Easter

We had a great Easter holiday this year! I had been planning a big egg hunt for the boys and we had planned on doing it on Saturday, but then it ended up raining. So on a whim, Josh decided to make an Easter lunch for Shell, Dan, the boys and us after church and the day turned out to be gorgeous. We had the egg hunt first, then Dan and Josh took the boys down to the playground and we had lunch outside on the patio. We were hoping to go down to Southern IN to visit Josh's grandma but it didn't end up working out. Hopefully we'll get down there soon.

Here are some pictures of the boys hunting for eggs:

And here is Shell, Dan, Linc and Kowe relaxing on the hammock. Perfect hammock day!!
As always, Josh worked his magic. We made some deviled eggs and I got the idea from Mary in my office to dye the egg whites. They turned out pretty cute.

And here's a picture of our entire spread...salad bar, ham, homemade potato salad, corn and cadbury mini egg cookies. It was all delicious!

Cheap Date: Black Tie Style!

This past weekend, we were able to attend the HTM Black Tie Dinner. Since we went for work, we didn't have to pay for the tickets, so we figured that we would take advantage of the free dinner to enjoy another installment of our Cheap Date! Series. We haven't been too good about our cheap dates lately, but this was a fantastic one! We enjoyed getting all dressed up and eating some unique and new (to us) foods.

Here is a picture of us. Unfortunately, we forgot our camera at home, so Wendi sent me a few pictures. (Thanks, Wendi!) I would have taken pictures of Josh drinking lots and lots...and lots of wine, champagne, more wine, more champagne. Oh, the wine was a-flowin'! I drove that night, so I enjoyed some fabulous NOjitos! They were delicious non-alcoholic mojitos! Sooo delicious!

This is a picture of a giant shrimp with frozen gazpacho. It was very interesting. VERY spicy! At least mine was. The theme for the night was Chilean food, as we have a new chef in the department who is from Chile.
My favorite course of the night was this delicious soup. It was a squash soup served with two types of salsa on the spoon. You dipped the spoon in the soup and swirled it around to get the best tasting soup ever!!

Here is a picture of Wendi, Denise and I.

And here is a picture of me with Ali, the BTD President from last year, and Carter, the BTD President from this year (and hopefully next year, too)! I get to work with them on seating and invitations. SUCH a great group of students. They work for 8 months and the event is comprised of over 400 students. They learn every aspect of the service of a synchornized service dinner. It's such a neat experience. This year's guest speaker was Gale Gand. She has been on several Food Network shows as well as Top Chef. She did a book signing after the event and we all got a copy of her newest cookbook, "Brunches." Funny story: when Josh and I were getting our book signed, I told her she could make it out to Josh since he does all of the cooking in our house. She was impressed with this and said she hoped I did the dishes (ummm....). Then she complimented me on my necklace and was just such a sweet and personable lady. But when we looked at where she signed it, she made it out to John. We laughed.

Overall, it was a fabulous event and we had a great time. Best of all, it was a great date night with my handsome hubby!

snail mail

You know what will really brighten your day?
I'll tell you!

A few weeks ago I checked the mail and found this sweet letter in there from Griffin. He told Shell that he wanted to send me a letter, so he wrote it all out on the back of a colored picture that he had done at school.

He's such a sweetheart. Just the thing to brighten any day!!

Cheap Date! Take Two

We had the opportunity on Friday night to enjoy the second installment of our Cheap Date! Series. We enjoyed dinner at Adelino's followed by a Civic Theatre performance. Adelino's is a local tapas-style restaurant with lots of different and interesting things. Josh hadn't eaten there yet and we had a gift certificate that we'd gotten at the silent auction late last year, so we headed out before our show.

Here's Josh taking a taste of wine. They let me try it first in this tiny wine glass and I thought it was funny seeing him with it. Don't I have an adorable Valentine?!
And here is me with their signature Sangria. Unfortunately, it was too cold for me to be able to really enjoy it (because of the dental work I had done that morning). I had to drink it from a straw which didn't work out too well...sangria is for sipping, not for straw-drinking!! I learned that really quickly!The food was really good! And different. Every time I go, I love to get the goat cheese marinara sauce. It's nice and spicy (which Josh loves) but really good.
Here is a vegetable medley, it was also really good:
Here is the Mahi Mahi skewer. The glaze on top was fantastic:

Our favorite part of the main courses was this sausage-stuffed pepper. Mmmmmm...After dinner, we went to the Civic Theatre to see A Raisin in the Sun. We laughed because the average age of the people in the audience had to have been 70. There was a sea of white and grey hair!! I took a picture of it, but was afraid that someone might stumble upon this and be offended. :) But the show was good and we enjoyed our little date night. The Civic tickets were also from the silent auction, so in total, we spent less than $25 for a pretty fun date night! It's nice to change things up a bit. We get so used to doing the same things, goin to the same places, so our cheap dates are a fun way to switch it up.

Super Bowl!

We had a fun Super Bowl!! We were hoping for a Colts-Saints Super Bowl and were excited when it actually happened! For me, I knew I would be a happy camper no matter the outcome. We had Jeff and Laura over and Josh, Jeff and Laura were all rooting for the Saints.

One thing's for sure: we definitely had a great night full of delicious food, good friends and fun games!

And don't forget these two cuties...they also enjoyed lots of love and rubs from Laura and way too much food:Of course the vajunka had to make an appearance: My contribution was the football brownies (and the presentation!)...
Here's our spread:We had 7-layer dip with Josh's homemade guacamole. Ohhh my gosh, it was good!

We had jalapeno poppers (yuuummmy!):

Here is our game setup (complete with a shot of vajunka!). We played some Sequence and 9-Hole...and you will note that I have a really good hand in this picture! But don't let it fool you, Laura beat us all! Overall, it was a fantastic night! Lots of fun and it was really neat to see Drew Brees (Breesus, as many at Purdue are calling him!) win.

Weekend in Florida

A few weeks ago, Josh, Patty and I visited with Josh's grandpa in Sarasota for a long weekend. We had a really fun time despite having cold, rainy weather! We managed to eat our way through the greater Sarasota area, there's no doubt about that!!

One of our stops was to this huge statue. We had to be silly and get pics of ourselves and we also got some of Grandpa and Sue.Then we headed to the beach because Grandpa loves to feed the birds! Here he is showing us that the birds could hear him coming!
I do NOT like birds. They freak me out and I'm always the one to get pooped on, so Grandpa decided that it would be funny to chase me around and try to get the birds to come to me! Funny man! What you don't see in this picture is Grandpa running behind me throwing bread at me so the birds swarmed toward me! I swear he chased me around this shack at least 3 times!

Here are some pictures of the bird whisperer at work. It was really amazing to see the birds floating in front of him and they would catch the bread in the air.
Here's a cute picture of Josh, Grandpa and Patty:
Another day, we went to see the manitees. I wanted to get in and swim and cuddle and kiss them, but this was the closest we could get. Unfortunately, it was rainy when we went, but it was fun to watch them. They're so cute. We also got to see lots of stingrays playing and flying out of the water. They were feisty that day!

Later, we went to a beach in Treasure Island, where Grandpa and Patty and their whole family used to go every year. Here's a picture of Josh and his mom on the beach (it was coooold!):

And here is a picture of some birds that hang out in Grandpa's little neighborhood. One of the white ones actually goes into one of the houses down the street! The lady cuts up hot dogs in the shape of worms. Patty and Josh and Grandpa also fed them. The brown one became so fond of the treats Patty fed him that we hear he still comes to visit Grandpa every morning!

And I just thought this was a funny picture. It looks photoshopped but it isn't!

Like I mentioned before, we did a LOT of eating! We visited a delicious Amish restaurant that had been on Man vs. Food (yum!). We had yummy ice cream! We had delicious seafood and Josh loooved his fish tacos. And we visited this place below. It is a restaurant in a traincar with a circus theme. They own the original traincar that was used by John Ringling from the Ringling Brothers Circus. It's attached to the car shown below and they are renovating it. It was an interesting experience to say the least. Oddly enough, I was in the middle of listening to Water for Elephants (which is about a traveling circus that competes with Ringling Brothers) so visiting this was particularly interesting to me.

That, along with lots of games of 9 Hole and Sequence pretty much sums up our long weekend in Florida! We were so glad to get to spend some time with Grandpa.

results

We got the results of our chromosome screening yesterday and found out that our baby was a girl. We also found out that she had what is called Trisomy 21, which is where she had an extra 21st chromosome, more commonly known as Down Syndrome.

In many ways, this is good news. It means that our m/c couldn't have been prevented. It also means that we aren't at any greater risk of having another m/c than any other person in the world. It means that we can hopefully get pregnant again (who knows how long that will take) and we should be able to have a full-term, healthy baby. This is all great news and Dr. Jarrett assured us that we will get pregnant again. He was very happy with the results.

At the same time, it's very hard (for me, in particular) to process. Many babies are born with Down Syndrome and live full and joyful lives. Yes, I realize that this wouldn't have been a guaranteed thing and it's not ideal, but it's hard to get past the feeling that she still belongs with us, physical and mental disabilities or not. She would have been the absolute light of our lives. We would have loved her beyond words. We still do.

People can say, "It's probably for the best," all they want. I don't want to hear that. Yes, it probably was for the best. But I feel like the best thing would be for her to have lived. For her to have blessed our lives. I have always loved children with Down's for their ability to show their emotions and their love unconditionally and without hesitation. I have known several families who had a Down's child as well as "normal" kids and the Down's child was always the light of the entire family's universe. She would have been the light of our universe. There's no question about that. It feels like it might have been easier if she had a Trisomy that wasn't compatible with life.

With all of that being said, we are looking for closure on this. We never want to forget her. But we do need to try to move forward. And we are. We have decided to name her and have a few things planned to hopefully help us.

We hope that everyone will continue to pray for our little lady.

Mya Belle

In our hearts forever.

We both chose a name based on the meaning. I chose Mya because it means "great." Josh chose Belle as the middle name because it means "beautiful." She was and is a beautiful part of our lives forever.

Cheap Date! Series

First off, let me say that we had our appointment with our doctor today and we got the results of the genetic testing that they did on our baby. I will write another post about it soon, but for now, know that we are still thinking of our baby and though we certainly feel some closure, our hearts are still heavy. More to come soon...

But in the meantime, I will share with you a fun new adventure that we decided to embark upon. We recently took inventory and realized that after the holidays, birthdays, the silent auction in December, and some other events, we have quite an abundance of gift certificates! We have everything from food (lots of food!) to tickets to a local Civic Theatre show, tickets to a Purdue Convocation, a certificate for a glass blowing class, movie tickets....lots of fun things. So in an event to make the most out of everything that we have, tonight we began what we are calling our Cheap Date! Series. I'm pretty sure that we have a good several months' worth of date nights here, so we're going to get creative and have some fun. Most importantly, it is a great way for us to enjoy some time together and add a little creativity to our routine. So since we were already in Indy, we decided to make tonight our first Cheap Date! Josh's Aunt Sandy had given us a giftcard to Red Robin (looove!) for Christmas and we were able to have dinner for free! I didn't get any good pictures before we dug in (an don't even try to get between Josh and his Red Robin french fries!), so this will have to do. My favorite thing there is the delicious strawberry lemonade.
So that's what we're up to. Looking forward to some fun, cheap date nights coming up. More information soon about our results from the doctor.

12 Days of Giving, Day 5

For Day 5, I was so bummed to have to miss a huge event that my committee for Tippy Connect has been working on since August. Since our sponsorship of Big Brothers Big Sisters ends this month, we decided to put together a holiday celebration and invite kids who were in need of Bigs, along with fellow Tippy Connect members and other people from the community who had an interest in becoming a Big or learning about BBBS, and we held a Holiday Big Drive for BBBS. We put together stockings for the kids and collected games and school supplies for BBBS and the kids. Back in August, Josh and I took advantage of the great back-to-school sales and spent about $30 to get a TON of school supplies. We got all of the crayons you see in the box, along with just as many markers and some other supplies. Then at a few of our Tippy Connect After Hours, we were able to offer free appetizers to individuals who donated $5 or brought a game or school supplies, so some of those supplies are seen below, too. We raised just over $115, so we were able to use that money to buy some more things for the kids. And Josh was nice enough to help us out with the books you see below. They're from the Kohl's Cares for Kids program and they are leftovers, so Kohl's is able to donate them to local kids programs. So it was nice that each kid got to go home with a stocking full of candy and school supplies and also a book, and then BBBS had a lot of games and some books to keep there at the office for when the kids come there.

Josh and I had signed up to go to the Big Drive, but it turned out that it was held the evening of my surgery, so we had to miss it. I was excited to see that it made the top story of our local news, so I got to see how it turned out...a little bit at least. I'm pretty sure we had several people sign up to become Bigs and also someone who was interested in joining the BBBS Board, so I think the night was a real success. Josh and I are considering becoming a Big Couple so that we can spend time volunteering but still spend time together, too.

12 Days of GIving, Day 4

So I have obviously gotten a little sidetracked from doing my 12 Days of Giving. I am still hoping to complete it, I just may have to do a few things in one day...or it may go a little past Christmas. Either way, for Day 4, we chose the Almost Home Humane Society. There are so many needy pets and it's just heartbreaking. We got some things together to take over...and we were sure to even remember the cats! We got some dog and cat toys and treats. Hopefully they'll help out a little bit.

our baby is gone

Sometimes life just isn't fair. We went for our 10 week appointment yesterday and there was no heartbeat. Our doctor said the baby stopped growing at about 9 weeks. I will have surgery on Thursday morning and they will do genetic tests and we may be able to find out what the baby was.

We are hurting so much right now and pretty much just trying to make it through the days but we appreciate everyone's prayers. Please pray for our sweet angel and for our families who are all hurting with us.

I don't regret sharing our news before the first trimester was up. We saw the heartbeat at one appointment and heard it at another and everything seemed to be moving along perfectly. Our baby was loved beyond words by so many people after we shared our news so I will never regret it. I am just sorry that so many people have to hurt with us now. We don't know what happened; I am trying not to blame myself. I try to think that there was nothing I could have done but it's a very difficult thing when your own body betrays you in this way.

Please lift our baby up and pray for peace and comfort for Josh and I and our families. We will get through this together just as we have the past 3 years' worth of struggles.

Jordy's Holiday Party

Shell and Dan had their Holiday party this year and somehow I forgot to take any meaningful pictures. Instead, I have a bunch of pictures of Jenny bopping around the house and popping up in pictures here and there. Makes me laugh so hard!!

Anyway, here are a few that I do have. We had just taken a real picture, but it didn't turn up on my camera, so it must be on someone else's. Instead, I get one of me cracking up at Shell and Jenny.2 years ago, Jace wore this hilarious Women's XXL holiday sweater and it might have been the funniest thing I have ever seen. This year, he and Laura wrapped the sweater up and Shell & Dan's neighbor won it in the gift exchange. Billy won the Snuggie that Josh and I took. I told him to hug the snuggie and this is the look I got:
Here are some more funny pictures of Jenny. Here she is hugging Jace:

And here she is hugging Billy:

Makes me laugh!! Needless to say, it was a really fun night. It was the first time we had seen a lot of our friends since announcing our pregnancy, so it was fun to celebrate with them. I'm just bummed that I didn't get any pictures of Josh and I or any real pictures with friends. :(

12 Days of Giving, Day 3

Day 3 was several months of work coming to an end!! This year, my young professionals organization decided to do a silent auction during our annual gala. I volunteered to chair the committee and it ended up being a LOT of work! I had a few people helping me (1 helped a ton, others, here and there), but essentially, it came down to a lot of work for two of us! However, I think it turned out really well. We got a lot of compliments on the variety of items and had a few really amazing big ticket items including a huge piece of artwork and a party with a private sushi chef. We raised almost $1,000 over our original goal, so I call it a success!

Here are the only pictures that I remembered to snag at the very beginning of the auction. It looks a little disorganized, but I swear it wasn't! Do you see a very handsome guy in this picture?:

Overall, this was a really fun event. Josh was so helpful and our entire loft was taken over by the 60+ auction items, but I think it was worth it!

12 Days of Giving, Day 2

For Day 2, I supported a great cause, plus got a treat in return! Over the years, I have absolutely loved the concept behind the (PRODUCT)RED line at the Gap, with Starbucks and with Motorola. A portion of the proceeds from RED products goes toward helping to fight AIDS in Africa. On this particular day, Starbucks donated 5 cents for every drink, so it was the LEAST I could do! If you think about the millions of hand crafted drinks they made that day, it was a really big contribution! Plus, I had to indulge in a cranberry bliss bar because it's my favorite wintertime treat from Startucks and we were celebrating because we were on our way home from seeing our baby's heartbeat again! (NOTE: I did *not* have any caffeine, I swear.)

(Top: Wendi, Susan; Bottom: Debbie, Cyndy, Denise)

Also, I wanted to share this cute picture of my coworkers. I took a tray of cranberry bliss bars in and was going to count that as one of my 12 Days of Giving, but Josh said it doesn't count because they're not needy! TRUE! So instead I will just call it a thank you. They were all so incredibly supportive during our quest for a baby, and all told me at different times that they were praying, so cranberry bliss bars are the least I can do to say thank you! They were all so excited about our news!

12 Days of Giving, Day 1

Every year, Josh and I figure out some way to give back during the holidays. For the past few years, we have spent most of our efforts on Jubilee Christmas at church. We usually donate a lot of toys that Josh picks up for inexpensively throughout the year at work and they are used for the "shopping" portion of Jubilee Christmas where the parents get to go in three or four different times to pick items out for their children in addition to the ones that were purchased by a sponsor. In addition to that, we typically select two or three children to buy for, so we get a list of clothing items and toys that they want and we go shop for them.

This year, I was inspired by my friend Laura to take a different approach to holiday giving. Many of my blogger buddies did a similar thing in the month of November where tried to give back in some way every day. I didn't get it together in time to do that, so when Laura told me about her plan for giving back throughout the month of December (I think she's doing every day, which is sooo ambitious!), I decided to get on board! I thought it would be fun to do 12 Days of Giving, so Josh and I sat down and tried to think of some different things that we could do throughout the community. It's been fun!!

For Day 1, we donated to Laura's Christmas Gift Drive. She knew of a family that was struggling this year, so she decided to raise money to help them and shopped at a store that is locally owned (she is in Ft. Wayne) to help out the owners, too. I'm so impressed with her generosity and thankful for the inspiration! This is a great way for us to give back to the community because we understand that we lead very blessed lives but there are so many people who do not. It's something that is on our hearts and we've had fun picking out some of the things we're going to do to give back. Stay tuned for more updates!!