Gender Reveal Party

Almost a month ago, Matt and I had our doctor’s appointment to find out if Baby Nolte is a boy or girl.  Let me tell you: technology amazes me and to how much ultrasounds can show and do!  I had no idea that they could measure certain things, like the circumference of the baby’s head—like, that’s just insane to me!  THEN, when the technician started creating the 3-D images…Holy Cow!

After our appointment, Matt went to work and I went straight to Kohl’s, to buy this onesie:

Matt had already bought the first item for Baby Nolte to wear, just three days after we found out there was a Baby Nolte. Haha.  I’ve always loved these cute little animal hooded towels, so he picked up this one:

After going to Kohl’s, I headed to meet Mom so we could go buy some last minute decorations for our Gender Reveal Party (we already spent the previous Friday buying lots of stuff!!).  After a late night for everyone on Friday, and me going back to sleep until about 11:00am, Mom and I spent the rest of the day shopping for food and preparing the food.  It was a LONG day, to say the least!!  The cupcakes were probably our favorite thing, and they were fun to make!

We sent Abby this picture of the cake mix after I poured it, and she said it looked like Trix Yogurt—she’s so right! It looks like the cotton candy flavor, so of course that’s all I thought about for the rest of the night making them! Haha.

Time for the frosting!

Matt even helped frost the cupcakes :)

We wanted to tell as much of our family at one time as possible, so we invited everyone over for the party!  I wish I could say that we couldn’t have asked for better weather, but it was just the opposite.  It felt like a million degrees outside for the first hour, and then started raining just after we did the reveal.  We started emptying the water vases on the tables earlier than planned, and I felt so bad that everyone had to leave earlier than we planned. :( Hey, at least we got to do our reveal and THAT wasn’t rained out!!

These vases from our wedding centerpieces have really been useful as we've been having more and more parties and events to decorate for! 

I punched out all of the confetti (which was a lot of fun) and also the reason I wanted to save it.  No way was I letting all that work go into the trash so quickly! haha

This was Matt's idea to have by the drinks:

We had three beer options, with Matt's most recent home brew, appropriately named "Ice Ice Baby Brew."

Matt's dad made the bottle openers made for the party:

I loved making this chalkboard to display:

Lots of good food!

Since it was SO HOT outside, we waited until the last possible minute to set everything out.

For the reveal, I knew I wanted to have a box hanging up where everything inside would just fall down. Matt then came up with the idea to paint it like one of the question mark boxes in Super Mario.  He did SUCH a great job painting it—it turned out awesome!!  On Sunday before the party, we filled the mystery box with the appropriate color balloons, streamers and ribbons, and we made our first haul of all our stuff for the party.  We had a few things left to prepare and a few more cupcakes to frost!

My cousin Gabby took this video for us:

My cousin Brooke sent me these next three pictures!

The kids that were there loved the balloons, so those are the only pictures we have of the balloons.  My favorite ones were the polka dot ones I found.

Since Abby is already in Northern Virginia for her new job, Aunt Sherrie FaceTimed her in between her meetings so that she could see the reveal. Later on, everyone else found out that Abby had known since we knew!  Right after we left our doctor's appointment, I called her to tell her.

We asked everyone to wear blue or pink, depending on if they thought it would be a boy or a girl.  Matt and I had thought all along that it was a boy, so we knew we'd be wearing blue.  A couple days before we found out, I told Mom what color we were wearing, so if we were right and it was a boy, it wouldn't seem like we changed our minds on the color, just to be right. haha.

TEAM BLUE

TEAM PINK

Mom bought this flag and had it hanging up at the party...I didn't even see it until she pointed it out later that evening! She also bought one for Matt's parents.

Baby Nolte

Let me start this post by telling you that it has been written for about a month and a half now.  I've kept going back to finish it, got frustrated, and had to just stop.  I've had to delete paragraphs of sarcastic thoughts/comments that I wanted to write, because I wanted to address people who have shared their opinions on what they think I should or shouldn't be doing, or what I should stop eating, or what I can't do. Please don't even get me started. But, I didn't want this to turn into a negative post.  So, without any more delay (hopefully), here is what I started back in May...

 
Well, let's see. How has this year's To-Do List gone so far?

Flop.

It started out pretty well.

I felt I was getting a tiny bit better about blogging.  I was trying new things I found on Pinterest, and sharing them whether they failed or succeeded.  And the list of books I wanted to read this year? Yeah, I've still only read one.  I've actually hardly read anything up until the past few weeks.  My eyes would hurt so bad when I read which just led to headaches, so, reading was a no-go for a while.  However, I have watched one entire episode of Doctor Who and then bits and pieces of other episodes....soooo, at least I'm doing a little better on that one?

Then I hit a point where I was just always tired. Always. And I still am. I could probably sleep all day everyday, to be honest.

And, of course, there's always my headaches.  I haven't taken my migraine prescription in MONTHS and MONTHS, so the migraines that had been doing so much better....well, so much for that.

BUT, as much as I might complain about being too tired to do anything, always having a headache, not doing everything around the house that I want to, I know it's all for a good reason.

My body is housing another human for goodness sake!!

It's not a secret anymore, since it's Facebook Official now, and well, nothing's true unless you see it on Facebook, right?

When we finally told our families, we were so glad to not have to keep a secret anymore!! Too many coincidental things were either said or had happened that made it hard for me to not tell anymore!!  And, I'm not gonna lie, there were a few times when I thought I'd slip!

We told our parents and siblings first, of course.  Then our grandparents and finally the rest of the family!  We both have big families, so while we wish we could've told everyone in person, that just wasn't feasible!  So we called, texted, and emailed and prayed everyone in our family would know before we started telling friends and co-workers! 

I've been keeping track since Week 10 by making a different chalkboard design every week. It's fun, because I've never changed our chalkboard as often as I've been doing now! Matt takes my picture every week, and sometimes we try to include Maple. "Try" being the key word.

So, come November 29th (give or take a few days), we'll have a bigger family just in time for Christmas!!  This also means our Christmas decorations will probably be up sooner this year, but hey, no complaining over here!  We've also found out that there are SO many birthdays in November, so of course our friends/family have a certain date they're rooting for ;) We know of two people who's birthday is November 29th, one of them being Matt's grandpa!

I like to think that blogging about Baby Nolte will become more of a habit once we find out if we're having a boy or a girl.  I feel like once we start buying things, working on baby's room, etc., I'll have more to blog about other than how tired I am or how I just want to complain about the things people say to me.  Plus, there's just a lot going on this summer!