A Baby Shower and Birthdays

This past Saturday Genna and I threw Allison a baby shower. We are all very excited to meet the new baby and wanted to celebrate it. Genna was awesome to host it at her beautiful new home.

It was your normal shower. The guests came from near and far. My aunt Jane came from Kansas, as did Wade's aunt Melba. Another cousin came from Des Moines. Allison's mom and second mom came from Iowa. Add all the locals and Allison is very loved!! :) When everyone arrived we ate brunch together.

And it was delicious! My aunt Mary Carol and my mom helped with the cooking. That is why it was good. :) Next we gave a little advice to Allison. I really hope we didn't scare her! We were only trying to help. :) Next came presents.

Like I said it was a normal and lovely shower. After the shower the men (well, not my men...they were busy doing other things) came over to Genna's. The men I am talking about are my cousin Wade (the father to be), my Uncle Harry (grandpa to be), and my Uncle Bert from Kansas.

We all decided to go to the Hot Shops. I have never heard of this place before. Which evidently means that I have been living under a rock!! It is a warehouse downtown that holds a bunch of different artists' studios. Since it was the weekend of Berkshire Hathaway they were holding an open house.

It was a fantastic three floor showing of various artists and their work. There was welding, jewelry making, paintings, paper making, photography, woodwork, and I am sure I am missing so much more. They had various artists creating what they did best. SO COOL to watch!! I could have spent thousands of dollars there. Lucky for me (and Matt) I didn't have money with me.

My uncle Harry enjoyed this piece of art. I think he should make some of these as he has gotten into welding as well. I also think Genna should put some of her art into the gallery there as well.

It was an awesome couple of hours. I wish that they had open houses more often!! Definately a place I would like to go to again!

And because that wasn't a busy enough day, we all decided to go out to my aunt and uncle's farm for dinner. Some relatives had come into town for Allison's shower and it was Harry's birthday that day, my mom's birthday the following day, and Matt's and Jon's birthday coming up in a couple of weeks- so we decided to celebrate all the May birthdays that evening. The weather was so nice that we spent time outside doing things like playing catch....

And riding bikes.....

And taking pictures of various things...

But I think the highlight of the evening was Wade giving us a tractor ride.

He took us everywhere!!!

On a farm, you have a lot of space you can go to!

It was all great fun!! It is so nice to get together with family and celebrate events like baby showers and birthdays. We are looking forward to getting together again and meeting the new baby at the end of June!!