New Beginnings!

Well, as most of my posts start out....where do I begin?? The month of September has been so amazing for our family! The first week of September was spent moving into our new home. We love it. Everyday I wake up amazed that God allowed us to find this house that we now call our home. As is our style, we have already had 1 party, 2 cookouts, a garage sale, and lots of visitors! Finally a home to share with our friends and family. God is good.
And well, of course, it didn't take us long to find something to do with all the extra space...we found out last week that we are expecting baby #3!!!! A surprise? Maybe. A moment of great joy? No doubt!! So Bobby and I have decided that God is amazingly good at math because so far, all our babies are going to be exactly 23 months apart. I am due at the end of May, Lucas turns 2 in June, Ava turns 4 in July. Sounds pretty great to me!
Here are a few pics of September so far:

http://www.pbs.org/parents/craftapparent/

I am feeling a little crafty lately, so I am using my blog as a place to remember all the fun crafts I want to try one day!


http://www.pbs.org/parents/craftapparent/


http://sistersstuff.blogspot.com/2009/10/diaper-wipe-case-tutorialand-some-of.html

Birthday Blessings

What a wonderful birthday I had this year! I never intended to blog about my birthday, but after so many blessings came my way, I just had to share. First of all, I love Bobby so much. Not only did he give me the most romantic, heart felt, tender birthday card, but he put a tremendous amount of love into making me a birthday cake! I think he was trying to surprise me because on Monday night (the night before my bday), he needed to go to the grocery store, but wouldn't tell me what he needed to buy. I guess what he didn't expect was for Ava to leak the surprise, because after he left, she said, "Ohh Mommy, me and Daddy are making you a cake tonight!" Hahaha. Gotta love it.
When he got back from the store, I left to go meet my group of girlfriends in downtown Franklin. So wow, where do I begin about how grateful I am for the amazing friends we have made here in Franklin. It's a group of about 10 of us and each month, we all get together for a girls' night to celebrate whoever has a bday in that particular month. I was the only August birthday, so of course I picked to go to Sweet CeCe's for frozen yogurt! Another special tradition we have started is a "Spiritual bouquet" (I included a picture below). How it works is one of the girls volunteers to arrange a bouquet of flowers and then she emails everyone (except the birthday girl) asking for them to reply back with a prayer/special sacrifice/note about what they love about that person. Each response is printed up on a small piece of paper and then they are attached to each stem of the flowers. So on Monday night, I received a beautiful spiritual bouquet filled with love from my girlfriends! It was so special to me and I will treasure it forever (well, the notes at least...the flowers won't last that long!!)
Prior to going out that night, I had worked out at the gym and while exercising, I felt inspired by this idea to write each of my girlfriends a personal note expressing my gratefulness for their friendship and example in my life, and to give it to them that night at the party. These women inspire me so much in our vocations as wives and mothers. Each note was a little different, but here is what most of them said,
For my birthday this year, I have spent alot of time reflecting on the many blessings God has given me in my life. Something I find myself saying over and over again is how grateful I am for our amazing group of Catholic women that we have here in Franklin. I could never ask for a better group of friends to encourage and inspire me in our vocations as wives and mothers.
When Victoria died so soon after we moved here, I just couldn't understand why God had pulled me away from my family. But in all His loving wisdom, He knew I would be lifted up and immensely loved by our friends-our FAMILY- here. Please know that I will be praying for you and thanking God for our friendship on my birthday this year!



On Tuesday, my actual birthday, Bobby made us all breakfast (YUMMY), and then the kids and I went to Mass at St.Philip. It was so nice to start our day in prayer. After Mass, our dear friend Laura took Ava, Lucas, and I to Starbucks for a delicious coffee and a few pastries (Thank you Laura!!). For Lunch, we took sandwiches to the office and had lunch with Bobby. Taking the kids to the office to eat lunch with Bobby is one of my favorite things to do. It makes me feel so happy to see him instead of having to wait a full 8 hours! And finally that night for dinner, we went to Chuy's with our great friends the Kerseys. It was DELICIOUS and FREE (thanks to my girlfriends who gave me a gift certificate the night before! AND to our sweet sitter who graciously volunteered to babysit for free when she realized it was my birthday! You rock!!)





(Can you tell we are getting ready to move??? Boxes are stacked EVERYWHERE!! Our poor kitchen table is also the desk,office, puzzle table, and catch all!)
Overall, this year was one of my most memorable birthdays to date. Why? LOVE and GRATITUDE. It was a day filled with love as is every day, but God especially placed on my heart a spirit of gratefulness for the many blessings He has given me in my family and my friends.

Birthday Party Luau!

A few weeks ago, we celebrated Ava and Lucas' birthdays with a big luau party at our pool. We had a blast! Gotta love the Dollar Tree because ALL our decorations came from there! MY favorite was the fruit bouquet that I made after my friend Lindsey inspired me! I also felt very Martha Stewart-ish when many a nap time was spent handpainting sand buckets for all the kids for their take home gifts! 22 in all! We are blessed by wonderful friends. Our friendships here in Franklin is definitely at the top of my list why I love living here!

God's Hand

God will NEVER be outdone in generosity. He reveals this to me time and time again. I am so happy to share that after MONTHS of searching, we have found our DREAM HOME!! Now I could be jumping the gun a bit here since we are going to rent the home first for about 12-18mos, but we are hoping and praying to purchase the house at the end of that time period if financially we are ready. Anyways, I can not tell you how many hours I have poured over craigslist, realtracs, and trulia searching for a home to rent. We walked through SOO many homes that were just not right for us. I admit, I was kinda particular about what we wanted: Garage, backyard (preferably fenced in), bonus room, hardwood floors, open floorplan...I started a joke to Bobby asking him how many "frogs" were we going to have to kiss before we found our "prince"?? I mean, we came upon some real DUDS!
I was starting to think that maybe we were just going to have to stay in our apartment because I just wasn't sure that I wanted to settle on something and go through the pain of moving if we didn't absolutely love it. But we are truly busting at the seams in our 1200 sf apartment (which for the first 18mos that we lived there, I LOVED it- you can't beat how easy it is to clean!) But we really want more outdoor living space for our kids. I have this image of them coming inside with green grassy feet after a long day of playing outdoors!
We knew our budget and were committed to not going over it so that I could continue to work just one night a week at the Children's hospital. Thanks to our best friend Lauri (or Tory I should say ;) ), she gave us the greatest idea EVER! After telling her how all the rental houses were either asking too much rent or were in poor condition, she recommended that we write a letter and place it in the mailboxes of houses for sale that we were interested in and ask them if they would be interested in renting. Talk about a great idea! That opened SOO many doors for us, literally! So as our excitement grew, so did our disappointment as many times we got our hopes up about a house, only to be beat out by other renters, etc. Finally one Tuesday morning last week, I went to daily Mass and had the opportunity to go to Confession. During that time, I poured my heart out to God asking his forgiveness for the times recently where I have lacked trust in His will and begged him to purify my heart and my intentions so that I can let Him reign in my day and in my family. After spending that time with our parish priest, I felt so much peace in my heart. And no joke, within 48 hours, we received a phone call for this house! AMAZING!
We prayed and prayed on the way to this house and we spent Bobby's lunch hour on Thursday speaking with the owner of the home. He shared with us that the night before, he and his wife finally decided to rent their home and the next morning (the morning he called us), he went to his mailbox and found our letter. Crazy. By Friday night, we had reviewed the lease and then we sealed the deal on Sunday. We move in on September 1! Bobby and I have been on cloud 9 ever since!~ We are thrilled to have more space for our family and have room to grow! The best part of the house is the lot. It's one of the biggest in tne neighborhood and backs up to a huge common area, which is a really popular feature in Franklin neighborhoods. It has everything we hoped for and MORE: 2 car garage, fenced in yard WITH built in playset, 4 bedrooms, hardwood floors, spacious kitchen, double vanity in master bathroom, etc. Thank you Jesus!!!
The furniture in the house is not ours, it's the owners, so I will have to post pics again once we move it and get settled.

0052

My wonderful grandfather, Eddie Morris, passed away peacefully in his sleep last night. My mom has had the blessing to spend this last week of his life right at his bedside in Tulsa, OK. When he passed away last night, we knew instantly that someone else was in the room with them- Victoria. For those of you who have seen one of my previous posts, 52 was Vic's favorite number and it is a number that I see ALL the time, in random and sometimes significant occasions. My mom's continual prayer while my grandpa had been sick was to be able to be with him when he went to Heaven, which was something that she did not get to share with Victoria. Well, God is good! I wanted to share with you the story my mom shared with all of us via email this morning when we woke up.
"The past few days I've been part of a bedside vigil of my dying father. We were told he could die any moment last week. My brother woke me up up last night for my turn to be with him. I was so grateful to be with Dad, as I wanted to see him go to to heaven, a chance I didn't have with Victoria but where I knew Victoria was waiting for him. I had been up many nights already and was exhausted so I put my head down, with my hand on his heart. I don't know how long I stayed that way, but suddenly I realized his heart had stopped beating. I looked up and Dad wasn't breathing. I was overcome, thinking I had missed Dad going to heaven, when suddenly his heart beat again. I called the nurses station and my mother and brother. His heart beat once more for us all and he was gone. Dad's time of death was 12:52 a.m. I later told the nurse about losing Victoria. I explained that Victoria's favorite number was 52 and was on her grave marker. I knew Victoria was with Dad when he died. The nurse with tears in her eyes said, We recorded your Dad's time of death in military time, 0052."
Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for the gift of life and we continue to praise you even in the passing of life. You continue to console us beyond our deserving, and I thank you for the gift you gave us, especially my mom, last night when Grandpa passed away at 12:52am to be with you in Heaven. It's a small detail, but we find much consolation in it and in knowing that his suffering is over, and he is with you and Victoria watching over us. I love you. I love you Grandpa. I love you Victoria. Please help me to love greater and serve others more so that I can be with you for Eternity.

Ohh Lucas....

Ohhh Lucas....I caught him playing so happily in the kitchen the other day, so I grabbed my camera (the video of all this is on my wall) and when I got over there, I realized why he looked taller than usual...and then, well it just ended poorly...Sorry Lucas! He is ok though of course. He actually didn't even cry!