Family Baby Reveal

Before becoming pregnant I always figured I'd wait until after the first tri-mester to tell anyone but it quickly became apparent that was going to be REALLY HARD.

I'm extremely close with my family, and my husband's family, and since I speak on the phone to my mom every day it was becoming harder and harder not to share the exiting news with her. Not to mention my dad had been giving my husband and me a hard time about not yet being with child for almost a year so his joking jabs were starting to feel a little ridiculous when he had no idea that, in fact, there was a bun in the oven.

We did wait until our first ultrasound to see the heartbeat and meet with the Dr. but we decided 8 weeks was a fine time to tell them.

Side Note: I've always wanted children, I'm almost 30 and we've been married for over a year so it's not like the idea of us being pregnant was a grand surprise however we still wanted the announcement itself to be a bit of a shocker. And let me tell you it was.

How We Did It: The Family Reveal

My parents live out in Southern California (we live in Chicago) and we wanted to do it in person, but we knew we had to arrive at their house unannounced for the surprise to work. We got lucky with the fact that our family has a bit of an inside joke about baby announcements since my brother has 3 kids. All of which they happened to announce (or tried to) at a Maggiano's. The first time it was random, the second time it was planned but under the radar. The third time they tried to get my parents to join them for dinner and when my parents kept saying they couldn't they finally had to budge and say "we were going to take you to MAGGIANOS!". Anyways, Maggianos in our family has become synonymous with baby announcements since that's about the only time we've eaten there.

My husband was already out in California for work on a Wednesday so on Thursday I met him at LAX, we grabbed our rental car and headed for Orange County. I knew my mom was working until 7PM that night and in our normal daily ocnversations I had been asking her what she was making for dinner each night (totally normal for us). So I knew she was torn between making dinner and going out for fish tacos on Thursday. While we were in the car on the way down around 6PM I gave her a ring at work and she confirmed they were making dinner at home - PHEW.

We stopped at South Coast Plaza, picked up some Maggiano's and headed for Laguna.

When we arrived to their condo development we quickly realized we didn't remember the code for the gate but luckily someone came along and opened it up after about 5 minutes. We were in.

We parked right near their condo, and could see the lights on - confirmation they were home! We tip toed up the steps nice and quiet, rang the doorbell and the rest is history below! As you can see they were beyond surprised!