Look Out: It's a Baby Hurricane!

The old joke has never seemed more appropriate than at our church this year: If you don't want to be pregnant, don't drink the water! The new year brought a huge string of baby announcements--a total of SEVEN women due between September - December. That might not seem all that impressive until you consider that our church has only 29 adult female members. That's not "married women of childbearing age"--that's *all* the women who are covenant members. A quarter of us are pregnant!

Appropriately enough, the non-pregnant women decided that a party for all these babies couldn't really be called a shower--it was more like a hurricane :) So on Saturday, we had a little celebration anticipating all these new little lives. One of the pregnant women couldn't be there, and the other is having a separate shower since it's her first baby, but the five of us present lined up for a photo op:

Melita's incredible talent and creativity were on display with all the decorations--she made the paper flowers hanging from the ceiling, our corsages (made of paper flowers) and the centerpieces:

Everything matched our green and yellow nursery, so I swiped a few things that were otherwise headed for the trash!

Another fun feature was a "photo booth" they had set up. I loved looking through the pictures (a link to a private Flickr album was distributed yesterday) and seeing all the crazy photos of various women being silly--two in particular (*cough* Jessie Rae and Donna *cough*). One of my favorite pictures was of my friend Lydia...everyone likes to tease her about the giant hairbows she puts on her little girl's head, so someone had the brilliant idea to put one of the giant paper flowers on *her* head:

I took the opportunity to get a photo with Jessie Rae...this is my sweet friend who will be taking care of Elijah when the baby comes (as long as her sister doesn't go into labor first!):

And I also got to do a belly photo with my sister-in-law! Steve's brother and his family were visiting for the weekend, so Michelle came to the "hurricane" with me. She's not due until next spring, so she hardly has a belly yet--just the tiniest little pooch that you wouldn't notice unless she was wearing fitted clothes and you knew how thin she usually is. But this was our first and only opportunity to take a belly shot together :)

The women of RBCN were a blessing to me, generously giving of their time and talents in planning/decorating/cooking for the shower (we had some seriously yummy food)...and several of them generously ignored the "no gifts" request :P I am thankful to be expecting along with six other beautiful women, and thankful to be surrounded by all these women whom I know will love and support me and our new little one!