Suprise/sirprize/surpriz!

Surprise! There is a reason why surprise is misspelled in the title of our blog and that's what we'll share with you in this first ever baby blog post.

We 'spilled the beans' to friends and family in various ways. Thanksgiving, the day after we found out we were pregnant, both of our families were getting together at Lake Lure. We rented houses across a little cove from one another, an easy morning paddle or cold water swim away. Lesh and I schemed on how to tell everyone and were nervous about keeping it a secret due to her lack of normal beverage consumption levels. Our plan boiled down to telling everyone that we were going to paddle the Myers turkey over to the Reardon house via canoe, just in time for Thanksgiving dinner with the stipulation that everyone had to be waiting on the other dock to welcome the floating turkey. In the rush of turkey prep, we collaged a banner saying 'baby on board'. As the turkey was ready to set afloat we realized that we didn't have enough arms to hold the turkey, paddle, and hold up the sign so we asked Gary and Sandy to come aboard to assist with turkey holding, paddling, and sign placement. As we jumped into the canoe we said, "Oh, yeah by the way guys-we're having a baby!" And off we paddled. See the above pic for the canoe announcement.

Our good friend, Jessy Kronenberg, was coming to town for a visit before Christmas, so we decided to wait until her arrival so we could tell all of our friends during a gathering planned at George and Kelly's house. Alesha went down to a local print making shop and had t-shirts made that said, "Surprise, We're Having a Baby!" or at least they were supposed to say that. You'll see in the attached photo that surprise is indeed spelled wrong and before most people caught what our shirts actually said, they pointed out that surprise was spelled wrong! Whoops! The good news is that we got a nice organic cotton onesie out of it from the print shop. Anyhow, we arrived at the party with outer shirts on and waited a few hours to expose our baby tees. Although we weren't "trying" to get pregnant, most of our friends tell us they weren't all that surprised because, "Alesha has been a crazed baby maniac", or something like that...

The baby is due on July 29th and we'll be working with New Dawn Midwifery here in Asheville. A home birth or a hospital birth are both options, although we're leaning towards a home birth right now. Alesha will be 12 weeks at the end of this week and when we go to visit our midwife on Friday we get to hear the baby's heartbeat for the first time. Whoa!

Stay tuned for more updates!

M&A&Baby