Baby Shower

I had my baby shower today at our house. It was so much fun! My sister, Sharon, and Sue did all the planning, decorating, and organizing. Everything turned out so nice. I was so happy. It was a good gathering of various friends - one from Jr. High, 4 from high school, 1 from Oakley, 1 who I met through Duke, my mom, my sister and Duke's mom, sister and niece.

Sue went early in the morning to the LA flower market just so we could have nice, fresh flowers. That was really sweet. We had a beautiful assortment and it really made it look special. My sister also had all these cute jungle-themed items - little note card holders to label the food, animal candles and lollipops with personalized stickers for party favors. I love monkeys (and I am one too) and there were lots of them all over.

My sister brought some veggies & dip and fruit assortment for snacks. We also catered in Buca di Beppo and my sister's husband was so nice and drove the food over from 40 mins away! The kids were with him, and Dylan was sad he couldn't stay to play but it was ok - we'll play tomorrow. :) Duke's mom also baked me some zucchini chocolate bread and it was really delicious! She got the recipe from her cousin in Michigan (the first time I ate the yummy goodness) and it really turned out great. Everyone was raving about it.

We all hung out for a while, then it was time for games. Sue made this poster board with labels for us to go through old wives tales of how to tell if you're having a boy or girl. There were lots of weird random notions in there which I didn't fit. They are wives tales, after all. Haha. We then did Baby Jeopardy where she went through various tidbits about babies and then shared some interesting facts about names now vs. when we were growing up. Meg was pretty funny since she said this was the smartest baby shower she'd ever been to. Usually it's about melted chocolate bars in diapers and guessing what kind of candy it was, but we were playing trivia. Haha.

We did do a non-intellectual game where everyone cut a ribbon to guess how big the circumference of my belly was. Most people guessed way too big but my junior high friend was extremely close. :) Everyone kept apologizing they thought I was so big but I didn't care - I think I'd be wrong if I played the game myself. Ha.

After games, I opened gifts and got lots of awesome stuff. I'm so thankful for all the friends I have and their generosity.

One by one, people had to go on their way. Duke's family drove 4 hours to come here and another 4 hours back to Vegas all in the same day. Hopefully they had fun and were happy they were a part of the shower. Crazy!! Sharon, Sue, and my sister hung out for a bit longer before cleaning up. It was a long day but it went by so fast. It was great to catch up with everyone, and I'm glad everyone got along so well even though they don't know each other that well. I continue to just feel blessed to be around such great people.