Last Thanksgiving, Sarah Benibo decided it was the perfect time to tell her family that she and her husband were expecting another child. Her sister, Sophia Stephens, suggested she play a hilarious prank on her parents, Dorretta and Ron Stephens, to share the news. That prank, which Sophia filmed and Benibo later posted, went viral on social media, garnering more attention than Benibo ever thought her announcement would.
According to Good Morning America, Benibo didn’t love her sister’s idea at first.
“Initially, I was like, ‘This is so cliche. This is so typical. They’re gonna know immediately.’ But my sister was like, ‘No, we should just do it.’ So we ordered the Instacart groceries and once my mom and dad arrived, I put my son to bed and then we started the whole prank at that point,” Benibo told GMA.
In the clip, the sisters tell their parents that there’s an issue in their Airbnb’s kitchen — someone left a hamburger bun in the oven. They discuss the matter in a nudge nudge-manner, though it takes a little while for Dorretta to understand what they were actually trying to tell them.
“I’m thinking nothing because as soon as she opened the oven, I’m thinking, ‘Who does this? Who leaves a bun in the oven?’ No clue whatsoever,” Dorretta recounted to GMA.
Ron said he was just as confused until they realized the happy news.
“I was like, ‘What is still going on?’ I couldn’t put the dots together and I felt a little bit embarrassed because everybody was like, rejoicing,” he told GMA. “Later on, they said, ‘It’s a baby!’ Then, ‘Oh, I’ve got it!’ So, the bun in the oven didn’t work with me. I didn’t know what was going on.”
Benibo, who’s not a habitual prankster, said the moment was worth it.
“That’s not really our thing, but for babies, it’s just such a celebratory time. It’s just such a happy moment for everybody involved, especially considering I couldn’t get pregnant for the first couple of years of my marriage,” she said.
Though the prank went down last November, Benibo only shared the clip last week, in honor of her mom’s birthday.
“I kind of just forgot about the video. We came back from California, it’s Christmas now, you know, we just moved on. And then once my mom’s birthday was coming up, I was like, ‘Oh, I need to post something, to just show her personality,'” Benibo said.
Benibo and the Stephenses can’t wait to meet their newest family member, who Dorretta says is “a little girl.”
“We’re all going to spoil her,” Dorretta added.
