Baby Shower!!!

So, as promised, I said I would tell everyone all about my baby shower and post pictures. Here we go...

My mom and I came up with all of the ideas and each contibuted to making it all happen. So, to start with, I originally wanted to have a "Frogs, Snails, and Puppy Dog Tails" theme (as in what little boys are made of). However, after I wrote my poem about having a baby boy, my mom suggested that we do the centerpieces to represent all things boys. This expanded the theme to be a celebration of all of the things that make up boys, specifically my little gift from God.

Wanting to stray from the very traditional, cutesy baby showers, I opted to have the baby shower outside in my aunt's backyard. She has a beautiful yard with a nice covered deck. I even researched the previous 7 years in an almanac and chose the day that was the most likely to have the best weather. And, then, to top it off, I wanted to have the whole thing be a big BBQ. This party was going to consist of my friends, my family members, people from church, my coworkers (past and present), and possibly some of Jesse's family. So, I was expecting about 40 people to show up.

Now, originally the weather was forcasted to be about 78 degrees and sunny, the hottest day of the week, in fact. But as the day got closer and closer, the weather forecast got worse and worse, dropping to 73 degrees, then 68, 65 and partly cloudy, 63 with showers. Moving the baby shower inside was always an option, but it would involve removing all of my aunt's furniture, and the atmosphere I wanted to create with the backyard BBQ would be completely missing! So, we prayed, and prayed and prayed. By Saturday morning, the forecast was predicted to be back up to 65 with only a 20% chance of precipitation. We figured this was good enough. So, we made the executive decision to have the party outside as planned.

We spent the previous night and Saturday morning putting all of the finishing touches together, and then people started to show up just about 5:00. I had asked my cousin Sam to stay and BBQ for us (when often guys don't attend), so two of my other male cousins stayed as well. Aside from cooking the food, they stayed away from the party and entertained the little kids. In the end, though, if you count them (and the kids) with everyone else, I'd say there were roughly 50 people. It was a great turnout. Even better, we had plenty of party favors and seats and food- everything!

As everyone got seated, I announced that I would be doing most of the emcee'ing since my mom is much shyer than I am and since I was the only one who knew everyone there. We had a door prize game arranged for everyone to put their names into a pail, and the names would be drawn randomly throughout the baby shower. If your name was drawn, you could either grab a gift off of the table (the designated gifts, of course) or steal someone else's. And, if your gift got stolen, then you grabbed another one off of the table. These gifts were left unopened until all of the prizes were gone. At this point, everyone got to see what they were fighting over. At the same time, we had a baby bottle filled with M&M's. Each person was to write their name and their guess of how many M&M's were in the bottle and place their answers in a separate pail.

I had everyone write down their names and guesses and then grab their food to eat, giving them time to chow down. When it looked like most people were finished, we began the next game. In this game, you wrap a present over and over and over again with wrapping paper. You start with one of the guests and allow them to unwrap the first layer of paper. If there is just another layer of paper, they pass the gift to the person next to them who unwraps another layer. Every couple of layers, you write a clue that gives the unwrapper directions on where to pass the gift next. This causes the gift to randomly jump to another guest anywhere in the room. In the end, the person who unwraps the very last layer and reveals the gift gets to keep it. This was the 2nd time I'd played this variation of the game, but it seems to be one that everyone enjoys a lot. And, I made the clues to be things that were personal to my own experience and shower.

The final game I had was a classic Bingo game. I happen to love Bingo and just made my own cards with pictures that I had drawn.

When the games were finished and all of the prizes were given away, it just barely started to sprinkle. A few of the guests were cold at this point anyways, so we decided to move the party inside to open presents. I didn't use my own camera very much, so I don't yet have a picture of the crowd inside, but I know my cousin got one. Let me tell you, it was quite a sight to sit surrounded by so many presents and people! I was happy with most of my gifts. I got a lot of really practical things that I know are going to be SUPER handy, especially the things I don't particularly want to buy for myself.

We finished up the party with the dirt cake my mom had made and then people started to head out. I was very happy with the turn-out, though. Everyone said they had a great time, and I got some great presents. So, no complaints from me.

Pictures in next post...