Behind the Scenes: Telling Our Parents

Knowing Ben and I you must have guessed we found a fun way to announce Baby H's arrival.

How We Told Ben's Parents

Friday, September 14th

We invited them to dinner. Ben made a geocache using white duct tape and an empty peanut butter jar. I edited a few pictures and Ben stuck them inside. He went to Lowell hours before we were heading there for dinner and hid the geocache across from the restaurant. The plan was to look for the geocache/share our news and then go to dinner where we could really talk about the baby and pregnancy. With a late start I was really getting nervous that it would be dark before we were able to go geocaching. When we got there the guys saw how busy the restaurant was so they wanted to put our names down first. They said it would be a 10-20 minute wait. This was perfect! We walk outside and start talking about geocaching and the hostess comes out and says our table is ready. Ben and I can’t freak out and instead go sit down at our table.

Ben and I tried to have a silent conversation where we decided we need to do this NOW. It will be dark when we leave the restaurant and then we wouldn't have time to discuss the news. So Ben has an awkward conversation with the waitress who awkwardly says it’s okay for us to leave for 10 minutes. We quickly headed out and in the direction of the geocache. Ben was taking the lead and I had to remind him to let his parents do it. They walked around and around until Ben practically pointed at the geocache when dad pulled it out. He opened it as mom looked on. The first picture that was pulled out was of the pregnancy test with the words Baby H due to arrive in April. I don’t think it hit until they pulled out the second picture of my baby bump with the words Week 11 on it. I have a priceless photo of dad’s surprised face. Hugs were exchanged and I think his parents were in shock. Many questions and stories were shared at dinner! It was a nice time to catch up on all things BABY! After we left we stopped at McDonalds for a celebratory whippy dip!

The geocache

Inside

Ben's parents looking for the geocache.

I love these next few photos!

Processing...

They figured it out!!!

Telling My Parents (and cousin Noah)

Friday, September 21st

Ben and I traveled to my hometown for my Aunt and Uncle's surprise 40th wedding anniversary party. This was perfect because I would be 12 weeks pregnant and was comfortable telling my family. This would be the only time until Christmas that I would get to see them and it was important to me to tell them in person. We got into town around 2 but my mom worked until 3 and my dad worked until 5. We spent that precious hour sneaking behind the Fire Station (my dad is a firefighter!) to hide the geocache and mark it in our GPS. From 3-5pm we carefully brought up that we discovered a geocache behind the fire station while looking online and then later mentioning we wanted to find it and even later still mentioning my mom, Ben, myself and cousin, Noah, should meet up with my dad and find it.

After some convincing we all went to the Fire Station to meet up with my dad. My dad took the lead and he quickly found the geocache and soon my mom found it too. They waited until Noah found it before taking it down. They let Noah open up the geocache. He pulled out the photos and said something like," due to arrive in April?" Then he flipped through the photos. My dad quickly figured it out and got super smiley and stared at my mom. My mom didn't hear Noah and instead saw a picture of a baby bump (but my head was covered by another photo). It took her some time before she saw Baby H on the photo when she squealed and hugged me crying. Lots of tears and lots of hugs continued for awhile. My mom later said that she saw the baby bump and thought it was really cute someone put that in the geocache.. haha little did she know!