Baby Shower – SarahRuthSeeks

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!

Isn’t blog update stating the obvious? What I mean is I figured out how to add a subscriber button AND get an automated email sent out weekly with my newest blog posts. I mean it is incredibly rudimentary but it is low maintenance and maybe will get people to keep up with our going ons. At least I think I did. I requested some help from family to test it out… will confirm Monday!

So I talked before about being Mrs. Nav and there’s a Mrs. Eng. Well, Mrs. Eng is pregnant and due in August. She very kindly invited me to her baby shower today in Ewa (pronounced “Eva”. W’s are pronounced like “V’s”. When you hear a proper Hawaiian say “Hawaii” it sounds more like “Hawvaii”). I have found Google maps to be less than satisfactory here at times. Today in particular it tried to take me on a road that was a field… but I figured it out.

I was so impressed with how put together this shower was! Everything was beautifully done. I think she did most of it herself which is crazy at her stage in the pregnancy.

We played guess the children’s movie based on emoji (I got 15/16!). A game where we guessed which of the parents was the right answer, like “Who is going to be doing the 2am wake ups?”. And a game where we named a baby item for every letter of the alphabet (I also won this one but think she might’ve been too lenient with grading… I put “happy” for “h” 😛 ) We also wrote our first memories together, and this was the first time I had met her! So I put a memory from when we first talked and she told me “I don’t have a lot of friends here… only like five”. And she was saying that to me, a New Englander brand new to the Island. It was quite funny.

I offered to take a few pictures with my camera for her. One of the girls was taking a bunch with her phone and I sometimes wonder if it’s worth having mine (in fact, when I was buying my new phone the lady selling it said “I’ve heard from a photographer friend these new phones are just as good as professional cameras!”). There are some fun artistic things I can do that I don’t think phone cameras can, varying shutter speed and focus depth. I experiment sometimes, and that’s how I got a blurry background in this picture, called “Bokeh”.

The desserts were really good, particularly the chocolate covered Oreos. She looked so beautiful today!

I gifted her a bunch of random fun things off her registry. And I also gifted her a couple really cute onesies, one with “good vibes” and a pineapple wearing sunglasses and a submarine onesie. I hope she doesn’t hate me for that one (her husband has THE toughest submarine job right now and is hardly ever home, so she’s not a fan at the moment…) She opted not to open presents while we were there, and I LOVE that. I find the whole process silly as well. Although I would’ve liked to see her reaction to the submarines.

Baby Shower!

Baby Shower and Blog update