An Adoption Shower

For the last 10 years, my dear friend Marcy has been praying for another baby.

Specifically a baby girl.

3 surgeries and a gazillion different medications later, Marcy and her Happy Hubby finally surrendered the idea of getting pregnant.

And then the Lord called them to adopt.

9 months, 5,786,532 official documents/paperwork, and 3 trips to Russia later…

They are bringing home their sweet precious girl in two weeks!!!

The whole process has been ‘a different kind of labor’ as Marcy testifies, but one that has proven God’s faithfulness time and time again.

There is absolute truth in Jesus’ words, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” John 14:18

I couldn’t have been more thrilled to be the one to throw her a special Adoption Shower.

Here are some pics of how it turned out…

Since the shower was just a few days before Valentine’s Day and they are adopting a little girl, the colors pink and red with lots of hearts seemed only appropriate!

I also found this quote from HERE about adopted babies growing in their mommies hearts to be perfectly inspiring for the heart fest that was this event. 🙂

There were also lots of martyroshkas (or Russian Nesting Dolls) – since little Evelina is from Russia.

We put together a sweet little clothesline of photographs from Marcy and her Happy Hubby’s trips to Russia.

I think it’s almost uncanny how similar Marcy and Evelina look!  Only our great God could do something like that!

My favorite thing about the clothesline was an adorable T-Shirt my friend, Abbie, made for the occasion.

She used some fabric to make an outline of Russia with a tiny little heart over the city of Moscow – about the place where Evelina’s from.

Man, it’s stuff like this that makes me WISH I knew how to sew!  I have to take my hubby’s shirts to my mom for help when the buttons pop off!

I scoured Pinterest for some yummy recipes.

The Princess Punch shown above can be found HERE.

This delicious chicken salad and grapes recipe can be found HERE.

Cheese and crackers (no recipe needed!), but what made them special were all of those magical little heart toothpicks!

Everyone was going crazy for this Fruit Salsa and Cinnamon Chip recipe from HERE.

Sticking with the heart theme – a friend brought this whimsical tray of Heart-Shaped Melon Chunks on popsicle sticks!

You can find that recipe HERE.

And it wouldn’t be a Happy Home Fairy party without my famous Broccoli Salad of Wonder (which you can find HERE).

Marcy happens to be one of the most talented artists that I know, so she has a lot of super amazingly talented and artsy friends.

One friend in particular, Megan, is an incredibly gifted cake decorator (on top of a million other artsy skills).  First on my to-do list when planning this shower was to enlist her help!

I almost cried with happiness when she brought the finished result to the party.

This shower did not seem like one where the traditional Baby Shower Games (see a great post about Baby Shower Games HERE) would work, so with some prayer, I came up with a couple of neat activities for the guests to enjoy.

First, a friend of mine baked a huge batch of martyroshka-shaped sugar cookies and we gave everyone a time limit of 10 minutes to decorate their martyroshka cookie with some provided supplies.

It was a blast!  I could not get over how creative these women were!

Marcy, of course, was the judge and got to pick her favorite design.

Here she is (on the left) with the winner!

Another game we played was a special Adoption Quiz.

This was really cool because I wanted the guests to get a window into what the whole adoption process was like for Marcy and her family.

We worked together and came up with about 20 questions for guests to attempt to answer.

Some of the questions were, “How many hours is the flight to Russia?” “What does the name Evelina mean?” “How many months of paperwork did it take to prepare for this adoption?” and so on.

My favorite question, though, was this one…

“How many times was Evelina offered up for adoption but saved especially for Marcy and her family?”

The answer?

31!!!!!

Can you believe that?!  God had a plan for Evelina to be a part of Marcy’s life FOR SURE.

Finally, we had all of the guests put their fingerprint on this beautiful tree.

Our pastor’s wife shared a brief thought on how the process of grafting is the fusing of a branch from one tree on to a separate host tree, during which it becomes a living and fruitful part of the new tree.  That new tree is changed forever as a result.

Kind of like how Marcy and her family are ‘grafting’ Evelina into their own family tree in order to bring God glory with all its fruitfulness! 🙂

All of the fingerprints are a symbol of our commitment to help Marcy and her Happy Hubby raise little Evelina and support them in the training of her precious heart!

We had a beautiful time of prayer.

People prayed for everything from a peaceful flight home with Evelina to even asking God to handle all of the details of the bonding/attachment phase of adoption.

And before everyone left the party, they got to take with them these cute party favors featuring a tag with Marcy’s dedicated Adoption Bible Verse and a little tin of mints – to remind each guest to pray for Evelina and Marcy whenever they popped a mint!

It was a wonderful afternoon of celebration.

Now we all just can’t wait to meet her in just a few weeks!

Happy Adoption Shower-ing! 🙂