florida day 3

Thursday, March 11, 2010

This morning we had breakfast in our hotel room and decided to head out to a sea turtle conservatory since the weather wasn't so nice today and as some of you noticed, Robb got a little too much sun yesterday, so it worked out perfectly to head out for the day! We stopped by a McDonald's for lunch on the way and found it fitting to have turtles on the tables :)
Grayden LOVED the turtles, he wanted to get right in their tank with them if he could!













We headed back to the hotel to get showered and changed for dinner. We ended up at Little Caesars. There aren't a lot of family friendly restaurants around this little town!


We had another great day, I am so glad we decided to go check out the sea turtles, we made some great family memories, that's what vacations are all about :)

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Florida!! days 1 & 2

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Our flight took off at 6:45 last night. Grayden did great on the plane, we sat way towards the back of the plane by the engine so the noise drowned out his hums and moans as he put himself to sleep. He slept for the last 2.5 hours of the flight!





We arrived to our hotel at 11:30pm and were more than ready to get some rest!
Our hotel is awesome, well worth the risk I took when I booked through Hotwire.


This morning we slept in and grabbed some breakfast at BK and headed to Walmart to pick up a few groceries for the week, then it was time to hit the pool! It was so gorgeous out today, beautiful and sunny!







After a couple hours in the sun we had enough and headed up to the room for some lunch. In the afternoon we headed down to the beach, this was Grayden's first time on a beach and first sights of the ocean, he was scared of the waves and hung for dear life every time one washed up on the shore, it was kinda cute :)




We all took a nap before we headed out to Boston Market for dinner.

We stopped in a couple shops and headed back for the hotel for some baby Einstein and spent some time playing on the big bed! Grayden loves to play with pillows and blankets!



We are having a great time!

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Top Two Tuesday

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

This is my first time participating in Top Two Tuesday and this week's topic happens to be one I LOVE....baby names!!





Since I won't be giving out any possible names for future Lubbers babies I will tell you the two names I thought I had all picked out for a boy and a girl 4 years ago when Robb and I first got married.

Boy: Jackson
Girl: Ava

Needless to say my name style completely changed once it became the real deal. I can't even guess how many names have been cycled through our lists over the years! :)

Have a great day friends! We are packing up and headed out to Florida this afternoon for a week long vacay :) Be ready for lots of picture posts coming up!!

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March 5

Friday, March 5, 2010

March 5 is a special day in our family. A year ago today I got the best phone call ever, with a runner up being this one. It was a call from our adoption worker telling us that an expectant mother (Grayden's birthmom) had chosen our profile! Talk about a life changing phone call!

Here is an excerpt from a post I wrote that day my adoption blog:

there is this website I visit that has a bible verse for the day, I usually log on and check out the verse of the day right away in the morning along with checking my email. March 5 was a really good verse and I wanted to share it with you. It is from Isaiah 25:1 "O LORD, you are my God; I will exalt you and praise your name, for in perfect faithfulness you have done marvelous things, things planned long ago."



God has done marvelous things for us! You see March 5, the same day I read that verse on the website, Robb and I found out we are going to be parents again!


I happened to be at my mom and dad's house that morning using their computer because my laptop was getting some repair done to it. I was about to leave to meet a friend for craft day when my phone rang. It was our social worker from Bethany. She asked me if I had a minute, which she has never asked me before since its usually just a quick question about something. I ran into their bathroom and shut the door so my mom wouldn't hear me and overhear our conversation.


She very calmly told me that a birth mom, we will call her S had chosen us and would like to meet us! I could not believe my ears. We didn't even know anyone had our profile or was interested.


I was in complete disbelief...all I said was "really?, wow!, ok!, great!, sounds good!, thanks!" over and over again. Not the reaction I had expected from myself!


I took half a second to catch my breath and then called robb who happened to be in Chicago for a work conference (which by the way i jokingly told him not to go to in case we got 'the call'!). He was in the middle of hearing Mike Rowe (from Dirty Jobs!) speak, when I called. He saw that it was me and right away asked if he could call me back, I said "well...i think you are going to want to know this" and he said "ok, well hurry up, whats up?" so I said "well...maybe you should just call me back cuz its something that you're going to want to talk about" after going back and forth a few more times I finally told him the news! Also not the way I pictured that going but I totally froze and couldn't come up with anything cute to say to tell him the news!



Since then, we both have perma-grins!


I am just BURSTING with JOY.


My heart is OVERFLOWING with LOVE.


We are PRAISING His name.



God's plan is so perfect.


Just four short days after the 1 year mark of our son's death the Lord answered our deepest desire.


"The Lord gives and the Lord takes away my heart will chose to say "Lord blessed be your name!"




It's no secret to say that phone call has changed our life and we both feel so incredibly blessed to be given such a gift! This past week has reminded me again just how precious life is. On Wednesday my sister and her husband found out that they had lost their precious 1st baby by miscarriage. Their baby (my first niece or nephew) passed away on or near Brenham's birthday. We are all heartbroken and confused why God has chosen to put us through such pain once again.

The timing of it all is so bittersweet but today was a reminder to me of what I wrote last year...God's plan is good and "in his perfect faithfulness He will do and has done marvelous things, things planned long ago."

I ask for your prayers for Mindy and Kyle as they walk this difficult road. We are so thankful to God and his promise to never allow us to walk this journey alone. Be near Lord Jesus.




"Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart" (Ps. 37:4).

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Wordless Wednesday

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

brotherly love; is there anything cuter?!?

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Brenham's Birthday

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Thank you all so much for the prayers, comments, emails, cards and fb messages you sent us over Brenham's birthday, they mean the world to us. They really do.


The celebration lasted all weekend starting with a visit from Nicole and some ice cream cake Friday night! Thanks so much, Nicole!


We chose to officially celebrate his birthday on the 28th this year since it was a Sunday and we were all together. We visited the church that our former youth pastor is now preaching at, he did Brenham's funeral service and also baptized Grayden so it was really special to us to go visit his new church, after church we went for lunch at TGIFridays.


We headed to the cemetery in the afternoon and released 2 blue balloons.










Its hard to believe he would have been 2 years old already but at the same time it feels like an eternity. We miss him so much but celebrate that he is in Heaven having the party of a lifetime. We look forward to the day we will all be together as a family.

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