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Showing posts with label 5th Baby. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 5th Baby. Show all posts
Georgiana turns one year old in about a week! I might be in denial a little bit.
We are going to be buried in boxes and renovations on her actual birthday, so we decided to have her first birthday party a couple weeks early while we are still in this house! It seems fitting to have her first birthday party here, since this is where we brought her home when she was just tiny.
Our last party in this house. I am a little sentimental about it. We've celebrated so much here, from our very first gender reveal party, through all the kids' birthday parties, and now this is the last one. I can't believe my tiny little baby is almost one year old!
I decided to go with a autumn/donut theme, because it was easy to pull off. It ended up being perfect to celebrate our sweet girl and send this house out in style.
I got most of the decorations from the Target dollar spot and Hobby Lobby. My friend Danae did the lettering for Georgie's wood sign (which will now live in her room at the new house). I told my sister I wanted a simple sprinkle cake this time (she's the master cake decorator in this family), and she made it come to life!
The centerpiece of our donut-themed party was the donut peg board, which Derek made for the party (I got the idea from Ashley's gorgeous baby sprinkle). It all came together really well! I am so thankful for my family and friends who helped me put it all together this time. I love going all out for the first birthday party, and this one was so easy with everyone's help!
I let Georgie have a taste of cake when we took birthday pictures a few weeks ago, so at the party it didn't take her long to remember that cake is pretty good!
It was so good to celebrate one last time in this house, with our dear family and friends. I'm glad we had a chance to celebrate our baby girl here. I might have cried a little after the party was over. It's bittersweet, leaving this house, and watching your last baby turn one.
But good things are on the horizon too.
My siblings are twins and are two years younger than me. We had a lot of fun growing up, being so close in age. I remember so many different games we came up with, and we would play with each other for hours. We had pretty good relationships with each other, and I loved having both a brother and a sister.
I think when we are young (especially us girls), it's easy to think that you get to plan your whole life out. When I was in middle school, I decided I wanted to get married at 22 (my mom's marriage age), wait two or three years to have babies, then have three kids (because it seemed to work for my family of origin). I even had names picked out (because of course my husband would love every name that I did).
If you have been following this blog for a while, you know that none of that worked out like I thought it would!
So to answer a question from my blog buddy Natalie, I didn't always want a "big" family (unless you consider three kids "big", which I don't).
I continued on with my well-planned-out life, and when I was 19 years old and in dental hygiene college I read a book called "America Alone" by Mark Steyn. I can say with certainty that this was the point when I started to think about family size a little differently.
This book was not necessarily about family size, it was about international politics, but it did address the history and current state of birth rates in different countries. In the book, Steyn presents evidence that countries or cultures that have higher birth rates tend to accomplish more in the world, and those that have anemic birth rates tend to go into decline.
This was a shifting point for me, because for the first time it occurred to me that maybe choosing how many children to have isn't a decision that should be merely based on personal preference or some arbitrary "ideal". It introduced to me the idea that having children is a way to pass something on, and if there are more children in the family, there is more of a chance to pass it on to more people. As a strong believer in Christ, that idea was interesting to me, because I want to pass on my faith to my children, and for them to pass it on to their children. For the first time I thought about having four kids instead of just three.
I think the Lord used that unexpected book to get me thinking in a new direction, because a year later Derek and I got married, and a year later we went off birth control because of our pro-life convictions. Still, I clung to the idea that I could control everything in my life, including the timing and size of my family. This was my decision, and I didn't think about God's opinion about my family much at all.
But God wasn't finished working on my heart, and I was rudely awakened to the fact that maybe I wasn't in control of this. Things weren't working quite right after I went off the pill, and for the first time it occurred to me that maybe getting pregnant isn't as simple as I thought.
We went through about eleven months of waiting for things to get back to normal, and I very quickly went from thinking we'd wait to try to get pregnant to being desperate to have a baby. This was what God used to turn me toward what He wanted for our family, instead of just what I wanted. This is what He used to change my view of children from something to check off my list, to viewing them as a true blessing that He was in charge of giving.
Fast forward a few years later, and instead of the two or four Derek and I said we originally wanted, we are expecting our fifth baby. Until about two years ago, the idea of five never even entered my head - but I credit this baby completely to God working in our hearts and family. After we had Clarice there was just that nudge from the Holy Spirit to wait, to not do anything permanent quite yet, and we wouldn't have been listening at all if not for all those years of God slowly changing my attitude on children. We would have cut things short long ago if God hadn't used our trouble getting pregnant to teach me to seek His will for our family, not just my own. He used a stressful time in my life of dealing with sub-par fertility to actually bring me more babies than I would have otherwise! Looking back now, I'm amazed at how gentle He was with me. He gave me just the right resources and circumstances at the right times to change my heart.
So here we are, having a "big" family. (I can probably say "big" without quotation marks now - it's just that the Duggars and Bates kind of redefined "big" for me.) Derek and I never really planned this out, but looking at our five babies (even the one still in my belly), we really cannot imagine not having them here. God has been really gracious to us, and He gave us what we didn't know we needed.
So, to finish answering Natalie's question, my favorite part of having a big family...well, they are all running around, laughing as I type this, and the joy is pretty infectious! (Of course, there are also times of everyone crying, but let's just skip over that.) I think my favorite part of having a big family is those moments when they are all gathered around me for school or Bible time, and we are talking about something really important, and I know that this is it. This is what God made me for, and these children are one of the only things I will do on this earth that will really last...and He trusted me with five of them.
It's a powerful thought, and it's humbling, and it makes me want to cry for the responsibility and privilege of it. He's been really good to me, and I see that nowhere more clearly than in these little faces that look back at me every day.
P.S. If you asked Derek his version of the story, he'd have a very different one than mine...but I saw how he kept his heart open to what the Lord might have for us over the years too. There is a reason God sent us each other, and these five kids are good proof!
P.P.S. If you have any "getting to know you" questions for me, now's the time! It'll help me come up with material for the last two weeks of my 31 Day Writing Challenge!
I am pretty sure we squeezed every ounce of New Orleans adventure that we possibly could out of 48 hours in the city. I landed in New Orleans at 1:23 PM on Wednesday, and left for the airport at 12:50 PM on Friday - it felt like a strangely relaxing whirlwind! I am so glad we took the chance to have a pre-baby getaway to a place that was brand-new to both of us.
More on where we went and what we did below, but first, pictures.
DAY ONE
I am pretty much a mountain girl, and rarely spend this much time in the city...so while I think my urban photography skills could use some help, this whole trip gave me a great chance to practice!
Here's what we did the first day:
-Arrived in the afternoon at Hotel Monteleone, which was so pretty! It also is home of the Carousel Bar, which is a rotating bar - we didn't get anything there, but it was cool to see it.
-Derek finished his conference class, and we set out to explore the city! We walked to Jackson Square and saw the oldest operating cathedral in the US.
-We also found some pretty doors to take pictures in front of. So many of the streets were so picturesque! If I lived there I would be hunting for good photo spots all the time.
-Stopped at Bourbon Street - that would be the picture where I am not grinning. It was so gross! Nothing pretty about that street at all, unlike the rest of the French Quarter.
-Went to the Palace Cafe for dessert. Derek got the bananas foster, which they made right in font of us! I got the lemon pie. Both were excellent!
-We also grabbed dinner, just at the Marriot because it was most convenient that night. We discussed baby names!
-Went back to the hotel and crashed at like 8 PM, home time. I was so tired from traveling.
DAY TWO
What we did on the second day (our only full day):
-Got some coffee at French Truck Coffee. I loved that place! It was clean and pretty, and they played oldies. I already waxed poetic about it on Instagram, see more there.
-Walked back to the hotel and waited for my tour bus to arrive while Derek went to the conference. I booked a city tour with Cajun Encounters, and it was definitely worth the money. The tour guide (forget his name, looked like Ashton Kutcher) was one of the better tour guides I've ever had. I wouldn't have seen nearly as much of the city without it, and I learned so much!
-The tour stopped by one of New Orleans above-ground cemeteries. It was creepy and interesting, because the reason they bury that way is not what I expected. Much too gruesome to describe here for all my posterity to read, but comment if you want to know and I'll explain.
-Other things I saw on the tour: Creole millionaire's row, Creole neighborhoods, Jackson Square again, the Tomb Of The Unknown Slave (which was interesting but so sad), the Garden District, and of course the cemetery.
-The tour also took us to a cafe called Morning Call, and we got free beignets and coffee as part of the tour! Score! These were actually my favorite beignets from when we were there.
-After the tour I went to a buffet for lunch (a little intimidating walking through the city by myself, it is so busy there). The food was okay, but the desserts were amazing! Every dessert I got in New Orleans was fantastic.
-Went back to the hotel and waited for Derek to get off from the conference. This was when I washed my hair - a turning point in the trip, because I washed out all my good products from home, and my hair responded way differently to the humidity without my products!
-I had intentions of sitting by the pool, but it was actually raining that afternoon, so I sat at one of the covered tables on the pool deck and started narrowing down our list of baby names and looking up meanings. Derek and I really wanted to use our time alone on this trip to get a short list of names for our girl!
-We decided to go ahead and book a riverboat cruise! When Derek got out of his class, we got dressed and walked over to the river (we might have stopped and bought some maple fudge on the way). It was a jazz dinner cruise on a steamboat called the Natchez, and it was an excellent decision to go. The music was amazing, the views were so pretty, and the the steamboat horn was so deep and cool-sounding. We got back when it was dark, and the city lights were so pretty!
-We took a pedi-cab back to the hotel - good because our feet were hurting, scary because our driver was nuts! I thought we were going to tip over! But hey, a 15 minute walk only took her about 3 minutes, so she was efficient!
DAY THREE
What we did on day three:
-Got more coffee at French Truck Coffee. I miss that place!
-Walked over to Cafe Du Monde for beignets and orange juice.
-The humidity was out of control that morning! My hair was wet by the time we got back to the hotel, but we stopped at several gift shops and a gallery on the way back (partially to escape the heat!). I practiced more photography in the city. We bought pralines for the kids, and a Christmas ornament with Santa riding an alligator.
-The gallery we stopped at had these unique paintings - the artist layered the pain on really thickly, so it had a 3D effect, I wish you could see it better in the picture, it was pretty cool!
-At this point Derek had to leave me again, and I took another shower before packing up my things. Derek had already packed and gone, because his flight left several hours later than mine, and he and some of his co-workers were going to do a swamp tour that afternoon! I have to admit, I was a little jealous of the swamp tour. He got to feed alligators! And hold a baby alligator!
-After washing my hair, I went to lunch at Mr. B's Bistro, right across from our hotel. I had the gumbo and the molten chocolate cup cake. Oh my goodness. It was so good! I gushed to Derek in a text about it, so he and his coworkers ended up stopping there too before they flew home. It was just really good. In my book, you pretty much HAVE to go there if you visit New Orleans.
-The airport shuttle picked me up, and home I went! I was sad to leave, but my hair was not sad. I worked on middle name pairings for baby while I waited for me plane.
I am so glad Derek and I got to explore New Orleans as much as we did, and it was a great time to reconnect (and think of some names!) before our little girl arrives in less than three months!
So if I was to make recommendations for a quick trip to New Orleans:
-Take a tour. They are definitely worth the money, and you see so much more that way!
-Jackson Square was really pretty, definitely walk over there.
-Eat at Mr. B's Bistro. It's a must.
-Try to find somewhere to listen to some jazz music! We did the riverboat, but I'm told Frenchman Street is a good place to go too.
-Bring your good hair products if you have even a slight hint of curl/wave! Your hair will thank me for this one, trust me.
-And get some beignets somewhere! It's kind of a New Orleans requirement, I think.
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