Brave Wandering

Andrew and I were sitting outside waiting for Rusty to get home from work. He wiggled out of my arms and played at my feet for a while before his started wandering away. He would stop every few feet and look back at me and giggle. He got about 50 feet away and found a ball in the grass. That was about as far as he wanted to go. I thought it was really cute to see him checking back with me every once in a while. The last picture is after Rusty got back, obviously.

Why I don't update the blog

Andrew is ALWAYS moving. I tell you what, I have a ton more respect for photographers who capture pretty moments with kids this age. I can't get
Andrew to hold still long enough to take a picture to SAVE MY LIFE! I don't think they make cameras with shutter speeds fast enough. They don't exist. I thought that if I just said all this that you guys would call me a liar. So here's some proof. I am trying to get pictures of him for you guys... he's just such a little BOY. Enjoy. The ones of him with that fuzzy brown circle are taken by Rusty. They were playing with a baseball. The ones with the fuzzy black mess were taken by me. I was trying to capture the ridiculous cuteness that is Andrew dragging around this black bear that my mom bought him.










So let's have a vote. Does it look like he's moving at the speed of sound? or does it look like my house is haunted by a blue eyed ghost?

Snow or Sunshine?

We can't choose a temperature here in North Carolina. Three days after it snowed, it was nearly 80* outside! How very strange, and confusing for our bodies. I will take the 80 degree range any day though, so here are some pictures of Andrew enjoying the outdoors. We went over to my friend Joanne's house and played in her backyard. Thanks Taylors for having much softer grass than we do.

He found himself a pine needle that was much more interesting than all the cars around him... we're never buying toys again.

Our trip to Atlanta

This is Meg and Roy's beautiful house. Roy said that it was going to snow the night before this and we all were "weather naysayers". Sure enough there was white rain the very next day.


Here's my snuggles watching the snow fall.


This picture pretty much shows the relationship between Andrew and Carlee Sams. Andrew loved this dog, and Carlee put up with him, minimally.


Here's Andrew and Asher splashing around in the bathtub.


Me and Andrew trying not to destroy everything they own.


Me and Meg before we went out to Eddie's Attic. That is a venue where acoustic musicians get to come and perform at an open mic night competition. We had SO much fun. There were some winners and some literally laughably losers.


Meg is a fantastic musician, she sings like an angel. When the boys helped her play, it was a little more difficult to tell, but it was cute anyway.


Asher was suprisingly able to share all his toys, and this is a sweet little picture of them playing together.


I know Andrew looks scared, but he was actually usually the one crawling all over Asher. How cute are these boys.

the story of Andrew's beginning

I have reconnected with a girlfriend from high school, and she asked me about Andrew. She asked how and when we decided to start a family. I probably gave her more information than she wanted, but I thought you guys might be curious too. so here is what I told her. This is, believe it or not, the summarized version. If anyone has any questions about the left out details, feel free to ask. We have no secrets.


Oh goodness, this is going to be long. We struggled big time with the kids topic. When we first got married I was on chemical birth control (NuvaRing). After Rusty's Ethics class here at Seminary we learned that all forms of chemical birth control thin the lining of the uterus to prevent a baby from implanting into the wall of the uterus. This may be the primary or secondary mode of prevention, but all the same, is therefore is an abortive aspect of the way chemical birth control works, so we immediately got off of that. Then of course we had to ask the question, "Are we ready for kids?" so, we used condoms for a while, while we really sought God's will in that area. What we found is that in the Bible, children are only ever described as a blessing. We thought long and hard about all of the things that God says are blessings. We tried to think of ONE blessing that we tried to delay or avoid, and we couldn't think of one. I prayed really hard that if we were going to decide not to use any form of birth control, chemical or barrier, that God would give me a peace about the potential of having a TON of children. He did, my heart was at rest, I was ready. We also realized that you're never going to be "ready". You never have enough money, time, or energy, until you have one. Your life changes when it's happening, not before. And we just couldn't get past the fact that as far a we could find, not one blessing that we try to avoid, except children. I think that we've been brainwashed by the American ideals of one boy, one girl, and a dog equals a complete family. So there ya' go, that's how we decided to start trying. What I didn't expect, was that it was going to take FOREVER. I think that from the time we stopped preventing to the time I got pregnant was a little over two years. That was the hardest time in our marriage. I just kept thinking, "I'm 21, why can't I get pregnant?". We found out that I don't ovulate on my own. I went to the doctor and researched my options. I knew that I wasn't going to take the fertility meds that make you shoot out 8 eggs, and I certainly wasn't going to do invitro, so that left me with one medical option and that was Clomid. Clomid is a mild drug that just makes my hormones do what they should be doing naturally. I took that for 6 months and no baby. I had to stop after 6 months because after that it actually starts thinning out the lining of the uterus, not good for babies. So I was destroyed, I thought my last hope was gone. The doctors had already told me that I wouldn't get pregnant without medical intervention, because my hormones just weren't fluctuating like they were supposed to. I went to a homeopathic practitioner (sp?). She helped me change my diet, I took some herbal supplements, and took some of her treatments. It didn't work overnight, but sure enough I got pregnant with NO DRUGS!!! YAY!! About a week after my positive pregnancy test I started bleeding, and saw a couple pea sized clots. Of course I ran to the doctor as fast as I could, and they told me that I had miscarried. So early in a pregnancy a DNC was unnecessary so I just had to wait for the miscarriage to complete itself. Well, a few days later I still hadn't had any significant amount of bleeding, so I went back to the doctor for a blood test and an ultrasound. Sure enough, I was still pregnant, they were wrong. We were all kinds of nervous still though, so we didn't tell a lot of people until things got further along. After our 13 week ultrasound, where we saw him sucking his thumb and swirling around in there, we told the world. We fought about names until we landed on Andrew, and then at 38 weeks I went into labor and delivered our little miracle into the world. Talking to a nurse at the hospital, we came to the conclusion that I was probably pregnant with twins, but we might never know the answer to why the doctors were so convinced I had miscarried. All that I know is that we've got a healthy little baby boy running around our house right now, and I couldn't ask for more.
That may have been more than what you were asking for, but there ya' go!! I do encourage you to think long and hard about your heart in the matter of children. We strongly believe that chemical birth control is wrong wrong wrong. We have come to the conclusion where we will not use any method of birth control, but that is because we feel that our hearts were and are selfish. We've learned that we have to question the things that the world has told us are benign. What do you guys think about this? Have you talked about when you might start a family? If you want a really great book that talks to the matter of birth control, read God, Marriage, and Family by Kostenberger and Jones, chapter 7. That particular chapter is written by Dr. Leiderbach, the Ethics professor here at Southeastern. Alright, I'll end this now. Let me know if you have any unanswered questions!!