God Only Gives What We Can Handle

Some days I believe everyone has to wonder "How much more can I take?" It seems that things come in threes, and the ol' saying "when it rains it pours," proves to be true in most cases. The Bible tells us that God has a reason for everything and that we must trust his will, we must walk by faith and not by sight, and to trust in the Lord with all our hearts, and he will keep our path straight.

In the past 2 weeks I have been looking towards Gods word for guidance and reassurance. They have been very difficult with multiple things.

1. We are expecting our first baby any day now, and knowing that she will come on "her own time" has proven to be a little stressful. I know why some people opt for a planned c-section or an induction because the waiting game gets hard.

2. My baby sister, who is 25 weeks pregnant, had to be admitted over night to the hospital because she had a kidney stone, which was very scary as we were fearful she was going into early labor since her pregnancy has been high risk from the beginning. Luckily just a kidney stone but still VERY painful and she needs to pass it.

3. My Great Grandmother who is 90, had a bowl blockage which caused a perforation, which required surgery (which is not ideal because of her age, pacemaker, hip replacement 10 weeks ago, and having pneumonia). When Brian and I told her we were expecting she was super excited and said the ultrasound photo looked like a "bird in an egg hole." She told us how all she wanted to do was make it to meet her Great Great Granddaughter. After hip surgery she told me how knowing she would meet Everly soon was what was keeping her holding on.

Tuesday (1-26-16) my Great Grandmother passed away. She joined my Grandpa in Heaven and I know she will still be with us watching over Everly and getting a front row seat when she arrives, but it is not the same. It is not the same as having that 1 photo of all 5 generations, that 1 memory of her face when she would see Everly, or all the many stories it would have reminded her of from when I was born.

My last visit with her was nice, all things considering. She was not really too responsive but she did inform me that she was "sick" and as I put her hand on my belly Everly began to move all around. I have been praying Everly would make her debut in time to meet Grandma, but I have to trust Gods will, and it was my Grandmothers time to go, but not Everly's time to come.

One of the hard parts of life is experiencing those "special times" and not physically having those you love still here with you to join in the celebration. You know in your heart they are always with you but not having them physically there sometimes is hard to accept.

I will always remember how great of a storyteller my Grandma was, and how much I adored her Cameo ring, and the hoop ear rings with the angels. She was always so happy, and so excited to see the family. She loved my grandpa so much, and she loved her grandkids a ton as well. She had a heart of gold and showed it by opening her home to people to stay that came for medical procedures at a hospital near their home. She was like a mother figure to my Dad since my Mamaw had him at such a young age and helped to raise him to be the man he is today. She will always be remembered and she will always be missed. 

Crazy Week (37 weeks)

What a crazy week it has been. Started out the week going to the dr to check on Baby Everly! Everything looked great, like normal, but her heartrate was over 180 which is super high for her, so they decided to do a stress test to confirm all was good. Wouldn't ya know it, that as soon as they hooked me up hshe was fine and bpm was back to 150. After sitting there for 30 mins on the monitors they confirmed all was good. She is so silly! The dr said she must have been doing her morning gymnastics! Who knows maybe she will be a cheerleader like Mommy and Mimi? 

This week was also celebrating 37 weeks of pregnancy which is super exciting as it is getting super close to "D day." I'm beginning to be very uncomfortable so I'm ready for her arrival. 

Riley is so ready for his little sister to come too! He snuggles with the bump every chance he gets. But he also loves snuggling with Daddy. 😀

Bumpity bump bump bump...

Brian and I had the privilege to work with Stacey from Staceykayphotography on our maternity photo session.

She was amazing and I'm still in shock that these photos were taken in January! The weather has been so crazy this year and although we had hoped for snow during our shoot we were still very pleased with how they turned out, and the fact it was 55 degrees out helped us not freeze. 

We have so many favorite photos from our shoot and can't wait for little miss Everly to arrive so she can take her photos too! Thank you so much Stacey.

I would recommend her to anyone in the surrounding area and she also has great ideas on outdoor venues for the photos which helped a ton. 

Mary Kay Monday- Crab People

In Mary Kay we often talk about "turning points" in our lives and how to identify them. A turning point happens when your mind makes a shift, and when this happens you remember EVERYTHING! You remember what you were wearing, who was with you, and the exact words that were said to make that shift in your brain.

I have had many turning points in my life over the past 27 years. My cousins claim I have a memory of an elephant because I remember many details but I think the difference is that I've had many turning points all of which I remember well.

At the end of March 2014 in Cincinnati, Ohio, I attended Mary Kay's Career Conference. Besides loving all the girlfriend time I got that weekend, I also had a major turning point in my life. We were at the conference center towards the back of the room, and I was in my new red jacket and excited as I had just confirmed I would be submitting DIQ in only a few short days! NSD Julia Burrnett took the stage, and I was so excited because I had never heard her speak before. As she began to talk it truly felt like we were the only two people in the room. You see I begin every Mary Kay meeting, event, or seminar, with a prayer that God challenges me, and allows my heart to be open to what is being said, and I know what she was saying that day was something I needed to hear.

I needed to hear it for myself, for people I knew, and for people I had no idea I would meet in the next year. What she spoke about was CRAB PEOPLE! Those people in your life that stomp on your dreams and you are the only one who is able to decide whether you believe what you know to be true or not.

Crabs are very interesting creatures and we can learn a hard lesson in life from them. Crabs are pretty neat in the sense that they can actually crawl into tight spaces, which is why when fishermen go out to catch crabs they have a trap that they stock with tons of food, and the crabs squeeze right in to eat up. They begin to pile high on top of one another and more just keep coming even after the food is gone. Among all those crabs one will start trying to get out of the bucket, and when this happens the other crabs pull him back in. If the crab continues to try, which it will, the other crabs continue to pull it back down, and eventually they kill the crab that tried to escape. This is called Herd Mentality.

The crabs were using their energy to pull the one crab down instead of using their energy to get out of the bucket themselves. Which is where the word CRAB MENTALITY comes from. In our lives we all have crab people. They can be a neighbor, coworker, customer, or family member. Those people who will do everything they can to try and bring you down, and crush your dreams. Not all crab people are bad at heart, some are just a product of the way they were raised or taught to think. Sometimes these people are only briefly in your life, and sometimes they are not going anywhere in a hurry, but you can always chose to ignore them, and break away from them. Eleanor Roosevelt once said "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." So dont give anyone the consent to make you question your dreams.

When you are so excited about something in your life or your Mary Kay business and a crab comes in and tries to stomp on your goals and dreams dont allow them to plant seeds of doubt ("I know someone who did that and failed", or "I think some people can do it but doesn't seem like something for you," or "You could never do_______.") Subconsciously they are worried if you are able to escape "the trap" then you would be proving to them that they can too, and they dont have the courage to escape so it is better for them to pull you back down.

If there was only one thing I took away from Julia's speech, which trust me there wasn't, it would have to be that you have to let go of the need for approval from everyone in your life. This is something I have struggled with in my business and my personal life over the years and as Julia said that a weight came off of my shoulders and I realized that there are people in this world that I want and need approval from then there are others that I dont need or actually want at all. There are customers that were not benefiting my business but I was doing everything for them in hopes that one day they would host a party for me or buy more than just a mascara. Other people in my life that assumed since I make my own schedule that meant I could and should, help them whenever they needed it no matter what, and I did all this until that day, until the day I realized I dont need their approval, and lack of planning on someone else's part does not and should not result in an emergency on my part. There is a great Al Anon quote that says you cant go to a hardware store for a loaf of bread. You cant keep telling yourself "maybe this time it will be different," because that is self abuse.

I also realized that mental energy spent in one area is mental energy taken from another, so I needed to start focusing my mental energy where it mattered, my relationship with Christ, my family, and my business. I had to remember I had nothing to prove and only ONE  to please.

Aristotle Said "There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing," Don't allow the small minded people in the world to effect you. A 16X24 dream cant compute in a 5X7 mind. Some people will never accept that you are trying to better yourself, and they will not be able to accept that you are able to succeed. And when you go to bed at night and you have had a day filled with crab people, pray for them, because the only taste of success some people get is taking a bite out of yours. 

https://youtu.be/VYmGHYC4-jk

And the Belly Continues to Grow.....

Many of you have asked to see how the belly has grown by the weeks so here it is!

 Also a sneak peak from our Maternity session the other day. Thank you a ton to StaceyKayPhotography! She did an amazing job and we love how they all turned out. 

Little miss Everly is growing away and everyone is Happy, Healthy and Ready for her debut.

Gender Reveal Party

(Realized I never Submitted this post so sorry everyone it is late)

HOLY COW! Today is the day we found out what Baby Telljohann is! As we waited in the waiting room for them to call my name my excitement was building. I mean we were about to find out the gender of our first child and Brian and I were sharing this moment with my Mom, Dad, and sisters. When we got back to the room my Blood pressure was super high because I was so excited. (they ended up rechecking it in my appointment and it was normal then).

I didnt realize that the anatomy scan TOOK FOREVER! We were back there for almost an hour before they ever said the gender. I felt it was taking forever, it was neat to see everything on the screen and watch little baby moving all over but we were both so anxious to find out what flavor we were having. THEN FINALLY we found out!

The deal was that the morning of we all needed to cast our votes on what we thought the gender was. Brian really never said, he just kept saying he thought it was a baby, and I know my family all were holding out for baby to be a boy because there were only us 3 girls. Today when my mom and sisters showed up my mom had on Blue and Pink because she said she was torn and didnt want the baby to look back on photos and be upset if she picked the wrong one. It was super cute of her. Then Chelsea had on blue and Michaela had on pink.

Brian and I did all the "silly" Gender predictors and kept track of them. I thought before we did them that they would all turn out to be girl and when we finished and looked at the results I was surprised to see that the verdict was still out because it was pretty even whether it was a boy or girl.

This evening we all went over to my Moms and invited the local family over to share the good news. We wanted to have a fun way to tell everyone so we decided to buy a blue and a pink flare and put whatever color was the gender into a box then light the flare so the color of the smoke would be the gender of the baby.

Everyone cast their votes by wearing the color they thought the baby was and it was fun to see what everyone's votes were and to see who was right and who wasn't.

One very cute thing is that my Mom's dogs decided they needed to cast their votes, which we didnt realize until looking at the photos after but my Mom's boy dog, Tucker, got in the Team Blue photo and her girl dog Bella, was at the bottom of the Team Pink photo. Kinda cute since no one put them there. 

Brian and I went out into the yard and lite the flare and everyone's reactions were PERFECT!!! Its a GIRL!!!!!!!! 

Today was awesome and I cant wait to see Little Miss at our next ultrasound, to see how much she has grown. Im beyond excited to have a baby girl on the way and Brian is so excited to have "Daddy's little girl" but he is also nervous as he didn't grow up around girls so I think he is a little worried about what raising a girl means. He did say that he can now get a Shotgun to add to his gun collection to scare off the boys someday. (ADORABLE) Now to decide on a name.

Baby Girls Nursery

As a FTM its hard to not want everything to be perfect! The day you find out your expecting the ideas began to flow of how you want to do the nursery and names you may like, but then once you find out the gender those thoughts consume you. You want to make sure it's the perfect nursery for your little one to come home to, and the perfect name. 

The name was the first thing we started talking about. We both knew if it was a girl we wanted to name her after her Grandma Bev who passed away a few years back. We also wanted to name her after my Mom, thus the name Everly Yvonne came about. We both love it and can't wait to meet her. 

It took Brian and I a few months to decide exactly how we wanted to decorate the nursery, but we did know one thing for sure which was what room in our home would be the nursery. In our home we have three bedrooms, one is my office and also where I house my inventory, the other is our master, so it was only fitting that the "other room" which was holding Brian's desk and his drum set would be the nursery. 

I'm not going to lie it took him MANY months to accept this fact and "move outl into my office. We bought a new desk to make the transition smooth as he is still in grad school, and put his drums in storage so someday at our next home, he can still rock out. 

With exactly 30 days until Baby girls expected delivery date we finished the nursery. I could not be more thrilled with how it turned out! I think Brian is pretty excited too because he keeps showing photos to his coworkers of the room. 

The nursery is so special to us in many ways. First of all the dresser and crib was given to us by Brian's Grandparents, because they were Brian's, his brothers, and his mothers, so they are very special to us! 

I am by no means a "painter" but I do enjoy painting for fun so I painted a few pictures for Everly's nursery and I know she will love them because her mommy made them. 

We also used the ikea shelf on its side for the changing table. I love that it has a ton of storage! 

We got so many books from our showers which was nice so Everly has a good supply of books on hand to read once she debuts. Brian's Aunt Annette and Uncle Eric got us our nursery chair which we are so thankful for. 

Finally we have the chandelier which we adore and the closet which Everly's Grandpa Baird designed and made for her. 

I think it is safe to say we are ready for her to arrive. Which is good as she is officially head down, ready to go and I'm dialated 1 cm! 9 more to go lol!