My beautiful Mom...

My sweet, beautiful, loving Mom is on her way to heaven right now. My Mom had an unexpected brain aneursym today and there is nothing they can do to stop it. She was taken off the intubator and is breathing on her own right now but it is just a matter of time until the bleed takes over. I am eternally grateful that we went to Utah 2 weeks ago to see my mom on our way to WA and that I got to see her and laugh with her one last time. And I am SO thankful that she got to meet her granddaughter. She absolutely LOVED Kara and wanted to hold her all the time while we were there and smother her with kisses. I love my Mom so much and she has taught me more than she will ever know. I will miss you Mom and can't wait to see you in Heaven. Please have a bag of heavenly cheesy popcorn waiting for me...

I always wanted a Greyhound...

....bus, that is. That's right, we are taking our first family Greyhound bus ride because car rental companies work on the right hand of Satan for how much they charge for one way rentals. I kid you not, I had one company quote me $1,500 for 3 days from Pendleton to Davenport. $1,500!?!!?!?!?!?!? I would rather go take the $1,500 and go buy supplies to fashion my own handcart and trek across the plains to Davenport. At least I'll have something I can keep after that. So I called a million different car rental places and yelled at 2 different representatives because they have bird brains and, alas, we ended up going with Greyhound because it is substantially cheaper and we don't have to do the driving. We get into Davenport at 12:30PM on Sunday and then we need to go get us a rental car until we buy something new. Supposedly the car already has $9000 worth of damage so we pray that they'll give us enough to completely pay off the rest of our loan and then it'd be nice if there was some left over to apply towards whatever new car we get.
Anybody wanna put bets on our Greyhound? It's a sure winner.

The semi truck won...

Yup, you heard me correctly. The semi truck won....

All jokes aside, I am so incredibly thankful to Heavenly Father for His protection over my family last night. The short story of it is that Honig, Kara, Dean's mom, and myself were driving to Utah to go stay at Honig's sister's house on our way out to Iowa after his job interviews in WA. We hit uber cruddy weather in Snoqualmie Pass in WA and they shut down the pass so we turned around and had to drive down to Portland and then go across Oregon. We were about 20 miles into the Blue Mountains and we knew there was a weather warning in effect but chains weren't required for cars, only for semis. Dean's mom was driving and we hit black ice and fishtailed about 4 times and hit the back of a semi at 50 miles per hour. I was in the backseat with Kara and I braced my hands on both sides of her carseat for make sure her carseat wouldn't pop out of the base when we impacted. It all happened so quickly but as soon as we stopped and I saw smoke in the cabin of the car 1 second later (which apparently was from both the airbags deflating but I didn't know that at the time, I thought that something from the engine was filling the car with smoke), I immediately whipped a screaming Kara out of her carseat and grabbed a comforter and dashed out of the car into the snow covered median to make sure we wouldn't be in the car in case someone else lost control and crashed into us. Honig had to run over to Mom's side and help open the door because Mom couldn't get it. She sprained her wrist and feels like she popped a rib, and Honig feels stiff today. I'm just sore below my left collarbone from the seatbelt cutting into it since I was turned to the right. A very kind man stopped and let me sit in his truck with Kara to keep her out of the cold and Mom and Honig dealt with the State Troopers the whole time. Finally the tow truck arrived and towed us back to Pendleton and we got a hotel room. We are working on getting a rental car because we still need to trek back to Iowa because Honig has boards next week. The car is probably totalled but we still need the adjuster to check it out and tell us if it definitely is.

My heart is so full of gratitude to Heavenly Father that we all walked away and that Kara is ok. It could have been a lot worse than it was but His hand protected us. You'd better believe that I've said about a million prayers of thanks since the second the accident happened. We are so blessed.

Princess Buns...

I LOVE baby bloomers with their ruffley butt and whatnot.

Nothing like an afternoon nap after church.

Kara is doing AWESOME at holding her head up.

SO CUTE!!! My heart just pitter patters with love for her all day long.

Loving her Daddy Kara time.

Kara's humble abode...

Miss Kara Faith's room...

We had a ton of fun putting it together.

Oh how we love that rocking chair.

The valance matches her bedding.

Where our perfect little Kara sleeps every night.

After I picked out Kara's bedding and knew the colors I wanted to coordinate everything with, Honig and I had a ball making the decals for her walls. We aren't allowed to paint in our townhome so instead we color matched Kara's bedding and flower designs and painted construction paper and cut it out in the same shapes as her bedding and then sticky tacked an arrangement of it to each corner. We love how it adds some flair to her room.

Optimus Prime is happy looking across the room watching over Kara while she sleeps. He'll jump out of his bowl and bark if there's an intruder. We taught him that trick.

I LOVE her bedding. Thank goodness for good deals on ebay or else we never could have purchased it. I love the combination of light pink, dark pink, red, and green on it. Pictures don't do it justice.

Honig and I made a ton of mini envelopes with a scrapbooking punch that I have and folded and taped them and then cut up little pieces of paper to be the stationary inside the envelopes and then put them in 2 of these jars. We write our little love notes to Kara on them and then put them in the jar on the right. Hopefully she'll love reading all the "little reasons" her Mommy and Daddy love her when she gets older.

Miss Love Buns...

Miss Love Buns wants to wish everyone a Happy Valentine's Day!!!

*Kara's so stinkin'cute.*

But Mommy...

"But Mommy, Jessica Simpson wears her pants like this. Why can't I?"

~

Because Kara, Mommy doesn't want you to end up in low budget films like Dukes of Hazard and saying phrases like "Oh my gaw" or answering the question "Do you want some buffalo wings?" with "Sorry, I don't eat buffalo."

~

Just because, Kara. Just because.