Baby showers

A few weeks ago I had the honor of helping throw a baby shower for my dear friend Keisha. She is expecting her 2nd baby, little Ketziah very soon. It had been a while since I had thrown a baby shower and as I was preparing I remembered how much fun it is to put all these little foods and decorations together. I have been in kind of a rut with cooking lately and I am feeling much more inspired to be creative now, thanks Keisha!

For some reason I have just loved throwing baby showers, I think I have done or at least helped with at lease 12 showers in the last 5 years. I started to look back at the different pictures I had, here is a progression.

Beginning with my first shower in 2003 for my friend Michelle, I pulled an all nighter for this one. It doesn't really look like it but the ABC block cake took forever.




This was a double shower in 2006, for my friends Heidi and Rachael both having baby girls around the same time.




The last is the one for Keisha a few weeks ago. I had the honor of throwing her first shower for baby Malia too, but I couldn't find any of those pictures.

OK, I admit that none of these come close to anything that a caterer would do. In the beginning I was really trying so hard to make things just look like Martha Stewart had made them. But the more I tried, the more would go wrong. Over the years I feel like God has really worked on my heart with regards to hospitality and entertaining. I have realized that it is more about loving people and enjoying fellowship, not about having the perfect color scheme or some fancy cake on display. Now I think I am learning the process of how to use the details and creativity, but not have it be about what I have done, but what Christ has done through me to love others. I am still learning, the more I focus on allowing my identity in Christ, the less I feel like my identity is in pleasing people through a nice home or perfect food.

Visit from Grandma Shirley

It just so happened that Tyler and his dad were out of the state in the same week. My mother in law Shirley was on her own too, so she came down to hang out with us for a few days. We had a lot of fun and went all over the place. Here we are at the Ballard Locks. The kids got to see a lot of big salmon at the fish ladder.

Then as we were going back, Jack was so excited to see a tug boat and a huge NOAA ship. Jack was very curious about the soccer ball on top.

Preschool!

Well he did it, Jack has started preschool!! It has been a pretty exciting new thing in our household these days. Jack is doing pretty well, we have had a couple good days, and a couple of not as good days. I think the structure will take a little time to get used to. He loves his teacher, teacher Pasi has been teaching this class for 11 years and still gets so excited about each child that comes into her class. Here he is on his first day with his backpack on.


When we came in, he went right to work at one of the tables. He looked so grown up, he didn't even say goodbye! I think I was more nervous then he was.