Shower-palooza

OK, lame & un-creative title to this week's entry, but seriously, it was UNREAL the amount of people who showed up to shower future baby Ullman with TONS of amazing gifts. I really am, for maybe the 3rd time in my life, at a loss for words to fully describe the outpouring we received this past weekend. No sarcasm, really!
20 people + 3 babies were present at the shower... it was, needless to say, a very full house. Kelly, as always, had prepared exotic snackies and desserts that I would never see anywhere else (and all were delish!). Alycia came up with a team-based assignment to create a onesie for the baby... complete with hand-out sachets filled with paints, markers and blank canvases. In the end, all were given a very cute pink, onesie-shaped cookie with a very sweet quote or well-wishes sentiment attached. (alycia, you need to explore event-planning at some stage of your life). And, thanks to Lisa for demonstrating her secretarial skills by taking detailed notes of all the gifts I received (complete with sassy commentary through-out, no less), perfect!
I, personally, thought the whole shower sailed by. It started at 2PM and, after multiple trips to my mother's car carrying loads of giftbags, we headed out by 5:30PM.

As you can see from the posted photo, we have a very full baby room now. Rob and I actually spent a few hours, after I took this photo, going through all of it. We pulled out the bags of hand-me-downs and sorted things into age-based categories. We pulled items out of the closet (yes, its stacked with gifts from the Ohio shower) and sorted through what may have been duplicated at this shower. We pulled tags off of the new clothes (and squeled at the silly bikini, sweet dresses, tiny pants and the very cool onesies. It was fun - Rob seemed to delight in all of it, which, I found shocking - but I became overwhelmed at the sheer mass of it all. Its funny, Rob and I have officially switched personalities. Completely.
We sorted out all the cards and arranged all the receipts. We pulled out the duplicates (4 packs of the same receiving blanket set, ha!) and stuck receipts on them to go back. Turns out, we still don't have all the receipts we need for things... or I have somehow mixed things up. People - take heed at this warning - if you ever buy a gift for anyone ever again, get a gift receipt... stores are becoming the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld when it comes to returns. Turns out, even Target will only allow me to return 2 items per year with no receipt - that's crazy! And, with the sheer insanity of all my gal-pals buying us so much stuff, we will end up having items that may either never get used or will need to be passed to someone else, tags & all.
For the most part, we do not have THAT many things that are creating a bit of a foul-up in the return department, but, its still worth shouting out to everyone that reads this... get the receipt! :-)
Kelly and Alycia flanking the pregnant girl during the backyard cook-out
And, last, but not least - again with the commentary on my feet. Because I went straight to the grocery store Friday (after-work) and then immediately spending all night baking cupcakes, making pasta salad, pre-fabricating burger patties, cutting watermelon and cutting up veggies all to be eaten Saturday night.... I caused temporary damage to my wee toes and ankles which was very apparent the next morning. My feet, really did look like freshly baked biscuits and it was embarrassing. They actually seemed to get worse throughout the baby shower and into the evening. I have included a photo for everyone's indulgence 'cause as horrifying as this photo is to me, its also worth a snicker (or 12). I have learned, if you can't laugh at yourself... then pregnancy is NOT that state-of-being for you. *Sidenote, I am happy to report that the swelling has subsided today, Sunday, after many glasses of fluid and staying off my feet. *wink*