the big secret is out and we couldn’t be more thankful for all the love + support that has poured in! this has been the craziest ride, keeping this all under wraps from even our closest friends + family, making for the BIGGEST surprise when it was time!
we had actually started the entire process very early in the summer {i promise to update with all the details soon} but dates just never worked out to complete a cycle in between vacations, so come august, the dates aligned and we were off! because of the way dates worked out, we had to leave our vacation a couple days early with my mom + stepdad for baseline ultrasounds, meaning that they were the only people who were in on this whole ordeal….which turned out to be extremely helpful with 3 babes + the amount of appointments that this process takes during the first trimester.
i got my first ‘real’ positive pregnancy test on the girls first day of practice preschool making for an extremely emotional day, ha! the next day, our entire came down with the flu + croup and we were doooown and it was the week from hell. not that i would wish any of our babes to be sick, especially with lila winding up in the hospital, but the fact that everyone came down with the nastiness kept our little babe a secret. needless to say, it was a rough couple of weeks!
once we got through the sickness, we’ve been pretty smooth sailing.. we’ve had ultrasounds to confirm {and re-confirm} that there is only ONE sweet babe cookie and we’ve had a pretty textbook pregnancy!

with all 3 pregnancies, i’ve always wanted to be surprised with gender and zach always wants to find out in our anatomy scan, which we’ve done with the girls + mills…so when we were making plans to keep this all a secret, i won the battle of keeping it a secret until we announced to our family + friends and we would find out with everyone else!

i’ve been so excited to have the opportunity to work with sneakpeek, an early gender DNA test through this process! sneakpeek is the only at-home DNA test that is 99% accurate as early as 9 weeks and is even available on amazon HERE! everything arrived in a tiny package and was very simple to use with the easy-to-follow directions. you must fiollow the directions completely to ensure there is no contamination, but i have to say, i was shocked at just how easy it was to complete!
because we wanted to be surprised, i had the results sent to my stepfather because i knew he would be able to keep the secret!! we also had him order all of the confetti + streamer cannons to bring to our party! he was SUCH a trooper and was so excited to be helping…he truly helped us pull this whole thing together to be surprised….right down to taking all the pictures. thanks, bill, we love you so much! :*

**my very disastrous attempt to paint the kids feet for a cute pre-reveal pic… note to self, put the kids up on something…and painting toddler feet and then expecting them to sit for a picture is HARD**

we always have a bonfire in the fall to kickoff the cooler weather, so it naturally fit that we would have everyone over for zach’s favorite event of the year! almost everyone was able to make it out so when everyone arrived, we asked everyone to come outside for a quick game we wanted to play!

when everyone gathered around, i thanked everyone for coming to the bonfire, but the true reason we wanted everyone together was for our big surprise! we had our fourth sweet babe on the way and we needed everyone’s help to find out if we were having a boy or a girl!!
it was a complete shock to most everyone…although zach’s mom has been on us like white on rice and has been questioning zach for weeks.
my sister’s face {who is my best friend in the world} was priceless. we’ve had many girls nights that i’ve had to be tricky with {pouring wine back into the bottle, arriving early to restaurants to ensure the waitress only brought me virign drinks, etc.}…she was definitely the most surprised and it made this whole secret totally worth it! as we explained that we did early genetic testing and would be finding out gender, bill passed out the cannons and we all gathered around together!
{we had told the girls that morning that we had a baby in mama’s belly and piper was convinced it was a baby brother like mills while lila was shouting pink the whole time.}

i counted down and we all twisted!

P I N K

a sea of pink exploded and we were shocked. zach + i were both thinking BOY but the night before the party, i kept having dream after dream that every room i went in there was pink confetti everywhere…

of course having a boy would have been so fun for mills to have a baby brother, but there’s nothing more precious than a baby girl with a sweet bow. i never thought i would love being a boy mama as much as i have, but we’ve also never experienced a full-term, healthy singleton girl. i was able to bond with miller like i never experienced with the girls, simply because there were TWO of them, all the time. it sounds silly and i’m not sure i’d ever understand that…but, i am SO excited to bond with our baby sister. we do everything together as a family….everything. and i have no doubt that regardless of whether we were showered in pink or blue, miller + his baby sister will be the best of buddies…and the two big sisters will once again, have their own personal live babydoll to love on!

i think my mom was the most excited to see pink and she danced and screamed as soon as the pink exploded and danced herself a big ol’ party! my sister + best friends were still in shock even after the pink exploded…we didn’t give them enough time to process the fact that we were even pregnant!!!
celebrating with our family + closest friends {minus a few key members that were unable to make it} was the best surprise of all. i had a lot to catch everyone up on and we had such a fun evening celebrating our news…

regardless of what color popped, we are SO excited to welcome another sweet babe into this crew and for now, i’m dreaming about all our baby girl snuggles…