of owls and Superman's cape

Today has been wonderful!
Starting at 1 PM, I had the first of two baby showers on this sunshine-filled Saturday. Wonderful! This was for another of the young women from my adventure in Italy in May of 2012 and was being held in the heart of downtown, at the bright space known as Ort Hall.

Wait!
Wasn't this the day of that Rock 'n' Roll Marathon???
Oh, no!
How to get downtown with so many roads blocked for the race?
Don't you fret, child. The nice folks that are in charge of the race have already given that some thought, this being the third year of the event in our fair city. All I had to do was contact them and they wrote back with explicit directions that were completely hassle-free. I was able to get there in my usual time - and I still saw a few runners on the way, too!

In honor the "Mommy to BEE", the theme was pollinators. You know - bees! Tiny pots of honey were at each place setting and pale yellow abounded. Very cute!
I was not the only traveler there, either. Including the soon-to-bee mom, there were five of us who had gone to Siena and Roma together. Que bella! We grabbed a table and sat together for the meal, catching up and reminiscing. So very nice!

Then we dined on crustless sandwich rounds with egg salad or pimiento cheese, fried chicken tenders with honey mustard, tiny chicken salad-filled pie crusts, cheeses and honeydew and red grapes...oh, my! I had the egg salad on all three types of bread! Then we played some games. How many honeycomb cereal pieces in the jar? (I was almost 150 too few.) Match the animals to their babies. (I missed sharks, giraffes, and alpacas.) What's in your purse? (Well, I only had 39 points and the winner had over 60!) And, baby bingo, were you fill the squares with the items you think the mom will get. I listed the three items I brought, of course!
I also learned along the way that the mom likes owls! Nice!
Now to remember that Scarlett is going to have lots of elephants, too.

Oh, my!
3:30 already???
Where did the time go?
Time to say our goodbyes and get our hugs on the way to the door.
Time, also, for our parting gifts, to remember the gathering fondly as we spread the pot of honey on our toast and savor the Bit-o-Honey candies.
Sweet!
And off I went to the east side of downtown for another baby shower! Woohoo!
This was for the daughter of a friend and niece of a dear friend, the late Sam Johnson. I wasn't expecting to know many folks there - and I didn't - but I sat with some lively women and we had such a good time!

These were very different games at this "jack and jill" party. For one, we were given a nursery rhyme and told to perform it - so Rosa and I rapped out "Humpty Dumpty" while Von gave us a beat! The daddy-to-be loved it! Sadly, we didn't win because we had not worked the baby's name into our performance. Drats - we were so busy planning that we didn't listen to all of the rules!
One game that I thought was awesome was this: each of the eight tables were given three pages, each with a single letter of the alphabet. We were given an array of colored pencils and tasked with drawing on the pages with appropriate pictures for the letter on the page. We were constructing Joshua's first Alphabet Book!!! isn't that an fabulous idea?

We had the letters "Dd", "Ee", and "Ff". They let me take over the "Ff" page and I drew a very colorful fish and a swirly concoction I call a Flower. They convinced me that I could draw an eagle and I made sure it was bald-headed when I colored it in. I cannot imagine why I didn't take photos of our pages, with their doughnuts and ears and eggs and dogs!

Next: the presents!
When she looked around for me after reading the card, I just had to bounce up there. I took the red plastic (which had wrapped the diapers in the stroller) and "pinned" it to my shoulders, just as the boy had done in the movie this summer.
She understood the meaning of the cape right away! I am sure she will share her love of her uncle with her son.
Then, the food! Very tasty chicken, baked, fried, and spicy wings! Flavorful saffron rice and cheesy scalloped potatoes! Corn, broccoli - even seafood pasta! And the cake was the BEST I've ever had, rich and buttery! I wouldn't have minded having a couple more slices of that!

Then we all realized the time:
6:30 PM! Oh, wow!
How the time flew!
Again time for goodbye hugs to friends new and old.
Time to receive little goodie bags of sweets for the sweet - nice!
I was even able to pack a plate of chicken and meatballs and saffron rice to go!
(The chicken was eaten before I even began this post, but the rest will wait for breakfast tomorrow.)
All so very much fun, but a little tiring. Maybe two baby showers in one afternoon and evening is a bit much - nah! I blame the flu shot on Thursday night. I do.
Still, I didn't go straight home. One last venture with friends, this time to see "Prince Avalanche" at Muse Arts. Definitely a guy film! I enjoyed the antics of these two fellows, out in the woods with only each other for company. The girlfriends I was with didn't appreciate it as much, but they don't have three younger brothers, either. Their loss!
Now to wind down and maybe call it an early night...