Brinley Kate just turned 1!

I can't believe how fast this past year has flown by! It seems like just yesterday we were at the hospital welcoming our little girl into the world. She has been such a blessing to Jennifer and me. Don't get me wrong, it has been a very difficult year for Jennifer and I to adjust to the lack of sleep, sometimes constant crying, difficulty eating, bathing another human, picking up toys thrown all over the house and of course changing dirty diapers (Just to name a few). However, there is not a thing in the world I would trade for the last 365 days that I have got to spend being Brinley's dad! I can't wait to spend many more years with my little girl.

As most of you know we celebrated monthly birthday parties with Brinley which really got her prepared for her 1st birthday party. We decided to have some friends and family over to our house to celebrate with the birthday girl. Jennifer and her pinterest addiction hobby got together a lot of ideas and then started decorating our house for the party. Below are some of the pictures from Brinley's party.

Invitation to Brinley's Party

Cake Table and decorations

Brinley's 1st Birthday cake!

Jennifer made everything here, except for the cake! She is pretty crafty!

Brinley's smash cake!

Brinley is a very blessed and happy little girl! She got lots of clothes that she will enjoy wearing all summer.

Brinley playing with her friends Sydney and Brandt.

A few of the party attendants.

Callie even dressed in zebra print for the party.

Our buddy Landon stopped by to visit. It won't be too long until  Brinley has her own little brother Landon to play with.

Group shot of all the little kids. They ranged from 9 to 18 months.

Our buddies Shelby and Hayes stopped by for the celebration.

Brinley says "Give me my cake!"

This cake is soooo good! Can you tell that she has a sweet tooth?

Helping Brinley open her gifts.

Brinley enjoyed getting her own rocking horse from Grandma and Grandpa Heflin .

Some of our family with the birthday girl! Left to Right: Grandma and Grandpa Heflin; Aunt Andrea and Chris; Cousin Tricia.

The one thing that we seemed to forget about was getting a nice family shot of Jennifer, Brinley and myself on her actual birthday. However, we got a lot of nice family shots while getting Brinley's one year pictures done.

Brinley's 1st and only birthday as an only child!

Again, I seriously can't believe how fast this past year has gone by. We have been truly blessed everyday with a very happy and healthy little girl. Although there was a lot of time and energy that was put into getting everything ready, it was all worth it to have our little girl celebrate with family and friends. We cannot thank everyone enough that were able to attend. We were glad that you could come to be a part of Brinley's big day. We can't wait to celebrate many more birthdays with our little lady. Thanks for reading and God Bless!

Easter 2013

We really enjoyed this special time of year with Brinley! We had fun doing all the secular things that are associated with Easter, but we made sure to read the true story of Easter to Brinley. I know that it doesn't mean anything to her now, but someday she will know just how important it was when her Savior Jesus Christ died up on the cross for our sins and then ROSE from the grave 3 days later! This Bible story will be very familiar to Brinley, since she will hear it every year.

We started off our festivities with a PICU Easter egg hunt. It was great to catch up with some good friends and to meet their children that I had heard many stories about.

Brinley meeting a new friend, Parker.

All the kids that came for the Easter Egg Hunt.

Brinley finding an egg on the car door handle.

Brinley trying to grab another egg, this was the first time Brinley had ever crawled around in the grass.

 We decided to go get some pictures with the Easter Bunny and it just so happened that we found a place that had both the person in the bunny costume and live bunnies. We got there and Brinley had just woke up from her nap and wasn't quite awake when the photo shoot started. The photographer just kept taking pictures and even got a few smiles out of Brinley. She really perked up when the bunny started moving and then it came over and tried to lick her face. We couldn't just pick one picture, so we ended up buying the rights to all the pictures.

Brinley getting a kiss from the bunny.

Now Brinley was getting excited about the bunny.

Brinley didn't seem to have any reaction to the costume bunny, good or bad.

I had to work Saturday and Sunday on Easter Weekend, but when I got off work on Sunday morning I came home to fix breakfast for my girls and then got ready for church. We gave Brinley her Easter basket and we also gave her all the gifts she got from her grandparents and her aunts.

Helping Brinley dye her Easter eggs.

But, she was more interested in eating the eggs.

Brinley with her bunny ears and her Easter basket from the Easter Bunny!

Brinley racked up quite a bit from the grandparents and her aunts.

Easter morning breakfast. I made her an Easter bunny pancake.

I can't help but smile every time I see her smile. I can't believe we got such good pictures with her bunny ears on. 

After breakfast we got ready and headed to church. Brinley really acted good during the service, but Jennifer and I know that the time is quickly approaching when Brinley will need to go to the nursery. After church we came home and I took a nap because I had to go back to work that night. Overall, we had a great Easter but we really missed getting to spend it with our family. I can't wait to see Brinley hunt eggs next year when she can actually walk. It will be interesting to see over the years whose competitive spirit she has taken after. Either Jennifer's laid back attitude towards competition or mine where I want to win at every thing that I try. I hope that you and your family all had a great Easter! Thanks for reading and God Bless!

Brinley really enjoyed her chocolate bunny!!

Landon's Room - A Work In Progress

We started decorating Landon's room the last weekend in February  I painted an accent wall a light shade of blue and Jennifer even created a neat painted wall design. It just so happened that our wall decals that Jennifer ordered off Etsy arrived on my birthday. After we finished my birthday celebration and Brinley went to bed we went up to Landon's room and started to put up the decals. It was kinda funny how it worked out that we could do them on my birthday because last year on Jennifer's birthday we actually put up the wall decals in Brinley's room. 

Landon's room and his bedding. His room is decorated with safari animals.

Tape that Jennifer laid out in order to paint a design.

Painted blue and the tape removed. Jennifer is super crafty.

Jennifer adding the leaves to the tree.

The tree is almost finished.

A couple of safari animals that I hope Landon enjoys.

The complete view of Landon's wall decorations.

Here is a picture of Brinley's room for comparison.

We still have a lot of stuff to do in Landon's room, but it seems to be a little bit more difficult to work on his room because we spend the entire day playing with Brinley. So, we try and take advantage of any nap time and Jennifer works on her craft projects every night that she isn't working. Brinley keeps us super busy all by herself, so I can only imagine what our lives are going to be like with both little ones running around the house. All I can say is that it is going to be interesting around the Heflin household. Thanks for reading and God Bless!

It's official...IT"S A BOY!

Today is my 28th birthday and we had our 20 week anatomy scan scheduled for this morning. However, from my last post you know that we couldn't wait to find out so we went at 16 weeks to find out that we were having a little boy. We decided to wait until we had a second conformation that it was a boy before we would officially name our son. We were scheduled for an 8 am ultrasound so when we left the house at 7:30 in the morning Brinley was still sleeping. Thankfully Grandma and Grandpa Heflin were visiting and could watch her while we went to the appointment. Leaving Brinley is still such a rare occurrence for us that it still feels really weird to not have her with us.

The 20 week ultrasound is the halfway point in the pregnancy and is when they do an extensive ultrasound to look for any abnormalities. Thankfully nothing significant was noted during the ultrasound that was a cause for concern. The placenta was close to the cervix, which is something that will just need to be monitored. If it was too close to the opening then there would not be enough room for the baby to come out, which would mean that a c-section would be required.

The only profile that I was able to capture.

The ultrasound consisted of looking at all the major organs and measuring the lengths of different things like the head, belly, arms and legs. After all the measurements were taken the lady asked us if we wanted to know the sex of our baby. We were then given the confirmation that I have been waiting weeks to hear. That we are in fact having a little BOY! Thankfully this was the case because just this week I started painting his nursery a shade of blue. Jennifer and I are extremely excited that we will each have our own little "mini me's" running around the house. It just so happens that in more ways than one the males and females in our house will be able to relate because Jennifer and Brinley were both first born. While my son and I are both the second child with an older sister.

IT'S A BOY!

If any of you have been following my blog from the start or remember any conversation that we had prior to knowing that Brinley was a girl, you would know that we had a name picked out for a boy. So, I guess in essence you could say that we have known our son's name since before Brinley was even born. It was the first and only boy's name that we came up with and Jennifer and I both really liked it. So, this July we will welcome into our home a baby boy named Landon Michael Heflin. 

Brinley is happy to announce her little brothers name!

The L tasted great!

Would you be impressed if Brinley had stacked these herself? Brinley was quick to knock  them down as soon as I put them up.

 Only jokingly had I mentioned to Jennifer about naming him Jordan Jr., but she quickly turned down that suggestion. We originally decided on the name Landon and when trying to figure out a middle name I just always kept going back to my own middle name and it just seemed to flow well together and Jennifer agreed. So, passing on my middle name will be good enough, which just so happens to be the first name of my father.

Jennifer and I have been so blessed with the opportunity to be parents to a amazing little girl in Brinley and we are super excited, and a little nervous, about our son Landon. Our lives will be hectic and crazy at times with two children that will be 14 months apart, but I know that God would not put anything on our plates that he didn't think that we could handle. I am sure that we will have plenty of good stories over the next few years. Thanks for reading and God Bless!

Baby Heflin #2 is a ???

After we found out that we were expecting a second child so soon after Brinley we decided that we should maybe try to save a little money on things that could be deemed unnecessary. One of these things that we decided to save some money on was going early at 16 weeks of the pregnancy to have a gender scan. However, I decided that Jennifer probably wanted to find out early so I was going to surprise her on her birthday, February 7th with a gender scan. Since the gender scan costs $100 I decided that I would tell her about my birthday surprise a little early just to make sure that she approved of the money that we were going to spend. It turns out that just the night before while she was at work a co-worker asked her when we were going to find out the gender and it made Jennifer anxious to know the gender of our second child. A co-worker of mine informed me that Central Baptist Hospital will do a gender scan for you at half the price, so we called to make an appointment. Jennifer really didn't want to wait until her birthday because we could find out 2 weeks sooner. So, we scheduled our appointment which happened to be at noon today, January 29th, 2013.

Upon arrival I started to get nervous about finding out what we were having. When we went into to find out about Brinley, I had almost set my self up for disappointment because I had only thought to myself that we were going to have a son. It just seemed that everything in the world was telling me that a boy was in our future.Even on a impromptu ultrasound at work one night we thought we saw the parts for a little boy. We even had a name picked out for a boy that we both loved, but had struggled to think of a girl name. So, when the lady doing the ultrasound asked if we wanted to know we said yes, but I just knew in my head that we were having a boy. So, I was in complete shock when she informed us with certainty that we were having a little girl. It almost seemed as if my life and all my money passed before my eyes. I imagined all the clothes, accessories, dresses, jewelry and a wedding that I was now going to be responsible for over the next 20-30 years. I was terrified of having a little girl because I wasn't in a household with a younger sister, so I didn't know how things were going to be with a little girl around. However, from the very first moment that I laid eyes on Miss Brinley Kate I couldn't have been happier or more proud of my little girl. She has been an absolute blessing to our lives. She brings us so much joy everyday with every laugh, cry, word, new "trick" or milestone that she accomplishes.

When Jennifer and I started discussing what gender we hoped that our second child would be we actually found positive aspects for both genders. We did not have a true preference boy or girl, we just prayed for a healthy little baby. We both work with so many children whose parents would give anything to have a healthy little child. (It actually makes me a little upset with myself that I was disappointed that day of our last ultrasound because I should have been happy that Brinley was healthy.) Our thoughts were if it was a girl it would actually be somewhat more cost effective since they were going to be born around the same time the majority of clothes could actually be reused with child #2. Having a girl would also give Brinley a sister in which she could grow up with and hopefully be best friends. On the other hand, having a boy would even up the playing field around the house and even out the testosterone and would allow the Heflin name to be passed on to the next generation. It would also give me the son that I have always dreamed about having. So, needless to say both Jennifer and I would be happy either way and again we just pray for a happy healthy child.

Today, we went back to the ultrasound room and after getting situated the lady let us hear the heart beat, which was 153. She showed us the profile view of the whole body and then she said are you ready to find out what your having. We both said yes and she said with 100% certainty that it was a ????. She even said that as soon as she began the ultrasound that she noticed, but went ahead and did all the preliminary views and sounds before informing us. Any last guesses?

We are proud to announce that in July we will be welcoming a little baby brother into the Heflin household.

Our baby boy was not trying to hide what he is from us.

Brinley didn't really seem too interested today.

Jennifer and our little boy!

Brinley is going to be a great BIG SISTER!

Now we got a little smile from Miss Brinley.

Brinley and her toy blocks making the BIG announcement!

Brinley liked the letter B.

We are still learning which way to put the B.

 We are super excited for what the next year has in store for us as we get prepared to welcome a little boy into our home. It is definitely going to be exciting around our household for some time with two little children  who are going to be about 14 months apart. We can't wait to meet the little guy! Thanks for reading and God Bless!