Trip to NC! (Baby Shower)

Well, you've waited long enough - here's the final chapter to our trip out to NC this summer! My mom and some friends from church were kind enough to throw me a great big baby shower. It was great not only for the generous gifts that were given, but also so I could catch up with friends from NC that I hadn't seen in a year or more! While the girls got together and ate desserts and talked, the guys (my dad, brother, and husband) escaped the house and grabbed some food. :)

The colors/theme of the shower was based around these cute plates that we found at the party shop:
Earlier in the day, my mom and I worked hard on a couple of the desserts, setting up the displays, and, most importantly, creating tissue paper "poof balls" to hang from the ceiling in the colors of the theme. We were running out of time, so luckily T and Mike were kind enough to chip in and help fluff the poof balls (somewhat to their dismay, however, considering that was a very "un-manly" thing to do, haha!):
The gift table in the kitchen displayed collages of both T and I as babies, perhaps to give us all an idea of what our little man might turn out like. T was a pretty cute baby, so I wouldn't mind at all if ours looks just like him :)

Here is the dessert table in the dining room. Everyone brought such DELICIOUS desserts! A couple of my favorites were the fruit trifle and the milk dud cupcakes (which we adorned with tiny little blue pacifiers). Yummy! Too bad I didn't get a close-up!
And we also had a "keepsake" display table next to the gift table where we showed off my blessing dress as well as T's cute little blessing outfit. We also both had framed cross-stitched announcements of our birth that our moms made for us a long time ago, so we showed those off too! It turned out to be a really cute idea (and I'm totally taking credit for it!):
I felt so loved as I had probably 40 to 50 friends show up for my shower. Luckily there was plenty of dessert to go around! Here's a little collage to show just a portion of the guests who were there:

Since it was a pretty big shower, we did it more "open house" style, but still had some fun activities for the guests to do while they were there (other than eat sweets and talk!). One such activity involved 8 containers of different flavored baby foods. Guests were invited to write down on the provided paper what flavors they thought each one was. Some were even mixed flavors (like peas & carrots) to make it more challenging. And yes, some guests DID taste the baby food:
Another fun activity that we put together was we bought a pack of newborn size diapers and provided markers so that everyone could write notes on the diapers. It'll be really fun to use these diapers as my first set - especially because I'll have fun little notes to help keep me cheery and to remind me how fun changing diapers really is (ha!):
It was a really fun night and I was so glad that I had so many of my friends from high school (and even as far back as elementary school!) attend. Here I am with 4 of my friends from Wakefield High (still looking good, ladies!):

The boys got back near the end of the shower and actually spent a little bit of time socializing and saying hello. Although they did remark later that it was a bit crazy - like estrogen overload! Haha!

The shower was on the last Tuesday night that we were in town. It was the day I turned 27 weeks :) Since we were leaving on a plane the next night, we had to figure out a good way to pack up all of the baby "loot" that I received. Fortunately my dad had a box big enough to fit everything and we just put it on the plane as a second carry-on! Considering it probably weighed 40lbs, that was probably a lot cheaper than shipping it all across the country, even if Continental charges $35 for your second bag ;)

We were sad to leave NC, but after 2 weeks we were also glad to return to our little apartment home. It was nice to be back (except for the whole going back to work thing!). Anyway, I must remember to take pictures of our new place (when it's clean) so I can show it off on the blog! That will come soon, promise!