How we told our families!

As soon as we found out we were pregnant, we starting thinking of creative ways to share our good news with family. We wanted everyone to be completely shocked and surprised when we told them, so we came up with several ideas on how to tell each of our family members. As you will read, not everything always goes as planned, but all of these stories are equally as memorable. Beware, this is a loooong post, but I really want to remember all of the details!

Kyle's family:

We usually go over to Kyle's parents house on Wednesday nights for family dinner with Ryan, Cassie and Hadley. Since we are all together, we decided early on that it would probably be one of those nights that we would announce it so that everyone could find out a once. But how? We thought about buying Hadley a "I'm the big cousin" shirt and trying to put it on her, but we couldn't figure out how we would do that without someone noticing that we were taking her in the other room. We had also thought about bringing over a jar of Prego for dinner, and attaching a cute message to it announcing that we were "preggo" - but we wanted to do something a little different. Then, while in Charleston on vacation at the end of August, I came up with an idea.

About 3 weeks later, we all were over at the Fertig's house for dinner. We ate dinner as usual, and then as we made our way back into the family room, we let everyone know that we had brought some pictures from our trip to Charleston for everyone to see. This is pretty common - if someone goes on a trip, we usually all get together and look through the pictures from the trip together. So we all sat around the TV as Kyle showed them pictures from our trip. We went through pictures of the old southern houses, downtown Charleston, food that we ate, and then we came to some pictures that we took at the beach. Before going on to the last picture, Kyle set it up for everyone by saying "And this next picture is of a cool message written in the sand that we came across while we were walking along the beach." Here's what came up on the screen:

For a few moments there was silence, then Cassie said something like "weird, there's another Fertig?" in an attempt to figure out why we were showing them this picture. And then it clicked for everyone....well everyone except for Kyle's dad. While everyone else started saying "oh my gosh" and looking at us with questioning looks, he sat there in complete confusion. Judy finally had to say to him "we're going to have another grandbaby" before he caught on! The reaction was pretty priceless, and we sat there and laughed about it and talked about everything for a little while. Overall, everyone was extremely happy for us, and I think we succeeded in surprising them with our good news!

Danielle's Family:

We'll start first with the story of my Mama, Rick, Erika (sissy), Shane, Travis and Austin. This one was a little trickier, as it's very rare that we can get everyone together at once. It just so happened that the weekend we decided to tell them was sissy's birthday. We were all going to be together Friday night for birthday dinner and then were going to a show together. However, we did not want to take the spotlight away from sissy on her big day, so I tried to get Mama to cook a roast and mashed potatoes and gravy (one of our favorite meals that mama cooks) on that Sunday to get everyone together again. We were going to do the same thing that we did with Kyle's family, and show them a slideshow of pictures from our trip. Everything was planned for Sunday, and then Mama decided to go to Missouri at the last minute. She was still going to come to the birthday dinner Friday night and the show, but she was going to leave right after that to drive to Missouri and would be gone until Sunday night. At this point, I had contemplated getting sissy a birthday card that said "Happy birthday to the best Aunt," to give her at dinner Friday night, but again, I decided that I didn't want to steal her birthday thunder. Friday rolled around, and we had pretty much come to the conclusion that we'd either have to wait another week, or tell everyone separately.

So, with nothing planned, we headed downtown Friday night to meet everyone for dinner. On our way, I called my mom to see where she was and tell her we would maybe be a few minutes late. She told me that she was going to pick up sissy, and mentioned that sissy had gone to get a birthday massage that day with Julie. At this point my heart dropped, because just the day before, I had called to reschedule a massage that I had booked to change it to a pregnancy massage with none other than Julie (we all go to Julie for massages). I had a sinking feeling that she might have said something to sissy, not knowing that I hadn't shared the news yet. So I played it off, and finished up the conversation. When I got off the phone, I told Kyle and he instantly said "she (Erika) knows." I agreed at first, but then I thought, if she knew, wouldn't she have called or texted me? She would have been way too excited not to say anything already. We figured we would be able to tell as soon as we saw her, if she was acting weird or if she said something. We made it to the restaurant just as sissy and Mama were walking in, and as far as I could tell, everything seemed normal. We sat down with everyone else and started talking and ordering as usual. Then sissy said to me "get your phone out." She then texted me "I know" - and we started laughing and continued texting back and forth. Turns out, Julie had casually mentioned how exciting it was that I was pregnant, and totally shocked my sister. She felt horrible and tried to get Erika to promise that she wouldn't tell me she knew, but sissy couldn't hold it in. At this point, Mama thought we were making fun of her from the other end of the table, and started getting a little mad at us. We promised her that we weren't making fun of her. Sissy told me that I had to tell everyone because she couldn't keep the secret, so I had to figure out a way to announce it.

We ate dinner and then sissy opened her presents from everyone. She opened our card last (we had just given her money), and then I announced that we had another gift for sissy. Everyone looked at me, and Mama said "what?" I then said "well, sissy is going to be an Aunt!" Austin said "what's that mean?" and I then looked down at Mama who had her mouth open in shock. For just a moment, it was silent, and then Mama let out a very loud scream...in the restaurant. haha! She then covered her mouth, and came down to the end of the table to hug us. She even went over to the table behind us and apologized for screaming, and told them she just found out she was going to be a grandma. We all laughed and talked about it, and the whole family gave us their congratulations. Again, I think we were pretty successful in surprising everyone, even though it wasn't the way we had planned for it to happen. I think sissy was surprised too, even though she didn't find out from us!

Next up is the story of how we told my Dad. Since my dad lives in Arizona, we didn't know how we were going to tell him. We thought about emailing the picture from the beach to him and then following up with a call, or sending him some sort of package. But we wanted a way that we could share the news as if we were in person, rather than just over the phone. We called to ask if he wanted to Skype, but we weren't able to get ahold of him that night. The next night, his number came up on my cell phone, and it happened to be my Gram on the other line. She was calling me back for my Dad because they were in the car on the way to the airport to pick up my aunt who was coming in town to visit. Because of this, we were unfortunately unable to Skype with them that night. I made a quick decision to share the news with them over the phone, because they were going to be traveling over the next week, and I wouldn't have a chance to tell them. I chatted with my Gram for a few minutes, and then talked to my Dad. Right before we were getting off the phone, I asked if they would put it on speakerphone really quickly. I also put my phone on speakerphone so that Kyle could share in the news. Once we were all set up, I told them that we had some news to share. After they both said "yeeeeees?" questioningly, we told them that baby Fertig would be arriving in April 2012. I heard my Gram say "your baby?" and then some cheering and then the phone went dead. I'm not sure if one of our phones cut off, or if they got so excited that they hung up the phone on accident, but we finally were able to get back in touch with them and celebrate together over the phone. They were both shocked, as we had been telling everyone it could be a year before we got pregnant. But they were also very excited! Again, not exactly how we had planned to share the news, but it all worked out!

All in all, I think we succeeded in shocking everyone, and telling each of them in a very special way. Everyone was so excited for us, and surprised to hear that we had been keeping this secret from them for a couple of weeks. It was such a relief to get the news out in the open, and share it with our family! They can hardly wait to meet baby Fertig!