Halle's 3rd Birthday!

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A Little Catch Up!

Considering that I cannot remove my blog from my gmail signature (I really have tried. It won't go away) and half the time when I reply to someone I forget to delete it, I figured I might pick it back up again. One reason being that we are possibly moving soon to plant a church in Knoxville. There will be lots going on there to keep people updated about! Also, the occasionally crafty thing people ask about. If I make a post I can just send that over! We'll see how I do. I'm not optimistic.  :)

So I haven't posted since Autumn's little scare at the beach. She broke out with hand, foot, and mouth disease a few days later so we are hopeful that's what caused it! No episodes since! Just watching and praying.

Basically, I'm just going to post some pictures (or links to) since then! That trip to the beach ended up being a great one!


Here is a smilebox of our annual trip to Oake's Farm Corn Maze! We LOVE that place!

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Here is a link to most of the significant pictures from October - December! This is terrible, I know. 

Halle's First Snow!! Here is a link to the rest of the pictures :) 

 Blake's Smirk!

Our darling little Autumn. 

I took a little "Kissing Booth" photo shoot for Valentines Day. The boys had no clue they had kisses on them! 

My kiddos. Halle WILL NOT LOOK. Ever. Period. For any photo.

My niece, Aliza, and nephew, Carter! He's a total ham! I like the lightening when I took these better than the time of day I did my kids. Oh well! Naps complicate things. :) 

My nephew, Kyden! I wish his little brother could've been there! He has such a sweet smile too!

Anyways... that should sum up lately!

Autumn Details- From our Facebook update.

With all the details floating around about Autumn, I thought it could be helpful to clarify what happened!

Tuesday around noon Greg brought Autumn to me on the beach and mentioned she felt a little warm. We thought little of it. She just got out of her crib after a longer than usual nap. After having a great time in some tide pools I sat under an umbrella to feed her a bottle. She quickly "fell asleep" and after holding her for a little while I realized her eyes weren't all the way shut. I tried to get her to respond but her eyes were glazed, she was unresponsive, and her body felt stiff. I quickly took her inside afraid she was too hot or maybe dehydrated. Once inside I realized something was wrong so I went to set her down and change clothes in case I needed to take her to a walk-in-clinic. But, when I sat her down, she fell over sideways stiff with her arms out and her eyes began rolling back into her head. I called 911 immediately and the Paramedics where there within 5 minutes. To be honest, with risk of seeming over-dramatic, I thought she was going to die. I have never seen anyone have a seizure and it never entered my mind that it what it could be. It is very emotional for me to think back on this moment and could really use your prayers for strength in this area. Anyways... The paramedic immediately mentioned she looked post-seziure (except he used a technical term ). Obviously this was a huge relief for us. Greg was on the beach and came back to the room to find paramedics helping littleAutumn.

She loosened up a little in the ambulance but she never responded and her eyes never shifted from staring off. Once in the hospital, about 20 minutes later, she began shaking and her eyes began fluttering and rolling again. They immediately put her on a very high dose of anti-seizure medicine and she calmed down shortly after. She never woke and about 10-15 minutes later she began having another seizure on one side. This passed quickly and she seemed to calm down. They quickly did blood tests, a CT Scan, and a chest X-ray. All came back clear! Because her seizures are not typical for febrile seizures and her first was so long and strong they decided to transfer her to the pediatric ER at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. Before we left her temperature was 103.8. We're hoping this is an indication that it was a febrile seizure.

Greg and I decided that I would ride with Autumn in the ambulance and he would pick up some clothes and meet us in Charleston. The ambulance paramedic was super-sweet and offered to play some baby music for Autumn on his tablet. The song that played first? A kids musical version of It Is Well With My Soul... God is good! This was such an encouragement to me! I tried to start a conversation with him and asked if he went to church anywhere. He responded "Yes Ma'am, but that isn't what saves me." He totally turned it on me! We ended up having an awesome conversation about Christ, what we are learning, and the sufficiency of Scripture. This was WAY better than I thought the ride would be! 

MUSC was awesome and Autumn was quickly given an adorable little gown, baby toys, and an Elmo movie! Everyone was so super sweet. We spent the evening talking with the various doctors andAutumn had an EEG (no fun!) around 3am. That came back clear and we are thankful there was no hidden seizure activity still going on! After talking with neurologists the doctors decided it was safe to send Autumn home. We still aren't positive what happened. Because of the severity of her first seizure she is at a higher risk for further seizures. Her episode was not typical for febrile but that's the only thing we can narrow it down to as of now because her tests all came back clear. 

We arrived back at the condo around 7:00am today and she has been sleeping on and off all day. She is having a harder time crawling and doing normal things. We were told this could be due to the duration of her first seizure and all the trauma her little body went through! We will continue to watch her throughout the night and will take her back to Charleston if she doesn't get better. Please pray that any possible infection lingering would heal quickly and that she would have no further complications!

While the test were hard, we are SO thankful for God's providence in technology and medicine! We are also rejoicing that we have a glorious God who will use any circumstance to conform us to the image of our merciful Savior!

        Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come, 

                    let this blest assurance control, 

                    that Christ has regarded my helpless estate, 

                    and hath shed his own blood for my soul. 

                    My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought! 

                    My sin, not in part but the whole, 

                    is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more, 

                    praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul! 

It is well!!! For those who repent of their sin and put their faith in Christ, he's already taken care of our greatest need. Why would we not trust him in anything else?! Thank you all so much for your prayers and love to us during this time! I attached a picture of Autumn in the Children's ER. Some of her medicine made her wired and she was going NUTS with that toy!

Autumn is crawling!

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Our trip to see Thomas!

We took the kids to Chattanooga to see a life sized Thomas the Train! They loved it so much. There were so many things to do. Blake wasn't so sure about the big Sir Topham Hatt so we didn't venture over there.  The old trains were so neat to see and I've never ridden in an actual train car so that was fun. Blake knew it wasn't really Thomas but I'm pretty sure Halle was convinced!

We realized we were less than a mile from Greg's Aunt Julie and when we called she told us both of Greg's cousins were in plus his aunt, uncle, and Papaw from Knoxville were there! What an added bonus.

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Kitchen from an Entertainment Center

A friend of mine recently recieved a homemade kitchen for her daughter from her father-in-law. Needless to say Halle LOVED it when we went to visit them. I knew that I couldn't do anything that required heavy tools (like anything besides a screwdriver and paint) or craftmanship skills, but I really wanted to make one so I decided to try! It was a little more time consuming than I thought but not complicated. The hardest part was using a drywall saw to cut the sink hole. Basically it was paint and hardware!

Yes.. I'm watching Emma.

Jake and the Neverland Pirates Birthday Party!

Blake, my (almost) 4 year old, LOVES Jake and the Never Land Pirates! So what am I to do when they make no birthday party products? I searched all over and came up with a few ideas I hope can be helpful. I haven't blogged in a while but I hope this can help any moms out their scouring the Internet like I did!

You can watch the scrapbook to get some visual ideas, but here are a few pointers:

Jake Costume:

• Blue t-shirt from the dollar store (vest)
• White t-shirt from the dollar store (shirt)
• Yellow duck tape (vest)
• Black string (I used curling ribbon!) (shirt)
• Husbands black tie (with permission of course!) or black fabric (waistband)
• Strip of red fabric (headband)

Just cut the sleeves off the navy shirt and outline with the yellow tape! I used a bottle cap and box cutters to make the buttons. You can make the collar "pop up" by folding it and laying a book on it overnight. I cut a small v in the top of the white shirt and laced the black string in it. Also cut slits in the arms. I did get the vest idea from this website. I just simplified it some because I'm not that handy. :)

Cake decor:

I printed pictures of the characters and laminated them leaving a "V" shape at the bottom to dig into the cake. I read on the Disney site that they allow Jake pictures to be printed! I asked Wal-Mart to make a cake with a beach scene and it worked out fine.

You can go to this website from Disney to print off hats and other fun stuff. I laminated the hats and put them together with brads to make them more durable.

The tableware is from Target. I love it! It's cheap and the pirate theme isn't scary! The pirate banner is from the Dollar Tree. The pirate in the middle was a little intense so I covered it.

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I hope this is helpful to someone!!! It was a ton of fun. If you buy the Jake and the Neverland Pirates on DVD it comes with a music CD with lots of fun songs on it.