Hanson's Happenings!: Elena's baby shower

Last Friday we had a baby shower for Elena and Ann. Ann put on a wonderful baby shower for Grace and I when Grace was born, and has been such a great sister, I owed her the best party I could throw.

Ann had the idea to ask people to bring books instead of clothes, as between the clothes she has already received and Grace's clothes and the other hand me downs she has gotten, Elena is pretty set in the clothes department. Books on the other hand are always good to have and it is nice to have books that others have read and recommend.

I was in charge of the decorations, invitations, and program of events. Maria was in charge of food preparation and presentation and my mom was the director of food, grocery shopping, and housecleaning. Daniel was the grunt work who set up the tables for us and cleaned that back yard. All in all, I thought everything looked great. And since I had so much fun with the decorating, I thought I would share pictures of it with you.

There were four desserts total, but I only got pictures of these two. I had the strawberry one and it really was as good as it looks.

I love parties and catching up with friends. Most of the people there were from the Chapel. There is Ann and Elena's table.

I sat at the non-Chapel friends table. Sitting next to my mom and Grace is my Aunt Joan. Across the table from my mom are my mom's BFF Vicky and our friend Donna, who has been a good family friend for years.

One of the kids tables.

Elena slept through most of her party.

We played a couple games and our friend Donna shared some verses from Proverbs about teaching your kids to follow God, not only by your words but also by your example.

Grace was super excited about gift opening time. I think she assumes presents are for her. She helped Ann get the presents and open them for a while, but there were a lot of gifts so she eventually got bored and wandered off.

So we were all super excited about my mom's best friend and her family coming to the shower. They are really more like family than friends becuase we lived with them for a while and have known them as long as an of us can remember. One of the things that is great about them, is that they have kids the same ages as the kids in our family so we each always had a buddy. We are all still friends, which is super fun as we grow older. Brittany (the oldest in their family) has three kids and although I saw them all last summer, this was Grace's first time meeting them.
Here is Maria (and her buddy Emily) each holding each other's niece; Grace and "Mel" (Amelia).