It's a...

On Friday night we went out to dinner to celebrate my birthday + Valentine's day, and most importantly - to find out the gender of our baby! We had an ultrasound Friday morning, and asked the ultrasound tech to write down the gender of the baby in a card I brought along. She told us when to look away during the ultrasound, assured us she was 90% sure (the highest % she gives) of the sex, wrote us a little note in the card, put in a revealing photo from the ultrasound, and sent us on our way. Friday afternoon flew by as we both eagerly awaited dinner that night.

When we got to the restaurant, it was really busy and we were wedged in at this tiny table with hardly any privacy. We decided to wait until the end of dinner, to see if the area we were seated in would clear out a little. We also wanted to build up a report with our waitress as we needed her to cooperate with us for our gender reveal plan.

As if God was "approving" of our plan, the area around us began to clear out, and we finally got the chance to tell our waitress we were finding out the sex of our baby that night and needed her help. She was THRILLED and went into overdrive to make sure our plan was executed perfectly - she was so much fun! We gave her the envelope from the ultrasound tech, two candles (a pink and a blue), and told her we were going to order dessert and we wanted her to bring out the dessert with whichever candle corresponded with what was in the envelope. She got right to work clearing off a better table for us to sit at (better lighting for photos), getting our dessert order in, and she even ran off with my cell phone so she could recruit a hostess to capture pictures of the whole thing. The longest 10 minutes of our life went by, and then this happened:

It's a boy! We couldn't believe it! We were both SURE it was a girl, and you can see we were really shocked - and thrilled! I not-so-secretly really wanted a boy at the top of the sibling line to be the "big older brother" to all the other kiddos. Needless to say, best birthday present ever (sorry mom and dad - this birthday better than the surprise party you threw me when I turned 16!). 

We managed to keep quiet for 48 hours until we could get together with our family to celebrate my birthday and share the news with them. We are very thankful our entire immediate family could be together, and extra thankful that so many of them generously gave of their time and energy to put together a wonderful evening. In keeping with the surprises, Kyle and I made gender reveal cupcakes and we got to watch everyone else be surprised!

Cupcake toppers - everyone got to pick which gender that they thought it was.

Kyle's family and my family with their gender guesses - most people thought girl!
(And apparently Zeke hates gender reveals...)

About to find out!

It's a boy!  The cupcakes had blue frosting on the inside.

Baby boy's first little outfit - thanks grandmas!

Giving it grace: We're completely overwhelmed with God's grace - and not because He is "giving us what we want". We're overwhelmed because in the midst of what is the happiest time in our lives - He is still pursuing us, asking us to stay tuned in with Him, calling our attention to bigger things, and disciplining us. He didn't just swing by, drop of this awesome present, and then ditch out. He has been faithful in revealing Himself to us through this miracle of life, keeping our minds focused on Him and how He is the giver of all good things, how He is the maker of life, and how He rejoices in the good gifts He gives. 

Before I was a Christian, I used to simplify God down to singular attributes: some days he was loving, some days he was cruel, some days he was real, some days he was a "good way to try to live." The danger there didn't primarlyy lie in what I was or wasn't believing about God's attributes, but that I was taking one attribute of God and making it god over my life and how I lived (which was ironic, considering I wouldn't even had said I necessarily believed God was real - a fact that makes my heart ache just typing it). Point is, God has many attributes, and they work in perfect harmony to encompass a perfect God. And our perfect God has perfectly been showing us how imperfect we are, and how much we need Him during this time - to love us, to rejoice with us, to guide us, to convict us, to teach us, to walk with us - and always.