gender reveal party!

When Jordan and I found out we were preggers I knew I wanted to have a gender reveal party!  I've seen some super cute parties out there and I just knew it would be fun.

I ordered invites from Bear River Photo Greetings on Etsy.

I'm sure it's no surprise to most of you that I waited until really late to order them.  Thankfully, Angie was so great to work with.  She was incredibly quick with getting back to me.  And more than patient as I changed the wording on the invite a billion times!  Once I finally made up my mind, she sent me the jpg and I just had them printed locally.  It was perfect!

July 7th came and the day actually proved to be pretty stressful.  My mom and sister drove the 1.5 hours it took to come to the appointment.  And as they were pulling into the driveway, my phone rang.  It was the OB office.  Their system was down.  For the first time ever.  Nothing was working and they didn't anticipate the problem being fixed at all that day. 

We all held it together pretty well as we talked through what our options were.  We called my regular OB office {my appointment that day was with the high-risk clinic since there are twins}, we called the Durham branch of the same high-risk office, we called a few of those 3D/4D places where you can pay out of pocket, we called my previous gynecologist, and we called a friend who is a nurse at another OB office to see if they could fit us in. 

And then....after hearing no from lots of places and the cost of the other places....I had a breakdown.  Like a big, ugly cry right in the middle of MiMi's Cafe.  I was awful.  I couldn't seem to pull it together and in fact ended up yelling at Jordan and making the situation much worse than it really was.  There was just so much build up and I wanted that night to be perfect!  Of course this would not have been as big of a deal if we didn't have 40 people coming that night to find out the genders! 

So, finally...when I pulled myself together we decided to cancel the party. But then changed our minds again and decided to hold off and see if we could come up with another solution.  I had a regular OB visit that afternoon and was hoping that maybe, just maybe they'd be willing to work with me (even though they'd already told me no).  As I was going into my appointment, my mom was on the phone making best friends with an office manager at a different ob office.  Who finally said they could do the ultrasound as long as we paid for it out of pocket {ahem...not cheap!}.  Then, when I got called back for my checkup, I ran into my ultrasound tech in the hall.  I explained all the drama and she took one look at her calendar and said, come back at 4:30 and I'll squeeze you in! 

I started to think there was hope.  But then asked, well...what about insurance?  Will they cover it?  Not wanting to get my hopes up quite yet.  And she whispered, don't worry about it...we just won't charge you.  I've never been so excited in my life!  I almost kissed her feet right there in the hallway!  Well, not really...but  I probably would have! 

So, we went back at 4:30 and had the ultrasound and then flew to my parent's house to get ready for the party - that we thought we'd have all afternoon to get ready for - when we ended up only having 15 minutes to get ready!

Okay, enough talk...how about some pictures?

Here are the details from the party:

We served lemonade in mason jars with cute paper straws ordered from The Party Fairy on Etsy.
We made orange and yellow tissue pom poms using Martha's tutorial.
We bought some fun baskets and cake toppers at Hobby Lobby (we had to ice the cake ourselves because we found out so late that the bakery couldn't do it for us).
And we had tons of food!


Some of the guests:

Jordan's brother and sister and their families couldn't be at the party.  So we skyped them when it was time to cut the cake!


Everyone was instructed to wear colors based on their guess for the genders.


Orange (1 boy and 1 girl) was the majority by far.  (Yes, my shirt is orange-ish.  It looks more pink in pictures but I definitely thought it was one of each!)

The blue team:

My mom was convinced that it was two boys.  But she wore a dress that day to the appointment and didn't have time to change for the party because we only have 15 minutes to pull everything together before people started showing up!


And the pink team:

Clearly the minority.
And clearly Ariel was not happy about that :)

So we finally got to cut the cake.

And found out that we're having.......

Two boys!

I could not have been more shocked when we found out.  I was so sure that it was a boy and a girl.  After I got over the initial shock, I got so excited!

We are so thrilled and can't wait to meet these two precious boys that the Lord has blessed us with!


And, I have to tell you the story that Gretchen (Jordan's sister) told me a few weeks ago.  When they turned off Skype after finding out the genders, Gretchen asked her daughter, Emma Claire, what she thought about two boys....and she burst into tears!  She said she wanted a girl!  So funny and sweet :)  I'm sure she'll love these boys but she was definitely looking forward to a little girl.  Maybe next time, Emma Claire!


Hope you enjoyed the pictures :) Thankfully, Courtney was willing to make me a CD of her pictures because I didn't get my camera out the whole time!