This is for one of my very best friends, Gillian Nichols. We were roommates in college, in each other's weddings, blah, blah, blah... She and her husband left this morning from Houston, where they live, to go the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. They will be there for about a week for her to get loads of tests done to see what's wrong with her.(Sorry if I get these details wrong Gillian...)
She's been having vision problems her entire life and has had NINE eye surgeries in the past few years. Her lenses keep falling out and she's having a wealth of other eye problems and pains. When she was pregnant with her now-four year old, she was on complete bed rest nearly the whole time because she had extreme endometriosis. Shortly after the baby was born, she had a full hysterectomy at age 26. Now she is having extreme pains in her hips to the point that she is in a wheelchair most of the time because she can't walk.
Somebody recently realized that there is a possibility that these problems are actually all related to some kind of tissue-connective problem. I'm not even going to pretend that I understand it. They were able to get into the Mayo Clinic for some way-smart doctors to try to diagnose her and get her better.
Gillian is amazing. Her faith through this entire ordeal has been completely unbelievable. I don't know how she does it! This past week, she sent out a list of prayer requests for their trip:

Would you be an intercessor for with me and join me in praying for one, some or all of these needs:
-Foremost*** For God's will to be done in our lives.
-That the Lord would use this condition/situation for HIS glory and that we can be good witnesses through this!
-That if it is in His plan, we get clear answers as to what my condition is, for the connective tissue disorder and for the new found edema in the hip bone marrow.
-That whatever info is found, we can translate that back home to Houston.
-That the Lord would provide a team of docs at home that can carry out our findings.
-That Leelah (their daughter) would not fret about us being gone for so long, but that she would have fun on her sleepovers and enjoy herself!
- a minor note: that the plane rides wouldn't be too painful as my pain has increased a lot and it hurts to sit for long
-And all the praise to Him for the way He has paved the path thus far, for the opportunity to be able to go to Mayo, for all the people that continue to be the hands and feet of Christ for our family!
-Praise for his future provision in all things.
God has blessed me through you all. I am so thankful for all of you in my life.
Thanks for your prayers. And please remember, I'm already healed!
love you all,
Gillian


Their church (2nd Baptist in Houston... you may have heard of it :)) has this awesome thing called a Prayer Pager. The person carries it with them, and anytime someone prays for them, they call the number and it pages the person to let them know they are being prayed for. If you could even pray for her one time this week and let her know, that would be awesome. Her prayer pager number is 713-200-0069. The prompt when you call tells you what to do.

If you care, (and are still with me) she has a blog that they will be updating all week with what's happening. She and her husband are hilarious and they are taping a video "doctormentary" that they will be posting each day. It should be funny.
They posted their first video tonight and it was great...



Thanks so much for interceding for my friend! It means so much to us both!

Posted in: friends, roommates on Monday, November 08, 2010 at at 10:43 PM 1 comments    

My college roommate/BFF/Los Angeles travelmate Erin got married on June 18th. I was one of the bridesmaids, along with our other roommate Gillian... and 7 other girls. I'm not going to post a bunch of pictures here, mostly because I'm still on the slow-upload train, but also because it's hard to pick the best ones without posting too many. So if you want to see my 75 favorites, go here to see the album on Facebook.

At the rehearsal dinner.

The Candy Bar at the reception! I was so excited about it!

My first bag of candy from the candy bar.

Yay! We're all married now!

They had a video guest book at the reception, so Gillian, her husband John, and I used items at the reception to make a representation of the tot we had in college (see here) to be with us in the video.

If you want to see more pics from the weekend, go here.

Posted in: candy, friends, roommates on Friday, July 16, 2010 at at 11:35 PM 0 comments    

Here's the rest of Christmas-y type things that happened last month.

Jake fell asleep after pulling his hat over his eyes.

We attempted pictures at church with the little camera.
They came out blurry.

Jake hung out with the snowman at Mimi and Pop's house.

Jake played with the Snoopy snow globe.

Jake had his own snoopy/sports tree for his room.

Complete with a Woodstock on top.

We finally got a tall tree!
And Jake got an assortment of First Christmas ornaments...

This is the first in the series of 1-5 that Hallmark sells.
I got him this one.

My mom got him this one since I was a pea pod
for Halloween last year when pregnant.

He was born in 2009!

And Mimi got him this cute picture frame ornament.

I took Jake out to the park to get pictures for our Christmas card. Here are some of the ones that didn't make it...

Smiley guy.

Always happy.

This one is on the card, but it's my very favorite so I wanted to show it again.

I'm on a bridge.

Oooooo! Leaves!

Two seconds later a face plant happened.

Holly bushes!

I love bridge.

This was our Christmas card.
Kind of looks like the top of this page, eh?
Sorry if you didn't get one. Consider this one yours.
And just a few more from Fort Worth...

Playing with the new toys with Grandude. And being a major cheeseball.

Flying Jake!

Dressed up for church with Uncle Josh.

And the Monday after Christmas, we got together with Erin and Gillian, the old college roommates and two of my BFFs. I've discussed them. Gillian, John, and Leelah were headed through Fort Worth on the way to Oklahoma and we got to eat lunch. Erin told us all about her boyfriend. Then three days later, at midnight on New Year's Eve... she got ENGAGED! YES! So you'll be hearing more about that as it goes along. Like y'all care. But you read this, so you'll have to deal.

Posted in: Christmas, Fort Worth, friends, Jake, roommates, the fam on Saturday, January 02, 2010 at at 4:49 PM 0 comments    

I have some crazy awesome friends that love to make things. Here are two of them...

The Great and Groovy Gillian, my roomie from college, loves to sew things for kids. She made this fantastic A&M onesie for the Jakemeister. Thanks Gillian!

The Super and Stupendous Sarah that I taught with in Texarkana loves to make stencils and paint shirts. This is the outrageously awesome one that she made for Jake. I'm going to have her make a bag or something with the same design on it. Thanks Sarah!

Posted in: friends, Jake, roommates on Saturday, August 08, 2009 at at 2:07 PM 1 comments    

Last weekend (not yesterday) we went to Fort Worth for my shower at the church I grew up in. Here are probably way too many pictures...

The traditional Baptist girl church shower table... cake, nuts, colored mints, and punch...

...with an added bonus of a diaper cake made by one of my BFFs, Sarah Brooks, who couldn't be there but sent this greatness.

The cake up close.

The so-creepy-it's-cute sugar baby with a... backwards head?

Me and my momma aka Granna (I think that's the name she's finally settled on.)

With my aunt Emily

With my awesome roomies from college, Gillian and Erin!

I handed Gillian my camera to take pictures of the present opening and she started to have fun. Starting with a picture of Erin...

Then just my big belly...

Then her "artistic shot" which her husband says just looks like she's falling over when taking it. I like it Gillian. Don't let him say that to you. :)

I was excited to get my swing!

And obviously very excited about this book that builds a rainbow with ribbons as you turn the pages.

My mom always gets creative with presents. Here's the bag she made.

It's five presents in one!

The bags spelled out Jake's name!

The bags had three animals that match the bedding, a dalmatian ("because every little boy needs a dog"), and the adorable JAKE nameplate that she made. She also got the 6-piece crib bedding set, the crib mattress, the baby book, and some other things I'm sure I'm forgetting.

Gillian had the same idea as my mom. Each letter went with one gift. J for Jake's name plate (below), A for Album (photo album she made), K for Kleaning (she said "Just go with it" - it was the thing for cleaning baby stuff in the dishwasher), and E for Eating (a bottle). Genius, Gillian!

The precious name plate Gillian made!

My mom also did a great job wrapping the giant present from my Grammy.

It was the stroller/carseat!

The nursery decorations we got.

The clothes. I LOVE the little vest-and-tie business and the plaid shirt with corduroy khakis.

The LOTS of blankets!

The LOTS of stuffed animals and toys.

The useful stuff.

The shower was really fun and I love everything we got. However, we're still lacking a bunch of the really useful stuff like newborn/0-3 months clothes, sheets, towels/washcloths, etc. You know. All that stuff. If you feel like buying us something check out the registries. They'll tell you what we still need. :)

Posted in: baby, Fort Worth, friends, Jake, roommates, the fam on Monday, January 26, 2009 at at 9:07 PM 0 comments