Gifts shipped to my home (etiquette question)

[clobert]

I'm having a baby shower next weekend and I've been getting gifts in the mail for about the last week.  Most are from people not attending.  One is from someone who will attend and it was wrapped in the box (its medium size).  
I'm assuming that my shower will involve a time to open all the gifts and I should bring any gifts from people in attendance and not open them.  For people who sent a gift but are not attending I should just open them and send a thank you, right?  That's what I've been doing, but when my mom asked me if my godmother should send a gift to my house or my host's house (and I said my house) she acted as though I should open the gifts from her in front of the guests even though she wasn't there.  Am I doing this right or should I drive everything down to the shower (2 hours away btw)?
Just in case anyone mails anything big or unwrapped to my home but is attending, what is the hypothetical thing to do in that case?

[Deleted]

For those not attending:

Open the gifts and send a timely thank you note. Also, you may want to call or drop an email thanking them, and also letting them know that the package arrived.

For those attending:

Open the gifts and call/email them to let them know it arrived. Do not lug the items with you to your shower. (They are shipping them to you so that you don't have to lug them around - we had several people ship big items to our home - like the swings - so we didn't have to attempt to get them into our little Corolla.) If your shower is soon, you may want to hold off on the written thank you note until after the shower. This allows you to personalize it more - "Dear Aunt Sally, it was so great seeing you at the shower. I loved getting to discuss the book that we're both reading..." and also, sometimes, even though a bigger item is shipped to you, the gift giver may also bring something small to the shower, like an outfit or something. (This happened to me a lot at my shower, actually. Big item came to my home, small item was given at the shower, completely blowing me away with the generosity.)

[ECB]

To follow on TwinStars:

Absolutely, for those NOT attending, do NOT lug the gifts to the shower. that's just ridiculous. And why exactly does your godmother want her gift opened in front of other people? Why does that matter?

As for those attending - i would assume that they sent them to your house so that you don't have to deal w/ taking them home after the shower. if they wanted their gift opened AT the shower, then why wouldn't they just bring it with them? It makes absolutely no sense to send the gift to you, at your home, for you to store/hold onto and then have to lug with you TO the shower and then lug back home.

If they actually expect you to do this, then they are clueless.

[clobert]

Thank you for confirming this for me. My registry is online and has my address, so I wasn't sure if maybe people just had it sent here without thinking.
ECB, My godmother is awesome, its actually my mom who is ridiculous. She got kind of worked up about that (why she even asked me I don't know). I'm not going to try and figure out why my mom wanted me to do that, I'm just going to say that I read that you only open gifts from attendees. Also, thanks for answering my dumb questions, I've actually never attended a baby shower and this isn't really mentioned anywhere.

[ruemorgan]

I opened them at home and then thanked them in person at my shower or gave them a call if they weren't attending.

[radiantly]

Helpful! I was going to ask the same thing but scrolled down and got my answers here. My shower is in 5 weeks but got the first boxes today in the mail!