Bartleys: Ruining Surprises Since 2008

One night, Ben, Tom, and I invited Jaz and JC to go geocaching with us (with our favorite headlamps!). They were kind of acting weird and doing their own thing on our hunt, which is... you know, whatever. It wasn't strange enough behavior to mention out loud. On a funny note, we did have an extremely close encounter with a skunk that night.

Of the four finds we made that night, neither Jaz nor Jose Carlos found the geocache before any of the three of us. They even arrived early to search for one of them! As we parted ways, tired, around midnight, Jose Carlos stuck a card addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Bartley on Ben's windshield. Were we supposed to open it on the spot? JC stood there grinning as Ben yelled, "Thanks!" and intentionally continued to drive home with the card stuck under his wiper.

We'd totally forgotten about the card until the next day when I was cleaning out the garage and just happened to see it on Ben's car. I took it inside, and Ben opened it, musing, "That's weird." and put it down on the coffee table. I forgot about it for another few hours, and when I read it, I was utterly confused.

What? Huh?!

You see, Grandma gives out thank you cards to everyone in the family at Christmas time. The idea is for us to send one to everyone who gave us a gift. Since no one (that I know of) has actually done this, it's kind of an amusement to all of us - because you know you can expect to get a pack of thank you cards from Gma, without fail, every year (but for all I know, she might be giving us the same deck of thank you cards year after year. Grandmas are smart like this!).

So when I read this thank you card, I initially thought it was an attempt at a semi-not-that-funny joke.  (and to date, I believe this might be the first thank you card that's been used!! Gma would approve.) Were they getting a new puppy? No way this actually means a baby... but then again, they don't joke around with stuff like this.

And then, since this was probably for real, the thought crossed my mind: "Were we supposed to have opened this card before we left Jaz & JC last night?!" I immediately had visions that Jose Carlos might've been standing there excitedly waiting for us to open the card, but being totally disappointed when we left him hanging in the middle of that parking lot as we drove away.

A few texts (Jaz was at work) and a response later, confirmed! They're having a baby!!!!

they're so stinkin cute...

Here's what we found out later: We are just WAY too good at geocaching. ;) They were being weird and secretive because they'd been trying to beat us to the geocache find all night, except they never did. The plan was to find the cache, stick the card in the container, and then pretend like they never saw it so that we would eventually discover the card in the container and be surprised, and think they were sooo smart clever. Except we ruined their master plan. :-\  But, that is a pretty fun idea...

So, we're all still digesting this huge piece of news. (some more quickly than others in the family) We're excited to be adding a new member to the Bartley clan!

Meanwhile, I thought I'd have some fun making a Spanish-inspired nursery mood board. Check it out!