The Twins' Reveal Party

Let me start off by saying that having a "reveal party" is a bit of a new thing for my family.  Way back when I had Justen, I did not even have ONE ultrasound, let alone get the chance to find out what we were having. With Taylor I had the one 20 week anatomy scan where they "thought" she was a girl, but told me to save receipts. With Calleigh I had 4 ultrasounds and they were almost a 100% sure she was a girl, but reveal parties were just starting to be popular around here. (At least I hadn't heard of very many at that time, but most of my friends are in the age group where there are not a lot of babies being born. . . )

Now we move on to the twins. Of course I have had more ultrasounds with them than I can recall unless I go back through the blog posts and count them.  Also, we knew a lot earlier that we were expecting them and shared with our friends and family right away - knowing that we would need all of the prayers and encouragement that we could possible get! And when we found out around 7 weeks that we were having twins, we were amazed at the amount of support we were getting! :)  We knew we wanted to do something for our family and friends that have walked this bumpy road with us, lifting us in prayer, encouraging us to keep going and to stay strong in our faith. We knew peoples excitement would continue to grow right along with these two precious little ones, so we decided to "go with the flow" and have a Reveal Party!

Taylor and I searched Pinterest and found a whole bunch of cute ideas for reveal parties and even a few ideas for reveal parties for twins! But after thinking about the week we were going to have with Taylor also in softball tournaments, we opted for easy, but fun!  

We settled on mini cupcakes, thinking that no one would want two regular sized ones, and found cute liners that had pink, yellow, blue, green and purple baby feet on them. We baked up the butter mixes and when they were cooled we poked a hole in the middle, stuck the tip of the frosting in and squirted a little bit of blue in half of the cupcakes and in the other half we filled them with pink!  Of course we had lots of offers to help us with the cupcakes, but we politely refused - knowing full well that these "helpers" were only looking for gender information before it was the proper time!

Next it was time to frost the top and add the green and yellow A's and B's on the appropriate cupcakes!

The next day was the party.  We had found these cute little pink and blue miniature clothespins and thought it would be fun to have the guests choose when they came in depending on if they thought it would be two girls, two boys or one of each.  

So when sides were chose pictures had to be taken!  Here is the 'two boy' guesses:

The 'two girl' guesses:

And the biggest by far was the 'one of each' group!  When we got to this group we made them pick which one they thought was the boy and girl by putting their guess for Baby A on the top and Baby B on the bottom: 

A couple of families had other things going on, so when they got there we had them make their "clothespin predictions" and took their pictures individually:

We had decided on a green and yellow theme with the frosting, plates and napkins until everyone bit in to their cupcakes.  We had watermelon, fiesta pretzels, and my aunt Sharon made home-made ice cream. 

Then it was time to pass out the cupcakes and bite in to "A" first:

It's a BOY!!!!!

Then we had everyone bite into the "B" cupcake at the same time:

It's a GIRL!!!!!

We also decided to share the names that we picked out for these two little babies, so others could be lifting them up in prayer by name. We had a collage made of some ultrasound pictures with their names that we gave to each set of grandparents.

I have had several people ask me where/how we came up with our names, so even though it's not too terribly exciting I'll let you know!  We had already decided on two girls' and two boys' names with a number one name for each in case it was one of each. 

Our number one girl's name: Payzleigh Hope Calleigh Belew

About the time we started trying to have another baby I read in our local paper about some older folks here in Palmyra that had their great-granddaughter Paisley come to visit them.  I immediately fell in love with that name!  Of course I had to be different and change the spelling around to fit in with the 'leigh' spelling that we started with Calleigh. Payzleigh doesn't have a fantastic meaning like Calleigh does, all I've found for it is "a pattern of fabric", but sometimes you just have to go with what you love!   Hope is what we've been hanging on to, so it seemed fitting to use as a middle name and a good friend of mine's daughter's name is Hope (she is in heaven with our CJ) so I wanted to used the name Hope.  We also thought it would be fitting to used Calleigh as a second middle name that we won't necessarily use, but will be there as a tribute to CJ. 

Our number one boy's name: Brayden Oliver Belew

Brayden was actually Calleigh's boy name and I still loved that name. We wanted to stay with the 'en' spelling at the end to keep with the 'Justen' theme.  Calleigh's middle name would've been Jaxen if she was a boy, and since then I had fallen in love with the name Oliver.  Last summer, when I spent time working part-time at Mamasita's I waited on a family with a little boy named Oliver and wanted to use that name ever since.  Corey and Taylor weren't as set on it as I was, so we compromised and used it as Brayden's middle name! 

Our number two girl's name: Nataleigh Ruth Joy Belew

I love the name Nataleigh, especially spelled using our 'leigh' theme! Ruth was my grandma's middle name, and Joy as a second middle name to honor CJ.

Our number two boy's name: Graysen Jaxon Belew

We just liked them all, and of course the 'en' at the end to keep with the boy 'en' theme!

There you have it! Not too exciting, but fun!  :)  

Peace and Love to All!!