…I know it is a little late, but wanted to share our Christmas card with you all…
We are so excited to share with the world that we will be welcoming a little bambino (or naval orange if you go by the current size on my iphone app) in July! I hit the 14 week mark on Wednesday and am SO happy to be cruising into my second trimester.
We chose to wait until Christmas to break the news to our families, and had so much fun thinking up creative ways of telling them. Every night before we went to bed we had a routine of looking up video’s of the week we were in, talking about names and planning out how our big reveal would go. The timing was great to tell our families at Christmas as it was the 12 week mark and they were free to tell their friends and talk about it openly. It was important for us to tell them face to face as well, and living in Vancouver meant the first time we would see everyone in person was Christmas…and it was so special!
So, if you are looking for ideas, i’ll share ours with you!
For Matt’s family, as it is their first grandchild, we wanted to do something personal with their new names like Auntie Becki. We printed off a 12 week ultrasound (unfortunately it wasn’t our baby, but we had had our dating ultrasound at 6 weeks so there wasn’t much to see), and added little personal speech bubbles from the baby to the family member. Here are a few examples.
We got these printed, put them in frames, and then had them open the gifts on Christmas Eve. This blog actually worked as a great cover and helped with our surprise, as we told them I had been working on a craft for the family. My mother-in-law was sure I had crocheted her a scarf, so it was amazing to see their faces when they opened the gifts and saw it was a grandchild!
For my family, we took a little bit of a different approach. My brother and sister-in-law have two handsome little boys so this was the third baby announcement to happen for the Doells. Matt found a really creative way of telling them, that incorporated a riddle for them to figure out in order to find out. We added our own twist and this is how it went.
Before we drove to Kelowna for Christmas we hit up the grocery store and bought these items:
We wrapped them individually and placed their names on the outside. So, my brothers got Uncle Ben’s rice, my dad got Papa Johns Pizza (which couldn’t have worked out better – my nephew calls him Papa and his name is John), I got Prego etc, and we had Matt’s brother anonymously drop them off at my parents house and ring the doorbell. My mom got the box, and with no sign of Jordan brought the gifts inside with a little smile on her face. She was intrigued and trying to think of who might do this random act of kindness, all the while Matt and I trying to keep straight faces. We had a typed up note in the box to the Doell family, from Santa and the elves, and instructions to open the gifts all together. At this point my sister-in-law was on to us! Her motherly instincts kicked in and she knew something was up, I could see her face out of the corner of my eye. We opened the gifts all together, and watched as everyone tried to figure it out. My younger brother mentioned how rice is a pretty stupid gift, and my mom was trying to match the pasta sauce and the pizza box together because they are both Italian food. They were confused, but Rachel knew. Finally, after Rachel had opened her Aunt Jemima, and she had seen that I opened Prego, her suspicions were confirmed. She gave the family a good minute to work through the random gifts and then declared to the family, “Does nobody understand?! Jill’s pregnant!!!!!!!” It was the perfect timing and such a fun way of sharing our news!! I’ll never forget the looks of confusion turn to tears of joy and excitement!!
The Christmas card was sent to extended family and given to our friends as a way of breaking our news to them. I had so much fun planning the surprise and so happy with how it all turned out.
So here I am at 14 weeks, can’t wait to keep you updated !
xo
Jillian Marie
mariejanelle.wordpress.com 