Announcing my pregnancy through baldness:)

So how did we go about telling the family about our future kid you may ask?? Well, since we decided to wait until I was 12 weeks along to tell the family we had 7 weeks to come up with something fun and creative.

We had a family vacation planned with Dan's 3 brothers and Dad and we decided to spill the beans there. We let my parents and brother know the night before we left on our little trip.

Baldness is a common joke on both sides of our family so it only seemed natural to tie it in to our announcement. My Dad has a side balding spot due to dropping a cabinet on his head and ruining his hair follicles there about 5 years ago. Dan on the other hand...well his widow's peak/receeding hairline is all natural:) hee hee. Either way, the two tease each other constantly about their baldness

So I made this shirt for Dan to wear:

We ate dinner at their house that night and Dan had a different gray t-shirt on upon arriving. Once we started to eat he excused himself to use the restroom and came out with this shirt on instead. We thought it would take my family awhile to notice he had changed but my brother noticed before he even sat down! But, it did take them quite awhile to decipher it's meaning mostly I think because they didn't even see it coming! I thought my parents might have already figured it out but they thought we wouldn't have kids until after Dan graduated so it came as quite a surprise (a welcomed one though! Especially since our kid will be their first grandchild!).

Next, we told Dan's brothers and Dad while we were on vacation in South Carolina. (Sorry the picture is harder to see on this one, I had a closeup but somehow erased it. It says Frontal Baldness= Result of ONE on the way and Total Baldness = Result of having 3!) Dan represents the frontal baldness and his brother, Spencer, is the one who is totally bald. Once gain, teasing regarding baldness is extremely common in his family as well:)

We were in charge of dinner the first night so it was the perfect opportunity to make our announcement. Once again, Dan wore a different shirt for the day and excused himself and went to change it shortly after we blessed the food. This time our planned worked almost too good! Not only did no one say anything about the shirt during dinner, (although we caught several of the family members staring at it...) we thought they might never notice! So after we finished eating Dan purposely sat across from Spencer until he noticed the shirt. At which point he freaked out that the shirt was making fun of him...the best part of all was that he didn't realize the meaning behind the shirt because he was too concerned about the joke behind his own baldness:)

When he finally put two-and-two together we all heard a MAJOR girly scream along with some jumping up and down from the other room. Let's just put it this way...the rest of the family quickly figured out what he was freaking out about!

Lastly, upon arriving back to Utah we went straight to Dan's mom and stepdad's house. Dan's mom spends about a month each summer in Guatemala and had just arrived back home. We wanted to make sure she got to hear it directly from us before the news started to spread:) This time Dan wore the shirt from the very beginning because our flight got in late and we both had work early the next am. They caught onto the shirt almost instantly but were as equally excited as everyone else:) Our kid will be the 19th grandchild for them!

Paintin', weedin', and lots of bakin'

Awhile ago I mentioned that in order to fill the void of homework I started a bagillion projects at once it seemed! I finally took pictures of my finished projects for everyone to see....

Painting

First, I re-stained our kitchen cabinets and add hardware, it was a huge job but I am glad I tackled it. I have always wanted dark cabinets with green walls. Now it makes me want new countertops even more!

Before:

After:

Weeding Next, Dan and I decided to put a retaining wall around our tree in our front yard. We haven't been able to plant anything there because of all the roots. We dug some of them out, added about a foot of dirt and the brick wall. We haven't added any plants yet, we will probably just wait until next Spring.

After:

Next, we decided to extend our garden and build a new frame. It's hard to tell since I took this picture after the project began, but the old garden was just the small section with weeds in it on the left. Last year it was way too small for everything we wanted to plant.

After...We now have 5 sections with walkways in-between (thanks to my dad and brother's awesome building skills!!!). We planted pumpkins, squash, zucchini, and a salsa garden.

Baking

Lastly, I've been doing lots of baking! Needless to say....I haven't begun any new major projects because of having a bun bakin' in my own oven takes quite a bit of energy. Yup, for those of you that don't know Dan and I are expecting our own little muffin Feb 27th. I am currently 13 weeks along. We are excited for our family to soon be a family of 3:)

This is our little muffin at 10 weeks along...