Happy 3 Year Anniversary to my Best Friend

In the last 3 years the Lord has led us through many laughs, celebrations and joys! He has also carried us through many dark troubling trials and has brought us forth as gold! As painful as those seasons have been, by the grace of God we have grown closer and stronger together and have truly experienced the joy of being lifted up by one another.
Through the season of miscarriages and waiting on the Lord, Fred was the sweetest most loving supporting friend, I could not have made it through with out him. He pointed me to the Lord, reminded me of God's love for me when I felt none and patiently wiped my tears away. I know it was a hard time for him as well and seeing him seek the Lord through all the mess encouraged me and lifted me up. After the rain I was brought closer to the Lord, came forth with a stronger trust in him and also made me fall even deeper in love with Fred.
We have also experienced sweet answered prayers, from Fred's teaching job, to a house and what we both desired and longed for the most, a sweet baby. As the time to meet our little Luke approaches the dynamic of our relationship has changed completely. My biggest fear when I got pregnant with Luke was that Fred and I's relationship would be hindered and that we would grow apart. I was terrified I'd turn baby crazy and without realizing disregard Fred's needs. Praise the Lord this has not been the case at all!
Having a baby on the way has led to a growth of appreciation towards one another. Fred has been the most caring papa bear. I've seen a side of him I never knew before. The way he cares for me, his tenderness, his excitement for Luke has been a beautiful sight to see. He's never missed one doctors appointment, I didn't have to talk him into taking all the classes the hospital had to offer, he joyful has joined me and has been excited to learn all about this new chapter in our lives.
Fred, these last 3 years have been the best 3 years of my life. I'm so blessed to be married to you, an amazing man of God and I look forward to our 75th year Anniversary with all our children and all our grandchildren, I'll hold your wrinkly hand kiss your wrinkly cheek and run my fingers through your gray hair. I know the love we have for each other has only been possible because Christ has loved us first and we have surrendered our relationship to him. Thank you for being the best example of Christ laying down his life and loving the church. We love because He first loved us. 1 John 4:19. I love you forever.
Happy 3 Year Anniversary Babe!
Some of my favorite pictures of moments and details of the best day of my life, 6/19/2009

Baby Luke's Nursery

Well after many many months even before I was pregnant, maybe even before I was married! I would imagine and dream what my babies' nursery would look like someday. Well my dreams are coming true and little by little baby Luke's nursery is coming a long! After many long nights on pinterest and many baby decor blogs of nurseries I finally had an idea of how I wanted to transform his room.

It was important for me that Fred be involved in the whole operation nursery but boy did this prove to be a challenge! I shouldn't have been surprised after how picky Fred was when it came to decorating our house. We had many, many, too many discussions over what we liked and what we both wanted for Luke and his room. White crib? Dark crib? This color? That color? Too girly? Too plain? Well after my emotional hormonal breakdowns and tears and the "how could you not like this" & "whats wrong with this one," Fred was a smart man and decided to leave the nursery up to me. I still wanted his input and his approval but he definitely became a little more open minded about my vision and many times I just had to say, "trust me." And so far he's pretty happy with how its coming together (I hope.)
I get asked all the time "So what theme are you doing his nursery?" and I never know how to answer them. Im not sure exactly what "theme" it would fall under, but I guess were doing a little of everything that I like: many patterns, many colors, many DIY projects & many resale/consignment finds that I've been able to score on! It's not your typical "baby" feeling room, you know the pastels and the baby blues, but I wanted something that was fun and playful that he can grow with. If you ask Fred what theme were doing he would say "nothing matches." He's so silly. And in away thats kind of what I wanted. Not so matchy matchy but somehow I feel like everything just comes together.
We started by painting the walls gray. Uncle Nick was so helpful and came to help daddy paint the room.

The dresser came from Ikea. I was a little worried that the red would be too much but it looks great! We're also going to use it as a changing table.

I found this Pottery Barn Kids lamp at the resale for 8bucks! It even had the regular price tag at the bottom $39.00, I got a steal! I found a lamp shade to go with it and Im planning on adding fabric to it.

I also found this at a resale. I thought it would be perfect to bring in some more red to go with the dresser and will be perfect to capture little Luke getting bigger and bigger!

So this rocking chair I got a baby consignment for about $115. I found this seat cushion on clearance for like 9 bucks! The chair was already comfy by itself and this not only added some extra cushion for my tush but it was super cute and fury and I just couldn't pass it for 9 bucks when it was regularly 30 bucks!

Every cowboy needs his rocking horse! We found this at Trader's Village. I loved it and had to convince daddy it was a great buy and it would look really cute in Luke's room. He finally gave in and even talked the lady down to like 32 bucks! Saved us 3!

Im making an ABC wall. I found a lot of the letters at the resale and then i bought other ones at craft stores. Im trying to make every letter different and I plan on painting and remaking many of them. I used the frames just to fill in the letters that I was missing just to get a better idea of how they would look all spread out.

My striped curtains! Boy these were a labor of love! So I found instructions on how to make these from plain curtains. Im not a sewing machine but I am a iron on glue queen! I wish I could explain how I made these but Im not even sure how I did it! This is how not legit I am, I even measured my stripes with scrapbook paper! Well these cost a total of maybe 10 bucks. All I had to buy was the iron on glue, I had a pair of black curtains I had gotten from Target a couple years ago (on clearance) and then I had white fabric we had bought to use as a backdrop when we took our Christmas pictures the first year we were married.

Closet has also been reorganized a little and all the clothes we have for him has been washed and put in hangers!

And here is what we have so far. Ok so it looks a little discombobulated... but thats because we had just been blessed with two showers at both of our jobs and we kind of just threw everything in there! Well Im happy to say that it is all been cleaned up since then and that box in the corner is the crib! Daddy and grandpa are going to build it this weekend. And then I can get started on making the crib-skirt and probably start hanging stuff on the wall.

So I think our To Do List includes: rug, light fixture, book wall, crib skirt, and a whole bunch of little details! I'll try to post some more pictures as we start getting more stuff together!

Our Gender Reveal Party

We decided to have a gender reveal party because we thought it would be so fun to find out the gender of our baby along with all our friends and family. What that meant, we would NOT find out the sex during the ultrasound instead we would find out at our party by cutting into a cake and if the inside was blue=boy, pink=girl.

This is how it all went down:

We scheduled our ultrasound at Stork Vision in Frisco. They were so sweet and helpful! We told them we didn't want to know the gender during the ultrasound, instead we asked them to write the results on a piece of paper and then put it in an envelope without telling us the gender. We were so excited to see our little one because the last time we had seen our baby he was 6.5 weeks, the size of a peanut! This time I was 19 weeks and baby was the size of a mango!

During the ultrasound I was so happy to see that he actually looked like a little human! A head, little legs, arms, fingers! My baby was growing and didn't look like a little blob anymore! So the time came for her to look at the gender! She asked us to look away and then wrote down the gender on a paper and then stuck in an envelope.

We took the envelope to a baker and asked them to bake us a cake, the outside would be white and the inside would either be blue or pink depending on the results in the envelope. Then we got busy planning the party!

Here we are at Stork Vision in the waiting room!

Here is the envelope with the results! By the way I carried that darn envelope in my purse for a couple of days before taking it to the baker! Yes, it was tempting, but we were strong and determined!

Fred, my wonderful artist husband designed our invites. What would I do without him? They came out super cute! He even took a picture of the baby Vans we used for our announcement and photoshopped them and made every detail of the invite, I mean chose colors, put every dot in its place, just amazing! I was shocked how great they turned out!

And the day of!

Here's a few of the decorations

Made this so guest could cast their vote. Mommy voted boy, daddy voted girl...

We hung Fred and I's baby pics to show what our little one might look like.

Aunt Selina bought the cake for us. She picked it up for us because I was afraid that if we went the person handing us the cake would be like, "Here's your blue cake" and totally ruin the surprise for us.

Getting ready to cut the cake and find out, boy or girl!

Watch a video of the reveal!


Here's the paper the baker gave us back in the envelope. I had a feeling it was a boy! And momma was right! Fred was sure it was a girl so I think he had biggest shock!

And the start of our diaper stash! Thanks friends!

The Lords Timing

That’s all it took and it was perfect.

And my timing is sooo not perfect because I should have shared this months ago! I actually did write most of this a couple of months ago but never got around to posting. So here I am with my answered prayer obviously bursting out of my shirt and oh so joyous!

This is how my pregnancy journey began:

Fred and I decided to start trying to have a baby. So obviously I expected to be pregnant the next month. That’s how it happens right? No condoms, lots of fun nights… Bam! You get pregnant. Nope, that’s not what happened. What happened was me stressed about ovulation dates, positions, legs raised in the air to increase your chances. I was a mess! So I didn’t get pregnant the first month we tried and I was so disappointed. I thought, “what did I do wrong? I did everything in the book!”

When my unwanted period came so did unwanted pride. I felt like I put a wall up towards God, I felt like a little spoiled kid when they ask for a toy and they don’t get it. I really thought, fine, you don’t want me to have a baby forget it then I just won’t want a baby. I really tried lying to myself about my desires to be a mom, I told myself, “you don’t want baby, just forget about it.” But I knew it was my pride and deep inside I didn’t want to hurt. I felt that if I didn’t ask God for my desires I wouldn’t have to be disappointed when he didn’t answer.

Then another month came, then another… The Lord was doing such a work in my heart. He had revealed my sinful pride towards Him. He was helping me to rely on Him. I knew someday He would provide us with a baby and I kept trying to take it upon myself to make it happen. Why am I not getting pregnant when I am doing everything I’m supposed to? The answer was obvious, I cant, He can. The Lord is the giver of life, the Creator, all sovereign, all powerful, He can do ALL things. How easy it would have been for my sinful self to boast in all the right things I did to become pregnant. The Lord wanted to have all the glory. He wanted me to trust and surrender my pride.

We began asking others for prayer.

Prayer is something I had always struggled with. I knew that the Lord knew I wanted a baby; I wasn’t going to waste my time getting others involved and have them feel sorry for me. The Lord would do it in his time anyway. I thought asking for prayer would show my weakness, it would reveal that I don’t have it all together, that I want things I don’t have, that I need help. And that’s exactly where the Lord wanted me, humbled; coming to my brothers and sisters in tears, sharing my fears and desires. The minute we began asking others to pray for a baby for us I felt this great immense love from others. Knowing that others were praying for us was the most comforting feeling. I didn’t feel alone with my burden. When the Lord decided to answer OUR prayers, WE would rejoice.

As I prayed and drew closer to the Lord I felt him asking me, “Am I enough? If I don’t give you a baby next month, next year, ever, Am I enough?” Yes Lord. In the mist of all the baby making drama tears I didn’t realize I already had more than I deserve. I had my heavenly Father who died for me and rose again. I had the most precious gift of all, salvation. Nothing else will fill that whole in my heart, not my husband, not a baby, not anything in this world. I am already complete. This is what the Lord wanted me to realize.

I became pregnant a few months later sometime in November 2011. When I was heart broken because I felt like the Lord was saying “no” to my prayer, I didn’t realize he was really saying “not yet, let me draw you near and show you how much you need me first.”

And here I am! 23 weeks prego! Feeling my little one kick, starting a nursery, looking up car seats! Oh so thankful for the Lords faithfulness, not only for this baby but for everything he has done and is doing in my heart!

Well I'm 18 here! We have to catch up and take a pic this weekend!