Showers (part 1 of 2)

JD and I are amazingly lucky to have fantastic friends - in Oregon, in Florida, and lots scattered everywhere else.

Before we left Oregon, our friends there threw us a baby shower. It was a gorgeous day for it, on our friends' deck overlooking the Sandy River. As we arrived, the kids threw "snowballs" at JD - rolled up newborn diapers! So cute. The kids loved it, too. We walked inside while preparations were still underway, and saw the most amazing cake ever:

While this cake wasn't gluten-free, they had gotten 4 gluten-free cupcakes for me from the local cupcake place, Cowgirl Cupcake, which were delicious. I was told that the cake tasted as good as it looked! The funniest part was that all of the children wanted to eat the baby - they had to divide it into pieces so that each child could have some.

My friends had also made this awesome diaper cake/mountain with newborn-sized diapers:

Soon after we arrived, the rest of the guests got there, and we all went outside. There was a great spread of food, and there were several stations set up where people could write down their advice for us, suggest baby names, and decorate white onesies with permanent stamp ink. Most of the name suggestions revolved around the initials "ER" since they know that JD is likely going into emergency medicine. The advice included useful tips to sleep when the baby sleeps, take notes or journal to remember all the times that go by so fast, and take lots of pictures. Our friends had also hung up a whole bunch of onesies along the deck railing. So little & so cute!

Just a few of my friends :)

One of the games that the guys played was drinking out of baby bottles:

Do you like the flowers that the children picked for JD and me?

Of course, our friend Erik, who has 2 children, looked at the bottles and immediately started to complain that they were infant sized nipples. JD and I looked at each other in surprise that there are different bottle nipples for different ages :) I don't even remember who won, but it was a lot of fun to watch the guys try to drink down a baby bottle of beer!

There was also the "guess the candy bar in the diaper" game which was really cute. I definitely did not win, but it was pretty funny to have my friends tell us how the different smeared/warmed candy bars look like baby poop at different ages. 

We got absolutely adorable and useful baby presents from our friends. Their thoughtfulness brings smiles to both of our faces. We are also lucky that our friends are mostly done having children, so we got a lot of hand-me-downs, which is so fantastic. While different presents stood out for different reasons, it was the love that went in to all of them that really made them so special. 

After the shower, a bunch of us went down to the river and the meadow to relax some more. It was a gorgeous day and the kids loved splashing at the edge of the river.

Even though it was early July, it was still cool in the shade!

JD and I just are so incredibly grateful to our Oregon friends for their love and for sending us off in such a wonderful way. Baby Storn is very lucky that we have such good friends!