Answered Prayers

Grace was sick this last Saturday. She threw up multiple times and was more clingy than usual and was refusing to eat. So Sunday and Monday we kept her on a liquid diet just to get it out of her system. Then today she started refusing food again and then threw up. Grace is already WAY too skinny and I've been trying to get her to gain weight so I was starting to really freak out. So I gave her a bath and I'm in tears just wondering what to do. Robby and I share a car so I'm at home, 45 minutes away from her doctor (who I might add isn't in on Tuesdays anyways) and have a sick baby.

I got her out of the bath and just started praying. I didn't know what I should do but I just asked for help. I then got Grace dressed and my phone rang. It was my visiting teaching partner Alisha. I thought she was calling about us visiting teaching this Saturday so I answered. She then asked how I was and that she heard Grace was sick and wanted to know how she was doing. I literally just started bawling. I told her that Grace just threw up and I didn't know what to do. She told me that just for peace of mind I should take her to the urgent care. She wasn't able to take me but she would find someone. 2 minutes later she calls back and says she talked to Jenna in our ward and she would come get me in 10 minutes.

Jenna takes us to Urgent Care and while we wait we stared talking. She tells me that this morning she had prayed for an opportunity to serve someone and a couple hours later she gets a call from Alisha.

I have no doubt in my mind that Heavenly Father was answering my prayer. And I am so grateful for wonderful friends who listen to the promptings of the Spirit and ACT on them. It is just so comforting to know that Heavenly Father listens to me. Even though I am not perfect, He still loves me.

Grace is doing a little better. We have to keep her on fluids for a couple more days and follow up with our doctor. If she still isn't eating or able to keep anything down we will have to do something more drastic but I'm really hoping it doesn't come to that. So please help pray for Gracie that she will feel better quickly (and that she can gain back all the weight she lost plus some).

The Reception

I know, you are probably all tired of wedding posts by now, but it's Sunday night and I'm "journaling". :) Also, I decided to combine 6-10 because it was just easier. :)

When picking my colors for the wedding, I naturally picked my favorite colors. Orange, Pink, Yellow, and Lime Green. I love everything bright and cheerful so it was pretty natural that is what I would pick.

For the flowers, I LOVE lilies so I wanted lots of calla lilies in different colors. I also wanted a lot of exotic flowers. I think the bouquets turned out beautiful!

The Food - I seriously only remember that there were eclairs, cake, barbeque pork sandwiches, and my fruit mountain. If there was other food, I didn't eat it. I was so lucky that our neighbor and great friend was able to put all the food together for us.

Isn't this the coolest thing? I seriously wish I could have one in my house at all times. :)

This is one of the centerpieces. We had them in orange (made with oranges) and yellow (made with lemons). I just loved it and thought it was so perfect!

This is to show off my shoes. I looked EVERYWHERE for white heels that I liked. I couldn't find any. And unfortunately, colored ones weren't "in" yet so I went a little more unconventional. I wore white DC tennis shoes. And I loved it! I was so comfortable! I could have jogged around. My feet didn't hurt at all. Wish I could say the same thing about my dress...

My other accessories were my sister's necklace from her wedding. It was my something borrowed. :) My veil was also from her wedding but my mom shortened it and added piping at the bottom. I wore earrings that Robby bought just for the wedding. They were white gold and were half hearts with diamonds in them. They are beautiful and I love wearing them. I also wore my bracelet he got me for our first Christmas.

The cake. My friend's mom made this for me and I LOVED it! The only cake layer was the top and the rest was styrofoam. I didn't want all that cake though so we had Costco sheet cakes instead. And I thought the cake looked so incredible. :)

The bridesmaids were my best friend Paige, my sister Kristi, and Robby's sister Alyssa. I wish we could have found dresses that I liked for everyone to wear but my mom did a great job making these skirts.

The Dress - I went to several stores before I found the perfect dress. And what did you know, it was strapless. I loved the line of the dress, the lace up back, and how it twirled when I spun around. So we had it altered to have sleeves. I didn't want just cap sleeves, I really wanted 3/4. Mostly because not a lot of people have it. The lady altered my dress beautifully but wanted to charge an arm and a leg for the beading. So my mom did the beading on the sleeves and the top part of the bodice. You would never be able to tell. She did an AMAZING job! Oh, and I wore "nice shoes" to the sealing because my mom wouldn't let me go in the temple with tennis shoes. Moms are so proper. ;)

The Men - Since I had so many colors for the wedding, we had each of the guys wear a specific color of tie. The youngest brothers wore Orange, the best man and other brother wore yellow, my brother in law wore green on his own (he's so awesome) and then the dad's wore green too. And Robby volunteered to wear pink. It's awesome now though because he loves wearing ties to match Grace. And she has a lot of pink. :)

Our reception was at Stonebridge Manor. It's a beautiful place and I had fond memories playing there growing up because my friend's parents are the owners. I love how classy it is and I was so glad we were able to have the reception there!

It was such a wonderful day. We were married June 17, 2005 in the Mesa Temple. Afterwards, we went to a luncheon at Mattas. Our reception was that night and it was so amazing. I am so incredibly grateful for all the wonderful friends we have that helped put the wedding together. We had friends do the food, flowers, cake, and my mom did the bridesmaid outfits. The day went by so quickly and I wish I would've written it all in my journal that night. But I guess 6 years later is almost as good. :)

Engagement Pictures

These are some of my favorite engagement pictures that we took. They were done at Freestone park in April, I believe. I miss that long beautiful hair. Also, we both look so skinny! But one thing hasn't changed, we are still as much (if not WAY more) in love. :) I also remember it took FOREVER to find outfits that "matched" but weren't identical. And find something we both looked good in. This blue green brought out the blue in both of our eyes and so it was the winner.

This is Robby's favorite. I love how I'm gazing into his eyes. :)

I remember distinctly that we smashed our heads so tight together. We never moved more than a foot apart. :)
Poor Robby. Lol. I had to jump on his back for this one. He was not used to carrying me around!
This is the one we ended up choosing for our invitation. I just love it!
We look so lovey dovey in this one!
This one is just fun. I love the tire swing!

The Ring

After Robby proposed with my mom's ring, we soon went ring shopping. I looked online and found a few things I liked but nothing I loved. Until, I found this ring. :) It has a princess cut (that's sounds so much prettier than square) and then diamonds on each side of it. It was WAY too expensive looking back but I loved it. I also paid for it myself. Which I know most women would hate but I love that I can say I worked for it. And really, it's OUR money once we were married anyways. :) And it helped build up my credit which was awesome! I know, hopeless romantic. Lol.

Robby could seriously care less about his ring. He wanted something simple, comfortable, and not very expensive. His is just a white gold band. But he wears it all the time. Which I love because way too many girls hit on my cute stud muffin! :)

Grace's birth dad came to visit

Grace checking him out. She is so much better with guys than girls. I should probably be really worried about that... :)

Poor thing was not feeling very well that day but she was still adorable!

Blowing kisses to Austin. I seriously almost started crying. :)

All of us together. :)

We seriously love when Austin comes to visit Grace (and us). I love having such a wonderful open adoption! It's so nice to hear how well he is doing with work and how great his family is doing. And the way he looks at Grace just makes my heart swell. You can see the love he has for her in his eyes (and in his smile). She has so much of his looks. While we were at the park we were talking to another mom and she was shocked that Grace was adopted and thought that Austin was her uncle. I quickly corrected her and am so infinitely grateful that we have him (and Kayla) in our family. :)

Proposal

It was February 17, 2005. I woke up and was about to get ready for work when I saw an envelope. I opened it up and it said to get dressed, that I didn't have to go to work because it was covered by Trevor and then to read the next card. The next card told me to drive myself to the first place Robby and I saw each other. So I got in my car, drove to the institute building where we had church and found another card there. --- Sidenote, I got hit on while I was there and was about to tell the person "BACK OFF I'm getting proposed to right now!" but I didn't and just said I had to leave. Lol.

The next card sent me to where we first talked. It was at Family Home Evening at the Temple in the church across the street. We were eating donuts and drinking hot chocolate. Robby saw me get away from my then current boyfriend who was making me upset. I think it was something along the lines of he was telling me about the date he just went on with another girl... So I saw Robby and decided we should talk so I could make the current boyfriend jealous. Sidenote--- Girls are evil. :)

I looked EVERYWHERE for a card and could not find one! I tried calling Robby several times and couldn't get a hold of him. So I was sitting in the parking lot trying to figure out what to do. I finally get a hold of Robby's friend Brian and tell him there is nothing there. So he talked to Robby and told me to go to where we had our first kiss. I found out later that Robby had written me a beautiful poem and had a cd player there to play a song to me. I'm really sad someone stole it. :(

I went to Robby's house where we had our first kiss and under the love sack was a pile of Hershey's kisses and a card saying to go to where we first said "I love you." That was just in the next room over so I went there and found a card saying to go to Papago Peak. He gave me directions but of course I got lost and had to call him. I finally found it and hiked up to the top. I am not a hiker but luckily this only took me 5 minutes. :) Then at the top there was a CD player and a note saying to play the song and close my eyes. It was our song and when it finished, I opened my eyes and he was right in front of me.

He told me he wanted to be with me forever and asked me to marry him. I of course started crying because he was tearing up and said "YES!" We hadn't bought a ring yet so he borrowed my mom's ring and put it on my finger. We then sat at the top of the peak and looked out over the city of Tempe. I took 2 pictures on my really old camera phone and hopefully some day I will download them off of that. :)

This reminds me that we need to get back to that peak. We have talked for years about going to it and haven't. Maybe we will this year...

When you knew he was the one

I knew Robby was the one when I went to visit his family. They were incredible. They welcomed me with open arms. And I have to say that the horse back riding was probably one of the biggest things. Watching Robby be so confident on a horse and how much he helped me since I was not so confident. :) I came home from that trip and told my mom that Robby was the guy I was going to marry. She laughed at me and was completely not convinced. For Christmas I bought him 2 picture frames with one having a picture of me and the other a picture of the Salt Lake Temple. I know for a fact it freaked him out but I knew I was supposed to marry him. And I made him buy me a gorgeous white gold bracelet with hearts. :) Needless to say I am shocked he didn't go running for the hills.

How it All Began

Yep. Kissing. :) This was shortly after we started dating.

A week after our first date at the Christmas Temple Lights.

This is Robby and I at the New Year's Eve stake dance in Yuma. 2 weeks after our first date.

This was the day after Christmas when we were finally back together after 2 long days of separation. :)

Going along with The previous post, this is number 1. How it all began.

I was attending a single's ward and loving it. I had moved out of my parents house and was living a quarter of a mile from Mesa Community College where I was going to school. One week, my roommate Joanna and I decided to go to ward choir. We went and the only things I can remember are that I was not crazy about the director because she seemed like a crazy person, and there was a really cute boy I had never seen. Well, come to find out, that boy was our Home Teacher's roommate and best friend. SCORE! So I purposefully got myself in front of the home teacher and cute boy and was chatting with them. Their other roommate decided to ask me and Joanna over to eat and hang out after church. I was ecstatic. Finally I would get to talk to this cute boy!

I went over there and this boy wouldn't talk to me. I kept flirting and flirting and he kept talking to Joanna instead of me. He was playing his guitar and so Joanna and him were talking guitars and basses and jazz music. I tried to talk Jazz music since I sang it, but he kept right on ignoring me. So I did what I do best, flirt with another guy. Lol. I talked to his roommate Kevin who would give me the time of day and actually was the one who invited me over. Well, Kevin and I kept talking and ended up having a great time so he asked me out. I said yes and we had a small relationship (I'm talking 2 weeks) and we were both still seeing other people. After Kevin and I realized we didn't really click, we broke up. (But for the record, I broke up with him). :)

A few weeks later, I had just finished all of my finals (most of which I didn't do great on) and was lounging in my PJs and watching John Q. I had been invited to a couple parties that night but I really couldn't decide on what to do. I was contemplating just staying home for the night with Denzel and enjoying the quiet of all my roommates gone. Then I get a call on my pink sparkly phone. I didn't know the number and normally I would never answer, but I was curious. It was the cute boy. Robby.

He asked me if I had plans that night and wanted to go to a wedding with him. He was the best man and all of his friends couldn't go. It was 3 pm so I said sure. He then tells me we need to leave by 4 in order to make it because we have to drive over 2 hours each way. So I jumped up, got out of my PJs, got a black shirt and red skirt on, did my makeup, and drove out the door to his house. I was really nervous but luckily I'm chatty when I'm nervous. We talked the entire time on the way there. We talked about our families, about his mission, about school, about what we wanted in a family, about music, anything that came into our heads. It was so much fun.

When we got to the wedding, Robby was in the receiving line, and I sat on a chair. It was so fun watching him interact with people from a distance. He was so smiley and warm. I chatted with the Grandma of the bride and she was shocked this was our first date. She said we looked like we were so in love.

After the wedding, we drove back to his house and kept talking. Oh, and I can't forget one of my favorite parts of the night. I was in a skirt. There was NO WAY I was driving two more hours in a skirt so I had brought my pajama pants. So, after he opened the door for me, he was walking around to the other side and I slid my pants on under my skirt and then pulled my skirt off. He thought I was insane. Lol.

Anyways... We got back to his house and I said "Wouldn't it be fun if we stayed up all night watching movies?" He was so excited and said of course! So, we went to the grocery store, got some food, and some Orange Rolls, and went back to his house and got on the Love Sack and watched some movies. We watched Cutting Edge, the rest of John Q, Minority Report, Beauty and the Beast, and the second Lord of the Rings. During Lord of the Rings, he FINALLY got up the courage to kiss me. It was short and sweet and I was in love.

He had to drive to Yuma for Christmas and I was so heartbroken. I had already scheduled a date for that afternoon with another guy so I had to leave too. The whole time on the other date, I couldn't stop thinking about Robby. The other poor guy didn't stand a chance (and this was our 4th or 5th date we had been on). I just couldn't get Robby out of my mind.

I called him every day he was gone and we talked for hours. After only 2 days, I finally decided I couldn't handle it anymore and asked him if I could come visit. He agreed and I drove down to Yuma to meet his family. Yes, after 2 days people and only 1 date. Lol. His family was amazing. We went horseback riding with his Grandpa and had so much fun. His mom even invited me to stay the night. The next day we got up and drove back to Gilbert to have him meet my family. Then he went back to Yuma for Christmas and was back the next day. We were inseparable. The next week we drove to Yuma again and spent New Years with his family at the Stake Dance.

Wow, that's a long story. :) Stay tuned for more.

Wedding Post Challenge

My friend Chelsea posted a Wedding Post Challenge and I thought it sounded like fun. So I'm giving it a try. Here's the list of the posts.

1. how it all began: how you met, first date, first kiss, how long did you date? first picture together.....etc.
2. when you knew he was the one: self explanatory.. but how and when did you know?
3. proposal: how it happened, how long were you engaged for? was it a total surprise? pictures of that... etc.
4. the ring: tell us about it! did you pick it out? did he? pictures! tell us about his ring too!
5. engagement/bridal pictures: let's see em!
6. the colors: show some of the flower and colors you used
7. the dress: was it what you always imagined? did you have it made for you? white or ivory?
8. the little accessories: you know, veil? shoes? jewelry? what did your bridesmaids wear?
9. the reception: where was it at? show us some pictures! what day did you get married?
10. the cake/food: i love food. so tell me about what you had at your wedding!
11. your song and/or the first song you danced to at your wedding: share a music video or lyrics if you can!
12. favorite part of the day and least favorite part of the day: can be anything.
13. honeymoon: where did you go? was it good? ;) haha...jk.
14. thoughts on marriage: what is the easiest/hardest part? if you could change anything, what would it be?
15. first place that you lived together: pics if you have them!
16. kids: do you have any yet? if not, when do you plan on it? how many do you want? any tips on good/bad birth control?
17. most recent picture of you and your significant other and what you love most about them :) and any other thoughts.

I have really been wanting to document all of this and so when I heard about the challenge, I thought I would give it a try. :) I hope you enjoy.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Yes, I bought 2 outfits for St. Patrick's day. It's just too tough to not buy the cute things. :) Plus, they were both on clearance. :) No leprechauns visited our house this year, but you can bet they will next year. :)

Also, doesn't Grace look like she's doing a heel stretch in the last picture? She's so going to be a cheerleader! :)

Robby's birthday

We were able to celebrate Robby's birthday this last weekend with his family in Yuma. We had so much fun.

Robby getting sung to. :)
Blowing out the candle. Grace was so confused by all of this. Only 2 months until it's her turn!
I made 2 kinds of VEGAN cupcakes. This is Cookies and Cream. There were cookies in the frosting, the batter, and on top. Delicious!
These were the chocolate cherry cupcakes. I think I might have been the only person to really like them. They were really tart cherries because Walmart had absolutely no frozen ones. And they didn't have any maraschino cherries either. :(
All the Colvin cousins. Jake just loves Grace and is always bringing her toys over and giving her loves. Connor loves her too but was so excited to hold his baby sister Clara. We all laugh because Clara weighs almost as much as Grace. But she sure is adorable! :) I think Grace might end up the only brunette though...

We just love spending time with family! :)