His Promises Kept

How many of you feel frazzled, at your ropes end, and/or just plain exhausted? Motherhood is no joke at times. When we just had Anna, it wasn't that bad actually. I remember thinking, "Oh this isn't bad. What are people talking about?" When we had Olivia, things changed. It's amazing what adding another child to bunch can do. As much as I love and adore my girls, being a parent is hard and exhausting, but in the end - rewarding. Do you ever feel like this picture below? I totally stole this image from Google, but the concept behind it I think reflects a lot of us and how we feel. The house is a mess, kids are doing whatever and you just don't care, dishes are in the sink, your hair is a mess, and you just don't have the energy to deal with it all. Some of us might even be counting down the minutes until bedtime because you know you'll be able to just sit, relax, and not do anything. Then again, maybe some of us take that time to clean up the house...

I've been doing a devotional about being a better wife for Steve. There is always room for improvement in all areas of life, including our marriage and relationship with our husbands. Did you know that we were called to be a certain type of wife to our husbands? God created Eve to be a help-mate to Adam. He created her to walk beside him. Some of you might not like what I'm about to write, but God even called us to submit to our husbands. In 1 Peter 3 it says that we, wives, need to accept the authority of our husbands. In 1 Corinthians 11:3 it even says, "...The head of every man is Christ, the head of woman is man, and the head of Christ is God." It also says in 1 Corinthians 11:9, "And man was not made for woman, but woman was made for man." Basically, husbands are the head of us, and we are to submit to their authority.  Woah, wait, what!? That might be a hard pill to swallow, but let's look at what the word "submit" really means...

Being October means lots of different awarenesses month. We have breast cancer awareness, SIDs awareness, and pregnancy and infant loss awareness. This month is also national adoption month. More people than you might know or realize go through pregnancy and infant loss, and the month of October is time to make this taboo subject a bit more known.  My situation is a bit different I feel like. The 2 miscarriages that I had to deal with were very early on. The first miscarriage was at 5 weeks back in 2004. The second was around 6 weeks at the beginning of June of 2016. They both hurt and stung, and we did grieve, but I felt like I was able to overcome these losses a lot quicker than some other women who are/were much farther along than I was. According to Wikipedia, the Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Movement began in the United States in 1987. On October 25, 1988, President Ronald Reagan designated the entire month of October 1988 as Pregnancy and Infant Loss Aware...

I am not sure how many of you heard, but on 10/1/17 around 10pm PST, a very tragic event took place in Las Vegas. It is being deemed as the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history, as around 59 people lost their lives that day and over 400 people were injured. These are innocent people enjoying an outside concert when the massacre took place from a near by hotel. People are saying that the person who committed this act is senseless, deranged, and even psychotic. However, only thing one thing crosses my brain when it comes to something like this - he is missing Jesus. The person responsible for the many lives lost is Stephen P. He is a multimillionaire and a major gambler. A lot of our brains cannot fathom the reasoning, as in reality, it should be hard for us to comprehend this. However, we need to stop and really think about this whole situation. We have a hole in our heart that can only be filled by God. We can try to cram all kinds of things into this void, but in reality we can...

How many of you enjoy watching your husband play, talk, read, teach, and be silly to your kids? I enjoy every moment and sound that that moment produces. We have struggled for so many years, and longed for those moments and sounds that it just take my breath away now hearing them. Anna's laugh when she plays with her daddy, comes from her toes. Her eyes dance with a huge smile on her face. When her daddy comes home from her, she lights up and just yells "DADDY!" I know he loves to hear her say his name along with the shirks she produces from that little body as they play. He's basically a big kid at heart anyway, so I know he enjoys every minute of it.  When Anna gets up in the morning, she stands at the top of the stairs and says, "Daddy?" I usually have to tell her, "Awe, baby. I'm sorry, but daddy is at work. You'll see him a little later today though." She is a little sad sometimes when I say that, or sometimes she just repeats...

How many of you laugh at the littlest things? Like, they might not be funny to other people, but you just crack up about it. I do that a lot with my 2 year old. She does the funniest things in my eyes, and then I go to tell others and they are like....aaaahhhh.....then I'm like, whatever, you're loss. There are so many things that Anna does that just makes my day. From the random way she decides she wants to walk, to the way she decides to make her voice. Well the other day I was taken back on what she did and said. I just got done nursing Olivia and was putting myself back together. I need to back up a minute. I have these inserts that I take out before I feed Olivia. Anna likes to play with them while I'm nursing from time to time. While I was putting myself back together and about to put the inserts in, Anna says, "No Anna's." I said "No honey, mommy needs these." She then lifts up her shirt and says, "My boob!". I laughed so hard! Lat...

Well, it happened! Olivia was able to finally roll from her back to tummy officially yesterday. She has been working hard on this and would get stuck and then mad because she was stuck. It was that darn arm that got in the way when she would turn. She's been able to roll from tummy to back since around 2 months, but now she has both movements. Crazy how fast they grow. Makes me a bit sad too. Our dog, Bear, is not a fan of the kids when they are on the move. He's weird. We started joking that now that Olivia is rolling over, she's going to be chasing him before he knows it. Even my mom was like, "Watch out Bear!" It makes me laugh.       ******************************************************************************************** So I am going to switch gears a bit and talking about nursing. How many of you enjoy nursing? I know some people struggle with not producing enough. I also know the flip side of that where they produce way to much. But regardless ...

How many of you you enjoy rocking your babies? I know I do. When Anna was born, I was given a book called Baby Wise . Over all the book was really good and it gave me a lot of knowledge since I was a first time mom. There are a few things in there though that I just don't agree with. The biggest for me is the "cry it out" method. First, I want to say that if you use that method, that is totally fine. I will not judge as I have a few friends that do this method. I have also had to use this method from time to time but I, personally, do not make it a habit.  This book did help me in a lot of other areas though. It helped to give me signs or reasons on why Anna would wake not long after putting her down during naps. It also helped in other areas in growth and development, like in the feed/wake/sleep cycle. This really helped me understand why it was so important for them to get full feedings in. So I do recommend the book, even though there are some aspects of it that I do...

I'm sure most of you moms out there that work will agree with me saying this: Working sucks! I would love  to be an at home mom that didn't have to worry about working. I do work from home, which is a major plus, but it still sucks. I am not a fan of having someone else come and take care of my kids. Now, let me back up a bit and say that I am completely bless to A. be working from home and B. having our sitter come to the house to watch the girls. This allows us to be a bit more flexible than most jobs and daycares would allow. I am not going to lie, I totally loved being off for 16 weeks with the babies. I didn't even think about work or how many days I had left or anything. It was so nice. I went back to work about 2 and half weeks ago now, and it just rips my heart out knowing that I can't spend every minute with them anymore. However, it is nice to be able to still see them and hear them. That makes this mommy's heart feel better. After Anna came in to our fa...

A year ago was when we transferred 2 little embabies. They were so beautiful! The process was not easy. Let me start from the beginning. I started working for a company shortly after moving here to Utah back in 2015. After already being hired, we got on the subject of Anna and how she is adopted. My co-worker then proceeds to tell me that our insurance actually covers infertility treatments. WHAT!? One of the biggest reasons why we decided to jump into adoption and not do infertility treatments is because of the cost. With adoption, we felt more people would be more willing to help financially then to help with infertility treatments. We decided to look more into the process and found a doctor that we met with the end of 2015. We did not start the journey until the beginning of 2016. Through some testing, we did finally find out that my AMH levels  were very low, like .1. With knowing this, we decided to try injections. The first round got us pregnant, but sadly we lost...

So it's been awhile since I made laundry soap because the way I was making it, I didn't like. I finally decided to try a different recipe and go forth with making it again (it saves so much money in the long run too). These are the products I used. Yup! That's it! I do want to make note about the bar soap. This is where I stirred away from as I had a hard time finding it. My suggestion is don't do it! If you have to, order Fels-Naptha online. You can purchase it through Amazon  if you need to. It is so worth it when you do. You can purchase the Borax and Super Washing Soda in a combo on Amazon. Click  here  to view and or purchase it if you would like. So the first thing you need to do is shave the bar down. This is what mine looked like. The start of the shaving End result from the shaving Once you do that, pour the full bar into a bowl of some sort. I then added 1 cup of each the Borax and Super Washing Soda. I then mixed it up. That...

Hey guys! I know it has been an extremely long time since I've written on here, but I have decided to start blogging again! So a lot has happened since the last time I wrote. My daughter, Anna, is now 2 and a half and is a big sister to Olivia. She joined our family in May of 2017 through IVF (that's another story to come).  So, I am going to start this blog like I'm starting a new blog all together. Welcome to our blog. This is a place where you will find us being real and living life to it's fullest. We have been married for 14 years now, and have 2 beautiful daughters. Our story is not your typical story. It is a very well designed story made from God. Our life has had some major ups and downs as we struggled with infertility for many years. Anna's story is so unique, I cry and get the goose bumps every time I talk or think about it. She is in our family because of a very brave woman who decided that placing her for adoption was the best for her. We h...