Suprise Brandi!

As many of you know, my sister Brandi is adopting a little girl from China, so this past Saturday my neices, my brother-in-law, and I threw her a suprise adoption Shower. To our suprise the party actually remained a suprise to her up until she walked through the door. Considering that my neices (blabber mouthes), her husband, and about 20 other people new about this shower, it was a suprise to us to see it pull through and remain a suprise shower. Not to mention I sent all the shower plans to her by accident, while trying to e-mail them to Amanda. Oops, my bad :)
The party was decorated in a Chinese theme complete with dragons, flags, zodiac signs, fans, and of course Chinese favorite colors red, black, and yellow. There was also an All About China board and a sign welcoming Kalia to our family and of course we couldn't forget lots of good food, goody bags, and a grand prize basket.
But of course, before there couldn't be a party, there had to be a lot of planning and preparations. I got Amanda and Dan on my side and they found a list of about 30 people who wanted to come or send a gift and they arranged a church to throw the party at for free! Alvina (from Dan's work) offered to make the cake as a gift to Brandi and a family friend (Wendy) offered to create a delicious Chinese treat, egg rolls. I did all the shopping and found a lot of great decorations from orientaltrading.com, as well as from Hobby Lobby and of course Wal-Mart. I also searched high and low for various Chinese information to create an All About China board to help give everyone some knowledge about this country. I even went as far as asking Brandi to answer some questions for me, but of course it was for a "report" :) We arranged a couple of times for the girls to come down and help with crafts, cooking, and filling goody bags. So far so good and now it all came down to the day of.
The party was scheduled at three, so I got up early and started to prepare Sweedish meatballs, sandwiches, and BBQed Lil' Smokies. After loading the van down with what we thought was everything, we headed to the church and started to decorate around 1:00pm and cook the jalapeno bites we had prepared the night before. At about 2:15 we realized we had forgot to bring the grand prize basket, so James had to travel all the way back down from New Bloomfield to Eldon to get the prize. We got done decorating about 15 minutes before the party was supposed to started, but the party started about 10 minutes late, while we waited on some guests that were running behind.
We called Dan about 3:10pm and gave him the signal to bring her down and then the fun began! It was quite funny, because she thought she was heading to town to get some stuff for supper, but when he pulled into the church she was so confused. She came through the door rolling her eyes and when we yelled suprise she looked up with a even more confused look. She had no clue whether to smile, laugh, or duck for cover :) Her first responce was "What are you guys doing here?" After the initial shock she started to warm up and have fun.
We ate first in order to give some late guests a chance to show up. After we stuffed our belly's we planned a few of those corky baby shower games and everyone seemed to have a blast. I had three team games planned and prizes were given out by drawing tickets that were given out as people entered. The first game was Jeopardy and although they all did pretty good, I was expecting it to be to easy.
The second game was "Feed the Baby" game. Everyone got a partner and fed picked which one was the "baby." Then they were all give baby food (applesauce) and a giant bib and then they learned the twist of this game was that the baby's couldn't use their hands and both people were blind folded :) It was pretty funny watching the different technigues, but I would have to say my favorite group was my mom and my sister Cheri. My mom was feeding Cheri and she had applesauce all over Cheri's face and clothes! It was halarious! The team with the best technique was Amanda (my neice) and her other grandma, Dorothy. Although they fell behind the pack, they had the least amount of applsauce on the "baby."
The third and final game was the "Pregnant Egg Race." In this game people were asked to place a balloon between their legs, place one hand on their back, all while balancing an egg on a spoon. This made everyone look like they were pregnant and waddling around the room. This was also halarious to watch! Mom chickened out and said, "I had to video tape." A pretty poor excuse if you ask me :)
After the games were done, Brandi opened presents and got a lot of cute outfits, a car mirror (to see the baby with), plenty of toys, and even some money. She also got the money from the raffle as well as some books to start Kalia's first library. She even got lucky enough to win a prize out of the prize drawings. Hope you liked Everything Brandi!
After she was done with presents we drew for the Grand Prize winner, which was Brandi's friend Wendy. The basket was filed with various bath stuff, candles and holder, and a Chinese relaxation songs CD. People then started to file out with their dragon goody bags that were filled with a Chinese fan, either Merigold or Morning Glory seeds, a Chinese key chain, an Almond Joy, and some hug and kisses.
After we got the church tidied up, we all went back to Brandi's for Margaritas. We couldn't stay long because we had to pick up the kids, but we stayed for about an hour before we headed back to Eldon.
Overall, I think everyone had fun and Brandi had a day to enjoy herself before going back to getting stuff ready for her new baby girl! I will be posting pictures as soon as possible, but I must download them first.