The Best Baby Shower Ever

This past Sunday, my three closest friends - Amy, Kelly, and Shelly - threw Baby Reagin and I an amazing baby shower. If you had asked me back in July what I thought my shower would be like, I would've never been able to come up with something this great. Every single one of them worked very hard down to the smallest detail to make sure this day was really special for me, and it was.

Although I didn't post a picture of it, Kelly handmade all the invites. She cut multiple pieces (including ribbon) for each individual invite. And I must've had her mail at least 40 - so I assure you that it took her quite a while to finish them all. She should be very proud of her work.

Kelly was also nice enough to record a bunch of the shower with our brand new video camera.

One of the areas Shelly took care of was the party games. She was lovely enough to include a BINGO game that occurred during the present portion of the shower. This was good because it gave the guests something else to do besides just watch me open present after present (which I'm sure is not all that exciting). She even went to her catch-all store to purchase prizes for the winners.

There was also a special area set up where guests could write advice for the mom-to-be called "In a Pickle" (the shower's theme was Pickles and Ice Cream).

Amy held the role of party caterer, which is actually what she does in her professional life anyways. I've always known that she is creative and crafty, but she really outdid herself. As far as I understand, the three ladies agreed on an Ice Cream Sundae Bar immediately in the planning process (you all know how much I love ice cream right now...). She borrowed dishes and linens from her work, so the pink and green theme really took off here. The food was excellent - I have friends who are still talking about her chicken salad (and I didn't even get to try it because everyone ate it up so fast!). There was a tasty punch (that I just finished the last cup of today) and yummy Mimosas!

As you can see by the photo of me standing at the sundae bar, Amy also made us a diaper cake, which Ed was just telling me how neat it was tonight before I sat down to write this entry.

What the girls did for the Baby and I... I just can't put into words how special it was to me. There were pieces of each of them in every part of the shower. I am so lucky to have friends like them. We are so set for this baby girl to arrive now. Yes, we still need to get some essentials, but we wouldn't be nearly as comfortable as we are right now if it weren't for Kelly, Amy, and Shelly's hard work this past month and a half.

THANK YOU SO MUCH, LADIES!

P.S. Don't you just love this photo of Kelly and I? I still can't believe our babies are due within a week of each other!

More Photos from the Baby Shower

The amazing hostesses (from left: Shelly, Kelly, and Amy) with the grateful pregnant lady.

I've been friends with Jennifer and her Mom, Vicki, since 1995. I don't get to see Jen enough, but at least she's moved from Seattle to San Antonio - getting closer...

Some of my co-workers were nice enough to make the drive out to our house. And then our neighbor brought her beautiful baby girl over as well. She and Baby Reagin will only be 5 and a half months apart in age, and will be the best of buddies!


Nicole and I have been friends since high school as well. She came in from New Orleans to celebrate with us. Ed says this is a big deal because that means she left Elliott alone in LA and they're still rebuilding from the last natural disaster!

Mom and I didn't take a picture during the shower, but we managed to get one in before the end of the night.

The Nursery

Okay, so last week was so full that I have to make two blog entries just to cover it. I know that I said I'd post these pics as soon as the room was finished, but we took so much time completing it that we decided to debut it at the shower first and then blog about it (the shower blog entry will come tomorrow or the next day).

The weekend before last was completely devoted to 'nursery work.' I believe I filled you in on those shenanigans in the last blog entry. To update you sufficiently though, I should add that from start to finish, painting the nursery took four days (not full days - just what we could devote to it, since it was encroaching on the weeknights). Every time we tore off tape, we ended up putting more back up and re-touching almost the entire room (twice maybe). We went to bed every night last week between midnight and 2am. It was a rough week to say the least. Might I add again though that we would not have been able to do it without Amy's 6 hours of help on Sunday.

On top of painting, we also had to get the rest of the house ready for my baby shower on Sunday. With Mom and Jim coming into town and staying at our house (not to mention the sheer number of guests attending the shower who had never even seen our house), we had a lot of work cut out for us. As if being 7 and a half months pregnant isn't hard enough on the emotional stability, you should see what 7 non-stop days does to this woman right now (not to mention her husband...)! I can't believe we actually pulled it off. In this case, it was all Ed. I mean, I helped, but he really did the grunt of almost all of the work. And he was definitely suffering, too.

We managed to get the house parent-ready (and actually dig the guest bedroom out from under the rubble of two combined rooms) by the time Mom and Jim drove in on Friday, then we finished up the last remaining items on Saturday night. During the day on Saturday, Ed and I picked up the crib!!! We brought it home, made a trip to Babies R Us to address some last minute registry questions as well as for Mom to purchase our shower gift, and then came back to the house, where Ed promptly built the crib so it could be ready by shower-time.

Another issue this weekend was "What is Katie going to wear to the shower?" It was not easy. It took three trips, three shirt purchases, and two shoe purchases... only to end up with me wearing one of Kelly's borrowed shirts (Thank You, Kelly!). We were very rushed trying to fit in the last shopping trip on Sunday morning before the shower and I hadn't eaten yet, so it was touch and go for a bit there.

But everything came together, from the nursery to the shower. It was all better than I had ever even imagined. And I will tell you all about the shower in the next entry. For now though, enjoy these photos of our beautiful nursery for Baby Girl Reagin:

7 and a Half Months Pregnant!

Does that sound crazy to anyone else? I can't believe so much time has already passed. We only have 2 and a half months left before Baby Reagin comes...

We are not ready!

That's why every waking moment is officially now going towards getting ready. This week, I actually woke up in the middle of the night thinking about the nursery. Woke up thinking about it - not woke up and then began thinking about it... but was in mid-thought about the unfinished nursery when I realized that I was awake!

So that's what this weekend was devoted to (for my sleep and sanity, which are directly related lately). Since three very good friends of mine - Amy, Kelly, and Shelly - are throwing a baby shower for me next weekend at our house, I really wanted to have something ready in the nursery. I'm still waiting for our crib to come in (it may actually arrive this week!), but I at least wanted to get paint on the walls in time for the shower.

That meant that we actually had to have an empty room in which to put paint on the walls. So Friday night was all about emptying out our giant, heavy desk in order to make it mobile. Saturday was supposed to be about moving the remainder of the old office into our guest bedroom, but one little stop threw off the entire day. We decided to take a little joyride into Woodstock (a lovely 40 minutes away) to check out a chest of drawers that might 'match' our antique, repainted dresser. After getting there, we realized that we didn't have our camera with us, which had pictures of the existing dresser so we could compare the two. Basically, we had to wing it. We decided to get it and went to load it into the ever-reliable Jetta... too big.

So, we had to drive out to Tucker (at least 35 miles away) to temporarily trade cars with Ed's Dad (thank you so much for doing that for us, Tom!), and then drive back to Woodstock to get the dresser. Then, we drove back home, unloaded the car, and promptly got back into it to drive to Ed's Dad's house in Lilburn (50 minutes away). It was after 10pm by the time we got home because we still had to stop at Home Depot to buy paint. And we closed it down! Then we knew that we're really embarking on a new phase in life - no kid ever closes down a home improvement store!

So 10:30 is when we started moving the rooms. After I crashed on the couch at 2am, Ed kept working until 4, so we could be ready to paint today. We got started around noon and we're still not done. It turns out, we picked a really difficult design feature to add to our walls (imagine that!). Thankfully, Amy (one of the three throwing our shower next weekend) came to our rescue today and helped us paint. (We hope she's still willing to be our friend after these two weekends!)

We can't wait to debut the nursery now! Once we're done with all this ridiculous painting, we'll post a picture or two right away. Sorry about the lack of pictures this time, but our electronics aren't hooked up yet from the room change, so we'll have to post some later. By the way, I've officially embarked on the 'doctor's visits every two weeks' portion of the pregnancy - yet another reason why I feel that the end is coming really fast! We signed up for one of our three childbirth education classes tonight, too. Hopefully, we'll be signed up for the other two by the end of this week.

Should have lots more to add as this week progresses, so I hope to post again at least once or twice within the next 7 or 8 days.

Have a great week!