Clapping

Alli has recently started clapping more and more when we ask her to. Here is a short video of her clapping. I can only get her to do it once but it's still cute.

ADORABLE!

I just made these earrings for my etsy shop. They are made out of buttons!! You know you want a pair!

Newest nephew

I have always been one of those people that gets very emotionally attached to family. So it eats me up when I can't see some of them as often as I would like. This week is a prime example of that. Brittany and Jay (Ben's youngest sister) went into early labor with their first child Michael. He was born about 2.5 weeks early. Everything went fairly smooth but he was having some breathing difficulty and they were keeping a close eye on him. About 24-36hours old, they realize Michael has had a collapsed lung and had to be air lifted to the closest NICU. They are currently in Alaska and the closest NICU was a good distance. So little Michael and his dear parents have been in our thoughts and prayers as well as many others. He is doing much better and looks to be getting out of the NICU by Thursday. With all the crazy events, pictures have been few and far between. Marilyn sent us a couple the other day and Jay sent these today. I must say, Michael is a little stud!
These pictures make me want to fly out to Alaska and hold this little angel in my arms. After having Alli, and after seeing all these adorable little babies born since Alli, I can see now why people want to jump back into having another one. **Disclaimer** No this does NOT mean we will be trying again soon. I can just understand that motherly tug on your heart to fill your home with the precious gifts from God. My life has never been as blessed as it has to have had Alli. If I could provide, protect and have the energy to raise a whole house full, then I would want just that, but unfortunately this is not the case. I am so thankful to have what I do have. Anyway, I just wanted to share these sweet pictures with you all. We are very happy for Britt and Jay and hope they are able to return home soon with their bundle of joy!

9 Month Check up

Alli had her 9 month check up today. She weighs in at 17 lbs 6oz and she is 25 3/4 inches. At 6 months Alli was 15lbs and 25 1/4 in....so yes you read that right...in 3 months time she only grew 1/2 inch in length!! Doc says this can happen at this age. He said their height can do a stair step pattern. So he is expecting her to gain some length by 1 year. He said she looks great. We talked a lot about the fact that she has no desire to crawl/walk/roll..haha My baby is just lazy. She wants to move...she just doesn't want to put in the work to move herself. So Doc says to force her into tummy time and to just keep working with her. If she doesn't show signs of more mobility by her next visit then we may explore physical therapy options for her. So...Alli needs to get on the move. He doesn't mean crawl necessarily, but he would like to see her being able to move from belly to sitting up position and from sitting up to belly. We'll see what happens.

What's one more thing?

Well we had some excitement last night. I was up late making bows while Ben played XBOX with some buddies from work. We finally went to bed fairly late but Ben decided he wanted to get a drink real fast and get something from his truck. While getting a drink, he happened to notice someone walking by the house in our side yard. Ben walked around to the front door and someone was shaking our doorknob trying to get in. Ben ran upstairs and grabbed the shotgun and told me to call the cops. Needless to say he ran downstairs and scared the holy you know what our of whoever was trying to break in at 1230. The cops came and searched our neighborhood but the guy took off behind our houses where there is a fairly large forest area he could hide in. Lovely! Hopefully it was just some random occurrence and won't happen again. I'm just thankful Ben was home! Lucky for me, I have a cop as a neighbor and he gave me his personal cell to call any time!!! Love good neighbors.

Today we planned on making a nice lazy rainy day. Unfortunately, while trying to take pictures of my new bows for my etsy shop, my camera decided after 4.5 yrs that it didn't want to take any more pictures. So....what now....I need a new camera to take pictures of my bows and my darling little girl! So I spent most of the day researching. I would've loved to have gotten the camera Shannon and Ashlie both have because they just rave about it, but I really didn't want to spend that much money if I could help it. So I found the next best thing, and so far I love it. Here are a few pictures I got while playing with it.

Miss Alli reaching out for the new camera while I was trying to grab a cute shot of her! Oh yeah did I tell you guys she has 4-5 teeth coming in on top???!!!

Now here are some pictures of the storm rolling in tonight. Not bad for night shots. I've never had a camera that could take night pictures. I mean seriously!

Oh the moon...love the moon

yay....I can see moon craters! Love it! It's not a 20x zoom but 15x isn't too bad! :)

Here's to praying for a much quieter night!

Planting makes me happy

After realizing that our weeping cherry tree was dead, Ben and I have been on the lookout for something to replace it. We've been looking at all the local plant shops and finally found a deal at Lowes. We found a decent size Japanese Maple, white Azaleas, and Impatiens. The Impatiens will bush out about a foot each, the Azaleas about 3-4 ft each. I can't wait to see them get big!
I love our little Japanese Maple.
Pretty pretty

Our crazy ride

This has been a crazy start to the week! Here's what's going on in our life right now:

• Alli has figured out how to clap. It's so stinkin adorable! If I could catch her on camera I would. I haven't done it yet.
• We planted a little garden at mom's. We planted some tomatoes, onions, and peppers.
  
• Ben's email got hacked into yesterday. We apologize if any of you got crazy emails sent from his old email address. This is going to be an ongoing headache for him as he tries to retrieve his contact list and any important information he had saved in his email.
• We have been in limbo for months....MONTHS about whether or not the city would promote the fire fighters who applied for driver. We finally found out that it had been approved but didn't know who was being promoted. We continued to pray that if it was right that Ben would get this promotion. Well today we found out that Ben was once again denied the promotion. We know there is a higher purpose. We may not see it right now but God has never steered us wrong. The Lord has always blessed us beyond what we deserve. So we know there is something else Ben needs to be doing right now. He is going to continue to pursue his associates and then his bachelors (which the city is paying for). So...for now...its all good. We will see what other doors the Lord opens for us.
  
• I was recently informed that the state of TN is implementing new licensing rules for those of us who work in Sleep. It is going to be an extreme headache but I have to have my license in place before I can go back to work. I have to renew my CPR certification, pay for a TN background check, pay to have the BRPT send my test scores to the state, possibly have to pay Vol. State to send an official transcript to the state, get letters of recommendation from doctors, get the application notarized, and then finally pay for my license. This new licensure also requires a change in my continuing education credits. The national registry (brpt) requires a minimum of 5 a year as long as I have 50 over 5 years, but the state is going to require a minimum of 10 a year. So this means I have to make sure I get 10 CECs a year....which also cost $$. This is on top of all the CECs that Ben has to stay on top of for his paramedic license. Ugh...thankfully I've found some online webinars that I can take but I can only use 30 towards my 50, so I have to come up with 20 some other way. Anyway, its a lot of work to keep a license.
• Finally some good news, Ben's little sister, Brittany is currently giving birth or Michael Jay Mangum. I can't wait to meet me newest little nephew. Unfortunately, they are living in Alaska right now so it will be a while before I will get to meet him... ;( .
  

Anyway, that's the update on us. Alli is getting so big. This monday will be her 9 month check up. I can't wait to see how big she is. She has become quite the talker...she loves to scream yayayaya. haha