Thankful Saturday =)

I'm so thankful this week for my church. Last night, I went to the Women's Christmas Banquet, and it was so much fun! Many ladies volunteered to hostess the tables, and they turned our sanctuary (which at the moment is under contstruction!) into a beautiful Christmas wonderland! Our table hostess, Amie, set a beautiful rustic Christmas table. and gave us each these adorable little bird candle holders. We just had to get a picture! Top row: Jen, Elisabeth, Leslie (with her new baby Landon), Amie. Bottom row: Me, Jeanette, Jolene, and Anne.

What a fun group of ladies to share the evening with! Here are a couple more pictures of our table and the room. I took more pictures, but of course, my camera was on the wrong setting and a bunch of them turned out blurry! Darn!

The centerpiece

The stage

On Monday night this week, we went with Andy and Elisabeth down to Plano for a Christmas Vigil honor our babies. A hospital down there has a support group called Healing Matters, and the leader of it is amazing! Elisabeth and I went to the support group the week before and truly felt like it was such a wonderful place to connect with other parents who have lost their babies. Ginny, the leader, has been leading this group since 1988, and really knows how to comfort families. I'm so thankful for this group!

The vigil was such a nice event--there was a group of singers, a powerpoint running the entire time with our children's names up on the screen, a candle-lighting ceremony, readings of our children's names, and refreshments afterwards. I was telling Justin later how much it meant to me to hear Jonathan's name read and see it up on the screen. To me, it felt like they were acknowledging him as a real person, as a real part of our family. To us, he always will be a part of our family, but sometimes it feels like for others, it is more awkward to mention children who have been lost before they had a chance for life. We will never see Jonathan's name on school papers, hear his name called at graduations, or have anything that he made for us. So this night was special because it kind of felt like, at least at times like this, we got to enjoy him being publically acknowledged.

At the end, we got to go up to the tree and take the ornament that they made for us with their names and birthdates on it. How special to have another ornament for my tree! It was a great night, shared with so many other families who have experience the exact same things we have.

Here are a few pictures of the evening.

Jonathan's ornament--I loved the little handprints!

Here is his name on the screen

With Andy and Elisabeth

This week I'm also thankful that I live today, at a time where there is so much great medicine and technology. I wasn't planning on sharing this, but I feel like this is a place where I can share my heart, and know that we are being covered in prayer by those wonderful family and friends all over the world who read my blog. This week, on Thursday, we officially began the process of trying for a baby again. Most of you probably know that we have struggled with infertility for 4 1/2 years, and have found that using fertility shots help us to be able to conceive. They helped us to get pregnant with Jonathan, and with a baby before him that we lost early on in the pregnancy. On Thursday, I gave myself the first shot of this new cycle. They are actually really easy and painless--think Epi-pen (if you know what that is) with only a tiny little needle. We do shots through the weekend, and go in on Monday for a check to see how everything is growing. I promise I will not go into too many details on here--I'm just not comfortable with that , nor do I thing it's appropriate!! =) But I will share enough to keep you posted, and to give you specific things you can pray for.

Here is my shot, all ready for my dose tonight.

We hope that by Monday, my follicles (these hold the eggs before ovulation) will have grown enough, and that there aren't too many. I have something called PCOS, and many women with it have a lot of follicles/eggs. My doctor closely monitors me when I'm doing these shots to make the follicles grow, because neither he nor us wants too many babies at once! Especially now knowing that I have an incompetent cervix and will need a cerclage after my first trimester. (I know--I'm using all sorts of terms that are just second nature to me now! I never imagined needing to know about all this! Feel free to google them if you need to!)

So all that to say, we are VERY excited to be getting started in this process again. I'm so thankful that God has led me to such great medical care, and am trusting that He is doing an amazing work in my body. I would love any extra prayers that you want to send our way. Depending on how it all works, I'm hoping to have some wonderful news around Christmas! Like I said earlier, I was hesitant to share this with too many people at this point in the process, but Justin I have decided, that we would rather have people praying for us during each and every step of the way, rather than only after we are in the 'safe zone'. For us, it seems that there is no 'safe zone' anyways, so we'd rather just have the prayers!

Hope you have a great weekend!