Prior to getting pregnant, I honestly thought I would be one of those people who had a "feeling" of what the gender of my baby would be. I seemed to have that "feeling" about all my friends' babies (and was usually right!), so I figured I would surely have that connection with my own. Well, that was definitely not the case. I had absolutely no idea at any point in time, and was anxious to find out the gender as soon as we could.
Scott and I decided to hop on the "Gender Reveal Party" bandwagon to find out what our little bundle of joy would be. We made an appointment at Triangle Imaging Center in Cary at 16 weeks and 2 days and hoped and prayed that Baby Blakeley would cooperate. We invited our family and some of our closest friends over that Sunday (the ultrasound was on a Saturday) to find out with us. No one could believe that I would actually hold out on knowing the gender until the party, but low and behold, I did! I am so happy I did too, because it made it all the more fun for us both to find out at the party (that is, after all, kind of the point of the party?!). So that Saturday morning my mom met us at the Imaging Center and Baby Blakeley was in perfect position to tell us what he/she was the second she started the scan! She put the ultrasound picture with the words "It's a ___" in a sealed envelope and we delivered it to Party City in Cary that afternoon.
We delivered a box and picked out balloons, one set for a boy and one set for a girl. Then we headed home to prepare for the festivities!
We had planned to have everyone over to our house and have most people hanging around outside, but the weather looked pretty gloomy/rainy Sunday afternoon so we moved it to H.T.'s barn (our go-to party location!) at the last minute. Luckily, we didn't have a huge amount of decorations to take down and move to the new location. To get the party started, we had everyone mark on a chalkboard whether they were team girl or team boy, and wear pink or blue beads to show their vote. We also had a little fish bowl out for people to "help us" name Baby Blakeley, which proved to be more entertaining than helpful, but that was kind of the point!
My sister-in-law, Amanda, made some delicious gluten-free chocolate chip cupcakes, half with blue icing and half with pink. They were so cute! My mother-in-law made her famous chicken salad and pimento cheese, and we had some other yummy finger foods too. I also have to give a big shout out and thank you to my friend, Meghan Brown, for these awesome photos! Her payment was the cupcakes being gluten-free (thanks for figuring out how to make those, Amanda!) :-)
After everyone had a chance to eat and socialize, it was time for the big reveal. Now, I said in the beginning of this post that I never had a feeling of what the gender was; however, I had a dream the night before the party that it was a boy and therefore decided on Sunday that I was "team boy." Scott was still team girl, as he had been from the start. Go figure-we can never be on the same team with anything. Anyway, without further ado, Baby Blakeley is a.....
GIRL!
I absolutely love these photos and our expressions that Meghan was able to capture. Apparently, I was much more set on it being a boy than I realized because I was COMPLETELY shocked when pink balloons floated out! Scott, as you can tell, was ecstatic!
After the big reveal, we had to get a picture of the "losing" and "winning" teams...
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| Team Boy! |
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| Team Girl! |
We are so grateful to have such wonderful, supportive, and loving people in our lives! We're even more grateful that they will love our little girl just as much as we do, and look forward to sharing many, many memories with them! Here's to a future filled with lots of PINK!
