Model Shoot Part 2

My sister Jacque came to stay with me after Cash was born and she brought her nice camera. We decided to do another photo shoot because I just can't get enough pictures of this little guy. Jax did such a wonderful job capturing Cash's faces and his essence. What a sweet little boy.

Cash Money Millionaire

Here are pictures from Cash's newborn photo shoot. My friend Jenny was the photographer. She did a fantastic job capturing my beautiful lover boy. Cash was 10 days old.

AVP Champ

Casey won the Coney Island, New York AVP tournament on July 5, 2009. Winning an AVP tournament has been his biggest dream since he started playing beach volleyball. He did it! I'm so proud of him. Check out this clip from the final match.


At the end of the game Casey says, "I love you Lexi and Cash. Cash money! That was for you boy!" We love you too Daddy!

Casey is a wonderful husband, proud father, and AVP Champion. Not bad. I can't wait to see what he does next!
Check out www.avp.com where you can watch Casey's interview, vote for him as the most "sizzling hot" male up and coming athlete, and of course vote for him as the Paul Mitchell "Hot Shot" award.

Here's our future AVP Rockstar.

Cashman 2029

Cashman Celebrates

Casey and I celebrated our 4-year wedding anniversary on July 1st, 2009. We got each other the best anniversary present ever. A beautiful little baby boy! The traditional 4-year gift would typically be fruit and flowers, but our son smells and tastes better than either of those! That day also marked Cash's first week of life! We spent the day shopping for Cash, eating takeout from Cheescake Factory, spending time adoring our son, and then Daddy left for New York to play in a tourney.


After Casey left, Cashman and I celebrated when his blood tests came back and all of the jaundice is gone!!! He doesn't have to wear his tanning bed paddles anymore. Thank goodness for that. It was awkward trying to work around those things.


And today is one of my favorite holidays, Independence Day. Cash and I celebrated with a photo shoot! We love us some red, white, and blue. Hopefully next year we'll actually get to leave the house in celebration. We're hoping to catch some fireworks from our backyard. Happy 4th!

Introducing...Cash Ryan Patterson!

On June 23rd at 3PM, my water broke while I was on the table at my doctor's office. He sent us straight to the hospital. I was completely shocked because I was only dialated to a 1.5. And Casey was still covered in sand from that morning's beach practice. We ran home to shower and grab our hospital bags that had been packed for over two weeks. We got to the hospital at 3:45PM and I was hooked up to the monitors by 4PM. I wasn't feeling my contractions yet, but they were there on the machine. At 5PM, they started me on pitocin to speed along the labor process. I started feeling the contractions at 6PM. By 8PM, they were strong enough that I had to really breathe through them. Around 11PM, Casey fell asleep. Meanwhile I am still laboring and oh yeah, starving! They wouldn't let me eat anything except ice chips and popsicles. By this time the pitocin is really making the contractions stronger. But I was still trying to walk it off. Around 12AM, the breathing isn't helping and I'm on the birthing ball doing everything possible to get through the contractions. They were about 50 seconds long and one minute apart. I thought for sure that it was getting close. I had the nurse come check to see if I was further along and I was only at a 2.5! I couldn't believe it. I thought the end was in sight. At 1AM, I was crying through my contractions and Casey woke up. We called the nurse in and I decided that an epidural was going to need to take place ASAP. By 2AM, I was numb, pain free, and delirious. We both fell asleep hoping that we would have this baby by the time we woke up the next morning. At 4AM, the baby's heart rate started dropping. At 5AM, they took me off pitocin to help the baby's heart rate. By 6AM, I was dialated to a 6! Without pitocin! Around 7AM, my epidural started wearing off. Two pumps of epidural boost later, I was all numb again. At 10AM, I was dialated to a 10. The nurse had me do a couple of pushes to see if I was close. After the second push, the baby was crowning so she told me to stop pushing and she called my doctor. By 10:45AM, I was having a hard time not pushing because my epidural was wearing off and I was feeling a lot of pressure to push. The doctor arrived. At 11:02AM, after 5 pushes, we finally met our son.

Cash Ryan Patterson
Born June 24, 2009 at 11:02AM
7 lbs 15 oz
21.5 inches long

As soon as he came out of me, the doctor placed him on my chest. It was love at first sight. I watched with tears in my eyes as he took his first cry in my arms. Casey and I looked at each other and cried with joy, relief, fear, and excitement. Is this really happening? Then Casey cut his umbilical cord as I cradled him. Cash was swept away to be cleaned, weighed, measured, and checked. Then he was brought back for our "golden hour". He was placed on my chest, skin to skin, and everyone disappeared for an hour while Casey and I just held him and gazed at him. What an incredible experience. Worth the wait. Worth every minute of those 40 weeks. Worth every ounce of nausea and vomiting. Worth the 40 pounds I packed on. Cash was worth everything and more. Casey and I are in love. We can't stop staring at him. He's so beautiful. He's perfect. He's ours.

And now we are three.

E.L.K. Weekend

On May 28, 2009, we had our first official annual E.L.K. Girls Weekend in Huntington Beach, CA. It just so happens that I'm too pregnant to fly anywhere, so they all came to me!

8 1/2 months pregnant

Now you are all probably wondering what ELK is. I'll give you the run down. It is a secret society of tall beautiful women who are enamored with each other. It was started by the two first original members, Kristin and Lexi in 1997. Known back then as the Heroins Club. Then it gradually grew to include Erica and Lauren in 1998-1999. Finally it's fifth and final member was inducted in 2000, Kimberly. The club was then renamed to fit its members E.L.K (Erica, Lexi, Lauren, Kristin, and Kim).

ELK in 2005

Now 12 years later, the ELK club is still going strong. Still tall. Still beautiful. Still eternally enamored with each other. Over the past twelve years the friends have endured together through school, volleyball, graduations, heartache, love, loss, firsts, lasts, faith, disappointment, sickness, injury, health, marriage, adventures around the world, death, and new life. We stuck together no matter what came our way. And in 2009, we were finally able to have our first true girl's weekend in over 4 years! And what a time we had.


We spent the weekend at my house and we lived it up. Catching up, gossiping, shopping, laughing, crying, eating, reminiscing, watching movies, pampering, crafting, and loads of picture taking!

lots of laughing. good times.

decorating our Venitian masks

I love you girls so much. Thank you for coming to our ELK weekend. It was amazing. I can't wait for next year.

Erica (aka Rica), Lauren (aka LoLo), Lexi, Kristin (aka Baja), and Kim (aka Kimmy).

Nursery? Check!

Casey and I have been working overtime on our baby room for the past two weeks. It's finally done! Hooray!

I have been on maternity leave since May 26th. Best feeling ever. It's only been two weeks and I am loving it. Strange how I don't miss it. There was not one day where I woke up early feeling like I was late for work or missing something. I went from working full time to sleeping in and hanging around the house without blinking an eye. Isn't it amazing how that works? I am sooooo looking forward to an entire summer off of work with my hubby and our baby. Most exciting time of our life together. Our first adventure as a family. I can't wait to hold him in my arms. I wonder what he'll look like and what his personality will be like? I'm so excited to meet our son.

Casey left for Sweden today. It was a last minute trip. He got invited to go play in a beach vball tournament representing the USA. He didn't want to pass up a free trip back to Sweden and it's great experience to play internationally, so we decided he should go. We went to the doctor today and he gave the okay. I'm not dilated at all. No contractions. I'm putting myself on bed rest this week to make sure that baby doesn't come while daddy is away. But it looks like I still have another solid two weeks until baby Patterson will make his debut. I'm totally okay with that. I hope he comes right on his due date. June 22nd would be a good bday. Casey helped me get everything ready before he left just in case baby comes. So we'll see what happens. We both had a little talk with the baby and I have a feeling that he will wait for his big poppa to come home on Monday night. Next doctor appointment is on Tuesday. More updates then.

By the way... I haven't mentioned it on here yet, but we came to a decision on baby Patterson's name. Grandpa Patterson made him a beautiful name sign to put above his crib, so we are locked in with the name. What do you think?

Cash Ryan Patterson. He's going to be so hot with a name like that. Just like his daddy, Casey Ryan Patterson.