Beautiful Blue

As I have mentioned before I come from a family of eight. I am the youngest. When I was twelve years old I became an aunt for the first time. It wasn't long before I was an aunt of eleven. I had one of my own in 1991. Then the dry spell hit. In October we finally welcomed a new addition to the family. A little girl. Now, we have a little baby boy coming. He is due the end of April. We had his shower today. One sister who is usually out of the area was finally able to attend this family get together. A very rare occasion.

We had beaucoup blue. My sister chose the games from a list I gave her. She wanted simple ones like word scramble and match the baby animal with the Mommy animal. She wanted to keep things moving because we had out of state guests who had to hit the road. Then everyone ate. We had meat and cheese plates, vegetable trays, pasta salad, cookies and cake. I served two different kinds of punch. The pineapple one and my old stand-by Hawaiian red punch and ginger ale. The ice ring melted beautifully.

I'm not sure I mentioned the ice rings I make. I take a bundt cake pan and put a little ginger ale in the bottom. I take baby items that can get wet (such as teething rings, plastic key toys, rattles, etc...) and lay them in the ginger ale. I freeze it overnight. The next day, I add more ginger ale and more baby stuff and freeze again. I do this in layers because if you do it all at once the baby items all float to the top of the ice ring. When you are ready to put the ice ring into the punch bowl, sit it in warm water to loosen it and carefully take it out and float it into the punch. This can get kind of tricky without splashing punch all over the place.


I had to travel with this ring today, so I wrapped it in heavy duty foil and placed it in a large cooler. It was still frozen solid an hour later when I arrived at the hall.

We had a blast. There were so many people that had not seen each other in years, that some groups of people were kind of in their own little world. I can understand that. It was a beautiful event and the Mom and Dad-to-be were blessed with a huge amount of gifts. The Mom has one boy already who will be nine. He was not forgotten and received some presents of his own. I chased him around the hall with my little grand niece teasing him that he needed to practice holding a baby. They laughed and said he wouldn't touch her because she was a little girl. I then told him she had cooties and I chased him with her trying to touch him.

We gave him all the extra balloons. I thought for sure he was going to float away when he took them outside, but MythBusters has proven that isn't likely to happen. Supposedly it took 5000 helium-filled balloons to lift actor Paul Newman off the ground.

I think it was Melanie from Gone With the Wind who said "The happiest days are when babies come."