One of my newer subspouse friends, Mindy, (actually, kinda older now in the lifespan that is subspouse friends) had a baby last week! I met her in August; she was there the day Brian left for his SouthCom “underway” for three months. In true military spouse form, I ended up planning her baby shower. Truthfully, when I was walking with her one day I threw the idea out there thinking there was no way I was her closest friend and the one to plan her shower… and to my surprise she said yes!
Here’s what I wrote about the event on Facebook:
I “missed” acknowledging military spouse appreciation day yesterday. But here’s why… I was planning a baby shower for a mil spouse who I’ve barely known a year but was there for me the first day I ever had to say bye to my husband for longer than a month. I was picking up her best friends, who have since moved to their next duty stations, that I’ve never met, from the airport because her husband couldn’t so they could be here for it. And I had my other milspouse friend, who doesn’t even know her, come over after to lend her decorating expertise because it’s not my strong suit. And, in this picture are borrowed tables and chairs from multiple milspouses, because we know I don’t have my dream entertaining space yet. The cake I got was from a recommendation from another milspouse. Today, I hosted the shower at my house, where a majority of attendees were milspouses, and it was full of love and joy. That’s all you really need to know about how it takes a village to get through this crazy life and how much milspouses are the real MVPs.
When she said yes to my offer, I started investigating who her other friends were and found out a spouse named Haydeé (now in WA) was my point person. I called her and got some thoughts about planning. At some point, I sent her a picture of the invitation which had a date on it. I filled in the date because it was a requirement; not because it was the date Mindy had given me, and was simply asking for feedback about the general layout. Well, Haydeé took it as that was the date… and unknowingly to me she and another friend, Katy, bought tickets to fly out to surprise Mindy. I only found this out when Haydeé called me saying Mindy’s husband, Sean, was unaware of a baby shower happening that day and I told her because I hadn’t gotten a date yet from Mindy. Well… now I went to work to convince Mindy to have the shower that day.
Fortunately, I was going for a hike up Makapu’u with her in a couple days and we also planned to do her maternity pictures that day. This meant I had somewhat of a convincing argument… you’ll already have a lei! Let’s get it done in one day! Thankfully she agreed, phew!
Fast forward to the week prior to the baby shower. Mindy’s husband, Sean, ends up getting COVID… and now there was no one to pick up the friends from the airport. So I went and picked them up, never actually having met them in person. We went and ate a Moku Kitchen (my fourth time there… it’s delicious!) And then went to Mindy’s to wait for her to get home. She was so surprised when she walked in the door. It was really sweet- she had no idea. Then I was off to go home and get decorating!
Thankfully my friend Jess came over and helped. She was instrumental in getting the place to look very nice. She helped me finish up these baby sock center pieces that came out wicked cute. We clipped shrubbery from my backyard. They are rolled up baby socks on chopsticks stuck in flower foam. They were a little droopy by the next day but I was ok with that. I painted Fage yogurt containers white for the vases.
I also used baby bibs hanging to decorate. As you can tell, I’m trying to be really environmentally friendly and purposeful with the decorations.
We had brunch and split into two tables. Then we played two games – Name that children’s book based on emoji and name that song title with the word “baby” in it (I played a YouTube video). Both were a lot of fun. We also wrote on baby diapers things like “it’s dad’s turn” and “smells better than a submarine”
We also made baby’s first lei by buying a kukui nut lei, unthreading it, and handing a bead to everyone. We then wrote blessings on note cards and said them to ourselves over each bead, which were restrung to make a new lei. We had super delicious gluten free cake that I picked up that morning. Seriously, one of the most delicious tasting cakes I’ve ever had (second probably only to my carrot cake at the wedding). The saying on it is Hawaiian for “welcome baby”. It was guava lilikoi something. Sooo ONO (delicious in Hawaiian).
I also made this epic diaper cake. The layers are wrapped in burp cloths, the center is a bottle of wine, and the topper is a curled up teething bib.
We had everyone bring books to stock a library. I bought a sloth one because it’s her favorite animal. The shower was a huge success in my opinion. I was so pleased with how everything came together! I wasn’t extremely stressed about it, but I don’t typically excel at making Instagram perfect things, so it’s always out of my comfort zone. We had a really fun time and shared great memories showering the new momma!
