Portraits!!

We went to Portrait Innovations in Leesburg tonight to get our family pictures done. Gracie is 9 months (almost 10) and this is the first time we got professional pictures taken! haha Oh well, I guess better late than never. I wanted to do a post and show some of the amazingly adorable pictures they got of our cutie Grace! She did soooo well!! She loves having her picture taken, she is such a ham :) Well, enjoy the pictures!









We also got some Christmas portraits done. Here is just a little preview ;-)

My Little Reindeer

These past two weeks I have been watching my neice, Adriana. I am so glad to be watching her again, but at the same time it brings some challenges. Having a 9 mth old and a 12 mth old in the same house all day can be very tiring! However, I am so lucky that I get to stay home with my little girl and have the pleasure of also watching my neice grow up! It just doesn't get better than that! I am still working on getting them on a more regular napping schedule, but they seem to be getting better. And if they get tired enough, they will eventually just conk out! Like the photo below. Gracie was in mid-crawl and just completely fell asleep on the floor haha. What cracks me up even more is that she sticks her butt up in the air!!




We finally got our Christmas tree!! This weekend we plan on decorating the house and trimming the tree. I can't wait!! I just hope Gracie can keep away from the tree for at least part of the time it's up haha. We shall see how that goes! I am so excited for this Christmas. I hope Gracie's first Christmas is enjoyable for her!! The holidays will never be the same now that we have a child. They will hold so much more meaning and emotion for me now! Below is a picture of Gracie with her reindeer headband on while we went shopping for a tree. It cracks me up!! Isn't she just the cutest?!?!?

Hope

The past few months have been pretty hard for me and my family. The economy has really effected us, which in turn effects our mental and emotional well being. I wish I could say I was a strong enough Christian who knew God would take care of me and who didn't doubt. However, I will be completely honest and let you know that I have let fear rule over me these past few months. Instead of getting into His word and spending one on one time with the Lord, I grew distant from God. I know He called me away from my job to take care of my daughter, but when my sister lost her job, which in turn meant I was out of money that my family depended on, I felt a total let down from God. Here I was obeying what He asked me to do, yet my family is struggling in more ways than one!! I felt like He let go of me and I had such a hard time feeling His prescence. I couldn't even really get into worship at church, and for anyone that knows me, knows that worship is MY thing! I let satan build a wall up between me and my God. I let his lies become truths to me. I gave in to my fears instead of standing on God's promises!! However, this past Sunday the pastor said something that really resonated with me. Well, he said a lot that really spoke to me (I thought the sermon was written for me! haha). He said "why are we so afraid that our God will not take care of us? If we love our children and take care of them with all we know how, than how can we think that our Father in Heaven will not do exceedingly more for His children?? And He has ALL the capablities at His fingertips to do so."

This comment really spoke to me and hit me right in the heart. Why am I so fearful?? And of course God loves me! The question should have never been if He loved me or not, it should have been what does He want me to gain from this experience. I can also honestly say that even though my family has gone through a pretty hard financial time, our needs have ALWAYS been met. This Christmas may be a small Christmas, but maybe that is exactly what God wants! Maybe He wants me to focus on all the blessings He has given me like my beautiful Gracie, my wonderful husband, and my awesome family and friends. It's not about the gifts, it's about His son and what He gave to the world! I am not to focus on the presents and what I don't have, but instead focus on what I DO have and all that He has given me. I am His daughter and He will always take care of me NO MATTER WHAT!!

And today I proudly report how gracious and GOOD our God is!! My sister got a job and starts on Monday!!! YAY God and Congrats Kara!!
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I also wanted to post a picture of my beautiful blessing, Gracie. I just can't get enough of this cutie!!


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On a side note, I follow a blog written by Angie Smith (she is the wife of Todd Smith, lead singer of Selah). About two years ago she was pregnant with a baby girl and found out that the baby had a terminal illness and would not live past delivery. She carried the sweet baby, and it died shortly after she gave birth. The blog is her journey through that trial. I love reading her words and find such enouragement in her writing. Her new post is very inspiring and I hope it speaks to you as much as it spoke to me!
http://audreycaroline.blogspot.com/

Halloween

I just wanted to post some pictures from Halloween. Gracie and Adriana were Redskins cheerleaders. They looked soo cute!! I love these girls!

My Big Girl

Time goes by so fast when you have a child. Time was already going fast before Gracie, but now it just flies by! Grace is 8 and 1/2 months already and I feel like she was just born yesterday. She has been having a lot of "firsts" lately and it just makes me feel so proud! I know every mother thinks their child is the smartest and cutest, but Grace really is haha. :)

This past Saturday was Adriana's first birthday party. Can I just say that just blows my mind!! The above picture is from the party. It was an awesome party and my sister did a great job putting it all together! There were sooo many kids. Having everyone all together in one place really showed how big our family is growing and how many new little ones we have. My cousin Misty just had a baby boy, named Anthony, this past week. So, currently the new little ones are Connor (just turned 1), Adriana (1), Grace (8 1/2 mths), and Anthony (1 wk). Now that doesn't count all the other little ones that we have that are under 6. We also have a lot of friends that just had babies too! Gavin (4 mths), Landon (2 mths), Peyton (17 mths), and Maddie (1 yr). Grace and Adriana are so blessed to have so many play mates!!

Seeing all the new little babies at the party made me think of how much Grace has grown in such a short amount of time. It also makes me want to have another one so bad!! Grace has started to finally crawl. She has been kind of crawling for about a month now, but she was more interested in sitting up and pulling herself up on things than actually crawling. Well, the morning of Adriana's party, she started crawling!! She does it so well!! Gracie also learned to wave with one hand on Saturday too. She was trying to wave for quite some time, but she would wave with both hands haha. Now she finally gets it and waves with just one hand. She also said "no no" for the first time on Saturday and has not stopped since! This was cute the first few times, but now it's lost its excitement haha.

Saturday night, Clinton was leaving to go to the store and Gracie could tell he was about to leave. So she crawls over to him and says "no no dada" over and over again and then kept giving him lots of kisses. She didn't want him to leave. It was sooo cute!! I know it broke Daddy's heart! It was a big step for Grace because it showed that she is using her words in association with their meaning instead of just babbling words.

She is so fun to watch! Gracie loves to play with toys and figure out how they work. When she figures out how the toy lights up, plays music, or moves she get so excited and proud of herself. I love the look on her face when she figures it out and how she looks around for me or Clinton and then claps to show her excitement. She is just the cutest thing. I may miss her little baby stage, but I sure am loving her "big girl" stage. God has blessed me with such an amazing daughter! Even when things are going crazy around me, all I need to do is look at my sweet little girl and see God's goodness and mercy. I see His Grace!!

My Cutie-pie

I don't have much to say tonight, just wanted to post a picture of my cutie! And her shirt is oh so true haha She LOVES her Daddy!!

October

I am really bad at keeping up with this blog!! I have been meaning to write as I have had a lot on my mind and heart, but there never seemed to be a good time. However, tonight Gracie went to bed early and my husband is out, so it seems as if God has opened up some time for me :) Yesterday was my second wedding anniversary. It's so crazy to think that two years have gone by already! These past two years have been trying yet blissful, heartbreaking yet joyous. We have grown as a couple, yet have MUCH more growing to do. We are learning day by day to rely more on God and less on ourselves. And now with including a daughter in the mix, we are learning how to be parents. I pray that we are the parents to Grace that God wants us to be. He has blessed us with a beautiful, healthy daughter and I fully give her back to Him because she is the Lord's daughter first. I am just gracious and blessed that He chose ME to mother her. She teaches me so much every day. She teaches me patience, understanding and most of all she shows me the areas of my heart and mind that I have to work on!! haha



October is a month that comes with much celebration, but also with a great mourning. It marks my wedding anniversary, but also marks the date of my miscarriage. Two years ago on Oct. 5th I lost my first child. Most of the year I try not to think about the pain and the suffering I went through, but two months a year I have a hard time NOT thinking about it. October is hard and then again in April I struggle. My due date was April 28th and for some reason April is always harder than October. I guess it reminds me that my baby is not spending a birthday with me and is not here for me to kiss and sing "Happy Birthday" to.



I haven't really talked too much about the miscarriage because let's face it, most people don't really don't know what to say and I don't want to make anyone uncomfortable bringing up such a painful situation (and who wants to talk about death and miscarriages anyway!) However, I mostly don't want anyone to really make me feel better, I just want someone to talk to about it. I want someone to listen. On a day that I may happen to think of my first baby I want to be able to just say out loud "I wonder what he or she would have looked like" or I want to say "well today he/she would have been 2". I feel like if I could verbalize that out loud I would be acknowledging their existence.



You see, one of things I struggle with the most is the fear that I won't get to meet my baby in Heaven. It's hard for me to even write this down because I have only really verbalized this to my mother. I replay the day we heard I was miscarrying over and over like a movie and replay what the nurse told me on the phone over and over and I let fear settle into my heart. Clinton and I were at the doctor to hear the heartbeat for the first time. My OBGYN got out the doppler and started searching for the heartbeat. Even though it was taking her quite some time, I never once was nervous or even had a thought in my head that we wouldn't ever get to hear my little one's heart beating. She searched for a while and finally said that she couldn't get on the doppler and said she wanted me to go their office in Sterling (where they had an ultrasound machine) to do a sonogram. I think back to that moment and I STILL was not nervous nor did I even think about miscarriage. I just had no idea that the bottom was about to drop out from under me.



The dr. assured me that this wasn't completely abnormal because sometimes you can't pick up a heartbeat in the early stages of pregnancy, but she wanted to do an ultrasound just to make sure. We drove over to the other office and waited to be called. The dr. there did the sonogram she looked for quite some time and then turned to us with a solemn face. I will never forget the moment she said, "there is no fetus in the gestational sac". Such medical, cold terms for such heartbreaking news! She said I had a blighted ovum. I had no idea what the heck that was, but was devastated that what started out to be an exciting day turned out to be my worst nightmare.



We were absolutely devastated. The Dr. left the room so that we could have some time alone. I remember hugging Clinton and just breaking down. And then the thought of having to walk out of the room and past the waiting room where there were happy, pregnant women was just too much to bare. But we pulled ourselves together and walked out of the office as fast as we could. It was such a horrible day that there aren't even words to describe it. Horrible, devastating, tragic, just don't describe it fully. I felt numb, empty and just sooo incredibly sad. I remember researching the term "blighted ovum" and I found that it was one of the most commonly misdiagnosed conditions during pregnancy. I got a glimmer of hope thinking maybe just maybe the doctor was wrong. At my next appointment they drew blood to check my hormone levels and then sat down to talk about my options. They were very eager to schedule a D & C. I mentioned that I wasn't bleeding or having any pain and told her what I read on the Internet. I asked if I could just wait a little longer and have another ultrasound to confirm that my baby was gone. She seemed quite surprised and said well we have never had anyone wait it out, but you can do what you want. I had another ultrasound about a week later and it confirmed their original findings. And all my hope I was holding on to went out the window! I was devastated again, but glad that I had a second opinion. Also that week I got a call from the nurse about my blood work confirming that my hormone levels were dropping which also indicated that I was indeed miscarrying. I remember crying on the phone and I will never forget the following words as long as I live. It has been the basis of my fear for two years now. I asked the nurse through my many falling tears "Was there ever even a baby?" and she said "I don't know". I hear this conversation so many times in my head and it starts such a fear in my heart. I don't know why I even believe that there might not have been a baby! Even if life only lasted a second and then it died inside of me, there was still LIFE! Why I let the enemy get to me like this is so crazy, but I just fear that the day I meet my Maker, I will ask to see my child and He will tell me "there never was a baby".

At this point, I still hadn't had any bleeding or signs of a miscarriage and didn't want to do a D & C because I heard it could harm any future pregnancies. Well, about a week later on Oct. 5th at around 3 am I started bleeding and having the worst pains I have ever encountered in my life. I was so scared and soo sad that I was really going through a miscarriage. I know I was told many times that I did not have life living inside of me, but since I had no outward signs of a miscarriage I guess I never fully believed it. Since I was in unbearable pain, my parents took me to the ER. I basically went through pains of labor, but without having anything to hold in my arms after. It was such an empty, numbing feeling. But even though I was growing through the hardest time in my life, God was still there with me through it all. The doctor I had in the ER was amazing and was a God-fearing woman. She cared for me in a way that I know was God ordained. She even sat down with me and talked about her own personal miscarriage. Here I was in so much pain emotionally and physically, yet I had a doctor who had been there and knew what I was going through. That was God loving on me!

I know I have written a lot and hope it wasn't too much! I just really needed to get that all out. I wanted to write my fear down and expose it. It is a lie from the enemy and I want it gone from my mind! It is not true! I have a child in heaven that is being loved and cared for by my Heavenly Father. I WILL meet him or her when my life on Earth ends. I WILL get to hold, kiss and love on my little one for eternity! We are only separated during this life, which the word says is "like a blink of an eye". My son or daughter gets to grow up in a place where there is no hurt, pain, sadness or tears. What more could a mother want for their child?? I thank you all for reading and allowing me to share my heart. I just needed to acknowledge that my child LIVED and still LIVES today.