Note of caution: if you are on Facebook, tell your friends that know first not to say anything until you have a chance to tell everyone yourself. Especially if there are work friends in your network and you don't want it widely known at work yet.

Now to the happy parts:

With our first, we happened to be having my parents over for dinner for my dad's birthday. When they got there, I couldn't think of any good way to tell them. Casual conversation went as usual before dinner and I kept trying to think of a good way to tell them. Eventually I figured I was just over-thinking it so I picked up our Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy book and laid it on the table in front of my mother. She was thrilled.

A few weeks later we went on vacation near my spouse's family. I think the news had already been leaked by phone to the parents and older sister but not the 2 younger college-aged sisters. One was told that if they ever wanted to travel during college that they "could stay with us to visit their new niece or nephew". This elicited a huge scream of joy that only a teenage girl can produce. When the other sister got home from work, we said we had some pictures to show her and gave her the ultrasound pics. She was also really happy and gave us big hugs. It was a great way to start a vacation.

give them a cake that says "Congrats Grandma and Grandpa !!"

This didn't involve telling the future grandparents the news, but I thought it was novel:

My cousin had invited me once to a casual poker game at his brother-in-law's house, to fill a spot. As we were playing the first hand, another guy at the table had been dealt one of the Joker cards, which was not supposed to be in the deck. He interrupted the dealing in progress to show us the card.

Scrawled on the face of that Joker card was was "Steve's going to be a daddy!", or something to the same effect. Steve's wife had inserted the card into the deck before the game!

I think the dad-to-be knew the news already, but it would have been priceless if he didn't. :-)

We had our dog tell my brother and his girlfriend we were pregnant. We bought her a scarf that said "I'm the Big Sister" and had her run into their house and jump on them :)

We told our parents while showing them pictures of a recent vacation we took. When we were scrolling through the pictures (on the computer) at the end a picture came up with a closeup of the pregnancy test (which they didn't realize what it was), then the next picture was of me holding up a little onesie on my stomach. It was funny to watch the look on their faces as they tried to process what we were telling them :) They were so excited!

When we had our first child, we bought all the grandparents those really cheesy "Best Grandma/Grandpa in the World" mugs, wrapped them up, and brought them over as gifts when we were ready to break the news. It was a lot of fun seeing their reactions, especially after being confused about why they were getting presents.

I told my best friend by taking the pregnancy test to church and showing it to her.

When I told my mom, the first words out of my mouth were "Are you sitting down?" When your daughter calls and thats the first thing she says, you know she's about to drop a bomb.

With my son, I showed up for my SIL's wedding and just showed the ultrasound pics to family members. We'd already told siblings and parents, so this was to inform aunts, uncles, cousins, and great-grandma.

We visited my parents, and my wife was complaining about some stomach pain. I told my parents in a matter-of-fact tone "I'm not worried about her, this is perfectly natural for the first trimester". Their chins dropped in astonishment =8-)

I bought two t-shirts of similar colour from the iron-on place in the mall. We went to a family dinner, with me wearing the first one with an iron-on of a tiger. Partway through the afternoon I slipped off to the bathroom and changed into the second shirt, which was printed to read:

I know someone

who has a secret

in her tummy

It took a few minutes for anyone to notice, but when they did... it was very popular. :)

My mother was always anxious for me and my wife to get pregnant, so I told her almost every week we were (although it was a lie).

This was all in preparation for the real deal, when I told her she didn't believe me and it was fun to try to convince her I was telling the truth that time =)

I honestly don't remember the first time, but when we were expecting our second, we told my parents at my dad's birthday celebration. We gave him a card signed with our names and "and baby" at the end. He read it out loud.

I did apologize to him later for kind of stealing his thunder, but he was totally fine with it.

you could steal a Full House way of doing it. Make dinner and have baby carrots...baby back ribs... they had other foods but I can't remember what they were!!

Our friends are getting married in the summer, so for her parents we went with:

"are you busy on June 27th? because we could do with a baby sitter"

About 5 seconds later the penny dropped.

This is our plan the next time. Video tape our daughter saying "I'm going to be a big sister again" and then send it to our parents. Our friends just did this and it turned out to be really cute.

We were renovating out kitchen at the time and had a multitude of brochures. We put the ultrasound photo in the brochure and then handed it to "grandpa" to ask for advice. He stared at the ultrasound, flipped past it, went back and stared. Then grandma came over and stared hopping up and down. Grandpa swears that he thought it was a starmap

Okay... here's one for you all...

My fiancee and I while we were vacationing in Thailand in March.

On April 1st (as an April Fool's joke) she called me up and told me she was pregnant. To which I quickly (and in a pretend panic) told her I had an STD (not true) and she could go to the doctor right away!

I then added, "...oh and next time you're going to try playing an APRIL FOOL'S day joke on me you should probably start the day before!"

We had a good laugh...

But sometimes the world has other plans... :-)

After missing her monthly visit on April 3rd, she started stressing over it. The anxiety got worse and worse...

I finally came one one evening and said to her, "You know, why don't we go down to the drug store and get a pregnancy test RIGHT NOW so we'll KNOW and can act accordingly."

She paused a moment then said, "Uhh... okay... but I'm making dinner. So let's go after dinner, okay?"

That was fine with me.

After dinner she handed me a card (which wasn't too out of the ordinary because she's sweet like that all the time). I opened it up and it said, "You're not the boss anymore."

Half thinking this MIGHT be some continuation of the April Fool's day joke I wasn't quite sure HOW to respond. Shen then showed me TWO pregnancy tests... both positive.

Side Note: BOTH of those tests were SOLID positive and yet she says to me, "That one has a small nick out of it so I'm not really sure..." I looked at her and said, "Sweety, that is a TEXTBOOK POSITIVE if I've ever seen one!" (Talk about denial... LOL!)

It turns out she'd already come to the same conclusion as I did and stopped off on her way home from work to pick up the tests...

So that's how I found out.

My mom... I simply called her up and said, "Hey mom, _ has something to say to you, and handed the phone over." The look of SHOCK on her face was PRICELESS. She made casual conversation with my mom for a while... never said anything, so I finally leaned into the phone and said, "We're pregnant. You're going to be a grandma."

(Note: Unless your mom is 110% cool like MINE is... I don't recommend it. But I'm 34, my fiancee is 37 and my mom REALLY wants grandkids... so she was THRILLED.)

Her parents... I wasn't there but HER mom was thrilled and her dad said (jokingly) something like, "Do you not know how this happens?"

So, the moral of the story is... April Fool's day jokes are NOT something you want to take lightly.

The baby is due Dec 6th. Its a girl! God help us... ;-)

My sister was talking to my Mom about her wedding plans, and my mom handed the phone over to me. My sister asked me if I would be her Maid of Honor in her wedding....I said, I will, but are you sure you want me to because I might be really big then. I said, I will be having a baby in December, and I will be six months pregnant at that time!! My Mom and sister were really excited for us!! I was not planning on saying anything yet because I was only like a month along, and wanted to wait a few more months before saying anything.

We were able to tell our families when we were visiting for Christmas. We created a movie poster with an ultrasound image from the web and put it in a movie clapboard picture frame. Then we wrapped it and gave it to our families after all the other presents had been opened.

With number three my parents were trying to organise a holiday with us and my brother. My mum was trying to sort out dates, and I said that a particular date was possibly going to be no good, as I might be pregnant, and if I was then that would be around my due date. It turned out I wasn't pregnant that time, but after that my mum knew we were trying for another, so she wasn't going to miss any clues.

Our first was a little sudden (we had been together for only about 6 weeks) so we were concerned how parents were going to take the news. We told our best friend first, he and his girlfriend were both pleased for us, so, next day we went round to see my wifes mum while dad was at work. We needn't have worried, she was thrilled and rushed off to phone dad, who wasn't near the phone, so she started phoning random relatives to tell them!
My mum and dad live (seperatly) a distance away so both had to be told by phone. Telling dad was easy (in between my attacks of giggles anyway). When I told my mum she asked something along the lines of "Whose the mum!?" as I don't talk to her very often I had neglected to tell her that I had a girlfriend. Caused a little confusion when I asked het how she felt about being a grandma. :)
Our best friend had organsied a new year party at his flat, (this was all between xmas and new year) and asked if he could tell the rest of our friends at the party. At midnight he proposed a toast to the 9 people in the room (not sure if the number is right, too long ago, but one of them was new baby). He did the toast, then waited, and waited, and waited. It was ages (probably only 10 or 15 seconds actually) before someone noticed that he had got the number of people wrong and he was able to explain why he was right. Moral of the story, if you intend to do similar, make sure the room has a decent number of SOBER people in it!

We got to tell them twice.

When we found out we were pregnant we called our parents right away, nothing special there, although a fantastic experience naturally. However Rita had some bleedings about ten weeks in, and we were scheduled for an ultrasound two days after, with the fear that it migth be a spontaneous abort. We kept our parents updated.

At the ultrasound we found out that everything was alright, and that we were having twins. Thrilled I called my worrying parents, and I said that "Everything is fine with both". They naturally thought that with "both" I was meaning mother and baby, and I could keep dropping several subtle hints before they finally realised what I meant.

When I found out I was pregnant, I made a card for my husband. On the front, I glued a sesame seed - the approximate size of our baby at the time and put my due date underneath the seed. Inside the card, I put the positive pregnancy test. It was a really fun way to share the news with him.

If you are looking for a novel way to tell your parents, you could make a similar card. :)