Heading back to resume "normal" life/December: the start of something new

We left my Papa's house this morning about 3 am to head back to North Carolina. It was very bittersweet for so many reasons... Although it is always nice to get back home and sleep in your own bed along with getting back to your normal routine, Texas is my home and that is where all my family is. I love being anywhere in Texas, but I especially love being there at my Mam-ma and Papa's house. No place feels more like home. Now with Mam-ma being gone also, I really am glad I can be there for Papa and help fill some of the loneliness that he is obviously feeling. Although he is doing very well all things considered, I still (understandably) watched him get pretty emotional several times throughout the week, particularly the last couple days before we left. I just hated leaving him and so wish I did not have to.

Here is a picture of Papa spoon feeding Mason (my sweet almost 2 year old (he'll be 2 in just 13 days)) some coffee... It was just so sweet.

When we left, he asked me when we would be back. I told him sometime after Baby Gavin was born (I'm 32 weeks today), we would be back for everyone to meet him. He said, "well you let me know as soon as you know when y'all are coming and I will have everything ready for y'all!" It just made me so sad and homesick for my home there already, and I hadn't even gotten in the car yet. I just love my Papa.

This trip was very weird without Mam-ma there, but I know she was in Heaven smiling down on us all. Zach and I were talking about just last night while lying in bed about how it's so different with her as opposed to anyone else in either one of our lives who has passed away before, because there really is no doubt in anyone's minds where she is. Every single one of us knows she's in Heaven and therefore it almost feels like she's not even gone, because we know we'll get to see her again. It doesn't make missing her any less prominent though. I miss her everyday.

Savannah (my sweet 4 1/2 year old) got to go to her cousin Ryleigh's birthday party yesterday. I am so glad they planned the party for while we were still in town! It was at Sweet & Sassy and all of the girls truly had a blast! Savannah just was on cloud 9 the entire time! It was so fun to watch her get pampered and dress up like a princess!

Here are some pictures from the party...

I just love my little girl! She is so much fun and is a huge blessing!

I know when we get back home, we will settle back into our routine just fine... My daughter will resume preschool tomorrow morning and my son will resume Mother's Day Out. I will resume housework and my husband will resume work. I have a doctor's appointment on Thursday that I am looking forward to as I am already currently dilated to a 2 and over 50% effaced with my baby being completely dropped. I am so very thankful for the time we had together away from the normal chaos of life though. I will miss the uninterrupted time we all had together while seemingly being in another world for the week.

Here is one last picture of my husband and daughter while we were out to breakfast with my Papa yesterday....

As Christians, we should be thankful every day, not just Thanksgiving or the month of November. That is something Brother Jim loudly pointed out at church Wednesday night. I for one and am going to make a conscious effort to be thankful for all of these blessings in my life and for The Lord who blessed me with them, most importantly. This is the kind of life my Mam-ma led and it's the kind of life we all should be striving to lead as well.

May December mark a new beginning for us all... A time to be renewed and find a newfound purpose!

Intro... New to blogging.

I have always said I would probably never have a blog. To me, there was no benefit of blogging, because I actively utilized Facebook for posts I wanted to share with family and friends about my life. After losing my grandmother this past August 19, 2013 to an awful disease called pulmonary fibrosis, who was so much more than a grandmother to me, but rather more like a mother, I slowly began realizing that it actually would be nice to have a blog... If anything for the writing and the ability to speak freely about things that were weighing on my heart, things that I am passionate about, etc.

In addition to being an outlet for me, I do want to be able to reach out to and encourage other women, mothers, and wives through my writings. My grandmother was an amazing mentor and counselor to hundreds of men and women and she truly showed Christ's love to everyone she came in contact with. It has been my desire to follow in her footsteps. Given the time of my life and the current location I am in, I feel it would be easiest for me to start this lifelong journey through blogging.

Here is a photo of me and my Mam-ma just a couple days before she passed away.

A little bit about me...

I am a wife to a wonderful husband, my college sweetheart. We have been through a lot and had many ups and downs prior to marriage, but we always worked it all out and in the end love prevailed. I could not be happier and although at times, I do wonder why we had to go through so much to get to where we are now, I know it has all been part of God's plan and He has a purpose for everything.

We have a daughter who is 4 1/2, a son who will be 2 in just 2 weeks, and are expecting our third (another boy) in just a little over a month. We do also have one precious baby in Heaven who we never got to meet. Before I was pregnant with our son, we miscarried when I was roughly 5 weeks pregnant.

This was an extremely tough time in my life especially as I had never experienced this kind of loss. What made it more difficult was I had not yet shared the news of being pregnant with anyone and therefore did not even know how to begin sharing the news of this loss with anyone close to me. We ended up not telling anyone and dealing with the loss by ourselves, which in hindsight was not the wisest choice. It was very difficult to sort through the emotions I was feeling and to deal with the grief I was experiencing without anyone to talk to about it. While my husband was wonderful, being a man he could not fully understand the degree of hurt that I was feeling and I think that in and of itself was very hard for him. We have over time, shared our loss with a few close to us who have also experienced this same kind of loss in hopes we can help them with their grief a little better than we were able to help ourselves. I have since come to realize that women should not be ashamed to talk about this loss or even share the news of pregnancy early on for fear of a possible loss. These are our children no matter what stage of pregnancy we are in and in the event this horrible loss does occur, we need people to acknowledge the life that was, the life of our young, the life we carried in our womb and ached for when it was taken from us, to truly allow us to grieve in the way we need to.

For an amazing read that will pull at all your heartstrings on this topic, I am posting a link to a sweet friend of mine's blog post on this topic. It was written several weeks following her miscarriage and she puts everything I have ever felt into words so perfectly.

http://fastforwardgirl.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-disqualified-grief.html

Originally from Dallas, Texas, I went to college in Lynchburg, VA where I received my BS in Psychology. I would love to further my education one day and complete my Master's in Marriage and Family Therapy. I may try to do this when all my children are in school. We now live in a small town in North Carolina where my husband has grown up most of his life.

Although I have grown up in church all my life, something changed drastically in my heart at my grandmother's funeral. I began to have this thirst for The Lord that I had been lacking over the past few years, I began reading my Bible daily and truly seeking His face, and I began trying to be more like Him when before I had been much more on again off again.
It is my desire that my family will serve The Lord all the days of our lives and we will all continuously strive to be more like Him.

Here is a picture of my 2 kids.

I hope you will enjoy reading my blog and will find something in it that speaks to you or encourages you in some way. I look forward to connecting with many other wonderful people as well.