A surprise for the fam

After being a total slacker and then getting hit with the plague, I’m finally getting around to posting more on how we shared the news about pumpkin {the masses – i.e. 2 of you – have spoken and this is baby #2′s nickname} with the rest of our family.

We timed a visit with by brother and sister-in-law perfectly by having dinner with them the same day as our confirmation apt. We knew we wanted to tell our family first and well, we had a hard enough time waiting until we got that first sonogram to open our mouths so as soon as I got that first picture from the doctor we were ready to go. We arrived at their apartment and shot the breeze like normal. At one point when my SIL was in the other room I motioned for Z to grab my wallet were pumpkin’s first Polaroid was waiting. He pulled it out and casually handed it to my brother.

He looked down at the photo for a few seconds without a reaction. Looked back up at me and smirked… classic reaction. My SIL walked in at that point and he followed suit by casually handing her the photo. She took it from him and said “Oh neat, where did you find that?” thinking it was one of her own from my nephew that had gotten misplaced or stuck in the couch cushions from nearly a year before. We all kind of silently smiled at her and my brother responded with, “That’s not ours”.
CLICK!
My SIL got a huge grin and shouted, “Oh my gosh, YAY!”
Hugging followed shortly there after as did information sharing like how far along I was and the due date and what not. After that we started doing what siblings to best and began plotting for my parents’ reveal. Following suit with our perfect timing, they were coming into town that weekend for a visit. I was planning on utilizing the same frames I’d used to share the news with Z but my SIL had another, FANTASTIC idea.

My mom had this adorable Grandma book that listed out a bunch of cute facts about grandmas like… “some grandma’s have a lot of purses” or “some grandmas give you lots of books”. It’s super cute with some kid-drawing illustrations and my mom loves reading hers to the kids. I first thought about putting pumpkin’s first picture between the pages of the book and making sure my mom read it at some point during the weekend… but that wasn’t enough. My SIL is an awesome graphic designer/editor so she piped up and said she could make new book pages that look like the originals. We could change the story a bit and make it specific to my mom as a grandma of 2… soon to be 3… sweet babes. How much do you love this idea already!?!?! I was hooked and excited to see how it turned out.

We snapped a few pictures of K holding the sonogram and my SIL got to work!
Here is an original page from the book:

And here are some of the pages we added:

Holy perfect, right?

The first full day my parents were in town {we had to PAINFULLY keep our mouths shut the first night they got there because we didn’t have the book and wanted to make sure my brother’s family was there with us} we were getting ready to go out to eat. We’d planned it so that we’d all be ready to go while waiting for Z to change from his work clothes. Perfect time for “Gammie” to read her favorite book to K.
Let me tell you, my mom took her sweet time reading those first pages. Stopping to count items on the page, explaining the pictures, you name it. What you’d expect for a grandmother/grandchild reading session but it just made we secret keepers that much more anxious.
She finally arrived at the first added page and was slightly stumped at the change in page thickness but we encouraged her to keep reading.

Gammie: “Some grandmas have two grandchildren” {pause to explain the photo} ” Some grandmas have three grandchildren and don’t know it yet.” {pause- look of confusion - she’d read this book many times before so this suddenly didn’t seem familiar. My mom grinned, peeked around to the next page, closed it again before seeing what was there and looked back at my dad who had been standing behind her watching the whole time.}

Gammie: “Jesus Christ they did it to me again. {to my dad} Are you paying attention?” {turns page to reveal this picture: }

She then pointed to the page… Still in grandma mode reading to K… and smiled. It took a few more seconds for my dad to realize what was going on, since he didn’t have his glasses on to see the ‘reveal page’, but finally the news was out and everyone shared laughs and hugs.
Another announcement success!!!
We did record the whole thing but it’s pretty long… I’m not kidding when I say she took forever to read the book… and I’m quite certain my mom would kill me if I posted it so, once again, I hope the story was enough!

Next up… Telling Z’s side of the family!

Until next time…

Filed under: This and That