A Season For Healing

I can feel Fall coming. The nights and mornings have been a bit cooler in recent days. Autumn/ Fall has always been my favorite season. I love fall for it's bright colors, delicious flavors (chai latte or pumpkin spice latte anyone?), warmer cute clothes, the coolness in the air, the feel of leaves crunching under your feet, apples, pumpkins, hay rides, corn mazes and of course Thanksgiving.

 

This year Fall means so much more to me though. It means the end of what was a very painful season for myself and many people that I love. I discussed my heavy heart on here about a month ago. At the time I had no idea things were going to get much, much worse for some of us.

I'll give you just a small picture of the pain that I'm talking about. Nearest to my heart is the loss of my beloved Grandma Nancy. Our family continues to feel the pain of missing her. Although each day has been a little easier than the one before, I have yet to go a day without crying (even a little) and almost every thought leads me back to her.

Then there's the pain of my friends and family. In our small couples group from church, we have a close friend that lost both of her parents in a tragic accident two weeks ago, and we have friends that are facing some serious illnesses with their children.

I have a sister and some dear friends that have been walking through the valley that is called infertility. Everybody's journey with infertility looks different, and while my journey was very short lived compared to many, I do know how painful it is. I know what it is to lay awake at night and wonder if you will ever get to become parents. To hold your own child in your arms. I have been praying for these loved ones for months and for some, years. I still trust that God is faithful, and that he does have a plan for each of these families, but sometimes it's so hard to understand what he's doing.

I posted this as my status on fb the other day: "And just like that the school year has begun and summer is over. I've never wanted a summer to end so much. Praying/hoping this Fall brings us a fresh start and healing to hurting hearts." This is my prayer. Please Lord, use this time to draw us closer to you and bring some healing to broken hearts.

 

Of course this summer wasn't all pain and sadness. We had some great times too. I just wanted to share some of our happier moments in pictures. :)

Ellie had her cousins Devyn and Reagan over for their first sleepover at our house. I woke to these 3 smiling, beautiful faces.

 

When they were getting dressed they all wanter to wear dresses and headbands to match. You've got to love little girls. ;)

 

And then there is my two babes. Elliana and Ethan. They are my biggest challenge and greatest joy. When I look at these photos, I see two kids that love eachother greatly and have fun playing together. Most of all, I see two kids that are growing up WAY too quickly.



Isn't it odd how sometimes we want time to stand still, and other times we welcome the changing of the seasons? I do know this, God holds all of it in his hands.

 

Our 4th-A Busy, Fun Day!

We had a very fun and very busy 4th of July!

The day started early for what we thought was just a family brunch on my side of the family. It turned out to be a surprise engagement celebration for my cousin Ryan! He had just proposed early in the morning. She said YES and you could see how happy the two of them are. :) We're so thrilled for Ryan and Lorin and you can tell they are absolutely head over heels in love for each other. This engagement happened just 9 days before my cousin Daniel marries the love of his life, Olivia. Holy cow, that's a lot of wedding planning. :) We couldn't be more happy for everyone!

After the engagement celebration, we headed to Caleb's parents. They put on a 4th of July fair at the trailer park where they live and serve the Lord and the people that live there. (I'll need to explain this ministry on here soon). Our kids has an absolute blast! They enjoyed a jump castle and blow up slide, a fishing station, a bowling station, a basketball/ football station, a cupcake walk, and much, much more.

Unfortunately it was extremely HOT (in a few of these photos you can see rosy cheeks on Ellie and Ethan). Due to the heat and the fact that Ethan was desperate for a nap, we only lasted at the fair for about an hour. Still, it was a really fun time.

After the fair we headed home for some nap/ rest time and cleaned our house for guests. Caleb and I decided to host a little get together this year due to the fact that we live in one of the few towns that decided to do fireworks this year. It's been an extremely dry and hot summer already and most of Colorado is at high risk for more fires.

Courtney and Jeremy, my parents, Caleb's parents and our friends Mike and Elissa and their kidsan came over a BBQ. We set out the kiddie pool and the water slide for the kids. You got to love kids, even though they had their swimsuits on earlier, they decided to spend most of the time in the pool after they'd gotten their clothes back on. Oh well, you can see from the pictures they had a ton of fun.

After dinner, we enjoyed some ice cream cones (thanks to these adorable cones that Courtney and Jeremy made) and some popsicles.

When it started getting dark, our friends David and Becky came over. We put Ethan to bed and the rest of us got on the roof of our house to enjoy the fireworks. I had never seen the firework show put on by our small little town before. I have to say, they did a great job! In the end it was a fun, full day and we all slept well that night. :)

This next week is going to be crazy for me since Caleb is out of town with his volleyball team and I'm on my own with the kids preparing for Daniel's wedding. Hopefully the craziness will just make the days that Caleb is gone go by faster.

I hope you had a wonderful 4th of July week too!

San Diego Vacation!

Once again it has been far too long since I've had the chance to blog. We've been very, very busy in the past few weeks, but we've been having a lot of fun too.

2 weeks ago, my focus was completely on making cupcakes for my cousin's fiance's shower and cleaning and packing for our big vacation. My sister Courtney did a great job blogging about that big/ fun bridal shower. The shower was a blast, and I so enjoyed making these cupcakes that I'm considering making a career out of baking down the road...

Anyway, back to the vacation. My wonderful and incredibly generous in-laws gift the family (Caleb, his brothers and their families) with a vacation every 3-5 years. Our last vacation was in HAWAII in June of 2008 when I was pregnant with Elliana.

Over the past 4 years the family has grown from 1 granddaughter (and 1 on the way) to FIVE grandkids.

Since there are 5 kids all ages 5 and under, we all agreed that this vacation would have to be one that both adults and young kids could enjoy. So when Caleb's parents (lovingly named Lito and Lita by the kids) suggested we go to San Diego for this year's vacation, we all thought it was a perfect location!

Here are my wonderful in-laws. The kids adore them, and so do we. :)

We had SUCH a great time in San Diego! We were there from June 9th-June 16th. I simply couldn't fit everything we did in one blog post, so I thought I would try to highlight some of our best experiences and pictures.

The first few days, we enjoyed getting to explore our vacation home for the week. It was so beautiful and was right on the beach.

And, of course we spent some time on the beach. I love these pictures of Ellie and Ethan.

Of course, we couldn't go to San Diego and miss out on Seaworld. Seaworld might have been one of my favorite days. We watched the Shamu show, saw dolphins, penguins, sealions...

... and we played, rode on a few rides with the kids, and Ellie even splashed around a bit in the fountains.

See the picture of Ellie and Ethan stuffing their faces with cotton candy? That's one of my new favorites. Ha ha. ;)

We went to Balboa Park and LOVED it! We had so much fun looking at the fountains and old unique buildings,

and playing with the kids at the park. We captured some of their best smiles there.

After the park, Ellie and Ethan enjoyed a ride on the carousel.

We went to Legoland and had a BLAST!

 I had no idea what to expect of Legoland. It's basically like a mini Disneyland with a Legos theme and it's especially geared toward younger kids (ages 2-12). It was PERFECT for our group. The kids rode many rides and had so much fun!

One night the adults got away for a dinner cruise. This was SO much fun. The dinner was so delicious, and after dinner we listened to music and danced.

Most of all, we enjoyed spending time with family. This is Nate, Caleb's younger brother and his wife Amanda. They are starting up their own photography business and they spent most of the week taking zillions of pictures on their new camera. I can't wait to see and share some of the photos they took.

A few other highlights for me that I sadly don't have any pictures of was walking and biking on the boardwalk next to the beach, splashing in the waves, watching the kids make sand castles, trying a SUP (Stand Up Board) for the first time, kayaking on the bay with the kids, spending an afternoon in Old Town, and taking professional family photos at Balboa Park (can't wait to see how those turned out). If you ask Ellie, the highlight of the vacation was having our own hot tub that she spent lots and lots (and lots and lots) of time in. She absolutely loves "swimming"- just like I did as a child.

When it was over, I was so sad to head home. We had been talking about and planning this vacation for a few years. It was fun to see Elliana and her cousin Abby sit together on the plane though.

Thank you Mom and Dad H for giving us such a wonderful vacation. I know we all had a great time and will be talking about it for years.

Carlsbad on Dwellable

Whoa There!

Hi! I'm still alive. I haven't blogged in a while because I've been spending every free minute working on Ethan's first year baby/photo/scrapbook online. I must say I'm really pleased with how it turned out and I can't wait for it to arrive! I wish I could share it with all of you, but I couldn't figure out how.
I decided in the process of designing his book (I used Shutterfly, but I customized every page and designed it all myself) that designing/ putting together photo books is a new hobby of mine. I LOVE working with photos and making gifts out of them. Now if only I could figure out a way to make money doing this...

I named the title of this post "Whoa There" because between time flying by, Ethan hitting big milestones, and having so much to do to keep me busy, I feel like I just need to put the brakes on-if that is even possible.

Speaking of milestones, Happy Birthday to my amazing, sexy, wonderful husband Caleb! He turns the big 30 today! We've already done a ton of celebrating which included a weekend get away in Denver with his best friend Joe and a surprise party this past weekend. Tonight the two of us get to celebrate with just each other and have a much needed date night. Caleb, I love you more than anything and I hope we get to spend MANY more decades together as husband and wife.

As I mentioned above, our Ethan had hit some BIG milestones since I last posted about him. After months and months and months (you get the idea) of teething, our little man FINALLY has some teeth-2 to be exact. His first tooth came between his 12th and 13th month. He had only one tooth for a while and he was rocking the one tooth look. ;) Now he has an adorable two teeth grin.

Then, on May 4th, Ethan took his FIRST STEPS! It was after dinner and he took 3 steps towards me! Then within 2 weeks, he started walking full time. Now he's not crawling AT ALL anymore. I'm a little sad, but also excited for him. He has been wanting to walk for SOOO long and has been using ANYTHING (he mostly used our hands or pushed furniture across the room) to help him walk.  Suddenly, over night it feels like Ethan changed from my baby into a toddler. I guess that means it's time for another baby, right? ;)

Does anyone feel like time is suddenly in fast forward? I don't know what it is, but I feel like once the last week of May came, summer was staring me in the face. And with that, I have a never ending list of things to do.

We leave in 10 days for our San Diego vacation with Caleb's family. We have SOOO much to do, most of it involving lots of laundry and lots of packing. But before then, we have family visiting to spend time with, and I have cupcakes to make for my cousin's fiance's shower that's being thrown the evening before we fly out for San Diego.

Speaking of flying, this will be our first time flying as a family of four. To say I'm anxious is a huge understatement. I seriously don't know how to have a successful flight with a 3 year old and a extremely active 1 year old. I guess success will mean landing safely with all of our things and our children alive and by our sides. :)

I wanted to end this post with some photos I took of Ellie and Ethan having fun together in our backyard the other evening. I loved how these pictures turned out. To me, they just scream kids and summer. Yep, summer may be crazy, but it always brings back so many fun memories and a sense of well being for me.

When did this girl get so big?

Crazy July and Ethan at 4 Months

Wow! I can't believe it's been more than 3 weeks since I last posted.

Our July has been crazy busy, we've hardly had time to catch our breath. I have so much I could/ should blog about. We had Ethan dedicated to the Lord last week, Caleb is currently painting our home (before and after pictures to appear soon), we've spent so much time with friends and family, we've been to weddings, we've spent time at the family cabin, and today was our pastor's last sermon before retiring to become a pastor to missionaries. Unfortunately there just isn't time to blog about everything now. Maybe later...

I did want to make sure I stayed on top of Ethan's monthly updates. He is growing and changing before our eyes. So, here goes.

Ethan, you are FOUR months old now! I can hardly believe it.

~You weigh 12 pounds exactly and measure 23 inches long. You gained 4 pounds since your 2 month check up! You are in the 5th percentile for weight and the 1st percentile for height. Though you are small for your age, people constantly comment on how quickly you are growing and how chunky you are getting. :)

~You've grown out of size 1 diapers and are now wearing size 2 diapers. Just one size smaller than your sister!

~You are beginning to grow out of 0-3 month clothing and are beginning to wear 3-6 month clothing.

~You are nursing or taking a bottle every 3-4 hours. You are beginning to stare at our food like you want it. :)

~You are still a pretty good sleeper but you are beginning to sleep a lot less. You still sleep in your bassinet and through the night most nights. You still wake up once at night every once in a while. You are sleeping a LOT less during the day. I guess you're becoming very curious of the world around you.

~You love when people talk to you. You really like to smile back and coo and blow raspberries.

~As much as you love to smile and coo, you are also a very serious baby. When you're not smiling, you have a very concerned look on your face. I always call you my "little old man".



~You are outgrowing your love for the swing and bouncy seat. You now prefer to be anywhere that you can get attention from your sister and your parents.

~You most enjoy to be on the floor with some toys and with your family near by.

~Speaking of your sister, we are loving watching your relationship develop. You are always watching her and she loves to be near you.



~We had you dedicated to the Lord on Sunday July 24th. Your cousin Ashlynn and many other babies from church were dedicated the same day. We had a celebration lunch after church with both sides of your family there. It was a very special day!







~You rolled over from stomach to back for the first time a couple of weeks ago.

~You hold your head up really well when you're on your stomach now.

~You are beginning to show signs of teething. You drool a lot and recently you've been biting down hard on your mama's fingers.

~You continue to be laid back and easy going. If you are well fed, rested and changed you are happy.

~You still seem to enjoy cuddling and I LOVE it!

~We didn't give you any new nicknames this month.

Ethan, we love you SO much and we are so proud to be your family!