Dearest Drew

It is through tears of pain and relief that I write to tell you that our nephew, Drew, went home yesterday. He went peacefully in the arms of his parents. We thank you for your prayers and support for the Clark family and ours.

Please read their blog to see how they are glorifying God amidst their loss.

http://jkpdclark.blogspot.com/

A Ray of Sunshine

Many of you have been emailing asking for a Drew update. Kevin got home last night from seeing him and his family. (I was unable to go b/c of being high risk for pre-term labor, otherwise I would have been there as well. Words cannot express how distressed I am that I could not be there.)

Drew is hanging in there. Kevin said he was very peaceful, still seizing, but peaceful. Kari and Jordan continue to be beacons of trust, faith, and hope in our God.

Please continue to show your support through prayer. Thank you all for embrassing them and us with your love, encouraging words, and prayers during this time of pain.

Time-out Wonder Woman Wanna Be

I'm 17 and 1/2 weeks in this picture (18 tomorrow)!! I promise my belly is even bigger in person than this picture! So I met with my doctor yesterday and whew that was a long visit. I had tons of questions and he had lots of information. So basically he said bed rest is in my future and I'm going to get extra special treatment. He wanted to see me back in two weeks and I have another sono in three weeks. He made feel confident in him and the care that I will receive and especially about delivering them, but I am still very concerned about pre-term labor. He said that we were definitely going past 32 weeks and he felt confident about 36. He said that he has every intention of delivering them vaginally which is exactly what I wanted to hear.

I am supposed to take it very easy and lighten my load which is going to be very hard for me b/c I am an independent, first born child, that has lots of responsibilities!! But I am already trying! I am not picking Liam up at all, I am only doing light cleaning, I'm only going to cook easy meals that don't require standing in the kitchen all afternoon, and I'm laying down any time I get tired. My sweet mom is going to clean my house for me every two weeks and I've already had close friends volunteering to come over and help out with the boys and Kevin is of course going to be doing so much for me too:)

Hey a special thanks to all of you supporting Drew, I read all of the comments on their blog and it made me so emotional. I'm sure those encouraging words and prayers mean more to them than you will ever know.

Drew

Our nephew and his family are in desperate need of your prayers. Please read Jordan and Kari's blog, it explains in detail his status so much better than I can.

http://jkpdclark.blogspot.com/

Shock...utter shock

Well I thought I knew what shock felt like, but yesterday was the first time I've ever felt it at full capacity! I'll just get right to it and then give you the whole story......drum roll please.........are you ready for this??? We are HAVING TWIN BABY GIRLS.......AHHH.....(insert SCREAMING and JUMPING HERE!!!!) No I'm not kidding, this is not a joke. We're still in shock too!!!!!

So I don't know where to begin.....because there is a lot to this story. Well, I'll start back in November last year. Okay so we were coming around to the idea of a third child and one day for fun I typed into google, 'how to have a girl', and I fumble through website after website reading all kinds of funny and bizarre things. Then I came to this website that seemed way too good to be true. In a nut shell it said join our program that has a 94% success rate and if you don't get the gender you desire we will double your refund. I talked to Kevin about it and he said maybe we still have a while before we should get pregnant (lots of trips planned) and so I thought about it for months...literally months. March rolled around and I knew if we were going to do it we needed to get in gear b/c it takes a few months of preparation. The preparation is basically changing your ph level by strict diet and supplements (calcium and magnesium for girl) and doing the deed on the days they tell you to until you get pregnant. Sounds simple, but actually it was fairly challenging to change my ph and I almost threw in the towel on a few occations. So I could write ten posts just on fertility and gender methods...but I don't want to....if you seriously want more info on that you can email me at lauramstaples@hotmail.com.

Okay back to the baby story. So we stuck with the program and some how got pregnant the first month! And even crazier than that, we got pregnant on a day when I was totally not 'suppose to be fertile'. In fact, I was so sure that I was not pregnant that I road a roller coaster two weeks later....yes ladies....I was mortified that I had done that after I found out. I didn't tell Kevin about the pregnancy test for three days and gave it to him for Father's day. He was SO surprised to say the least. Now fast forward to week eleven. My first doctors appointment and I've gained 10/11 pounds and my tummy looks like that of someone 6 weeks ahead of me. I say, "hey doc, I'm huge, do you think it could be twins?" He just laughs, listens for the heart beat, finds it and says "nope, just one." Then fast forward to my next visit at 15 weeks. I tease him again, "Are you sure there is only one, I felt this little one way before I felt the boys move!" He laughs again, finds one good heart beat and still says just one.

At that point, I put the twin thing to rest. It was a funny joke and trust me plenty of people have teased me about it over the last couple months, but seriously who has twins at the age of 26 with out fertility drugs?!? So doc allowed me to have my ultrasound a little early since I told him it was my birthday at my 15 week visit:), so we scheduled it for week 17. The last two weeks flew by and yesterday morning I woke up and started dreading my ultrasound. The baby's health had really been on my mind the last couple weeks and I was feeling SO guilty for wanting a specific gender so badly. I spent most of the morning in prayer and meditation and by 2:00 I was at peace and was finally really ready for whatever was to come. I prayed that God would allow me to see the big picture and not be so focused on my tiny little life, I knew I would love this next one just as much as I love the boys of course! I was just afraid of initial reactions.

So Kevin and I went in without the boys and we told the lady as we were walking back to the room that we already had two precious boys and we were crossing our fingers for pink. She said well don't get mad at me if it is a boy! So as she went to put the moniter on my tummy, Kevin jokingly says, "It would be cool if you told us we were having twins." She just laughed like yeah I get that one a lot. So she started rolling the moniter quickly across my tummy, then jerked it off, took a depth breath, adjusted her glasses and says, "Is this your first ultrasound?" Us not taking any hints go, "Yep, sure is." She rolls it over my tummy again slowly this time, we still have no idea, she takes it off again, looks at us and yells, "You guys are having twins!!" After we calmed down she started the ultrasound again and it all of a sudden hit me, our chances for a girl just doubled. I said, "Tell me there is at least one girl in there!!!" She looked at baby A for a long time and then moved to baby B and got a real good shot between the legs and I said, "I don't see a weenie!" She said well actually, I feel very confident that you are having two girls!!!!!! AHHHHHHHH!!!! Yep, I haven't come down from cloud nine yet. Everyone's reactions have been priceless!! Thank you all for being so excited with us.

Please keep us in your prayers, as going full term is even more on my mind than it was before of course. Pray for 36 week, healthy twins. Whew....it has taken me 7 hours to write this b/c I can hardly sit still and my phone has been ringing off the hook! I woke up around 3:00 last night and never went back to sleep! So I'm going to try to get in a nap while the boys are asleep! I will post pictures of the babies and my belly this weekend.

Custom wedding invitations, birth announcements, and more!

For the past year and a half I've been working with my friend and business partner, Sarah, to develop an online store that offers custom wedding invitations, wedding packages, birth announcements, party invitations and holiday cards. It's been such a journey! I could go on and on about everything we have learned, but I won't bore you! We are finally open for business and we couldn't be more excited. Go check it out at http://www.forkeepsdesign.com/. Everything on the site represents hours (or rather, months) of work spent designing, writing, researching and developing. Be sure to read the About Us page to find out more about who we are and why we chose the name For Keeps Design. A special thanks again to Sarah Jones Photography , as she provided much of the beautiful photography found throughout the site. We love the way it turned out and can't wait to hear from all of you! Let us know what you think! Be sure to check back because we will be adding new designs to all the categories and we will offer more specials and discounts as our business grows!

Pre-school and mini-what?!?!

Landon started back to preschool this week. We are trying a new one that is closer to our house and so far so good. He was in full character this morning as we entered the building (well Liam was too!), they said hi to everyone we passed, hugged a few here and there, and he ran into his room with out even telling me bye....sob sob. I was like, "okay...I love you....I'll pick you up later....bye...". Then when I went to pick him up he didn't want to leave but I quickly assured him that we would be back on Thursday, so then he decided it would be alright to come home. Then he and Liam put on a great show for several of the parents and directors by embrassing in a HUGE hug and Liam told Landon, 'I wuv you Wandon" and Landon squeezed Liam tighter and said, "Ahhh, he must have missed me so much today. I love you too brother." Nope, they aren't always like that, but they do really love each other!!

Now on to my favorite birthday present.........my new mini-van!!!! I love it already. We were planning on getting one in a couple months but Kevin's car had other plans. The radiator went out last week and the starter has been going out lately and it was going to be a very costly repair. So we decided to make the jump to the mini-van early and say good bye to 'Black Lightening' (my sister's nickname for Kev's car....it was her first car:). I was thankful that we had been researching already and we had narrowed down our options before Kevin called me last Tuesday and said, "Get online and find your van Laura." We had decided to only search for Toyota Siennas and Honda Odysseys that had low miles and were only 2 or 3 years old. And of course it had to be a color I liked....I was a little picky:) So anyway long story short, we haggled on our top choices all week, almost ended up with a Pilot, but in the end we came back to our senses and realized that you can't beat sliding doors and middle row bucket seats and a dealer found us a van in color that I loved that was finally a price we were willing to pay and the fact that it had a dvd player was icing on the cake.

So enough suspense, here's our new ride. Words can't describe how much the boys love it, they act like we are going to Disney World every time we tell them to load up in the new van!! I'm sure that will wear off soon....:)