Sharing Big News, What Do You Do?

My wonderful friend Hannah made this cake and delivered it to my in-laws!

We took a blue cupcake to my mom, Grammy, at the Christian school where she is a teacher. She had had a rough day teaching school and was suspicious about the cupcake when I was taking pictures. She actually wondered if I put laxatives in it or stuck something in it that would blow up in her face (I can't imagine why? It's not like I'm the family practical jokester or anything =) Ali had to come right out and say, "I have two brudders" before she got it.

My dad, Boppa to my kids, is also bewildered about why we told him to eat his cupcake.

He takes a big bite, asking, "What? Is this a St. Paddy's Day cupcake?" Keep in mind this is about a month AFTER St. Paddy's Day! The cupcake is also more blue than green!

"Ohhhhhhhhh!" With a little clue or two from Ali, the look of realization dawns in his eyes and he immediately gets a gloating look on his face. He was one of the few who was convinced I was having a boy. I then had to endure the "The rubber doesn't fall far from the rubber tree" Lecture which I was dreading and knew was coming. My cliche-loving Dad is convinced that people take after their parents in many ways and he was SURE I was having a boy since my mom had a girl and then two boys.

Some people like to share a happy secret quietly, some like to blurt it out loudly, and some like to announce it in creative ways. I fall in the latter category. I feel like really big news doesn't come along very often so I might as well make the most of it and make a memory! Here are the ways we announced our pregnancies to our families:



*With Ali, we got a pink and blue balloon and snuck it into my in-laws' house while they were at work and left the balloons tied to their chairs at the table, and a cute note on the table with a baby rattle on top of it that said, "Hi Grandpa and Grandma, I can't wait to meet you in 7 months!" It was their first grandchild. They were shocked and surprised! Since my folks lived 1,000 miles away I recruited my brother, who was at home then, to buy a cheap pack of diapers and write little messages all over them and he was supposed to hide them all over the house. But instead he made a trail leading out from their bedroom to all over the house and they were mystified as to why their teen boys had left diapers all over at first! It was their first grandchild too! Ironically, my frugal mom saved all the diapers and when we moved to WY, she gave them to me to use for Jeremiah!



*With Jer, both of our families were vacationing together in March at my family's cabin in the mountains for some snowmobiling. So, we had these little photo magnets in the shapes of schoolbuses because both of my in-laws are bus drivers. We put a photo of Ali in the first one and my due date with a ? next to it in the second. We all sat down to dinner and King Jo placed them on the refrigerator directly in front of the huge table, hoping the parents would notice since the fridge is bare. They didn't! In fact my parents just thought that King Jo's folks had actually brought magnets with them on vacation when they glanced up and saw schoolbuses briefly. King Jo had to open and close the freezer door many, many times to get everyone at the table to notice what he was doing and his mom was the first one to read the magnets and figure it out. My parents were sooooo surprised! It definitely takes them awhile!



*With Baby #3 we were going to be in MN for Christmas, and my parents were also going to be there visiting my dad's folks who live there. We made a little poem, rolled it up and stuck it in a tiny bootie ornament and had both our sets of parents open it on Christmas Day since we saw them both on that day at different times. To see pics of this you can read about it under my Stories About Our Family category on my blog. We also gave a bunch of our closest friends a letter to open on Christmas telling them about the baby. We snuck one into King Jo's sister's stocking and then called her on Christmas morning to tell her to check her stocking on the fire place (as they hadn't put anything else in them) and they opened it and were very surprised!



*Finding out baby's gender this time, we decided to do a cake surprise for the grandparents. So, one of my best friends from college, Hannah, is a cake decorater and she made a pretty cake and delivered it to my in-laws. They were very surprised to see a cake show up at their house all of a sudden and the top read, "Congratulations, It's a ......" They had to cut the cake to figure out the mystery. Of course the white cake mix had been dyed blue! I did the same thing with my folks here, taking them blue cupcakes the day of the ultrasound. Unfortunately, as I mentioned before, my parents have a hard time "getting" stuff. They both ate most of their cupcakes and still couldn't figure it out, even though they knew about the ultrasound being that day and King Jo's parents didn't. So, Ali had to help give them some clues about why the cupcakes were blue!



*Telling your hubby you are pregnant:



*With Ali, he was in the bathroom with me and we were both a little in shock and not sure if it was true when the test came up positive.

*With Jer, we were on our second month of "trying" (the only baby we tried for) and I was so thrilled I went WAY overboard! I look back and laugh at myself at the way it all backfired. Since I knew our baby would be born in November I cooked a HUGE Thanksgiving meal complete with EVERYTHING except turkey, as it wasn't in season, as a celebration of the little one to come in November. I made a card with a picture of a man holding a quiver of arrows and drew an arrow shooting into the quiver to join the one arrow in there. I had my camera ready. The minute King Jo walked in the door I started snapping pics and handing him the card. He'd had a bad day at work and was not in the happiest of moods and was irritated. He didn't understand the card and he was upset that I had gotten up in his face immediately with a camera. He was overwhelmed by the 10-course meal and only ate a tiny bit of it (he's not an enormous meal eater but is a big snacker, hungry all the time). I was so heartbroken I just burst into tears (pregnancy hormones) and he felt so bad he bought me flowers that night after Youth Group. He told me later that he prefers me to just come out and say it plainly than to do a big ordeal about it. He also was grumpy out of concern for me because he thought it was really early to be so ecstatic as the tests were positive a few days before my period was even due and he wasn't sure it was for real or not yet. I learned my lesson!

*With Baby #3, we went shopping together and he knew I had bought a test since I was late. Later that afternoon, I took it, and immediately e-mailed him (since he wasn't with me when I took it) a very direct-approach e-mail that said Baby #3 would be coming in August. I attached a photo of Jer to the e-mail that had a caption saying, "I'm a big brother." Needless to say, this was a much better way to break the news to him and he was excited!



I'd love to hear comments on how you share big news and some stories from you on the subject!!!