Living overseas you often become like family to one another. You must rely on each other because you have no family or life long friends to share the good, bad and ugly with. We come in as strangers and leave as friends. Every rotation you start again.
For the most part, we handle the transitions well. It is a part of the life we lead. But sometimes you just need for people to do a little more for you. And, we as a community, know when we should step in to do a little extra.
My friend is having her second baby. She never had a shower for her first baby, so we took it upon ourselves to shower her with well wishes, good food, and gifts galore. We wanted to do our part to make her know that she is special to us.
I was the party decorator and caterer. Lucky for me I had a bunch of stuff in my stash that I could pull and use to make our little last minute offering look a little festive.
The diaper cake. She was thrilled about receiving a diaper cake! She had seen pictures of her friends back home having baby showers and all had a diaper cakes. Who knew that something so simple could be such a gift.
The kiddos helped make tissue paper pompoms. We had just bought tissue paper at the Dollar Tree this summer when we were home for our homeleave. I mean a dollar. Here this stuff is like liquid gold, I am talking nearly 4 Euros for a pack of 10 sheets of tissue paper, and that's if you can find it.
I had purchased a couple of packs of the plain white tissue at the Dollar Tree and with a little spray mist we were able to make pink pompoms to go with the white.
The table cloth was a 3 meters of fabric I bought downtown for 12 Euros, or about 15 dollars. I hemmed the ends and viola, a table cloth in raspberry pink.
For the food, I went to Pinterest and checked out my Yummies board. I made lemon baked doughnuts, Snickerdoodle cake, baked oatmeal, fruit salad, ham and biscuits, and a cheese tray. On offer for drinks was coffee, pomegranate raspberry lemonade with sparkling water, and sweet tea. Did I get one picture of the spread of food, uh, no. But it was good.
The guest list, was straight from our community and mostly all were new comers. New comers who came to a baby shower for a woman they met just a few times. New comers and a few of us old timers, gathered to honor our friend. To let her know she is not alone. That we are here to help and support her. We will step in as family. We will be helping hands until she moves on to her next post. For some the friendship will last a lifetime. For others it will be a season. But for all it is a comfort, because we know that it will be reciprocated, if not here at our next post and as the need arises.
Have a good one,
T.
