A New Year, A New Life

Happy New Year!

This year we spent Christmas and New Years with Paul's family in Virginia Beach. It's was very nice to visit the east coast and spend our first holiday season married with Paul's family.

Speaking of family, before we left for VA we broke the news of baby Gardner via Skype to my parents. To get the best reaction, we emailed the picture of my positive pregnancy test to them and let them figure it out. Needless to say they were shocked, but once the initial blow wore off were incredibly excited and supportive. Our conversation concluded with them pondering what they wanted baby G to call them. I think I can safely say they are looking forward to being grandparents.

Thankfully we were able to tell at least one set of our parents in person since "conveniently" we got pregnant right before Christmas. The night we arrived in Virginia Beach we told Paul's parents and sister. The twist is that Paul's parents best friends, the Phillip's, are about to become grandparents in late spring as well, so we thought it would be fun to tie that in to the surprise since both couples have been through just about every major life event together since college. We gave them this book, Grandloving, and wrote the following on a card:

"The Phillips are moving on to to the next stage in their lives, and we didn't want you to feel left out..."

Their reaction was priceless, as was Paul's sister's, Christine's, immediate comment, "are you joking? please tell me you're not joking". We were also able to tell Paul's grandparents the following morning who will be first time great-grandparents. It was a great time of celebration with his family. Everyone of course was extremely excited and as the holiday progressed it got even more fun with Paul's mom, Carole, breaking out some of Paul and Christine's baby clothes, old family films, and sharing stories of their pregnancies.

As we expected since telling our parents we are getting more and more excited about Baby G's coming. Thankfully, as Carole said, the baby doesn't come right away and we still have ~8 months to prepare ourselves. The next big step is breaking the news to the rest of the world.