10.10.2022

I feel soooo lucky to call this place home, surrounded by some of the best friends a gal could ask for!

My girlfriends planned this tropical beachy baby shower for me, Ian, and baby Moffitt.

My only request was for it to be a co-ed event so our village of fam and friends — guys, gals, and pets — could join in.

We started off on island time, of course… just a couple hours after the start time on the invitation 😉

Dad started us off with a word of prayer.

Then a buffet of food was ready to be devoured. On the menu, we had:

• Steaks, burgers, hot dogs from the grill thanks to Tim and Sam
• A colorful green salad by Chef Dee
• Mac salad and vaitipolo (freshly squeezed Samoan lemonade) by Traci and Ano
• Filipino pancit by my mama
• The best brownies on island, also by Traci and Ano

Everyone rallied for games like guess mama’s bump size, guess the age of baby Relly and baby Ian in the pics (these were displayed as cute centerpieces for each table), tinkle in the potty race, head-shoulders-knees-and-toes grab the diapers as fast as you can, and poppin’ bottles of beer and baby food.

My mom gave some words of advice.

Then Ian went up to the house and brought Yodi down in preparation for our version of a “gender reveal”…

Many thanks to Traci for giving us the idea just hours before the baby shower to have Yodi reveal the gender… we otherwise were just going to announce it by telling everyone because everything else seemed cheesy. Anyway! I had quickly made Yodi a bandana earlier in the morning using fabric scraps from an old tropical green lavalava, and hand stitched a canvas triangle scrap over the green fabric where I used acrylic paint to write out “It’s A Girl”.

For the gender reveal, we asked everyone to stand to our left if they thought it was a girl, and to the right if they thought it was a boy. When the groups were split, we gave one of our friends a piece of hamburger meat so Yodi would go to that side. Gabby counted us down and then we released Yodi from her leash and unfurled her bandana around her neck. It was pretty chaotic because Yodi ran the complete other way at first because she was so excited. From the folks who guessed boy, half yelled and half sighed because they saw that her bandana said “It’s A Girl”, and everyone that guessed girl, all yelled too! They were right!! It was cute.

While Ian and I generally think that gender reveals are a bit dated, and silly, it was a fun way to tell everyone at the same time what the doctor told us… there’s a hamburger down there, not a hot dog! hahaha.

To close off the baby shower, Ian and I shared our heartfelt thanks with everyone. We had a lot of fun, and I was happy that it was still early enough in the afternoon for us to just hang out, or dip out if we wanted to.

I changed into a bikini and got in the water to relax the rest of the day. I was only planning on hanging out in the water for an hour or two… but I ended up staying in the water until a little after 9pm (!) and we saw an epic full moon rise up out of the horizon. It was huge and bright red! It felt like the perfect way to cap the evening — under the moon and stars with our friends, and my little kicking baby bump.