Our First Maternity Photos

July 17th we found out that our sweet little baby is a boy and we named him Elwin Ransom Boyd. The next day we went out to Lake Washington in Kirkland and took some gender reveal photos and maternity/couple photos. I want to share them with you here, as well as the story of the day.

A month to several weeks ago our sweet friend Emily Mason offered to shoot our gender reveal photos for us. We talked about different ideas or themes that we could do. I originally wanted to do colored paint, where Curtis and I wear white shirts and throw the appropriately colored paint at each other. I decided this would be very messy and the waste of a perfectly good white shirt. Ally Macewen gave me the idea of the ice cream cones as well as the idea of throwing the wrong colored cone on the ground. Emily and I loved this idea, so we went with that one!

We set the shoot for Tuesday, July 18th, right after our ultrasound. Emily and I both called around Bellevue and Kirkland, looking for ice cream places that had a blue ice cream. For your information, blue ice cream is not very common. Everyone has pink, no one has blue. I thought we might have to scrap the idea and do something like balloons but Curtis said "why don't you just buy blue food coloring and vanilla ice cream?" Genius! So I made a trip to Safeway and got some waffle cones, strawberry ice cream, and vanilla ice cream. When I went down the cake aisle though there was no food coloring to be found. There was, however, some cupcake icing spray paint....I'd never seen anything like it before, you use it to spray on the cupcake icing to make it whatever color you want. So I grabbed a blue bottle and called it good.

Emily showed up Tuesday afternoon and we packed up our little ice cream picnic and headed south to the park. Everything was going great, the sky was blue, the air was warm, and there was a shirtless jazz flute player giving us some mood music. I got our cones all ready and sprayed Curtis' with the blue spray paint (which is labeled as being completely edible). Curtis took one small, cautionary lick of his ice cream cone and refused to touch it again. "It tastes chemically" he said. "Curtis, you have to lick the ice cream cone!" I said to him over and over. I would pose for the camera and glance over at my husband grimacing at the cone. "You're going to ruin our pictures!" I even ate some myself to show him that I could take one for the team, so he should too. He eventually mustered up the courage to get a few licks in.

The photos turned out great, thanks to Emily. 

Here is Curtis looking at his cone while I tell him he has to eat it.

This is me hitting him, insisting he has to eat it for the pictures.

Obviously neither of us was too upset about the whole thing...after all the trouble it was to get to the park with pink and blue ice cream, we just found it all really funny.

My ice cream was delicious.

Curtis did not like the idea of throwing the pink ice cream on the floor. "What does that say to girls? It's like we're saying 'get on the floor where you belong!'" Emily and I overruled him though and we did it anyway.

I made him compromise and pretend to eat the cone for this picture.

I think I just put some ice cream on his face.

I definitely put ice cream on his face here.

Then I laid down the law and was like "EAT IT!"

Then we took some photos together! I really treasure these pictures because are only other photos together are from our wedding and a couple engagement photos.

Comparing our bellies. I win.

Crazy face!

Can't wait for Elwin to join our family!