ask away...

ok, so i was just going through my posts that are still marked "drafts". there are 33 of them, yes 33!!
some of them are merely one sentence or just a brain dump.
very few of them are in finished form.

i scanned over them and i am just not in the mood to complete any of them. and i don't have any other ideas of what to write about. so i could use your help...pretty please...

leave me a comment and give me some ideas of what i could write about, ask me some questions and i am pretty sure that i will answer!!

tiny girl...

jaelyn had her nine month well visit yesterday.
she is doing wonderful.
we are so blessed to have such a healthy baby girl!
her stats show she is a tiny girl;
weighing 16 pounds and 27 inches long
for more about what jaelyn is doing at nine months old...
go here

stay tuned for an update on our cloth diapering adventure!!

wordless wednesday...

happy 6th birthday jordyn!

jordyn turned six years old yesterday.

we celebrated jordyn in complete all girl style!
when we asked jordyn what she wanted for her birthday she wanted to go shopping and go out for lunch. such a girl, just like her mommy!!!
so last week, we had the first shopping trip with her grandma and her great grandma. we went to the mall and ate lunch at mcallisters. here are a few of the outfits that she got. she also saw this little kitty at the disney store and fell in love with her and had to have it. of course, i was thinking great another stuffed animal, but there were tears shed and it was her birthday so she got to bring "sparkles" home.






on saturday, my sister and i took her out to lunch and shopping. we went to sushi 101, at her request. it was so yummy!


of course jaelyn had to join us! she is in training for all girl stuff too!!

after lunch we headed off to the mall, where jordyn picked out all kinds of fun jewelry and makeup!

when we were done we stopped at rita's for a sweet yummy treat!!!

on saturday night, jordyn's friend, maddie come over for a sleepover. they had lots of girly fun. jordyn gave maddie a best friends necklace that she picked out at the mall. and maddie gave jordyn a sweet necklace and orange purse (perfect for carrying her offering into elevation!!!) i painted their nails and then we made cupcakes! yummy! we had pizza for dinner and decorated the cupcakes. they watched a movie and ate popcorn before heading off to bed. after giggling for over an hour, they finally fell asleep.



on sunday we headed off to elevation church! we met maddie's family there. here is a picture of the girl's before we left. a great way to end a sleepover by going to church together!!!

jaelyn wore this sweet dress and hat on sunday for jordyn's birthday. jordyn wore this dress on her first birthday and it is so cute that jaelyn gets to wear it now!!! it has the sweetest pair of flip flops with little flowers, but the flowers have started to fall off and become a choking hazard.

jaelyn loves to stick her tongue out like this, because she is getting her first tooth and i think she is feeling it coming in!!!
sunday was a busy day. after coming home from church, we raced around the house getting ready for our family to come and celebrate jordyn! this is my niece, hannah, who i wrote about in my last post!! we have had a busy but fun time celebrating my sweet girl's birthday.

here is a picture of jordyn on the day she was born!!!
it is so hard to believe that she is already six years old.
i wish i could slow time down.

for year by year photos of jordyn go here.

six years ago (jordyn's birth story)...

this is one of my very favorite things to do...share the stories and think back to birthing my beautiful babies!! i love thinking back to those very special days!! words can't even express how much i cherish those four birth days!! so with jordyn's birthday coming up, i am going to share my second baby, first baby girl's birth story!

six years ago, i gave birth to our first baby girl, jordyn alexis. it is crazy how fast the last six years have gone by. i have always always wanted to be a mommy to a little girl and i feel so blessed to be jordyn's mommy! i feel double blessed that she gets to be a big sister to our second baby girl, jaelyn!

going back seven years ago, i remember holding my sweet baby niece, hannah, she was dressed in a sweet pink dress, with lots of pink and white ribbons in her hair and she smelled so good. oh, i knew i wanted a baby girl and i remember praying to God and asking Him to bless us with a baby girl.

it was several months later, just a few weeks after joshua turned two years old that we found out we were pregnant with our second baby. we had been trying to get pregnant for almost a year. and we were on our third and final round of clomid (fertility drug) when God blessed us with our second baby. i had been quite frustrated and had finally given it all to Him, i released my control and put it in His hands. and that is when He gave us our beautiful baby!!

overall, i had a wonderful pregnancy with jordyn. of course there were a few bumps in the road. i was sick for the first 14 weeks, just sick feeling all of the time, morning and night. we had a little scare around 9 weeks when we couldn't hear a hearbeat, but when i came back in two weeks, we could hear her heartbeat with no problem. my uterus was tilted making it hard to hear the heartbeat (this happened with all four of my pregnancies) at 13 weeks, when i had some spotting, i was so scared, but an ultrasound showed a happy healthy baby!! and then at 16 weeks, we had an ultrasound that showed my placenta was low-lying. we also found out at this ultrasound that we were going to have a baby girl. i was so excited!! i was so excited to create a girly girl nursery and buy dresses and ribbons and bows! we had another ultrasound at week 28, which showed that my placenta had moved and i did not have placenta previa. yay! i really wanted to do another natural childbirth. the ultrasound also showed that our baby was definitely a girl!! i breathed a sigh of relief.

friday july 11, 2003: my mom had been in town all week, hoping i would go into labor with jordyn early. my due date was july 15. but i hadn't gone into labor, so she left that morning to go home to pennsylvania. she and my dad were heading to the outer banks the next day with my grandparents, it was the first beach trip i missed in several years. after she left, josh and i were going to the ymca, when i got into the van, it would not start. i had a dead battery. my friend stephanie and her little guy elijah came to pick us up to go to the ymca. we did a yoga class then we went to buy a new battery for my van. i was driving a 1998 toyota sienna at the time. we brought subway home for lunch. we ate while my brother in law put the battery in my van. that afternoon, i headed off to my week 39 prenatal appointment.

i was seeing the doctors in my practice at the time. i was 4 cm dialted and 80% effaced. dr. makemson, delivered joshua and had walked with me through all the infertility stuff i went through so i really wanted him to deliver jordyn. we set up an induction for that following monday. and i headed home excited to know that there was relief in sight. i was probably home for less than 2 hours when i started having contractions. they were painless and very far apart. they continued on and became closer together. i knew i had to play it safe and get to the hospital relatively soon. my first baby came extremely fast. and since i was already 4 cm, i didn't want to risk having a baby in the car (which i was close to doing with baby #1) ! i called my doctor's office and they told me to come up to the hospital when i was ready. we headed to the hospital around 9:00 pm. by the time i got checked in and settled into a labor & delivery room, the monitors showed that my contractions had stopped. i was so afraid that they would send me home. when my nurse checked me, i had progressed to 6 cm. so that bought my ticket to stay!!

by 11:00, my contractions hadn't really picked up at all. so we started talking about breaking my water. my doctor broke my water at 11:30 pm and within minutes the contractions resumed. by 11:45 pm they were on top of each other and quickly i was 9.5 cm and by 12:00 am i was ready to push. i pushed three or four times and our sweet baby girl, jordyn alexis, made her entrance into the world. she weighed 7 lbs 1 oz and was 19 3/4 inches long. she was and still is absolutely precious. she was born at 12:27 am on saturday july 12, 2003. a year later, almost from the date of my prayer for a little girl, she was born!

jamil and i were at the birth with my doctor and nurses. this is the only birth that we did without a friend or family member in the room. and we will never forget that because, we have no pictures of immediately after jordyn was born. the first picture we took was after the nurses took her to the nursery to do the evaluations and then brought her back all clean and with a little bow in her hair. i still can not believe that we didn't take any pictures, nor did the nurses on anyone remind us. we were so completely enthralled in her birth and loving on her that we just forgot. one day i know she will ask if she was adopted since we don't have those pictures like we do with the other three. but that is ok, this special event is forever implanted in my memory and i know she was born straight from me.

ever changing...

once again, i find myself in another new season of life. i am learning that God really has our lives designed with seasons. life is ever changing and full of surprises. just when you begin to become settled or used to what you think you know and can handle, something else is thrown in your way, sometimes it is a mountain to climb, sometimes it is a valley you have fallen into.

as a mom, i am learning that as fast as our kids change and grow so do our seasons. what once was a year ago, is not what it is now. what was given to you and was right for your life a year ago, may not be the right thing for you now. if i make a decision to do something now that doesn't mean i will be doing it in a year from now and it doesn't mean i won't be doing it. God is in control of our lives and He has programmed the course, it is up to me to go for the ride. or put on the brakes and fight it.

i am choosing to let Him plot my course. i am allowing Him to change the seasons in my life.

wordless wednesday...

(this week i have barely been able to catch my breath, let along blog... so i am loving wordless wednesdays!)

9 months old...

today jaelyn is nine months old.

today, i read something that said she is 39 weeks old.

born at 38 weeks, jaelyn has been outside of my belly longer than she was inside.

today, i love being her mommy just as much as
the day i found out i was pregnant with her
maybe even a little bit more.

today, i think back to the day she was born and
realize how much she has grown.
and will continue to grow.

today and always she is a blessing to me.
she has a way of making life just more enjoyable.

friends, family & fun on the fourth....

wow! we had a busy holiday weekend...
it was full of friends, family and lots of fun!!

on saturday, we went to our friend's, the miller's house for a parade & picnic

we got to their home early in the morning and then walked down

their street to watch the hickory grove parade

my kids are waiting for the parade to start

jesiah & jaelyn ready for the parade

jordyn and her friend anagrace waving their flags...

the kids watching for the parade to begin

our large party waiting for the parade...

watching the parade...
larry & daelyn
w/ jamil & jaelyn
yes, our babies have very similar names, too cute!!!

here i am with two of my dear friends,
heather dooley and teri miller
love these girls!!!

at the end of the parade
jaelyn is ready for her nap

jaelyn slept while we ate a picnic lunch,
after lunch there was plenty of fun and games for the kids

here is jordyn doing the egg toss

group shot of the parent/child egg toss

batter batter baseball
jesiah's favorite!

greased watermelon relay!
go josh!

slip & slide...
weee jordyn loves it

we had so much fun with our friends on the fourth of july. after celebrating the holiday we went home and rested for our next gathering. that evening we went to my parent's house and ate dinner with my parents, grandparents and jamil's mom and stepfather.
(pictures to come!)
it was such a great day!!!

happy happy independence day!!!

from our family to yours!!!

a new kind of busy...

not so long ago i came out of a season that was very busy with a lot of "outside of the home" activities. i was involved in a lot of volunteer activities. they required lots of meetings and planning. and a lot of my time.

i lived for those things. being a type a personality. planning and leading and organizing just comes naturally. and i really enjoy it.

i would often volunteer and take on a lot of events and activities. i figured since i didn't have a "real" job outside of the home, i had plenty of time to do these things i would take on. i wouldn't say that i had a problem with boundaries or setting limits or saying "no" at the time. but looking back, i realize that the problem was that when i said "yes" to all of those activities, i was saying "no" to something more important.

a lot of my time was spent on the phone or the computer doing "my work". i would never say that my kids were neglected but i would say that they didn't get the best of me. because i was giving my best to something else.

when i was pregnant with baby #4, i felt God impressing upon my heart that it was time to focus on family and home. and with a new baby coming, i really needed to simplify and focus. at this time i wasn't doing nearly as much as i was doing the year prior. but i was still doing a lot. enough that my focus was shifted off of my family a lot of the time. i loved doing the volunteer work i was doing, and it was hard to let it go. but i did.

i have taken this past year to really focus on my family and really truly put them first. i still have a long way to go. there are still other things in my life that will easily pull my attention from my kids. but i have more of a balance now. it isn't perfect. but i am still working on it.

God really spoke to me about saying "no" to a lot of things and really simplifying my life. i learned to set boundaries and limit the things i said "yes" to. i am so glad He has given me a "new" kind of busy. taking care of my family and putting them first and really focusing on them, keeps me so busy. i really can't see how i would have time for much more.

playing favorites..

could it be that i am a indecisive?
or maybe its just that i don't know what i like and dislike?
or maybe i just don't know myself well enough to play favorites?

jamil and i were asked to fill out a really simple survey of some of our favorite things. like restaurants, stores, candy, music, authors, hobbies etc. guess what? i had trouble doing that. big trouble. and ever since filling it out, i have revisited the answers i put down. and wondering are they really my favorites?

and then asking myself, what are my favorite things? what do i really truly like?


it wouldn't be hard for me to tell you about some of my kids favorite things, my husband's favorite things, or even my sister's favorite things. but when it comes to me, i really don't know what i like, really like.

so i am starting to learn a little more about me and a little more about what i like. and even what i dislike. i am revisiting some of the things that i would quickly answer as my favorites, and considering whether or not they really are.

once i get it figured out, i wonder if they would let me redo my portion of the survey? you think?

wordless wednesday...