The Shower Ascendancy

As promised - your weekend update.

As you know, Mrs. J's baby shower was this last weekend, and it was a resounding success.

Due to my limitless skepticism, I anticipated a colossal failure, but was pleasantly surprised at how many guests showed up.  Of 22 RSVP's, we had only 3 no-shows.  Although, knowing how poorly some people can adhere to commitments, I feel blessed that we had the turnout that we did.

Being our first child, we were flying somewhat blind into baby shower territory, not knowing how long it should last, what activities would be deemed enjoyable, or what the proper social protocols to follow during the event were.  Even in spite of that, though, it went very smoothly.

All of the ladies in attendance seemed to have a genuinely good time, and my male compatriots and I sequestered ourselves to the back yard, and had a good time cooking, chatting, and relaxing.

Most important to me, though, was that Mrs. J, the star of the show, thoroughly enjoyed herself.  For the first time in a long time, she had a day all about her.

The most notable event of the shower, though, was everyone's willingness to participate in the craft we planned out - everyone in attendance was asked to paint one of 26 wall hanging letters, in any pattern or design they like, with the colors we made available.  Though not one person, aside from my wife, our son's godmother, and I knew what the end result would be, they all ate it up, and had a great time doing it.  Even more surprising, was the amount of effort that every single one of them put into it (even the guys in attendance).

Following the paint-fest, and a barbecue lunch for everyone, were a couple of less exciting games, and then the gift giving began.  Both Mrs. J and I were absolutely stunned at both the amount of gifts our son received, but also that our registry was almost 100% completed following it.

And while there were out of town family members unable to attend the shower, we were able to include them through the attachment of a notebook computer and a webcam to our television, and the utilization of Skype's group call function, making it so that everyone could participate in the event.

I look forward to being able to post up all of the photos from the event, although it'll likely have to wait until after his birth - we wouldn't want to spoil the name for anyone... and I'm waiting until I make the final decision whether to migrate this blog to another host, with a less terrible image capability.


All in all, I am certainly pleased with how well the shower turned out, and even more importantly, Mrs. J is even more thrilled with how it turned out.

So, until next time, stay tuned for another update.

-J