Friday, January 27, 2012

Surprise Internet Baby Shower

As my followers (haha, I have followers?!) should know, I live in Germany. Here in Germany, Baby Showers are not really popular. It's slowly becoming something being done in Germany, however, I have/had no intentions of having one.

Why?  

First of all, the main people that I want to be here (my family and best friends in California) would not be here. Second, it's expensive to get them all here. As it is for me to go there, and it would be a pain bringing back so much stuff through German customs. Third, my husbands family and I are not *that* close. Sure, we talk occasionally, but we are far from best friends. And ever since the passing of my father-in-law in October 2011 (RIP), there has been a lot of tension amongst my husband and his siblings. (Long story..) Fourth, of the friends that I have made in Germany, none of them live where I live now! We moved a state away last year in February (about a year ago), and I have yet to make any really good friends here in the new location. (We are 2.5 hours away from our previous home.)

So, I am in this sort of "Support Group" on Facebook with a bunch of friends. There are, give or take, 30 of us in the group. A handful of people in the group I've been friends with since the "Myspace days," prior to converting to Facebook. And a lot of the members I met through those friends. We are each others support group. We talk about the most random shit, the good, the bad, the ugly, and the sexy. Although, mostly sexy. (A lot of topics turn into someone "hitting on" the other. hahaha) I am the only member NOT living in the USA. The other members are located all over the states. I have not personally met any of these members, however, many of them take vacations to locations where others live and they meet up. Last summer we had a postcard exchange. I sent out postcards to everyone who participated, and received some from them as well. That was definitely something that was affordable and fun.

In any case, back in November-ish, I had a somewhat emotional day and I was complaining about not being able to have a baby shower due to all of the aforementioned. I had read so many stories online from different baby groups that I am in (BabyGaga.com, TheBump.com, BabyCenter.com, Facebook, etc.) about baby showers and something finally pushed me to my wits end. What exactly that was, I do not remember. Though it could have been of the hundreds of complaints that were something like:

  • My ex-best-friends-sister-in-laws-cousin can't make it to my Baby Shower because she lives 2 hours away and her car broke down! I'm so mad!
  • I registered at 15 different stores and all I got was this lousy $200 gift card from Amazon!
  • I asked for only baby sizes 3-6 months! What am I going to do with all these newborn socks?!
You get the point..
My response has always been something along the lines of "Be happy with what you get!" So I complained to my support group and they helped to cheer me up. They jokingly said something about sending me gifts, but I mentioned how much shipping is and that customs is often a bitch, and the joke died down. Then I forgot about it. (Minus the occasional post from preggo girls in random groups I'm in.. Which I try to ignore..)

Fast forward to today.

I had already eaten breakfast and walked the dog. I turned my laptop on and made a coffee and some toast. As my toast finished, I brought it to the table and as soon as I sat down, the door bell rang. It was a delivery. A package from the states. I knew it was from the states purely from the box (USPS Priority Mail box). My first thought was "Who the fuck sent me a package?" because they are expensive and I typically know when I'm getting something in the mail.. Especially a friggin' BOX.

On the box it said it was from "Support Group." I opened it up to find this note on top:


How stinkin' cool! My support group thought of me! I was so overwhelmed I started crying! I posted in the support group "WTF!! You guys made me cry today!" with a picture of the note and the box. This was just before noon my time, which means it was hardly 6 AM on the east coast, and hardly 3 AM on the west coast. I knew that it'd be a few more hours before they all woke up, so I decided not to go through the package and set it aside until they woke up. I did, however, see the "Customs Declaration" sheet that stated the contents of the box: 1 baby blanket, baby clothes and greeting cards. YAY! I was super excited to get ANYTHING for the baby.

As my support group started waking up, they started posted things like "Ok, everyone needs to wake up now so we can give her THE REST of her gift!" To which I was completely surprised. Like I said, I wasn't expecting anything, and this box was awesome to begin with. What more could they be giving me, being so far away and all?!

I waited a couple more hours. When almost all of them were online, I was invited to another group. This was a group that they kept secret and talked very bad things about me in! hahah. Just kidding.. Actually, this group is where they planned the whole thing out. It turns out they'd been planning this for a while. So I wrote a big thank you message in the group, and told them I had waited to go through the box. They asked for my e-mail address because they had another surprise for me. And they wanted me to record this all on video. OK.

So I used the video function directly in the group since I cannot exactly record myself on my phone while opening this stuff. Luckily, I've figured out how to share this video on the web even though it's a "secret" group. It's kind of embarrassing for me, since I'm a crying blubbery mess at the end, but I'm sure everyone else will enjoy it.

Make sure you have a box of tissues handy if you're an emotional person!




If anyone didn't catch what exactly happened, I opened the box to read my cards, started looking at the clothes, and then I got my e-mail from them. I started to read the e-mail and found out that together they all raised over $700 and sent it to me through PayPal! They all wanted to send me gifts, but the international shipping was so ridiculous that they decided to just get their money all together and send it to me through PayPal so that I could buy things for the baby myself! 

Isn't that fucking AMAZING?! 

I truly feel blessed to have such awesome internet friends. I was, and still am, completely floored. Words cannot express my gratitude!

After pulling myself together, I was getting ready to take some pictures of the things they got me, for blog purposes, of course. They asked me when Husband would be home and, at the time, it should have been another 1.5 hours or so before he'd be home from work. I told them I'd try to get a video of him when I told him the news.. And literally as I wrote that he got home from work!

I grabbed my phone, turned on the camera, and ambushed him. haha. This is the result:




I LOVE this video! I love that he freaks out about the baby clothes, and then he was speechless! Again,words cannot express how thankful we are right now!

I truly have some amazing friends.

THANK YOU!! THANK YOU!! THANK YOU!!

4 comments:

  1. I'm crying all over again!!! LOVE YOU, MOMMA!

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  2. AWWWWWWWWWWWW YEAH. SUPPORT GROUP LOVES YOU.

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  3. I love this so much! I'm so glad we get to have the privilege of knowing you and that you and Uwe get to go and get some awesome stuff for the new baby! :)

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  4. reading this made me cry Roni! i wish i could be in your shoes (but we both know why that cant happen) seeing you blog and keeping everything updated means alot to me lol. ughh now the tears a really rolling. i just wanna say im reallly happy for you and i enjoy "following" you! i love ya and my best wishes and thoughts go to you and Uwe.
    -Oreo xoxo

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