Christmas and Gender Reveal

So we had our ultra sound on December 17th. We chose to wait until Christmas Eve to learn the gender of our baby. I really wasn't sure that we would be able to wait 7 days, especially having the results sitting in our living room!!! We made it though! We woke up, took pictures and then opened our stockings, and then opened our gifts! I was so pumped with my gifts! My husband really outdid himself this year! Usually we don't do big gifts and just have fun getting stocking stuffers and things that are just "big" stocking stuffers! My big gift for Stephen was tickets to the Sugar Bowl. I knew he would love a last guy trip before daddy duty kicks in! And my big gift from him, my parents and his parents was the new Canon 60D, lens and camera cards! I was pumped! We had been talking about buying a video camera for the baby, but my Canon rebel was giving me a difficult time so he decided it was best to get 2 in 1! I absolutely love it! He wrapped them in a very funny order. I had to open one large box with these 3 items wrapped inside. Then he had them numbered! I opened the first and it was the lens. I thought, "oh wow, you got me a new lens for my dying camera." Then next, was the camera card, which was the size of my Kodak cards, not my rebel compact flash card. So I was confused thinking, you bought me another camera card to go to my kodak camera-when I have at least 30...random! Lastly, I opened the camera, looked down at my belly and said to baby, "oh my goodness, aren't you so excited! We have a new camera and I can take all kinds of pictures of you!" Yay yay yay!!!

Okay, okay, on to the reveal. We set up my new camera so we could video our response. I think we were both kind of expecting a boy so we were quite shocked when we read, "It's a Girl!" But we are so very excited. I had Suzette make us two cards, one for a boy and one for a girl and had our ultrasound tech place the correct one in an envelope with the ultrasound gender pictures.

For our families, I really wanted a way that everyone could find out the gender at the same time. So I thought, I want to use a jack-in-the-box so the baby can have it as a keepsake and it's kind of a fun way to surprise everyone because a jack-in-the-box is always fun!

So the night before Christmas Eve I worked on the accessories to the jack-in-the-box. I had planned on making a penant and attaching it to the rabbit's hand. So that when he/she jumped out the arms would open and hold out the penant. Well, when I practiced the first time, the flag shot out in the air and then came flying down in my tea glass. Oops! So I made another and tried again. This time is just shot up in the air. Okay, I have to get it secure. Well, I finally got it to stay in it's hand. But then it's arms were getting weak and it quit holding it's arms open like I wanted. So we had to go with something else. We ended up making a pink bow for a girl and a blue blanket for a boy. Needless to say at this point, we ended up with a pink bow. This is when I realized I was going to have to start working on my bow making skills! =)

We drove out to the Fulton's house on Christmas Eve, but didn't share the news until Christmas day. We waited until everyone opened their gifts. We had Stephen's parent's hold the jack-in-the-box so everyone could see it and then she opened it. It was so neat! We got it on video and I just know our baby girl will love watching it on video!

We did it the exact same way at my parent's house. It was tough because we had to wait until after church and gifts to let them find out. It was such a special time to share with our families. I was amazed that my niece and nephews all picked girl! My dad always chooses the wrong sex, but this time he nailed it! My mom had just told me that morning that I was indeed having a boy because I looked pregant from behind! I was flabbergasted! She was wrong and insulting =)!!! It's all for a good cause!

Sorry for the long post, just trying to get it all in. I will be 23 weeks this Friday! Boy has time flown by!

I just realized tonight that I am going to have to make sure and get my parent's and sister's pictures since I was videoing with my camera I don't have any snapshots of them!