showered

last weekend was our baby shower and it was amazing. somehow i forget how generous our families can be. the shower was held at horan's, adam's brother's bar, and they gave us the gift of delicious food and drink and wonderful service. there were about 40 of us there, so our event was no small feat. it still throws me off a little, but there were 3 tables of adam's family to my one, with 4 friends sitting with me and adam. there was talk of us inviting more of our friends to this event, but i'm glad we didn't. it would have been way too many people at once, too crowded in the room and no time to appreciate everyone who came out.

like i said, the food was delicious: chicken, rice, peas, salad. and for dessert, adam's mom out did herself by getting us all eli's cheesecake. no funky cake for us! it still amuses people to hear that i don't like cake, but it's true. unless me or my mom makes it (or it's carrot cake from costco) i really won't like it. what can i say? but cheesecake is always top on my list, especially if it's eli's. i got to have a piece of the turtle flavor and it was perfect.



adam and i opened gifts after the food and what a whirlwind that was! we had 2 to 3 helpers at any given point: little girl relatives all too eager to help us unwrap all the many surprises our family had in store for us. we found a good (though fast paced) rhythm when the girls would find the card first, then dig in on unwrapping. sarah performed the amazing feat of keeping up with it all in keeping notes for thank you's. after it all i was flushed and practically sweating and not all that sure what we received. adam said a few words and with a few hugs good by, the room cleared out like a school cafeteria after lunch. i was glad i got some visiting in while i did when i arrived, because no one stuck around after adam gave his thanks.

adam somehow packed most everything into the jeep and we headed home (when we got back home, i jokingly asked adam if it would have been too presumptuous to just take the van, hee hee). it was very surreal to just stand around while everyone else packed up the car, because if i so much as lifted anything larger than my purse, everyone would have been on my case about lifting in my condition. . . . blah blah blah. i'm just not used to not being helpful! since adam's detroit family was in town, we offered to have everyone over to visit and share our new house with them (they hadn't seen much of it yet. adam (somehow, again!) got all the gifts into the house and crammed them into the baby's room. it was a huge mound of stuff and very intimidating. we did some quick picking up, ran to the store for some snacks and had a wonderful evening visiting with family. wonderful, with the exception of my social faux pax of scolding grandma for feeding the dog. i'll admit i was very distracted keeping an eye on the dog and went straight from saying "no" to gibson for attempting to steal a chip out of her hand, to attempting to tell grandma "no" to not give him the chip. sure, i didn't very well expect her to eat it after being licked by gibson, but i didn't want her to reward him by giving it to him. unfortunately, according to adam, i didn't make the vocal transition between scolding gibson and reminding grandma not to feed the dog people food. i made an quick, awkward apology, but didn't know what to do with myself at that point. i'm still having a hard time having gibson hang out with people who are clearly not dog people: squirming at his approach and asking to be pet, jumping when his little wet nose touches their hand, awkwardly withdrawing themselves from him to attempt to keep some distance. it gets old calling him over to me every 3 minutes, especially when it doesn't seem to bother adam (maybe it bothers me too much?).

sunday was a special treat too. my mom's siblings and dad's local family all went over to rick's for dinner. with all the family gathered, rick and lisa shared their special news that lisa was 3 months pregnant and due in april! our little one would have a fresh new cousin to hang out with! of course, i had the privilege of finding out sooner, but it's still exciting to share the news with family. i'm really looking forward to our kids hanging out together, and to have this opportunity to grow closer to my brother and his wife, as we both go through this interesting experience of motherhood together. all in all it was fun to visit with family and catch up, since the shower went way too fast to do anything like that.



on tuesday, adam and i braved the mound o' gifts to try and make some sense of it all. i'm happy to say we were able to get a better appreciation for the gifts we received, sorted through items that needed to be returned (like the collection of thermometers and hooded towels and blankets), and organized what was staying into some semblance of use-ability. now all we have to do is find a new home for the full-sized bed in the room, remove the remaining boxes and start organizing the room for the baby.

now all we have to do is get those thank you cards out there!