Baby Shower!

Last Thursday I had my baby shower!  It was hosted by my sister Jessica, my mother-in-law, my sister-in-law, and one of my friends from church, and it was at Jeff's parents' house.

Jessica designed the invitations, which were really cute.  Obviously the real thing had last names and an address, so it looked better, but here is the Internet-safe version

I really worried that nobody would come since Jeff is my main friend and he wasn't even invited.  Actually, I think there were 20-25 ladies that came.  It felt great to know that so many other people cared enough to come celebrate with me.  And, a few other people have brought gifts to our house because they were unable to attend the shower.  That's really kind.

I think the decorations were a collaborative effort; there were balloons, flowers, and streamers.  Jessica made a cute banner to match the invitations...with our baby's name on it!  (More about that later.)

Since the shower was held in the evening, they served a light dinner: soups (my MIL asked for some of my favorite recipes), fruit and vegetable trays, and warm homemade bread.  (I don't have any really good pictures of this, or of everyone eating, or even when everyone was there, because I just snapped a couple photos on my phone before guests arrived and finally thought to pull out my camera at the end.  Whoops!)

For dessert, we had cake balls!  When my hosts were planning the shower, they asked what requests I had (for the theme, or foods, or anything) and I requested cake balls--if they weren't too much work.  Jessica said they take some time, but she didn't mind doing them.  So, she did.  They were perfect.  She made pink (strawberry), brown (chocolate), and white (lemon) cake balls, and they were really pretty, and really delicious.

After that, I started opening gifts.  Partway through opening gifts, the guests started playing the "dirty diaper game."  The way that worked was, there were a bunch of diapers that were all numbered.  Inside each diaper, a candy bar was melted, and the guests had to try to identify the different candy bars--no tasting allowed.  It was pretty funny to watch.  All of the guests were smelling "dirty" diapers.  A few of the guests got really into it and tried to compare the contents of different diapers, and discussed them. 

I finished opening gifts.  We got a lot of great stuff!  I kind of wished our baby were already born so that she could have enjoyed the shower too.  I felt like I had snuck into a 5 year old's birthday party and opened all of the presents without him.  (Although, it will probably be a while before she is interested in receiving presents.)  That's okay.  And then we went over the results of the diaper game.  The guests were all asked to write little notes for me with parenting advice.  After that, everyone went home. 

I felt very pleased for the next couple days that I have so many people that care about me and our baby.  Now, I am determined to do a better job of writing thank you cards than I did when I got married.  (In case you're wondering, I've made good progress so far.)