The Gender Reveal

1. I spend too much time on Pinterest.

2. I like planning things--like parites, but as mentioned, I like to keep the small and just for my kids so I don't have to be super stressed about having everything clean.  I just make sure to not get the mess in pictures.

3. This is baby #4.   I'm a little sick of just texing my parents, "It's a BOY!"  or whatever.  I decided to mix it up a bit this time around.

4. My sister did a gender reveal party for her 4th, so I had to too. Obviously.

Once I got a date for the ultrasound, I indulged myself in a little Pinterest viewing and found this cute and simple gender reveal--silly string.

So after the ultrasound yesterday, I dropped by Dollar Tree (also a guilty little pleasure of mine) and thought myself quite lucky to find 5 bottles of silly string in the color I needed.  I did have to take the lids off and cover up the center of the bottles so as not to reveal the gender too soon.

 I even, last minute, decided to decorate.  I made a quick banner out of some twine, clothes pins and the ultrasound pictures from early that day.  I also put up signs that said "Team Boy" and "Team Girl" and had the kids stand under the sign of their guess for gender of the baby.  Greg is neutral since he knew the answer.  He's just holidng Henry in the picture.  It's hard to see in the picture, but Alice guessed girl while Rex and Henry guessed boy.

 Then we each grabbed a can of silly string, shook 'em up, I counted down from 3 and we let loose.  Actually, first I had to explain the whole color concept to the kids, then we counted down.  Henry was not sure how he felt about the whole experience and bordered on the edge of crying and laughing.

 Alice and Rex, however, thought silly string was the greatest thing to ever happen.

 As soon as the first silly string hit him, Rex declared, It's a girl!  Alice was pretty excited.  I think she would've cried if we were having a boy.  She really wants a sister and calls just about every girl she meets her sister.  I thought Rex might be a little disappointed since he claims Henry is his favorite sibling, dispite the fact that Rex and Alice play together all the time and very well and they both scream when Henry tries to join their games.  Whatever.  Rex quickly realized that a girl will bring balance to the family--3 boys and 3 girls, and that we have a nice little pattern of boy, girl in our family, including me and Greg since Greg is older than me.

 The kids then threw nasty wads of silly string at each other for a bit while I sent out texts to the family.  We finished our little party with root beer floats, because all parties need a treat.  Alice was disappointed by the short length of the party but her thrill over getting a sister out-weighed her sadness at the shortness of the party.

 After making a huge mess with root beer floats, the kids took a bath while I attempted to clean up all the silly string.  I'll be vaccuming this mess up for a while.  Greg says, "Doing this inside was your idea."  Whatever, it was cold and dark outside, the pictures would have turned out horrible.