Baby Blogging - The Baby Shower!

Technically I should call this post the 'Baby Showers' because last week included two. Both were full of surprises but one was a little more planned.

Our wonderful friends Sam and Sara had kindly offered to host our Baby Shower and Sunday the 10th had been the date we picked way back at the start of the year. Laura had been nervous that it was so close to the end of the 9 months, I was always confident that baby girl would still be quite at home. 

In the months leading up to the Baby Shower the girls had collated names and contact details for all our guests, inviting them with stunning paper invites detailing the plans for the day. We had wanted to invite family from across the globe although we fully appreciated they wouldn't be able to make it. What we hadn't fully appreciated was that so many of our UK family and friends would make it.

As the replies came back Sam and Sara kept us in the loop and the final count was 38. We were blown away. Not only had our Nan's managed to make it - Laura's from Windsor and mine from Tunbridge Wells - but we also had a mixture of work colleagues, people from our 'social activities' and, in my case, my closest family, and in Laura's case her brother. It was amazing.

Thankfully my parents were happy to host the shower at their house and their large garden was perfect, especially as the sun decided to shine. Since the start of the year my Mum had been hard at work prepping her garden, flowers beds had been put in, new turf laid, new decorations added and it paid off. The garden looked show home worthy.

Sara and Sam had headed to my parents house early on Sunday to set up and we had no idea what to expect, by the time we arrived almost 2 hours later the garden was transformed into a beautiful setting. My Mum and Aunt had added bunting and the girls had added balloons and decorations. The kitchen smelt delicious with all kinds of party food being prepared and in my parents dining room there was now a dessert table. It looked incredible!

Our guests started arriving at 2pm and we were able to welcome everyone as they came into the garden. It felt almost wedding-like as we very much felt like special guests. We had been provided with 'Mama-to-be and Mummy-to-be' sashes and our only job was to mingle and catch up with our guests.

My Dad had kindly driven to Windsor to pick up Laura's Nan - a 3 hour round trip - and we were so relieved they had made it in time to enjoy most of the shower. If anything this baby has really had people going to extreme lengths for her so far. We also really wanted to make sure Laura had her Nan there on the day. (She was kindly dropped home later that day by my sister).

My God Parents / Aunt and Uncle and cousin and his wife had made the journey up with my Nan from Tunbridge Wells and had stayed with my parents the night before, along with my sister and her boyfriend so my family were all on site and ready to help if needed.

Laura had colleagues old and new and people from choir and almost my entire netball team had made the effort to attend. We had Charlotte and Hannah up from Norfolk, Laura and Allana over from the Malverns and Lisa, my old boss, all there and we couldn't have felt more loved.

The Netchix team and their furry mascot!  Baby girl even got her own Netchix babygro :)

The garden was packed and buzzing and the food provided was the perfect amount. Once most of it had been eaten the girls started with the fun activities. Firstly they had asked people to bring baby photos and they had been placed on a line with numbers, the game involved matching the baby with the guest. Not an easy task when you have people meeting for the first time. (Thankfully the girls had provided name tags for everyone).

The slightly simpler task was then filling in a postcard with predictions for the baby - arrival date, weight, length, name and a wish for her. We almost cried reading them after. And someone guessed the name (we think we are going for) correctly!

The third task was to guess the number of sweets in a jar, this was won by my sister and her boyfriend who were only 4 sweets out! Not bad as the jar contained 163!

With all the fun going on we almost ran out of time to open the wonderful gifts that our guests had bought. Laura had asked that everyone bring a book they loved as a child so our little lady will have quite the library. What we hadn't expected was that we get anything else. It turns out that cute baby clothes are irresistible though and baby girls wardrobe is certainly well stocked now.

Baby girl also has a baby sling, play mat, baby monitor (I guess that's for us), sunshade for her buggy, some cloth nappies, teething toys and some cute Peter Rabbit cuddly toys. Not only that but one of Laura's friends gave us a hand knitted blanket, headband and shoes in our nursery colours and another friend had stitched an Alice in Wonderland picture - both gifts were so thoughtful.

Before everyone left they also got given a slice of the amazing red velvet cake the girls had got and decorated with beautiful real flowers, as well as a bag of popcorn to pop at home.

We sadly didn't get to thank everyone in person for their gifts so the next job we want to get done are thank you cards.

Not only was the girls organisation outstanding, to the point that my usual control freak wife even took a step back, but everything was so personal. The food was all our favs, the dessert table was my heaven, the decorations were gorgeous and everything had been thought of. It truly was a day to remember.

As I mentioned at the start of this post as if one baby shower wasn't enough, just as I had recovered from Sundays shower I walked into my team meeting on Tuesday to be greeted by my team throwing me a baby shower. The look on my face was indeed a picture.

This shower was short and sweet. I was greeted with an incredibly generous voucher and adorable Unicorn themed baby grow (my company is Unicorn Training). There was only a few seconds to compose myself before the games. We started easy with a guess the baby - this time I got almost everyone right but there were only 7 people to pick from. From there they upped the anti and we were split into teams to dress the 'baby' in a nappy. Sadly my team lost.....not the best start to motherhood!

We finished with a team selfie and tucking into the pile of goodies that had appeared. It was a complete shock and I genuinely had no idea my team had been planning it.

A trip to Head Office in Bournemouth later in the week also proved beneficial as baby girl was gifted her own Unicorn and I got a lovely card signed by the teams and a voucher to spend at Amazon. I am certainly very lucky when it comes to where I work.

In fact Laura and I are incredibly lucky to be surrounded by such love. My work team had included a picture of Laura in the baby guessing game and my head office made sure the card was addressed to Laura and I. I know they are small things but they are things that mean the world.

The baby shower(s) was the last event we had planned so we are now on baby girl countdown!