Paint The Barn Red: bumpdate: how we told Jason's parents about baby

For those who missed my blog last week about how
we told my parents about baby, click here to read that post!

This is part two of a three-part series on how we told my parents, how we told Jason's parents, and how we told the rest of our families about baby! Some people have asked us how we told our loved ones, and coming up with creative ideas to announce the pregnancy was something I spent a lot of time on. So I thought sharing how we announced the baby news on my blog would be a great idea! I will still be doing my weekly bumpdate blogs during this time, so stay tuned for the 18 week bumpdate later on this week! (:

Jason parents live within driving distance of us which made telling them a little less of a production than telling my parents - kind of. There was a moment or two where I was afraid I had ruined our surprise before we even got a chance to tell them!

Let's go back a ways first. Jason and I found out I was pregnant when I was 6 weeks, but we decided to keep it to ourselves until I was 12 weeks along. This meant 6 weeks of "faking it" whenever we went to visit Jason's family. Which was not easy! One time, I was frantically texting my little sister asking, "What do I do?!", when Jason's parents wanted to take me to dinner one night. At the time I was feeling very nauseous and like all I wanted to do was hug a toilet. To make things more interesting, all I could say to my sister about why I felt like I couldn't go to dinner with them was that I wasn't feeling well. Because she didn't know I was pregnant either. I did end up going to dinner with them that night, and luckily I didn't have to make any quick sprints for the bathroom. This worked out well because I've never been a fast runner and I would hate to scar fellow restaurant patrons or their dinner plates for life.

Fast forward to September. Jason's parents had a get together at their house with all the kids and grandkids to celebrate the many upcoming birthdays in the family. Jason's dad was among the people with a birthday approaching. (This is important information, store it in your noggin for later.)

My plan was to tell my parents on Saturday, a week after the birthday party, since I would be 12 weeks by then. We would tell Jason's parents the day after that.

But then I remembered something that made me begin to panic - my father-in-law would be flying out to California that week.

And not only that, but since he was flying into LAX, my father-in-law was actually going to be staying with my family while he was out there! Ruh roh!

It felt like my plan might be unraveling. I couldn't tell my family about the baby before my father-in-law got there, because what if someone accidentally spilled the beans while he was there? And I couldn't tell my family while my father-in-law was there for the obvious reason, because, well, I wanted both Jason's parents to find out from the two of us!

I had to think fast. How can I get the information I need without sounding suspicious?

I sent a text to my mother-in-law.

"What day will dad be back from his trip?"

She responded,

"Saturday evening sometime. Why?"

Think fast! I responded,

"Ok, great! It just feels like it's been a while since the four of us got together and I thought it would be nice to this weekend!"

It wasn't suspicious because it actually had been a little while and it is nice getting together, the four of us. She said that that sounded good and that those plans would work for them.

Phew.

And so, the plan was set forth in motion.

Now that the when and where was set up, I continued working on the how. I had ordered some onesies from eBay, one for Jason's mom and one for his dad - one saying "I ♥ Grandma" and the other saying "Grandpa's little helper" with a wrench on it. (This is perfect for his dad because he's a licensed mechanic and millwright!) I made sure to get a gender-neutral color for the onesies since we obviously didn't know (and still don't) if we were having a boy or a girl. And green also works well because the baby is due in March and green just goes with March because of St. Patrick's Day haha.

We got some gift boxes to put the onesies in, but I wasn't sure if the message would be obvious enough. I know that sounds crazy--but our baby will be their tenth grand baby! They're used to seeing baby clothes! Haha. So I decided to design a print and have it sitting underneath the onesies to make the message stand out loud and clear. Now when they lifted the onesie out of the box, a card would be laying underneath it in plain text stating,

"Baby will be here by Easter 2015"

Remember that little tidbit of information I told you to remember? Jason's dad's birthday was the week before, so we hid under the guise that all we were doing by coming over was simply celebrating his birthday a little late.

So that Sunday, the day after we told my parents the news, we headed to Jason's parent's house to unveil our surprise. We brought a birthday cake and the onesies in their gift boxes, disguised as birthday presents. Nothing suspicious to see here, folks.

I hadn't even thought of it at the time, but Jason did, which made this work so well - it's tradition in Jason's family at birthdays for the birthday boy/girl to take a picture with their cake. So when we got to his parent's house, camera in tow, Jason had his dad pose with the cake for a "picture".

We are so, so, very sneaky.

the camera was on video.

Once Jason was done taking his dad's "picture", he casually set the camera down on a ledge overlooking the dining table and we watched them open the boxes. Both of them lifted the onesies out of their box with big grins on their faces. And Jason's mom noticed the card under the onesie right away! The surprise couldn't have gone better and I know they couldn't be more thrilled and excited for us! And we got some pretty great reactions recorded on camera.

At one point Jason's mom said, "Too bad the camera wasn't on video".

We just smiled knowingly back at them because it had been recording the whole time.

Would you like to see more?
Check out my other "bumpdates" below!