Baby Wilder #2 Gathering

  This post is about Zach and Jacquie's new baby's gender reveal party, but first I have to write about how amazing and wonderful my mom is. I love looking back and thinking about all the times my friends have come over to my parent's house, during high school and also the past 7 years, each time I came to visit during Full Sail and on my 3-day weekends. She is such a friendly host who makes everyone feel right at home. Prime example >> after Sharanya and I got back to my parents house from Payne's Prairie, she was saying how she didn't have any clothes to wear to the party. My mom insisted on letting her borrow a robe and put our clothes in the dryer for 30 minutes. What a sweetie!! 

  Zach and Jacquie made tacos for the party while her sister, Nikki, decorated their house with balloons and streamers. Peyton LOVES Mommy, the best grandma in the world. She would cry if Mommy tried to put her down and wouldn't let anyone else hold her. For games, Jacquie had us write down boy and girl names with the letters H and R. 

  Then we went outside and sprayed them with silly string. She took the caps off so we wouldn't know what color it was until we sprayed it. It's a girl!! Nikki recorded a video of it. I tried to get a picture of Peyton in her "big sister" shirt, but she's fast at running around now. On her tippie toes, just like I did at that age. (She's almost a year and 8 months.) Back inside, we played Hangman to guess the name they picked: Helena Rey. They passed out cupcakes and we watched the ultrasound video. Overall it was a really nice, festive day!!

^^ Last picture from the following day: My favorite oldest and youngest family members.

Payne's Prairie

  I kept telling Sharanya that I needed to see her when I came up last weekend. I had 't seen her since we got together to take dress up pictures after Christmas. #SkinnySlytherinDiaries  But Sharanya was only able to be there for about 30 minutes before she had to leave for work. Thanks, Mommy for taking these pictures (and all of the other "premiere" pictures over the years)!! 

  After Luke's party, I went back to my house where my mom made me 2 pieces of raisin toast with peanut. She's so thoughtful and said I need to eat healthy since I'm still trying to get pregnant again. When Sharanya picked me up, we took a few silly jumping pictures, then headed to Payne's Prairie. She goes there often, but I don't ever remember going. The weather was perfect when we got there. Cool and overcast, not hot and super sunny like I thought it would be in the open field areas. I should mention the PokemonGo craze happening over the past few weeks. Here Sharanya is catching an Eevee on the pavilion bridge area. 

  The very last two of these pictures are from Sharanya's Samsung Galaxy since my camera batteries died after getting pictures of that deer in the distance (below). I love the weather before it rains. Cool and windy, the clouds look awesome and you don't have to squint bc the sun is hiding. We enjoyed seeing the lightning in the distance and hearing the thunder clap. 

  Sharanya loved seeing the birds fly around us, but we barely saw any alligators, which was fine with me. Finally we realized the storm was coming towards us, not moving away like it looked and we took off running back to the car. It became more windy and I remember yelling, "It's times like these when I wish I was wearing my Dorothy dress!" (I said the same thing at the end of April 2014 as Michael and I sat in the living room of our condo in Birmingham, listening to the Tornado Watch weather reports before Sasha and I followed Michael into the smaller bathroom and sat together in the tub.)

  Soon the rain caught up to me and Sharanya, so we had to run faster. But we weren't fast enough. The rain fell harder and twice I stopped. There was no point in running since the dark clouds were above us. It seemed a lot further running back than walking that way the first time. I was drenched and I didn't have anything to cover the camera. I may not have any more Canon pictures to post for quite some time now.... 

  Sharanya called for me to keep running. "We're almost there!" I kept panting that I couldn't breathe, but it was only an exaggeration. Although I do feel like I have a low lung capacity. When we got to the small square "shelter" without walls above 4 feet she asked how I felt. Pretty awesome, actually. I loved feeling my heart pound like that. After waiting with 7 other people, we could tell it wasn't going to just be a "Florida rain" that would blow away after five minutes. So we kept going as the rain hit us like tiny hail bits. And Sharanya was so relaxed as she carefully pulled a banana spider off the front of her shirt before getting in the car. (!!!!!!)

Luke's 3rd Birthday

  July 11th was my friend Lindsey's son's third birthday. I feel like Luke and I had become friends over the past year since I've spent more time around him and we started a band together with Mia. Luke and the Band-Aids!! Tour tickets go on sale in September. ;) So I wanted to go up to Gainesville for his party, and see the rest of my family. I will admit that week (mostly Friday the 15th driving up when I cried for 20 mins) was hard for me, with Jacquie having her gender reveal party. That means Michael and I would have known by now if Shrimp was a boy or a girl. But now (hopefully) we have to wait the next 55 healthy years to find out. *insert angel emoji* 

  Peyton, Jacquie and her sister, Nikki, also attended Luke's birthday party since Luke had met Peyton on one occasion before and she doesn't get much interaction with little kids, so it was great for everyone! It was the perfect amount of people in my opinion. Five kids and nine adults, including Lindsey's parents. (It was really nice talking to both of them.) She had a Mickey Mouse theme with balloons and healthy snacks on the table. I didn't get any pictures of Nikki this weekend but she was there! She took the picture of me and Lindsay in the pool.

  Again I've learned that we've you can get some really good pictures by just being candid and not always trying to get the kids to look at you or tell them to smile. Just capture them having a good time. I've definitely been reminded of that by reading my favorite blog, LoveTaza. But thats how I got this blown out picture of Luke. (Blown out meaning I forgot to change the aperture setting between being in the patio shade to out in the sun.) He was trying to carry his plate with cupcake in his right hand and his toy bat in the left. The plate started slipping and he tried to balance it against his body until he lost his grip and the cupcake fell and got icing all over his stomach. It was "pretty silly" as Luke would say. 

  (Oh my gosh~ I loved seeing Michael play with Luke at Mia's house a few months ago. They were just kicking a ball around. Luke was pretty hyper & every two minutes he was laughing while saying, "Michael is silly!" Flash forwards of him being a dad one day!) Oh and for a "Lukeism", since kids are hilarious when they start talking and asking questions. That night with Michael, Lindsey was explaining to him, "You know how Daddy is my husband? Well Michael is Rachel's husband." 

Luke asked, "Who is my husband?" 

Lindsey laughed politely, "You don't have a husband." 

"Is Austin my husband?" 

"No, Austin is your brother." 

HA!! Ohhh, kids. & hey! You can see Jacquie's sister, Nikki, swimming in the background of that picture above. Phew, got her!

Horse Farm

Time for another ramble of what I've been thinking about. Plus some pictures from a few months ago. I calmed down after writing this on Tuesday once I got a free milkshake in me ~

I've never been a fan of abortion (who would be?! Killing an innocent baby that did nothing wrong) but now, after my miscarriage with Shrimp, it is such a slap in the face. I think all of the "pregnant and alone" billboards need to say something at the bottom like "think of all the women crying themselves to sleep because their baby died (or they are infertile)".

I just read a magazine article talking about how this girl (in her late 20's) had a one night stand and soon found out she was pregnant. And when she decided to keep the baby, all of her friends were saying how brave and inspiring she was. I stopped reading it at that point. Why aren't there tons of articles about the young women who are brave and inspiring for the opposite reasons? For waiting until they found the right person to marry and resisting any temptation for however many years. Why are those girls not looked up to and written about? 

Although Michael and I would have loved to meet Shrimp before we get to Heaven, our marriage/ relationship has definitely gotten stronger since then. Michael was there for me the whole time and still is. He took off from work to come to my doctor appointments in March and April. He was there to listen and calm me down when I'd yell "It's not fair!" twenty times a day after we lost Shrimp. I have never seen Michael as wonderful, talented, and kind as he has been this year. I just bought a card on Etsy that has 2 shrimp in the shape of a heart that says "You are shrimply the best." So cute! Also a silver shrimp keychain and a shirt for Michael. 

The second weekend in April, Michael and Sasha went to Gainesville with me on Saturday & Sunday. I was supposed to be working but my Teletype trainer at the time was closing on her house and had the weekend off so they said I could have it off too. (As of Tuesday I've been solo on Teletype for a month now!) That Saturday we went with my family to the retired horse farm, each with a bag of carrots for them. Eventually, after Michael got off the phone with the home inspector for our house, we wandered off into "The Field of Dreams" and enjoyed being together-  just us. It was so nice because sometimes Michael is the only one in the world who matters. It was such a big area. We want to go back. And maybe also live there. I didn't know before this day (April 9th) how much he likes horses.

 ~ ✩ ✬ ✭ ✬ ✩ ☆ ✩ ✬ ✭ ✬ ✩ ☆ ✩ ✬ ✭ ✬ ✩ ☆ ~

The place was hard to find because the GPS takes everyone down a different road that was a few miles East of the road that needs to be taken. The proper way to get there from US 441 is to go down 235A North past Santa Fe High School, keep going until after driving on the bridge that goes over I-75, then the entrance (which only has a green sign on a pole) was on the right . The following pictures from the Mills Creek Horse Farm were taken on the Canon using the 50mm lens:

I mostly took pictures and petted some of their noses since I was worried about accidentally getting my fingers bitten off! Next time we come (preferably during January or February) we will have to bring three or four big bags. Michael felt bad only giving each horse one or two carrots- and there were still a bunch we just walked past without feeding.

This miniature horse, which we called Lil Sebastian, was his favorite, as well as the speckled horse. We seemed to spend the most time together here, which quickly got very toasty in the sun, but it was still a nice time. I sure was eyeballing the huge buckets of water the horses shared in each fenced area. I asked Michael if I could jump in, but he said no. ;)

One of these white horses got really aggressive when the other one was standing behind it while being fed a carrot, and kicked the other horse in the chest with his back legs! Yipes!

There were a bunch of people who seemed to stay around specific horses and I wondered if those horses belonged to them, or they were the sponsors, if that is something Mill Creek does? Of course they took donations and sold shirts and hats, but the entry fee is just a bag of carrots. There was a sign at the front that said some of the horses could only eat sliced apples or bananas because they didn't have strong teeth. One family rode around on a golf cart (the area is pretty big- we probably walked at least a mile and a half!) and then ducked through the fence pieces to pet that white horse in the back. ^^ There were no signs saying not to walk through the pastures, but I would assume most people are not supposed to do that.. So again, I wonder if that was their horse, even though all these horses are retired. Maybe it used to be an equestrian horse?

Michael and I really liked this place and have it on our list of places to visit at least once a year. He doesn't come to Gainesville with me too often, but it always makes me happy when he does. The way he really enjoyed being around all the horses, I told him that it seemed like he grew up on a farm. I know we would love to bring our future kid here one day.