Our Baby Shower

We have a very dear group of friends from our housegroup that we were a part of for the past few years. Most Thursday nights, we met with this group and talked about as many aspects of marriage as you can talk about, life, shared hurts and joys with one another, ate lots of yummy snacks (mostly desserts:) and more!

Last night, this group of friends who has been like our family here in Chicago, threw us a couple's baby shower. It was seriously, the most amazing baby shower I have ever had or been to! Neither Ben and I know how to express to these wonderful, kind, selfless friends how very much it meant to us and how honored and blessed we felt to celebrate our baby's coming with them.

There were fresh flowers everywhere, which, as you can see, they shared for everyone to take home! There were fresh garlands of baby's breath strung from the doorways and the fireplace, made by the hostess Erin. A lot of time and love was put into making them.

And they so very generously gave gifts to our little Gift! Our friend, D, handmade these items above with such love and perfection, that we were so overwhelmed! I have never seen such beautiful baby gifts in my life! These are things I will treasure forever and pass down to her children....maybe:)

We also recieved things we really needed, as the first two rapscallions wore out or stained a lot of stuff! We got onsies, pants, dresses, socks, a knitted blanket and lots of little items used in a game.

Speaking of games: the most fun baby shower games I've ever seen! Joy, who hosted the game playing, did a price is right game where she had baby items up for bid and we had to guess the right prices. Ben and another friend ended up in the showcase showdown at the end! Ben lost because he underbid by $4 or so and the other, a new mom, won by being only 12 cents away from the right price!;) There was also a boys/girls relay where we did things like diapering a melon blindfolded, feeding the next person baby food pears (blindfolded!), matching up baby socks (You guess it...blindfolded), drinking water from a baby's bottle, searching for outlet covers in a bucket of beans and passing a pacifier from skewer stick to skewer stick.

The guys won. But only because they cheated. That's my story and I'm sticking to it!!

And the food, most of which was prepared by Ben and Emily, was SOOO good! There was pasta salad (which Z said he wasn't going to eat and then devoured:), bean salad, panini sandwhiches, frozen fruit cups, brownies and these other devlish cookie things. And a beautiful cake served at the end, by crafty D!

The time and the love put into this shower made it one of the most memorable parties ever and is something that we will treasure. We can't wait to share with Baby Girl how very much she is loved and blessed already!