The Gender Reveal Party (back in August!)

So, I've decided to finally blog about that crazy gender reveal ice cream party we threw the week before we moved to Tennessee!  Just a side note here - if you want to remain a sane person, never try and host a big party when you literally have a week-and-a-half notice about an impending move... especially when you have small children.  There will be tears, much frustration, and most likely injuries.  But it will be memorable, that is for sure.  Maybe that is why it has taken me so long to post about this - the shock had to wear off! 

Back in August, we decided to have a gender reveal party to announce to all our friends if we were having a boy or a girl for our baby #3.  This is something we did with our second kiddo 2 years ago and it was so much fun finding out what we were having while being surrounded by our loved ones (and not being racked with pain from childbirth).  With Charlie, we had a bakery put colored frosting into some special cupcakes that we all bit into at one time.  With this baby, we decided to do something different and something more special for our boys - a balloon release.  Oscar (our 4 yr. old) was determined that the balloons were going to be pink and Charlie (our almost 2 yr. old) was just excited that there would be lots of balloons.  We invited lots of our good friends and some family up to spend the afternoon with us for the reveal and an ice cream social. 

(click on the pictures to see them larger)

How much fun we had!  It is true that everything was a bit on the crazy side, being that we had JUST found out that Tim had gotten a great job offer and that we'd be moving the following Saturday, but luckily I had already prepared most of the decorations and games the week prior, so there was NO WAY I was cancelling this party.  Besides, it gave us a great opportunity to have our own farewell party, too.  

About the party, the decorations and print-outs were mostly yellow, white, and grey with some neutrals thrown in for good measure.  I wanted the star of the show to be whatever color came out of the balloon box.  We had folks choose either a pretty yellow bow pin to wear if they thought we'd be having a girl or a black felt mustache pin if they voted boy.  It was an ice cream party, so I had yummy vanilla ice cream with tons of different type of toppings.  Most of the food I served was white, just to keep in the color scheme.  (BTW, it's REALLY hard coming up with white foods!)

I served cucumber sandwiches, veggies in clear cups (with ranch dressing at the bottom), white meringues, candy-dipped marshmallows, powdered sugar doughnuts, vanilla cupcakes, and the sugar cones were also candy-dipped.  (And contrary to popular thought, the "B" and "G" on the table do not stand for Battlestar Gallactica.  I was going to make a little sign that said "or" to put in between the letters.  I ran out of time.) 

The games were a blast.  Tim and I created our own version of "Baby Scattergories" and we also did a funny Mad Lib for people to fill out.  The best though was a candy game I found on the internet.  Too funny.  I plan to do an entire post just on this awesome game (and maybe even a printable for interested folks).  We also had pictures of ourselves to cut up and a chalkboard for people to "design" our child.  And then we posted the boy and girl names we picked out, mixed in with a few others, for people to guess the correct one.

Finally the moment of truth arrived!  The balloon release!  Would it be pink balloons or blue?  (Our good friend Karen filled the box up, so she and the ultrasound technician who wrote it on a card were the only people who knew...

Blue!!!  Oh man!  Yet another boy and I keep my status as queen of the household!  After the release, we announced our boy name to everyone as well.  (I was tired of the name Oz and Charlie picked out for baby: Marshmallow.  Yeah.  Try having someone pat your tummy and call you marshmallow.  That doesn't feel super awesome, regardless of how cute it started off being.) 

We're gonna call our next little man Henry.  Henry Evan Bomgardner.  And we can't wait to meet him.  (The countdown is on now!  We've only got about 8 weeks left!  Eeek!)

Thanks for reading!