she's here!

well, if anyone is still out there, we have an announcement to make.

i have been a not-so-great blogger, but things have been a lot a bit hectic. but we are slowly getting back on track, and making new routines, and working on old ones.

and now, i am very eager to get back on this blog and catch up on things before i forget it all. a lot has happened around here that we want to remember.

but first, our announcement.....


Makayla Brynn arrived on November 12, 2010, at 1:18 pm.

she weighed 8 lbs 11 oz, and was 20 1/2 in long.

we are in love.


she is such a good baby. she sleeps a lot, and doesn't cry much at all unless she's hungry. she looks just like her brother did as a newborn.

a few more pics.....






and my ginormous belly right before delivery.....




and all ready to go home.....






husband was able to take some time off of work to stay home with us. we basically just locked ourselves in the house and soaked up some much-needed family time.

after the long summer we had, it was just what the doctor ordered.

but alas, all good things must come to an end. he is back at work, and i am learning how to balance life at home with two little ones.

and life is starting to feel normal again.

we are blessed beyond measure.

thomas the train

thomas the train is a celebrity around here.

as soon as little man gets up in the morning, he looks for one of his trains to carry around.

"choo-choo" is one of his few words, and he says it at least a hundred times a day.

he loves the videos, although i have to admit that i don't quite understand the attraction. it's really kind of slow. it's not animated, and a lot of it is just still shots of the trains where only their eyes move.

but Caleb loves it.

so we go with it.

not to mention, it's a heck of a lot less annoying than dora, or diego, or those stupid silly wonder pets.

so, a few weeks ago, when our speech therapist mentioned to us that thomas was coming to town, we immediately looked into it and bought tickets.

we found out that thomas is actually quite-the-celebrity everywhere. not just at our house.

there were a lot of kids.

and strollers.

and cameras.

and lines. long ones.

and parents, who were all probably thinking the same thing we were.

"when did we become those people who are willing to spend way too much money to stand in the middle of crowds in 90 degree weather to let our two-year-old, who probably won't remember this in a month, see a pretend train?"

but then you see your little man's eyes get big, and his little face lights up, and those thoughts disappear, because it's all worth it.








after all the fun and excitement, and maybe a little bit of heat exhaustion, husband and i suffered a momentary lapse in judgement, and we did the unthinkable.

we took our little man into the gift shop.

this was truly the little kid in a candy train store, and it was not pretty.

actually, it went downhill very, very, very quickly.

so we did the most logical thing to do after an episode of that magnitude.

we packed it up, drove it home, and put our little man down for his nap.

in a rut

i am in a big one.

i think about sitting down to update this blog, and then i can't think of a thing to write about.

life is so incredibly busy right now.

i want to sit down and write about all of the fun things we're doing this summer. about how we enjoy our hot summer days by the pool, and come inside for homemade popsicles, and grill out every night, and chase fireflies, and fall into bed at night exhausted by all the fun we've had.

but none of that is real.

we wake up in the mornings and go. we rush around getting dressed as we go over our to-do lists, agendas, and coordinating our schedules. little man has therapy four days a week. our house is under construction, so there is constantly another phone call to make, another decision to make, someone to meet, an errand to run, and so on. i fall into bed at night exhausted from keeping up with my ever-so-lively-two-year-old and carrying a baby around in my stomach 24-7. husband falls into bed exhausted from working at the house all day and working at a restaurant all night.

that is our reality.

i'm not complaining. i know that this is only for a season.

i'm reminding myself that every season of life has blog-worthy aspects.

this blog is my journal. a scrapbook. it's our family's story.

our story might be crazy right now, and not at all what i thought i'd be writing about when i started this thing, but that's ok.

we are learning lessons. we are growing stronger. we are living life.

and that's worth blogging about.

and away we went

a few weeks ago, we went on a family vacation. this was our first big vacation since little man was born, and we had been planning it for quite a while. we came very close to canceling after all of the flood mess, but we have great friends who encouraged us to go. and in the end, we figured if we ever needed to just get away, this was it.

so away we went!

we went with two other families who are very good friends of ours. we all stayed in one big house right by the beach on Tybee Island, which is just outside of Savannah.

first of all, let me say that whoever invented portable dvd players for the car is a genius.....


we had as smooth a car-ride as one could expect with a two-year-old on board.

as soon as we got into town, we drove down the cutest streets with all of these little shops. they were lined with these trees.....


.....which i think are just gorgeous. when i think of an old southern plantation, these trees are on it. of course, usually in the movies the plantation ends up being haunted, but they're still beautiful to me.

miss Paula Deen's restaurant is down there, so we all ventured there to have lunch. it was very busy there, and even though we had reservations, we still had to wait for a table for quite a while. we opted to wait outside with little man, since it was too crowded inside.

the look on his face pretty much tells you what he thought about the wait, and the heat.....


we all had the same look on our faces after the meal. Paula's great and all, but it was a typical southern buffet lunch, and that's all i'm saying!

a few more pics around town.....



this was Caleb's first time to the beach. we were a little worried about how he would do with the sand and the water. he doesn't really like to walk in the grass, so we weren't sure how he would feel about that much sand; and he really didn't even like bathtime, so we definitely did not think he would like the water at all. but he really surprised us! he was walking around on the sand like it was nothing, and he was jumping the little baby waves in daddy's arms and loving it!




showing off his muscles and throwing back a cold one.....


and this pretty much sums up how he felt at the end of the day.....


we literally took over a thousand pictures while we were there. here are 999 just a few of them.....















we had a great time, and we are so glad that we went!

by the way.....

with all of the flood hupla, we failed to mention that this.....


.....is scheduled to arrive this November.

we are completely overjoyed!

i will tell more of HER story thus far in a future post. for now, we just wanted to be sure that bloggyland was in the know!

life these days

.....is busy. hectic. full.

we have been living with my parents since the flood.

we are so grateful that there is room here for us. little man already knew this house so well, so it wasn't as big an adjustment for him as it might have been. he has his own room here, and although the house was already slightly baby-proofed, he has shown us that we had a lot more work to do in this area!

we have gotten as settled as we can for now, and have gotten into a new routine here.

our house still sits with the lower floor completely gutted. still no walls. still no flooring. just concrete and studs.

most of our things that we were able to save sit in a storage unit.

there is a lot to do after a flood. a lot of meetings, applications, paperwork, phone calls, and on, and on. some days we feel ok. some days we want to scream.

we have learned how this whole FEMA thing works. we never thought we would be using any kind of program like this, but here we are.

we always thought that we were completely covered with all the various insurance coverages: medical, car, homeowners, life.

we didn't have flood insurance.

we didn't think we needed it.

we were wrong.

we have yet to meet anyone affected by this flood who was covered.

we refer to our life as "before the flood", or "since the flood".

we will think of something, or look for something, only to remember that it "drowned".

we are in a state of not knowing exactly what is ahead. we are not exactly sure of when we can start rebuilding, or how long it will take.

we are not sure of when we will have a home again.

if you know me well, you know that this is driving me crazy. i want a plan. i want a timeline. i want to know what to expect. i am a nester. i need a house to clean, and decorate, and love.

it's a good thing that i have a God who knows the big picture. i am asking Him to remind me of this a lot these days.

i also have a wonderful man by my side, who helps keep me calm, and focused, and sane.

not to mention a bouncing 2-year-old, who keeps me smiling, and laughing, and busy!

the flood

hello blog.

long time no see.

i do have a reason for my absence.

we were hit by the great flood of Nashville.

it's being referred to as the "flood of a thousand years", as in that's how often a flood like this might occur here.

we woke up on the morning of May 2nd to someone banging on our front door, telling us they were evacuating our neighborhood and we had 5 minutes to get out of our house.

bobby and i thought that this woman must be a little loopy and was completely overreacting.

yes, it had been raining a lot, but we are in Nashville. we are not near an ocean, or even any really big lakes. just a few rivers here and there.

so Bobby went outside to go check things and out. when he came back about 10 minutes later, the water was already knee high across the way.

enter panic mode.

i grabbed diapers and milk and Caleb.

Bobby grabbed Bella - crate and all.

we walked out the door saying:

"do we set the alarm?"

"do we even lock the door?"

we got loaded into the car, and my amazing husband had enough sense to stop us right then, grabbed my hand, and said a prayer.

(have i ever mentioned how much i love this man and how lucky i am to have him?)

we tried to go to my parent's house. they live 5 minutes away, and we couldn't get there. every road there was already under.

even the interstate.

enter major panic mode.

we called my aunt and uncle, who also live close but up on a hill. they were so amazing and gracious. they let us invade their home, even though they had no electricity and part of their ceiling had caved in from all the water.

so we stayed there that day and night. when the electricity finally came back on, we stayed glued to the news coverage, which constantly showed our neighborhood, completely under water. it looked like our house was at least 3 feet under, maybe even more.

we went to bed feeling sick, uneasy, and completely helpless.

the next morning we drove over, just to see what was going on, and we were completely shocked to see that the water had already gone back down, and we could get into our house.

the water had been right around 3 feet deep all through our lower level. almost everything that was on our lower level had to be thrown out.

here is a picture looking down the sidewalk from in front of our house. that is my sofa on the right, just sitting out on the front lawn.....

the trash in our neighborhood accumulated so quickly. it was absolutely unbelievable to see how much there was.

here is husband standing in the middle of it all, to show just how much there was.....





they quickly started tearing the house apart. floors ripped out...walls knocked down...cabinets yanked out.

this is a shot of part of our living room and dining room.....



when the guys were knocking down the walls, they didn't want to take this down. so they hung it in the middle of the living room and left it there for everyone to see.....



it was such a great reminder in the midst of it all.

it is hard to watch your house being torn apart. it is hard to see your stuff sitting outside like garbage. it is hard to see the toys that your baby played with a few days earlier thrown into a trash pile.

every time i thought i had accounted for everything we had lost, i would remember something else that was gone.

not the material things. as much as i really liked some of our things, that wasn't what really mattered.

we lost pictures. Caleb's baby book. Caleb's newborn handprints and footprints. my maternity journal. our wedding album.

but as hard as the last six weeks have been, we are ok.

we have amazing family and friends. they showed up for us in ways that absolutely floored us. we are so grateful for each and every one of them.

we have an amazing God. He watched over us and protected us, and we are continually blessed by His faithfulness.

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;

and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;

when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,

and the flame shall not consume you.

For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.

Isaiah 43:2-3