Baby Shower #1

And so the baby food tasting, present opening, cake cutting, mingling begins. Yes, on Saturday, the first of our baby showers took place and it was great fun. Lindsay arrived on Friday afternoon with a huge surprise-- her co-host for the shower, my sister Sue. I haven't seen Sue since my wedding about a year and a half ago and I definitely was not expecting her to show up. Apparently, when I saw her in the car, my jaw dropped.

From that first moment when I saw them drive up, the good times began for the weekend. We spent Friday night shopping for necessary supplies and Saturday morning preparing with decorations and of course, Sue pulling out her Cooking Lite cookbooks and her full menu, from baked brie to buffalo chicken tenders to stuffed mushrooms and tomatoes. Needless to say, no one went hungry at the shower.

Speaking of eating, I got my first taste of baby food at the party. One of the games that Linds had planned involved the guests tasting various types of yellowish- orangish colored baby food. I felt confident to start with. I stuck my finger in the first one and tasted it... "Pumpkin", I thought. "This is definitely pumpkin." I wrote it down and moved on. The second one was easy as well and then I got to the third. "But wait," my brain told me, "this one tastes like pumpkin." And so it turned out that the one right after that also tasted like pumpkin. Come to find out from Jess, who kindly offered a hint, that there was no pumpkin baby food at all! Yikes! Now what? I changed the pumpkin to all the things that taste like pumpkin-- squash, sweet potatoes... and ended up getting a bunch right.

Post games began the opening of the gifts. When I was at Jess' shower last summer, I wondered why she was so self-concious about opening her gifts. But now I know. I must have been opening gifts for about an hour and I found that there is a skill to opening these things. You have to move quickly so that no one gets bored, while also making sure that every guest realizes how great their gift is, while also takihg the true time to appreciate what you have been given. It is hard to describe how happy I was with all the things I received. All of the clothing that we got, and there was quite a pile of it, was cute. We got a number of large items, and I even got 4 bottle basket cleaners for the dishwasher.

In the end, the shower was a fantastic time. I got to bring together a large number of people that I really don't see very often, played a few games, and even got the chance to talk to most of them. At times it felt like my wedding reception-- so many people, so little time to have a conversation with them. But just to spend any time with them was worth it. I must send out a thank you to everyone who shared their Saturday with me, and especially a thank you to Lindsay for putting it all together!!!!! And to Sue, for making enough food for Glenn and I to figure out 101 new recipes with buffalo chicken.

For more pictures of the shower, check out: http://www1.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=186694353/a=9228246_9228246/t_=9228246