Thursday, January 2, 2014

Goodbye 2013



Well 2013 has come to an end. As I have been reflecting on this past year my heart smiles. 2013 was a fabulous year. 2013 brought an answer to 4.5 years of a bumpy roller coaster ride and many many prayers. After 2 fertility specialist, 3 OBGYN's, hormone specialist, acupunture therapist, diagnosis of endometriosis and PCOS and various diets, juices, and pills; our precious baby girl was born March 14.  Over this year we have been learning how to be parents, praying we are doing everything we are supposed to for her. Aubrey brings so much joy to our lives and we are beyond blessed. Thank you to all that prayed for us in prior years and who have come and visited us since Aubrey has been born. It warms my heart to know just how much she is loved and just how special she is. I cannot wait to share our story with her and for her to know just how much of a miracle and blessing she is.

This year David and I also celebrated our 5 year anniversary! I love him with all my heart and I cannot wait to continue celebrating anniversaries with him for many many more years.

David also celebrated his 30th Birthday and for the first time surprised him with a surprise party!! Keeping anything from my husband is nearly impossible because my face gives me away every time. However this time I was able to wrangle his closest friends together to surprise him at one of his favorite restaurants for dinner. It was fantastic to see how happy it made him.

We also refinanced our home this year and were able to go from a 30 year loan to a 15 year loan by only increasing our payment about $100. It took a lot of persistence and keeping people on their toes to do their job but we finally closed and couldn't be happier.

2013 goes down as one of the BEST years for us and I cannot wait to see what 2014 brings!!

Wishing you and yours a very blessed 2014!!

Wednesday, January 1, 2014

9 Months!


Baby Girl has been on this earth the same amount of time as she was in my belly. She is getting so big! At her 9 month appointment she was 18lbs (47%), 27" tall (24%) 43 3/4 head circum (46%) = absolutely perfect!

They found that she had some fluid in her ears and has had a cough for awhile so they put her on medicine for this. She handled the shots like a champ. Dave reported that she only cried with the initial shot and as soon as he picked her up she was happy again. 

So this is what has been happening this month: 

* We have started finger foods. I was kind of late one this (bad mommy) because I assumed since she still has no teeth that she wasn't ready for finger foods. OOPS! So tried yogart bites which she did not care for. Then I tried just cutting up a cooked sweet potato and giving her small bits which she LOVED!!! She created a huge mess which was so much fun but she got the concept of picking it up and bringing it to her mouth. Now getting it into her mouth was a completely different story but so fun to watch. ha ha Stressed OCD daddy out to no ends. 



* Aubrey had her first Ice Day! No school! Got to love TX, 70's one day and then just a few days later we're below freezing and experiencing a huge ice storm! She was extremely curious about that hard white stuff and we discussed how it was cold. 





* We were reminded just how good our Lord is. The night the ice storm hit Dave had just got done giving Aubrey her bath and I was cooking dinner. I went in to start her bedtime routine of PJs, Meds, and nose cleaning when we heard an alarm go off. We had a fire going so we just figured it was our smoke detector. Dave went to check it out as I finished up with Aubrey. I took her out to say night night to him when I saw him holding our carbon monoxide detector; which was going off. As he went towards our backdoor it stopped going off but as soon as he got close tot he kitchen it would go off again. We decided to call the 911 for the fire department to come out and see if they could figure out where it was coming from. They were there pretty quickly and determined that it was our water heater. They turned it off and told us we could stay in the house but we had to get someone out there ASAP. So Dave had to call in to work and then attempt to find someone that would come out to our house in the middle of this huge ice storm that was coming in that same night. I am thankful every single day that the year prior my coworker and I had had a conversation about her Carbon Monoxide Detector and that she got me thinking we needed one. I hate to think what could have happened that night, what my husband would have come home to that next morning. God and our gaurdian angels were watching over us for sure. 




*Thanksgiving 1: My mom, dad, and brother all came in the 2 weeks before Thanksgiving to do our family Thanksgiving with my brother. It was great seeing him and spending the holiday with all of them.





*Aubrey's Thanksgiving outfit! 



* On Thanksgiving Dave was scheduled to work that night and worked the night prior. I was off that entire week so Dave suggested I go visit my parents earlier in the week with Aubrey. As most of our blue family understands holidays are great but they do not have to be celebrated on the actual day. You celebrate them whenever you can and when it is best for your popo spouse. One thing that is hard is that he works nights aka most active time; so he NEEDS his sleep. Little sleep=not 100% alert=safety risk. I will never be ok with putting his safety on the line because we "have" to celebrate a holiday on the actual holiday. I'd rather him get sleep and be at his best for the "just in case". Luckily my family understands this since he is the only one in our family that works on the holidays so everyone is more than willing to accomodate to his schedule. They offered to push back our traditional Thursday Thanksgiving Lunch to Friday Thanksgiving Dinner so that Dave could attend which meant they would get to see Aubrey....which we all know was the most important thing.  ha ha So Aubrey got to spend her First Thanksgiving with our Rosel Side of the family.





* Pictures with Santa!! We went to Cabellas to have Aubrey's pictures with Santa done. She did SOOOO good. She wasn't to sure about these odd looking individuals but no tears were shed.



*She is also pulling herself up from a sitting position on pretty much anything and everything she can. This meant the crib had to be dropped. 

*Aubrey's playroom is 90% done!!! I LOVE how it came out!