The Story of the Pictures

If you weren't able to figure it out from the pictures...Samantha is going to be a big sister. Yep we are having a baby (or maybe two) near the end of the year.

We decided to do in vitro again, but Brent said that he didn't want to tell anyone this time. He wanted to just be able to say "Surprise! We are having a baby!"

We knew on March 24th that my pregnancy test at the doctor's office would be on Good Friday, so we started making plans for what to do on Easter weekend. We were already supposed to travel to San Angelo for Easter, but we decided that we would go to Clifton first and surprise everyone by just showing up and making our announcement. (We never really considered that IVF wouldn't work, we just planned for it working.) One of my friends announced her pregnancy to her blog readers by posting a picture of her younger son wearing a shirt that said "Middle Child", so I got the idea to get Samantha a "Big Sister" shirt and not say anything to our families but to see how long it took them to notice. Brent thought that was a good idea. We ran into a problem, though. I couldn't find a big sister shirt small enough for Samantha. The smallest we could find was 2T. That would swallow her!

I remembered another friend making her son's halloween costume by making iron on transfers with her home computer, so I decided to do that. I found a couple of plain shirts and used my scrapbook program to start designing the iron ons. We decided to make 2 shirts so that we wouldn't have to worry about keeping one shirt clean for 2 days. It took me about a week to come up with 2 designs that we both liked, but when I put them on the shirts, they looked terrible! Apparantly the iron on paper "for white or light colors" ought to really be only for white, because the colors of the transfers changed a lot! So back to Wal-Mart I went, and found the transfer paper for dark colors. Then back to Target to get 2 more shirts. This time it worked, with the colors looking exactly like they did before being ironed on. Yeah!

We got the car mostly packed up on Thursday (4/9/09) evening and I finshed getting a couple more things together on Friday morning. Then, while Brent fed Samantha breakfast, I went to the doctor's office for my bloodwork. We knew that we wouldn't have the results until that afternoon, so a few days earlier, I took a home pregnancy test, just to be sure. As soon as I got home from the doctor's office, we changed Samantha into her big sister shirt and left for Clifton. It felt so weird to be leaving town and not calling to tell anyone we were on our way.

Brent and I also had a bit of guilty conscience hitting us b/c we had both basically lied to our moms. My mom had asked me if Brent would be off for Good Friday. He was because of the slow production they have been having, but it wasn't specifically for Good Friday. They actually don't get Good Friday as one of their holidays. So my answer to my mom was, "Mom, he works for a corporation. They never get Good Friday off." Brent's mom was talking to him on Thursday evening about us going to San Angelo, and asked, "So you couldn't make it out there this evening, huh?" And biting his tongue, he just told her "No." Then he almost ruined the surprise because he almost said "See you tomorrow" to her. He managed to keep from spitting it out, though.

When we arrived at the Grelle house, Mom and Dad were at the office, but we kept driving to the house. By the time we managed to get out of the car, Mom was already there, and Staci had made it outside, too. They noticed Samantha's shirt immediately and were very excited. Dave was outside when they saw it, so who knows if he would have noticed on his own or not. Dad was still at the office, though, so he didn't know anything. When he got to the house, he hugged us, and started playing with Samantha. Brent kept straightening out her shirt, trying to draw dad's attention to it. Finally he saw it, but it still took him a minute to get it. Then he was very excited!

Mom called Uncle Charles and Aunt Ginger and told them that we were there and that they should come over, but that if they weren't able to come in the afternoon, we could all have dinner together that evening.

The guys all left to go play golf for the afternoon, and it was just us girls at the house. Right when we were getting ready to go meet the guys for dinner, Samantha threw up all over the place. So she and I had to change clothes and mom had to clean her living room rug. Needless to say, we were a bit late getting to dinner.

Brent later told me that before we got there, Dad asked Charles and Ginger "Have you heard the news?" When they asked what news, he started backtracking and said that if they don't know, he isn't at liberty to say. Then he also told them that when we arrive, to be sure to look at Samantah's shirt.

Brent and Dave met us at the door of the restaurant and Dave immediatley noticed that Samantha was wearing a different shirt, and was disappointed until I showed him that it also said Big Sister. We got to the table and Dad noticed that her shirt was different, but he couldn't see the front of it, and said something about not wearing her shirt anymore. Brent told him that it is OK because it was the same. Samantha was holding her lambie and blankie, so no one could see the front of her shirt yet. Dad then told Brent to show Charles and Ginger the shirt, and once they saw it,they immediately congratulated us.

Brent also told me that Dad told him at some point "I'm sorry, Son, I'm just so excited." about pointing the shirt out rather than waiting to see if they noticed. We can understand...we are pretty excited, too.

We left Clifton to go to Sana Angelo on Saturday morning, and once we were a little way out, I saw that I had a voice mail from my mom. I called her back and told her that I hadn't heard my phone ring, so we must have been in a dead spot when she called. (Of course, I knew that we were, because when we are in Clifton, unless we are actually in town, there is no signal for us.) Mom said that she figured that and was just checking on us. This was about 11am that we were talking now, and I told her that we got a little later start than we had planned and we were still almost three hours away. She said that was fine and she would see us when we got there.

Samantha finally fell asleep and slept until we had to stop in Ballinger. Then she woke up and was very cranky for the rest of the trip, so as we were getting into town, I called Mom and Kathy and told them that we were going straight to Grandma's house so that we wouldn't have to put Samantha back in her car seat after getting her out. They both said that they couldn't come immediately but that they would come in a little bit. We got to Grandma and Grandpa's house and let Samantha play on the floor and with Grandma and Grandpa. I kept standing her up, straightening out her shirt, trying to draw attention to it, but neither of them said a word.

Kathy got their about 45 minutes later, picked Samantha up and said, "What does your shirt say?" As soon as she read it, she got it and congratulated us. Then grandma said, "I was wondering why she had a shirt that said big sister, but I just figured it was a hand me down." We all decided she was just crazy! Hehehe...

Mom came over a while later and sat down beside Samantha. After a while she noticed Samantha's shirt and said "Big sister. You're not a big sister" I said, "Oh yes she is!" Mom said, "To who?" I said, "We don't know yet. We don't even know how many yet." Then Mom got it, too. She said that she also figured the shirt was a hand me down.

Dad came a bit later than mom, so he wasn't there when mom saw the shirt, and we didn't say anything to him. He didn't notice anything by the time we left to go eat. We got to the restaurant and he still didn't notice, so finally I stood Samantha up in my lap and said, (speaking as Samantha) "Grandpa, look at me." He said "uh-huh. You're standing up." I said "Grandpa, look at my shirt." He said, "I see. Big sister." and didn't say anything else. Brent was standing beside him and asked "What does that tell you?" Dad said, "That she is a big sister." I groaned since he had absolutely no reaction and said "My entire family is clueless!" And Brent kept leading Dad until he finally came to the conclusion that we are having another baby. Good grief! I thought it would be so obvious!

One we got back home, we wanted to wait to make the announcement to our class until we had told our small group, so on Wednesday, we put on the big sister shirt again and headed off to the Williams house. We were the first ones to arrive, and Beverly noticed pretty quickly and congratulated us. Everyone except James and Tammy arrived before Jill finally noticed what her shirt said. And everyone congratulated us. We had started thinking that no one would notice at all. Beverly even came over at one point and quietly asked me if anyone had said anything and I told her no. So, Yeah Jill! You got the word out!

When James and Tammy arrived, I told Tammy to look at Samantha. She did and said how cute. I told her to look at the shirt, and she again said how cute. Then she realized what it said and did a double take. That was kind of funny to watch her expression change.

The next morning I sent an email to our class just saying, I thought you might like to see these pictures of Samantha. A couple people replied, so I know at least some peole got it. We will see on Sunday if everyone did or not.

Anyway, so we had a lot of fun with our announcement, and now we have some great stories to tell to go with the pictures. :)