The contest I won

A few weeks ago one of the most amazing things happened that I wanted to keep a secret until I started telling people about the baby. Now that we're spreading the word, I can FINALLY share this story and publicly thank the anonymous people who so generously donated their time to run this contest, and who made me so incredibly happy, grateful, and excited!

Back when we were in New Hampshire for Chris' grandma's funeral (the weekend of Feb 14), I had a bit of time to waste at the hotel because everyone else was sleeping, and I stumbled upon a web site called "His Boys Can Swim" (http://www.hisboyscanswim.com/). It's an anonymous blog written by a couple in Texas who are expecting their first baby. They ran a contest on their web site that started Feb 21 and ended Feb 28. The contest was for various products, mostly baby-related. There were 31 prizes in all, and there were three ways to enter. The first way was to visit each of the sponsors' sites and leave a comment on the His Boys Can Swim blog about which products I liked on each site. As for the other two chances to enter--one was to post on Twitter that I entered the contest, and the other was to write about the contest in my blog. Well, since I was only 10 weeks pregnant at the time and didn't want anyone but our parents to know, I opted to not enter the contest the last two ways. When I entered the contest, I wrote in my entry that I was only 10 weeks along and was not ready for friends and relatives to find out from my blog or Twitter.

We were skiing on the day that the drawing took place (yes, I continued to ski even after we knew I was pregnant), so the next morning I checked the results. I was sure I hadn't won as I scrolled through the winners and didn't see my name, and then I got to sponsor #31, the very last one. The winner was "Kelly (comment #154)". My heart started pounding--that prize was a $200 gift card for Babies R Us! So I went back to the blog to see if my comment was, in fact, #154. Once I found out that the winner was ME, I ran into the family room to tell Chris. I just couldn't believe it!!!

Now, here's another interesting little part...when I first went to the web site to check the winners, I scrolled down further than I had intended and I missed the first part of the blog entry where they talked about how the drawing had gone the previous night. Later when I reread that posting, I saw that they specifically mentioned MY ENTRY to the contest! I couldn't believe it! I felt like a star! They mentioned how I opted to only enter the contest once but that I won the largest prize. Read about it here: http://www.hisboyscanswim.com/1502/the-his-boys-can-swim-pregnancy-blog-contest-winners#more-1502

I feel so fortunate to have won this prize, which will surely be put to good use! I'm a frugal shopper, even with gift cards, so we'll be able to stretch this gift card quite far. We may decide to hold onto it until after the baby is born so we can buy things we didn't realize we would need, and I'm certain there will be MANY such items, since we have absolutely no clue what we're doing!

I hope you enjoyed this story! I couldn't wait to share it!