How We Told Our Families

With a great secret like a new grandchild/niece/nephew to spill, I wanted to come up with a fun way to do it. M is more of a straight forward kind of guy and wasn't sure if he wanted to do anything too elaborate. We settled on the scrapbook approach.

I have been dabbling in scrap booking for a few years now and was onto my second album. Only M had seen this one so far. I created the following page to slip in the back of the book. (Now, I am not on the year 2008 yet in my scrap booking, so this page is jumping ahead a bit, but it all worked out.)



Jenny was the first to get the news when she was here visiting. I had put the scrapbook in the living room under a pile of other books and was planning on showing it to her once her kids were in bed. She spotted it before I could show her and I let her page through until she was almost at the end. I told her there was a surprise there. She figured it out right away and even had tears in her eyes as she told me congratulations.
At M's parents, I let his mom finish getting lunch in the oven and then asked if she wanted to see my latest scrapbook. When she got to the end she figured it out pretty quickly and M told his dad why she was so excited about a scrapbook. Unfortunately in all the baby talk that followed M's mom never got around to making the apple crisp for dessert. We'll see if M's dad ever forgives this baby for that. ;o)
When we got to my family's it was almost time for supper, so we all ate and then we were headed to church together. My sister and M's sister were both there, but my sister had to leave early as her choir was singing. Everyone was in one room when I went to get the book. When I came back, everyone was gone. I waited as patiently as I could and finally my mom and M's sister came back. I told them they should look at it together. When they got to the end, mom was still looking at the page before the baby page. M's sister figured it out, looked up and said, "Really?" At that, my mom figured it out, too. I think it took a while for the news to sink in with my mom.
When my dad was looking a few minutes later, he had been looking at the previous page and then his face changed as he figured it out. (I don't know how much any of them got out of the church service that night.)
We showed the book to my sister after the service. I think that she was the most shocked. She even picked me up off the ground when she hugged me. She has been bugging us about making her an aunt for a long time now.
It was so much fun to share our news with everyone and see how happy they were for us. I am glad that we got to do it with so many people in person.