PLANS

I had planned on posting some videos from the weekend today (they are hilarious!!!  How about some mechanical bull riding?), but the Lord had different plans for my post.

When I spoke at the WRMC banquet a couple of weeks ago, I really prayed about what to share.  Of course I wanted to share all about our daughter, but I also wanted to share how AWESOME our  God is, even in such a trial.  The Lord laid it on my heart to talk about plans.

The verse we cling to for Faith’s life is Jeremiah 29:11: “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord.  “Plans to proper you, not to harm you.  Plans to give you hope and a future.”

I shared with the audience that even though the plans WE had made for her life did not come to be, the plans that HE had for her life did.  Although her life was short, she made an impact on many people both near and far.  She showed the world that if we just allow God the opportunity to reveal the plans He has for us, what kind of impact can we make?  The impact she made was HUGE for only living 9 months and 42 minutes.  What kind of impact can we have in a lifetime if we choose to follow the plans He has for us?

This morning, our daily Bible verse was Jeremiah 29:13: You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.

Are you seeking Him with all of your heart?  What is standing in the way His plans for you?

As Rob and I continue to seek God’s plans for our family, I ask you to please be in prayer for us tomorrow.  We have a meeting to discuss a possible opportunity, and we are just asking that His will be done.  We are open and willing if that is what He wants.

I pray that each of you know that the Lord has great plans for you. 

Colors, Costumes and Cutting a Rug

Last week, my dear friend Courtney invited me to a painting class at Corks & Colors.  She had been several times, and her work was AMAZING!  I did tell her I can’t draw a straight line with a ruler, but it would be a great time.

This is the best my canvas looked all night!

 

Here is a picture of the sample…in other words, what my art is supposed to look like.

And here we are with our finished pieces.

 

When we got home, I showed it to Rob.  His response was “It’s not that bad.”  He was pretty impressed.  In fact, he was so impressed he hung it in our kitchen. 

Last night, we went to a fall festival at a church just down the road from us.  Some friends had invited us to join them, so we dressed the kids up, and had a great time.

 

Notice the princess has on a tutu!  Her kitty costume was at Gamma’s, so Ariel was her only choice.  And Cade chose to wear his ghillie suit, and boy was he a hit!  Everyone asked us where we got it from, and he was so proud.

And finally, if you need a good laugh today, you have come to the right place.  SG was jacked up on candy, and decided to have a dance session with Elmo.

Even Cade makes a cameo in his underwear.  I hope you all have a happy Thursday!!!

BIG Weekend

This weekend proved to be HUGE in the Vaughn household.  It was busy, but oh so fun.

The weekend started on Friday night at the Women’s Resource and Medical Clinic’s Annual Banquet.  This is a pro-life organization that my family has supported for years.  It has come to mean a lot more to me in the past year.  I was asked to speak and share about Faith.  I have never been more nervous, but once I got up there, the Lord blessed me with a peace and I overflowed with pride as I shared what my daughter has meant to us and many others.

We left from there and drove until 1:30 am to get to the hunting woods.  It was opening rifle season in GA, and heaven forbid we miss it!  Remember this?

Rob was so excited for me to finally be able to shoot it.  But I am sad to report that it served as nothing more than an accessory because we didn’t see anything we could shoot.  But guess who did?

Cade shot his first deer and he was so proud of himself.  I think Papa was even more proud (but not as proud as Momma and Daddy!).  Rob and I had to leave Saturday afternoon for a Sunday School party, so Cade stayed with Gamma and Papa.  He had to use Papa’s BIG gun to shoot it because it was so far away.

Sunday, SaraGrace had a big day.  She got to do this:

Aunt Amy arranged a special meeting for SG and the Gator cheerleaders.  There was a volleyball game, and the girls (and boys) cheered for them.  They practiced earlier and SG got to be in the middle of the action.

But she wasn’t the only one.  Brooke and Hayley got to go too.  They were so good to SG and she just loves them!

 

Aunt Amy and Hayley.

Then SaraGrace wanted to play like she was shy.

It was breast cancer awareness day, so the girls had pink pompoms.  Our girl was loving that! 

Everyone was so sweet to make SG feel like part of the team.  They even taught her the Gator Bait cheer.

I hate that this picture is blurry, but she and SG both had red hair:)

  SaraGrace got all excited when they started doing “junaxtix” and “stumps.”

She thought she wanted them to put her up in a stump.  So Mr. Josh asked some of the guys to come and put her up.  Because she was so scared of the fact that there were boy cheerleaders (she kept saying they weren’t real cheerleaders, but they were SO SWEET to her,) they got this young lady to stump with SG.

  After practice, it was time for the volleyball game.  SG thought the girls (and guys) were the coolest, until Alberta came around in a pink dress.  This is one of my favorite pictures of the day. 

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend as well.  Happy Monday!

Random and Not So Random

This is a hodge-podge post with lots of little tidbits of things going on.  Some are random, some are NOT.

We’ll start with the Random:

• SG can’t decide what she wants to be for Halloween, but a kitty cat seems to be the most popular.  I thought it would be cute to dress her in all black, with a black tutu, ears and whiskers.  But she informed me “No Tutus!”  When I asked her why, she replied, “Because I HATE tutus.”  I’m still picking up the pieces of my heart because I LOVE to see my girl in a tutu.

 

• Speaking of Halloween, Rob and Cade spent the majority of our grocery trip to Walmart in the scary makeup section.  They bought all kinds of stuff.  There are some tattoos that look like scars, and Rob just had to try them out on Cade.  While SG was watching, she said, “Mommy, I want a tattoo.”  I asked her what she would get.  She said, “A butterfly.”  I asked her where she would get it.  She said, “At the dentist.”

 

• You know you work with mostly family when this happens:  I brought in one of my favorite bras for Aunt Lisa to fix.  She laid it on the front counter, and we realized it only AFTER several men came in to get their checks.  NICE!

 

• If you are friends with me on Facebook, you saw that I posted yesterday would have been Faith’s 5 month birthday.  It was a little hard, as it is each month.  But over the weekend, our family of 4 went to spruce up “Faith’s Garden” as named by SaraGrace.  It looks so much more cheery (if that is a word.)

I have to tell you that I went to Dollar General last Sunday afternoon to pick up some essentials.  But they were having a 90% off sale on their wind chimes.   I have seen some out at the cemetery, and I have since wanted to put some in Faith’s Garden.  There were so many to choose from, but there was one very special one that caught my eye.  It was a cross that said “Faith” in the middle of it.  I knew it would be perfect!

 

Now, on to the Not So Random:

• Please pray for me as I will be sharing the story of our little girl at the Women’s Resource and Medical Clinic Banquet, tomorrow night.  I am thrilled with the opportunity, but I want to only be a vessel of the words that the Lord gives me.  I want to honor Him!

 

• PLEASE PRAY for Jacob Jones.  He is 13 months old and was just diagnosed with Tay-Sach’s.  Here is a little of his story…

Jacob’s Story

My name is Jacob Alan Lee Jones and I was born on August 29, 2010. Recently the doctors diagnosed me with a very rare disease called Tay-Sachs, which currently has no cure. With the help of friends and family, they are trying to share my story with the world, in attempt to help take me to Peru, for what could be a life-saving treatment. A facebook page has been created to provide updates, prayers, support and love for both me and my family. Please “friend request” me at Jacob Alan Lee Jones.

Donations can be made at ServisFirst Bank under:

Erica & Justin Jones for the benefit of Jacob Alan Lee Jones

If you would like to help with the upcoming fundraisers, please contact Erika Freeman at (205) 243-0327 cell, (205) 397-5125 work

efreeman@jrprewitt.com or eleigh28@gmail.com

Thank you for all your prayers and support!

To read more about Tay-Sach’s disease please visit:

http://www.ntsad.org/

The National Tay-Sachs & Allied Diseases Association, Inc. (NTSAD)

This world of blogging has been wonderful for sharing prayer requests.  Please lift this family up in your prayers.

Preacher Man

We are convinced that Cade is our little Preacher Man.  He takes very seriously the message of Jesus Christ, and doesn’t mind sharing it with anyone.

As I’ve shared multiple times, Cade has really struggled with losing his sister.  But he has used it to help him be more bold in sharing about Jesus. 

Last week, as I was picking him up from school, he had a piece of paper in his hand that looked like it had had a hard day.  He said, “Guess what I did today, Mommy?”  He looked so proud as he told me he started a Bible Study in his class.  That piece of paper was the  “form” for everyone to fill out.  He wanted to make copies so everyone in his class could have one.  We walked into the school office, and Mrs. Melanie was so sweet to copy his “forms.”

He then told me that he named his Bible Study “Having Faith and Hope.”  Then he said, “You know why I wanted to do this, Mommy?” 

I said “Why honey.” 

He said “I want to change my life.  I don’t want to be mean to my friends.”

My heart melted.  His teacher then told me that Cade said he knew how to do a Bible Study because his daddy used to have one.  I nearly gasped!  We haven’t done that Bible Study in over a year. 

But what really caught me off-guard was the fact that it had made an impact on him.  He spent most of those nights running through the house, aggravating his sister and playing games.  But he was paying attention.

The Lord really spoke to me saying “What kind of example are you setting for  your children these days?”  “What will be the next thing that they pick up because of something they have learned from you?”

Admittedly, we have been so busy with every day life lately.  Football, church, gym, date nights, and the list goes on and on for the things that occupy our time each week.  We do our morning devotions and prayer time, then we have family prayer time at night.  While those things are wonderful, are we truly doing everything we can to invest in our children to further the Kingdom of Heaven?  

While Rob and I were driving one afternoon, we heard a message on the radio that discussed being busy.  This preacher said that BUSY stood for “Being Under Satan’s Yoke.”  Wow!  He said that Satan wants us to fill our time with worldly wants and needs, then at the end of the day we are too tired to be good husbands and wives, good parents to our children, and definitely too tired to give Jesus any of our time. 

We are so proud that Cade is boldly sharing Jesus with the people around him.  Our prayer is to be obedient to the will of God to do things that impact our children for eternity.  You never know when they are paying attention.

The Nail

While Rob and I were driving to Port Canaveral last week, we were listening to Christian radio.  A devotional came through the speakers of my car that hit me in a profound way.  I cannot take credit for the parable of the nail, and I have no idea who was doing the story-telling.  But it is definitely worthy of sharing.

In a small foreign country, a man had his house for sale.  He was asking $2,000.00 for it.  Another man and his family desperately wanted to buy the house, but they only had $1, 000.00.  The owner of the house agreed to sell the house for $1, 000.00, but only under one condition.  He would retain ownership of the nail hanging outside the front door.  The new homeowner was more than willing to oblige, and so they moved into their new home.

Several months later, the previous owner wanted to buy the house back, but the family was not willing to sell it.  So, he began to hang dead, rotten animals on the nail outside of the front door.  As the days went on, the nail held something more and more gruesome, until the family finally decided to sell the house.

The moral of the story?  If you say you belong to Jesus, and you’ve given your life to Him, you can’t allow Satan to own the nail outside your front door.  He will use it to hang his junk on, to discourage you, and to push his way into your life.  He will use it to control you!  He is powerful.

I took this very personal.  The last 18 months of my life have held many hurtful trials.  Though I have turned them over to Jesus, Satan has tried to hang my hurts and disappointments outside my front door.  Each day that I allowed him to do that, they became more and more controlling of my life.  I thought about this long and hard.  What could I do to remove that nail so Satan had NO ownership in my life?

I got on my knees and begged the Lord to please get out that heavenly hammer and get rid of that nail.  I no longer want my hurts, my disappointments and my failures to overshadow what God has in store for me and my family.

Do you have a nail outside your front door?  If so, what is Satan trying to hang there?  I encourage you to do some soul searching and pray and ask God to help you remove that nail, so you may be fully willing and ready to be obedient to what He has in store for you. 

Our Honeymoon~ 9 Years Later

It is no secret that Rob and I have experienced the hardest year of our lives.  It is a well known fact that couples experiencing the loss of a child stand a 90% chance of getting  divorced.  Though we told ourselves we would not allow that to happen, we were almost that statistic.  Grief is a hard thing to understand, and men and women, daddy’s and mommy’s experience grief very differently.

We are so grateful to God for intervening on our behalf, and for providing us with Godly friends and counsel, who helped us through our rough patch.

In celebration of overcoming these hurdles, we decided we needed some time together…just the two of us.  So, what did the Dr. prescribe?  How about a Bahamian cruise!!!

We dropped the kids off at school Thursday morning, and headed to Port Canaveral.  We were like two kids in a candy store:)  We boarded our floating hotel, the Carnival Sensation and set out exploring the ship.

We had the best time checking everything out.  We had a great ocean-view room, and soaked up every detail we could.  Before we knew it, it was time for dinner.  Of course  the food was delicious, and we enjoyed it very much.

Thursday night, Rob schooled me in some Black Jack.  Can I just say I had so much fun?!?!  We stayed up until nearly 2:30 am and finally decided it was time to go to sleep.  We didn’t want to miss anything.

We woke up Friday morning to this….

   …a Bahamian Sunrise.  It was so romantic to stand on the balcony, look over the ocean and watch this with the love of my life.

 

We ate an early breakfast, spent some time in the hot tub, then my honey treated me to a spa session.  I spent the most heavenly hour and a half getting pampered with a massage and a facial.  It was so nice and so overdue!!

We were in port at Nassau, so we decided to finally get off the ship and check it out.

 

My mom had just been there two months before and told me about this awesome Haviana flip flop store.  It was a must-see attraction.  Needless to say, I brought home 5 pairs of flip flops for the ones I love.

We only stayed on the island a total of 45 minutes, and then we decided we would go back and spend some quality time soaking up some sun.

 

It was formal night, so we got gussied up and had some pictures taken. 

 

 

We had tons of people ask us if we were newlyweds.  We took that as a compliment, seeing we have been married for 9 years!

After dinner, we spent some time playing Black Jack, and then danced the night away until 3 am.

Saturday morning proved to be a little rough sailing.  The waves were huge, and rocked that ship like a toy boat.  People were getting sick everywhere, and they placed barf bags at every elevator.  Thankfully, Rob and I were not affected.  We were having so much fun, I don’t think anyone or anything could have ruined it for us.  It was a little rainy, but we spent a long morning in the hot tub overlooking the back of the ship.  Then we wanted to watch the Gator game, but they couldn’t get it on the tv.  From what I understand, that was a huge blessing!

We got dressed up for dinner again and had some more pictures taken.

 

We had a rockin’ good time that night.  The ship was rockin’, the band was rockin’ and the dance floor was rockin’.  We felt like newlyweds so in love for the first time.  It was as if we were given a new lease on life.

We were so sad that our trip was over Sunday morning.  Though we only got a total of 12 hours of sleep throughout the trip, we reconnected with one another on a totally different level.  This was the honeymoon we never got, and it was so worth the wait!  Sure we have had our ups and our downs, but at the end of the day, we have each other.

Thank you Lord Jesus for the blessing of our marriage, and for putting Rob in my life.  I can’t imagine going through any of the trials we have faced without him.  Thank you for strengthening us in one another, and more importantly in You.  May we continue to seek your will for our lives, and may you continue to use our testimony to tell others of the awesomeness of your love and faithfulness!

Rah Rah Ree

**All pictures courtesy of Embrace Yourself Photography.**

Miss Thang’s life-long (all of 4 years) dream became a reality on Saturday.  Remember this post about cheerleading?  Well, she hasn’t given up yet.

Saturday, we dressed her in her uniform (like every other Saturday.)  The awesome cheer coaches told her she could run on the field with the cheerleaders. 

She thought she was so big!!!

After they ran on the field, they let the little girls stay down with them and do some cheers.  It started out with her just standing by the wall…

Then they gave her some pom poms .  Oh My Goodness.

But it didn’t stop there.  Eventually, she made her way into the lineup and cheered her little heart out.

 

By the end of the game, she was just one of the girls.

 

Thank goodness there were no “stumps” (stunts) involved:)

48 Pounds of Tough

Do you want to see some serious cuteness, I mean toughness?  I have finally posted some pictures of Cade playing football.  All pictures are courtesy of Embrace Yourself Photography.

At practice, Cade was able to perfect the move of recovering the ball. 

Apparently it worked, because 2 weeks ago, he got a  fumble recovery in the game!  Momma was OH SO PROUD!!!

How cute is this?

 

See that white tape at his knees?  That is something his Daddy rigged up for him to keep his pants up.  They are too big, so we just tape ‘em.  It makes him easier to spot on the field:)

Here he is getting ready to go in for the kill!

 

Look at him tackle that boy three times his size!  That is Cade with his hand on his butt…

 

Just to show you how tough Cade really is, look at the size difference.  That is Cade turned sideways facing the other player.  He doesn’t back down.  THAT’S MY BOY!!!

While we are talking about cuteness, we happen to have the hottest coach in the Pop Warner league!!!

 

In all seriousness, it doesn’t matter how tough we are.  We are nothing without the power of Jesus Christ.  This picture just makes me so proud to be a part of an organization like this…