A Gender Reveal!

I am 23 weeks pregnant today!

. . . Which means that we had the "big ultrasound" almost 3 weeks ago. And we kept a secret from everyone, until Thanksgiving Day. (If baby hadn't been 100% healthy, we wouldn't have kept any secrets.) My parents had come up for the holiday week, and we were doing the big feast at B's aunt's house. I figured it would be the perfect time to announce if Cora would be getting a brother or sister.

For my sister and her family who live in GA and weren't with us in person, I made a word search and emailed it to them! There were a LOT of kinks in this (repeated words, etc.), so just know that if you want to go that route. I used this website, though, and this right here was the actual word search I sent if you feel like doing it. (You'll probably find some errors or such, but you'll figure it out.) The leftover letters tell you a phrase with the answer. It's easiest to do these types of searches if you circle each individual letter instead of the whole word.

As for the rest of everyone present at Thanksgiving dinner, we did a balloon pop. There were a lot of kinks in this plan, too. (Can anything ever be so easy for me??) But here's the video, and with the sound on you can hopefully figure it out (even though B accidentally had his finger over the mic for the first part):

We did pink and blue balloons so people could pick a side (since it wasn't actually a gender reveal party where people come dressed for their 'team'). All of the blue ones got chosen, as I think people were just hoping for the one-and-one. We had to fill the wrong ones with white confetti (confetti being torn-up crepe streamers) because you could totally tell if the color didn't match. Some things I'd do differently if I use this idea again:

• Use helium-quality balloons. They're more opaque. The crappy blue balloons I got at Wal-Mart for a buck were basically clear and we had to dig out some other blue ones from our party stash.
• Don't use pink and blue balloons. Maybe black and purple and designate which goes for which, and fill them all with the correct color. People had no idea what the white meant, since all I told them was "you'll know if you're right."
• Maybe only use black and make people get into teams on each side of the room.
• Have people hold the balloon in front of them or over the head. Just trust me on this; I had done a practice balloon on my dad, and he held it above him and it was awesome. Plus, he clearly could see the color because it was falling on him.
• Have someone help me pass out stuff (B filmed the whole thing, and I ended up cutting the video down because it was rather boring and you couldn't hear anything because his finger was over the mic). Also figure out a way to give the pins out quickly, since his aunt accidentally popped her balloon while I was still passing pins out. (White confetti came out and nobody knew what it meant). I had threatened that if anyone popped theirs early, they would have to clean up the mess. (That was moot because all participants did a good job of cleaning up!)
• Another idea I kept seeing when doing research: only one person gets the 'reveal' balloon. Everyone else has white confetti so that one person gets to shout it out.
• Get a better videographer. (Sorry, B.)

Maybe the proverbial next time we'll just do a cake like everyone else, but I think everyone present thought this was a fun activity to throw into the Thanksgiving celebration.