Honoring Brittyn

Today was Brittyn's due date. I remember when I found out that I was pregnant with her, I was like "Wowsers! That is very close to school starting!". I went through a few months of not knowing how in the world that was going to work out, and then finally being at peace with realizing that a substitute teacher would start my school year for me. I felt like it was God's way of showing me that He was in control, and that I was not. I was going to have her sometime this week, then I was going to miss inservice and 3 weeks of the school year. I was going to have Kailey and Makenna start back to school when they normally would have, and then I was going to have Brittyn all to myself for 3 whole weeks.

Yep, that was my plan.

Obviously, in April we found out that God had a plan different from mine. He wasn't going to teach me that He was in control by having me out of my classroom this fall. Instead He was going to teach me He was in control by me losing my baby girl, and having no other choice but to trust Him.

When I think back to April, and everything I had to go through to lose her, it feels like it was forever ago. In the same way, it feels like her due date has taken forever to get here. It is like I have been waiting on pins and needes for this day to come, so that I could move on past it. In some ways, I have felt like I have needed to keep her memory so close to the surface each day of these past 4 months, to make sure I carry her in my heart as long as I would have carried her in my womb. I know that I will carry her in my heart for the rest of my life, but I also know she won't always be as near to me as she has been for the past 4 months. I am sad about that, but as I have gone through these months, and today, one thing I know for sure is that she is with Jesus! I shouldn't want to keep her from that! I should be overflowing with joy that she is there with Him! That is our ultimate goal, to make it to Him one day! She doesn't have to have pain or sorrow...ever!

So in some ways, I feel that having her due date pass by, is giving me a sense of peace. This was God's plan for her life. For my life. I don't know what the future holds, and I never have known what it holds, even when I thought I did. All I know for sure is that God is Sovereign, and He is in control, and He has an amazing plan for my life, just as He has an amazing plan for hers in Heaven with Him.

We wanted to honor Brittyn today, and remember her in a special way. Casey and I both googled some different ways to remember babies that have passed away, and one idea that kept coming up was to have a balloon release. So that is what we did. We bought a dozen pink and white balloons and on each one we wrote a special message to Brittyn. Kailey even told us some things she wanted to say to Brittyn. Then we released them, one by one, and watched them float into the sky to Heaven.

Obviously I am not so crazy as to think that they will actually go to Heaven. I even said to Casey "She won't even get to read them".

But then he turned to me and said, "But, what if she does?"

So, that has been my prayer today. That she got to read them. That maybe God let her have a "window from Heaven" as Karen Kingsbury says in her books, to see what we said to her today, so that she can see how much we love and miss her. Here are some pictures from our day.

(We found out that they are going to replace the headstone, due to the grammar mistake with arms.)

I wasn't going to blog about this....

I wasn't going to blog about this, but then I kept trying to write a facebook status about it, and I erased it about 15 times before I realized that I couldn't fit all of my thoughts into a status.

You guessed it. It's about Chick-Fil-A.

So stop reading if you are as sick of the whole debate as I am. I guess I just really wanted to clear something up. I went to Chick-Fil-A twice today, but for some reason people think I did because I hate gay people?

And I'm not talking about non-Christian people here. I'm talking about at least 4-5 of my facebook friends who are Christians.

The reason I went to Chick-Fil-A today was because Dan Cathy said the following, when ASKED about his views on marriage:

“We are very much supportive of the family — the biblical definition of the family unit. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that.

“We operate as a family business … our restaurants are typically led by families; some are single. We want to do anything we possibly can to strengthen families. We are very much committed to that,” Cathy emphasized.

“We intend to stay the course,” he said. “We know that it might not be popular with everyone, but thank the Lord, we live in a country where we can share our values and operate on biblical principles.”



Then after he said these things, well you all know what happened. People started calling him "homophobic" and accused him of speaking "hate speech".

So then Huckabee said we should all go to Chick-Fil-A on August 1st to show our support for Mr. Cathy.

OUR SUPPORT FOR MR. CATHY.

For some reason today, instead of it being viewed as support, people are accusing those of us that went of the same things they accused Mr. Cathy. And I'm not talking about "worldly" people...I'm talking about Christian people.

He never said anything hateful about gay people, and neither did I. Why isn't it obvious that those of us that went are supporting him...and not that we hate gay people? It just really bothers me that even on a day like today, when it is a pretty easy way to support a Christian brother who took a stand, a lot of Christians 1) refused to do so and 2) started calling foul on the people that went.

It's just ridiculous.

I just wanted to be perfectly clear (although I would think by my character people should know this) that I don't hate gay people. I just was supporting a VERY generous man, who shares the same Christian beliefs that I do.

A Fast Summer

Summer is always super fast! I look forward to it so much, and then before you know it, July is almost over! Crazy! I am still not to the point where I am ready for school to start. That usually hits me a couple weeks into August. For now, I am just trying to enjoy what is left of the Summer. Here is what our Summer has looked like so far:

June 8-15: Single Mom Week #1: Kingwood for me and the girls (Casey went to World Changers in Corpus)
June 20: Curriculum Writing for me
June 25: More Curriculum Writing for me (yay.)
June 24-28: Single Mom (at night) week #2:VBS at our church (This was from 6-8:45 each night..then Casey stayed out til midnight every night with the youth)
June 30: The day of two birthday parties
July 3-5: We spent time in Kingwood for 4th of July
July 6-7: We spent time in Burleson at the Yogi Bear Jellystone Campground with Casey's side of the family
July 7-14: Kailey spent the week with Casey's Parents in Shreveport. While she was gone we were put on a water restriction due to a power outage at the water plant, and the day after that was turned back on, we had to call Roto-Rooter to clean out the pipes at our house. (Thank you Dave Ramsey Emergency Fund!)
July 16-20: Single Mom (at night) week #3: Casey has been working with the youth at a church in Killeen to do VBS each night this week. They showed up to help, by request of the county Baptist Association, and have ended up running the entire VBS!

We have had a super busy summer so far, especially Casey! We still have one more week where I am a single mom, the girls are going to be flower girls in a wedding, and then we are going on a much-needed cruise in August!

Here are some pictures from our summer:

Arthur Story Time at Barnes and Noble:

Water Fun:

A few pics from our week in Kingwood:

Father's Day Pics for Daddy's Gift:

Fourth of July:

Yogi Bear Jellystone Campground (Super fun time!)

Park and Water Fun

Another big part of our summer as been keeping Brittyn's flowers alive! So far, so good. I mean they have their moments..but overall they are surviving! Here are some of my favorite pics of them! (Oh and I have fallen in LOVE with Instagram this summer, in case you can't tell!)

This is the time

This is the time.

The time when I am supposed to be doing the "less than a month" countdown. This is the time when I am supposed to be posting updates about how I am 36 weeks and not even in the slightest bit dialated. This is the time when I am supposed to talk about how my doctor thinks Brittyn is going to be at least a 9 pound baby. This is the time when I am supposed to pull the girls' baby clothes down from the attic, only to discover some of my favorites have stains. This is the time when I look on facebook, and I see 5 of my friends are going through the same pregnancy symptoms as me, and I comment on their statuses and relate to their struggles, instead of looking at those 5 friends' statuses, and weeping because she's not here and I feel she should be. This is not the time for me to be doing the "Ripped in 30" workout by Jillian Michaels. I should be stuffing my face with whatever I want, and stuffing Tums down my face all night long because of the insane heartburn.

It's so easy to sit and cry and mourn for what should be happening, in my own human perspective. Believe me I do that plenty. More often than not though I try to bring myself back to the simple reminder that, Brittyn isn't here. And no matter how much I think those things above should be going on, that was not in His plan for my life. It's so hard. I wanted that to be His plan for my life. I want so badly to be about to have my sweet baby girl. Instead of marking the 3 month anniversary of her being gone. Instead of welcoming her into this world like I want to be, I am still mourning the fact that she is gone.

It is a daily decision. I can talk about all the should have beens, or I can choose life. I can choose to live my life in a way that glorifies God, and rejoice in all of my beautiful blessings that I do have, or I can constantly moan and say "well today I should be having a doctor's appointment" or "today I should be 36 weeks pregnant". He doesn't want me to live that way. It doesn't bring Him glory.

I want to bring Him glory.

So even though "this is the time"...

Even though I am still going to have some sad days...

I have to choose life. I have to choose to bring Him glory, even in the midst of this time.

Makenna's 2nd Birthday Party!

I can't believe Makenna is 2! Where did the time go? This year we rented the pavilion at Whistle Stop Park for her party, which is this really cool park next to the train station. The theme of her party was "Pink Lemonade Picnic". Here is her invitation:

For favors, I made each family a bag with lemonade mix and pink and yellow jelly beans.
(I ordered her invitations, banner, thank you cards, cupcake/favor tags, and water bottle labels from this shop on Etsy).

We had a picnic with hot dogs, chips, fruit, pink lemonade cookies, and of course pink and yellow lemonade. The adults drank their lemonade out of mason jars, and the kiddos had Capri Suns.

We had birthday cupcakes instead of cake, which I ordered from Gogos Cupcakes. We had strawberry lemonade cupcakes and chocolate with vanilla icing.

(I ordered Makenna's shirt from this shop on Etsy.)

I think Makenna had a good time. One of my favorite parts of the party was that in the middle of opening her gifts she just stopped and wiped her forehead and goes "juice, juice!" like she was so exhausted from opening gifts! She is the funniest, sweetest little girl, and we are so blessed to have her in our lives.

At her 2 year check-up yeserday she weighed 23.8 pounds and was about 32 inches tall. She is still a tiny little thing!

The pink lemonade cookies at her party were a big hit! I got the recipe off of Pinterest, and thought I would share it with you. It is super easy, and super yummy!(I got the recipe from this website).

Strawberry Pink Lemonade Cookies

Cookies-

Strawberry cake mix
1 stick butter, softened
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
1 Tbs. water
1/4 cup pink lemonade mix ( I used strawberry lemonade for a couple of batches, and it actually tasted better than the pink lemonade!)

Add all of your above ingredients into your mixing bowl and mix well. Drop by a heaping teaspoon onto your cookie sheet. I chose to grease my cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 8-10 minutes.