Where's the SUN?!?! Part 1

We had a wonderful trip in Florida with some good friends of ours.  We were all looking forward to the SUN and guess what??? It was cool and cloudy pretty much the whole time we were there.  Regardless we had a great time with great friends and fully enjoyed ourselves.  We stayed at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Fort Lauderdale, FL.  The hotel was very nice and had a mini shopping mall, restaurants and bars located right there outside of it's door.

The view from the plane as we were flying in!

We went to a local restaurant to eat the night of our anniversary and then we went and hung out at the outdoors Hooters bar that was there on the hotel grounds.  It was right next to this little lake area that had a water and lights show.  It was a little chilly, but we had a wonderful time. Somehow I managed to not get a picture of JoeDan and Holly.  I guess we were having too much fun and I forgot to take pics.  I need to get much better at this!! Much better!

The next day we drove to Palm Beach to go to the Honda Classic Golf Tournament.  I must admit that golf is certainly must more fun to watch in person.  We got to see all of the major players including Tiger Woods.  The crowds that were following him were crazy!!  We even got Ricky Fowler's autograph for Kallaway!  Of course....this means nothing right now to my 4 year old, but when he is older I am hoping that he will think it is really cool.

The entrance to the golf course

Chris and I at the tournament

The golf course was beautiful and Chris was totally in his element.  He LOVED every minute of it! And I enjoyed myself a little too! :)

9 years of Wedded Bliss!

Today is our 9th Anniversary and we are flying to Florida for some R&R.  This is the first trip we have EVER taken without our children and I must say....it seems very weird knowing we will not see them for four days.  Nevertheless, we are excited about our mini vacay.

Oooohhhhh....the memories!! We have come a long ways since this picture was taken when we were in high school.  Truth be told....I love him far more now than I ever thought was possible.  He is my rock, my soulmate, my best friend, my partner....MY EVERYTHING!!  I love you, Honey!!

Goodbye 2012....Hello 2013!!!

Tonight I am ringing in New Year's at home with my 3 LOVES in our pajamas while we watch football and the NYE special from New York.

We cooked a wonderful dinner complete with Mediterranean Crusted Salmon, broccoli & cheese, taters and S'mores roll ups for dessert.  

2012 has been a wonderful year full of love, laughs, happiness, blessings and even some heartache.  We watched my beautiful cousin Holly marry her prince Mark, they welcomed their ADORABLE son Fischer into this world, my nephew Garrison graduated high school and received a full scholarship to McMurray University, we welcomed another BIL into our family when Benita and BJ got married, we had a wonderful family vacation in San Antonio, my dad suffered a mild stroke, we had very successful years at our jobs, we celebrated our third pregnancy, had wonderful holiday celebrations with friends and family and even suffered the loss of our baby in my recent miscarriage.

The good consistently outweighs the bad and I am eternally grateful for God's love and faithfulness.  He is always by our sides which has been proven over and over to Chris and I throughout the past few days.  Just this evening, I was looking into something and the answer I found literally made me laugh out loud.  Only God can put the pieces of this puzzle together as accurately as they are falling into place.  While my heart still aches, I am confident that 2013 will have many continued blessings for our family.  I am sure there will be some heartaches along the way as well and for that reason we will continue to press hard unto Him! 

I cannot wait to see what 2013 holds for our family.  Happy New Year!!

Grief

Over the past few days I have discovered that grief is a very funny thing.  One minute you will be perfectly fine and the next minute your whole world is crashing down.  I have been feeling pretty good physically since having surgery yesterday; however, emotionally I have been a wreck.

I am sure this is to be expected.  I have talked to many people who have dealt with similar situations and they all reassure me that my thoughts and fears are not abnormal.  I. Am. Grieving. Plain and Simple!  I have lost all of my grandparents and even an uncle; however, nothing has compared to the pain I have felt the past few days.  I am literally numb.  My heart feels incomplete.  I have struggled to hide my emotions from our children and our families in order to keep them from hurting that much more.  Unfortunately, this has left Chris to deal with the majority of my grief.  And let me just say....he has been my ROCK!  I could not have made it without him the past few days.  He has held me, wiped my tears, let me cry myself to sleep and taken wonderful care of me.  He has made me laugh and smile even when I didn't feel like it was possible.  He has reassured me that everything will be ok and that God will give us another child.

I think I hit rock bottom today.  The kids and I went to town to run a couple of errands and we met up with Chris once he was done with work.  The kids decided they wanted to ride home with him and they needed to run one more errand.  I was fine all the way home but when I walked into the house it hit me like a ton of bricks. 

Kallaway slept in his crib, which was in our room, up until a few months ago.  I didn't fight him on getting out of his crib because he was close by when he would wake up in the middle of the night and I simply knew he was contained.  I told Chris a couple of months ago that we needed to take it down.  He simply laughed at me and said, "Why? So we can put it back up in a few months?"  I laughed at his response and with that moved on. 

I walked into our bedroom today and there was the crib.  The crib I thought was soon to hold our third precious child.  Grief overcame me at that point and I lost it.  I had no idea how to take the crib apart, but I grabbed a screwdriver and piece by piece disassembled the entire crib.  I am sure this wasn't within my surgical restrictions, but I simply couldn't help it.  I felt as though I couldn't breathe.  I have now lost a child. Unborn....yes, but still my child.  Once the crib was apart I felt better, but then I started feeling guilty for my grief.  Guilty because I have two healthy children.  Guilty because millions of people would love to have ONE child of their own.  I have TWO.  Guilty for my tears and my actions. 

This guilt has been driving me crazy because I am NOT ungrateful!  I am fully aware of how blessed I am, and I thank God daily for all of the blessings he has bestowed upon me.  Time heals all wounds......I have to have FAITH in this and Him!!

A very sweet, dear friend, who has endured her own share of heartache, told me this..."While you grieve, LEAN and TRUST in the ONE who holds you in the palm of His hand....and be confident He WILL turn these ashes into something BEAUTIFUL!"  She may never know just how much those words have meant to me!  

Surgery

After meeting with my doctor yesterday and discussing our options relating to our miscarriage, Chris and I decided that having a D&C was the best option for me.  I had surgery this morning to complete my miscarriage.

Physically... I am ok.  Emotionally... I am a wreck.  I will be perfectly fine and then out of nowhere I lose it.  I know that this is normal, but for someone like myself who is somewhat of a control freak it completely drives me insane.  

While I was in recovery, Chris got a call from his brother stating that his MIL had passed away.  She got very ill last night, was rushed to the hospital and took a major turn for the worse early this morning.  We got out of the hospital around noon and went straight to the other hospital where they were to express our condolences on their loss.

I am at home resting now while my kids are playing with all of their fun new toys they received for Christmas.  

My Red Raiders play in their bowl game tonight and I am certainly hoping they can give us a WIN! 

Today I am even more thankful for my wonderful husband, beautiful children, amazing family and friends and our health!!

NUMB

We went in this morning for our routine 11 week ultrasound.  Chris and I were both off of work so he went with me.  Several people had been joking around with us saying that we were having twins.  Everyone was so excited to find out if we were having one baby or two.

Looking back I am sooo thankful that Chris was able to be there with me.  After several minutes of silence, I could tell that something wasn't right because of the look on our ultrasound technician's face.  I finally asked her if everything was ok.  She went on to explain to us that she was not supposed to tell us anything, but that due to the holidays the radiologist wasn't there yet and she didn't want us leaving not knowing what was going on.  The words she had to say rocked us to the core.  She then confirmed what I was already beginning to fear.  I was in the process of a miscarriage.  She could not locate a heartbeat.  I think I was numb and just going through the motions.  To be honest....it is kind of a blur.  We went in feeling perfectly fine and just plain excited about getting to see our precious little one.  And then we left with our dreams for this third child of ours being shattered.  My heart is breaking, but I know that God has a plan for my family and I.

Ugly Sweater Party!

Tonight we had an ugly sweater party with a bunch of our wonderful friends!  We looked everywhere for an ugly sweater for Chris and I and we had no luck.  We finally found a really tacky turtleneck for me to wear and finally decided to make Chris a sweater.  I had no idea how much fun making his sweater would be.  We ended up taking this "ugly" theme to the extreme....

I wish I had a better picture of his attire...it was hilarious!

Kallaway had been running a fever earlier in the day so I contemplated not going to the party.  He acted like he felt fine once his fever would come down.  He wasn't eating much and sat in my lap the majority of the day.  My parents insisted he would be fine for a while and that they would watch our kids.  My mom called not long after we dropped them off to inform me that he had eaten a really good dinner so I was happy to hear this.  Unfortunately I got another call close to 11pm to inform me that he was really struggling to breathe and that his chest was retracting.  Chris and I said goodbye to our friends and headed to go get our sweet boy.  

We changed clothes quickly and then headed to the ER with our sweet boy.  You could tell by looking in his eyes that he felt awful.  We got to the ER at 12am....and of course the waiting room was full.  We  finally got called back to a room around 2:20am.  They gave him some steroids and 3 breathing treatments back to back and then we finally got released around 4:15am.  

Sitting on the hospital bed by himself like a big boy!

I hate seeing my babies sick and would do anything to trade places with them.  Luckily the steroids and breathing treatments have helped.  We finally got in bed around 5am.  Needless to say we were very tired!!