Pregnancy Losses

I found out today that a dear friend of mine has miscarried. She is almost 6 weeks pregnant. She has been trying for only 6 months, but she wants a child so very bad. She found out just last Tuesday she was pregnant and now she found out today that she will miscarry. I hate that she has to go through this.

I experienced the same kind of heartache on June 3, 2009. It was the day before our 4th anniversary and I had started bleeding the day before. I passed a sweet little baby on the 3rd and that just broke my heart. When I became pregnant, I had no concerns that this would happen. My first pregnancy had had no problems, that gave me a false sense of security.

In September of 2009, I experienced another miscarriage. This one was a lot earlier than my first, if I had not taken a pregnancy test, I would have never known I was pregnant; I would have thought my cycle had just been a few days late.

As I think back to those days, I find myself wondering-is this kind of hurt worse if the baby is at an older gestation age? What if I had a stillborn instead of a miscarriage? Would my heart hurt more? I think my answer would be maybe. Even though I ache every day for my babies I lost much too early, I never had the chance to hear a heartbeat, feel a kick or know their gender. I think once you find/see/hear those things, your bond with your baby becomes even stronger and you become more attached to them as time goes on-you know their identity now. However, I don't know if I would feel more hurt, and I pray that I will never know.

Please don't think that I think that losing a baby early is not devastating-believe me, I know it is!! I believe that life begins at conception and that my baby had a heartbeat, an identity and that my baby was most definately my child from the start. I am just not sure if my hurt would be even worse if I had lost my child closer to their due date. We had names picked out for our second baby-one boy name and one girl name. We are not going to use either of those names now. We do not know if this baby was a boy or a girl and I am not going to mistakenly give their name to another child.

I hope you can see what I am trying to say. I was just thinking about that in my head today as I was praying for my sweet friend. Every time I hear a woman is pregnant, I pray they do not need to know the hurt that many women do. Some women do find that out, some don't, but in the end, we can all take comfort in knowing that our babies are with Jesus patiently waiting on us to be there with them so we can give them the hugs and kisses we never got to give them on Earth.

Once again, I pray I do not upset anyone with this post. These were just thoughts running through my head this afternoon. If you have experienced this heartache, I am so sorry; my prayers are with you.

Mommy misses you and loves you so much my sweet angels in Heaven.

My Bucket List

I have been thinking lately about the things I want to do before I go to meet Jesus and then today I saw a blog about someone's Bucket List. I thought that was ironic, so I figured I would make my own personal one and share it! (and no, I haven't seen the movie yet)

My Bucket List
1. Learn a foreign language
2. Become a regular volunteer at a shelter
3. Write a book(not for publishing, but for fun)
4. Travel out of the country
5. Study each book of the Bible on a regular basis
6. Go to the Grand Canyon
7. Make Thanksgiving dinner all by myself
8. Just sit and listen to the rain outside
9. Go birdwatching
10. Organize every picture I have of Emma and make all kinds of different photo albums of each age

Some of those may be more of a goal, but it is what I want to do before I pass on. Every day I try to get stuff done, but I am bombarded with laundry, cleaning, child care, bills, work, the list goes on and on....then I sit back and realize how lucky I am to be able to do the things I HAVE to do. Just like getting Emma a sippy cup while I am trying to carry a load of laundry to the laundry room. She is grabbing at my and whining and I start to get exasperated. Then I just set my laundry down and get her what she needs. The reason why: there are millions of people out there who cannot have a child or who have lost a child-I have not gone through that experience with Emma and I need to remember to praise God for that every day and pray for the people who have experienced that heartache. I will eventually get this list accomplished and when I do, I may be old, but I will be proud. I was really inspired when I read about this:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100127/ap_on_re_us/us_centenarian_degree

How wonderful that she was able to get this!!
Do you have any goals you want to accomplish?

Colts-A classy team

I am so happy for the Colts!
Top 5 Reasons I LOVE the Colts:
5. They do amazing comebacks
4. They have players that stick together and do not blame one another.
3. They treat their fans wonderfully and know we stand behind them.
2. They do not trash talk their opponents.
1. They are not afraid to thank God for a great game(whether they win or lose).

Miami--here come the COLTS(again)!!!

Overdue Pictures

Here are some pictures from Christmas and a couple of weeks after. I will just write under the pictures-it is easier that way!



























It has always been a tradition for me to open one gift on Christmas Eve with my parents. Well now that Emma is the baby, she gets to do it. Since we live about 2 seconds away from my parents, we took Emma over there and she opened up her Christmas Eve gift-it was a drum that has a few balls between the parts you hit--sorry I don't know what that is called. Emma cannot figure out why the balls don't come out-she wants to take them out and play with them so bad!!



The picture quality isn't too good, but here is the princess tent Santa gave to our Princess!(the cat was not included)



Apparently our princess wasn't too impressed with her presents Santa got her because as soon as Mama was in the bathroom, she ran in there and got into the toilet paper. So much funner than toys!!



How many pieces can I tear this into....



Give me the floss! It is the best toy here!



She likes to munch on floss-what can I say?



It was actually quite funny, Emma had to stop and look through each book as she opened it, it took a long time to open up her gifts!



Emma is trying to decide whether or not she likes her new baby doll she got from Santa.



She loves her!!



Sorry about the price tag showing, but I had to show off her adorable Indiana cheerleading outfit Grandma got her! She is in a Hoosier-loving family!



Like my new sweater?



Can you tell that she is laughing hard here?



Emma decided to climb in this box that we had sitting by the front door to recycle. She about flipped out when I turned it right side up, but after she realized the world wasn't ending, she had a great time in it!



Mommy, I can't wait until spring!



Emma loves to read her books.



I hope this is not a sign of things to come! :)(She does this all the time, I don't know what the deal is!!)



Look mom, I don't have it in my hair this time!!



This is Emma's "Surprise!" face.






This is Emma's "GRRR" face.

A Few Overdue Pictures

I promise--I did not give Emma any narcotics prior to this picture!! :) And if you'll notice, she has her hand down my shirt...I am not sure why she does that so much right now!



Alright, so I only have a couple right now. I have the wrong flash drive with me. All well, eventually Christmas pictures will be put on here! The two I have on now are from the Wilbur Wright Christmas Festival/Walk. They had a big room with all kinds of Christmas Trees that had different themes. They were very pretty and fun to look at.

It is 40 degrees here right now. I did not have to let my car run to heat up this morning(the first time in 3 1/2 weeks). I am loving this "heat wave"! We have a busy weekend ahead. I am going out with some girls from work tonight for dinner. Tomorrow, we are heading to a party that is being thrown for Brandon's cousin that is going into the Army in a couple of weeks, then we are heading to Emma's great-grandparents house for supper(these two places are two hours away and they are each an hour away from our house--pretty much a 4 hour drive...yuck). It will be nice to see some family that we don't get to see very much. On Sunday after church, my mom and I are going to make a big pot of chicken soup. I am so excited about this, I have been wanting some for a long time! A nurse at work had some the other day and I was very tempted to steal it....:)

I hope you all have a great weekend and I hope it is warm wherever you are at.

What Did I Do Last Night??

The Things I Should Have Done Last Night
1. Laundry
2. Clean bathroom
3. Cook an actual dinner instead of eat leftovers
4. Unpack some more boxes
5. More laundry
6. Organize Emma's closet
7. Unload and re-load dishwasher
8. Sweep floors
9. Mop floors
10. Go for a walk
11. Take trash out
12. Take recycleables out
13. Shovel sidewalk(again)
14. Order checks
15. Pack my lunch for today
16. Go over diaper bag for baby-sitter
17. More laundry

The Thing I DID Do Last Night
1. Played with my favorite 17 month old and enjoyed every minute of it!

What did you do last night? Emma and I just hung out and had a girl's night. Brandon had an interview that was near his parent's house so he stayed there overnight so he could be there early in the morning. So, I stayed home, heated up leftovers and Emma and I read books, tossed toys around, worked on saying words and took a bath. I must say, that girl is fun to hang out with!

Cold and snow.....what's so great about it anyways??

Oh my, it has been a while since my last post. I always mean to put something up, but then I forget....all well. I have some great pictures to put on here, but my husband has the camera today so I am out of luck with that!
It has been SOOOO cold here in Middle America! Of course, it has been so very cold in all of the country so far this year(at least us and south of us). However, it is supposed to get up to 40 on Thursday!!! I am so very excited about that. I am still trying to catch my breath and lower my heart rate after seeing my propane bill yesterday. It was amazing to see how much it was considering we do not turn our heat over 68 degrees and we turn it down to 60 degrees when we are gone for the day. At least the company was very nice and we worked out a deal. I am definately going to have to get on the budget billing with them this summer. How cold is it where you live??

I have some great pictures of Emma, but like I said, I need the camera to upload them. We had pasta the other night with lots of sauce...and well, I will let you think about it. I will try to get those pictures up tomorrow. I really need to blog better!!

Okay prayer warriors--please pray for a precious little girl named Sydney. She is a baby who was born with Trisomy 18 and she is on her 5th day of life! She is truly a miracle and I encourage you to stop by the blog made in her honor. Please pray for the Lord to be with Sydney and her family as they do not know how long she will be with them before she makes her journey to to be with Jesus. Let's just praise Him that they are able to spend this time with her!!--and thanks Nikki for letting me know about this blog!

One more prayer request....my husband goes in for a job interview tomorrow at nine--please pray that he receives this job, we are in a financial pit right now and desperately need this! I will keep you all updated! Thank you and everyone have a blessed day!