Lisa and Steve got married!

My mother-in-law, Lisa got married on June 29th! She lost her husband September 4, 2005. After being a widow for almost 8 years, Steve walked into her life just 6 weeks after Matt died. They met November 17th on a blind date with some mutual friends. They hit it off immediately and the rest is basically history! :) She was engaged on Valentines day and is now a married woman and even moved about an 1.5hr away to his hometown. He has 3 teenage daughters who have gained a wonderful stepmom! She has been through so much and it's truly a great thing to see her happy! I wanted to share some pics from the wedding and show off what I believe is the most precious flower girl ever! :)

Lela & Lyla photography took the pictures and you can see many more on their blog!

I love to write on the blog about our life so I will remember special things but I also have found so many blogs to be inspiring. So my hope for this post is for all the widows that might be reading this, including myself, will see that there are many happy days in the future!

30th birthday!

Hello blog world! I've missed you and I hate that I've been away for so long! I'm going to try to at least blog from my phone since I am not spending much down time on my computer anymore! 

Last week, I started out my birthday celebration with a girls trip to Grapevine, TX! Mom, P and I did this last year and had a blast so we went for 2 nights to the Gaylord Texan and spent a day at their water park! We ate good Mexican food, rented a cabana for a day, swam with some good friends, relaxed and had a great time! I had my first Drybar experience and shopped at the Northpark mall in Dallas before heading home! 

If you have read my blog for many years, you will remember that I always spend my birthday at a church camp with Matt's family. Matt and I basically met out there and I have been with him every year for the last 13 years. Needless to say, this was incredibly difficult to attend this year. I made it out there for a few hours and decided I would just have to try again next year! :( But P had a blast at her 2nd Campmeeting! 

Then I was blessed with a family dinner party with Matt's mom, Steve, brother Andy & wife Chelsey along with my parents, brother & his family! We ate at my favorite, Outback and had yummy cake! I loved seeing our kids dancing and having fun together. 

Lastly, I have gotten about 50 birthday cards from blog readers and let me just say how sweet it is to read each one and know that I have so many prayers still be said for us! You will never know how much it meant to me to be showered by birthday love! Just one of the many reasons, I love the blog world and why I am not going to give up blogging even though I've done a horrible job keeping up in the last 10 months! Thanks for hanging with me and for the continuos thoughts, prayers and love! And thank you again for making my 30th birthday so special!! 

Hiiii!

Preslee has perfected the word Hi. She has many different versions of saying it as well. So thats why I am starting out with Hiiii! 

 I am sorry for the lack of post but this month was a long one! The holidays are always exhausting but add in the emotional fatigue and I am just glad I survived. But there are many special memories we made with Preslee this year and I wanted to document them so I remember there were some good days amongst the sad ones. 

We took P to her first Christmas parade! I grew up going to this parade so it was fun to taking her and seeing her enjoy all the sights and sounds. :) 

Then we sent to see SANTA! Obviously she really loved him. And to be honest, I love crying Santa pics. :) 

We have been so blessed by many of our friends coming to visit us. Jennifer and the kids have been down quite a few times and that makes our day! And that day, they just happen to be in Hot Springs so we met them for dinner at CFA! The kids had so much fun playing in the Chick-fil-a play ground!

 During the holidays, it was important to me to be surrounded by my closest family and to pour myself into Preslee and making sure that she had fun! I was really excited for her to get to play with my niece and nephew on Christmas Eve! 

There were many aspects of the holiday season that I could have just skipped this year but I didn't want Preslee to be affected by any of this. I want her to have memories and pictures just like she would have if Matt hadn't died. So... Santa came to see her even though he (she) didn't really feel like it! :) 

Then we headed off to do Christmas with Matt's family. She was so spoiled with all her new toys! :) 

We were at our 3rd Christmas by 1:00 and she didn't miss a beat! :) 

She is a gift to us all! She has become so affectionate and loves giving kisses! It makes everyone feel better! :) 

We ended Christmas night with SNOW!! I took a nap and woke up to inces of whiteness! It was so beautiful! 

 Preslee definitely brought so much joy to all of us during the first holidays without Matt.  Her smile and personality made us laugh instead of cry!

The new year brought on many different emotions. I found myself thinking about the past new year when we had a 4 week old baby and we just were starting a new chapter of our lives. My stomach hurt thinking about 2013 because it was a date that Matt would never be apart of. 

 Then, the week that had been dreaded.  Jan. 8 was Matt's 33rd birthday and Jan. 13 would have been our 6th wedding anniversary. I was really sick with virus that week and I decided that I would move to my new house that week too. I am not really sure what I was thinking but I just about killed myself trying to get things settled I guess I was just trying to keep busy so that I didn't let my thoughts and emotions of the week get me down. 

But that brings me to the fact that Preslee and I are finally in our own house! We love our little place and feel very comfortable and cozy here! I am going to do a whole post of the renovations of the house so you can see the before and after. After 3.5 months of living with family, I am just so thankful to have a place of my own again. My parents and MIL are absolutely wonderful and took such good care of us but it was just time to try to regain my independence and figure out what life looks like now. 

So now that I am somewhat caught up from the past month, here's to hopefully starting to blog more regularly again! Thank you ALL for you constant prayers and thoughts for us. They are so appreciated and I know are helping us get through this day to day! Love you all! 

Davidson Campgound

Every last week of July, you will find us at this old church camp! Davidson campground is outside of Arkadelphia and Matt's family has attended all their lives. So this year was very special... It was Preslee's FIRST camp meeting!!  This is going to be picture overload but I couldn't cut out any more from the hundreds I took that week! 

Wingfield Family cabin

 Preslee and her campground boyfriend, Cooper Batson! 

I had a romper made especially for her "First Campmeeting" and I loved how it turned out!

 Preslee loves her Gram and Gdad!

 She loved staying cool in the kiddie pool! 

 And loved riding in the wagon around the campground! 

 She had lots of boyfriends come to our porch!

I celebrate my birthday out there every year! It was my golden year, 29 on the 29th but mainly because I had my baby girl to help me celebrate! And she turned 8 months on my birthday! 

The cute cake had a picture of Preslee on my hip! 

 Most days were over 100 degrees so we spent a lot of time in the pool! 

 Miss P was a trooper and played non-stop in the extreme heat!

 Every afternoon they have craft time for kids! We were so excited to get to take Preslee to crafts! ha! 

 Her first craft was a campground napkin holder and we did her cute lithe footprints on it! 

 We got to spend some good quality time with our Batson family friends! Preslee loved playing with big girl Blaise!

Preslee learned to wave and said bye-bye to everyone while we were out there!

She also got to spend lots of time with daddy!

Preslee's first time to the creek and sticking her feet in the cold springs! 

This girl wasn't afraid of anything and was so entertained by the creek! 

My all time favorite photo from camp meeting! This happened one morning while Lisa was swinging with Preslee on the porch swing! It is just the sweetest picture ever! 

Another Davidson camp down, next summer should be even more fun with a 1.5year old!! :)