Happy Thanksgiving!

After telling my family at my birthday party about my little hitchhiker we then waited until Thanksgiving to tell Brian's family when they would all be together.

Oh, except we decided to drive to Arizona to spend the holiday weekend with Brian's sister and her family (thanks, Huffmans!!!). Small details.

So the day before Thanksgiving we placed this photo in B's parent's home:

Now, we had thought this was fairly obvious. I wore my sparkly Toms, so they would know for sure who's feet they were looking at. We also chose very boyish little sneakers! We put the picture at the stairs, which everyone has to walk past to go up to the kitchen.

So after sneaking in to plant the photo we started driving to Arizona.

B's mom called--but just to see how the drive was going.

And again--but just to see how the drive was going.

And repeat.

Each time we thought for sure they had seen the photo, but nope. Wednesday ended with the Derrick clan still in the dark. The next morning (Thanksgiving) we showed the picture to my nieces and nephews in Arizona. Emmry immediately recognized the silver shoes as mine, but we went through quite a few guesses at who the little sneakers belonged to. I was actually impressed as the Huffman kids named every male (they also recognized the boy shoes part, no girls were guessed)  cousin they had, although they don't see them often. Eventually, Braden had it:

"Your baby!"

He's a smart kid, that Braden. Next we emailed the picture to Brian's sister in Texas. When she showed the picture to her boys and told them we were expecting a little boy in May her youngest, Gideon, said "Is it me?" Which is extra funny because the little dude actually IS due on Gideon's (and Aunt Ashley's) birthday.

So we waited alllllll day for someone from Brian's family to call us saying they'd seen the photo.

By 6:00 pm we figured we better call and make someone go look at it before they all went home. (I promise, we weren't trying to be THAT sneaky. Every single person had walked past the picture multiple times by then.)

We had B's sister go down to look at the frame, but she didn't get it so we had her go get B's mom. As she was looking at it Ashley came downstairs and saved them all by recognizing the idea from a website that we both use for cooking and craft ideas.As Ashley explained (and with some prompting they realized they were boy shoes) the hallway filled with far more people than it was meant to hold. Just when we thought everyone had heard the news, Brian's dad wandered in.

Jim had been outside the entire time.

I think next time we'll just send an email. Apparently we are too sneaky for our own good.