12 Years

This post is a jumble bumble of thoughts and emotion so I will warn you before reading it might be hard to get where I'm going, but here goes!!!

Twelve years TODAY my husband and I will celebrate being together as a couple for what seems to be a short time! At first when I realized that TODAY is the anniversary of that life milestone I wasn't too interested because after all we are at a 5 hour time difference plus in different countries at the moment, but now it hits me! Call it pregnancy hormones or whatever but my mind was flooded with memories over those 12 years not just of my Husband and I but of all the people that we made incredible connections with during that time.

I feel honored and blessed to have so many heaven on Earth moments! The best, greatest, most wonderful, and the hardest work would actually be this phase of life right now. I absolutely LOVE being a Mother and a wife in our growing family! Every moment is a miracle and each day teaches me something new about myself. The only sadness I really have is that I am horrible as a friend to all the good people I call my friends because honestly I only do things with family now. Those wonderful people I made friend connections with (no not just Facebook) but real amazing connections with over the years I've completely dropped and put 100% of my time now into my family where I feel it should be. I still however think about those good times plus I still very much so care about all of those people or YOU if you are one of them!!

My husband and I were teens when we met in college and we REALLY lived the college life to the fullest going to social events on campus, sporting events, and even went with tons of friends to the OBX once a year as well! After college we still kept connected with a bunch of college buddies still went to games plus the beach then added a new group of friends through our neighborhood, church, work, and even in my hobby of pageantry! We also got an amazing opportunity to live in Spain where we made more friends plus traveled all over Europe as well! Life was good and we could be very selfish with the time we had! When we entered our current phase if our 12 years together at first before we had children we planned (as we always do with everything) for the changes we knew we had to make including getting a bigger house, saving more money by not going out as much, quitting some volunteer programs we were doing to make more time to take on the responsibilities, and we started getting very excited that we were going to grow our family of two into a family of however many blessings we were given! Finally we did have our first sweet baby in 2009 after praying very hard we could even have children and that is the moment nothing in the world could be better than being parents! Now God has given us our second child who is expected to arrive in around 5 weeks so we are still building our family and feel very thankful that we are continuing this phase of life!!

Cannot wait to see what the next 12 years will hold so thankful for everyone placed in our life over the last 12 especially thankful for our children! I love you bunny ;-) and thank you for being with me for 12 years working through all that life has thrown our way! Miss you and cannot wait till you are home guess it is already about time for you to wake up in Germany while I'm heading for bed here!!

Here we are just a few weeks ago and remember my round face is due to pregnancy :-)

Gender Reveal Party

I love planning parties and especially love having parties! I think now that I am a stay at home mother I love them even more because I do miss being around people everyday therefore any chance I can get to plan and have a party I do it! This Saturday we are going to tell friends and family members the gender of our second baby during a gender reveal party. Honestly I do not care what the gender of this sweet baby is because no matter what I wanted him or her to be healthy plus I love it so very much from even before God blessed us with this pregnancy! In the spirit of celebrating this child's life plus having our first born be involved with something attached with the new arrival we decided to do this party!

Here are some photos from the even which was tons of fun! 

 

Above centerpieces my awesome Mother made from roses and a hydranga plus the vase was purchased at the dollarstore then we sprinkled it's a boy it's a girl confetti around it :)

 

Cake above was a cute idea carried out by a friend of mine that I worked with she does great work!

 

Food table had all kids of pink and blue all over it especially these cute mints my Mother-in-law and the baby's Great Grandmother made!

 

This is the box wrapped in wrapping paper that holds all the pink balloons that were attached to a balloon weight at the bottom so the balloons wouldn't go everywhere plus so they would come out in a cute pattern! 

 

Balloons YAY!! IT'S A GIRL!!!

Above is the invite I made and had printed myself then the image I quickly made just to put on facebook so I could invite most of the people we wanted to invite that way.  Invites are so expensive using publisher or something like that to create your own can save you tons of money that literally will be landing in the trash!

Thank you to everyone that helped make that day special for our sweet baby girl and for our family!  Lots of food and lots of fun times!