Having Children in Faith

This short film makes me so grateful to be a mother.  Dave and I could have easily shrugged our shoulders and said, "Oh well, we can't have kids on our own so that's that."  But we understood the Plan and we wanted to be obedient.  So, full of faith we headed to the medical specialists and did all that we could do, knowing, or maybe only hoping, that the Lord would prepare the way for us to become parents.  And, He did!  We love our Benjamin so very much and hope we will soon be blessed with many more beautiful babies.

IVF Sensitivity

When I was about six months pregnant with Benjamin I started having some pretty major anxiety about what my baby would look like.  I understand that nearly every expectant mother goes through it but for me it was intensified by the fact that my baby started life in a petri dish.  I kept worrying that the clinic might have mixed up our stuff with another couple's.  It would be bad enough if he didn't look like us but what would we do if he were a different race?  Needless to say I was a bit of a wreck over it all for a few days until Dave, with his ever calm and positive attitude, talked me down.

Gratefully, our beautiful baby was born and though he is his own person he definitely has many traits and characteristics of his parents.

Then yesterday we had a play date with one of my neighbors and she said, "I just can't figure out who Benjamin looks like."  And that quickly some of my anxieties returned.

Moral of the story:  If you have family, friends, acquaintances who have children through IVF, please avoid such comments.

Thank you!

From his dad he inherited an insatiable love of ice cream.

Happy Holidays

Many Facebook friends have shared this blog post today:

http://www.rageagainsttheminivan.com/2013/03/lets-bring-holidays-down-notch.html

Let me just say, Amen!  I saw what some people did for their kids on St. Patrick's Day: green water in the toilet bowl, chocolate coins and little footprints, green waffles, etc. So creative...so much planning and time to pull it off.

I'm not a Scrooge regarding any holiday, but sometimes I think the token remembrance is good enough.  Here's my token from St. Patrick's Day.

We didn't even have corned beef and cabbage.  Just a few green side dishes to commemorate the holiday, and that was good enough for me.

Hope you had a green St. Patrick's Day too!

It's Back

My resilient little chive plant is green! Look at its beautiful new growth. I only wish I had seen this yesterday before I resorted to using the dehydrated stuff in the vegetable dish for dinner. I can't wait to snip some off and use the delicious fresh herb next time I cook. Yummy!

He's Walking!

Well, almost.

Yipee!!

After helping him go down the slide only two or three times he decided that he was big enough to go down by himself.  And he loved it!

Happy Birthday, Dave!

After encouragement from me, his receptionist, and other outside sources, Dave finally consented to take off work on his birthday. I think I was more excited about this than he was. But I did my best to make the day as fun as possible.

We started at The Leonardo where we saw the Mummies exhibit and explored some of the activities on the second floor.



Then we took a nice walk around Tracy Aviary.



Finally dinner at Pat's BBQ (no picture but just imagine how good it was...are you drooling yet?).



Happy Birthday, Dave!

Activity Days Update

I've been working on one of my other blogs lately.  A few years ago I started a blog to journal my Personal Progress and I thought it would be fun to add Activity Days to it too.  I'm always looking for new ideas and hopefully something we have done will inspire another leader.  Take a peek...