Let's start at the beginning. We found out our lives were changing on October 27th, 2012- just five days after our one-year anniversary. It was a Saturday, and unlike most Saturdays, Brad had to work. I took him to work and dropped him off, then made a beeline for home and that test with all the answers.
I found out I was pregnant at around 8:30 a.m., and Brad would be unreachable until about 1:30 p.m. A+B= 5 hours of torture. With all this time on my hands, I formulated what I thought would be a genius plan. I needed a plain card for Brad that I could write in, in code, explaining my discovery. Than, we needed a way to tell our parents. Again, I had a genius idea. Unfortunately, most of my genius ideas require a lot of little variables to line up just right. They didn't :) I went to every thrift store in town (and other gift shops that I thought might have what I needed), looking for coffee mugs that said "World's Best Grandma/Grandpa." In our family makeup, we needed 3 grandma mugs and 3 grandpa mugs. I found 3 grandma mugs and 1 grandpa mug. Failure.
Finally, I got the call from Brad that he was almost finished and I could come and get him. I got there, texted him to let him know I was there, then sat in the car trying to breathe. This went on for a long 5 minutes, and then he called me again. "There's just a few of us left here, so if you wanna come inside and wait, you can." I didn't think I could handle it. "That's okay. How long do you think you'll be." "Not long, but you should come wait inside. No one will mind and it might be a bit." "Oh, alright."
Now my "acting experience" needed to come in handy. I didn't want to tell him in the warehouse with a few guys I didn't know lurking around, so I had to make sure the news wasn't all over my face. I guess I did pretty good, because he didn't suspect anything, and I even was able to meet one of his coworkers and make small talk. But on the inside, it was time go.
Eventually, it was, and we got out to the car. I handed him his card and a candy bar. He looked a little confused, but he opened it and read it with a little smile on his face. In hindsight, I should have come up with a better code. It was a little too vague, and it took him a few minutes to understand what I was talking about. But, then, it hit. "Really?!" I nodded. We took a few minutes to celebrate, then I went ahead and put the car in drive. I went on to explain how I called the clinic and they needed us to come in and take a pregnancy test there before they would set up a first appointment for us. Then I proceeded to explain the plan I'd had for telling our parents, but how now I wasn't sure it would work because apparently grandpa's hold onto the mugs they get, and maybe don't have extras to just give to thrift stores like grandma's do. Afterall, I had had all day to get used to the news and get the ball rolling. Poor Brad sat there in shock. It hadn't been fifteen minutes yet, and I was already unfolding this big plan for him. I realized what I was doing and gave him some time.
Then, a little bump. Just a little bump. Betsy texted me to tell me she was on her way over, because Luke needed her to look through his things for a car title. This is when the acting really needed to get good, and on Brad's part, too. It didn't seem right to tell her our news when we weren't sure yet how or when to tell the folks. Thankfully, it was lunch time, so all we had to do was act really preoccupied with our lunch. Since it was about 2 p.m. at this point, it wasn't hard. She came in and said "Hi" to us, then headed upstairs. Now we needed to figure out how to leave for the clinic without telling her where we were going. Things like that don't seem like they would be that hard, but they are for us for some reason. Brad hollered up the stairs, "We need to go run errands!" Betsy answered, "O...kay...", and we rushed out the door. Safe!
You would think it would be a little awkward to go up to the front desk in our noisy clinic and announce to the receptionist that I needed to take a pregnancy test, but I was so excited and sure of my results, I did it proudly. They took me back and sent me to the bathroom. I came out and handed the nurse my...specimen...and she told me their machine took about 5-10 minutes, and I could go wait in the waiting room. I walked out and took my seat next to Brad, told him it would take 5-10 minutes, then immediately heard my name called. The nurse had a big smile on her face. She brought us back and said my test lit up as positive right away (Sidenote: this, along with other factors, would lead to my future sneaking suspicion that I was pregnant with twins, but that's something for a future blog). So we got all set up, I told her which doctor there was my favorite, she said she'd ask him if he was free to take me on, and we were off. We had medical proof of pregnancy!
Now it was time to tell the folks, plan or no plan. My dad and stepmom were going to be in town that evening, and we planned on having dinner with them. It seemed pretty unfair not to tell them now, when we had the rare opportunity to tell them face to face. So, even though we were still trying to comprehend our new information, we were about to relay it. So I wrapped up one of the grandma mugs and the one grandpa mug, and we awaited their arrival. They came over and sat down with us. I left the wrapped mugs in the other room for now. As most conversations with my dad, we ended up talking about why I wasn't in school, and how it wasn't too late. It's nothing to hold against my dad. He's always been confident in my strengths and abilities, and wouldn't want me to think he didn't care about whether or not I was successful in life. But anyways, he said something to the tune of, "You'll need to do it now, before you guys start having kids." Apparently, it was all over our faces because my stepmom immediately turned to me and asked, "Are you pregnant?!" "Umm...yep!" My dad: "What?!" I rushed into the other room for the mugs. The previous conversation totally behind us, we hugged, were congratulated, everything was good. Our regularly planned dinner date became a celebration dinner.
We made a new plan to tell Brad's parents and my mom and stepdad. This plan did not work. This plan was thrown out the window a good fifteen minutes after it was formulated. This was the plan: tomorrow after church, we would invite Brad's family over for lunch. We would make our announcement, celebrate, and then take a little drive to King Hill, where we would repeat our announcement, and then celebrate some more. Then, we realized something- We were going to have to go through church tomorrow, with all of it's greetings and catching up with people, without letting anything slip. We couldn't smile ridiculously big for no reason. We would have to tell people nothing was new with us. Same ol', same ol'. Our lives were about to change! There was one more of us hiding right there under my blouse! It was just too much. We had to go tell his parents right now- it was about 9:30 p.m.- and call my mom on the drive. So that's what we did.
My mom was doing something at the sink and almost dropped her phone in it. "You said you wouldn't tell me over the phone!" I agreed, it wasn't the way I wanted to do it, but I didn't see any other way. When we got to Brad's parent's house, we walked right in and sat down with them. I could tell from Wendell's face that he knew something was up. So I'm sure you know how it went. After a little delay, we made our announcement, and we celebrated.
This blog ended up being much longer than I anticipated. And this is only the beginning of Avery's story! So, I'll continue it soon, and try and keep a more recent one going at the same time. Here's some pictures of how I looked a day or two after we found out (5 weeks along):
And here's the damage I did at the library those first few weeks:
And here's me again at six weeks (like you can tell the difference yet):
That's all for now! Thanks for reading!
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