Beach Vacation

A couple of weeks ago, we went with my family (minus James and Krista) to Gulf Shores, AL to the beach. My parents rented a house for the week and Nat, Josh, the kids, Jonathan and I spent 4 nights of the week down there with them. It was such a great time and made some fun memories!!

Luke loved digging and building in the sand

Lily riding the waves

Jonathan caught a crab for the kids to see

And he caught a starfish that Lily saw in the ocean

Liv always had a smile on her face

Hard to see but Jonathan out fishing early one morning

Mom and dad and the kids

"Pleasure Key"

Beautiful!!

What's in a name?

Baby names...We never really talked about baby names until after we found out we were pregnant. But we both quickly agreed on a boy's name that we loved...Jackson Ray James. (or Jaxon-we never really decided on which spelling we liked.) Ray is Jonathan's middle name so we wanted to use that for a boy and we both just love the name Jackson (or maybe it had something to do with Stonewall Jackson for why Jonathan liked it so much!) But we could never really decide on a girl name...we had a couple of top contenders but nothing really stood out to us early on. Well, when we found out we were having a girl, we knew we had to tackle that and give our little one a name!

Since Jonathan found out the gender before I did, he started looking at lists of girl names. We like the older/traditional names so he looked at turn-of-the-century names and one stood out to him...Georgia. He told me the name he had found and I had to admit that the name never stood out to me before (cause I am sure I went over that name in all the lists that I looked at!) but I really like it! Then we looked at the meaning of the name "Georgia." We had always wanted a name that had a great meaning behind it. When we searched for the meaning we found that Georgia means "farmer" which we weren't too excited about. We were hoping for something a little more, I guess, deep... So we kept looking for another name hoping to find one that we would love and love the meaning of the name. As we looked through more lists and thought of more potential names, everything was being compared to Georgia. We just had this feeling that Georgia might be it...despite us not being too excited about the meaning behind the name.

One morning, Jonathan was driving by himself up to his parents' land in Oklahoma and the Lord gave him new meaning to Georgia's name. God told him that He wanted Georgia to be a "cultivator of hearts." Jonathan read the definition of cultivate for me after he told me what the Lord had said to him...

Cultivate:
1) to improve and prepare
2) to grow or tend
3) to promote the growth of
4) to nurture; foster
5) to form and refine
6) to seek the acquaintance or goodwill of; make friends with

After hearing this it confirmed that Georgia Renee James would be our baby girl's name! And we pray everyday that she will cultivate the hearts of everyone she will encounter! We are so thankful that God has blessed us with the task of raising one of His precious children and we pray that we will show her what the love of the Father is like and point her to Christ in all that we do!

Nat's bday!

Happy Birthday, Natalie Marie Jeffrey Patterson! So blessed to have you as my sister and best friend for the last 28 years! Thanks for always being there during all seasons of life and all the support and advice that I have taken away from our conversations! I am excited for what the Lord has in store for you in the years ahead! I have never stopped looking up to you (even though I am taller than you!) Love you!!

"Sisters, sisters...there were never such devoted sisters.."

Grandad

Harry Fred Tibbals Jr.

Aug. 2, 1918-Oct. 16, 2006

Today is my grandfather's birthday. He would have turned 93 today. To sum him up....giver! He was the most joyful and generous giver! Not just to us, his family, but to those he never met as well! There are numerous times that I can think of or have heard from family members of people coming up to us saying, "Hey, I was helped by your grandfather when I was in need. " or "Your grandparents were the reason I was able to go to college." He loved blessing people so much! One memory that I will always have is when he would randomly "slip" us, his grandkids, some cash when you were leaving after a visit with him. He would try and be sly about it by sliding a bill in your purse or shirt pocket. Or like one time, in college, he and Nan were singing with their church choir in my college town and I went to go hear them. Well they brought me a 12 pack of Dr. Pepper and he slipped a hundred dollar bill in the top of the container for me...just because he loved to bless the people he loved!! And he love to bless the people he didn't know! I remember him as being such a sensitive man. I don't know if he was always that way or if it was something that increased as he got older, but he would always have a tear in his eye when he would tell us he loved us and how proud he was of us. He and my grandmother were married for 68 years and showed our whole family what a godly marriage looks like. I am so blessed to have had him in my life and so thankful that he was my grandfather!

2nd Anniversary

Today, is Jonathan and my 2 year anniversary! 2 years ago today...well for starters, it was not this hot!! We had a nice break from the summer heat during our wedding weekend and it was very pleasant! Thank the Lord for that!! 2 years ago today...I became a wife. A wife to the most incredible man I have ever known! He is more than the man of my dreams and continues to pursue and reveal his love for me everyday. He is my best friend, greatest supporter & encourager, and spiritual leader. I love that man more now then I did 2 years ago and am amazed at his love for me!

We celebrated on Saturday by going to dinner at Hibiscus! It is a great steak place if you have never been and has incredible desserts as well, which is always a plus!!

Here is us before we went out. I have an anniversary photo album given to me by a sweet friend as a wedding gift. So each anniversary, we take a picture and put it in the album. It will be a fun way to see how we will have changed over the years and at each anniversary the different season of life we are at (like this one, me being 6 months pregnant!) So this pic will go in our album!

My steak and fries dinner! So good!!

The ginormous onion rings they serve that are sooo good!

I didn't get a picture of Jonathan's steak, the cream corn or the crab dip

that we had prior to our meal....but it was all so fabulous!!



And then there were the desserts!!!

This was mine...ice box pie...maybe the main reason that I wanted to go to Hibiscus for our anniversary dinner...and yes I did eat it all by myself...no judgement...I am pregnant and have been dreaming of this for 6 months now!!

Jonathan had the sour cream apple pie with lavender ice cream....which was pretty amazing as well!!! And it was voted the best apple pie dessert by D magazine...at least that is what the waiter told us but I believe it!!! Jonathan did not finish all this for the record (and no I didn't finish his too...I just had a couple of bites of his!)

It was a fabulous night with my handsome man!!

23 weeks

...and feeling good! Some days I feel like I have more energy than pre-pregnancy! I really don't get this newfound energy since I haven't been able to sleep through a night in who knows how long. With all the nightly trips to the bathroom, routine turning schedule, frequent leg cramps, and being wide awake for 2 hrs in middle of the night, I should be exhausted. But I feel good!! And I am trying to take full advantage of this new burst of energy during this season. I have been trying to plan and decorate our little girl's nursery. So I have been searching, researching, price-comparing, coordinating everything from gliders to rugs. And I am having so much fun doing it! My goal is to have most of it all done before the 3rd trimester hits when I figure I won't have as much energy, be bigger and probably swollen!

But here is a preview of what is to come in our little miss' room...

It's a...

So we had our 20 week appt last Tuesday. This is the appt that you will typically get to find out the gender so we were really looking forward to this sonogram! A couple weeks before, we (or I) really wanted to have a gender reveal party for our families and we scheduled a get together for Friday night at our house. Well I decided (the day before the appt) that I wanted to be surprised with the families on Friday night. So our plan was to have Jonathan find out and me to be kept in the dark until Friday. Our doctor was great about it when we told him our plan. He even wrote it down for us and put it in an envelope along with pictured proof just in case Jonathan wanted to be surprised too on Friday. But Jonathan had a 5 hour drive to Amarillo right after the appt so he couldn't wait. (And he was going to call Lora, our cake decorator, so she would know what to do with the cake.) Well Jonathan did so well keeping it from me until Thursday night when he was driving home from Amarillo. He accidentally let it slip (in the most unusual way, I will say) and so I found out. I was first super excited and shocked and then upset that I wouldn't be surprised at the party. But I got over the latter and became elated at the news that I had just heard.

So we had the reveal party on Friday night with our wonderful families and I had a few pink and blue desserts for everyone to enjoy.

My mom made this bouquet of flowers for me...pink and blue!


The cake was an idea that I got from a cake show on TV. The icing in the middle would be either pink or blue depending on if it was a girl or a boy. Lora from Dream Cakes did such a great job!!

I had the family pick either a pink or a blue cake pop to represent which gender they thought the baby was before we cut the cake.

And then we cut into the cake to reveal....PINK!!!

It's a GIRL!!! Jonathan and I are so excited to be having a girl. We both kinda thought it was going to be a boy at first. Even though I did have 2 dreams early on that it was a girl. I guess I need to trust my dreams! We had a boy name but hadn't settled on a girl name yet so now we are name searching and nursery planning for this precious little girl. We can't wait to meet, see and love her!