Baby Shower #1!
Hi Everyone! Happy Friday!
Thought I'd post a few pictures and stories from my baby shower last weekend! :)
First of all, there was snow, and lots of it. We live on the Western edge of Colorado and were driving over to Denver (4 hours away) on Friday. Were a little worried about the passes, but they were no big deal. But Denver itself had this crazy storm which essentially shut the city down.
We (my husband and I, my brother, my parents, my best friend and her husband who had flown in from Seattle) spent Friday night holed up at my brother's...he lives about an hour outside of Denver up in the mountains in the house where we both grew up. It was fun to be snowed in!
Oh and two super-cool things happened on Friday: First, when I first saw my BFF, she and I were wearing the exact same sweater, which for some reason made me so happy. And second, my parents had an envelope for me, which contained a TOTALLY unexpected inheritance from my grandmother, who died last summer. What a huge surprise. We're looking at it as a gift for our babies, as we're going to place the money in their college funds.
Here are the icicles at my brother's Saturday morning:
Saturday started with light snow, but it stopped and the sun came out and the main roads all got plowed and it all worked out fine.
The shower was kind of a co-ed happy hour thing at my friend Betsy's Denver home. I know Betsy from San Francisco...we worked together at the ad agency and have worked together on and off in freelance capacities ever since. She's also a very dear friend and has been with me through a lot of this fertility stuff--from going with me to my initial diagnostic appointments, to even putting me up at her house and taking care of me while on bed rest for one of my cycles when my husband couldn't be with me.
She went all out with jungle-themed shower decorations...the whole house was so lovely and festive...unbelievably cute:
Here's me with my fabulous husband right before things got going:
And with my best friend Danielle (who co-hosted the shower with Betsy), and her husband Jason:
I know Jason and Danielle from Santa Barbara...Jason was in a punk band and best friends with my brother Luke, the one who died. After that happened, they (Jason and Danielle) moved in with me for a few months, and essentially took care of me...I was a total mess...I don't know what I would have done without them...
So many people came to our shower...between 30 and 40, with some of my friends even coming from out of town. It was so incredible to see everyone! And so nice to be celebrating something so good and happy. Some of my friends, when we did the "When was the last time we saw each other?" thing, the answer was my brother's funeral...my friends mean so much to me and this shower was so important to me because for a long time I felt like all there ever was around me was sadness...so wonderful to have something happy to celebrate. That's my dad in the middle:
Some interesting things were said to me at the shower. So many people told me I looked great pregnant, and while I'm sure it's mandatory to say that to the mother-to-be at a baby shower, it still made me feel really good, as I just feel so huge and frumpy these days. But apparently I'm not nearly as big as people expected, and am "all belly."
And on a different subject, one of my friends from college told me she always thought I'd be the first of everyone in our group to have children, she always saw me as a mother, said I was so nurturing and loving to everyone around me. Several people I know from my late teens/early 20s have made that same sort of comment, and it's interesting, because I SO wanted to get married and have children young...it just didn't work out that way for a number of reasons and there's no way to go back and change it....so just have to accept it, which is something I'm still working on...
Betsy's husband August made the most fabulous dinner ever (I wasn't even expecting a dinner...like I said, they went all out)...beef tenderloin and salad, cupcakes for dessert...so yummy. Here's the buffet table before all the food came out:
And the gifts...goodness...we got sooooooo many beautiful things; everyone was so incredibly generous. Here's my husband with teddy bears we received, demonstrating how he's going to hold both babies at once. Awww....
And here's Betsy (in black) at the end of the night, and our friend Habeeba who we also used to work with in San Francisco (and continue to work with now...it's so nice to work with your friends). Habeeba came out from Oregon and helped Betsy tons:
So really an incredible party and weekend all around. I feel so, so lucky to have such amazing people in my life.
Hope everyone has a great weekend! Thanks for spending some time here this week. :)
XOXO
Here a link to my post about Baby Shower #2 for anyone who's interested...
Seattle, Day 11
This is Lucy. Love, love, love this dog. Isn't she the cutest thing ever?
Slept in. Lounged with our friends' puppies, Lucy and Gibson. Got a little work done. Found a beautiful purple ruffly silk dress for the wedding I'm attending next week (and how fun to get to shop with my fabulously stylish friend!) Had Mexican food and margaritas at Mama's...yum. Viewed another epic slide show back at our friends' house (yesterday was our most recent vacation and their recent trip to Europe, today the vacation/wedding trip of mutual friends of ours).
We are having the best time...don't want it to end...
XO