With two boys and one girl, my sister Karis already knows she’s crazy blessed, but when they decided to have one more baby, Karis said from the beginning that she was hoping it would be a girl…just so Cora would be able to have the chance to have a relationship with a sister like the three of us have. Sisters = awesome. Built in best friends from the very beginning and all of that.

So when she said that she was finding out the gender (she didn’t with Cora) and that she wanted me to shoot a gender reveal, I was SO excited/nervous to get it *right*. And when the U/S tech texted me the “It’s a GIRL!” shot, it was all I could do to keep it a secret for 6 long days! I knew how happy it would make Karis and that made me so. stinking. happy. She’s such an amazing person/sister/friend and does so much for me and other people that even though I didn’t make this kid’s genetic girl make up, I felt so so so happy to be a part of the whole surprise part of it!

The anticipation was killing her!

I will say that I had a grand idea to do something *different*. I have done the balloons out of a box thing, and I’ve seen TONS of cake cutting and glitter blowing and all that jazz. And I have to be honest, that I’m way better at playing with families and showing up with a quilt and a camera and that’s it. I applaud photographers like Skye who pull together this elaborate eye candy photoshoots, but that is 100% something that I’m not good at! So I reached out to my amazing Facebook friends on the fan page and got so. many. amazing suggestions.

We decided to concoct some sort of bucket/rope system where the boys would pull a rope and pink glitter, feathers, rose petals and powder would rain softly down on them. I went out and bought $70 worth of pink frilly stuff and came back home with every intention of putting this together somehow for the shoot later. Then the kids begged us to come swimming (it’s over 90 degrees in Michigan right now and we have no A/C!) and play tag. And as excited as I was to shoot this crazy unique idea, I also told myself that I’d be “working” on it later and that would take some time away from my precious vacay and you know what? Screw the whole bucket dumping idea…I was dreading setting it up, and what if something went wrong and a bucket fell off. In the end, it just didn’t feel like “us”.

Thankfully, Melanie from FAAS had suggested the day before that she could make cupcakes for Randy and Karis to find out by feeding each other and they’d have pink filling. And it was an excuse to see her again so I was all over it.

It was perfect. I love love love Randy’s smile in that last one!

Karis and Randy just celebrated ten years of marriage on July 5th, and I feel so lucky to have their relationship (and many others!) to help me continue to find new ways to look at my own marriage. Soon to be parents of four, and they are still completely over the moon for each other, make totally inappropriate nonsensical innuendos constantly (example… Karis – “I need to run to the Post Office” Randy *waggling eyebrows* “I’ll take YOU to the Post Office” —-it doesn’t even make sense!) and are just totally rad parents to the three they already have.

After they had their time together to celebrate another girl on the way, we gathered up the kids and brought them over and instructed them to close their eyes and whatever we put in their hands to toss, and if it was pink that meant mommy was having a girl and if it was blue, mommy was having a boy! I LOVE how this turned out…I love Logan’s glitter pile just plopping to the ground, lol…it makes me laugh so dang hard! Perfectly imperfect. 🙂 And no buckets used!

I just love Colin (in the purple) and his reaction. He has a total soft spot for Cora and was hoping for another little sister to love on 🙂

******insert gratuitous glitter blowing shots here*******

We headed back to the cabin, but the boys wanted to play with the glitter a little bit more, so we obliged them!

And Coraline…she has no idea that she’s about to get kicked off her throne. I kid you not, Randy’s pet name for her is: Pumpkin Pie Sugar Spice.

Not.

Even.

Lying.

But until November, she will be blissfully ignorant <3