Virginia

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Early Saturday morning.

New York City.

Fog covers the buildings, and a misty rain continues to fall.

And I'm first up to drive.

Lovely.

It did give me a chance to listen to my music.

That's our rule, as I've said before, whomever is driving gets to choose the music.

Everyone else will listen to their music on headphones.

Know what this means?

I can sing as LOUD as I WANT when I'm driving, and it disturbs no one.

Although I do wonder what people think when they see me singing because oh yes, I'm sure you can see me singing.

I also had an opportunity to listen to the soundtrack for Godspell, and as I listened it allowed me to relive the show from last night.

Sublime.

As an aside, don't you think it's sad that the lowest gas prices we saw during our entire trip were on the New Jersey Turnpike?

It didn't take us too long to get to the baby shower - well, over 4 hours, although we did arrive 30 minutes late.

No worries.

We got there.

That was the mission.

The shower was already in session, and it was okay.

I had the presents shipped to the future grandma's house, and she kindly wrapped them for us. I also brought a pair of baby booties from Major Knitter for the future mother (she loved them a lot, by the way).

Here is the guest of honor opening her presents:

Let me tell you, I hate perfect pregnant women. You know the ones, they never gain more than they're supposed to, carry only the baby, and can fit perfectly in their original size clothing just made "maternity" by addition of a little extra fabric.
Ugh.
That was never me.
Seriously, love you T, you're a gorgeous mother-to-be.
And here's the ecstatic future grandmother - she's the one taking my picture back.

It was nice to meet up with people I haven't seen in, oh six years.
Here are Kathy (standing) and Audrey (in the chair).

It was great to visit and it made me miss living in Virginia.

We didn't run into too much traffic either which is what usually snaps me back to reality and kills that particular daydream, so that whole conversation hubby and I had about, "Could we live here again," was even more relevant.

Of course my youngest wants to move back to Northern Virginia because she likes the shopping there.

Yeah.

Uh huh.
Mother-to-be chose to have a book-themed party, as she wanted to build up her baby's library.
She also has some very generous friends.
Here's the count: 90 books, and 45 blankets.
So many blankets.
Her godmother (also her aunt) gave her four huge bags of blankets, bath towels, and clothes.
What was even nicer was that a lot of the blankets she received were handmade by either her godmother or a family friend.
Great heirlooms, for sure.
Here's the Corduroy cake (yummy).

And the future grandmother made some delicious peach punch.
I told her to give me the recipe.
She didn't.
I did, however, find it on the Web.
It's a Taste of Home recipe.

Here's what you need to make Peachy Lemonade:

10 ServingsPrep: 10 min. + chilling

Ingredients

• 8 cups lemonade
• 2 cans (5-1/2 ounces each) peach nectar or apricot nectar
• 1 cup frozen unsweetened sliced peaches
• Fresh mint sprigs, snapdragons and lemon balm

Directions

• In a 3-qt. glass pitcher, combine the lemonade and nectar;
• refrigerate until chilled. Just before serving, stir the lemonade
• mixture; add frozen peach slices. Place mint sprigs along the sides
• of the pitcher and float the flowers on top of the lemonade. Yield:
• About 2-1/2 quarts.

You know Goya carries a peach nectar, and my friend used the Simply Lemonade you find in the refrigerated section to mix with the nectar although she didn't add the flowers or lemon balm, and that's okay.

I'm sure if you made homemade lemonade and added that the taste would be completely different.

I think this will be a staple at my picnics over the summer.

It was a great book-themed party, and a good time visiting with long-time friends.

I thought I'd have time to knit at the party, but I was so busy eating, drinking, and talking that I just didn't get to it.

At the conclusion of the party when almost everyone had gone home, the future grandmother took out the invite list to check over who had come and who had not.

Audrey said, "It's a good thing you made it, Julie, otherwise there'd be a black mark next to your name!"

Now that's funny because it's true! There would have been hell to pay if we had not gone down to Virginia.

I'm glad we did.

And now we just have to wait until April to find out if it's a boy or a girl.

This was worth the crazy trip.