Monday, October 31, 2011

Happy Halloween!



I love Halloween! I really enjoy a good spooky story or movie (nothing too gory or scary though...). I thought that it would be fun today to share some of my own spooky stories with you all and then maybe a local story from around the area that I live. I know that everyone has their own small story of unexplained weirdness that has happened to them. So in honor of the spooky day that it is, here goes!






(Disclaimer - my stories are pretty lame and not all that scary :)

So my first story involves 2 houses that I have lived in. When Graham was a baby we lived with Bobby's parents while we were building a house. It was very very early one morning and Bobby had to go into work really early. I was super worried about him because we had had some really bad flooding in our area and I was waiting up to get a call from him saying that he was able to make it into work safely. While I was waiting I decided to watch the local news on the T.V. that was in our bedroom. I had it on pretty quietly because Graham's crib was in our room too. In the middle of a news report I started to hear a really faint whistling. The whistling grew louder until I could hear a definite melody. I turned down the TV but could still hear it! I was seriously scared because I could not figure out where it was coming from! It was soo early in the morning that Bobby's parents weren't up yet, it wasn't from the TV because I had turned it down, and it could not have been the wind outside because I could hear a melody! It stopped after a while and I pretty soon forgot about it.

Flash forward about 9 months later... Bobby and I had moved into the new house that we had built. Once again, Bobby had already left for work and it was still really dark and early. I had just gotten Graham up to take to daycare and as we were about to leave the house guess what I hear?? You guessed it! It was the same whistling melody that I could hear! I have never run out of a house so fast in my whole life!! To this day I can still hum that melody...




My second story is a little more scary! Bobby and I had moved once again to another house (to get Graham in a different school district) and one night I heard something at our bedroom door. It was maybe midnight and we were sleeping with our door closed. It sounded like maybe Graham needed us and was fumbling to get our door open. I waited a second and wondered why he hadn't come in yet. By this time our dog Crash had started to growl at the door. I was starting to get scared (I'm a super big scardy cat with too big of an imagination) so I nudged Bobby awake and told him to go and open the door for Graham. He went to the door but Graham wasn't there. He walked across the hallway to check on him and he was sound asleep. When Bobby climbed back into bed he told me that I was hearing things and to go back to sleep. (Bobby is the much more reasonable, level-headed person in our relationship :). About 5 seconds later the sound at our bedroom door started up again but this time Bobby could hear it too!! We laid there together listening to it and trying to figure out what the heck was going on. It sound just like someone was pawing or scratching at the door and doorknob. You could hear something tapping or hitting at the knob but tell that it wasn't actually turning the knob. Crash had started up his barking again because he could hear it too. Bobby once again got up and re-looked around again. This time I made him check the whole house and thankfully he still found nothing. We never figured out what was making that sound. I do have to say though that my level headed husband was sufficiently scared enough though that the next night he set up a video camera outside our bedroom door to record all night. I watched the first 15 minutes of it one time before I got bored and stopped. Maybe one day I'll have a free 8 hours (yeah right) to sit and watch the whole thing to see if we caught anything!

See, I told you my stories weren't all that scary or exciting. :)




And now a local one from our area! Incidentally this is where Bobby and I stayed the night we got married!

The Comal Hotel (later renamed the Prince Solms Inn) was built in 1898. It was known to be the most romantic and most luxurious hotel in this area, as it is still today. In the early 1900�s, a young woman and her family came to the hotel to celebrate a special occasion. It was to be the young woman�s wedding day.
On her wedding day, the young woman got dressed into her beautiful wedding dress, draped with layers of lace. She waited for her groom to come so they may be wed in the hotel. She waited and waited, he did not arrive. The young woman began to cry. Her two over-protective brothers decided to ride on horseback in search of their sister�s husband-to-be. They were not going to allow this man to run out on their sister.
As the two brothers followed his trail from town to town, they reached a town to discover he never arrived there and that no one had seen him. The two brothers proceeded back to the hotel to tell their sister they could not locate him and suspect something devastating had happened to him. The young woman went into denial. She told her family that she was not going to leave the hotel and that she was going to wait for him to come so they could be married.
The owners of the hotel offered the young woman a job to stay at the hotel as long as she did chores for her room and board. The young woman agreed to this and stayed at the hotel and later became the innkeeper of the hotel. Sometime in the late 1920�s or early 1930�s, the young woman passed away due to natural causes. This was a terrible tragedy as she had waited over 20 years for her true love to arrive so they could get married and he never came.
In 1935, a young gentleman came through the front doors and proceeded through the hallway of the hotel toward the staircase to the second floor. The new innkeeper, sitting in the parlor, heard the man come in and approached him. As he started to go upstairs, she asked him if she could assist him. He continued up the staircase and said that he was here to see someone.
The innkeeper looked upstairs and, to her amazement, saw a young woman in a wedding dress at the top of the staircase. As the young man reached the top of the stairs, he embraced the young woman, kissed her, and then they both disappeared.
To her astonishment, the innkeeper realized that the woman at the top of the stairs was the young woman who worked here and was the woman waiting for her true love to come all these years. Was this man her true love she was waiting for?...
The innkeeper did not believe what she had seen, so she went out the front door to ask if anyone else saw anything. On the front porch, there were three gentlemen, who were guests of the hotel, talking with each other. She asked them if they saw the young man enter the hotel. One of them said, �Sure, his horse is over by the hitching post.� He pointed to the side of the building and sure enough there was a horse tied to the post.
The innkeeper told the men what she saw. They did not believe her, so they went into the hotel to look for the young man and the young woman in a wedding dress. The men searched every room, every closet, in the basement, and in the attic. There was no sign of either one of them. Where did they go? Who was it? The horse that was tied to the hitching post remained at the hotel for three months. No one ever claimed it�
After this sighting, the ghost of the young woman in a wedding dress has been seen several times since 1935. She has been seen in Sophie�s Suite lying in bed with her wedding dress on. Also, she has been seen upstairs walking around in the hallway. Again, in her wedding dress and smiling in happiness. She has been seen downstairs in the cellar, as recent as 1960.

Has anything scary or creepy ever happened to you? Leave me a comment or maybe a link if you're posting a scary story today!

Friday, October 28, 2011

It Happened Again

It happened again. We lost yet another tree in a small-ish wind storm this morning!



At this rate we will have no trees left at all!! Thankfully it was only one of the branches. Hopefully we can salvage what is left of the tree. My poor hubby just got one more chore added to his honey-do list for this weekend ...

I Need A Lot More Sleep...

Are ya'll ready to laugh with me for a really short blog post?? :)

I posted yesterday that Griffin was 1 month old. HA! He is one month old today...not yesterday. I don't remember my own kid's birthday...

I need a lot more sleep.

So to make up for my mishap :), here are a couple more pictures from his real birthday... (and a couple days thereafter).





This is one of my most favorite pictures of all times. Neither of us looks super great in this picture but I think it speaks a thousand words. We were both just soo glad that our baby was finally here safe and sound.


This is what I came home to! During a small wind storm our tree was ahem damaged.


It missed our house by 2 inches. Swear to God. It missed my MIL's car by 1 inch.


This was Grady's very first time to hold his brother!


Brotherly love!
 Maybe this wasn't such a short post after all! :) Thanks for hanging in there with me. Many more random, forgetful posts to come!

Hope you all have a great weekend!

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Happy One Month Griffin!

(Otherwise titled I Can't Believe We Made It This Far With Our Sanity Intact)  :)




I only took 15 pictures nearly identical to these 3 this morning and then I couldn't decide at all which one was my favorite so I'm gracing my blog with the ones I like the best! Maybe by next month he will give me a little smile!

I love my newest little man soo much and I can't wait until next month to compare and see how much more he's grown!

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

What I'm Loving Wednesday!




It's been a while so I thought that I'd take the time and join back up with Jaime for What I'm Loving Wednesday!

I'm loving and thankful for soo many things this week!

  • I'm loving that Griffin is 4 Weeks old today! Time has flown by sooo fast. I still can't believe that he's ours and I thank God everyday for this sweet baby!



"I will gnaw my own arm off lady if you don't feed me again quick!!"
  • I'm loving that the above cutie slept pretty much the whole night last night (from 10:30 - 4:30). Thank God because this Momma was getting crazy tired...

  • I'm loving that Grady styled his own hair this morning with apple juice... HA! I walked into the room and he was rubbing his hands through his hair and when I asked what he was doing he said "I fixing my hair". I  suspiciously asked with what and when he said "water" I got scared because the only water around was in the dog bowl. Gag. Thankfully he showed me it was just shaken out juice from his sippy cup. Today will be one of those days where he needs a bath before noon...

  • Coincidentally, Graham styled his hair rather unusually this morning too! His was legit for school though. They were able to dress is bright clothes and with crazy hair as part of a campaign to be "Crazy about being Drug Free".


Grr...don't you just hate hate hate it when your computer only pretends to flip the orientation of your pictures!!

  • I'm loving that Hugh Jackman was on Sesame Street this morning! ;)

  • I'm loving the homemade Chili that we ate the other night! I plan to do a recipe post on it soon!



What are you loving this week??

I Heart Being A Boy Mom!


This is what I found last night in the bottom of my washer. Funnily enough, I was doing a load of sheets and blankets at the time :).

Friday, October 21, 2011

Decorating for Halloween and Fall

There is just nothing more fun that pulling out tubs and boxes of decorations! I love to spruce up my home as the seasons change. Fall and Winter are my favorites! I love that I can pull out Fall things starting in September and leave them all up until its time to start decorating for Christmas (which is by far my absolute favorite!).

Last year, with the loss of Caroline, it was very very hard for me to get in the spirit of anything. Most of the decorations that made it up were put up by my MIL so things would seem more ordinary to the boys for the season and not quite so bleak. I just didn't care last year. Taking time to decorate just seemed soo unnecessary considering all that we were going through. This year however, I am back in the mood!! 


Here is a couple of things from one of our downstairs bathrooms. I love the picture in the top picture! It was from Grady's first Halloween!


Our Dining Room decorations. This is the first room you seen when you walk into our home so I tried to make it extra special this year! I can't wait until the next time you see pictures of this room. We are going RED!


Just some fun nick-nacks hanging around the house. The "M" pumpkin I just found at Hobby Lobby last week. I just had to buy it to add to our collection of decorations! I love that I can leave it up for both Halloween and Thanksgiving!


Here is one of Griffin's Halloween outfits. I'm saving it for him to wear to a birthday party we have this weekend!
How do you decorate your home for the Fall Holidays?

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Griffin Is 3 Weeks Old!

(yesterday)

HA! Are you super surprised that I'm late once again posting something that should have been done yesterday? :) Sounds like my pregnancy updates... But, better late than never right?!



I promise that soon I will post pictures of my baby awake for a change! He just still sleeps soo darn much during the day that its super hard to catch him awake to actually get a picture. He is awake soo much during the night but I refuse to take his picture then...:)

At 3 weeks Griffin :

  • has just lost his umbilical cord! Gross story, but for my records, when I went to change his diaper in the middle of the night last night I found it laying inside his onsie. Umbilical cords (dried or otherwise) totally skeve me out. I know its a wonderful part of both him and I but I hate to even look at them. Yesterday I was giving him a sponge bath and I could see where it was trying to separate. It was a little bloody and gunky and I panicked just a little and called both my hubby and my SIL. You would think that this is not my 3rd go around...

  • has managed to sleep until 2ish am on 3 occasions! Can I get a WHOOP! Most other nights he wakes up every 2 hours to eat. Other bad bad bad nights he NEVER.EVER.SLEEPS.

  • has started to do this silly fast breathing when I'm talking to him. I think that he's trying to work up to cooing. I can't wait! :)

  • has a love/hate relationship with his swaddling blanket. Some nights he sleeps sooo good with it on him. Other nights I can hear him thrashing around trying to get his arms free. He is soo red faced mad then!

  • is still eating like a monster. I have caved a couple of times and given him a little bit of formula when I can tell he is starving and I just don't have any left. (I have also caved and given him a little bit of cereal off a spoon too... no judgement please!)

  • can still wear preemie sized clothing. He wears it about half the time now instead of all the time. I am pretty sure he weighs at least 8 1/2 pounds and 21 inches now but we all know how newborn and 0-3 month sized clothes lie about fitting newborns. I'm glad I got some clothes in this size before he was born because I have really used it! After the frustration of clothes just not fitting my first two boys I finally wised up, ignored the tag in preemie clothes that states "up to 5 pounds" (yet another clothing lie), and purchased some outfits.

On a side note ~ can you all please say a quick prayer this morning for a couple I know that just found out that they lost their baby? From my very general understanding she went in for her 3 month checkup on Monday and the baby didn't have a heartbeat. I know how heartbreaking and devastating it can be to feel like you are out of the woods and then have something bad happen...

I hope that everyone is having a great week so far!  

Monday, October 17, 2011

A Special Gift From Afar

I was beyond excited today when I went outside to cehck my mail! We had a package in our box!



The boys and I were soo excited to see that the package had come all the way from Australia! We tore into to discover that it was from my dear and wonderful friend New Year Mum. 



Griffin loves his sweet little Koala Bear! It's a gift from afar that we will treasure always!

We are soo thankful to call New Year Mum one of our friends. Love you always NYM!

Walk To Remember

I am your God.
I will strengthen you
and help you;
I will uphold you
with My righteous
right hand.

Isaiah 41:10


This past Saturday was Walk To Remember here in San Antonio. I didn't have any plans to attend nor did I really have any idea that San Antonio had one until I was inspired by Mary and Katie. They both did blog posts about attending their local Walk To Remembers and so I searched and found out about ours!


The organization did such a great job putting it together! They had all sorts of different stations where you could do crafting types of things in which to remember your child. We did do a couple and then I started to get a little too emotional.

A quilting square that Graham and I made together

We got a couple of things done and I signed up to receive information for some different bereavement groups in the area before the water works started :(. Once I caught a glimpse of Graham and Grady's faces, I knew that being there and seeing me so upset just wasn't worth it anymore for us to be there. We headed out early.

I do have to say though, it was soo wonderful to see soo many families and to know that Bobby and I are not alone in what happened to our family. So many other families there had cute t-shirts on that they had made to commemorate their special child and tons of other Momma's there were either pregnant or had brand-new babies with them like we did! Despite my reaction to the event it really was a positive and uplifting day to so many others!



Before we headed out we grabbed some t-shirts for ourselves and we all got wrist bands to wear. The boys were especially excited about the bands!





We will for sure be going back again next year!

Saturday, October 15, 2011

Happy Birthday Sweet Caroline

** To the more sensitive of readers, this post will have a picture included of our sweet Caroline. If you feel that this might upset you, it might be best to just check back in tomorrow! xoxox


Dear Caroline,

Happy 1st Birthday to my sweet baby girl! I can not believe that one whole year has already passed since you have been gone. To Momma it still seems like yesterday that you were brought in to this world much much too early.

Momma and Daddy were soo excited when we first learned that we were expecting you. We were over the moon that we would be adding you to your older brothers! We were even more excited the day that we found out that you were a little girl! We were soo proud that we were going to be parents to a daughter and your brothers were super excited that they were going to have a little sister to watch out for and love.

We were beyond devastated a little more than a week and a half later to learn that our family's plans were not to be. The day we found out that you would only be our angel baby to be held in our hearts was the worst and most crushing days of our lives. You were already soo special and so loved to all four of us!

Despite the heartache that your loss has brought upon all of us, we are soo thankful that we had you even for such a brief moment. We know that you are waiting for us in Heaven and we soo look forward to that special day when we can all be reunited as a whole family. We know that you look down upon us daily and are our special guardian angel. We are soo blessed that you watched over your little brother Griffin and helped deliver him safely and soundly into our arms when he could have been soo easily lost too.

We miss you, love you, and think about you still nearly ever moment of every day. Thank you for the brief joy that you brought to our lives. We hope that we are able to honor you and your memory in many ways so that your little life has as much meaning as possible.

We love you with all our hearts, all our souls, and all our beans!

Love you,

Momma


Friday, October 14, 2011

In Honor...



I'd like to stop and honor my sweet daughter Caroline Elizabeth a day early today! As most of you all know, October 15 is National Infant and Pregnancy Loss Remembrance Day. Since tomorrow is Caroline's actual birthday I wanted to do a post exclusively for just her. So today is the day that I am choosing to spread the word and share my prayers with all the other families out there that have experienced sad times as these.

I love you Sweet Caroline!!

Pictures As Promised!

I think that I might make this a picture-only post! Lazy right? :) I just have soo many that I want to post, some from even before Griffin was born that I don't want to leave out!

Graham decided that he wanted to make something special for Griffin before his arrival! He and I went off to our favorite store (Hobby Lobby of course!) and found this super cute material to make a little blanket!

Ack! Don't you hate it when your computer won't change the orientation of your pictures! This was too cute to not post. How funny is it that my 9 year old squeezed himself into his brothers stroller!  We were all cracking up at these two at the mall this day. :)


At the mall and the Build-A-Bear store so the boys could make stuffed animals for baby Griffin. This was 2 weeks before Griffin's arrival so I was pretty big here!



This is Griffin on his way home from the hospital!

Griffin is all snuggy in his bouncy seat and with his brand new blanket from Graham! He sleeps soo soundly in it!

Angry baby... :)

One of our first outings out with Griffin. Can you spot him in this picture? He's so tiny that he's blending in with the other kids while in Graham's arms!

My silly boys!

Grady was soo scared in this picture! The place where they were sitting was a little bit up in the air and he was soo scared! I could hardly get him to smile at all.

Biggest Brother!
Bobby's sister, Aunt Stacy holding her newest nephew!

Don't you just loooove all the pumpkins Graham picked out! I'm fairly certain that our church (who hosts the pumpkin patch) was super glad to unload all these beauties. Sweet Graham found something special that he liked each funny looking one...


I fell in love with this onesie when I saw it and just had to buy it! Can you see why "My Mommy Is Exhausted"? :)

Griffin and Momma are in love with his Nap Nanny!

Our beloved OB! This is Dr. W. who took such awesome care of us! If it wasn't for her the sweet miracle in her arms wouldn't be here at all! Love this lady! This picture was from my doctors appointment yesterday where I got a great bill of health!
 
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