Our sweet little lady

I have always dreamed of having a little girl. I've thought about pig tails, twirling tu tu's, prom night, and mommy daughter dates throughout my entire life. For some reason, I always thought that Ben and I would only have boys. As much as I longed to have a daughter, I really prepared myself for a house full of boys, and I got excited about it! During our ultrasound, I called the baby a "he" the entire time and was certain that it was a boy. I'm not sure how much of it was me not wanting to get my hopes up that the baby might be a girl, or how much of it was actually feeling that it was a boy. Anyway, after the ultrasound, Ben and I were so convinced it was a boy, we almost felt like we knew going into the gender reveal party what the surprise was. On the way to the park for the party, Ben even said "it almost feels like we shouldn't have the party since we already know." I did say "if this baby for some reason is a girl, I really want to go shopping."

I gave the envelope with the info about the little one to my sister in law Kelsey. She did an amazing job of knowing what we were having, without giving any hints. She went to the dollar store and bought 15 cans of silly string in the appropriate color, and took the tops off so we wouldn't know what color it was. She said that she cried and could not have been more excited when she opened up the envelope. Me being the serious surprise ruiner, had crazy thoughts for the 2 days before the party about how I could find out. Should I call the party store to ask if they had a lot of blue silly string in stock? Should I say I left something in their condo and scour the trash cans for the receipt or lids? Yes, I'm crazy. Somehow I managed to get through the two days. 

So back to the reveal. We held the party at Edmonds Marina Beach Park and invited a ton of our friends. We had a brownie sundae bar with blue & pink toppings.  

One of the best parts about the night was that my mom totally pulled off a crazy surprise and showed up at the party! I couldn't believe it! What an amazingly perfect surprise. On the drive down to the party I even told Ben that I wish my mom was there. 

Team pink had a seriously strong showing. Blue not so much. I think 1/2 of team pink thought it was a boy, but just really wanted me to have a girl. 

We all got into a circle, Ben counted to 3 and then we all started spraying the silly string. I was so ready to see blue that at first both Ben and I saw gray. The pictures are hilarious because we're just spraying away with smiles on our faces before we even realize it's a girl. Stephanie (in the green coat) got the memo the quickest)

Finally we realized that it was actually PINK silly string coming out. I pretty much freaked out. 

Man.. God is SO good and SO amazing with surprises.. even when we think we know what he's up to, he just shows us up. Here's a video reaction

And so it begins..the amazing blessing and challenge of raising a daughter.