How Christmas 2011 Changed Everything

Christmas this year was honestly one of the happiest days of my life. After months of keeping quiet and not being able to be excited with our friends and family, we were finally able to let the cat out of the bag. Now, we have Christmas down to a science. We spend the morning with my family at my sister's house having breakfast and opening presents. Then we head to Crystal's parents' place for more presents and dinner with her family.

Showing up in the morning we were so nervous and excited to finally be able to tell people the great news. We began opening presents and I was keeping my eyes on my mom to see when she got to our gift. We had wrapped a frame that had 3 spots for photos. We decided to use two of the spots for pictures of my sister's kids, their only grandchildren...that they knew of. Then we used the third for the ultrasound picture. I was able to get a great video of what ensued:

See what happened there? Apparently my mom, who had always lectured me on checking the tag before opening a gift, didn't follow her own advice perfectly. Because of the photos of my niece and nephew she thought it was an announcement from my sister. Pretty funny stuff there. It was truly a moment I'll remember forever, and I'm so glad I got it on video.

After all the hugging and crying and whatnot we made our way to Crystal's parents' for surprise number 2. No video of that one (I'm far sneakier with the camera that Crystal, plus, I have a natural gift for cinematography), but it's an equally great moment. Crystal's mom figured it out a lot quicker than her dad, which made it really funny. She had given him some more subtle clues to figure out - a graduation cap and a D-Day video hinting at the month of June. He was so focused on that that he was not paying too much attention when her mom opened the picture frame with the ultrasound and photos of our pups. Once they were both on board her sister tried to convince that she had figured it out long before. I still doubt it, but Crystal buys it.

So after the families were in the loop we were ready to take it to Facebook to make it official. Crystal posted it in a status update, but due to some confusion over her privacy settings no one saw it. She kept checking to see how many comments she received and was getting upset that no one was saying anything. Then I posted something and got some immediate responses and that REALLY pissed her off. It took us a while to figure out what was wrong, but she finally got her comment fix with a second post and corrected settings. Suddenly we went from being Crystal and Lee to Mom-and-Dad-to-be. We were public, and nothing would be the same.

So that's how Christmas 2011 changed everything. Fun times.

Be good.

- Lee T.

Holy kicks batman!!!

That is all. I return you to your regularly scheduled program. :)

UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT

You may notice some changes around here. In what can only be described as a hostile takeover I have wrestled control of this web log (or "blog" as you hipsters are so fond of saying) and will heretofore be posting my own rants and raves. No, this is not an alternate personality that Crystal has invented as a way of coping with the ever increasing madness of the world. This is, instead, her loving and devoted husband. Since she lost interest in documenting what eventually became an increasingly sad saga of misfortune, I have heroically stepped forward to carry the flag. So, to begin, a little housekeeping. Here's what you've missed...

After our fourth miscarriage Crystal and I began to wonder if this whole "procreation" thing was ever going to work out at all. We feared that hope may have been lost. Desperately we grasped at any straw we could. Crystal resorted to acupuncture, while I consoled myself with copious amounts of fried food. Weeks turned to months and it was truly a sad period of our lives.

But enough of that...

As you may or may not have figured out, this is the beginning of a happy tale. One that began on or around September 14. You see, once again I performed my husbandly duties to perfection and wouldn't you know it, Crystal was pregnant. And the secrets began. We couldn't tell people, not yet. Given our history we were far to cautious to get our own hopes too high, let alone those of others. So we waited. On October 26 at 1:38 pm we saw what we had waited so long to see: a beating heart.

Now at this point in 5 pregnancies we had seen exactly 1 beating heart, so this was kind of a big deal. For the first time we looked upon a life we had created. This little ball of cells with a pulse was going to change our lives forever. But, still, we had to stay quiet. We decided that night that we would wait until Christmas to make the news public for two reasons. One, by then we would be much further along and in a more confident place. Two, it seemed to us that if we could get away with giving an "announcement" to our parents it would sure be a money saver! Word leaked a bit, as it generally does when Crystal tries to keep a secret, but for the most part, it was kept under wraps. We decided on pictures of the ultrasound for our parents (by this point we had had a second one done, and this time you could definitely make out that distinctive "baby shape"). It was quite the ordeal finding frames that suited each set of soon-to-be-grandparents, but eventually we figured it out. The stage was set, all we had to do was make it through Christmas Eve...

AAAAAAND that's enough for today. Gotta go cook dinner. We're having chicken tacos.

Be Good.

- Lee T.