1st Baby Shower

FIND MORE BABY SHOWER PHOTOS HERE
After breaking the news to the family, it was decided (by moms and sisters) that a baby shower was in order. “Isn’t it too early?” was my initial response (I was barely past my 12th week). “well, maybe, but better early than never!” was the consensus. And so the wheels started moving and the planning started. Gera’s mom had already decided on a place and time: breakfast on the Saturday before I was to leave, so that would give them 2 weeks to plan and invite people. Then Abril and I started working our magic and created a bird theme baby shower (inspired by Martha, of course!).

It all started with the cupcake idea and then went on from there: bird houses for the center pieces, bird invitations (which I designed and printed, of course), nests with eggs (Jordan almonds) as party favors, and a whole bunch of other little bird-theme details. We had a long guest list, since it included my friends and my sister’s friends, as well as my mom’s and mom-in-law’s friends. I think we handed out about 50 invites total, and we had about 40 guests… not too bad I’d say.

I must admit I was pretty excited about having a shower… the cake, the presents… hehe. We all worked really hard to put it all together, and I enjoyed the planning as well as the execution. I did the center pieces because I couldn’t wait for my mom (the florist) to get off work… it was just a big temptation to have all the flowers and materials there and not do it. I love how they turned out! Abril did the cupcakes, of course (she’s the pastry chef to-be). Although she (we) encountered “mild” problems with the frosting and the heat, after a second batch of not-so-melty frosting they were done at about 2am. We also did the cake stand for the cupcakes, and even though we ended up putting it together after a few guests had arrived, it looked terrific and made the cupcakes stand out! We got a lot of compliments on the décor, invites, cakes, etc… I was really happy!

The invites requested “lluvia de dolares” (dollar shower/rain), which is a common theme for bridal and baby showers. That way you get to buy whatever you want (since registering is not that common in mexico yet). But I also registered at Target and Babys’R’us at El Paso. I got 2 gifts from the registry, and the rest were half money envelopes and half baby stuff (mostly clothes). There was no time to open the presents at the shower, so I took them home unopened and then waited like 7 hours for Gera’s mom to come to dinner so she could be there when I opened them. Oh… my fingers were itching…. I did peek at one…. don’t tell her, hehe. It was also nice to do it like that because the dads (grandpas-to-be) were there and could be included in the baby festivities. Gera had already returned to Zurich by then so he wasn’t there for the shower, but he was there for most of the preparation, and he contributed ideas and we went together to register. It was great to see him buying baby stuff!

december trip recap

Sorry it took me a while to finally get this posted,…

the pictures are still HERE.



I will not bore you with many details of the 26 days I spent in Juarez, so I will split up my vacation into categories and talk about that in a more general way.

Family
I was super happy to see my parents, I don’t think I had ever spent so long without seeing them. My mom just started a new job as head nurse in a new fancy hospital in Juarez, and she is super busy getting her nursing degree AGAIN! (when she went to nursing school it was just a technical career and no degree was given, so she is studying it again! Way to go Mom!). She was a bit sick and hospitalized in November, so I was glad to see that her health is great and she is as pretty as ever! My dad is planning his first ever trip to Europe this july! I am super happy for him and most of his Christmas presents were trip-related (Ger and I got him an awesome day-trip bag). I hope I get a chance to travel a bit with him when he’s there.
We spent Christmas at Gera’s house. We ate turkey and had cheesecake for dessert. We were all together for the first time in years (by “all” I mean Gera’s parents, brothers, and nephews and my parents and siblings). Then we spent New Year’s at my parents’ house. We had tamales and carrot cake. Roberto’s plane left early on January 1st, so we had to celebrate midnight like an hour later, so they could be at home and in bed before midnight.

Friends
I had lots of time to visit with friends, and go out to parties. I even got to go to a Quinceañera!! Of course, the time spent is never enough and I was very sad to leave, specially because I left my very pregnant friend STILL pregnant (we were hoping she would pop while I was there). She had her baby almost 2 whole weeks later! Since I don’t have a car (nor a driver’s license, hehe) I spent a lot of time at home, and pretty much depended on friends to come pick me up (or on my sister to come home from work so we could go do something), so even though I did go out and had fun, I also spent a lot of time at home alone watching TV (hey! contrary to what you might think, the world does not revolve around me, and everybody has a life!)

Food
We ate a lot! We got fat, we knew that would happen and were ok with it. I fulfilled all the items on my list, except 1: yoghurt ice cream from a special place in Juarez (it was cold and I never really felt like ice cream…). Everything else was crossed off, sometimes even more than once! (Taco Bell, Arbys, dominos pizza, McDonalds, Sonic, Wendys, Hardees, Birthday cake, steak, shrimp/seafood, Barbacoa, tacos al pastor, tamales, sushi, carne asada, flaming hot cheetos, blue moon, root beer, vanilla coke). It was, as I said before, a gastronomical fest, and we enjoyed it all. Gera of course ate other things as well, like lamb and buche, which I really don’t like. Now that we’re back in Zurich, we’re eating better and going out for walks 3 times a week. I think we’re almost back to our initial weight, which was high to begin with, so we’ll keep going until we are thin, fit and fabulous!

Shopping
I’ve said before that stuff here is expensive… so when I went shopping in Dallas (and El Paso) I was going crazy with the super low prices!! And I wanted to buy everything! Of course I limited myself to things I needed, like clothes. Oh, and a luggage set, and a small shopping bag with wheels. And shoes. And Christmas presents. And hair products. I was concerned that my bags would be too heavy, so I really did not go overboard. Really.
The bags were not too heavy, and I even got to bring back a couple of mini blocks of Valveeta cheese (there’s no yellow cheese here! Its killing me), a bottle of Frank’s Red Hot Sauce (for wings), and a few packets of cornbread mix (thanks Adri!).