Colorado and California

At the end of June, we visited family in Colorado for a family reunion with my mom's side of the family.  I was very excited for the trip, especially since this was Karson's first time to meet many of my cousins. We flew into Durango and then drove to Montrose.  On the way, we stopped in Ouray, CO for lunch and took a few family photos. 

 I did a horrible job taking photos of the weekend, but here is one photo of all of the Aunts and Cousins.:)

 Karson then flew back to Texas to go to work and I flew home with my parents.  They spoiled the three of us all week!!! During the week in Cali, we did a lot of relaxing and we were able to visit with some very special people.  This is Laura and her son Garrett.  Laura and I actually both live in Dallas, but her grandmother lives in Bakersfield very close to my parents.  Her grandmother was always my "adopted" grandma and every summer when we were little, I would spend a week in the summer at Grandma Jo's house with Laura and her sister Jenny. It was very special to get to spend some time reminiscing with their sweet family. 

 This is Garrett with Laura's mom, Cheryl, and Grandma Jo.:)

My mom got to practice a little on Garrett.:)

And so did my dad!:)

 During our visit, a few ladies from our church threw us a very sweet and special shower.  Grandma Jo, Cheryl, Laura, and Faye did such a great job hosting.  This is a picture of Grandma Jo and Faye. Faye and her husband Dave were always like a "bonus" mom and dad to me.   They had strawberry cake and peppermint Dewar's ice cream, which are two of my favorite things. They spoiled all three of us!

 Judy Stallings, Betty McCarthy, Shirley Harris, and Doris Black are all very special to our family!

 Janet Riden, Annette Williams, Helen Williams, and Shawn Brandenberg are also so very special to us!

At the shower, a sweet family friend, Nancy, gave our son a bib and boots that she made.

 Debbie, one of my best friends' mom, drove in from Sacramento to surprise us for the shower and gave our sweet babies beautiful handmade quilts.  It was so special to have her join us.

 Merrily, one of my mom's best friends, gave us twin Willow Tree figures, which I thought was very cute.

Our visit home was so very special and it made me realize even more how incredibly blessed we are.  Everybody was so generous and kind to our family and we are so thankful for every one of them. :)

Oh Boy! Oh Girl!

On June 17th, we decided to have a little gender reveal party at our house. We enjoyed a cookout with a few of our friends and had cake to reveal if we would have blue, pink, or both in our future.:) I didn't intentionally plan for it to be on Father's Day, but I think it ended up being the perfect way to celebrate.  I had taken an envelope with our babies' genders inside of it to a local bakery and asked them to make either a pink or blue cake, depending on their genders. 

The top tier was for Baby A and the bottom tier was for Baby B.

 For the first hour, we all ate and enjoyed each other's company...   

 And then everybody voted for their gender prediction...

We took "team" pictures.  This was Team Pink.

 This was Team Blue.  

 And then there was Team Pink AND Blue.

We were so excited to cut into our cakes!!!

 The top tier was BLUE and the Bottom tier was PINK!!!   

It really was just an unbelievably special day for us. We felt so honored to have so many friends and family share our day with us, whether it was in person or over the phone.   We could not feel more blessed and we could not be more excited to meet our SON and DAUGHTER!!! 

Speaking of our sweet boy and girl, here is a little of what they've been up to these past few weeks.  This is at 15 weeks.

 This is all three of us at 16 weeks.

 We had another 4D sono at 17 weeks.  Here is baby boy.

 And here is baby girl.

 Baby girl waved at us.:)

 Here we are at 19 weeks.

 At 21 weeks, we confirmed that the bakery had the cake colors correct. Baby A is definitely all boy.:)

 Baby B is definitely a girl.:)

 We got a good profile shot of our sweet girl.  We are going to have to work on getting our sweet boy in the pictures.  He is facing backwards and his sister is sitting on his head, so he is really hard to photograph.:)  I'm sure we'll make up for it when he arrives.:)

Baby boy is measuring in the 75th percentile and baby girl is measuring in the 15th percentile.  They both seem to be growing and healthy.  We are very thankful and so in love with our sweet little ones. 

xoxo,

Sharon

Our Family's Journey

 I honestly don't even know where to start.  In fact, it's taken me an hour to just write these first few sentences. We're just so thankful. The past few months have been truly the most amazing months of our lives.  Yes, they've been challenging. We could list all of the complications, scares, and discomforts of this pregnancy that we've experienced so far, but none of them even remotely compare to the feelings of complete joy and thankfulness that we feel.  I still can't believe it.  After five years of asking God for children, words don't even describe how excited we are to welcome these blessings into our family.

While there is no way to document every step of our journey, we'd love to share just a few pictures. 

In the beginning, there were a LOT of shots!!!  And this was just the first shipment.;)  

 After daily doctor appointments, shots, and all sorts of other fun, we finally got to see our babies for the first time.  I love this picture...our first family of four picture.;)

This picture just makes me laugh.  I went into severe hyperstimulation and gained over 15 pounds in less than 12 hours. It wasn't my favorite thing I've ever done, but some bed rest and extra IV fluids seemed to do the trick and I was good to go in no time.  We joke that this is my 2 week pregnancy belly. 

 While I was on bed rest, we were blessed with a lot of sweet visitors.  I don't have pictures of all of them, but I thought I'd share a few.  Karson snapped this picture when he came home from work to find Haylee and I eating dinner in bed.:)

 And then sweet Ranger and his daddy brought over deviled eggs to celebrate my eggs.  You can't go wrong with a cute kid, creative idea, and yummy food.:)

 And then a little over a week later, on March 6,  I went to the doctor for blood work.  I wasn't supposed to go until the 7th, but it worked out that I could go in a day early.  We surprised Daddy with a little message when he got home from work.   It didn't go quite as planned because Karson knew our test was on the 7th and he thought I was just being silly. Once I FINALLY convinced Karson that it was for real, he was, of course, ecstatic. 

On the 23rd, we had our first sono and saw that we were expecting TWO precious little ones.:)

 And we all three have been growing ever since...:)

 6 weeks

 8 weeks

The 10 week sono was obviously a little overwhelming to Baby A...:)

 10 weeks

 12 weeks

Twin B

Twin A

Baby B was tired of all the attention!!!

 14 weeks

Thank you so much for reading this very long post!  We love all of you! 

xoxo, Sharon