Our First Easter Egg Hunt

The church that sponsors our MOPS group also sponsored a community Easter Egg Hunt in Pooler.  Chick Fil A, a radio station, and another business also sponsored the event.  My parents happened to come on Easter weekend and joined us for the event.  I bought Spencer a new Easter basket to use every year and I also bought a similar one for Grayson to start using next year.  The egg hunt was at a community park and was free to the public, but it was a ticketed event.  We got our ticket early, and got to the hunt early, thank goodness because I left the ticket at home and we had to go back and get it.  But we still made it with time to spare.  We were on the little kids field and we practiced the night before picking up eggs and putting them in the basket.  Spencer proceeded to then take them out of her basket and put them back on the floor.  So I was a little unsure about what she would do at the real event.  While waiting for the event to start, the Chick Fil A cow and princess cow were there to dance and entertain.  Spencer liked looking at them but not getting near them.  She wore an awesome consignment find-a smocked bunny dress! 

There were 12,000 eggs on the two fields. 

Then we entered the field to get ready for the hunt. 

The whistle blew and the hunt was on.  We were instructed to pick up just 12 eggs.  Spencer started picking up the eggs-and keeping them in her basket.  After she had 12, she picked up a few more.  Then they said everyone had their 12 eggs so go ahead and pick up more.  The eggs had to get off the field somehow!

 Needless to say that she got way more than 12 eggs.  But all her eggs had just candy-some eggs were filled with coupons and two eggs had free Chick Fil A for 3 months!  But Spencer had fun and she picked up the eggs.  We are so proud of her!

He will be called...

When I was growing up, as most girls do, I doodled names of my future children in all kinds of print.  Most of these names were just made-up, ones I heard that I liked, or really creative.  When we got pregnant with Spencer, I liked NONE of those names anymore.  Since Jason and I are named the #3 and #1 names of our birth years, we both wanted unique names for our kids.  However they must be easy to pronounce, easy to spell, be strong, not to trendy, and preferably from somewhere in our family.  One of the names I loved after seeing it on my family tree was Ella Grace-but since everyone else thought that was a great name-I mean in Clemson World I was seeing two or three in each magazine I got-this name was x-ed of the list.  We love Spencer's name, even though it is traditionally a male name.  Everyone who hears her name loves it and it fits her.  Spencer is my grandfather's aunts name and we think a surname back on that side.  Her middle name, Reece, was just something we both liked.  We had picked out Cru- a shortened version of my maiden name- for a boy just in case.

So at the beginning of this pregnancy we were thinking if it is a boy, we would use Cru, but we changed the spelling to Crew to make it easier for him in the future.  But we had no middle name.  While both our families had a plethora of male names that were unique-for instance Propus- and we knew these men stood for great character in our families' history, we didn't want our child to curse us in the future for being made fun of at school. I also like my grandfather's name, Edward, but being that the Twilight series is so popular right now and our last name is Hardy-Ed Hardy doesn't work for me!  There were also many J and H names in our families but I personally don't like to have the same initial for the first and last name and we didn't want a J name for our child for fear that the non-J-named children would feel they were left out of the J club that mom and dad were apart of along with a J-named sibling.

So then Jason and I were thinking-lets just come up with a strong middle name to go with Crew that is not necessarily a family name because Spencer's middle name is not from our family.  We went through name sites and books.  But we couldn't find anything we like to go with Crew.  At least as a middle name.  But Jason did not like the idea of calling our child by his middle name so moving Crew to the middle to go with another name didn't work either.  We even went to sites and put in Spencer's name to come up with good sibling names.  That was interesting...but no names showed up in that list that we liked either.

Finally the night before our big ultrasound, we decided to scratch Crew altogether and start with a new family name.  And we both liked it and it represented both of our families.

So our baby's name will be .....

Grayson William Hardy

 Here is my dad reading the names for our families in Virginia.

Grayson is Jason's great-grandfather's name and William is my dad and brother's name.  My brother has already nicknamed him G-Dubb but we shall see how that holds up.

Gender Reveals to Friends and Family

The day after our doctor's appointment, we were traveling to Virginia for my grandfather's 80th birthday.  Then we were heading to Anderson to see Jason's family so we thought, we will just tell them in person.   But we had a small gender reveal party her for our friends the night we found out.  That day was so hard because I met my MOPS group at Hobby Lobby right after our appointment.  I wanted to tell them but was waiting for the party.  I did let them know that we did find out for sure.  My friend Jen said that it must be a girl because if it was a boy I would not be able to stop myself from buying some boy stuff to make for him.   So I threw together this small party in two days. 
"Whooooo is coming in August?"  This sign was on the front door.

 In our entryway:

 Drinks and cups and plates for the party:

 A place to cast your vote:

 Spring peeps:

 Party favors:

Our Family:

 Jason cutting the cake:

 The icing revealed what we were having:

 I just love Jason's face here:

My friend Jen's daughter, Campbell, said before I got pregnant, that the next baby would be a boy because Spencer likes boys.  Then when I got pregnant she still said it was a boy because Spencer needed a boy.  Right before she found out, she voted girl though.  Jen said Campbell was going to pick boy but then she saw that her mom voted girl so she changed her vote.

Then we went to Virginia to see my family.  Here are my maternal grandparents-he is the one turning 80.

 After his birthday show of sorts, we had my dad and my grandfather open the box of balloons to reveal what we were having. 

 Its a boy!

 Spencer was getting especially interested in the balloons.

 The next day we went to my dad's mom's house and used the same box of balloons. 

 My dad and his mom opened the box

 We took the same voting board to all the parties.  Here are the votes so far.

 Again Spencer was excited about the balloons.

  

 Finally at Jason's parents, the last votes were cast.

 The cake was readied:

 And the cut was made:

So we are having a boy and everyone knows it!  Next up...naming this baby!

It's a....

 On Thursday March 22, we found if Spencer was going to get a baby brother or a baby sister. 
When I got pregnant, I really didn't care if it was a boy or a girl.  If we had a another girl, we would already have all these clothes for her and I would love to dress up my two girls in matching clothes.  I never had a sister so I thought this would be really cool.  However, it would be nice to have at least one of each gender and we already had a boy name too.

I read in one of the many pregnancy magazines that magically show up at your house when you register on different websites and get sent home with from the doctor that women who dream about the gender of their baby usually have a baby of that gender.  Not sure how or why that works but...with Spencer I did dream it was a girl.  With this baby I had a dream too-I don't remember the dream I just remember waking up that morning and telling Jason that I dreamed this baby was a boy. 

At 12 weeks we also did the Intelligender test we did with Spencer.  I know this is really just a novelty test.  But it did work with Spencer.  For a girl-your urine doesn't change colors.  For a boy, the urine is supposed to turn blue.  Here is our test this time:

With this pregnancy I have also notice some major differences.  I have been way more tired-of course I also have one year old running around and creating new things for me to clean up.  I also cannot eat seafood with this baby-I could with Spencer.  With this baby I can actually eat red meat-I almost crave it along with more salty things.  With Spencer, I could not eat red meat and wanted sweets.  

So all of this led me to believe that this baby was most definitely a boy.   But either way, Jason and I didn't care but we wanted to find out at this ultrasound.  We had a boy name-that we decided on the night before.  We originally were going with a different boy name but couldn't settle on a first/middle name combination that we liked so we up and changed the whole thing.  But a girl name-we had NO IDEA.  So we were just hoping for a namesake that this was a boy or we would be back at square one for a name.  To insure this baby was up and moving, I had a small coffee from Starbucks.  Then we headed to the doctors.  Here is Spencer with me before we walked in.

 The ultrasound happened at our doctor's office this time.  Which was nice because it just went right along with my 20 week appointment.  She took us back and asked if we wanted to find out.  We said yes!  She went about taking her measurements and we both heard her refer to the baby as a girl.  I was thinking-oh no!  I don't have a name.  So Jason said, "Oh you already saw what the baby was?"  And she said no not yet.  Then she moved down to the bladder on the baby which was full and the ultrasound lady said, "Well it is a good thing you want to find out because I am not sure if I could hide this from you!"  You are pregnant with what is most definitely a BOY!!!!  Here is the still picture we got but in the ultrasound right after she showed the bladder, his man parts looked way bigger-I think he was peeing!  Whew-no more coming up with names.