Newlyweds!!

I have so much blogging to catch up on I don't really know where to begin. I guess we'll have to start with the most beautiful wedding of the year! My awesome brother married Miss Julie Zeller (now Zimmer).

We traveled down to San Diego for the weekend and got to watch them commit the rest of their lives to each other. It really was beautiful. Speaking of beautiful, my sister-in-law is quite possibly one of the most beautiful girls on the planet. She is kind, godly, loving, funny and so many more things that have made my family just fall in love with her. She's beautiful on the outside too which is actually a little annoying. People keep coming up to my sisters and I and say "how do you feel having such a beautiful sister in the family now?". Isn't that a weird question? Apparently we were a bunch of uglies and now Cinderella made her way in. :) Just kidding, although I have admitted once or twice that I hope she gets fat. Ok, this blog post is going down hill fast!

Anyway... the ceremony was precious. My brother wrote and sang a song to Jules that was gorgeous. My sisters and I were so dehydrated by the end of it from crying so hard. That boy can write a song! Both Julie's dad and my Papa married them and really did a great job challenging them to have a marriage that honor's the Lord.

One of my favorite parts of the weekend was that my Aunt Carol and cousin Bethy came from Georgia to celebrate with us. THEY ARE A BLAST!! I wish they lived closer.

Here are some pics from the event!! (I have no idea why the pictures downloaded like this, but you get the idea)

My parents, David & Jules

My sisters and I

Our little family

David's song. (Ignore the pom pom coming out of her head :))

The Ladies (Aunt Carol & Bethy)

Precious!

Sorry, I just had to throw this in, she had a blast with her daddy :)

I can't get enough!

The Happy Couple

Sleepy baby!!

I am so thrilled to have Julie as my new sister! Love them!!

Mr. Patient

I have so much blogging to catch up on. In the meantime, I'll leave you with this little story that perfectly demonstrates the day to day in my marriage with Jonathan.

He had very graciously offered to take the trash out for me. I gave him the kitchen and bathroom trash then told him that there were several boxes at the top of the stairs that needed to be recycled.

He was standing at the bottom of the stairs and I was at the top. Then this happened...

Jona: If those boxes are empty you can throw them down to me.

Me: Ok

Jona: Are they empty?

Me: Yeah, totally.

Then as I threw them down the stairs as I said...

Me: They kinda have trash in them.

And of course trash went ALL over the stairs. We laughed pretty hard at my stupidity and he graciously cleaned up after me as I went on my way to take care of another mess I had caused.

If that isn't love,I don't know what is!

5 Months Old!!

I'm a little bit behind on this one, but at least she'll still be 5 months for a couple more weeks. :) I know everyone says that every stage just gets better and better, but this one most definitely takes the cake. She has developed such a cute little personality and I love her sense of humor and the things that make her laugh.

She can now roll over front to back and back to front, which I'll admit, before Pen, whenever I would see a parent brag about their child doing this boring activity, I always thought they needed to get a life, but when Pen does it, I cheer like she just built a bird house. Let me take a sec and apologize for the 6! comma's that last sentence contained. Moving on...

She's also sitting up and can stand while holding on to the couch, coffee table, or if she's on my lap, by pulling on my hair. She has finally learned to occupy herself for long periods of time which means I have finally resumed showering.

Every day I am falling more and more in love with her little idiosyncrasies. She can't fall asleep in her crib unless she's buried her face in her lamb or unless she is touching my face. It melts my heart every time. She loves cuddling and loves to rest her head on my chest or shoulder when I hold her.

One of her new little games is to take her blanket and put it on her face. She makes a ton of noise like she's smothering herself and she'll kick her legs like crazy until all of the sudden she'll stop moving. I can't tell you how many times I've thrown myself across the room terrified that she's passed out. I'll run over to her and throw the blanket off her face which is then followed by her looking up at me with a giggle and the biggest smile ever. She gets such a kick out of freaking me out. Not cool Pen, not cool.

Here's what I mean...

I've been thinking and praying through a lot of things as I am learning to train this one to be obedient to God's word and love Christ through her attitudes and actions, but that's waaaaayy too long for this post. In the meantime, here are some pictures of our little Penelope...

This picture is from Picture People. They were giving away a free 10x13 so we decided to do it, since it wouldn't cost anything (you're welcome for the redundancy). The funny thing was immediately after we were done, they tried to sell us a picture package for $1,000!! Really? We walked in for one free picture and they thought "Well now that we got them to pose for a picture, maybe they'll now decide to sell their child to be able to afford our Heirloom Package." No thanks.

P is for Penny

"What is this thing?"

"Maybe I should smell it"

"Hmm... I wonder...."

"... If I can eat this"

"Yep"

"Kinda hard to fit in my mouth though..."

"Oh, hey mom!"

P is for Peppy!

P is for Perky!

P is for Pretty!

P is for Pensive

P is for Playful

P is for Potty Time ;)

Penny and the Pink Pants

I've gotten a little behind on posting some pictures recently, so the next couple of blog posts will probably just be mini albums of our monkey.

I got these pants at Baby Gap and I absolutely love them even if they're too big on her still. I love this kiddo!

P.S. My husband keeps telling me that I write captions incorrectly, that they're supposed to go below the picture. So I will take heed to his advice, even though to me it seems like you should read it first then post it.

"What mom? It's picture time?"

Hmmm.... Maybe mom won't notice if I walk away

"Mom how 'bout we forget about the pictures and you

just come sit right here, next to me"

"So how do you want me to pose? Like this?"

"How 'bout all cool, with my arms up, like a gangsta"

"This is my model pose"

"Let's take a break and hug it out" :)

We moved to the floor where I got one of my favorite pictures of Penny ever! She's so cute I could just eat those cheeks! :)

Then she looked up at me with this really exhausted look on her face.

I took a break to look at some of the pictures I took and when I looked back at her she was like this...

The End!!

Open Hands

I realize that I seldom write serious blog posts and that most of my blogging content isn't in any way life changing, unless you learn lessons about sitting on flags, but I have recently been processing through some things and I hope you'll allow me the opportunity to share my heart.

Last night, after a wonderful date with my sweet husband, we picked up Penny from my in laws house and brought her home. As I started putting her to bed she woke up and could not have been sweeter. She wouldn't stop smiling at me as I changed her diaper, put her in her pj's and rocked her and fed her a bottle. She just kept looking deep into my eyes and then would give me the sweetest smile. I swear if she could have spoken she would have told me she loved me. It was just one of those moments.

When she finally stopped smiling and fell asleep, I tried to put her in her crib but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I couldn't let go of her. I brought her into my bed and laid down next to her and just repeatedly kissed her soft cheeks and her perfect little lips. My heart was so full of love for her, I thought it would explode. All I could do was thank God over and over again for her.

Back when I was pregnant with Penny, in the middle of those several long, sleepless nights, I would look for blogs to read to help pass the time. For some reason almost every other blog I would find would be written by a mother or father who were processing through the death of a child. There was something about their stories that would grab a hold of my heart and not let go.

I read about a mom who lost her twin babies to a rare disease when the babies were 4 & 6 months old and her amazing testimony through that time.

I read about a mom who's precious 3 year old little girl accidentally drowned in a swimming pool while on a family vacation.

I read about a precious young family who lost their adorable 3 year old little boy to a horrible sickness.

I know that it sounds morbid, and I'm sure that you would like me to get to my point, but I had to try to understand how these people could try to work through this unimaginable grief as something so precious could be ripped away from them.

Apart from the blogs, even in everyday life there were people I knew, some very well, who were having stillborn births and miscarriages and heart breaking struggles with infertility. It didn't make sense to me why I was allowed to have a baby and I was almost certain that she would be "taken" from me. I started feeling guilty that I was pregnant and even felt as though God had made a mistake.

I remember at the beginning of the pregnancy when I should have been 7 weeks but nothing was appearing on the ultrasound. I was bleeding heavily, and thought for sure that we were losing our first baby. It seemed to me at the time that it would make sense if God would take her because I wasn't spiritually ready to be a mom. All the same, I begged God not to take this little life that I had already come to love so deeply. When I hit 13 weeks I thought, "thank goodness! She's safe". I soon realized, through other people's loss, that there really is no such thing as safe and I resumed my pleading with God to let me keep her.

After she was born, I became even more surrounded with other people's heart crushing losses and I would weep over their pain & hold Penny even tighter. I made it a point to think of every second as important and precious. When I begin to get impatient, remember that I have been given a blessing that could so easily be gone in the blink of an eye. I don't think that I lived in fear, it was and is not in my nature to worry, but I was determined to attempt to be so thankful for every moment.

Randomly, I decided recently to read in 1 Samuel for my devotions, not even thinking about the book's beginning. I was reminded about Hannah and her vow to give her son back to God if He would bless her with one. That's when again it was made clear to me that PENNY IS NOT MINE.

She belongs to God.

She exists to bring God glory. He can't ever take her from me because she was never mine to begin with. You may be rolling your eyes at how long its taken me to figure this out, but to me it was kinda life changing in the way I view the gift of children. It takes so much pressure off knowing that she belongs to God and He will do what is perfect for her and for me.

I can't begin to imagine the pain of losing a child and I still pray that I won't have to see that day, but if it does happen, I hope that my heart remembers that she never belonged to me, I was just chosen to point her back to her Creator. To feel guilty is literally to say to God that He doesn't know what He is doing and that He made a mistake.

I love this verse when Hannah says "'Therefore I have given him to the Lord; as long as he lives he shall be given to the Lord.' So they worshiped the Lord there."

The Idiot's Guide to Homemaking

For some reason the whole pregnancy nesting thing hit me about 5 months late. I don't know what's wrong with me, but recently I've been keeping myself awake at night dreaming about all of the cool things I could do to my home, or a dress I could make for Pen, or a cool craft I could make as a gift for friends. I've been begging my husband for a sewing machine to make our curtains and bedding and clothing and on and on. The possibilities are endless! The problem is I don't really sew.

I've also considered planting some flower & cute little trees in our little 6x8 area by the entrance to our condo. The problem is I don't have a green thumb. Horticulturally speaking, I don't even have thumbs. I have however managed to keep an orchid alive since December but all I did was throw on a couple of ice cubes every few days. I recently decided to repot (is that what you would call it?) because I just had the strongest desire to get dirt on my hands and it immediately died. If I had been listening close enough, I probably could have heard it crying.

I started playing around in the kitchen a little bit, but all that happened was we started putting on some serious poundage. So I tried cooking healthier and that just tasted gross and was completely unsatisfying. Now we're on stupid diets which mean we hardly eat anymore so that was pretty pointless.

In all fairness, I can clean a toilet and do a mean load of laundry. Occasionally my house is clean and my child is fed and changed but when it comes to the "extras", I haven't quite gotten anything else down.

I don't mean to come across discontent, but I would love to fill my days with sewing and crafting. I would love to be creative enough to start my own little business making some kinda of jewelry or sewing projects but so far, all I've really been able to make is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a scarf. I guess I made a kid too, but I'm not really looking to sell :)

Here are some people that can do what I'm talking about...

My friend Dana MAKES these! Isn't that the cutest little clutch that you've ever seen?! She didn't ask me to give a commercial for her but I'm gonna anyway. She started an Etsy account and they featured her products on their front page and she had tons of orders come in over night. I keep demanding that she teach me something. Sooner or later I'm gonna kidnap her and make her show me how to sew a button on. :)

I just love her stuff!!

I also have a friend Keri who makes EVERYTHING. She even makes her own laundry detergent! She also made this and this. I would love to just come up with this kinda stuff.

This woman, Mrs. MK has become my hero. She is such a precious, godly woman that I would LOVE to meet some day. Look at some of the things she came up with...

Then, of course, there's one of my best friends, Lisa. I could write all of the things that she can do but it would be significantly quicker to write the things she can't do. I'm pretty sure she's never swam with dolphins and I don't think she knows how to build an airplane, but I could be wrong. She's also never learned how to make window treatments out of tree branches or lead an Alaskan dog sled team. Oh never mind, she has done those last two things. See what I mean? Totally annoying. These are some of her GORGEOUS flower arrangements...

Okay, so you've learned I know some pretty talented people :) Even my mom and mother-in-law can crochet some of the most beautiful things. I guess that's just not where my giftedness is. Now I've come to the end of this post and I'm not even sure why I wrote it. :)

I think its just that for the first time in my life I've realized where my calling is, my home. I'm gonna spend the rest of my life finding ways to love and serve Jonathan & Penny (and hopefully a few more kids) and to make my home a place that is inviting and warm. I'm just not sure how to do it besides the cleaning and cooking thing. I don't even know where to start but I'm so excited to learn! Do any of you creative people have any ideas?