The Curtis Diaries : Gender Reveal Party

On July 5th we got to tell our families (and a few friends) together what our sweet baby was going to be! My mom was nice enough to host the party. My entire family was already in town to celebrate the 4th and throw a surprise 60th Birthday Bash for mom. She sent out some super sweet invitations and everyone was invited to come and join us for a fish fry and then the gender reveal.

I decorated with light blue and light pink with just a touch of chevron and gold. The onsies hanging on the wall say "He or She". The gold frames and chevron napkins are from Hobby Lobby. The baby's 18 week and 15 week ultrasound profiles were framed as well. Since mom had a big lunch planned, I only got fruit, spicy crackers, pink and blue punch and the MOST DELICIOUS cookies ever made to put on the table. A precious mom from my classroom seriously makes the best cookies. She made cookies for both the girl and boy name monogram and then some black and white chevron cookies. I'm really obsessed with them, and I didn't get to eat one…I'm not bitter about it though…

Mom also outdid herself by hiring a photographer to come a take a few family pictures before the party and then take pictures of the reveal. Unfortunately, the photographers camera had a malfunction and the pictures were lost. I was really sad about this, but it is NOT the end of the world because my awesome SIL made sure to get a few on my camera as well, and some family members got iPhone pics and video! There are a few things that I don't have pictures of, but I will cherish the ones that I do have.

We had our guests wear a blue or pink clothespin to show their guess about the baby's gender. We had the photographer take "team" pics. These are the only pics I'm sad about not having. I do however have a candid boy team pic! The majority of the guests thought boy, and according to my family's history, I don't blame them! I thought boy, too!

(The girl team was: Andrew, Dad, Doug, Katie, Lauren, Annie, Mama Jo, Aunt Mary, Keely, Mrs. Carol and Mr. Herald. **Michele and Nate had to be in both pics because they KNEW what the baby was!**)

Our plan was to do the reveal by suspending a box in a tree, pulling a rope, and then balloons and confetti would drop from the box. Simple, right? Wrong. The box required a lot of tape to hold the confetti in. This extra tape caused the box to not open when we pulled the rope. Whatevs. Andrew had to get in a chair and open the box himself. (By the way, Andrew told me earlier in the morning that something was going to go wrong with this box…I should learn to listen to him.)

(We are looking at Annie who was totally pumped about another girl cousin!)

I'm not going to lie. The overall reaction is not quite what I was expecting. I'm going to write it off as "shock", but there were not NEARLY has many shouts as I thought there would be. BUT the pictures of faces are priceless. We all knew Mary Lou would have a great expression, but Caliway and Annie are a close second for best faces.

(Look at Annie and Caliway…my heart.)

After the reveal we all talked about how wonderful and beautiful Claire is going to be. We did talk about that, right? I got to spend a little time with Brooke and Warren and Parker who took time out of their Saturday to come and celebrate with us. We took a few more pictures and then spent time together as a family swimming in the pool. It was the first time for all Goodson's and Curtis' to be together since our wedding. I loved it.