Weekend in Philadelphia

This weekend we packed up the Pilot and drove up to Philadelphia for my baby shower! My aunts and mom threw it for me. It was a lot of fun. I felt like I should look more pregnant though - is it really a baby shower unless the pregnant girl is about to burst? Anyhow, we had a baby duckie theme in full force:


It was really cute. And holy crap, was that cake good. Cream cheese frosting and a layer of fresh raspberries in the middle. Yum!
We got lots of great baby gifts, so I guess we really need to have the baby now. Yikes. For sure, we're going to have one well-dressed baby! If you're ever in need of a clever shower gift, here are two.
1) My cousin made a 'diaper cake'.

All of the layers are made up of rolled up diapers arranged around a central support. Then she used receiving blankets to surround each layer, and stuck a bunch of little baby stuff in for decoration. It was really cool, and a big hit with everyone.
2) A laundry-themed gift. I don't have a good picture of this one, but my mom's friend came with a covered up laundry basket. When I went to open it, she read a cute poem she had written about doing the baby's laundry, and two volunteers pulled out a big clothesline she had pinned a bunch of little clothes and socks and stuff too. Another big hit at the shower!

It was a lot of fun, and of course I love being the center of attention. I'm glad I got to have a shower too - I thought that being down here away from my family, I might not.

Over the rest of the weekend we visited with everyone. We stayed with my cousin and her husband, of baked bean fame. Speaking of baked beans: Now, I don't know who would do something like this (actually, I do!), but someone set this up on their patio.

Hee!
My aunts and uncles all came over on Sunday and we ate and hung out. It was really nice to see everyone! We also got some practice for having a kid - we watched a million Baby Einstein videos and a Barbie movie. I'm ashamed to say that the Barbie movie wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.

The weekend was nice, and a bit emotionally overwhelming. It was the first time I had driven this route since we did it the day after Ed died, so I kept reliving that day and remembering how I felt and what was happening. Then we saw all these people who I hadn't seen since the funeral. And my mom and dad gave us some nice stuff for the nursery, but it all had some sort of Ed connection - a dresser that we had all used (as well as our friend's two girls) where my mom had written all of our names and birthdates on the back, some antique airplane prints that had been up in Ed's room, a wooden plane that had been Ed's (my brothers each had one of these, but this one had Ed's name on it), several blankets that they had used to bring us all home from the hospital (one my dad even came home in). I'm glad Brian came with me, because it would have been hard without him.