The Twins Turn 6

The babies of the family turned six and we decided to host all their friends over for a simple summer yard hang. We rented a bounce house from Columbus Castles, who did all the leg work. They arrived on site and set up the bounce house, balloon arch and cute little sign, then when the party as over they came back and cleaned it all up. Talk about a full service. I also reached out and booked Sunny Sips, a little camper smoothie truck who will come to your event location and serve delicious smoothies. It was a big hit with the kiddos. Happy birthday to our baby girls.

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Summer inside with my Girls

If you follow along, you may have seen last year I did a photo session with just. my girls. You can see that here- Picnic with my Girls

This year, my girls are 5 and I thought, how fun if we just make some forts out of sheets and play for a while. I always go into photo sessions, and reality for that matter, knowing these girls move and groove. They are not the type to sit with barbies for hours. They are too wired for that kind of intentionality. So I knew they may like the forts or they might have just as much fun destroying them. We went to Nicoles beautiful home for the photos and set up shop. As anticipated they were into for a few minutes but quickly moved on and wanted to explore her house, which in return made for just as beautiful of photos.

I have come to look forward to these annual photo shoots with my girls, always trying to come up with a theme they may enjoy and if nothing else, will have to look back on fondly when grown, with their mother in front of the frame with them.

Photographer- Nicole Leoné Miller

Venue- Miller Manor

My Babes turn 5

Picnic With Just My Girls

Ive decided I want to take moments to intentionally be on the other side of the camera with my husband and with my kids. I dreamt up this vision of spending an afternoon with my girls, having a picnic and just hanging out doing whatever their little wondering minds wanted to do. We went down to Hoover Reservoir, set up “camp” and naturally the girls immediately went to the water and spent most of our time playin in it. Riley of Riley Elizabeth Photography joined us and captured the time so honestly and in return beautifully. I hope to make time to do this every year and have boxes of pictures for my children of time spent together to look back on someday.

Gatlinburg, Tennessee | 2020

It’s a new year. Some people shun new year resolutions and some kill it. I personally love the excuse to chat with my husband Ryan about what our goals are individually, as a couple and as a family. One thing we miss as a couple is the ability to run off somewhere new. So we decided to attempt more family vacations and maybe a couple kid free, when possible. We are not ashamed to admit we are home bodies and don’t need long stretches away from home. Every once in awhile we get itchy for a change of scenery. Earlier this week, we were driving to pick up our girls from pre-school and talked about our week plans. Somehow it hadn’t been on my radar we had the whole week off together?!? Generally I’m very on top of our schedules but the shuffle of the holidays had me living more day by day lately. So... we decided to head south and figure it out on the way. We landed on a family trip to Gatlinburg, TN and it was perfect. Warm cozy cabin in the Smokey mountains was the perfect setting for our first getaway as a family of 5.

Holden Beach | North Carolina

I grew up going to Holden Beach in North Carolina with my family. We would go every other year and aunts, uncles, cousins and our grandma would all go. The last time I went was 10 years ago. So my mom inquired last winter about trying to go back to HB this summer. We found a house and made it happen. This was also the first time that Ryan and myself took a whole full week off for a vacation. As nurses we tend to try to work a couple shifts at the beginning of the week and take off for a "long weekend" somewhere. I was excited to go and start our own traditions as a family at the beach I grew up going to. Hattie and Hazel loved the beach. Hazel would sit in the shallows and let the waves hit her while Hattie took off exploring up and down the beach. Spending this much uninterrupted time was a nice break from the day to day hustle and I hope to make this a repeated trip in the years to come.

The Twins Turn TWO

Can it be possible that these spunky free spirit twin girls of mine have grown another year older? The years are going fast while the days seem to stay long. Hattie and Hazel can, sometimes, be exhausting to put it lightly. They are curious, full of energy, ready to venture into the next scene (opposite directions) all the while not taking a notice to an adults warning cry. They have their own language that only they get to share in. They don't share often but when they do it warms my soul. They love to "brush" their teeth and any warm day spent outside is their dream come true. Like their mama, they love the water and would permanently live in a pool if possible.

Birthday Babes Turn ONE

All the feels as I sit here and recap celebrating the twins first birthday. We had their party a week early since Ryan has drill on their actual birthday. It doesn't feel real that the girls have been around for a year. They are such a part of our every thought that it's hard to remember life before them. I read through their baby books after the party and as I saw the pictures and read the details of their development it felt like a lifetime ago that we brought them home. I am happier than ever to have started blogging and be able to keep record of these moments that too quickly become memories.

The party was hosted at our home. We went with a "party animal" theme. Bright colors, animal crackers and sprinkles were what motivated the decorating/planning. I originally wanted to use the local park shelter house but with limited time slots available for rent and the cost for a location I opted to try our house (for free). I was banking on sunshine since we would have to utilize our backyard. Thankfully it was a beautiful day. Although it was beautiful and sunny... I have taken mental notes on how to improve on next years festivities. For example- we needed more shaded areas. We had a lot of toddlers and babies in attendance and the heat can make for some fussy babes. Hattie was going to loose her mind if we didn't do something quick (see baby on left in pic below)... SO, we sped things up and got cake passed out to all our guests and the smash cakes in front of the birthday babes. This did the trick and come to find out, my girls are excellent cake smashers... I mean, somehow they really knew what they were doing. I think the funniest part was Hattie in her exhaustion, kept laying her head down in her cake.

They smashed their cakes sooo well, that I quickly worried about their sticky sweaty situation. This is when the baby pool came out. We had no intentions on having the girls swim or all the other babies for that matter, but it ended up being one of my favorite moments. Our girls, along with all their pals, played (or cried) in the pool and were finally able to cool off. It's so profound to think in ten years these same little baby friends will still be celebrating life milestones together.

h + h | A Birth Story

The twins were coming. After a night in the hospital for monitoring due to pre-eclampsia, the doctors agreed it was time to deliver. My surgeon thought I was a "ticking time bomb". The symptom that didn't settle right with anyone was my overall feeling of "just not feeling good". Now being a nurse, this is very unhelpful and I knew that but there was no other way to explain it. This along with my borderline elevated blood pressure, lab work heading in the wrong direction and the minor headache all concerned my doctor enough and with approval from the neonatal docs, the C-section was put in the books for later that morning. This date would make the babies 36 weeks and 5 days old. Life had gotten very uncomfortable so I was relieved to hear I would be finally meeting my girls.

What is it they say about healthcare workers being patients? I don't know if there's an exact phrase but I would sum it up with; if there's a chance; it is probably going to happen. What I mean by that is pre-op and post-op could have gone better, but in retrospect they also could have been much, much worse. As a nurse in the cardiac field, OB is a foreign species to me. I had general understanding and a brain but overall as with any patient, you are left to trust your healthcare team to be the experts. Now, don't interpret my tune wrong. I am very happy and grateful to the staff who entered our lives over that hospital stay. Some of them will forever be branded on our hearts for their attentive care.

Pre-op started a little rocky when one of my IVs had gone bad and after multiple (by multiple I mean 7) attempts, I had another IV. Then if that couldn't be topped, anesthesia attempted my spinal epidural 10 times before I finally could say, "YES, I feel the tingling in my legs" indicating I was numbing from the chest down. Surgery itself went flawless and even though it was surgery, the surgeon let me watch as she pulled the babies out and I did indeed see their first breaths like any vaginal delivery. The rest of delivery was a blur as they sewed me up and I had my head arched back to soak up every first minutes of those precious babies I could.

Post-op started out groggy as expected but it started to spiral downward when my blood pressures kept decreasing with each check. To explain my mental awareness is difficult. I knew things were going wrong and felt out of body at the same time.  If the nurses knew things were bad, they did a good job of hiding their concern when they checked under my sheets and asked everyone to step out while they cleaned me up. I was still numb and some blood is expected but the amount of blood and size of clots I was passing, were not. Quickly my room filled with extra staff. My husband had been allowed to stay in the room and during the next scene of my life he was up pacing with a crying baby while watching the staff pull me back from the downward spiral I was on. At one point while listening to the staff talk about what to do, what drugs to give (some foreign to me and a couple as only code blue drugs in my own work world) and demands from anesthesia to go pull my surgeon from a procedure and get her in my room right away; I looked at my husband with one of our two new babies and wondered, how in the world will he raise twin babies by himself? Death was absolutely what could have come of my complication if the staff had not acted quickly. Thank you Jesus for the fast pace care given that day.

To explain what had gone wrong was and still is a little fuzzy. Pre-eclampsia, left over placenta in the uterus, magnesium transfusing and my body heading toward DIC/HELLP Syndrome (look them up if you're curious about those further) were all attributing to my dire situation. My uterus wasn't contracting and I had lost too much blood, in return my blood pressures were in the bucket. The lowest blood pressure I remember being said out loud was 60s/20s. To say I was a little bossy or demanding of information would be a nice way of putting it. I was not use to being the patient and was prioritizing my care in my own head like I was the nurse. Luckily, if the staff was annoyed or offended, I never knew. To save the day, my surgeon arrived to my room and manually extracted all leftovers in my uterus, magnesium had been shut off and multiple drugs and fluid given to bring my blood pressure up. In a moment I could feel myself recovering.

Over the next few days, I slowly recovered. With bedrest and multiple blood transfusions my body was working its way back to normalcy. I am now 7 weeks post op and almost don't notice any discomfort where my incision lies. It took weeks to feel normal mentally and weeks to be able to walk without a hunch. That experience feels like a life time ago. When life becomes so serious in a blink of an eye, at least for me, you learn what matters most. I love my husband more than I knew possible and now have two beautiful babies who have shown me what having unconditional love for another, actually means. Thank you Jesus for allowing Hattie and Hazel to come into my life.