workin' my way home: It's a... Surprise!

Well, sort of. We know the gender of our baby. We even knew for a few hours before our family found out. As a little girl, I always wanted to wait to be surprised with either a little boy or girl upon their arrival. I always thought I'd convince whatever man became my husband and the subsequently father of my child to think the same way. Then there's the reality of finding out we're expecting a baby. Everything I *thought* I'd do a certain way... well, it seems like I'm not really doing it that way.

Like finding out the gender. We decided to go for it. As a bit of a compromise, we opted to have a "Gender Revealing Party." << Okay, okay, I know. It sounds a little awkward. Would you prefer we call it a "Baby Sex Party"? That's 100 times worse, and it would probably land us on the pedophile/predator list... I digress >>.

So the big day arrived (04/08/2011). We show up for our appointment at 9 am for the usual routine- pee in a cup, check weight, blood pressure. Everything looks good. We take a seat, indicating aloud that we're excited for the ultrasound. The nurse says, "Um, we don't have you down for an ultrasound." WHAT? There has to be a mistake. We've been looking forward to our anatomy ultrasound- we've even planned a party to surprise our family with the news that requires an ANATOMY ULTRASOUND. The nurse leaves, and the doctor comes back. They can get us in at 3:15 that day. Of course Preggo breaks down into tears, and the hubs is extremely sweet and supportive << he later admitted that he was as upset as I was, but he knew I was expressing enough for both of us >>. The office promises to call us if they get a cancellation sooner. Distraught, I head back to work. Less than an hour back at work we get a call- they can see us at 12:30. WHEW!

Well... which is it?!?

The little runt did not disappoint! Within the first 15 seconds we got our answer. Then for the next 15 minutes, we chased the wiggle worm all around my womb checking for fingers, toes, heart function, brain formation, bone length, and all that good, sweet, 'growing a baby' stuff. My passenger weighs a whopping 12 ounces! We've got a 3/4 pounder on board.

So now we could finalize the details for the big reveal! Colors for the party were fun and gender neutral: green, orange, and yellow.

We had some jelly beans in a bowl, iced lemon and orange sugar cookies, and in the background of the pic below are the yellow packages that each family opened, contents inside revealing whether we're having a BOY or GIRL..

We used the balloons to create XX and XY wall chromosomes.

We had some orange flowers and framed ultrasound photos.

Yellow flowers and more framed ultrasound pics.

A hand-made sign to welcome the guests...

A fruit bowl, with - you guessed it - oranges, lemons, and limes!

We also had a couple of pitchers of ice water with slices of lemons and limes, but we didn't photograph those. Now for the actual reveal, I'd heard about putting food coloring in the cake and then covering it with icing so no one knows until it's cut what the gender is. While I always like the idea of cake, I don't particularly love the idea of eating a pink or blue cake. I could give you pink cake- in my head, I can assume it's strawberry flavored... but blue? Yuck!

So we opted for little goody bags for everyone to open at the same time. They were wrapped in yellow tissue paper, tied with orange and green ribbons. Inside was a seed packet with wildflower seeds (either pink and red or blue and purple flower seeds) with a label that said either a sweet little girl or a precious little boy was in bloom.

Team XX pictured here!

Team XY pictured here!

I guess you want to know what was in the package. It would be very cruel of me not to tell you, wouldn't it?


IT'S A BOY!!!

For fun, we added a little package with 2 wrapped almonds, held together with a blue clip. Here we are, proud to announce that we're having a son... The Bocangel name will carry on for at least another generation!