Baby Shower!

My good friends Susan and Michael are in the process of adopting a baby! I'm wildly excited about this! Adoption has always been something special to me and something that I hope to be able to do one day and Susan and Mike are the 1st folks I have known personally to go through the process! You can follow their progress also at Bramble River Baby

They started the process over the summer and on January 20th they got matched with a birthmom! The baby is due April 13, so preparations began in earnest! Susan sister, Judy, myself and two other friends, Elizabeth and Jacalyn began working on plans for the baby shower.

Yesterday was the big day and I must say that the 4 of us can throw a pretty good party (even more amazing is that we never met face to face to plan, all plans were taken care of via e-mail and some twittering and 1 "I'm-in-Babies-R-Us-help-me-not-buy-everything!" phone call)

Since the shower was planned for 3:00 in the afternoon we decided to have an "afternoon tea" party which turned out to be a perfect theme because yesterday was a cold dreary rainy March day and hot tea was lovely!

We'd all seen these "diaper cakes" and most are made with disposable diapers, however Susan is planning on using cloth diapers so rather than buy one, Jacayln volunteered to make one! It was pretty awesome! She included not only cloth diapers but also onsies, socks, a bottle, nipples, a teether, some pacifiers and other "baby bling" and I even got a hat to go on top so the cake can "clothe baby Jack from head to toe!" Jacayln had also gotten a coupon for formula at Walgreens and added that to the cake at the last minute! All your baby needs in one tasteful centerpiece! :-)

The finished cake right before it was placed on the table as the centerpiece!

Judy (Susan's sister) and Chris (one of Susan's co-workers) - enjoying some tea and eyeing the Wegmans pastries! Chris is pinning on a diaper pin for our "Baby Taboo" game. Throughout the shower anyone who said the word "baby" had to give up a pin to the 1st person who called them out on it - the person who had the most pins at the end won!

The whole spread! Judy made wonderful chicken salad (they are in the lower right hand corner!) - I need to get her recipe! Elizabeth made yummy homemade scones to go with the tea! The pregnant belly in the top left corner is Elizabeth, she is due in mid-May and is also having a boy.

And here's the Guest of Honor herself! All decked out with a tiara and giant button! Every mom-to-be needs a tiara! I was attempting to get Susan and the diaper cake in the pic - all I got was the top!

Jacalyn explaining the Baby Taboo game to Sara and Ciecly - 2 of Susan's book club pals.

Hanging out, getting to know each other - we all came from different parts of Susan's life and few of us had met each other.

The main event....PRESENTS for Little Jack!

Judy (a new mom herself and Susan's only sister) sharing some sisterly advice, gems such as "if you have a problem call my sister, she knows how to handle babies and things!" LOL!

Jacalyn explaining another game we played - thaw the frozen baby. We'd bought little plastic babies and then froze them into ice cubes, it person to melt their ice cube and get the baby out wins! This is where hot tea came in handy - Judy easily crushed us all by wrapping a hot tea bag around her ice cube and freeing the baby within minutes!

The other game we played was gift bingo. Before Susan began opening the gifts we all had a blank bingo board and we filled in each square with something that we thought Susan would receive and as she opened her gifts we crossed off what she got and the 1st person to get four in a row won!

For prizes we had gifts for Susan! Every time someone won a game they selected a gift from the basket and it had a note attached that they signed and then gave the gift to Susan - they were all toys for the baby. At the end, since all the prizes were won Susan got the "Grand Prize" - a Target gift card, that she can use to buy formula or other baby needs.

Enjoying getting to know each other and sharing motherly advice! Joe crashed the party, um I mean surprise Susan by showing up! Joe is fun to have around and one of Susan's lifelong friends so he was more than welcome to come!

Susan with the "Hello Kitty Rectal Thermometer" - a gift from none other than Joe.

Susan enjoying her gifts! This zebra goes well with a blanket that has a rainbow zebra on it that she received from another friend - Susan remarked that this zebra was a "serious zebra"!

Jacalyn showing off all the diaper pins used in the game, all of which were given to Susan to put to good use.

Susan got 2 hand-crocheted blankets - one from me (see previous blog entry for pics) and one from her sister! Judy even learned a new crochet stitch, just for Baby Jack! Like me, Judy also finished this about 11:30 yesterday morning! Nothing like the last minute huh?

It was a lovely afternoon and everyone enjoyed themselves! Now on to the main event...Little Jack's arrival! :-)