Martina McBride's song "Anyway" talks about things that might not ever come to be, that might scare or intimidate you, that may never be appreciated, or that might not even be accepted, but you do them anyway because you know it's good for you and it's where your heart and hope lie. Therefore, knowing that how my family acts, how we look, what we choose to enjoy, or even what we say and believe may not be appreciated or accepted, I still want us to be who we are anyway...do it anyway.
Saturday night of Easter weekend we continued our long running tradition of going over to my parent's house to dye Easter eggs. My mom always has a couple of dozen eggs ready for us all to enjoy coloring. Aaris has been able to do everything independently for a couple of years now. For the first time Titus was pretty much independent this year as well. That was fun. He loves to do things "all by myself" as he puts it. My mom's is the best helper though and jumps in right when needed. She also had a fun new design trick this year. She helped to wrap rubber bands around some of the eggs before we put them in the dye color. The egg changes color except for where the rubber band was. I liked putting polka dots on a couple of mine. Aaris's favorite egg was a pink one that had a cross drawn on it. Skylyn pretty much just played with Papaw. We all had a really fun time.
Boy, with 3 kids, our house on the market, and every weekend packed full of activities I have really fallen behind in my posts. So, here we go with trying to catch up.
Aaron's brothers and sister-in-law and niece came into town to all be together for Easter. We spent Saturday letting the kids help Poppy (Aaron's dad) in his vegetable garden. They loved finding worms and digging in the dirt. After that we helped the kids cut out sugar cookies. It was fun seeing them repeatedly pick out their favorite shape be it a cross, an egg, a butterfly, a flower, or a bunny. We then got to dye Easter eggs. There is just something so exciting about watching a plain white egg evolve into a beautiful treasure of color. We then all enjoyed a homemade lunch prepared by Mamaw (Aaron' mom).
Friday, April 10, 2009 (also Good Friday) was Aaris's first annual Holy Heart Day. This is the one year anniversary of Aaris's open heart surgery to repair her congenital heart disease. On this day she went from having a hole in her heart to having a holy heart.
We hope to start the tradition of always finding some way to give back on this day since she was given to so greatly. This year we went to the post office and mailed her cut off hair to Locks of Love.
Other special things we did included making her a Holy Heart Day t-shirt, having a heart shaped sandwich for lunch, making heart cupcakes in the afternoon, going to Going Bananas (a large building full of air-filled bouncy houses, slides and obstacle courses) and eating dinner with all of our family at Cafe 1626.
Aaris is full of energy and has really become a very lovey-dovey girl. She loves to love on people with hugs and kisses and loves to loved on in the same way. It also brings her great joy to find ways to help people and make them feel special. But, still, what thrills me the most is how much she loves God and Jesus! She has even started asking to eat crackers and juice almost daily so that she can remember Jesus.
I still feel so honored and beyond grateful that God healed Aaris for us and that she is a strong and beautiful hearted child of His now one year later. I'm looking forward to a lifetime of these celebrations!
Aaron went to our church's annual men's retreat this weekend, so the kids and I were by ourselves. I needed to think of things to do while alone with them in order to survive. I called up my dear friend, Leslie, who takes great pictures and who has a neighbor with a beautiful wild flower yard and organized a time to go take bluebonnet pictures. We got some great hand-me-down clothes that matched for Aaris and Titus, and Skylyn wore one of Aaris's baby dresses. It was beautiful weather, and despite my anxiousness the kids did great. Here are some of the many pictures. Again, thanks Leslie for helping me with the kids and for snapping some pictures of Skylyn and me.
SURPRISE!!! That is exactly what I got at 3:00 am in the morning one year ago today. I had been feeling funny for about a week and always hot, never able to cool off. I woke up from a dream where I was taking a pregnancy test. Well, I really needed to go to the bathroom, so I figured, why not. I looked in the back of my cabinets and found an extra left over test. I waited 3 minutes almost falling back to sleep and found myself looking at a plus sign on the pregnancy test. WHAT!?!?! Needless to say it took me awhile to fall back to sleep again. The next day after work the kids and I told Aaron the big news with new "Big Brother" and "Big Sister" shirts. That evening Aaron's parents invited us to meet them for dinner, so they found out the surprise news as well. We had dinner again with them tonight and this time we were holding Skylyn now 4 1/2 months old. It's amazing how our lives have changed in one year. I didn't know I needed her. I didn't plan on her coming, especially when she did. But, let me tell you, I don't know how I could live without her. I love you Skylyn and I'm so happy that God knew better then we did.
Okay, so all I can say is, "Thank goodness love is patient and can wait." So very sorry Aaron that I haven't had the time to organize and post this entry until now.
Valentines this year was Aaron's project and he once again pulled off a very memorable and special day full of surprises. All I could pull off was making him chocolate covered strawberries. My dear friend Karen and her two kids came over Friday morning and we all made chocolate covered strawberries together for our two husbands. It was hard keeping the kids from wanting to eat them all while they were making them.
The rest of the weekend started with Aaron letting me know that the kids would be staying with my parents on Friday night of Valentine's weekend. (mom and da: y'all are amazing...thank you!) That alone could have been the one and only gift I received and I would have been ecstatic. Well, it wasn't. (side note: we then took the kids to Chuck-E-Cheese on Thursday night to celebrate Valentines with them.) I dropped the kids off at my mom's office Friday afternoon around 4:40 pm. I then drove to Aaron's work where our weekend began. Aaron played me the song "Dancing Queen" and told me that was the theme for the weekend. Therefore, everything we did had something to do with dancing or queens. I also received a scroll, because of course every queen has scrolls that she reads from, declared things in, and such. Inside the scroll where 11 games of blank 'hang-man' games. I would be playing hang-man to always reveal to me what our next adventure would be. I also drew different types of queen cards form card decks to help with the clues. The first word ended up being 'parlor' (a queen's palace has a parlor). We then drove to the restaurant Catfish Parlor for dinner. YUM! The second word was 'hearts' (for the 'queen of hearts'). One of my favorite candies are conversation heart candies. Aaron gave me a couple of boxes of them. Double Yum. After that came the word 'Shakespeare' which led us to the Wells Branch public library where they were serving chocolate fondue and having a showing of the movie "Shakespeare in Love". After that came the word 'regal' (because queens are regal). We then went to the Regal Cinema theatre and watched the movie "He's Just Not That Into You". We wrapped up the evening with me surprising him with the chocolate covered strawberries we had made.
Saturday morning I got to sleep until 9:00 am. Awesome! My word for this on the scroll was 'beauty rest'. I then was awoken to breakfast in bed which involved a cinnamon roll donut from my favorite donut shop. I also had an envelope to open on my tray. Inside was a gift certificate from a lady's business who does chores for people. Aaron had gotten me a gift certificate to have 72 loads of laundry done. That came to about 6 loads of laundry every 2 weeks for the next 6 months that I can have done. He knows that with 3 kids that is the most time consuming chore that I have to do. My word for that on the scroll was 'servant'. After I got ready for the day I played hang-man again and revealed the word 'protector' (a queen is surrounded by people to protect her). We then went to see the movie "Taken" because Liam Neison is his daughter's protector. After the movie my hang-man word was 'dairy' for the restaurant Dairy Queen. Yes, it's not the most glamour place, but it does have one of the best foods ever: ice-cream blizzards. I love ice-cream blizzards but never go to get them because I would want to order the biggest one they have and eat the whole thing for my meal which is not the best example for my kids. But, Aaron let me do just that. I did order a side salad and ate that first before I indulged myself. After that I played hang-man again and my word ended up being 'hip-hop' (the style of dance). Aaron then did a very brave and selfless thing. He took us to the dancing school downtown for a hip-hop dance class. I love dancing but Aaron is not so comfortable with the idea. It was sooooo fun, yet sooooo hard. There are a lot of steps involved and a lot of work involved to get your body to loosen up and let go yet be coordinated enough to move with style. Anyway, it was a great experience. I think the most interesting thing to people in the class was not our lack of dancing ability but our matching "I love you" and "I love you too" bright red shirts". It was then home to get ready for our big finale.
We were going to an event called "Second Chance Prom" put on by another church, but attended by some friends at our church. My mom still had my actual high school prom dress so I squeezed into it, and tried to attempt to pull off some type of up-do with my hair. Aaron once again pulled out the scroll where I played to reveal the word 'carriage'. Aaron had signed us up to take a horse drawn carriage ride in downtown Austin. It was leaving from the Four Season's hotel. He dropped me off at the entrance and attempted to go park the car himself. Oh, and did I mention that my parents let us borrow their red T-bird car to drive around in for Valentine's Day! Way cool! Anyway, while I was waiting inside for Aaron to show up I started to hear a lot of commotion. Suddenly a lot of men in dark suits starting coming through the doors and as I looked at them I noticed that they were wearing ear pieces - like the secret service would wear. Just as I was taking all of this in former president, Bill Clinton, walks by me in a bright shirt, light blazer, nice jeans and cowboy boots. What?!?! He stopped to say hi to a woman and her daughter who obviously new that he was there and asked for a picture with him. I just stood there dumbfounded with my camera case on my shoulder. He then quickly entered an SUV with a lot of the secret service men and then a motor-cade of several other SUVs full of them all drove off. At that point, still in shock, I look across the covered entry to see our good friend and Aaron's business partner Steven Drachenburg and a date of his walking up to the hotel. It seemed like I was just running into everyone. They stopped to talk to me and then he revealed that he and his date were there to ride in the carriage with us. Oh my, what a fun surprise. His date didn't know about the carriage until then and got surprised as well. Aaron then showed up to have the valet park our car because he had no luck. We took pictures and then had a fun ride through downtown. On our ride some other people from our church rode up beside us in their car and waved. This time it really was random and not a planned meeting by Aaron. After that we drove to the 'Second Chance Prom' where I played my last hang-man. I was sure being a four letter word it would be 'Prom', but Aaron through me for a loop and the word ended up being 'Ball' because that's what queen's give at their palaces. We had a great time with Monte and Lori Poppe and Chad and Kara Dennis along with some of their friends. We ate good food and danced to really fun old-school songs. We finally got to my parent's house to pick up the kids at 10:00 pm. We just got Aaris and Titus so that we wouldn't have to mess up Skylyn's sleeping pattern. Since our church's baby dedication was the next morning and my parents would be attending, they just brought her to us then.
Like I said, it was a non-stop, fun at every turn Valentine's Day...or as we call it around here "Aaron and Jessica Day".
I still can't believe that it's been done, but it has. Today Aaris got her hair cut! Ever since Skylyn's been born I haven't had time to really do Aaris's hair. It needed a lot of combing and fixing and I just didn't have the free hands or free time. Aaron was getting tired of having to work at getting the tangles out of her hair after bath and kept mentioning cutting Aaris's hair. We were going to get it cut in Lubbock by our dear friend Christy Taylor, but we didn't make it to Lubbock. So, yesterday, I called my hairstylist and got an appointment. We got Titus's hair and Aaris's hair cut. I must say that I wanted to badly just change my mind and walk out of the salon. But, instead I just cried hard. I loved Aaris's long hair! She did have enough hair to donate it to Locks of Love to give to another little girl who needs a wig. She looks adorable, but I will miss the long curls and the up-do's. But, as Aaris said when I was crying, "Mom, it will grow back." I must say that she looks very grown up now. She'll be starting school in the Fall and now she looks like she should. My little girl is truly growing up too fast right in front of me.
