shower recap

The shower was a success! I'm really happy b/c it's the first one I've thrown, and people had a good time! Woohoo!

T and JD, the other girls throwing the shower with me, made a heroic effort and arrived at the train station at 9am - having left their apartments in the city before 8. On a Sunday. My mom and I had done all the shopping and some of the prep the week and night before, but there was still plenty for everyone to do and by 11:30 we were done and ready for guests. Which was a good thing because people were on time - who does that? Lol.

It was rainy and gloomy Friday and Saturday and Sunday morning, but around 11 o'clock the sun came out so we were able to sit outside in the back yard. It was a gorgeous day to be outside, we really lucked out on the weather.

The surprise shower wasn't such a surprise to JS, since she kinda figured out what the date was and the "pressing reason" why she and her mom had to come to my house on their way from Jersey to the South Shore was pretty transparent - I am on the Northern Shore of the Island and NOT so on the way. But we did manage to surprise JS as to what the shower would be like!

Last Wednesday at work, I was IMing with JS and she mentioned that she didn't know what to wear for her shower - "it could be sneakers, could be a ballgown!" she typed. "Ballgown?!?" was basically my reply, and she's like, what if we're doing a ballroom dance lesson? Haha, little did she know that we weren't planning any such thing, but it just so happens that one of my coworkers is a pro-level Tango dancer and is always talking about Tango. So on a lark, I asked if he'd be interested... and he said yes!

So this afternoon he came over and taught 8 of us (5 lame people just watched) how to Tango. He was worried it'd be weird to have girls dance with girls, but a) it's not the same as guys w/ guys which would be weird, and b) all the "simcha dancing" we do at weddings and bar/bat mitzvahs are separate-gender dancing anyway. We had SO much fun, and he was a a really good teacher too. By the end of 40 minutes we were tangoing back and forth across the backyard and making plans to try our new moves out at the wedding.

We had bbq for lunch. I made a pasta salad, JD did the corn salad, mom made the cole slaw, and T, my mom and I made the potato salad and a green salad collaboratively. My mom was really nice and manned the grill for us too : we had hotdogs, burgers and grilled chicken. Then we opened presents and had dessert. I really wanted to make Jacque's better-than-crack cupcakes but JS doesn't eat chocolate for health reasons, so I kept it simple: yellow cake mix into a muffin
tin. My mom whipped up some parve chocolate icing and we had some vanilla icing, and they were a big hit. There was also fruit for dessert, but the cupcakes went better.

During dessert we played JS-themed taboo. We made up the cards. It was okay, better than some shower games but nothing spectacular. It was good that it was quick, noone got too restless.

People stuck around for 4 hours - a long time for a shower, right? It seemed like everyone had a good time, but most importantly JS loved it. Mission accomplished! :D