"We're having a party!"

Let me just start off by setting things straight. We're not actually having a party. BUT we ARE having a baby:) That (as you've probably deduced) is the reason I had been away for most of July. I've just been consumed by early pregnancy sickness/mid-pregnancy sickness/actual sickness.

When we announced to Brian's parents that we were pregnant I had wanted to surprise them in a cute way. This led to some confusion about what exactly we were having.

Brian's mother had bought a cookbook for Lily all about baking cupcakes. She looked through it for days and insisted upon making each recipe. She took it with her on car trips, carried it in her purse around the house, and talked endlessly about going to the grocery store to get all the ingredients.

So I thought a funny way to announce our news would be invite ourselves over to their home with the promise of homemade cupcakes that secretly spelled out

"w-e'-r-e
h-a-v-i-n-g
a
b-a-b-y"

on the tops.

I wanted to be extra creative so instead of using icing I thought I'd cut out each letter with paper, then sprinkle confectioners sugar over top and remove the paper leaving a clean blank letter behind.

Do you see where I'm going with this?

Unfortunately last weekend was hot. Really hot. And the sun shone hard on the plastic Tupperware container for the 30 minutes it took to drive to their house.

Do you see where I'm going with this?

Have you seen what happens to confectioners sugar when mixed with moisture? By the time we got there the characters had expanded like the bubble letters you doodled in your junior high notebook.

I was nervous. I was so nervous. I laid the plastic container down on the dining table while Ann hovered over the cakes confused, stiffly pronouncing "We....were....we're....having a.....par....ty....?"

Not quite. Although I guess eventually we might have a party for the baby.

We awkwardly had to explain that we were actually having a baby....not a party. It wasn't quite the climactic declaration I had imagined:)

Long story short. When you're announcing big news don't rely on perishable condiments.

He or she is due Jan. 30th. Maybe I'll announce the gender by baking some pink, blue or (more likely) ambiguous purple cupcakes.

Photos courtesy of flickr user ellie+eden, Mossy's masterpiece cake/cupcake designs, and Martha Stewart.

I had hoped to post pictures of the actual cupcakes we made but they were just too tragic to share with anyone.