Ho Ho Ho

Rogers looks like he is about to be sick, but I thought Santa was very nice. At least we didn't have a screamer on our hands!! Side note, those socks are just killin me, thanks Scott for those!! Memories were made that is all that matters, right??

Merry Christmas

We have some news...

Rogers is going to be a big brother!! We are so excited about our new baby sister or baby brother that will be making an appearance July 25th!!

As you know from our story, we are a fertility family. We did IVF to have Rogers and when we were ready to have a second baby we made our way back to ART to go for it. We had four frozen embryos waiting for us. So we did a transfer of two on them back in June, I was so confident that this was going to work, but right before we did the transfer we learned that with a frozen embryo there is a 30% chance that it will take, compared to a fresh embryo which has a 60% chance at taking. I did everything I was suppose to, laying on my back for a week and then taking it easy the next week, which is quite difficult with a one year old by the way. My mom came in town and helped take care of Rogers which was such a blessing. We learned nine days later that neither of the embryos took. So we made arrangements for the next month to use our last two embryos. We went through the process again and the awnser was a no again.

I just want to stop here and tell you what amazing friends we have. After the second month of this journey and hearing a no for the second month in a row, our friends rallied around us. We went to the lake with some of our best friends and the weekend became a time of loving on us and morning with us. I could not have asked for anything more, and I am so grateful for their love and friendship!

We went back to ART to regroup and figure out what to do next. I really struggled with the second no, because I just could not understand why God would have given us these 4 healthy embryos and have none of them work. As we moved forward we decided to do 3 IUIs, if none of them worked then we knew that we would take a year off and try IVF next August. About this time I started a bible study up at our church, that was called To Walk and Not Grow Weary. Was that for me or what??!! I had no clue what I was walking into, but the first week we studied about Sarah and her infertility and I about lost it. I just felt like God was reminding me that he had not forgotten me, and it was not by chance that I had shown up in this bible study with a leader who had struggled with infertility for 11 years. My leader reminded me that regardless of how many shots I take or how many IUIs we do, the Lord decides if it will be a yes or a no.

Well, we did 2 IUIs and both did not produce a pregnancy. I had gone to bible study and we were studying Rebekah and how she had to wait on the Lord before having her son. I left bible study and the Lord spoke so clearly to me, saying, Katie, it is time to wait on me and stop all of the treatments. I had a choice, either I would trust the Lord or I would continue to try things my way. Everything that was in me wanted to go back to ART to do the last IUI. But instead I called Scott in tears and told him that it was time to stop everything and that we needed to wait on the Lord.

The next month I was feeling funny and took a pregnancy test on a Monday or course it said not pregnant which is every pregnancy test I had ever taken. The following Friday I was still feeling interesting so I took one more, and it said pregnant. I almost died!! My hands were shaking and I called Scott at work at 7 in the morning. I said I know normal people wait until their husbands come home to tell them this, but I am looking at a positive pregnancy test. He said he didn't know what to do, but that I needed to go buy more tests and take them! Off to the store we went and after taking 2 more tests, all of them said the same thing, pregnant!!!

We did not obey the Lord because we thought He would give us a baby, but what an amazing gift that He has blessed us with. We are thrilled!!

We Have Got an Indian on Our Hands!!

This is what I saw when I was going to pick up Rogers from school yesterday on the bulletin board outside his room. Happy almost Thanksgiving!!!

A good post to come...

Our Recent Adventures..

We have been having some fun in the Howell household lately. Enjoying the Fall weather and watching Rogers grow up before our eyes!! This is his Halloween costume, a little early yes, but he LOVES it. He wants to put it on at minimum once a day. At least we are getting our moneys worth, right? Monkeys are his favorite right now.. can you tell?

Rogers started mother's day out at the beginning of September and he is let's say "adjusting." We are working on not crying through out the whole day, what can I say he just loves his Momma. This was the first day of school, he sure loves his froggy back pack!!

The buddy and I made a trip to my Uncle Phil's lake house in Kentucky and got to see a bunch of my family. We had a great time, Big and Rogers had some fun on the four wheeler.

The most exciting news recently is that we have a new cousin, this is George Elliott Cochran. We are so excited that he is here!!! He is just perfect and his parents are not to bad themselves! We love you Aunt Ju Ju and Uncle Clay and are so excited for ya'll. Your going to be the best parents ever!!


Rogers meeting his cousin for the first time.. he loves his Saty, we were a little nervous on how he would do with Saty holding her new grand baby, instead of Rogers getting her FULL attention, he did great thank goodness!!

Our house keeps getting a much needed face lift, we just got a new front yard. Now we have a place to go out and play which is wonderful. Rogers FAVORITE thing to do now is pick up sticks in our front yard, which helps Scott out, who knew entertainment was so easy!!

We had to water the lawn so we played in the sprinklers a bit.



Until next time.. God Bless and Wareagle!

Our House Adventure

As promised here our pictures of the first stage of our house renovation. The house was built in the 1950s and it needed some major tender love and care. We have four stages of reno in the works over quite a few years. I don't have a picture of the outside, that will have to be for another day.

Here goes:

The Kitchen:

This is before:

This is the view from the carport door, the old kitchen is to your right. We covered the brick wall and took out the laundry room and moved it to the basement. Then we made this area into a functional L-shaped kitchen.

What you see below was the previous owners WHOLE kitchen. A very small galley way, to small for my liking, so with the help of Eddleman Properties we turned a small kitchen in to a kitchen that Scott and I just love!! This area was turned into a butler's pantry. Get excited..

Our dining room which we are going to eat in every night and the very big living room.

Sorry Mom, this is not the best picture of you, but it shows where our new working kitchen is going and how it opens into the den.

Now on to the new...

Here is the new kitchen, we took everything out to the bones of the room, and then went to town. This used to be a brick wall and now it's our kitchen!! You are looking at the carport door. I am obsessed with the chandelier, among other things..

The farm sink is so functional and so pretty..

We love how our den opens into the kitchen, it is so functional and spacious!

This was the old kitchen, and we turned it into a butler's pantry, adding an ice maker which is Scott's favorite and a wine cooler with an extra sink. Love it!!

Our new dining room and living room. It needs some furniture to go with the pretty floors!

Above is our new master bedroom, the windows are so fun.. Decorating to come, I promise!

I think he likes it!! Did we mention we have a walking baby?

SMILE!!

I hope this picture of Rogers makes you as happy as it does me!! More pictures to come soon!

Craziness!!!

It has been a solid three months since I have come back to our blog, and to say we have been busy would be an understatement!!!

We sold our house with only having it on the market for six weeks, which was such a blessing! The new owners wanted to be in the house in a month, so that meant that we were going to be moving out VERY quickly! Scott did not want to make an offer on a house until after the inspection on our house. So to say that I was extremely nervous about finding the house we are going to spend the next thirty years in just two weeks was an understatement. Our plan was to move into a rental house if we did not find something we loved. I had found the area of Vestavia that I really wanted to be in, and our realtor showed me everything there. We found a ranch with a full basement that needed a lot of tender love and care. I loved that we could make the house our own. So while we were in Boston, which was amazing, with some of our great friends Brown and Katherine, we ended up buying it and then started the renovations!! Pictures will be coming, I feel like I need to re-post this post with pictures later, but we don't have alot of things at the new house right now.. a kitchen, den, cable, or Internet.

Anyways, we decided to use Eddleman Properties for our renovation and I have loved working with them!! We have four or five phases of renovations to make this house our perfect home. But first phase, which is going on right now is new hardwood floors, painting EVERYTHING, new light fixtures, new laundry room in the basement, new doors (inside and out), a new AWESOME kitchen and den, new AC unit and a breaker box to take the place of the fuse box.

Now when you do finally see pictures of our house, yes you will say, does the Brady Bunch live here?? I promise that when we are done with everything, that will not be what comes to your mind!

And yes, we are living around the chaos.. Saty and Pop were so sweet to let us stay with them through the renovation of our bedrooms, and when the rooms were finished we moved into our construction zone of a house. So now we sleep at our new house and then Rogers and I move to the Howell's house during the day. It is going to be amazing to stay in our house and not move around, but we are so blessed to have somewhere to go during the day!

On to other news... Rogers turned one on May 27th, yes we now have a 13 month old, that is so darn cute and also likes to throw really loud temper tantrums. Sorry friends that we went to pizza with last Friday, they got quite an earful!! The whole restaurant was staring at us because of my screaming, very loudly, I may add child. Perfect...I always thought I would never be that girl with the obnoxious kid , well I was completely that girl, and that was why I quickly left before the pizza even came to the table. Liz, thanks for bringing me pizza later! You are the best!!

I will leave you with this bit of new, I went to Italy at the end of May with Saty and my cousin Robin. It was incredible to say the least... I promise to put pictures up when I get my computer back!! If you ever have the chance to go to Florence, Tuscany, and Rome, just say yes, you won't be sorry!!

Well, that is enough for now. I promise to be back sooner that three months..

10 Months and Counting

I have been thinking lately about the last ten months of our lives. How different they have been in every way possible. We have this little blessing that keeps growing and growing and turning into a little boy with a personality and a lot of spunk!! While we were at the beach last week, can you tell we love the beach, but who doesn't, right?! Side note, thank you Ty Howell for a wonderful trip to Seaside!! Julie, my sister in law, and I were walking around and I was talking about the difficulty of worshipping the Lord during this time in our lives. Another side note, we are so excited that Aunt Ju Ju and Uncle Clay are going to be adding to the Howell clan with a new baby on the way in September. Back to where I was headed, it makes me feel a little better when I read from many mom's thoughts that spending significant time with the Lord really does have to come in different forms rather than how it did before the little bundle of joy arrived. I am still figuring this out 10 months down the road, and I know that this will be a constant journey for the rest of my life. It is just so easy to go to church and stand before the Lord and whole-heartedly commit myself once again to daily devotion and quit times and the next Sunday I am in the same place I was the week before. I think constant prayer and diligence just need to be a bigger part of my life. Any ideas to help??

I wasn't sure if I would be the type of mom that needed to have something to do all the time. I mean we get out of the house EVERY day, and if we didn't, I think I would go insane, but even for a few days during the week if it is just the two of us, I am completely content. Don't get me wrong after a few days of a constant one on one date, I am in need of hanging with some friends. But it is amazing to me, that I am not counting down the seconds until Scott gets home, usually.. =) Another thing that the Lord laid before me when Rogers was quite young, was the opportunity to work from home. When I worked at Canterbury before he came, and a little after Rogers arrival, I was in charge of the finances for their Mother's Day Out and Day Care. Literally the day I left for good, which was very bittersweet, I was told about this job, being the financial secretary for Red Mountain Church. I ended up getting the job which was wonderful and quite overwhelming. After many tears and much anxiety things have calmed down and I am so grateful to have this job that I can do from home. What a blessing, while Rogers is snoozing I SHOULD be doing my job. Sometimes the Bachelor from the night before that is on dvr, or my favorite show Parenthood is calling me to watch, and I do say yes to the tv calling a lot of the time. But I do try to leave the right amount of time for the higher priorities...most of the time.. until that little buddy boy decides to wake up one hour into his nap. Now that is another story..

And now we are on to the next chapter of the Scott, Katie and Rogers journey, looking for our "grown up" house as I like to call it and thinking about the future of our family. Who knows where God will put us and what next little blessing he will bring into our lives. But one thing is for sure, when I look back at the last ten months of my life, I know that the Lord is present, guiding us, directing us, and forming us into who He desires us to be.

I thought a little wrap up was needed, it has been quite a while of fun pictures, but a little depth is good too, right?!

House For Sale House For Sale

The Howells are on the move because we are in need of some more space. Our house has been a wonderful first home for us but it is time to move on. So if you know of anyone in need of an ADORABLE three bedroom and two bathroom house in Vestavia please send them our way!

Here is the mls number to our humble abode: 492864

And some pictures, please take a little tour..

We Are All Smiles

We are all smiles in the Howell household these days. Life is good and we are enjoying watching this little guy grow up. I am ready to move on from these cold winter days and move into days at the park and the pool!

Even though we did not make the trip to Glendale for the big game, we had our own party at home. With Scott and I jumping up and down and high fiving like our lives depended on it. Rogers was fast alseep, but you can see that he is very proud of his Auburn Tigers!

I need to get professional pictures taken of the little guy, since he is already eight months old. I tried to take a few on my own, and after Scott kept whining about Rogers being in this adorable outfit, I think Rogers started to agree. This face tells it all!!

Food is our friend. Scott has gotten in the habit of being incharge of Rogers's dinner and it cracks me up!! Each night he tells Rogers that he is going to get some puffs for dessert. Little does Scottie know, Rogers gets puffs ANY time we are out to eat to calm this squirmy baby!!

One thing I have been so thankful for are these girls. Both of them are such an encouragement to me in so many ways. They're rock solid faith in the Lord, how they deal with the ups and downs of daily life, all of their mama advice, and they're amazing friendship. What a blessing that each week when Rogers and I could just be hanging out together all alone, we can pick up and go visit these sweet friends. And Rogers has some cute little girls to play with as well!! Thank ya'll for your amazing friendship!! I love you both!