Once Upon A Time...

I started a journey and was going to write all about it. Then about a year ago, my whole world was flipped upside down! Honestly, looking back at this year, I can't even understand how I made it to this point. But a year later, I know that I want to continue my journey. I have started taking the steps to get back on track and hopefully I can stay that way. There are so many amazing things - good and bad - that has happened this year that it would be impossible to write about them all right now. So, I hope that this week to post one of the major events each day just to catch everyone up on what's been going on. So, I have no idea if anyone still reads my blog since I haven't written anything in over a year but perhaps I will be able to slowly build back up a following... So, the journey begins... again.

My Son Is A Blessing

So, I have been spending a lot of time sharing about my new baby girl. Whether it is on Facebook, email, blogging, or people visiting, she has certainly been quite the center of attention. She is quite the beautiful blessing to me but I certainly can't dismiss my son, who is also a blessing. My son, Tyler, is quite an interesting character. While, many times he makes me want to just SCREAM, he is also a tremendous blessing to me and my family. While, we often butt heads, he is an amazing kid with a good heart. This is my son, Tyler:

This our very first family picture. Tyler was 8 1/2 years old in this picture.


This is Tyler's very first concert. Where did I take him, you ask? To see the Barlow Girls! :-)


This is Tyler at Halloween a couple of years ago.


This is Tyler and I running on the beach in San Diego. This was his first time to the beach.


This is Tyler just before he had surgery for a hernia... definitely was not all smiles afterward.


Christmas of 2008


The family at a wedding in San Diego in the summer of 2009.

So, these are just a few of the pics I have of my son. And, hopefully, soon we will be celebrating some good news in regards to him as well. We are ONLY steps away from finalizing the adoption with him. The only thing that we are waiting for is the birth records from the hospital where Tyler was born. But since he is already ten years old, the hospital has to go offsite where ever they are stored and get the records. And, in addition, the hospital is in Arizona. So, I'm sure that we are not at the top of their priority list. But I sure do wish they would hurry up because they are the last step before we can make everything official. So, hopefully, within the next month everything will be OFFICIAL!! And then we are going to have a PARTY!! Woo hoo!!

So, I hope everyone's week is going well. And I did want to make a shout to my beautiful friend Bobbi because yesterday was her birthday! She is a beautiful person inside and out! I know that she is a blessing in some way to pretty much everyone she meets. :-) I was going to post a picture of Bobbi and I but for some reason the "Upload Photo" button is not working right now. Perhaps I will be able to add it later. But for now I want to post this or I probably never will.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BOBBI!!

Newborn Photo Shoot

Man!! I am such a slacker on my blog!! I said I was going to post these pictures on Monday and now it's almost another Monday. One day I shall get the hang of this. Well, here are just a few of the pictures that were taken at the complimentary photo shoot of Tariana, compliments of Jessica Hekman!! She was so kind and did a great job cause Tariana was SO fussy. Thanks so much Jess!!

I hope that you all enjoyed the pics! I was really blessed by Jessica doing these for us. I never really thought I would be in to this stuff so much but once I got the pictures back I was just SO excited!

It's A GIRL!!!

I know that this post is LONG over due... but I had my baby 2 weeks ago (and 2 days)!!!!! I had a beautiful baby girl!! Her name is Tariana Lynn Heppenstall.

She was born on March 26, 2010 at 8:21pm. She weighed in at 9 pounds and 10 ounces!! That's right, she's heavy! :-) And she reaches 20 1/2 inches long. That sounds big but amazingly everyone has been telling me that she doesn't look like a 9 pound baby. I guess that's a good thing cause I never saw a 9 pound newborn before so I wouldn't really know. :-) Baby Tariana is doing well now but we had some worries to begin with. We didn't tell anyone, but about 3 weeks before she was born, we found that she only has one kidney. So, we had to really keep a close eye on her to make sure that she was peeing enough so that we would know that the other kidney is working fine. Apparently many people out there only have one kidney and we were told not to worry. And she has been just fine, kidney is working great!! Yay!! :-) The other small scare was that Tariana was breathing kind of rapidly and on the day that we were supposed to be discharged, Tariana was admitted to the NICU to run some tests and do observations. She was there for that night and two more days.... ugh. That was SO not fun!!! But we were able to bring her home and she doing just great!! For those of you that were aware of these situations, I thank you all for your prayers and support!! So, since we have been home, it has been pretty tiring. I have NO baby experience so it has been quite an adjustment. I absolutely LOVE my baby girl and I am very thankful that she has been a pretty easy baby so far. Her fussiness that she has had so far has been frustrating for me but I know that it is very minor compared to some others I have heard about. So, thank you Tariana for taking it easy on Mommy!!! But since Tariana has been born, we have been showered with the blessings of loved ones. Thank you to everyone has come to see us!!

So, right now I have written that much and I'm already tired. So, right now I will leave you all with some pictures of Tariana from her first week home :-). My, how she has changed since Day 1!! Also, I would love some input on some good, quick 'n' easy recipes for a family of three to make things a little easier.

In addition, tomorrow I am going to try to post some other pictures that were taken of Tariana on Thursday. A wonderful lady offered to do Newborn photos for us at no charge. She was so nice and Tariana was so fussy. And I love how the pictures turned out!!

I hope everyone has a great start to their week tomorrow!!

What A Great Week!!

So many awesome things to share!! Where to start, where to start!!.... Well, let me jump back to Monday....

MONDAY, MONDAY...
Since my son had Monday off from school, I decided that we would go meet up with my wonderful friend, Heather, so that her and I could talk and the kiddos could have a bit of play date. Her kids are a lot younger than Tyler so sometimes that's a bit hard for because he wants to do things that they can't. But the way I see it, that will give him good practice for being a great Big Brother!! :-) Heather was so wonderful as to make us some PB & J sandwiches with some sliced apples and baby carrots on the side. And then, of course she spoiled us with brownies sprinkled with Reese's bites on top. They were so good! Unfortunately, I didn't bring my camera and have no pics. Such a disgrace to the blog world!! In addition to this wonderful-ness, Heather has also been blessing us with lots of baby stuff that they are no longer using. And the beauty of this stuff is that it is well taken care of. It's almost like getting brand new stuff. Here's some of the stuff she's already given us. She says there could be more but she doesn't want to overwhelm me.

Thank you Heather!!!

AWESOME LUNCH
On Wednesday, my friend, Jessica, invited myself and two other friends to her place for a home-cooked lunch. It was so absolutely delicious! I was about 15 minutes late (which I had already expressed that I would be) so when I got there everyone else was doing their part to help cook. Jessica is so funny because she under estimated how long everything would take to cook so we all ended up helping her which was fine by me because that just meant more fellowship time. YES!! The only thing I don't like about it is that I always feel lost in someone else's kitchen. But other than that, good times!!! Here's some pics of the chefs. They did WAY more work than me since I was late. Somehow, I FAILED miserably to get a picture of the host. I am such a bad blogger!!I partly blame it on my hubby's camera cause he changed all the settings and I had to get it back to normal for me, which took a little bit of time. :-( So, only pics of Veronica and Grace.

The food was SO good. Jessica decided to make this Chicken Chili recipe and it turned out SO delicious. I was going back for more even though I know that I shouldn't have. Here's a pic of the recipe with picture in the cookbook of how it is SUPPOSED to look. I personally think the chili Jessica made turned out WAY better than the picture looks!:

Here's the pics of all the goods: (And I somehow managed to not get a pic of the chili in it's serving dish all alone. I really gotta get better at this!!) Chicken Chili, Homemade whole wheat bread fresh out of the bread maker, with veggies on the side. Mmm!!!!

Here's my first serving. I, of course, went back for seconds (but no pic).



And we certainly can't forget about dessert!! Jessica made some mini brownie bites which were quite delicious. I'd like to say that I only had this one that I took a picture of... but... I had many more. Not good. She also put a whole bunch of Hershey kisses for us, which I stayed away from since I already had so many of these little brownies. Mmm!!

After we were all stuffed, we had some good time fellowshipping. It was so great to be there. Jessica has been living out of California for a couple of years and it is SO good to have her back. This was day was kind of like a flash back in time. What a blessed time!!


TRIPLE THREAT THURSDAY
Thursday was a big day for me. There were 3 great things that happened. First things first.... I had my regular doctor's appointment for the baby. Baby checks out absolutely healthy and everything looks good. Yippee!! I am now 36 weeks pregnant. I'm really starting to look the part now, huh? .... finally. :-)

I also found out at my Dr's appt that I could potentially find out the sex of the baby. Since one of my glucose tests (out of three) turned out to be a little bit high, they want to have another ultrasound on March 4th to check the weight of the baby. If I wanted to, I could very well find out the sex of the baby at this time. This is a tough one for me. I have already waited this long so I kind of tell myself that i could just wait until the baby is born.... BUT..... then there's that part of me that says "The information is RIGHT THERE!!! Just find out!!". What do you guys think I should do? It will be hard not to find out. :-)

The second thing that was great about Thursday was that I got to have a one-on-one lunch with my WONDERFUL friend, Grace. She was at lunch with us on Wednesday, which was wonderful, but I ALWAYS love my one-on-one time with people. We decided to go to Baker's, which is a classic, favorite of ours. We've been going there together since high school. It's not the healthiest but we always find things that fit in to our budget. :-) Sorry no pics! So busy chatting it up that I didn't even think to take a pic. :-(

And now the third thing that was great about Thursday.... We went to the playoffs. Thursday was our first (and last) game of the playoffs. We had such an amazing game! The other team was by far better than our team but our girls probably played one of our best games of the WHOLE season!! I was (and am) SO proud of them! While I am a little relieved that the season is over (cause I'm exhausted), I am really going to miss the girls. They all such amazing personalities. I never went to a practice or game without one of them making me laugh. :-) So, thank you to Natalie, Lydia, Jillian, Mariah, Jamie, Caley, and Tiffany for making this season such a wonderful experience for me. And thank you to Matt McCormick (our head coach) for asking me to assist him and join the journey. It has been a great ride!! And I leave Triple Thursday with some great pics from the game last night - compliments of Mrs. Bobbi! :-) First pic is of me and Matt, the wonderful head coach. And the second pic is of both teams praying at together at half court - gotta love that!!! Enjoy the rest of the pics!!

Congratulations RAVENS!!!
T.G.I. Friday!!!
And now it is Friday! Woo hoo! While it has been a great week, I am exhausted and glad it's Friday. And for Friday I have a bit of great news.... I just got hired as an Instructional Paraprofessional for the Redlands Unified School District!! And they don't even care that I am 9 months pregnant and I will be on maternity leave within a week. How awesome is that!?!?!? Another thing that is great about this is that I substituted in the class that I will be working in for about a week before getting hired and I already know that I get along with the teacher I will be working with and I already know what to expect (for the most part) from the job and the students. YES!! That pretty much wraps up this wonderful week.... but unfortunately with all this GREAT stuff, the week ended kind of on a bummer....

Taylor and I were planning a surprise "Big Brother" dinner for Tyler tonight and we were gonna make one of his favorite dinners, which would be spaghetti with garlic bread, salad, and some fruit on the side. And I was going to make a cake and decorate it for the big brother. We also bought Tyler this shirt that we thought was really cool, which says "Big Brother" on it. Tyler is still quite insecure about his place in this family so we want to make sure that he knows that a baby joining the family is a good thing and that that does not put him out of the family. But then something unfortunate happened..... Tyler's school called me at almost noon to tell me that Tyler was sick and needed to be picked up. So, Tyler actually ended up being sick in bed for the rest of the day and we didn't do the Big Brother dinner. It's a good thing that he didn't know about it or else he would have been REALLY upset. But here's the pic of the shirt we got for him. What do you guys think?

So, that is my wrap-up of my wonderful week. What is in store for the weekend??? Who knows... Guess it depends on how Tyler is feeling but we will definitely have to keep it low-key so he can get some rest. Have a GREAT weekend everyone!!