Check Out These Great Giveaways and Help a Sweet Family Bring Home their Baby Girl from S. Korea

One of the blogs I read is written by a sweet woman named Adrienne. She and her husband Jim have travelled quite a long road to having children. She has had numerous miscarriages and heart breaking failed domestic adoptions. During this journey they have adopted one sweet boy from Russia named Owen. Now they are on another journey to bring a baby girl home from South Korea. They are a great family and Owen will be a wonderful big brother! A hard part of the adoption process is all of the fees that go along with it. They will have to raise somewhere around $25,000 by the end of the adoption process! Through Adrienne's journey, she has made many "friends" in the blog world that really want to help her and her family to raise money so they can bring their baby girl home soon. Go check out her blog to hear more of her story and to get to know their family a little better and offer support during this adoption process. If you feel compelled to help in a bigger way, check out her left sidebar for various opportunities to donate to their adoption fun through buying some great items such as mosaic crosses, baby blankets, jewelry, photography, etc. She has also had a bunch of items donated to her to raffle off. So, she is doing three great giveaways with a bunch of items in each giveaway. By donating, you can be entered to win some of the items of your choice in the great giveaways. This week's great giveaway ends tomorrow, Thursday, so hurry over and check it out by following the button below.

Show Us Your Life - Wedding Party and Flowers/Ceremony

This week Kelly from Kelly's Korner is hosting the 'Show Us Your Life - Wedding Party and Flowers/Ceremony' blog carnival. This is one thing that I thought I could take part in again.

The Wedding Party:

The Bridesmaids - My girls wore a dark red strapless dress with some beading on the bodice. I think they all looked absolutely beautiful! My best friend from college, Beth, was my maid of honor. My bridesmaids were Erin (another best friend from college), Kathy (Dan's sister), and Sarah (my cousin). My sister, Taylor, was my junior bridesmaid. She was 7 and looked so pretty in her white dress!

My youngest sister, Hannah, was my flower girl. She was 4 and did a great job walking down the aisle!

My mom was way too young to wear a traditional 'mother of the bride' dress so she wore a gorgeous bridesmaid dress instead. It even had a tiny train to be bustled for the reception :) Don't my mom and Dad look great?!

The Groomsmen - Dan and his boys looked so handsome in their tuxes that day! His brother James was his best man. Both NJ and TX are well represented in the groomsmen :)

The Flowers:

I carried a bouquet with red roses and white Cala lillies in it. The bridesmaids all carried Cala lillies. They were just gorgeous even though Taylor's looked mangled by the end of the ceremony :) Sadly, I didn't get any pics of just the flowers, but you can see them in other pics.

The Ceremony:

We had two pastors officiate our wedding. My grandpa is a retired pastor. He baptized me when I was a baby, confirmed me as a teen, and he did our vows at our wedding. It was such a special moment for us! Pastor Mark was our other pastor and he was the pastor of my parent's church at the time where we got married. We were very blessed to have him as a part of our wedding.

Time felt like it froze as the doors opened for me to walk down the aisle. Then I saw Dan with a huge smile on his face and it felt like it was only the 2 of us in this place. We had both of our moms light the family candles at the beginning of the service for the unity candle lighting.

Here are a few more pics from after the ceremony. I think the best one is the candid that the photographer was able to get of my dad paying Hannah $5 so she would smile for the pictures after the ceremony. She had fallen asleep during the ceremony and wasn't too happy when she woke up :)

Sorry for the overabundance of pictures! I hope you had fun anyway looking back at my wedding day. If you want to see other beautiful brides on their wedding day, check out Kelly's Korner Blog.

Wordless Wednesday - Just Like Daddy

Pray Pray Pray Pray

UPDATE 7/28 AM: I don't think Stellan has been airlifted to Boston just yet. I wanted to pass along some great news though. He went for a stretch of an hour and a half last night with NO SVT! It may not seem like a long time, but it was a great break for his overworked body. He seems to have had a decent night overnight and the concoction of drugs that the docs have him on now are at least popping out of SVT every once in a while which is a good thing. Pray things continue to get better today!

UPDATE: In case you aren't following MckMama on her blog or twitter, I thought I would update here. Stellan is being airlifted sometime tonight along with both his mom and dad to Boston Children's Hospital to have another ablation to correct his SVT. Most likely, while doing that, he will need to have his chest opened up and will end up being put on a pacemaker for the rest of his life. Pray for peace and comfort for this family and wisdom and steady hands for the doctors as they perform surgery on his little heart.

ORIGINAL POST:
Baby Stellan is back in the hospital and doing very very very poorly. He had a very rough night last night and it seems by all medical evaluations that his little body is shutting down. To put it in perspective for you his entire family is on the way to the hospital now to be with him. The doctors are trying everything in their power right now to help him. Even though I don't know them, have never met them, and will never meet them, I am shaking right now as I type this. I don't know how to explain it, but I have read MckMama's blog daily now for at least the past year and I feel somehow connected to this family and all that they have gone through with little Stellan. Please lift this family up in prayer in this very scary time. Lift the doctors and medical teams up in prayer that they know what is best for Stellan. MckMama has been updating her blog through http://twitter.com/MckMama if you are interested in staying up to date with Stellan's medical state.

Show Us Your Life - The Wedding Dress

Kelly over at Kelly's Korner has changed her 'Show us your home' blog carnival into a 'Show us your life' blog carnival. I'm a little late for last week, but I thought I would join in anyway. The theme last Friday was the wedding dress. So without further ado, my wedding dress.

Dan and I just celebrated our 5-year wedding anniversary at the end of June! I can't believe it has been 5 years already! I am surprised that I do remember quite a bit about our wedding day. I'm sure there's a great deal that all runs together and I forget too though. I loved my dress! I felt like such a princess the whole day. My dress was white, strapless with detail embroidery work on the bodice and a plain skirt.

The train was a decent length...nothing too long.

The only shot I got of the train pulled up for the reception was from during my dress fitting. (sorry for the poor quality photo)

Sadly the dress is now in a box in a closet. I wish I still fit in that dress. Maybe I would wear it to vacuum or something, haha :)

If you want to join in the wedding dress fun or just look at everyone's wedding dresses or what their dream wedding dress would be, hop on over to Kelly's Korner - Show Us Your Life - Wedding Dress. There are a ton of beautiful gowns posted! I hope everyone had a great weekend!