Well, I didn't make it the whole month of November, but 20 days is not bad! For me, at least. So many things happened in our life this year and I didn't even get to blog about it all. One day I will blog about the adoption and the birth of our kids. One day I will share more about the life of our sweet pup. One day. But for now, I decided to give you a recap of our year.
*We started off the year with the sweet surprise that we would be adding a new member to our family.
*In February we lost our sweet pup, Colt.
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| Colt doing his favorite thing, walking at Town Lake. |
*Kristina went to her first concert, Austin Mahone and Demi Lovato. We drove down to meet my sister and niece at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo.
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| So excited! On our way to Houston to see Austin Mahone! |
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| Watching Austin Mahone put on a show! |
*We found out we would be adding a baby girl to our family and got to share the news with friends and family!
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| It's a girl! |
*Christian turned 11!
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| Christian and his camouflage cake. |
*We spend the summer hanging out with friends and family.
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| We went to the Alamo with our good friends, The Hunters. Sam and Tim were in town too! |
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| My momma celebrating her 58th birthday with her siblings! |
* Elias and I celebrated 7 years of marriage on July 29th!
*In August we had a crazy full month. We became a Forever Family on August 2nd and then on August 3rd we had a shower in Freeport for sweet Hadley!
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| Our family with the judge who granted us Forever Family status. |
*I took the kids to their first UT sporting event, womens soccer. I didn't even have to ask them to put on their burnt orange and they put their 'Horns up immediately when I told them to take this picture! Made this momma proud! \m/
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| Hook 'em Kristina and Christian! |
*On August 24th, at 12:58 am we welcomed this sweet little thing into the world.
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| Our first picture with Hadley! |
*The kids started school while I was in the hospital with Hadley so my parents helped us out with them! They did a great job!
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| First day of school for the kiddos! |
* I celebrated my 31st birthday in the hospital with Hadley. While I would have preferred to be home with all of my family, it was so nice to have friends come visit and give hugs and the hospital did a great job in celebrating with me.
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| My early birthday present! |
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| Some more birthday presents that just came earlier in the month! |
*After 4 days in the NICU we finally got the ok to take sweet Hadley home! Needless to say, we were all pretty excited!
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| Elias getting ready to pack her up! |
*4 days after their little sister was born, Kristina and Christian finally got to meet her and hold her! They were so excited to finally hold her and they were in love!
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| Our first picture of all 3 of our kids together! |
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My awesome momma spent 3 weeks with us helping us out!
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*We went trick or treating with our good friends, the Hunters. Hadley was a Tootsie Roll and Christian was a Ninja Turtle. It was a fun night filled with lots of candy and some of the best friends we've ever had!
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| The cutest Tootsie Roll, Ninja Turtle, Fairy Princess and Zombie ever! |
* We had a great time at Thanksgiving and Christmas with our family in Freeport. I just haven't uploaded the pictures from then. Except this one. I snapped this picture as we were getting ready to head out from my parents house to see Elias' family on Thanksgiving. I am so very thankful that I did. This was the last time I saw my sweet Aunt Linda (my dad's sister). She passed away 2 weeks later. I miss her so much already. Christmas was not the same at all without her. I'll try to blog about that here soon.
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| My sweet Aunt Linda holding my little Hadley. |
So, I think that was a good review of our year this year. I'm sure I'm missing something. But I just wanted to update everyone on our year and highlight everything we've gone through.
It was a year filled with both great sorrow and great joy. In the end we have come to realize, as a family, that Jesus is so much better than those sorrows and joys. He is so good and is so worthy of our praise and our lives. We have fallen more in love with Him and have learned what it means to truly lean on Him. We have so much more growth but we hope to spend 2014 and every day after living our lives for Him.
Happy New Year! Peace out 2013!
