baby shower weekend

I just got back from my best friends surprise baby shower. In the end it didn’t turn out to be a total surprise for her, but it did turn out to be fairly fun.  My best friend is named Heather and she has been my best friend for like 13 years. Soon I’ll post the story about how we came to be best friends but for now just know that she is. She lives over in eastern Washington and her and her husband have been trying to get pregnant for almost 10 years now, being unsuccessful until 8 months ago when suddenly out of the blue she was. 

 I knew that I wanted to plan this party for her almost from the beginning. I mean found out she was pregnant like the day she did, and I instantly felt nothing but joy for the fact that her life and family would finally be complete. I have spent so much time with her talking about how important a family and children are to her and her husband. I’m not going to get into her whole journey because she has her own blog that you can read if you want to know about it. I just want you to understand that this was such a huge shock and surprise to them.  I almost instantly thought that after 9 years of trying the very least she deserved is a kick ass baby shower.   Here’s the problem that I almost instantly ran into. Well honestly there were two problems. The first is that they live across the state from me and two they both happen to have almost zero friends. So you ask… how do you throw a baby shower from a different city for someone who has no friends? Well you end up with what happened this weekend.  But I’m regressing here…

So I found out that she was pregnant but she wasn’t going to announce it until after a few more months just in case. After she got the pretty much all clear I started my planning into action. I first started to talk to her about the baby shower. See she has family close to her that might have told her about doing a party themselves, but Heather kept saying that they repeatedly expressed disinterest in the whole idea. I then emailed Mike, her husband and told him my plan to do one. He was so excited because Heather had started to get a little miffed about the fact that after 9 years of trying for this baby no one really seemed to care about the fact that it was finally here. Because of how close I am to Heather, I knew that keeping the whole party a surprise would both drive her insane and also shock the heck out of her, so I made that my agenda: surprise party!!.

I contact her mom about possibly using her back yard for the party and she says that she just isn’t feeling up to having people at her house.  I then went on a quest for a location from across the state that would be ok for a party. There are a ton of parks in her town, but I didn’t want to have to worry about things like sun and bugs and weird random strangers walking around the party, so I instantly vetoed those. I then looked into hotel banquet rooms and rental spaces but those were kind of expensive to rent for the day, and many didn’t come with tables or chairs to use, so you would have to get those as well. I finally found this little building called a garden center, that’s basically is a little house in one of the huge parks where you can rent the house and the patio area for an afternoon. It includes tables and chairs and has bathrooms and a kitchen to use. I thought it sounded perfect. So I called the reservation number and found out that it was 65 bucks to rent and 100 extra for a deposit. I figured that was reasonable so I asked if they had any availability in June or a weekend day. They had one Sunday open so I jumped on it and sent off my check the next day. The only problem is that I had to pick up the key to the building on the Friday before my party, because city hall wouldn’t be open for the weekend. And due to some lame rule about renting the place and paying, I wasn’t able to allow anyone else to go pick it up for me, so I now had to take an extra day off work just to get this stupid key.

 Now that I had a location and a day fro the party I started on the invitations.  I could have sat and hand written all the invitations myself, but that would have sucked. So I decided that I would find cheap printed ones online. I found a place that was reasonable and made a very cute ducky themed invites, which I feel really stressed the surprise part of the whole party.  I bought them and waited the week that they took to get printed all while gathering all the peoples addresses from her husband and mom. I finally got the invites and have to say that I loved them. They were cute, but to the point, and all my info fit without being all annoying. I addressed them and send them feeling good about the amount of people I invited to this party (45 in all) then I just waited.

Around this same time her mother started to show some interest in the whole thing. I guess because I kind of took the rains and ran with it. She kept telling me about ideas and games she would like to play. I said that was fine because I didn’t really want to be in charge of games anyways.  I kept my focus on the few things that did really matter to me. One of the things I love most about Heather is the fact that she is a vegan. And that she stands proudly and strongly behind her vegan choices, and isn’t super judgmental about the fact that I am not a vegan. I knew that the one thing I could do to make this party super special is to make it an all vegan party. I started to look into vegan food options and lucky for me being in Seattle I have many. I ordered two different vegan cakes and got a bunch of food from places around town that make vegan dishes.   So at some point I guess Heather started to feel pretty depressed that no one was throwing her a shower and started to stress out about it,  enough that he mom sent me a letter asking if I could tell her that it was going on,  cause she was worried for the sake of the baby. I told her that keeping this a surprise was super important to me, but I would come up with something so that Heather would stop freaking out.  I started to tell her about this fake shower that her family was throwing her, and about how sad I was to not be able to go.  I spent the next few weeks having many conversations about how sad I would be to never see her pregnant, and how much I wish I could see her and such. The whole time planning this party knowing that she would be so shocked and happy.  I truly am kind of a devious friend, but I knew in the end the surprise would all be worth it.

The time had finally come and I guess I was all ready. I had the room all booked, I had my two days off work taken, and my hotel all booked for the four days I would be in town.  I had all the food packed up in my cooler including two different vegan cakes I got made for her. I had decorations in pink and yellow with duckies galore to make it all special.  I had a huge box of clothes I had been collecting pretty much from the second I found out she was pregnant.  I had about 9 RSVPs which isn’t all that many but that’s about what I expected with someone who doesn’t have a lot of friends. I had a bunch of gifts that other people sent to my house because they weren’t able to go to the party themselves.  I was set I guess, so away I went.

My drive over went fine. Nothing special happened and I enjoyed the time to catch up on various podcasts I had slacked on lately. When I got to town I immediately got the key to the building and did some last minute shopping.  Then I got really really bored, I mean I had a day and half to kill now. I texted Heather trying to fish for any idea that she knew I was in her city.  She and I had a conversation for a bit and eventually she made some comment about the party. I asked how she knew it was this weekend and she said that she saw the invite on her Grandma fridge. At this point I was like “crap” the surprise is all ruined. So I told her I had to get back to work (hahaha) and went to visit Mike at his job to get the scoop about what she really knew or not. He said that she didn’t know everything, just that the party was this weekend. He also said that she was kind of depressed about a few different medical issues she is having, so it might be nice for her to see me sooner then two days. He convinced me to go see her early so I drove to her house and surprised her ahead of time. After the shock wore off we quickly feel into our normal routine of weird random conversation you can only have with your best friend.   I was happy to have her too vent all the drama of the party to and have her share in it all herself.

 The day of the party went great as did the party itself. I mean I was a little sad that more people didn’t come, because it would have been nice with a few more. But I think the few who were there had a good time and most definitely enjoyed my awesome food spread I offered.  The room looked awesome and most importantly Heather and Mike had a nice time, oh and got a lot of random presents.  I guess where I want this post to go is just that this was one of those moments that I didn’t have to do. I could have easily said no and she would have totally understood. But being the person that I am, I never had that thought cross my mind. I mean here is this person who means the world to me, and they are finally having a baby after all this time and effort,  the least I could do is throw them a nice party right?  That was like the first thing I wanted to do and I am so happy that I was able to do it to someone who means so much to me.  The amount of money I spent doesn’t really matter because giving them a small something to show that I love them is worth way more. 

 I’m glad to be back home now and not have to worry about the party any longer. But as always as I drove away this afternoon I cried a little because of how much I miss having her around every day.  I love that I made the decision to move back to Seattle from that area, but leaving my best friend sucked. And now knowing that she is going to have this little baby that I don’t get to see all the time sucks too. I miss her so much and so many of the things I end up doing during my days out here include thoughts about how much Heather would like it ,or even how it would be so much more fun if she were here.  Over all it was a great weekend and a wonderful celebration that is long in the making to be had. I am so glad that I was able to give my best friend a super awesome surprise baby shower, even if I did ruin the surprise of it  all 36 hours beforehand because I got  kind of bored.  Spending a few extra days with her made it totally worth it in the end.