We're Having a Baby: How We Told Our Families

Do you know how hard it has been for me to not write anything about being preggo? I actually started keeping a personal journal so that I could look back and reference it and share parts of it on the blog when the time came. When we told our families, my sister confessed that she had started stalking me on the internet to see if I was writing a secondary blog somewhere. Thankfully I was smart enough to keep it offline!!!
 

We decided to wait and tell both of our families the weekend of Easter. It would be the earliest time we could see my parents and we really wanted to do it in person. This also allowed us some time to wrap our heads around the fact that we really were pregnant.
 

Friday we asked Daniel's mom, dad, sister and brother-in-law to meet us for dinner at Cheddars in Smyrna, TN. Unfortunately Daniel and I were about 15 minutes late to the restaurant and the rest of the family was already seated. We sat down and the waitress took our order. When she was finished, Daniel handed her our camera and asked her to take a picture of the family. Before she snapped the picture Daniel said, “Everyone say cheese.” She took the picture and then we asked her to take a second one. This time Daniel said, “Everybody say Cheree’s pregnant.” The expression on Emily’s face was priceless. Our waitress kept snapping photos of the reaction. Soon Emily and Regina were crying. It was a great way to surprise all of them. We were able to spend the rest of the meal sharing all of the details of our pregnancy and answering questions.

After dinner we went to my sister's house in Hermitage. On the way, Daniel called Amy, his sister who lives in Boston, to tell her she was going to be an aunt. It was close to 10pm before we got there, so my parents were the only ones still awake {they had come over from Arkansas for Easter weekend}. We stayed up visiting with them for about an hour.

At one point my dad asked Daniel how his family was doing and Daniel said, “Well Emily and my mom cried.” I shot Daniel a dirty look and proceeded to tell my parents that Daniel’s family had been happy to see us because it had been since Christmas since we had seen them! We hoped that it was enough to keep my parents from guessing our news. We went to bed and Daniel apologized… he was exhausted and not thinking about what he was saying!!! 

 

  

Saturday we got up and visited and played with Izzy. I was debating when to tell my family. I really wanted my brother to be there and he still hadn’t showed up. Mid morning Mark finally showed up. It turned out to be a good surprise for my parents who had no idea that he was going to be in town! We are all full of surprises this weekend!  

We all ended up in Angela and Robert’s bonus room and I made the offhand suggestion to take a family picture. I set up my camera on the self-timing mode and set the function for it to take a series of 10 pictures in a row. We all got into position and I said, “Everybody say Cheree and Daniel are having a baby.” Angela started laughing. My dad grinned ear to ear and my mom just sat there. When the camera finished, my mom said, “Are you serious?” Instead of reacting immediately, she sat perfectly still for the camera smiling because she was so focused on the picture taking! Mark and Angela and Robert admitted that they had guessed. My parents had been clueless. Everyone was very happy for us. 

Best reactions were definitely from Daniel's sister and my sister.