What A Weekend

Dearest Babe-

What a wonderful weekend for our families! By now, most everyone of our family and friends know that you will be joining our family. The only people still left in the dark are the Washington DC crowd (Uncle Ross, Aunt Amber, Aunt Kristi, and favorite Caster cousins). We will be visiting them weekend after next and then the secret is officially out! It is so exciting to be able to talk about you and share all of the joy we have kept to ourselves. I don't think I have stopped smiling since Thursday night. I can think of a few other family members that have the same silly grin! Allow me to walk you through the chain of events this past weekend, starting with Thursday evening. Your Grandma and Grandpa Lumsden arrived in Raleigh (long story) after 11 PM. I was pretty overtired and emotional by that point. We greeted them with this sign:

I think your Grandma was pretty dazed and shocked. Of course, we all shared lots of tears and hugs. It was truly a magical moment that I will never forget. Within the first five minutes, your Grandma was already upset about being far away from you and missing the special moments of your life. Here are some more photos of the sign:

This last one shows your Grandma on the phone telling Aunt Diane the good news! She couldn't even wait for the picture to be taken to talk to her.

Friday morning got off to a bang when your Grandma and Grandpa Wilkin found out about you. We knew surprising my Dad was going to be a challenge, but your Dad and I came up with a great idea. We sent a giant chocolate fortune cookie with a message inside. It read "Congratulations, Grandma and Grandpa Wilkin. We are having a baby!". Here are the pictures (Many thanks to Grandpa's assistant who took the photos for us) and check out the look of shock on his face!

He immediately called and was speechless. It was great. You will soon find out that Grandpa Wilkin is never at a loss for words. So we really pulled off a feat. Then Friday evening, we meet for dinner with Grandma and Pa-Pa Beale. We held up the same sign (slightly modified of course) in the restaurant. I think it took a moment to register because they are already Grandparents. But after they figured it out, they too were overjoyed. We don't have any photos from that surprise, just video which we can watch together someday.

On Saturday I received a beautiful bouquet of flowers from Grandma & Grandpa Wilkin.

Saturday night, we went to a Greensboro Grasshoppers game and we were able to tell a large group of our friends. Everyone was so excited and you will have so many people who love you! It is sometimes overwhelming to think about how much love you are already getting from our family and friends. Sunday meant more of our church family finding out and more tears of joy. Oh, how they will cherish you. Our church is a wonderful place to raise a child and I am so looking forward to it. I know I probably left out a lot of detail from the weekend, but I wanted to get the basics down before I forget. I will write more in detail later this week. Until then sweetie pie....

I love you,
Mom