The best four years...

I'm still amazed on a regular basis that I am so richly blessed to be married to such an incredible man.  We celebrated our four year anniversary last Thursday!  These last four years have been a journey that I never could foresee.  It's amazing how you try and "plan" your life out...and God just laughs.  Even though our "plans" haven't come to fruition as we would like, we have each other and our relationship with the Lord...and that's all we really need.  Jeromy has been the rock in our relationship, he is mostly a fearless and very strong man.  He's not very emotional, but has the biggest heart.  I give him credit for strengthening my journey with the Lord, and this is what I'm most thankful for.

When I think of the enormous love I have for him, I am reminded of what led me to him.  I am reminded that through pain and suffering, the Lord actually is working in your life to bring you to a better place...ultimately to bring Him greater glory.  Shortly before I started dating my husband, I was in a relationship that ended very badly.  I had been engaged to a guy for about a year.  Throughout our relationship I saw several red flags, I ultimately chose to ignore those.  Looking back, these red flags should have been deal breakers, but I suppose when you're planning a wedding all you can see is the big picture...which is your wedding day.  Without getting into too much detail (b/c I have a public blog, and I'm not that kinda girl), he came to me three weeks before our wedding and told me that he couldn't go through with it.  This was a Friday night, and the next day was a combo wedding shower and bachelorette party...talk about devastation.  All I could think about was the embarrassment I was about to face.  All I wanted to do was cry, cry and cry some more and never leave my house.  In hindsight, I think I was more devastated and embarrassed about having to call off our wedding than actually not marrying him.

Shortly after ending that relationship, I met my husband (well I knew him, we just never got to know each other).  I only tell this story, as a testimony to what our God can do in our lives when all we see is devastation or loss...but in His precise plan, He is working to mend our hearts and to bring us to a higher place.  When I was engaged to that guy I was a Christian, but he was not; I wanted children, but he did not.  It was a perfect mis-match, and because I was blinded by certain things, my Lord took care of business for me...even when I wasn't looking for Him to do so, I'm ashamed to say.

I couldn't imagine life without my husband, and clearly neither could the Lord, because He divinely placed him there...glory be to God!!  I couldn't imagine going through this journey with anyone else, I just wanna shout from the roof tops how much I love this man of mine and how incredibly thankful I am for him!!!!  Our life isn't perfect, but I think there is beauty in that.  The journey that led me to my husband reminds me of the journey that we are currently on to have a child.  It's shaky, it's devastating...but we will remain faithful knowing that our Lord, full of grace and mercy, will indeed bless us in His own way in His own timing...and indeed, we will be in a higher place giving God all the glory!!

Mean bloggers

I'm such a hit or miss blogger.  Sometimes I get on a roll, and other times I just abandon the blogging world all together for a while!  The problem with this is, I start to lose track of my bloggy friends and it takes some serious time to catch up.  This problem coupled with the fact that I still can't comment on people's blogs most of the time (crushing to me), is making me look like a terrible blogger/friend.  I have emails I need to respond to, but my email is jacked right now...and I'm pretty sure this email problem and the commenting problem go hand in hand.  I know I'm kind of a big deal, right (?), but on the other hand I know ya'll aren't checking your emails/blogs daily for my comments/response...but just know that I'm working on it.  I'm still thinking about all of you and praying for all of you!!

So I was just reading this blog that I follow.  This lady has done like 3 IUI's, 3 IVF's and finally got pregnant on her third...what a journey!!  Well, she's several months into her pregnancy and has been receiving nasty comments and emails about her being pregnant.  WTH??  I absolutely cannot wrap my mind around sitting down at my computer, choosing an "anon" identity and then just blasting a woman for finally getting her blessing that she WORKED HARD for!  And the commenters?  Infertile women.  After reading many comments, it is of my opinion that for some infertile women it has become some sort of contest as to who has suffered more or who has spent more money.  I just became so enraged reading some of the things these women have said on her blog.  Infertility is awful, it really is.  It arouses some truly ugly emotions...here are few, but not limited to...bitterness, jealousy, depression, anger, confusion, guilt.  But, it should not be in our power to be able to unleash these emotions on, what used to be, our fellow infertile in the TTC journey.  Infertility is not a reason to be mean or hateful or hurtful!!

When I find out a fellow IFer is pregnant, my heart leaps in pure joy, honestly.  Because I am human and I'm just being honest...it does tend to be a little difficult to continue to follow their blog for the whole nine months.  It just becomes too painful to watch the growing belly.  With that said, my unflattering feelings and emotions are reserved for women that have children but don't want them, women who took too many jello shots and met Mr. Right Now and BAM...you catch my drift.  My heart hurts for this woman that is being put on blast.  Have ya'll seen this going on on blogs where IF women get pregnant?  What do you think?

Arts & Crafts disaster...

We thought it would be fun to do an arts and crafts night, you know, to mix things up.  Riiight.  The pictures do my arts and crafts catastrophe no justice.  In true Amy A-D-D doesn't.have.a.crafty.bone.in.her.body fashion, I started the project, got frustrated, got up and walked away, went back to the project, got more frustrated, ate the delicious dinner my friend cooked for us, went back to project and then quickly reached DEFCON level 5 frustration...and then gave UP on it!  Right after dinner A started working on her wreath.  Perfection.  Seriously??  Just a blow to my creative ego, thank you very much. 

So, we went to Michaels to get everything we needed, and long story short, we ended up having to do a different wreath because we couldn't anything other than neutral burlap colors. We started out wanting this one:

 And ended up doing this one:

Loove this wreath, however it's a little more complicated (to me) than the other one. It required stitching, yikes, and then cinching...clearly way over my head. Here is my wreath before I gave up.

My friend put hers together in about, um, like ten minutes...like it was no thang!  Just to be clear, it called for two layers (front and back) of the ruffle wreath, but we only had time for one layer.

The finished product isn't really finished.  Because we had to change our wreath last minute, we went to a different store and didn't have the items needed to finish it.  Even though my project turned out awful, we had a back-up plan...alas, a third grade project I can do!!  A coozy, a Halloween coozy!!

Lots of hot glue, puffy paint, foam zombies...YES!  Suffice it to say, there probably won't be many more arts & crafts nights, unless it is on an elementary level ;)  But, we did have fun...and that's most important, right?  The arrow on my head reads "I'm with creepy" ;)