It's a................

THAT'S RIGHT.....It's a GIRL!!!!! Our little sweetie finally decided to show her stuff, makes sense that she was just being ladylike and shy all that time! We are super thrilled and actually a little surprised! I was definitely thinking this would be a boy and boy was I wrong! Since this is the first girl on my side of the family we will be experiencing some new adventures. And we already have a niece on Jason's side of the family who is super excited and is going to make a great little friend and, later, babysitter to our girl. The picture above shows how we revealed to everyone. I absolutely LOVE this picture! Thanks to my BF Jessica for being our photographer and making it look all professional. It's exactly how I hoped it would be. Here is a picture right after we got all the pretty pink balloons. Definitely an exciting moment for us that I don't want to forget.

After we took the photo we set the balloons free as a sort of symbolic measure....symbolic for what? I'm not really sure, but we did it anyway!

So, as soon as we were finally able to confirm the news. We headed to tell the grandparents and totally caught them by surprise. We kept it to ourselves just exactly when we try to make our next attempt at finding out simply because, at this point, we weren't sure when we were going to get our final answer. So we went straight to the cupcake store and brought three little pink cupcakes all wrapped up like this



And inside the boxes held these sweet little treats!



First place we went was to tell my mom, Nettie, that is. My goodness.....talk about a happy woman. Do you think these pictures capture it????





: ) Such a happy exciting moment. We had so much fun surprising her and even better that we met her at my grandma's so she got to get in on the fun as well. Next stop was to Lorraine and Doyle's, AKA Nana and Pa. Pa was asleep getting rested up for work but we still surprised nana with her cupcake and she was very excited! She also informed us that she had already bought Little O her first Christmas dress, before she even knew the gender! : ) We visited for a short minute and headed out the door to get back to Benton. Next stop was to see my sister. She had invited me over anyway for a girls night just to get some takeout and visit for the night. This worked out perfectly since I planned on making a surprise stop by there anyway. Randi and I ordered takeout from the local Mexican place and I knew that I didn't wanna just whip it out in the middle of our getting the dinner process so I tucked away her cupcake and prayed we wouldn't get on the topic of the baby....WRONG-O...of course we did. No secret here that our little baby had proven to be quite stubborn so of course, sister wanted the details on the failed attempts....it was literally killing me, I wanted to scream out, but I KNOW NOW!!!!!!!!!! Instead, I waited for the perfect moment to catch her off guard. As we were cleaning up our dinner mess and about to head to the couch for some visiting. I told her it was time for dessert and pulled out the cupcake box from my bag. "Guess whaaaat, the gender of your niece or nephew lies in this box....." Naturally she ripped right into it and started jumping up and down like a little girl with her biggest Christmas wish lying right under the tree! It was AWESOME!!! So wish I would have had a video of that one. But it was a special moment for both of us! We spent the evening hashing over the details and such and just enjoying some girl time.....just the three of us ; ) Lastly, we shared with Leslie, Jeff, Zack and Allison by making a quick visit to their house. We thought it would be fun to wrap the surprise up in an envelope and let Allison unwrap and announce it. Everyone was super excited that we could finally put a gender and maybe somewhat of a personality to this baby.

The VERY last reveal was to our wonderful friends. Friends like family that is. For this we decided to have everyone over for dinner and a small reveal party. Nothing extravagant. Just an intimate little gathering with several Papa John's pizzas delivered and a crock pot of cheese dip! I decided it would be fun to get my girls in on the action so I re-used our little box from the picture, stuffed some more pink balloons inside, and let them rip it open to reveal the surprise. They were ALL on pins and needles as they had been dying just as much as me to know what the baby was going to be. After all, we spend so much time together this baby already has about a half dozen aunts and uncles from this crowd alone, along with built in cousins and best friends. We needed to know if there was going to be one more boy to add to this mix or else another little girl. Right now we have 3 girls and 2 boys. Here are some pictures from the reveal.

The box with the surprise inside

TA-DA!!!  The big news is out! I have to say that even though the vote was split, or actually mostly boy on this particular night, most people were guessing girl. Even Jason. Looking back now, I remember talks Jason and I would have about children and he would always say, our first child is gonna be a girl. I would sarcastically reply, "ooookay....how do you know?" His reply, "I just know, you'll see" Guess you were right babe...I must say, what else is new? Pay attention now little O, this will be the exact thing that drives you crazy when you're 16 years old!

To sum it up, I think this picture captures it all. I went back to the chalkboard at the end of the night and snapped this pic of the altered result. I love the little "so excited" message one of the aunties added ; ) yes, sweet darling, you are loved! Are we excited? Of course. Are we nervous? Most definitely!!

Cheers and Tutus,
Kelly