free sale.

Jessica got that black top too. Aren't we just so cute??

And we found tiaras inside Charming Charlie's! My twitter handle is Princessa Brunna, because princess is in English and princesa is in Portuguese, so I just combined the two to describe who I am. Regardless of how much money I have or my standing in life, I am so definitely a princess, so I had to try on tiaras!

The cuteness is overwhelming! And the tiaras all looked wonderful on me. I really do believe I should have been a princess.

Then Wet Seal was having a 50% off sale, so I got this adorable blazer!

It's too casual to wear legitimately with a business outfit, but it'll add a classy flair to any outfit I put together. Not to mention that while I have probably half a dozen black blazers, I don't own a white one. Finally!

Then we hit up H&M because they were having a $4 Fourth of July sale. Here's a screen shot of the Snapchat Jessica sent me of me trying to poke out my stomach to look pregnant like Karima (she's having a baby girl!!!)

We did end up visiting the nail salon and getting our mani-pedis. I hadn't had one since my 18th birthday! It was long overdue!

I fell in love with the super girly, and as Karima put it, princess-y, nail polish and glitter look. Unfortunately, my nails are disgusting from spending so long without being done and working so hard in restaurants and fast food, so even done, they look stubby and gross. But this is it. I'm determined to start taking better care of nails again. I used to go to the nail salon every 3 weeks before I moved out. I won't splurge like that anymore, but I can do small nail maintenance at home and only go every other month or something like that. We'll see.

On the way home, we blasted the radio loud and I was jamming and driving at the same time, while Jessica and Karima laughed their heads off at other peoples' expressions. How can you not enjoy a night with a sunset like this??

Overall, it was an amazing day spent with my girls, and the day ended on a good note.

Adventures In Tennessee

I went whitewater rafting yesterday!!!

It was soooo intense!

A while back I found a Groupon for a white water rafting trip for four on the Ocoee river, and naturally, it ended up being me, Luis, Jessica, and Rodrigo. Whenever Luis and I do double dates, it's always those two who we go with.

We woke up bright and early to start our trip up to Tennessee at 6am, but we didn't end up leaving until well after 6, due to the fact that we somehow lost my car keys. (Lulu gets the best mileage out of all our cars, so we decided to drive her up... I didn't do any driving though. Rodrigo drove up there and Luis drove back.) It was actually kind of a disaster of a morning. Usually I'm super organized and extra prepared when it comes to these things, but I just failed yesterday (I'm blaming it on the fact that I worked over 50 hours last week). I brought 3 pairs of shorts for me for the weekend, but didn't bring a single top, so I borrowed one of Jessica's shirts. I also forgot to send everyone the packing list from the website, and ended up sending it at 5 30 am the day of. 

We finally got out on the road, had breakfast at a McDonald's out in northern Georgia, and made it to our destination by 9 30. Turns out, I also forgot to print out the Groupon that we had bought! Luckily, the lady gave me an email address that I could e-mail the voucher to so she could print it for me. Whew. That would have been bad.

We finally got suited up in our life jackets and helmets

Then we grabbed our paddles and went out on our great adventure!

It was about a 3 and a half hour trip. We had two of the rafting company's staff on our raft and we went through many many rapids, ranging from class 2 to class 4. It was pretty intense! There was a part of the river that didn't have any rapids, so we jumped out of the raft and swam for a while. The water was FREEZING! I swear we all looked purple after we got back into the raft.

After the rafting trip was over, we ate at Zaxby's. They all ate hot and insane wings while I sat there nibbling on my Nibblerz. I will never understand how people can stand to eat such spicy things, but they do it and they enjoy it. Go figure.

Then we decided to get to know a Tennessean mall. We ended up finding a shoe store with an amazing sale, and I bought the cutest pair of heels ever. They are officially my new favorite pair!

The mall trip lasted a short while. The boys weren't having fun following us around into stores, and we didn't have money to spend anyways. So finally came the next crazy part. We didn't want to end the day quite yet, and we had driven so far to come to Tennessee! We needed to do at least one more thing before heading home. (One more failure to plan on my part. I had intended to find something else for us to do in Tennessee to occupy the whole day, but never got around to it)

We ended up going to a fireworks store and buying lots of goodies. What else is there to do in Tennessee other than things that are illegal in Georgia right? So we went to this huge fireworks store and browsed all the wonderful selections and ended up buying a good amount of fireworks.

We had to wait until night time to properly enjoy them, but when the time came, we had the time of our lives!

That is me setting off a roman candle, and Luis aiming the thing so I wouldn't hit any trees or hurt myself. Jessica always takes the best pictures of me and Luis. Some of my favorite shots of me and him were taken by her.

And here's a video of one of the atomic bomb things going off. We had six of those.

We also had some that whizzed away when we lit them, sparklers that also shot off, some things that sounded like gun shots, firecrackers, and more. It was a lot of fun.

We wrapped up the night by sitting on Luis's couch watching Fast and Furious. Well, they watched it while I lied down on Luis's lap reading my book (Yes, it was that good!). 

When everyone went home, it took me all of a minute to fall asleep after my head hit the pillow. It was an extremely long day, but totally worth the exhaustion I felt at the end.