For a few days, we were brainstorming about creative ways to tell our parents and families that we're expecting. I had the idea to buy them all "gifts" that reflected their new titles...products that had "grandpa," "grandma," "aunt," and "uncle" in the title. The easiest was, of course, for my brother:
Lee mentioned Grandma's Cookies, which I had never heard of, but we decided to look for those while we were out shopping. I didn't know about "Grandpa's" anything, nor a product by the name of Aunt Jackie, so I hit the internet. I found a gourmet soap company called Grandpa's, and ordered my dad a lavendar and vanilla bar. He's so sentimental I figure he'll probably never use it, but maybe it will make his sock drawer smell good for a while. :)
I was at work surfing for something for Jackie, and I found this!
One of my African American co-workers near me leaned over, looking at my screen and asked, "You use ethnic hair products??" Ummm...whoops. I had just ordered it. Oh well, Jackie has curly hair; how could it hurt?
Finally, Grandma's Cookies. This should have been the easiest thing to find, given that we go grocery shopping every week, but we couldn't find them! We struck out at Wal-Mart, H.E.B., and Kroger. Finally, we were walking in the Woodlands mall, and there happened to be a convenience store there. We thought why not give it a try...and score!
I kept calling Rachel, asking her if she was sure she and Jake weren't going to be able to make it up for Christmas. She assured me that it was impossible, so we're probably just going to tell them over Skype or something. It's kind of a good thing though, because I searched and searched and the only thing I found by the name "Aunt Rachel" was a movie about an aunt who is unlucky in love, so she wishes the same fate upon her niece. Thus, she does everything she can to destroy her niece's romance with a young man - not exactly the kind of message I would encourage. The other alternative was a weird looking book called "Aunt Rachel's Fur." Umm, no. And I couldn't really find anything for Jake either...
Anyway, we wrapped the gifts for my mom, dad, brother, and sister-in-law in identical wrapping paper, with the plan to have them open the presents at the same time. Hopefully they'll figure it out, and it'll be fun to watch. The only thing is that I'm already bursting to tell them the secret. Now I'm not sure when all 4 of them will be together. I want to walk in and be like, "Open these presents NOW!" But that would almost certainly make them suspicious. I've been bugging Jackie about when she and Ben are going to be coming over on Christmas Eve. She probably thinks I'm just being controlling, but the thing is that I'm trying to find the earliest time when everyone will be together! (Sorry, Jacks. :)
The reveal for Lee's parents had to be a little more obvious, since they already are grandparents. We didn't want to do the same thing and have them think we were just reaffirming the fact that they are grandparents because of Julia, our niece. So Lee had the idea to get baby clothes with "grandma" and "grandpa" on them, in the hopes that they would understand it was for a new baby. (Why would we get them baby clothes for Julia?) After hours of searching, we found these. After all the pinks and blues, we thought these were pretty gender-neutral...at least until I showed Becca and she pointed out the pink letters. Oh well, if we have a boy, he's going to wear them anyway!
We're going to give these to Lee's parents as the last gift when we have the Hooker Christmas on December 22. Our plan is to fake-forget them "in our suitcase" so that we can ensure they open them last. We even planned a little fake argument. :) We're not very good actors though, so we'll see how it goes. I guess I'll have to update you on how everything went after Christmas!
~Hooks
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