Baby Shower in Cary

What an absolutely wonderful weekend! The baby shower was held this past weekend and I'm going to do my best to describe everything that was there. I gave my camera to my cousin Suzanne to capture different moments during the shower, and I'll try to post some of the pictures here shortly as well.

The baby shower was so much more than I ever could have imagined, and Carolyn, Lindsay and Sarah really went out of their way to make this the most perfect event. The shower was held at Biaggi's restaurant in Cary, which is the same place Patrick and I had our rehearsal dinner before our wedding four years ago. The room was beautiful and the girls decorated it with flowers and balloons. Lindsay made the party favors which were chocolate covered pretzel sticks and she could really start a side business selling them because everybody wanted to know where she got them. We were treated to Biaggi's always exceptional food and then the cake came from Blue Moon Bakery. It was so cute - it matched our nursery theme with an elephant on top and the colors matched exactly as well.

It was really nice to have a shower full of close family and friends. In attendance were my sister Carolyn, my mom, my mother-in-law Chris, my sister-in-law Stacy, my Aunt Susie, my cousin Suzanne, my big sister from the sorority Sarah, my grandbig sister from the sorority Tracey, my good friend from college Lindsay, my good friend from college Meredith, my former co-worker and friend Susan, my mom's best friend Jennie, my mom's oldest friend Nancy and me. We had a great time!

When we sat down the hostesses passed around a bottle full of M&Ms and we had to guess how many were actually in the bottle. I was feeling pretty confident about my guess, until the winner was announced...Susan guessed 310 and there were actually 305! She works a lot of trade shows and evidently that experience has paid off because she was so close to the actual number. Sarah then very casually (ha!) picked up a basket full of baby goodies that had been sitting next to the cake on the cake table and walked around the table where we were all seated with it in her arms. (She was super subtle - just kidding!) We then all had a piece of paper on which we had to jot down as many items from the basket as we could remember. Susan's trade show experience came in handy yet again because she won that game as well. I think Tracey was a close second in that game.

After we ate an amazing lunch, it was time for presents. All I can say is wow - everybody was so generous and I cannot believe all the things that were given to our little guy. He has a room full of goodies already, and he's not even here yet! I'll post pictures of some of the gifts when I post the pictures separately, but it was truly overwhelming. While I was opening gifts, every guest was given a bingo card with various baby items listed and if I opened a gift with the item they could mark the appropriate square. Stacy came up as the big winner in that game. After games it was time for cake (yummy - it was so good!) and then it was time to try to load all the gifts up into my car. Believe it or not, I was able to get everything home to Charlotte but seeing through my back window was a challenge throughout the drive.

It was so nice to be able to celebrate Ethan with this wonderful group and it meant so much to be able to spend such a wonderful afternoon together. It makes it seem that much more real that Ethan really is going to be here before I know it. Yikes!!