celebrate Gracen

We continue to thank you for following Gracen's story and loving us and this sweet girl so much!  She keeps growing in there and is very active:)  It's hard to believe we're already 31weeks, we have an appointment Friday and will be almost 8months along.  We can't wait for our ultrasound and to see her this week.  Please pray that we can truly soak in and enjoy each moment we have with her, the time is just going by so fast.  Much excitement comes the closer we get to her arrival, but many other hard feelings come as well.  We have sad hearts to think the time we have with her now is the majority of time we'll have.  We continue to ask for joy in the struggle and that we will put Gracen's needs and precious worth above our own.  When we pour out our hearts to the Lord we so often find ourselves using phrases that are all about "us."  I'll tell God, "I wanted to do this or that with her so bad..." or "I always dreamed it would look like ... or "we wanted to raise this child your way"  I think about the deployment coming up in the midst of all this and prior to finding out about our special baby I was so focused on asking for strength in that.  Ryan would be missing over half of our baby's first year and that wasn't easy to think on.  We were so positive about it though, getting excited and planning for all the great military family tools out there we would get to use to connect Ryan and our baby.  I started making a list:)  daddy dolls, flat daddies, books on tape through the USO, photo shoots... there are many awesome creative resources out there.  When I am being selfish and talk to God about that, I get angry because my absolute favorite part was going to be picking out the cutest red, white and blue outfit for our baby to go pick up Daddy in.  This would be the sweetest homecoming ever because Ryan would be coming home to both of us..  These were things I wanted and so often we do make things all about us.  Well, its not about us and thank the Lord for that.  It's about delighting ourselves in Him, living grateful lives and thanking God that it is only by grace that we have been saved.  We are confident the creator of this entire universe who selflessly gave His only Son that we may be free from sin and have abundant life, has much better plans for Gracen than we could have.  That is why as hard as this is and will be we are celebrating this gift and thank God and thank you for celebrating with us.



This day was the most precious celebration and will forever be a beautiful memory.  I wasn't able to upload each picture or each girl who came ... but I'm sure by the few pictures, you can see what an amazing time we shared.  I couldn't believe the amount of girls who came to support and love on Gracen.  Our sweet friends here, friends from San Antonio, friends from Abilene and even family from Pennsylvania and New York were there!  I will be forever thankful for each girl who came along and each person who sent something special and their prayers, I appreciate that support more than they'll ever know.  Does the sweet set up not look like something from a magazine?!  I must have told the hostesses Allison, Emily and Jayme that a hundred times... 

  

These next pictures were taken a few weeks ago by our sweet and talented friend Lyssa:)