We have AMAZING friends!

When I lived in Houston, I joined a triathlon training group coached by my fellow yoga teacher and friend Cyndy.  We had spin class led by Cyndy followed by short jogs on Tuesday and Thursday morning (triathletes call these "Bricks".  I'm not sure why, but I think it's because your legs feel like bricks after you get off the bike and try to run), and we had an hour-long swim sessions on Wednesday evenings with Rice University's women's head swim coach, Seth Huston.  Shortly after I joined the coached triathlon group, Cyndy moved to Toronto, and the group mostly stopped being a "triathlon" group and became of just a "swim" group - we're not really motivated enough to be in Seth's masters swim program, but we still wanted to get together to swim, so Seth agreed to keep coaching us after Cyndy moved away.

The swim group is a super fun group of really interesting people from a wide variety of backgrounds. They usually have dinner together after swim on Wednesdays, and it's just a really easy group to hang out with - people that I probably would never have met in any other circumstance except that I was interested in triathlons.  I actually met one of my best friends through the group (Kim 1 - she and I ran together for years, and I couldn't have done my first half marathon without her coaching me through it!), and when I started dating after divorce, this was usually the first group of friends I would introduce "the guy" to.  When G and I started dating, he would meet us for dinner after swim, and after we got engaged, he started swimming us to train for his first triathlon.  It became our Wednesday night treat to swim and have dinner and laugh with friends. We both miss our Wednesday nights with swim group terribly!  I was especially looking forward to swimming while pregnant as the other ladies in the group who have done it told the baby actually makes you more buoyant.

Anyway, our swim group decided to host a virtual baby shower for us, which we think is such a super sweet and thoughtful idea.  They had cupcakes in our honor...

I believe these are from Celebrity Cupcake, one of my favorites in Houston!  I wish I could have been there to have one!!

Served on fun pink plates....

And they brought photos of all the gifts that they purchased off our Amazon Registry and had sent to G's parents house since they couldn't physically give us the gifts in person.

From L to R, Brad, Alaina, Kim 1 (I'm Kim 2), Fugy, Bette, and Gay

The sign that Brad's holding says "I have a 21 yo... in lieu of baby gifts, I bought you two boxes of condoms, to help prevent this from happening again"

Alaina also sent us 2 videos that I can't figure out how to download and upload, so I posted links back to facebook :-)

Video 1

Video 2 

We have to give a special thanks to Gay on the far right side of the photos for bringing cupcakes to everyone, and another extra special thanks to Alaina (with the visor on the left) for organizing the virtual baby shower.  And of course, a thank you to the whole group, including a few swimmer friends who couldn't make it to the actual cupcake shower, for all the new gifts that showed up as "purchased" on our registry (despite the sign, Brad did actually send some very nice items!).  We are so incredibly blessed to have such wonderful friends.  Even when we're half a world of way, they are still showering us with love!