Gushing with Gratitude

I couldn't sleep last night witch is one reason I'm so glad I got called off today! I have so many thoughts running through my head, I fear this is going to be a long post so I hope I don't lose you! Another reason I couldn't sleep is first, two cups of coffee late in the afternoon yesterday as me and my mother-in-law were making stuffing for 60 people, and second, I'm excited! Excited about a lot of things! First, we get to go on a trip for Thanksgiving to the West, I think most of my cousins will be there, three of us with babies, and it's just a lot of fun! My aunt and uncle host it at their 100 year old farm house and we get to be with my parents, sisters, grandparents, and this year, Mike's parents get to join us!

Another thing I'm excited about is my husband! In the picture above, taken at a very fun Harvest party hosted by some of our friends, Craig & Jenna, and Brent & Kimberly, and their parents, Mike and Daniel are sporting their FSU shirts. They are very appropriately dressed in them as Mike found out last week that he will be the new Associate Director of Planned Giving at FSU!!! I'm SOOOO proud of him as he jumped through many a hurdle and waited PATIENTLY for this job! If it is possible to be bullied in a job, I think he was to some extent at his previous job by someone he had to work frequently with. Can I just say it is miserable to watch your husband be miserable about his job! Men get SO much of their identity from their work and it is painful as a wife to watch your husband suffer! This new job is totally a God thing and we are SOOOO grateful to God for giving it to Mike! Who is better for this job than MIKE?! The most PASSIONATE man I know about FSU, plus he can use all his knowledge that he has gained the past 6 years as a financial planner! I love you Mike and am so excited to see you take on this new career path! I admire your courage to step outside the box of what we have known for the past 4 years! An added bonus for me in this, is that I will get to be home more with Daniel and work less at the hospital!! YEAH!!

It seems as I sit down at the computer lately, I find myself weeping. And sometimes, I share what I read with my family, and they weep also. Please pray for the next couple of families I'm about to tell you about. I don't even really have the words to write. I found Katie's blog this past Sunday. I know of Katie because her dad was the RUF campus minister at UF when my sister was a student there. Her grandparents are also good friends of my grandparents and live across the street from my cousin. Mike and I wept as we looked at the pictures of she and her husband as they met and said goodbye to their precious baby Henry. I don't even know Katie but she and her husband's faith amaze me! I CAN'T even imagine what they are going through but I know I want to have a faith like hers! Their story has touched our lives and for that I am grateful. I am grateful that one day, we will be able to meet Henry in heaven, that we will all have new bodies, free from disease, perfect just as our Saviour is perfect and gave his life for us so that we could live eternally with him.

The next family I ask you to pray for is the Lamendola family. You can read more about Parker Lamendola here. (You might have to sign in, I did, the password is parkerlamendola, and you have to put in your name and email address). I don't really know this family either but have been praying for them for many months. Parker and his twin brother, Drew, are about Daniel's age. I remember when their mom had them, I welcomed her to her room at the hospital. When Parker was about 6 months old, he began having seizures and discovered that he has multiple brain tumors. He is currently at Shands, separated from his brother and will be there with his parents over the holidays. A good friend of this family is in my Tuesday morning Bible study and she and our group are organizing a special Christmas treat for this family. I am very excited about this. We are all bringing angel ornaments to decorate a tree for his hospital room, angels of hope is kind of the theme. We are attaching Bible verses about hope to each ornament. There will be an "angel" wreath for his door, a basket full of homemade treats for the family, gift cards, Christmas music, matching Christmas pj's for the twins, presents, and more. So I am grateful and privileged to be a part of blessing this family this Christmas season and I ask you to pray for little Parker Lamendola that God would be pleased to heal him from his cancer and give him a 'normal' long life.

Next is Brian. Brian was diagnosed with Hystiocytoma in September. He is three and the son of my friends, Carrie and Freddie. Carrie's dad was our pastor and close friend of our family for my whole childhood and young adult years. He gets chemo and steroids through a port on a weekly (I think) basis. The last update I got was that he is responding to the treatment but it will be a long road ahead (like 2 years of treatment) before they can clear him as curred. He is one of 4 children under age 5 and trying to keep 4 kids healthy because one of them has a weak immune system due to all the treatment is no walk in the park. Carrie's faith also amazes me and I am grateful to watch as she and her family grow through this trial. She said that she has been prepared for this trial and rests in the knowledge that Christ will sustain her, wow! I am just blown away by her maturity! Pleas pray for little Brian. (I meant to post of picture of Brian and will in a next post, if I do it now, I know I will mess up this post b/c I am not blogger savvy yet!)

Ok, last is my dear friend, Katie M. (A different Katie from the one mentioned above). Katie and I worked together for a couple years, her husband is a campus minister at FSU and they have an almost 2 year old son, Michael Paul. Katie kept Daniel for me alot over the summer and works in Labor and Delivery occasionally. She and her husband have had a heart for adoption for a long time and specifically, desired to adopt a sibling group. They have spent this year jumping through the hoops and red tape of paperwork to become licensed to adopt. Because of God's providence, they have also been approved to be foster parents. You can read her blog here. This past Friday night, they had ONE hour to make a decision! It is amazing how God works! You have to read Katie's account of it on her blog. So yesterday, they got 3 kiddos under the age of 4 (and they have a 2 yr old of their own!). I think they are fostering these kids, but I'm sure I will find out more after Thanksgiving. Please pray for Katie and Michael, for the new kids, and for Michael Paul as they all adjust. I am so excited for these kids because they will get to see Jesus in Katie and Michael! They will get to learn about Him, be read to about Him, and loved by Him! They are going to be in a home with lots of laughter and love! So I am grateful to know Katie and Michael and I am astounded by their faith and willingness to step out in obedience to the Father! They are both wise and spiritually mature for their young age! Please keep them in your prayers!

Ok, so if you are still reading, sorry for the long post but I really have wanted to share all this with you all for quite a while! Hope you all have a Happy Thanksgiving, just got a call from the Hospital, looks like I'll be going in at 11am, oh well, at least it's only 8 hours instead of 12!

A Perfect Fall Wedding on the Farm!

~The Fab Five!~
(Jaime, Melanie, Ashley, Laura, and Me)

G.G. with Daniel and Kaitlin the morning after the wedding. Kaitlin wasn't feeling well. :( I don't know why I still cannot figure out how to load these pictures in chronological order! grrrr.... My parents fixed a big breakfast the morning after the wedding so the visiting continued.

Daniel LOVED the bubbles, he even said "bubble" for the first time!

Papa and Daniel looking at the cows.

Aunt Laura and Aunt Ashley showing Daniel the cows.

Daniel checking out the cows.

This is the groom, my cousin Keith, the oldest male cousin on my mom's side.

Jaime, Keith's sister in law, was in charge of flowers. She also was basically the wedding coordinator and in charge of all the set up and decorations for the wedding and reception. She did an awesome job!!! I got to help her with the bouquets and boutonnieres. We were very proud of ourselves for how Kamron's bouquet turned out!:)

Kaitlin is Jaime and my cousin, Kevin's daughter, she was one of the flower girls and is 5 months older than Daniel. She is SOOOOO cute! Jaime tried to coax her down the isle with a cookie during the ceremony, it didn't really work but she was absolutely adorable!

This is the only picture we have of the three of us from the entire weekend. The wedding was at 2pm and Daniel had been up late the night before, way off schedule, and hadn't really had a long enough nap on Sat. By the time it was time to get changed for the wedding, he was in melt down mode! Mike graciously put Daniel down for a nap and stayed with him at the cabin while the rest of us went to the wedding. :( Mike and Daniel joined us for part of the reception.

Grammom with some of her grandchildren and great grandchildren. Every time one of us gets married, our family just gets better and better! We are so happy to have Mike, Jaime, and now Kamron in our family! (Four of our other cousins and their spouses were unable to make it to the wedding).

Kamron's bouquet that Jaime and I made.

Another view of her bouquet. The wispy things are wheat.

Jaime did the table arrangements with white hydrangeas, hypercium berries, and pears, BEAUTIFUL!!!

There were also 3 of these tall arrangements, with hydrangeas, some branches with orange berries, and something similar to thin grape vine wreath in the bottom of the vases.

Kamron and Keith's families. If you look closely, you can see two horse shoes on the branch above them, Kamron teaches horseback riding lessons at the farm and LOVES horses. Her dad nailed the horseshoes to the branch above where they stood during the ceremony. She rode to the ceremony in a horse and buggy from the house where she got ready. So cool! This farm where they got married belongs to my cousins' dad. My cousin Kevin, took Mike hunting here on Friday morning. Keith had been running a large organic vegetable garden here.

The Beautiful wedding party! Saturday couldn't have been any more BEAUTIFUL!!! It wasn't too cold, and the wind died down by the time of the reception. The sun set was gorgeous at the end of the reception, and everything went very smoothly! The place where they got married, under the arch of a beautiful old oak tree overlooked the rolling hills of cow pasture with the leaves changing on the trees in the background. WOW!

Exchanging rings.

This is Thursday night when we got to Kevin and Jaime's house. Kaitlin was showing Daniel the "puppies", Murphy and Lily.

We drove up to Atlanta on Thursday and started our weekend with a trip to the Georgia Aquarium, wow! We all LOVED it!

The beautiful coral reef exhibit!

Nose pressed against the 2 feet thick glass where the whale sharks are kept. There are 6 million gallons of water in this tank, the largest in the world!

Daddy showing Daniel how to touch a sting ray, Daniel absolutely loved the touch tanks! It was a very fun weekend! Thank you Jaime and Kevin for opening your lovely home to us! Great times, great memories! Congratulations Keith and Kamron!!!

Playing catch up!

I got this doggy costume last year from my friend, Autumn for Daniel to wear this year for Halloween. I failed to look at the size as I was overcome with its cuteness! Well, when I pulled it out this year, I saw that it is a sz 3 months! Haha! I had to try it on him anyway and I was trying to get Campbell in the picture too, so I got out the doggy treats, looks like this doggy wanted to eat a doggy treat too! :) He wore this for a few minutes, long enough for me to snap some pics, then he was OVER it! Our dear friends, the Vernons, had our small group and some other families over for chili, soups, and trick or treating. They live in a great neighborhood that really gets into trick or treating! The houses are close together and not set too far back from the road which makes it good for the kiddos.

This is how Daniel enjoyed his first trick or treating experience. We didn't take him up to any of the doors, just pulled him in the wagon (that we hyjacked from the Jessees), he enjoyed the ride!

These three 1 yr olds were all born within a week of each other, I had the priveledge of taking care of both of these sweet girls and their mommas in the hospital when they were both born! Ella is a little princess and Aubrey is a fairy in training, too cute!

Wyatt and Daniel, the two cowboys, riding together. It is nearly impossible to get them both to look at the camera and smile at the same time!

Mike bought Daniel his first Dolphins shirt. Mike is a HUGE Dophins fan and grew up watching this NFL team from South Florida. Here they are dressed in there shirts watching a Dolphins game on a Sunday afternoon.

Boot Scootin' Root tootin' 1st birthday celebration!

Aunt Laura and Aunt Ashley and Mommy with the Birthday boy! The cute banner behind us my mom made. It said "Happy Birthday Daniel" out of yellow bandanna print paper on a blue and brown border background, strung with leather, it turned out SO cute!

Mike and I love having big parties! Mike smoked boston butts all day that were cut up to make barbecue pork sandwiches, it turned out delicious! We also had fried okra (thank you dad for frying it in our big turkey fryer outside!) and macaroni and cheese (thank you Ashley for quadrupling the recipe!) Ashley and Laura also made yummy homemade salsa for the appetizer. We put out pretzel rods, twizzlers, and beef jerky in mason jars tied with raffia on the kids table for them to nibble on before dinner.

We had close friends and family over for the party. Pictured are our marriage mentors, George and Diane, my paternal grandparents, Pete and Arlene, and my parents, Doug and Kristin. All these people at this table are 100% Dutch (except my mom and Daniel). I made this table clothe by hot gluing a thick rope to the outside edge of the bandanna print fabric. Mom arranged all the flowers in mason jars with red, blue, and twine or raffia ribbon tied to the them. She picked some wild flowers out of our yard, off the side of Thomasville road and some were store bought. She did a great job. Each jar was placed on a colored (either red, green, turquoise, orange or yellow) bandanna print 8x8 piece of paper.

Aunt Ashley with little buckaroo outside on our NEW deck sitting on some bales of hay!

George and Diane hit it off with my grandparents, Daniel's great grandparents!

Mimi with Aunt Ashley, Aunt Laura, mommy and Daniel. I think Daniel was ready to eat!

Ashley made Daniel his own "smash" cake. Mike wanted this cake to have regular frosting (you will see in the other pictures that the big cake has fondant frosting). He wanted Daniel to be able to smear it all over his face and really get into it. Well, Daniel surprised us! I think a combination of factors played into the birthday cake let down. :( He had been fed ALOT prior to the cake, he was probably overwhelmed by all the people singing to him and staring at him, he was probably tired and he had never had a dessert before. So he looked at his cake, stuck one finger in the icing and tasted it, then he started crying. We tried to give him a bite of the cake and he took it out of his mouth and threw it on the floor. It's such a build up to the cake, but oh well, if he doesn't like sweets, that is a good thing, right? Oh, one more thing, I lost it during singing "Happy Birthday," I couldn't even choke out the words, I felt that BIG lump forming in my throat and then the tears started pouring, what a mess! My baby turned one, I made mostly through the day being ok, but the singing got me! ;)

Mimi and Papa with their first grandchild on our front porch. Mom and Dad got here Friday night after Daniel was already asleep, when I got him up on Saturday morning (which this is the first time I cried, by the way, about him turning 1), I took him outside to see Papa, who Mike had already put him to work! :) Daniel said, "Papa" very clearly!! We were both surprised and so excited that he said it! In my previous posts, you probably read about our backyard renovation and all the friends who so graciously gave their time and energy to help lay sod and build our deck. (It got finished Friday night about 10:30 and it looks FABULOUS!!!) But Mike still wasn't finished with his master plan for the backyard. He had my dad up early on Sat. morning to go get a truck load of mulch, then they worked on landscaping, mowing, blowing, edging, and cleaning. It looks great and is a VAST improvement over what it originally was!

Mom made this cute star wreath for the front door. It's kind of hard to see but inside the red bandanna star it says, "Daniel" in black with a "1" in brown polka dot paper.

This is our new (to us) kids table. I bought it used from my friend Stephanie (who is cleaning out her playroom for baby #3). It was originally from Wood U and had never been finished/painted. It had some coloring marks, pen, stickers on it that I sanded off (thanks for lending me your random orbit sander Brian!) I painted the legs, sides of table and chairs with navy blue high gloss spray paint and the top of the table I brushed on black chalkboard paint. I think it turned out really cute. Stephanie then found this cool chalk ink that comes in a pen. It washes off with a wet cloth and looks like you painted on the chalkboard paint.

The cake stand is made from real horse shoes (that I bought at the Tractor Supply Store), that a friend's husband welded for us. Thank you Ryan!! It turned out perfect! The bottom layer of the cake is supposed to look like blue jeans (kind of hard to see in this pic), middle layer like a bandanna, and top layer like a cow print. Clara, a friend from work (she actually makes cakes with her dad, they have made several of her siblings wedding cakes) gave me the recipe and tips on how to make fondant out of marsh mellows that tastes better than plain old yucky fondant. Underneath the fondant was a layer of cream cheese frosting used as the glue to hold the fondant in place. You know me, I got the the cake mixes B1G1 free a while back (bottom was yellow butter cake, middle was chocolate w/ choco frosting under fondant, top was white cake). It helped that I made a practice cake 2 weeks ago, I learned from some of my mistakes what to do differently for the real deal.

Mommy and Daddy with our little cowboy. We are so thankful the Lord blessed us with Daniel after 4 years of desiring to be parents! He is such a gift! I pray that I remember that he is not my own, he belongs to the Lord. We are learning that parenting is a wonderful, challenging, sacrificial, humbling journey and apart from God's grace, we can't do it on our own! Thank you to ALL our friends and family who prayed with and for us for this little boy! We love you all and feel immensely blessed beyond measure at the outpouring of your love and prayers!!

We LOVE you Daniel! Happy 1st Birthday!!!

Pulling Up

Daniel is going to what I think is THE BEST childcare place! His teachers are SO loving, Mrs Vickery and Mrs. Holly care for him like I would. (Sometimes, I think they even do a better job than me!) Vickery made this cute crown for Daniel for his birthday! Isn't that sweet! She also sends home a full account of his day including what time he had his diaper changed, what he ate for snack and lunch, what songs they sang, and their prayer for the day based on scripture. She is even teaching him the children's shorter cathechism. The first question is "Who made you?" the answer, "God made you." The next question, "What else did God make?" Answer: "God made all things." We have been working on this at home too. I wish all children who had to be in childcare had something this good! It makes it easier for me to leave him and go to work knowing he is SO well cared for! These pictures aren't that clear, but last week just seemed like a week of firsts for Daniel. He started pulling up and almost cruising around the coffee table on Thur, Oct. 1. He also started putting his face in the water when he takes a bath. He thinks it's funny! :) I've been trying to get him to blow bubbles when he does it, but for now, he just wants to drink the bath water. Oh well! Ha ha!

Daniel's 1st haircut

Mike has been begging me for weeks (probably more like months) to cut Daniel's hair. I just didn't want him to have a haircut until he was one. I don't even have a good reason, although I did want him to keep looking like a baby not a grown up little boy, so finally, on Thur. night, Oct 1st, I succombed to the pressure and gave in. Stephanie gave me some pointers and so I trimmed some hair in the front, so it won't hang in his eyes anymore, and I trimmed his "ear bangs" :). I must say he was quite cooperative, it is a little nerveracking to have sharp scissors close to a moving target. A few snips and we were done!

Before After!

This is the shirt I made on sewing night Tues. Sep 29th, for Daniel to wear on his 1st birthday. It was my first time making an applique shirt and I followed Darby'shttp://http://www.flythroughourwindow.com/2008/08/appliques-101-without-an-embroidery-machine/ tutorial on how to do it. My friend Alicia was here with me and also walked me through the steps.

This is a "pillow case" type dress made without the pillow case for Aubrey, she was born 2 days before Daniel (I actually took care of her and her sweet mom Julie in the hospital the day before I delivered Daniel). The blue fabric is named Lily Pond (I forget who makes it), and the border and bows are Amy Butler fabric.