Giveaway Winners!

I still have family in from out of state, so this post is just a quick notification of the winners from the giveaways!

Winner of the One Year of Joy and Laughter is Alison!

The winners of the Memory Books are Ian's Mommy and Alissa!

The winner of the CD is Melissa!

I am going to start working on the gifts for all who entered next week too!  I also need to post about Christmas. Just not enough hours in the day!

I hope  you all had a peaceful Christmas and are preparing for a blessed New Year!

Merry Christmas! (and a Giveaway!)

Merry Christmas readers!!!

I have been pretty absent the past couple of weeks, but today I am co-hosting the last day of Tina's 25 Days of Giveaways!  Yay!  Since I know ya'll have tons of things to do and family to spend time with, I'll keep it short and sweet!

First off, I know that since today is Christmas, so I thought I would give away some gifts that would be good for the New Year.

Giveaway #1

My babies in Heaven have beautiful names.  Shyla Joy and Jakin Isaac.  The mean Creative Joy and God Will Establish Laughter.  So what better thing to give to one of you than this One Year of Joy and Laughter Devotional?  I seriously want to keep it for myself.  Joy and Laughter were both things that were (and sometimes still are) hard to come by after the loss of a child or children.

  
(source)

Giveaway #2

In the Company of Angels  
A Memorial book from www.pregnancyloss.info
This memorial book is basically a baby book for a loss mom.  It is beautifully done.  (And please still enter for this item if you have lost twins or more than one baby...I have two to give away!  My babies were not twins, but I feel the need to keep everything "even" just as if they were here.)


(source)

Giveaway #3

The third giveaway is a CD.  This CD has a selection of songs that have helped me through the loss of my two beautiful babies and many of the songs are included in the care packages that we take to the hospitals and have been used in memorial services around the country (I sent several of these CD's to October 15th event organizers last year).

TO ENTER THE GIVEAWAYS:

The giveaways will be open until 11:59pm December 27th and winners will be announced the next day.  I would like to also offer something special to everyone that enters, but it will be a surprise, so please leave the following info when commenting below:

*Which item(s) you would like to be entered for (just let me know if you would be happy winning any of the items or if you just want to be entered for a specific one or two).

*Your baby or babies names.

*Your email address.

*And if you would like please include something that has brought you joy or laughter since your loss.

Love and Hugs to all and I hope you all have had a Merry, Peaceful, Joyful Christmas.

Just Catching Up

My guest post for 12 Days of Christmas with you in Heaven posted today at Small Bird Studios.  I wrote out our Christmas Stocking Project and how much it has blessed us at Christmas time.  I think I will do this again this year...

Jakin's first birthday in Heaven (aka Thanksgiving Day) has come and gone and I haven't had a chance to post about it.  It was a hard day.  Much harder than Shyla's first was.  Maybe because on her first we had the hope for him...I'm not sure...but we did spend much time together as a family.  I cried when I needed to cry and we took him a balloon and visited the cemetery.  I also spent most of the morning making the Christmas saddles for their rocks.  Complete with white poinsettias (and a pink and blue one too!) glitter and a sparkling dragonfly each.

 It was a long day and honestly, I'm kind of glad it has passed. It is so much easier to look on the holidays with Joy after the hardest days have passed and I know that that day was the hardest.

We got our Christmas tree on Sunday and putting the ornaments on is always such a rush of memories.  This year was no different.  Each ornament was placed with love and a smile.  We have so many ornaments from Shyla's first Christmas in Heaven and a few from Jakin's last year as well.  Also adorning our tree are ornaments Ethan has picked out every year and a picture from the day he was born.  I now also have many of the ornaments from when I was a child.  It was a beautiful night decorating the tree (except when the beautiful live tree took a nose dive on me!)

Anyway, I'm still here and I plan on updating again soon.

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving and are preparing for a peaceful Christmas season.

Much love.

November in Review

I've been in kind of a rut lately, but I really want to get back into blogging.  I don't guess not writing for 2...well, 3 weeks is considered being out of blogging, but I feel like I need it.  It's like therapy to me.  Writing and putting myself out here makes me accountable with my emotions and helps me see things from a different point of view.

So, in an effort to get back into the swing of things. I'm going to do this ridiculously random post.  Ready?  Here goes...

First off, 11-11-11.  We had fun with carrots and home made pizza sticks. And we wrote a whole lot of ones.

Thanksgiving has come and gone and we did lots of fun Thanksgiving-ish things that week.  Mostly with food.  Have I mentioned just how much I love pinterest?  These are all photos of creations I copied from ideas I found there.

(found this idea here)

(found this idea here...but I like how our colors turned out better)

(and found this idea here and made some adjustments to what we had at home.)

We also had our "Thankful turkey" in our kitchen.  Every night we would all write something we were thankful for on a feather and add it to our turkey.  These were just some of my favorite feathers written by Ethan...

Thanksgiving Day (November 24) was also our third child, Jakin Isaac's 1st birthday in Heaven.  One year ago on the 23rd he passed away in the womb and on the 24th he was born.  My brother and sis-in-law sent us flowers to let us know they were thinking of us.  It was a pretty hard day, to be quite honest.  But we spent it with family and I spent the morning making the Christmas saddles for Shyla and Jakin's rocks.

Lets see, what else was going on in November...Ethan finally got to watch Cars Two and loved it.  He has rekindled his love for his toy cars and has been playing with and drawing them like crazy.

I learned how to make cinnamon-sugar donuts.  And they are yummy.  And I made them again this morning.  And (enter guilty mommy voice here) Ethan ate two and about three donut holes for breakfast this morning.

I also started working on LOTS of handmade gifts that I will just have to wait until after Christmas to post because you just never know who might come across this little ol blog of mine before then.

I guess I'm about all caught up!  Except to say that we have had massive issues with internet and computers and it has taken me 2 days to write this post.  And now I remember why I haven't been posting as often!  Hopefully we can get this all resolved soon and this can get to be much easier and more enjoyable again.

Be sure to check back soon, because I have several posts in the works.  An update on my dad, a giveaway, an interview and an adoption post.  And we will probably throw in a fundraiser somewhere in there for good measure!

Thank you all for your love and prayers!

Remembering Jakin's Healing

One year ago today, Jakin's heart was healed and he went home to Heaven.  I've just re-read my post from that day and I only kind-of remember writing it.  I have no doubt God was carrying us through those days.  It's a little harder today than it was then, in a way.  I don't know what I should be doing today.  I'm not sure how much more I can even elaborate, words are kind of escaping me today.  So I will just leave it quoting myself from my post I wrote one year ago today...

Ecclesiastes 7:1 says "A good name is better than precious ointment; and the day of death than the day of one's birth."  

Today was better than tomorrow.  

 

(source)

I woke up at 4:00 this morning.  And I couldn't go back to sleep.  First my mind went to some Christmas gifts I need to make.  Then on to my to-do-list today. Then I couldn't help it going where it has been going lots lately.  To my littlest child.  Jakin's first birthday in Heaven is next week.  I grieve that I feel like we will not celebrate his life the same way we did Shyla's.  We had a beautiful celebration for her 1st.  Jakin's first is on Thanksgiving Day.  I know it wont happen.  I know there will be very few that think to speak his name that day.  

I laid there this morning and asked my husband a "why" question.  I knew he wouldn't have the answer...and I really give an honest effort to stay away from the "why"s.  I asked him "Why did he have to die at Thanksgiving? Isn't it enough we buried two of our children?  Shyla's original due date was Thanksgiving too. Double whammy.

I'm having a harder time being at peace now than I was when we were approaching Shyla's first.  I wish I could keep from comparing them.  But I can't help it.  Don't we all try to treat our children fairly?  What we do for one, do for the other(s)...

I really need some prayers to help me focus on God and his peace right now.  I know that those things can be found only in Him.  I need His strength, and I need him to carry me through.  I have no doubt He is near, but sometimes the grief is just stronger than others.  

And now is one of those times.

My Hope Fulfilled: Interview Project

November is National Adoption Month and to celebrate, Heather from Production, Not Reproduction organized the adoption bloggers Interview Project!  Bloggers with experiences in all kinds of of adoption joined in and were randomly paired together for interviews.

I was paired with Michelle from My Hope Fulfilled.  It has been a blessing learning more about Michelle and her beautiful family.  Michelle blogs about her family, open adoption, parenting, and other fun things.  You can read her story HERE.

Below is my questions (in bold) and her answers.  You can read my answers to her questions on this post.

***

Q:  When you were in the beginning phases of the adoption process, what were the major factors that led you to domestic infant adoption?

: : The cost, the timeline, and the average age of the child placed in our family.  

Q: After talking to other adoptive parents, I often learn that husbands and wives often have very different concerns about adoption.  Was that the case for you?   If so, what were some of your husband's concerns? What kind of concerns did you have?

: : We had discovered that we had a common interest in adoption before we even began dating.  So when fertility issues arose, it seemed like an obvious choice.  My husband was quicker to jump aboard the adoption train, but I think that's because fertility treatments would have involved some needles going in placed he had no interest in getting poked {here's a post about that}.  Our main concern was cost - how would we ever afford it?!  God blessed us with people who helped out financially, some part time jobs where we could earn extra money, and a family member who gave us an interest free loan until we get the tax credit money back.

Q:  I love the scripture in your tagline (it is one of the verses my 4 yr old has memorized).  What were some of the other scriptures you clung to during the wait?

: : Sometimes I wonder if I had the best attitude while waiting...I really clung to Psalms 20 and 103 which deal with God granting you the desires of your heart if you delight in Him.  At one point in my life, I was sure I never wanted children, but God changed my heart on that, so I held on to the fact that if He placed the desire on my heart to be a mom, He was going to fulfill it.

Q:  I noticed that you are a scrapbooker (me too!), how much of your adoption story do you plan on including in your son's scrapbooks?  Will you include every detail, or an abbreviated version?

: : A lot of it!  I didn't go into the heart breaking weeks that unfolded during the beginning of his life, but I will tell him all about that someday.  All the happy things surrounding the adoption, including tons of pictures of his birth family are included.  Between the scrapbooks and my blog, he's going to get pretty much the whole story!

Q:  The relationship you have with your son's birth mom is beautiful.  What led you to choose open adoption?

: : Honestly, I'm not sure.  I think I was just so desperate for a baby, I was willing to broach any kind of openness situation.  However, the more I read about open adoption I realized what a healthy relationship it could be for birth mom and adoptee (and everyone else, too).  When I found the blog, Heart Cries, I was sold.  I realized I actually wanted an open adoption.  When Jen picked us, I don't think she intended for us to have as open of an adoption as we have, but it's beautifully unfolding.  We are facebook friends, live about 35 minutes apart, and invite each other to our children's birthday parties.  It is like we have a very special part of our extended family.

Q:  What are some of the blessings of open adoption?

: : Knowing that Levi will never have to wonder if anyone wanted him.  He'll always know he was loved, he will always know his first family.  The more people to love on my son, the better!  On the flip side, I love that open adoption gives Jen the opportunity to see Levi grow up and see how absolutely adored he is.  Also, open adoption is great for obvious reasons like health issues.  We found out his birth father is highly allergic to strawberries, and his birth mother has some dairy issues, so it's helped us watch out for those things in the food that we give Levi.  

Q:  What are some of the harder parts of open adoption?

: : The more I get to know my son's birth mother, the more I love her, and the more I ache for her over the decision she made.  I wrote a post about it {here}.

Q:  How do you decide how much of your life to share on your blog?

: : I try to be pretty transparent.  I have a hard time keeping anything in my own life "private."  If there's ever a question about whether or not I should share something on the blog, I run it by my husband.  He's got great discernment.  But honestly, the only things I've not written about in detail are those things which are nitty gritty and not edifying to anyone anyway.

Q:  When do you find time to blog?

: : I usually blog in the evenings.  Our computer is in the living room so I can blog while my husband watches TV and we are still "together."  I also get things done during Levi's naps.

1Q:  When (in the process) and how did you tell your families you were starting the adoption process?  What were their reactions?

: : Pretty much as soon as we decided to start looking into it.  Everyone was supportive but some were a little bit concerned about the potential emotional roller coaster.  I think most of those fears were actually realized when our adoption was temporarily disrupted, but in the long run, Levi's adoption has been a huge bonding point for our families.