Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8:35-38

Thursday, November 17, 2011

November Fun

I can't believe it is already November...Thanksgiving is almost here.  I love Thanksgiving.  It has been a fun and busy month so far.  We had another appointment at the OB where we had an ultrasound. Everything went really well and the baby looks good.   I was 11 weeks when I had the ultrasound but the baby measured 11 weeks, 3 days.  There is a big baby in there.  I think it is a boy.  Savannah always measured so small, so the fact that this baby is measuring big makes me think it is a boy.  My doctor said he would do an ultrasound to find out the gender of the baby on December 23rd!  I am so excited.  I will only be 17 weeks, 0 days but he said they will probably be able to tell.  I am so glad we will know before Christmas.  We didn't think we would know until January.  Anyways, back to the ultrasound.  We were looking at the baby, and it was apparent that the baby was sleeping.  The baby's head was facing down (on the screen.)  Here is a picture of that.



The baby was moving a little but nothing to write home about.  So, my doctor poked my stomach a few times and the baby started moving all over.  It looked like it was a little annoyed that we woke it up.  It stretched out it's legs and turned it's back to us.  (If you know our dog Aspen, you know that she does the same thing when someone wakes her up when she is trying to sleep.  She usually lets out a loud groan while stretching out her arms and legs...usually to let you know you are being too loud.)  I'm pretty sure if we could hear inside the womb, we would have heard a loud groan saying please let me go back to sleep.  haha!  Here is a picture of the baby's legs stretched out.




At the beginning of November, we went down to Black Rock Mountain, GA for a reunion with my college girls.  (We invited the husbands this time.)  We rented two cottages for the weekend on top of the mountain.  The drive up was full of hairpin turns.  We were driving up it in the dark and I was so scared.  I kept telling Eric he was driving too fast around the curves but I realized that he was only driving 15 mph.  haha!  While there, we played games, ate, hiked, had Thanksgiving dinner, talked, prayed, and just had a good time.  We try to get together atleast once a year.  We usually are able to get together more because of weddings and babies.  I love these girls so much (and their families).  Here are a few pictures from our trip.








 We have also been busy getting ready for the holiday season.  I started working on Christmas decorations (sometimes I feel a little crafty) this week.  I turned our refrigerator into a snowman.  I have a few other Christmas crafts in mind, so hopefully they will turn out well.  (I am not very good at crafts and I am ok with that.)  I think the holidays will be hard this year with out our little Savvy G but she is in Heaven now, so we can be joyful even though we are sad and miss her.  There was a lady talking about a miscarriage she had 10 years ago.  She was telling us how her oldest son found out that she lost a baby and he told his mom, "I wish there were seven of us."  (There's only 6 b/c the miscarried baby is in Heaven.)  It was kinda cool to think about how the boy missed his brother or sister even though he had never even met her.  It was not the point the lady was making with her story, but that is one thing that stuck out to me.  I wonder if our future children will miss Savannah too even though they didn't get to meet her.

One more really fun thing I did was attend a sleepover with my friends I used to work with at Chatham Middle School.  We really wanted to play games like Dream Phone and Mall Madness, but none of us had those games with us.  We ended up playing an Office trivia game and watching movies.  It was super fun.  We will have to save our fun early '90s games for another time.  I think I might have Pretty Pretty Princess as well. 

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving!!!

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Cold Weather and Pumpkins

I know a lot of people in North Carolina like cold weather.  I am not one of those people.  I would be really happy if it stayed around 70 or higher with an occasional snow every now and then.  We used our fireplace for the first time (since it has been cold) and it was really nice but I still prefer warm weather.  Aspen does too.  If it gets too cold in the house, she will not move.  One night, two or three winters ago, we woke up in the middle of the night b/c it was super cold.  Eric got up to turn the heat up and I tried to interact with Aspen, and she wouldn't move.  We thought something was wrong with her...nope, she was just cold.  Now she has a sweater and a coat, so she is ready for the cold weather.  You can (sorta) see her coat here.  All the dogs received matching coats for Christmas last year.



As I have mentioned in previous blogs (I think :)), Eric and I really want to have lots of kids.  God chose to bless us right away with another little sugars (as in one baby)...so Savannah is a big sister.  We are almost 10 weeks now.  We were going to wait until 12 weeks to tell but for one thing it was super hard to wait. Also, even if we miscarry, this baby is still a person and we want people to know about it.  I had my first appointment on Friday at Atrium OB-GYN.  (I love that place.)  We went there when I was pregnant with Savannah.  It was nice to be around familiar people.  The nurse that took me back to the ultrasound room remembered me from before and gave me a big hug.  The baby looks good so far.  I was able to see it's little arms move around a little bit.  Here are a few pictures of the new baby:


This is a picture of the baby at 9 weeks.  The big part is the head (it is part Cunningham) and you can see the arms and legs a little bit.

This is at 6 weeks.  It kinda looks like a cocoon.  We did get to see the heartbeat!

The hardest part of the appointment was the family history part.  I had to go over the fact that Savannah was not with us anymore and all that happened with her...but the Lord blessed me so much.  The nurse that was going over this with me is a Christian.  She was encouraging me about how we might not always understand God's plan and so on.  I was so thankful for having her.  It made a tough situation easier.

One more thing I want to share.  Last Halloween I started a tradition.  (I got the idea from my friend who does this with her kids.)  Whatever my kid/kids dress up as for Halloween, I paint a pumpkin with that Character on it.  Last year Savannah was a ladybug, so my friend painted her this pumpkin:


This year, before we lost Savannah, we had already decided she was going to be a ballerina.  So I painted her a pumpkin (as I will every year) with a ballerina on it.  Also, I went ahead and painted a pumpkin for the new baby too.  Here are the pics:



That's all for now.  Thanks for all your prayers and love.  We really appreciate them all.

Ash