Surprise!

My sweet friend Mindy Warren just had her third baby, a beautiful round cheeked little baby named Gwen.  She is precious.  

A lot of people love Mindy, and even though I totally agree that a person does not need a baby shower for every single baby, a good old rockin' luau is fun at any time!

I don't think I have ever documented my long relationship with Mindy that has formed into the bond we now have.  Mindy is my Las Vegas replacement sister.  The one I can turn to for literally anything without guilt and with the full knowledge that she will let me return the favor.  She is one of those friends that makes it survivable not to live by any family.  

***Backing Up*** When I met Jon he had two roommates, Sarah (whose relationship was recently documented in my Kauai post) and Dale Warren.  When we got married, we kicked Dale out of the apartment.  (Sarah caught on quickly that living with the newly married couple would not be an option, Dale had to be kicked out :)

He then moved to California, where he met his future wife, Mindy.  You're welcome, Dale.  I met Mindy at Sarah's reception.  Within the first minutes, she told me how excited she was that I was normal since she knew we would definitely be friends through our husbands.  Who knew I gave off such a normal first impression?

Mindy and Dale lived in California for a while, then moved to Utah where they had their first daughter just 6 months after Scarlet was born.  When they moved to Las Vegas, they took over our apartment.  They then followed us over to our new house neighborhood about five minutes down the road.  

And we are now caught up.  

So, anyway, everyone wanted to throw Mindy a party but Zannie Collette and I decided to take the ball and run with it.  We wanted to surprise her to make sure she didn't have to plan or think about anything.  As an excuse, I asked her to babysit my kids while Jon and I went to the temple.  Then, we had to change dates like three times.  And the final date was on a Monday...  I made up some incredibly horrific lie about having a business dinner with some client of Jon's, it was seriously bad.  But she totally bought it.  

And this is the look of surprise and wonderment that we were greeted with.

But look how happy we are to be throwing this party for her!

She cheered up dramatically when she learned there would be no baby games and we had all pitched in on a Joanns gift card instead of baby gifts.  Plus, we fed her.  And it was really good food.  I don't remember all of the delicious food people brought, but I remember what I made.  Yeah, I'm like that.  And my contributions were delicious.  These Kalua Pork sandwiches are easy and really really delicious.  I linked the picture for your eating pleasure.  You will not be disappointed.

My second contribution was our fun fruity drinks.  We went with pina coladas, a recipe from Sarah on our Kauai trip.

1 can Frozen Bacardi Pina Colada mix (found in the frozen concentrated juice section

A few scoops of vanilla ice cream

some milk so your blender doesn't explode

and then right before serving, squeeze a lime wedge on top of your glass.  

Obviously the ingredients do not leave room of non-deliciousness but really the lime just makes it phenomenal.

We played some awesome luau games including a great round backwards charades, but my favorite was the Luau Spelling game where teams had to spell Hawaiian words out with their rear, and Mindy had to guess the word.  The best part was our spellers were surprisingly good at making the letters clear and Mindy was great at guessing the letters.  What she was not good at was remember all of the letters she guessed and putting them into a word.  It was oh so very fun.

I hope everyone had as much fun as I did.  And if they didn't, at least I got to enjoy their company and good food anyway!