Mother's Day

Have  I mentioned how difficult it is to have time to blog with a newborn? It's my goal to blog once a week, but I haven't done a great job so far...I would much rather be playing with her! I will do better....

Our first Mother's Day together was so special. We went to church and I received the "Mom with the Newest Baby" award- a beautiful bouquet of calla lilies!  This was our first time back to church since Blakely was born and she did great! She slept through the whole service and Sunday School!  After church we had a nice late lunch at Mickey and Mooch! Monkey did great there, too! She is growing so fast and I feel so blessed God chose me to be her Mommy!  Here are a few pictures from the day : 

 I love kissing those cheeks! 

 Our sweet family

 Picture with Nana

Mimi and Papaw

For Mother's Day, Travis gave me a hilarious card telling me what a "hottie" I am. It was really funny and cute! On the back, he wrote a sweet note and then wrote that we were going for a weekend away to the Lodge on Lake Lure. Blakely has had serious colic and her first couple of months of life have been special, but also a challenge for Travis and I.  He asked my mom if she would keep Blakely so that we could have a weekend away to rest and get refreshed. We just went for our weekend and it was so nice! The Lodge was beautiful, the food was delish, and our time together was wonderful. We hiked to Chimney Rock, spent some time on the lake in a canoe and just relaxed. We sure did miss our Monkey Girl though! We couldn't wait to get back Sunday to kiss those sweet cheeks and hold her!  She is the biggest blessing in our lives and we are so grateful for her! 

 Lots of fun canoeing!

View from breakfast

View from our bathroom

Blakely and I also recently went to visit my Grandparents in the mountains. That will be the next post! :-)

Peace and Love,

Kristen

Newborn Pictures

Decided I would add Blakely's newborn pictures today. These were taken at my house and then outside at my mom's house! I can't believe how much she has grown since then! These are a few of my favorites....

Peace and Love~

Kristen

Catch-up

Since I'm playing catch-up, I thought I would add a few more hospital pictures and coming home pictures today! :)

 Love her folded hands!

Beacon's first view of our sweet girl! He pretty much ignores her most of the time. Every now and then he will give her a kiss!

Here's her first bath! My mom came over to help with this...I've never given an infant a bath and didn't want to do anything that would hurt her! 

and one more for good measure...Blakely's Aunt Jo bought her these little stickers to take her picture in every month. She is actually 2 weeks old in these pictures, but like I said...we were playing catch-up! 

Peace and Love,

Kristen

Finally blogging again..

I have not blogged in almost a year....time does fly...

However, pregnancy is draining and so I decided that I would wait until after Blakely was born to start blogging again...mainly to chronicle the sweet events of her life and what's going on in ours. So, I thought I would begin restart again with her birth story and a few pictures.

My due date was April 4- my birthday- and when that day came and went I was quite frustrated. Being huge at 40 weeks and not sleeping was not really my thing.

We went to dinner on April 5th for my birthday with all of the family- even my sis and sweet niece, Penelope, were able to join us! We joked that me eating the crab cakes and the jalapeno cornbread (my favorite!!!) would put me into labor...well....it did! At 2:00 in the morning!

My water broke and I was kind of startled because I thought I peed myself...I woke Travis up about an hour later and told him we needed to call the doctor. We did and they told us to head to the hospital. By the time we got to Presbyterian (great hospital and care!) I was having full on, crazy-strong contractions. They admitted me quickly and due to a wonderful miracle, I received my epidural super fast! I was soooo thankful! 

The doctor was sure that I would deliver pretty soon because of the strength of my contractions, but...it didn't happen that way. We rested some and continued to monitor the baby and as time went on, my contractions seemed to lessen in strength. The doc came in and said that we could continue on like this (Blakely was beginning to stress a bit) for another 12 hours or we could go for a c-section. She said if we went with the c-section it would be labeled the baby "Failed to progress."

Honestly, I was mortified at first because this was not MY plan. Amazing, isn't it how God's plans are so different than our own and He chooses the most interest times to remind us of that.  Travis and I prayed about it and decided that the c-section was the best way to go. We had a great peace about it and let the doctor know. 

The quickly wheeled me into the operating room and Blakely was born at 2:14 am. What a blessing! She was 7 pounds 8 ounces and 21 and a 1/4 inches long. Travis held her to me and then they took her to be bathed. We were in recovery for a couple of hours, but then headed to a room to spend time with our new bundle of joy and see our family. 

Happy "Welcome to the World" day Blakely! Mommy and Daddy love you..every ounce of you!

More to come soon :)

Peace and Love,

~Kristen

It's been a while....

So it's been a while...

The Reynolds have been really busy. We've been renovating a 1978 (FREE!) boat (pictures to come, hopefully), canning tons of green beans, gardening, working away, taking the youth to camp, and getting ready for our vacation!

Travis planted a rather large garden with green beans, lots of tomatoes, squash, zucchini, peppers, cucumbers, corn, blueberries, etc. I have canned 21 quarts of green beans and saved some fresh ones to have with supper! We have made lots of new recipes with the squash and zucchini. We've been gardening for 3 years now and each year like to try something new. Corn was our new adventure this year. It's fun to plant things and see what comes up! Plus you get to eat fresh veggies...they taste great and are super healthy! :)

I'll post more on the boat adventure later...but for now just know that it's taken a lot of TLC, but it floats, runs, and can even pull a tube...so look out Lake Norman....the Reynolds are coming in the hoopty boat!

Last week, I left with the youth from our church to help lead them on their annual adventure to Fort Caswell or Camp Caswell. The youth love going and they have wonderful times of worship and lessons for youth and adults. I enjoyed getting to spend time with 40 of our youth, getting to know them better, going to the beach, laughing with my Mom (she was our cook!) and basking in God's grace. As adults sometimes we think experiences like these are just for the kids...I think we couldn't be more sadly mistaken. I experienced so much this past week and am learning more and more about myself and to what I believe God is calling my family. It's an exciting time for us and we can't wait to learn what doors the Lord is going to open!

Our speaker at camp this past week was EJ Swanson. You should look him up- he has an incredible testimony. EJ just recently began an organization called "I Won't Watch." His motto is "Stop watching, Start doing." The organization sells really cool watches and gives some of the profit to Compassion International. The watches run from $15-$25. EJ gave all our youth one with the promise that we would share his passion and desire to help those less fortunate than ourselves. He currently has folks serving in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, but has also helped support children in East Africa- a place so near and dear to Travis and myself. We want to help support EJ and his efforts, so please visit www.iwontwatch.com!

We are going on vacation in the near future to Hilton Head Island. Travis has been working so hard and we are both ready to get away! We are looking forward to sand between our toes and I know Travis is ready to swing a club or two on the local golf courses!

All for now....posting soon on some new Pinterest recipes I am trying! Will let you know how they turn out!

Peace and Love~
Kristen

That post I was talking about...

I said I was going to post "tomorrow." I've been a bit busy, but the words from this book I'm reading haven't left my mind. I'm reading Kisses from Katie and while she amazes me, I'm thankful the Lord is using her to impact the U.S. and other countries. Katie is now around 24 years old and is the mother to 14 Ugandan little girls. I just wanted to post a couple of paragraphs from her book that spoke to me...
The truth is that the 143 million orphaned children and the 11 million who starve to death or die from preventable diseases and the 8.5 million who work as child slaves, prostitutes, or under other horrific conditions and the 2.3 million who live with HIV add up to 164.8 million needy children. And though at first glance that looks like a big number, 2.1 billion people on this earth are Christians. 


The truth is that if only 8 percent of the Christians would care for one more child, there would not be any statistics left.


This is the Truth. I have the freedom to believe it. The freedom, the opportunity to do something about it. The truth is that He loves these children just as much as He loves me and now that I know, I am responsible.


People.... we just read it, now we know it, now we are responsible. It doesn't mean you have to go or even give to Uganda necessarily, but it does mean that the children of this world deserve God's love- no matter who they are- American, Chinese, Ugandan, or Australian....they are His and He made us, His followers, responsible.

Peace and Love~ Kristen

It's been a week now...

Since we left Uganda. My heart and the way that I feel about the people of Uganda have not changed. I wake up in the morning thinking about them and find myself thinking about certain children or faces throughout my day. I'm sure it seems logical that I, in time, would begin to forget or that my daily life would become so routine that I wouldn't think of them so much, but I don't think that is going to be the case. You see, I think my eyes and my heart have been changed in way that I didn't expect. I see these people as family now. We are all God's children and if we don't look at one another as siblings in Christ then we are missing the picture of how God created this earth and his people to be.

In this post I wanted to put in a few pictures from our trip...below are pictures from our first 2 days in Kampala. Kampala is a larger city...the President lives here and Parliament is there. There is a constant smell of exhaust fumes and open fires as you drive through the city. People on little motorcycles or in taxis are everywhere and if they are not riding these, they are walking. There is no such thing as personal space in Uganda. The first two days we worked with Return Ministries, started and run by Pastor Samuel. He is a wise and loving man. You will see our team with him in one of the pictures. We handed out bags with many different types of supplies to families in his village. We played with and fed the kids at his ministry. I love these dear children...they were the first Ugandans I met and they were precious. You can see my previous posts for more on them.

After leaving Kampala, we moved on to Canaan's Children's home. Pastor or "Papa" as he is affectionately known as, began this ministry after almost being killed by a rebel army some years ago for his faith in Jesus. He was called and vowed to the Lord that he would care for the children of Uganda. He is making good on his promise as 120 orphaned children live on this compound. They are fed, clothed, and sent to school.  We held VBS in the afternoons with as many kids as we could from Canaans, but also a lot of street children. These children broke my heart because this was the highlight of their day. To sing, learn, and make a simple craft was so fun to them. We jumped rope and painted fingernails. Simple things to Americans, but treasures to Ugandan children.  In the mornings we visited different ministries. We visited Amani baby cottage (the first couple of pictures), Sanyu baby cottage (see my previous post- one the highlights of my trip...amazing too see God's provision!), Pillars of Hope Ministry (see pictures of the loom...they make beautiful pieces of work to sell for money, which pays for food and school fees for the street children in their ministry), the Karamajong Tribe (considered the lowest of the low in Uganda..no one wants them or cares for them other than the few ministries working with them. Their children were absolutely filthy, but some of the most attention and love-needy people I have ever met). We also visited the school that most Cannan's kids go to. Friday night we gave almost all of the children a set of new sheets and a pillow. We also gave socks, clothes, notebooks, and math sets.  Our team worked so hard each day to give all we had of ourselves to each of these groups of people. I cannot describe in words to you what it was like, but you have to know that each day changed mine and Travis's lives. We simply do not look at people the same way anymore. 

(You can click and drag to make this bigger, the pictures are also on my facebook page)

Below is a quick video of some of the smaller kids performing on Friday night for our "Welcome." It is hard to hear, but they were precious! 

I know this post is long, but I need to share with you one more thing. Before we went to Uganda, we knew of a young man named Isaac who Welch (our friend and trip leader) befriended on his last trip. Isaac is very bright and ambitious. When we got to Uganda, Isaac was in the hospital. There was no real diagnosis- hospitals do not even come close to the type of medical care we have here. While we were there, he was released and seemed to be feeling somewhat better. We learned this week that Isaac is very, very sick and at one point was close to not making it. He left Canaan's/Jinja and is now in Kampala in a larger, private hospital. Just to be admitted and seen the cost was $120. To stay there cost much more. Pastor Samuel (Return Ministries) is helping take care of his hospital cost. This is a burden, though, for Samuel and Isaac as money is not an abundant resource. We are praying for God's will in Isaac's life and how best to help him. Please join us in praying for this special young man. 

Isaac with Welch as we picked him up from the hospital.

 I want to share another passage from a book I have been reading....maybe tomorrow :).Thank you for your prayers and support. Please continue to pray for us as we discern what God would have us to continue to do for His people.  

Peace and Love~

Kristen