Jessica's Baby Shower

My baby sister is having a baby.  That, and the fact I'm up before the sun, blogging, because I can't sleep longer than 6 hours makes me feel 76, not 36.  (Had to use a calculator to figure out my age too.  I can never remember.) Is that a storm coming?  My knees hurt.

Anyway, I have a super gorgeous 10-years-younger-than-me, sister, who is having her first baby.  We're so excited it will be a baby boy, since those are pretty rare in our family.  Naturally, the rest of the sisters threw her a baby shower.  I felt incredibly lucky that I was able to travel to Salt Lake for the event and be there to see her big belly, watch her open her presents, and help her put it all away in her new, darling, nursery.

(I'm pretty sure I have the world's most beautiful sisters.  Now to figure out why Jessica can pull off the brunette and I can't.  Let's just say that none of the above is our real hair color anyway.)

Melissa seems to have spent 1000 hours, and probably as many dollars (well not quite, but...) on making every detail at the shower match and look perfect.  Emily and my mom and I did what we could to help her, but she is kind of a crazy-kook party planner.  I did make the invitations which I was pretty proud of:

Jessica made the mistake of telling us she was setting up a sock monkey-themed nursery.  Melissa took that and ran with it.  I am entirely shocked at how many products you can buy with a sock monkey on it!  She bought every single one, of course, and even more people brought monkey items for the baby.  I think Jessica is monkeyed out for sure.

Here are a few photos of the details:

Exhibit 1: The Diaper Cake

Now, I've made diaper cakes before.  You get a fortune's worth of diapers (2 boxes) and make round cake layers and tie them up cute with ribbons and little details.  Oh no, Melissa takes it to the next order of magnitude.  Since Nick is a motorcycle racer, why don't we make a motorcycle out of diapers, receiving blankets, bibs, burp clothes, socks, and a bottle for the headlight?  Are you kidding me?  I really can't believe she pulled it off just by looking at a picture from pinterest.  Pinterest is going to be the death of the world, mark my words.  To say the least, this is the cutest way to give someone a set of diapers and baby supplies I have ever seen.  

Party favors:

Games:  The Price is Right and the Poopy Diaper game

There is little that is more funny than watching your party guests, especially the grandmas, stick their noses in really gross looking diapers to guess what kind of candy bar is melted in it.

Refreshments:

Hey Shell, can you make a baby carriage with a baby in it out of a watermelon, a cantaloupe, and some fruit, like this picture?  Sure thing, Lis!  

Should we make sock monkey cupcakes?  Absolutely.  These were actually SO easy and turned out extremely cute.

My mom really does make great food.  This spread was delish!  I still need to get that artichoke dip recipe, mom.

Presents:

Jessica is pretty set now.  She has nearly everything on her registry and got tons of clothes in lots of sizes.  Sean and Kate were in on the action of course.  They have never seen a present they didn't think they needed to help with.  

I love these two.  Kate Elayne and Grandma Elayne.  Even though I was really sad I couldn't bring my girls up for the trip, it was kind of fun to get to play Aunt.  I never get a chance when my kids are around and I'm busy being Mom.  Kate and I spent some quality time over the weekend and she was so worried about how many nights I had left each day.  She actually cried when I left.  Awww...  love you Kate.

All the women in my family:  

Grandma Elayne (but we'll always call her Grandma Primmer), my Mom, Melissa, Me, Emily, Jessica, and Grandma Pearlie.  It was pretty cool that we were all able to be at the shower.  

These are Jessica's in-laws, the Moffords.  The "other" Grandma!  And, we're going to have to work hard for "favorite aunt" status with these two sisters in the mix.  

Here's the nursery.  Jessica has perfect taste.  The details couldn't be put together better.  I guess she still has the chair and armoire to add.  I think my favorite thing is the rug.  

Sisters really are the best.  It doesn't seem to matter what we're doing, whether it's a whimsical baby shower or a disgusting chore, we always have a blast when we are together.  Jessica has this giant koi pond in her backyard (that they built for their wedding backdrop last year,) and the top of the waterfall had gotten incredibly disgusting since they have been at their other house in TX a lot lately.  Jessica was heading out to clean it herself (7 months pregnant?  I don't think so.)  Melissa and I decided to go help her do it.  Sparing the rank details, it was reminiscent of the scene in Christmas Vacation when cousin Eddie was emptying his motorhome sewage into the gutter.  In Jessica's words - it looked like an elephant had used it for a restroom.  (As David pointed out, those really weren't Jessica's exact words either.  hahaha...) We suctioned the pond for about 1.5 hours until Emily was off work and came to finish the rest.  It was a comedy of errors as we hefted the industrial vacuum to the top of the wobbly rocks, tried to balance it, get it in the right spot so that gravity would help us, and drain the mess.  

We laughed so hard doing it that we were crying (and possibly barely controlling our bladders.)  At one point, we covered Jessica in the mess when the hose came loose from the vacuum.  So much for keeping her from getting near any of it.  Still it was so fun to just be with my sisters and laugh with them.  I miss getting to do that very often.  

Thanks for a really stellar weekend everyone.  I feel so lucky to have such an awesome family and that I was able to come.  I'm pretty lucky to have a great husband too, who bought me the plane ticket and stayed home with my girls all weekend so that I could go.