Family

A 5th Birthday Tribute to My Baby Girl

October 15, 2009 by Jennifer 4 Comments

As posted on October 15, 2008

As I am sitting here with the tears falling thinking back to 4 years exactly right now…I just cannot believe it has been 4 years. I was on my way to the hospital.

I remember hubbs telling me, just please let me sleep till midnight. HA.. you better believe when that clock hit 12am… I woke him up. I said hun, I am still having contractions pretty good and we should probably get to the hospital really soon since we are a bit away from it. I woke up my precious Madisyn who had no clue of what was going to about happen and then I woke up my step-daughter who said can I fix my hair. Ummm nope we have got to go. The contractions were coming so hard and painful… I was hitting my window all the way up the mountain to the hospital. It was soooo foggy too and hubbs was trying his best to get us there safely and fast.

I got to the ER and they were like, “Are you in labor?”. UMMMM YES…. that is why I am bent over like this. Ok let’s hurry and get you upstairs. They immediately wheeled me up. I said I don’t know if this is real labor (I was induced with Madisyn), but it sure hurts and I knew I should come to get check. I was two weeks early so I was like… I just don’t know. They said ok, let’s check you to see if we should keep you. I was thinking to myself Lord help us if this is not real. They got me settled in and checked me and OMG I was already dilated 7. I could not believe it. They said, oh yes you are definitely staying. They were hurrying around as fast as they could, because baby girl was coming out fast. They broke my water and I was to a 10 within just a short time… they were like please don’t push, the DR is on his way. Just hold on. Yea right… I can feel her she is coming. I bet I only let out two pushes and in walked the DR and she was out that fast. I knew she had swallowed her meconium because they could tell when they broke my water. But I didn’t know the cord was around her neck twice. I couldn’t hear her cry and she was blue and I immediately lost it. I was crying so hard. The room was swarmed with all kinds of drs and they whisked her away from me. I was like Please Lord, let her be ok… Please! With what seemed forever, I heard her first cry and oh was that a joyous sound to my ears. The team of dr’s got her breathing so well and I already had Madisyn in bed with me so we were itching to hold our beautiful Lyndsee. Yes, Madisyn was in the room with me the whole time and watched her sister be born. I would not have had it any other way.

Here are some pictures of that wonderful October 15, 2004 morning that our baby girl Lyndsee made her big debut.

I was so amazed at all her black hair since when Madisyn was born she was bald hehe. OH gosh what a sweet morning that was. I can’t believe these 4 years have went so fast and she looks so much like a grown little girl. Here is a picture from each of her birthdays.

6 month birthday

1 year birthday

2 year birthday

3 year birthday

4 year birthday

Updates:

The big 5 Year Old Princess

I will admit when I put her to bed last night, I had a good cry with L. I was holding her so tight and just telling her how I couldn’t believe she was 5. I told her she had to quit growing so fast. She was hugging me so tight and said but mommy I don’t have to turn 5, I want to stay 4 for you mommy. Ahhhh…. I love her so much. She means so much to our family indeed.

L you have grown by leaps and bounds this last year. You love to dance and sing. I always look forward to your “shows” you put on for us in the living room. You have to make sure your “stage” is set just so perfect before you will make your grand entrance. You are such a follower in your big sister’s footsteps and always wants to be doing what she is doing. Thankfully big sister loves that and you two are truly best of friends.

L you make us laugh so much with all your little stories you come up with and your creativity is out of this world. You cannot be still and always need to be doing something artsy with your time. You love to color, draw, cut paper, glue, and make crafts. You love to surprise us with your little gifts too that always have really big hearts drawn on them. Your big saying is coming up to us and saying “Mommy, I have a present for you” … then you proceed to give the biggest hug ever. I so heart that L. Also, you are always saying “I have big news” then you will say “I just farted” that is so not you girly girl but you think that is just the funniest thing.

L you still have to have mommy’s hair at night to go to sleep and if you wake up in middle of night and mommy is up working… you promptly will yell as loud as you can for mommy to come back to bed. Then we will cuddle and you are right back to sleep. We are still enjoying co-sleeping so much most definitely.

School has started this year for you L, and I couldn’t be more proud. You have come so far and have your very own little best friend now. Yes, the teacher says you are still fragile at school and will not hesitate to shout saying you want your mommy right NOW ;). BUT… you wake up each morning so eager to go to school now, much differently from the beginning of the school year.

I’m just so proud of you my dear and all that you have accomplished in the last 5 years. Never quit being you sissy, because you always know how to bring a smile to everyone’s face. Mommy LOVES you so much my dear and I will always appreciate you so much for being such a mommy’s girl and such a wonderful daughter/little sister!

Happy Birthday baby girl!!

P.S. I told you tonight when I was laying down with you to go to sleep “Sissy, mommy has tried to make your birthday such a special day and I hope that I truly did.” You said: “Mommy it is special, because you are my mommy.” Sniff Sniff, tears rolling!

Good Ole Mountain Fun

October 6, 2009 by Jennifer 8 Comments

It’s the most favorite time of the year. Oh yea!

I so cherish this time of year. I do miss living in Florida at times but this time of year living in NC is the BEST. The fall leaves, the fall festivals (yes, we are the family that tries to attend them all), the pumpkin farms, fall sports, and good ole fashioned clogging :).

I’m so proud of my M. She really gets in there and gives it her all in Soccer. You can just tell the determination on her face. She truly has found the sport that she loves to perform in. This is her last week of Soccer and she is not too happy about that. I really wish our county would do an indoor league for winter or a league for spring. Maybe sometime in the future there will be.

Look at this determination:

She loves playing goalie too:

How did she get so big?:

She does have a mean kick. Her first goalie of the season, she kicked so hard that the ball went into the air over the goalies head and down into the net. I so wish I had got that on video.:

She just loves soccer and getting right in there:

Often after a soccer game on Saturday’s, we head straight to a clogging event. L has got into clogging now as well so to both see my girls up on stage. Yes, this mom gets tears every time. I love that they are so into it. I always wanted to do clogging growing up, but my parents just could not afford the extra money each month. So when M, decided she wanted to do it… you know I did all I could do to make sure she got to be in on this wonderful opportunity. Naturally, L just followed big Sis’s steps. She absolutely loves clogging as well.

Such cuteness!:

I love when they pair up to do songs together in clogging:

You can see they really get into it with their hands on their hips and then doing the wave with their arms and hands:

Needless to say, we never have a dull weekend around here as soon as fall starts. It’s on… but I just enjoy it so much. To see the smiles on my girls faces, just makes the efforts so worthwhile. I love you girls!!!!

Family Fun at Biltmore House

October 1, 2009 by Jennifer 12 Comments

We are a family that will just get up one morning and take off. We do not plan, we just start driving. I love being adventurous and my girls love seeing the world like this. I didn’t get to do a whole lot of traveling growing up, so I have always said that I would change that with my girls. When we got the opportunity to tour the Biltmore House this weekend, I was ecstatic. I have been several times in my life, but my girls and hubby have not.

This estate is located in Asheville, NC.

The area is just beautiful and as you can see, the views are just remarkable. I could just sit there all day watching the views. You are not allowed to take pictures from inside the house, but please take my word for it. It is very beautiful, detailed, and just down right top notch designs. My girls never once complained while touring the house either.

You can see the very detailed architecturial work outside as well.

We took the guided tour inside and that was very fun, because we could engage with the tour guide and our girls could ask questions as well. I wanted to include them in every part I could. Once we were outside, we were on our own, so we took the chance to show the girls all the details of the outside of the house.

After taking in all the beautiful features of the outside of the house, we took a stroll through the gardens. I love nature, I love flowers and I love just taking a stroll with my family. This was so relaxing, girls were stopping and just taking in all the gardens had to offer. Just amazing time you can have with your family and just be you. Have quality conversations with them and just enjoy the view.

Up next, our tummy’s were starting to rumble a little bit. They have an awesome picnic area located at the Deer Park Restaurant which is on site of the Biltmore Estate. We enjoyed a nice boxed lunch that was healthy and not just some junk threw together 😉 all the while taking in the beautiful scenery.

It didn’t take long for the girls to say “I’m done eating”, once they found out we were headed to the Biltmore Farms. This is a fairly new feature of the Biltmore Estate, so I was excited to tour this as well. As you will see the girls were able to pet all the animals and be right there with the baby chicks.

The farm was all styled out in Fall decor, so the girls were enjoying that as well.

With that our tour came to an end. The girls are still talking about it and hubby said he was just blown away by the whole estate. It was definitely something he is glad he did and we would like to go back at Christmas and Spring as well. I know at Christmas they have Carolers all through the house singing Christmas songs. I just would love to see it all decorated as well for Christmas.

This is definitely a must see if you are ever in the mountains of NC. Your whole family will enjoy it and you can definitely make a full day out of it.

FYI: I did take these pictures with my own camera ;).

Making a Special KeepSake for Grandparents

September 12, 2009 by Jennifer 10 Comments

Tomorrow is a big day… it is Grandparents Day! Unfortunately, my girls only have one set of living Grandparents but they adore them so much. We will say a special prayer for our wonderful “Angel” Grandparents.

My parents love receiving sentimental things from the girls. The girls absolutely adore their PawPaw and YayYay. You may ask why the girls call my mom YayYay ;). When M was a baby, my mom would always call her on phone or come over and go yayayayayayayayay to her over and over. M would just crack up so much and laugh so hard. Well when M was right around a year, when she would see my mom, she would automatically yell out Yay Yay! So the name was born. They know no different! I love that M gave her a unique name too and L just followed suit naturally and calls her the same thing.

So when we heard that Grandparents.com launched a new section to their website to let you send a sentimental recording for FREE… I was all giddy. You can surprise the Grandparents anytime, any day and anywhere with a special recording. We did just this tonight, so the Grandparents will get it first thing in the morning when they wake up. My girls sang the song “You are my Sunshine” and also said a couple sentences about how much they love them and we clicked finished and had it emailed. I can’t wait to hear their reaction.

I think now every couple of weeks, we will do this to surprise them and just make their day :). Go ahead and give it a try… it sooo cool and something they will treasure always and forever. AND its FREE!

Deep Wounds Can Be Healed

August 31, 2009 by Jennifer 20 Comments

This blog post has been on my heart tonight. It is really personal but I thought I would share my story anyways. I touched on this story a bit with Sarah from Real Life Blog last Thursday on our trip to Raleigh, NC. Here goes!

Tonight when I was putting the girls to bed.. I heard M talking real softly. As I was kissing L good night, I leaned over to M and said: “Who are you talking to?”
M said: “I am talking to God, mommy”

That immediately warmed my heart and just out of blue she said: “Mommy, when I get home from school tomorrow night.. I want us to read my bible together.” This speaks so much volume to me, you just don’t know.

You see…I was always brought up in a Christian home and we were always in church. I got married to my highschool sweetheart right out of highschool. The relationship did not work as we were so young that we didn’t make it work unfortunately. I got out of that relationship and started seeing the man that is now my hubby today! Just a couple months into that relationship, I found out I was pregnant.

This was not good :(. I cried so much. On one spectrum, I was so thrilled to finally be a mom, but on the other spectrum I was scared to death. My whole family is real religious and loves our almighty God. I have several preachers in my family. So as you can see, being pregnant out of wedlock was not good. I remember calling my mom and telling her first. Her own first words to me were “I am really disappointed in you.” “We never dreamed of our daughter doing this.”

I was the child that never partied, never got drunk, never smoked, always made straight A’s, worked two jobs in highschool to help my family make ends meet. So my pregnancy was just wrong. Everyone around me was judging me so bad and looking down on me. The one person that I thought would really judge me was my BF from highschool Holly. But… I was totally wrong. She did not judge me at all. She was there to comfort me through so many tears and helped me get through those first couple of months. No one knew, but as I would cry so hard everyday… the thought that ran through my head was I should just kill myself. That way I wouldn’t disappoint anyone anymore.

As time moved on, my family accepted what happened and started treating me with respect again. BUT… I was still facing God. I served him so wrong. I was scared to even step foot in church… afraid of what would happen. Life went on and I had my wonderful, super fab, M. She was beautiful and I could never imagine life without her. As we were going on with life… I was still so scared to go face God. Then unexpectantly, I got pregnant again with L. Here we go round 2. Pregnant again out of wedlock. I waited till I was 5 months to even tell my extended family and 12 weeks to tell my mom and dad this time. I had lost lots of weight so it was easy to hide. Then we had our wonderful, super fab, L. Life was so grand. It was soon to be hubby, myself, and my girls. Life was complete. Or was it? We still needed God in our lives. I was so scared though since hubbs and I were not married that God would not accept us.

Hubby and I did eventually get married. I was just so scared to get married incase of having another failed marriage, but we both took the leap and did it :). Yay.. finally! We have now been married almost 2 years and brought God back into our family…. its just wonderful. Those deep wounds have been healed and I am not scared of facing God anymore!

So with M saying what she did tonight, just spoke so much to me. I am raising her right in the eyes of the Lord. He is shining bright in our lives now. Everything is going to be A-OK! We have found a great church family where we can be involved and be accepted for who we are. The girls can be involved with children’s activities and I am excited to go to my first Womens Ministry group this Wednesday. I just feel so at peace now with all that has went on the last 7 years. God is helping me heal those wounds.

This morning in Church a song was being sang by a wonderful lady and there was so much spirit with people praising the Lord, crying happy tears because they were moved so much. Both hubby and I looked at each other and were crying. Neither one of us were ashamed as we are born again Christians and we are where we are suppose to be. We all feel whole again. We are now complete as a family!

As we were walking in from Church this afternoon… hubby said: “Jen, we need to find a nice home wall accent that says This House Serves The Lord!” I said AMEN to that!

I know my past is not perfect (I am sure people will still look down on me) but I am thankful that I can repent my sins and be forgiven. I can start walking on the right path now and it just thrills me so much that my girls want to follow that path with us.

This post really means a lot to me and thank you so much for letting me share it!

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