D Blog of D Life

Addison's first birthday and our recent miscarriage have sent me wandering down memory lane.  Our journey to get our precious Addison was anything but easy.  It was, however, a time of learning and growing for me.  God used that time of difficulty in my life to grow and stretch me and my faith in Him.  During that time, after I hit a very low - low, I came to realize that my faith in Him was not constant.  I had uber faith when I was getting my way (what I thought I wanted), but fell into the "why me" trap  and blaming God when things were bad or not what I thought I wanted. My faith had been tested to the limits - I didn't even want to talk to Him anymore because I felt like He wouldn't care anyway.  It was then, during a day of wallowing in self pity that I felt God talking to me.  He led me to a song that will forever be my favorite song, and I had not even heard it before this time, or if I had, I didn't remember it.  I am not sure what the writer of these...

My oldest has now officially left on her first Mission Trip! About 12 or so middle and high schoolers left today at noon for New Orleans to help out with some demolition projects as well as doing a neighborhood outreach and a little sightseeing at some point. Shayna has been to church camp a time or two, but never on an actual mission trip...I am so proud of her for being super eager to go and lend a hand to a community still in need. She went into this knowing it will be more work than play, and yet she was excited! Her friends Erica, Kelsie, Holly, & Lindsay are on the trip as well! These girls are awesome! I love her friends and love the young lady that Shayna is becoming right before my very eyes...and all too quickly as well! I feel so blessed to have such a great teenager!

Well, it's officially over. My baby is one year old and has had her party. The cakes are now destroyed and our friends and family are stuffed full of hot dogs and icing and should be coming down off their sugar high right about now. :) (I know I am crashing...and HARD) Addison had an amazingly long nap leading up to the party and was an absolute joy to be around today. I think my favorite part of the day was when she opened her gifts! I had contemplated skipping this part since babies don't really open gifts and usually it is just a show of the parents opening prizes while the babies play in paper and seem to not care two hoots about any of the gifts their friends bought them. Addison however quite surprised me today. She was genuinely interested in each gift (especially the BOOKS that our dear friends Scott and Barb brought her). She took an interest in each item as daddy unwrapped them for her (and then went back to her book) lol. It was really cute and a lot of fun to...

Wowzers...that was a lot of work...and really, not so totally pleased with the outcome. :/ They look okay, but when I look at them I see about a bazillion mistakes I made. In addition to the mistakes, the castle cake is EXTREMELY fragile! Like, touch it and something falls off and breaks. :( Very frustrating. I was reading up on the Wilton website though and apparently I am not the only one complaining about this. So I guess that part is not necessarily due to my construction, but due to poorly constructed pieces for the cake. Ugh.. The good thing is, there are a few things that more experienced folks have come up with that I can do to make it more stable should I ever make this cake again. So yea for that! It will be kinda funny to see how the smash cake (barbie cake) works out for Addison. I purposely did not mound the icing on her dress and just made it very minimal in the hopes that she will consume a little less sugar during her first cake experience. As a result though, I a...

Well folks, the excitement has begun! I officially started Addison's FIRST BIRTHDAY CAKE! Ahhhh...I can not believe how quickly one year has passed! She is getting so big! She walks, babbles, does sign language (and pics up on new signs very quickly) and is in general, just a precious little PRINCESS! Which brings me to the theme of her party. The princess will have a beautiful (hopefully) two layer castle cake with a princess barbie cake for her smash cake! I am very excited about making these as they will be my most extensive cake endeavors to date. I am also, however, very nervous about how they will turn out. I have never worked with Fondant before - nor have I made a two tier cake yet. But here I go, on my way to doing it! Today, Shayna and I began the first steps for the Princess' castle cake and made about 300 pink fondant flowers! They turned out great as far as I can tell! I am so anxious to start the rest I can hardly stand it. Tonight, in a few minutes I will ma...

I love the concept of out with the old (and getting money for it) and in with the new. In that spirit we have made several purchases lately that were exciting. With the purchase of our new iPhones, we obviously had no need for our "old" phones, both of which were in great condition. So, I listed each on Craigslist and have now officially sold BOTH! Wahhooo! We got great money for them too. All said and done our iPhones were pretty darn cheap since Steve's was only about $40 after the sale of his Dash and mine about $80 after the sale of my SK3! How awesome is THAT! If only we could pay the monthly bill this way too -- HA! With the sale of Steve's old truck we chose to not put the money down on the new one directly since the APR was so incredibly low (free money doncha know)! So we took some of that money and plopped it down on a new (to him) motorcycle! He has been a very happy man jetting around on his bike like he used to do all the time, which of course makes m...

I have not been to very many sporting events in my lifetime. Never really cared to honestly. However, Steve's office got a suite and party deck at the Frisco Ball Park and gave tickets to the employees and their families. How awesome is that! Needless to say, we got a babysitter for Addison and Steve, myself, Shayna and her friend Erica all went! I will admit...up until yesterday I did not even know what type of sporting event we were going to. I had to look it up so I wouldn't feel stupid. ;) YAY! It was baseball...a sport I actually kinda like! So we show up and WOW...the suite and party deck were FABULOUS! We had free hot dogs, burgers and chips and even free beer, wine, sodas and water (duh...I drank wine). Most importantly though, we had GREAT conversation with GREAT people! I had already met and connected with a few of Steve's co-workers wives when we went to the Christmas party last year, so there was a great safety net there. As we hung out I got to know ...