Our exciting news!

This may be a surprise to some of you, but I am pregnant with baby number six! I haven't said much about it because we had a little rocky start and we just wanted to make sure everything was going to be okay before announcing it to everyone. Basically, there was some bleeding at first and we were afraid that the baby had miscarried. Having recently gone through a miscarriage we were a little worried. Luckily, our worries were for not and we had an ultrasound confirming a living baby!

On February 13th, we had our ultrasound that told us the gender of the baby. Everyone was excited and most everyone was routing for . . . you guessed it, a girl. Chad and I were just hopping for healthy (while thinking it would probably be another boy). To our surprise and delight we were told that we are having a girl!! Wow, miracles do happen! We will finally be able to see what a Monroe girl looks like.

We were very excited to share our news with everyone, but we were trying to keep it from Austin because we figured he would spill the beans to his brothers. We had him go into another room while we called family members and that seemed to work well. After we had gotten ahold of most everyone, Chad, Austin and I went to Chili's for lunch to celebrate. While we were there we got ahold of another family member and when we told them the baby was a girl Austin overheard. It was cute he looked up and said, "A girl . . . Fun!"

So with the cat out of the bag I ran to the store to get some confetti and balloons and then tried to get home before the boys so I could put Austin down for a nap (to keep him quiet). Ah, the best laid plans . . . I ended up getting home just minutes after Tanner. He immediately came out to the car and asked me what the baby was. I told him he would have to wait for Dad and his brothers. As I was getting Austin out of the car Tanner asked me another time if the baby was a boy. Austin quickly piped in that it was a girl. Tanner got excited and I got mad at Austin. It was kind of awkward because then Tanner didn't know whether to be excited or not. I put Austin to bed (before the other boys got home) and then told Tanner it was okay to be excited, but that he couldn't let on that he knew. He did better than Austin and kept the news a secret!

I wanted to tell the boys in a fun way, so I got black balloons at the store and put pink "It's a Girl" confetti inside of them. The boys had to break the balloons in order to find out the gender.

They enjoyed trying to pop the ballons (it took longer than you would think). Devon couldn't get his to pop, so he got some scissors and solved the problem quick!

It was fun, but the boys didn't quite get it right away when the balloons popped. The confetti was a little small, so Tanner helped out and said, in a surprised tone, "It's a girl!"

This brought several responses. The boys all initially smiled, but then Devon processed what had been said and he burst into tears. Apparently he wanted a boy.

Trevor was excited and Kaden was surprised, but wasn't sure what to think. It wasn't exactly the response we thought we would get, but that's okay it was still fun! Chad talked to Devon and settled him down and I think he will come around by the time she gets here - they all will!

After all of the balloon fun we celebrate by eating pink frozen yogurt bars. It's going to be fun to throw a girl into this mix!