Congratulations!

To Brynna, Luke, and Ivey on their precious new baby girl, Bethany Jane, born May 23rd. She is just adorable!

Praying....

for Steven Curtis Chapman and his family today for the loss of their little girl Maria.

For more information or to leave condolences you can visit their website here.

I sure would like to!!

That is, win an Ergo Baby Carrier!! (I WILL have one of these someday!)

But here is your chance to try to win one too!

Win an Ergo Baby Carrier

My Sweet Angel Baby

is 3 months old today. Time flies...enjoy your babies while they are babies.

It seems I'm always

catching up on here lately!! The end of school and planning for our Disney trip (which is in 1 1/2 weeks) has me running a little ragged it seems!


So without further ado, here goes the latest at the Hamilton Household:

Mari Cate had Awards Day at school. She received the Library Award, the Reading Award, and the English Award (our little math whiz, gets an English Award??? Weird!) Here she is with her awards.
Conner had his Spring Concert in Band. It was amazing to see how much they had progessed since the Christmas Concert. At the Christmas Concert it was more like listening to them play the "scales" only. Now they are playing actual songs and playing them very well, if I do say so myself!! I have a video of the concert and may try to upload just a little of it if I can. (I have a terrible time uploading videos no matter what hosting service I choose---anyone care to give me some hints in this area???)

And this past Thursday, Mari Cate's school had "Musicians Among Us" day. This is where ANY student and/or parent can showcase their musical talent. Some are really good, some are not so good, but I have to give them credit for even getting up there, cause I am not so sure that I would!! :) So anyway, the Black Fox Singers that are going to Disney performed the songs that they will be singing down there. They sound sooooo good!!

And last but not least...I have to share my wonderful Yard Sale find!! Normally, I would not have considered buying a car seat from a yard sale. But this time was different. We checked the car seat out very well. Frank looked up to see if there were any recalls on it. It had only been used in the husbands car (which means very rarely). I got this wonderful Britax Marathon Carseat with the UT cover (Go Vols!!) for only $50!! These are selling used for $250+ on Amazon!! I am sure that we will wait until Hayden can sit forward-facing in it before moving him to it, but just in case he grows out of the infant seat, we have the next one ready to go! Yippee!!

Please say a prayer....

my for baby boy. Last week I took him to get two of his two month shots. I did two shots one week and two shots the next, to make sure he had no reaction to them. I don't like the thought of all four shots at once and am really questioning vaccinations altogether, but I will save that for a different post. Anyway, that evening I looked at his arms and he had a terrible rash all over them and some hives, so I called the drs. office (of course it was after hours by this time), so the triage nurse called me back and said I should take him to the ER (that was horrible, too, again, another post, another time!). Well the ER nurse practitioner said she thought it was dermatitis and upon our insistence gave a dose of benydryl---no other instructions, except if it wasn't cleared up in a week, see our dr. Well, it wasn't cleared up so we took him to the dr. on Wednesday. The dr. gave him an antibiotic and told me to use some hydrocortisone on him also. Well, this morning the rash was oozing and looked even worse! So I called the dr. again and they changed his antibiotic and gave him an antibiotic ointment to put on it also. My poor baby's arms looks soooo pitiful! Like I said, the drs. won't say that this is related to the shots, but I truly believe that it is.

Please when you think about us, say a little prayer for Hayden, that he won't be in any pain and that the medicines will help clear it all up very quickly! Thank you!

A Little Late---but a Mother's Day Thank You

I took the time to recognize my mother in the previous post, but now I want to take a moment to recognize two other young women.

Two young women who were selfless enough to allow me to raise their children and be their mother for the rest of their lives. I don't know where either of these two young women are, but I am thankful for them. I thank God that they had the courage to carry their child and courage to give that child up. I pray that we are able to bring them both up in a way that would make them proud. I thank both of them for fulfilling my dream and desire to be a mother.

I thank God for also filling my desire to bear my own child. I don't love Conner or Mari Cate any less than I did before I had Hayden, however I now fully understand what a sacrifice their birthmothers made, one I am not so sure I could have ever made had I been put in their situations. But I thank them. I pray that during Mother's Day, they are not sad, but rather feel a peace about the decision they made and know that they gave a the most special gift to another Mother.