Thursday, December 31, 2009
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Christmas Tour Of Homes 09
Welcome to our first Christmas at the new house!
My favorite decoration!
My favorite ornament. Richard officially proposed to me at his sister's house during the holidays. He put my ring and a note (still in it) in this ornament and made me play "hot and cold" too find it.
Shiloh's favorite decoration!
Mice my grandma made for me
My first time ever being able to hang our stockings from a fireplace!
I had to include this picture because, well, I just love our fireplace!
My favorite decoration!
My favorite ornament. Richard officially proposed to me at his sister's house during the holidays. He put my ring and a note (still in it) in this ornament and made me play "hot and cold" too find it. 
Shiloh's favorite decoration!
Mice my grandma made for me
My first time ever being able to hang our stockings from a fireplace!
I had to include this picture because, well, I just love our fireplace!
Head over to Greta's blog to check out more homes!
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Let's Try This Again
It's been a while since I've posted anything other than a Wordless Wednesday picture, but I'm going to try to change that starting today.
Richard and I aren't adopting Shiloh's brother. There I said it. Whew! That's a huge weight off my shoulders. Most everyone knows already anyway, but I guess to blog about it makes it so final and definite. It's been hard for me to come up with anything to blog about lately because this has been on my mind so much and, like I said, to put it out here makes it so final, and I guess part of me was hoping there would be another way. Anyway. We informed Kim of our decision back in September and she has since then spoken with some couples in the metro Atlanta area and has hopefully found parents for him. We are hoping to have limited contact with the couple so Shiloh can still know her brother.
Don't ask why we changed our minds. I can give you all of the reasons in the world, but in the end none of them seem to justify this outcome. It was a tough, heartbreaking decision to make, but, as with everything, God has a plan. For whatever reason, it seems this boy was not meant to be ours. I just pray that when Shiloh is old enough to understand all of this she won't hold this decision against us.
Richard and I aren't adopting Shiloh's brother. There I said it. Whew! That's a huge weight off my shoulders. Most everyone knows already anyway, but I guess to blog about it makes it so final and definite. It's been hard for me to come up with anything to blog about lately because this has been on my mind so much and, like I said, to put it out here makes it so final, and I guess part of me was hoping there would be another way. Anyway. We informed Kim of our decision back in September and she has since then spoken with some couples in the metro Atlanta area and has hopefully found parents for him. We are hoping to have limited contact with the couple so Shiloh can still know her brother.
Don't ask why we changed our minds. I can give you all of the reasons in the world, but in the end none of them seem to justify this outcome. It was a tough, heartbreaking decision to make, but, as with everything, God has a plan. For whatever reason, it seems this boy was not meant to be ours. I just pray that when Shiloh is old enough to understand all of this she won't hold this decision against us.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Wordless Wednesday: It's A.....
And, just in case you don't believe me......
I couldn't wait to scan it so I took a picture of it....excuse the blurriness!Friday, September 4, 2009
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Baby Update
Shiloh and I just returned from our first doctor's visit with Kim. It was just a regular check up consisting of some measuring and listening to the baby's heartbeat. I'm happy to report that everything looked/sounded good! Also, Kim and I got to show off Shiloh a little while we were there since the midwife we saw today is the same one who delivered Shiloh. That was kind of fun!
One last thing, make sure you come back one week from tomorrow, because at 8:15 on that day we will hopefully be learning the sex of the baby!! I will be sharing the news as soon as we return home!
One last thing, make sure you come back one week from tomorrow, because at 8:15 on that day we will hopefully be learning the sex of the baby!! I will be sharing the news as soon as we return home!
Friday, August 28, 2009
One Of Those Days
As most of you know (I think) my bestfriend here in Georgia is pregnant. Her due date is actually less than a week away from Kim's. Pretty cool, right? For the most part. This is my first time experiencing the pregnancy of someone close to me...by close I mean in distance. It's not easy. After getting through my sister's pregnancy with ease I believed I could get through anything. Apparently, that's not the case. Today Brittany had her ultrasound. She found out she's having a girl. That's what she wanted and I'm happy for her, but I've ignored the two phone calls I've received from her today. For some reason it's just too much right now. I feel terrible for feeling this way and I don't want to rain on her parade right now, but I don't want to fake happiness for her right now either. To be blunt, it all sucks. I want to be happy for Brittany, I really do and I'm sure that tomorrow I'll be over all of this and eager to celebrate this news with her. But, for now, I just need to get through today.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
More Cake
This is how she eats anything with icing/frosting.
Realizing she got icing on her hands.
And last, but not least, Rich's favorite picture.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Pictures For Grammy
cake, cake!!
Oh no, daddy didn't just take a bite without giving me some!
waiting for another bite
The anticipation!
All gone!
Friday, August 14, 2009
This And That!
Shiloh and I returned home yesterday from an awesome trip up north that included stops in Tennessee, Ohio, Pennsylvania and North Carolina!! We left a week ago from this past Sunday and spent the night in TN visiting Rich's brother, Dale, and his family. They have a little girl, Emily, who is 2 weeks older than Shiloh and the girls hadn't seen eachother since they were 2 1/2 months old. They had so mujch fun playing, dancing and running around together.
Monday morning we left TN and drove up to Ohio to spend a couple of days with my mom's parents. My mom, Adrienne, Andrea, Austin, Jeff and Brayden arrived at my grandparent's house shortly after we did. While in Ohio we also had a nice visit with my Uncle Doug and Aunt Bec. I'll do another post later with pictures from our trip...this post will be long enough sans pictures. Anyway. I am so happy we were able to get the great grandkids up to Ohio to see my grandparents. You never know how many visits you have left so it's always a blessing to see them.
After our stop in Ohio we were off to PA....our main stop. We had a great time in PA between the church festival and more visits with family and friends! The main reason for the trip was to be home for my old church's festival and it was sooo much fun! Shiloh (I) won two goldfish (Flower and Belle...Payton named them), two super soft, kinda large tiger stuffed animals, an extremely large, super soft teddy bear, and a little elephant. I also bought her a pretty cool toy box at the White Elephant Tent for $20. We need to sand it down and then stain it, but I feel like once we do that it will look pretty awesome! During the festival weekend The Marcinick Family from Cleveland (Uncle Greg, Aunt Denise, Melissa, Matt and Michelle) visited. It was so great to see them and for them to see Shiloh! The day they left cousins Josh and Emily arrived for the night and Aunt Nina stopped by for a few hours Sunday evening also. For people reading this not in my family, my cousin Josh is a senior in high school who is 6'7" (and not quite done growing). Anyway. The last time I saw Josh he was 8 years old and we were playing basketball in his driveway. Needless to say, he was nowhere near even 6 feet tall then. I told my mom it was like meeting Josh all over again last weekend...he's definitely not the same kid I saw 9 years ago. It was so great to see him and Emily and again it was great that they were able to meet and spend some time with Shiloh and Austin. And from what I heard, Shiloh had a great time playing with Aunt Nina Sunday....we were at the festival with the cousins so I wasn't there.
Our visit ended Tuesday morning, but not before an awesome evening with Hollie, John, Payton, and Anthony on Monday. The kids had so much fun playing with sticker books, dancing along with Yo Gabba Gabba, chalking up the front porch and just playing together.
Tuesday morning we drove Andrea and Austin home to North Carolina, spent the night, and finally arrived back in Georgia Wednesday around 6:00. It was a ton of driving but so worth it!
Now for another baby update! Yesterday Shiloh and I met up with Kim for lunch. We talked about various things including her pregnancy. She's having a little more morning sickness with this one, although she said it's still not bad, and she is finding that she needs to eat every few hours or as she said she just doesn't feel right. Because her pregnancy is different this time around, she is guessing its a boy, but my mom said all of her pregnancies were different and she had to eat every few hours or she didn't feel well when she was pregnant with one of my older sisters.....so maybe it's a girl! I'll be honest right here, I would LOVE, LOVE, LOVE for this to be a girl because I want so badly for Shiloh to have a sister, but if it is a boy we will still be extremely happy and excited, of course! Anyway. Kim is doing well. She should find out the gender of the baby August 31 (she might have to reschedule) and Rich, Shiloh and myself will be at the doctors with her that day. To sum this all up everything is looking really good for potential adoption #2!
Later that day, as if things weren't going awesome enough already, we received a phone call from Brittany letting us know she was showing the house. I spoke with her up until the moment she was pulling into our drivway to meet the potential buyers. When we hung up she said she'd call and let me know how it went as soon as they left. Usually it's a good 45 minutes or so before I hear from her, which is a good thing, but not even 15 minutes after I hung up the phone she was calling me back. I was worried that the people had totally hated the house and just walked through real quick and left, but it was just the opposite! They loved it! They were extremely impressed with all of the upgrades Rich had done and they LOVED Shiloh's old room....they have a young daughter as well. They left the house and told Brittany they woul call her later because they wanted their parents to come see it. Well, it seems they loved the house so much that last night they called the lender Brittany works with to get things started and then they called Brittany to say they will be putting in an offer tomorrow (meaning today). Brittany will be meeting them at our old house at 5:30 this evening to show their parents the house and then we will start negotiating! We are so hopeful that these are our people!! Rich and I had given ourselves a deadline of this weekend for renting it. If we still had no one after this weekend Rich was going to put an ad in the newspaper on Monday looking for renters, which as I said before, we DO NOT want to do. So right at this moment things are really looking good for us regarding the Athens house!! Hopefully I'll have great news for you all on Sunday night when we return from Florida. Which brings me to my next paragraph.......
After ONE full day of being home, Rich ,Shiloh and myself are heading down to the Orlando area tonight for a birthday party this weekend. The daughter of Rich's roommate at Camp Pendleton is turning 1. We told them we'd do everything we could to get down there for Olivia's birthday before I realized it fell right in line with my trip up north. All I want to do this weekend is spend some quality time at home with Rich and Shiloh, but instead we will be driving 7 hours tonight and 7 more hours back home on Sunday. But, again, it's worth it. Josh and Kara are great friends and we haven't seen them since Olivia was about 5 months old. It's always fun getting Shiloh together with one of her future bestfriends, but after this weekend I am done with long distance car rides for a LONG time. Actually, after this weekend we start the extremely intimidating task of potty trainng Shiloh.....hmm, maybe we'll stay in Florida a little longer.
Monday morning we left TN and drove up to Ohio to spend a couple of days with my mom's parents. My mom, Adrienne, Andrea, Austin, Jeff and Brayden arrived at my grandparent's house shortly after we did. While in Ohio we also had a nice visit with my Uncle Doug and Aunt Bec. I'll do another post later with pictures from our trip...this post will be long enough sans pictures. Anyway. I am so happy we were able to get the great grandkids up to Ohio to see my grandparents. You never know how many visits you have left so it's always a blessing to see them.
After our stop in Ohio we were off to PA....our main stop. We had a great time in PA between the church festival and more visits with family and friends! The main reason for the trip was to be home for my old church's festival and it was sooo much fun! Shiloh (I) won two goldfish (Flower and Belle...Payton named them), two super soft, kinda large tiger stuffed animals, an extremely large, super soft teddy bear, and a little elephant. I also bought her a pretty cool toy box at the White Elephant Tent for $20. We need to sand it down and then stain it, but I feel like once we do that it will look pretty awesome! During the festival weekend The Marcinick Family from Cleveland (Uncle Greg, Aunt Denise, Melissa, Matt and Michelle) visited. It was so great to see them and for them to see Shiloh! The day they left cousins Josh and Emily arrived for the night and Aunt Nina stopped by for a few hours Sunday evening also. For people reading this not in my family, my cousin Josh is a senior in high school who is 6'7" (and not quite done growing). Anyway. The last time I saw Josh he was 8 years old and we were playing basketball in his driveway. Needless to say, he was nowhere near even 6 feet tall then. I told my mom it was like meeting Josh all over again last weekend...he's definitely not the same kid I saw 9 years ago. It was so great to see him and Emily and again it was great that they were able to meet and spend some time with Shiloh and Austin. And from what I heard, Shiloh had a great time playing with Aunt Nina Sunday....we were at the festival with the cousins so I wasn't there.
Our visit ended Tuesday morning, but not before an awesome evening with Hollie, John, Payton, and Anthony on Monday. The kids had so much fun playing with sticker books, dancing along with Yo Gabba Gabba, chalking up the front porch and just playing together.
Tuesday morning we drove Andrea and Austin home to North Carolina, spent the night, and finally arrived back in Georgia Wednesday around 6:00. It was a ton of driving but so worth it!
Now for another baby update! Yesterday Shiloh and I met up with Kim for lunch. We talked about various things including her pregnancy. She's having a little more morning sickness with this one, although she said it's still not bad, and she is finding that she needs to eat every few hours or as she said she just doesn't feel right. Because her pregnancy is different this time around, she is guessing its a boy, but my mom said all of her pregnancies were different and she had to eat every few hours or she didn't feel well when she was pregnant with one of my older sisters.....so maybe it's a girl! I'll be honest right here, I would LOVE, LOVE, LOVE for this to be a girl because I want so badly for Shiloh to have a sister, but if it is a boy we will still be extremely happy and excited, of course! Anyway. Kim is doing well. She should find out the gender of the baby August 31 (she might have to reschedule) and Rich, Shiloh and myself will be at the doctors with her that day. To sum this all up everything is looking really good for potential adoption #2!
Later that day, as if things weren't going awesome enough already, we received a phone call from Brittany letting us know she was showing the house. I spoke with her up until the moment she was pulling into our drivway to meet the potential buyers. When we hung up she said she'd call and let me know how it went as soon as they left. Usually it's a good 45 minutes or so before I hear from her, which is a good thing, but not even 15 minutes after I hung up the phone she was calling me back. I was worried that the people had totally hated the house and just walked through real quick and left, but it was just the opposite! They loved it! They were extremely impressed with all of the upgrades Rich had done and they LOVED Shiloh's old room....they have a young daughter as well. They left the house and told Brittany they woul call her later because they wanted their parents to come see it. Well, it seems they loved the house so much that last night they called the lender Brittany works with to get things started and then they called Brittany to say they will be putting in an offer tomorrow (meaning today). Brittany will be meeting them at our old house at 5:30 this evening to show their parents the house and then we will start negotiating! We are so hopeful that these are our people!! Rich and I had given ourselves a deadline of this weekend for renting it. If we still had no one after this weekend Rich was going to put an ad in the newspaper on Monday looking for renters, which as I said before, we DO NOT want to do. So right at this moment things are really looking good for us regarding the Athens house!! Hopefully I'll have great news for you all on Sunday night when we return from Florida. Which brings me to my next paragraph.......
After ONE full day of being home, Rich ,Shiloh and myself are heading down to the Orlando area tonight for a birthday party this weekend. The daughter of Rich's roommate at Camp Pendleton is turning 1. We told them we'd do everything we could to get down there for Olivia's birthday before I realized it fell right in line with my trip up north. All I want to do this weekend is spend some quality time at home with Rich and Shiloh, but instead we will be driving 7 hours tonight and 7 more hours back home on Sunday. But, again, it's worth it. Josh and Kara are great friends and we haven't seen them since Olivia was about 5 months old. It's always fun getting Shiloh together with one of her future bestfriends, but after this weekend I am done with long distance car rides for a LONG time. Actually, after this weekend we start the extremely intimidating task of potty trainng Shiloh.....hmm, maybe we'll stay in Florida a little longer.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Silly, Shiloh
Shiloh has been going through a cute stage lately where she only understands being called her name. I think it's pretty funny. For example, earlier today I was looking for something and she found it and brought it to me. Upon taking the item from her I said, "thank you, big girl"! Her response, with a very serious face, was, "I Shiwee"...that's what she calls herself. I couldn't help but chuckle to myself.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Friday, July 24, 2009
Another Update
We heard from Kim yesterday. Apparently, I had my days confused and her ultrasound was yesterday, not last week. It showed that she is 14 weeks along right now which has her due the middle of January. She said again that she would love for Shiloh's brother/sister to grow up with her(Shiloh), she just has a couple of things to figure out. We told her to take her time and that we'll respect whatever her final decision is. We are possibly getting together this weekend while my parents are in town....Kim has never met them....so we may talk more then.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
My Pity Party...Feel Free To Not Read
I don't remember ever having jealousy issues during the entire duration of my sister's pregnancy. I vividly remember being in the car with Rich on our way home from Agua Linda in Athens when I got the phone call from her. I can honestly say that my initial reaction was pure happiness for her. I will admit that later that evening I spoke with my friend Laura about it and during that conversation maybe a tiny bit of jealousy came out, but that was it. What I thought would have been the hardest pregnancy on me was actually the easiest, which brings me to why I'm writing this. I was just on facebook wasting time when I came upon a picture that quite a few of my friends had commented on, so I enlarged it. The picture was of a girl (I don't know her) who is obviously pregnant. As I'm sitting there looking at this girl's stomach I'm completely taken over by the fact that I will never experience that. They'll never be a picture of me with my belly sticking out, a life growing inside of it. Anyway. When I started breathing again I was amazed/confused by what this picture did to me. For the last year I have truly believed that I was over (for lack of a better word) not becoming pregnant, but then again do you just get over something like that. Apparently, I thought you could and I guess that's why this punch to the gut caught me so off guard.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Company
We had a nice visit with Rich's father (his mom passed away 3 1/2 yrs ago) this past weekend. He has been having some health issues and will be undergoing a somewhat risky surgery soon, so he spent this past week visiting some family before it all goes down. After taking a couple of minutes to warm up to Papaw, Shiloh had a great time playing with him all weekend. Thanks to the gorgeous weather most of the weekend was spent relaxing on the back porch watching Shiloh and the dogs run around.
Today we are cleaning the house and doing laundry in preparation for my parents and Lee, Laura and Ella's visit! All of them are arriving Wednesday evening. My parents will be staying for a week and The Tolberts will be spending the night and then leaving for the Atlanta Airport Thursday afternoon from which they will be flying to South Africa! I'm soo excited for my parents to visit! This will be the first time for my parents to see the new house plus my dad hasn't been down to Georgia since Shiloh's first Christmas. I called my dad today and reminded him to bring some of his fishing gear to fish in our neighborhood lake. Last night we were talking to some guys who were fishing and they informed us that when the lake was made back in 1958 it was stocked with big catfish and bass. According to him there are some catfish in there that could probably pull you in! Rich and I haven't had a chance to do any fishing in it and are looking forward to leaving Shiloh with my mom a few evening and walking over to fish! Anyway. I'm sure that in the next week or so I'll have tons of pictures to post from their visit. For now, here are a few pictures of Shiloh and Roger. He was reading her a book before bed last night.
Today we are cleaning the house and doing laundry in preparation for my parents and Lee, Laura and Ella's visit! All of them are arriving Wednesday evening. My parents will be staying for a week and The Tolberts will be spending the night and then leaving for the Atlanta Airport Thursday afternoon from which they will be flying to South Africa! I'm soo excited for my parents to visit! This will be the first time for my parents to see the new house plus my dad hasn't been down to Georgia since Shiloh's first Christmas. I called my dad today and reminded him to bring some of his fishing gear to fish in our neighborhood lake. Last night we were talking to some guys who were fishing and they informed us that when the lake was made back in 1958 it was stocked with big catfish and bass. According to him there are some catfish in there that could probably pull you in! Rich and I haven't had a chance to do any fishing in it and are looking forward to leaving Shiloh with my mom a few evening and walking over to fish! Anyway. I'm sure that in the next week or so I'll have tons of pictures to post from their visit. For now, here are a few pictures of Shiloh and Roger. He was reading her a book before bed last night.
Light At The End Of The Tunnel?
Lately I've been feeling extremely overwhelmed and kind of depressed with everyone going on....or not going on with the house and our potential adoption. We've had plenty of activity regarding the old house, but so far there is still nothing promising. Today we decided to drop the price again and I suddenly have a really good feeling about things. It's like a weight has been lifted off of me, so hopefully this price drop will lead to good things.
I haven't heard from Kim in over a week, which isn't abnormal, but since she had her ultrasound last week I was kind of hoping we'd get an update from her regarding how far along she is. Although, I also haven't seen her on facebook at all in the last week so maybe she has lost her internet access. I have to apologize in advance to the few people who read my blog, because there are probably going to be quite a few posts like this for the next few months regarding the adoption. Coming on here and rambling/thinking out loud about what's going on with Kim and the pregnancy helps me handle everything.
There is a bit of good news today! Maddie is going to be a big sister!! This morning Heather announced on her blog that she is pregnant! I am so happy for this family and will be praying that Heather has a healthy pregnancy and easy delivery! They deserve it so much!
I haven't heard from Kim in over a week, which isn't abnormal, but since she had her ultrasound last week I was kind of hoping we'd get an update from her regarding how far along she is. Although, I also haven't seen her on facebook at all in the last week so maybe she has lost her internet access. I have to apologize in advance to the few people who read my blog, because there are probably going to be quite a few posts like this for the next few months regarding the adoption. Coming on here and rambling/thinking out loud about what's going on with Kim and the pregnancy helps me handle everything.
There is a bit of good news today! Maddie is going to be a big sister!! This morning Heather announced on her blog that she is pregnant! I am so happy for this family and will be praying that Heather has a healthy pregnancy and easy delivery! They deserve it so much!
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Yellow River Game Ranch
Saturday morning, after our neighborhood's "Patriot's Parade", we went to the Yellow River Game Ranch to feed some animals! We all had a great time and were surprised to find out how much Shiloh loves chickens. For the first 10 minutes after we arrived she just stood around looking at chickens saying, "bagock, bagock"....that's the noise chicken's make, according to Shiloh. Once we got her past the chickens she had a fun time feeding deer, goats, pigs, cows, etc.
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