Welcome 2018!!

Posted on January 1, 2018 by Becky Snow

I’ve decided its time to get back into the blogging world again. I made a promise that when we had kids I would not stop blogging. I’ve not let our blog go away but it has definitely been put on hold for a long time! I knew life was going to change with having children but my goodness nothing could have prepared me for how much! These little people have become our whole world and I love it all! There is never a ‘normal’ day around here and most of the time I feel like we fly by the seat of our pants from one moment to the next but even with the busy-ness and craziness that I call each day, being Mommy is still living a dream!

In the coming year I hope to do many things as a family, have adventures, take trips, make memories, learn, play, grow closer to each other, but most of all I want our family to grow closer to the Lord and live for Him more than before. I hope y’all will follow us here as we share things from our lives, and enjoy our crazy adventures with us.

I pray 2018 finds your lives filled with many blessings in the coming year. Happy New Year from our family to yours!

But If Not…

Posted on February 11, 2016 by Becky Snow

Three hebrew children faced with their greatest trial of all
The king said give them one last chance, surely their faith will fall
But they would not bow, and they would not bend
All they said was we will stand
For the God we serve is able to deliver from your hand

But if not, we’re still gonna love with all our might
We’re still gonna bless His name through the darkest night
Not our will but His be done, The Lord, He knows our heart
He may grant us our request, but if not, we’ll trust His way is best

Lord, I know that I have prayed this prayer so many times before
But here I am before you now pleading my case once more
Lord, You know how important this one thing is to me
And I believe You’re able to give me what I need

But if not, I’m still gonna love with all my might
I’m still gonna bless Your name through the darkest night
Not my will, but Thine be done, O Lord, You know my heart
You may grant me my request, but if not, I’ll trust Your way is best

It’s been over 3 years since Jonathan and I started this blog. We began sharing with the world the desire we had to have a family of our own. This was an area of our lives that was somewhat private. Those who knew us well, knew the situation we were in and prayed with us that someday God would answer our prayer, but really it was a step of faith to share those deepest desires, to open our hearts to so many people especially not knowing what the outcome would be. I remember thinking “What are people gonna think of us for doing this?” I knew some people would help us, would pray, and would be kind to us but we also received some criticism and harsh remarks along the way. We knew that would possibly happen too, but trusting The Lord and letting Him lead us we followed His plan as best we knew how.

There were days that I watched as money for those puzzle pieces poured in and I could only stand in amazement, but there were still times when I doubted that we had made the right choices. I mean… “What if we do all this and then it doesn’t work?” That was a question that played over and over in my mind and the devil began to use that as a fear to haunt me. I knew that if it didn’t work I didn’t want to become bitter and quit on the Lord because even if he didn’t give us our desire He had still been to good to us to walk away bitter and angry with Him, but I was still scared.

I began praying and seeking The Lord for peace from this fear that I felt, and just when I was beginning to think He would not answer me He showed me this verse. …Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will show to you today… Exodus 14:13. I wrote the date in my Bible as a reminder to myself. It was on July 7, 2013 during Sunday School, Jonathan touched on this verse for just a few minutes during the lesson but it jumped out at me and I clung to it as if it were the knot at the bottom of a rope. It was at that point that I truly began to trust The Lord that He WAS gonna show us a miracle! I didn’t know how or when, but at that time it was as if it were HIS promise to me and I didn’t have to fear or worry anymore.

Instead I began praying that if it were His will for us to have children how happy we would be but if He didn’t then I was still gonna walk on and love the Lord no matter what. Then I heard this song and it stuck with me! Looking back now we had NO IDEA of the plans God had laid out for us! Only He could have orchestrated things to happen the way they did. What we saw as an impossible situation, He changed into a miracle for us.

Now I have two beautiful gifts from God, and they call me Mommy! I’m thankful for the miracle of my children, I’m thankful for how God changed our home, I’m thankful God answered our prayer and gave us the desire of our hearts, and I’m thankful He loved me enough to answer my prayer even though I didn’t deserve it. THE LORD TRULY IS GOOD ALL OF THE TIME!

We’re Back!

Posted on February 7, 2016 by Becky Snow

We just wanted to drop a quick post to say we’re back, and hope to be blogging again more regularly to keep you updated on our journey. Once we decided we were ready to get our blog back up and running we knew we needed to make some changes to update everything with the site itself and that has taken us a couple weeks to get everything where we want it. We hope you like it and we hope you will keep up with us here.

I made a promise that when we reached our goal that I wasn’t going to go into hiding and never blog again. Now that our family has grown, we want to share with the world how good God has been to us! Being a stay at home wife and Momma has always been my dream and now it has come true! Living every day with 2 toddlers is always interesting and there is certainly NEVER a dull moment in this house. There is nothing fancy about us. We live a simple life way out in God’s country and like it that way!

Like most other families we have a full and busy life, and it seems like we are always on the go but through each day our hearts’ desire is that anyone who knows us will know that we love the Lord… We know we are nothing without Him. My prayer is that as we live each day to serve Him we will be a light to those around us and I hope that our family will be a blessing to each of you as you read a little more about our lives from day to day!

Answered Prayers

Posted on August 1, 2015 by Jonathan Snow

A month ago we promised some huge news. We had to keep it fairly quiet a little longer for legal reasons, but here it is!

We posted a while back about Kyeli and Dane. They’ve been with us in our home now for a year and a few months. To say that we’ve grown attached to them, and them to us, is a massive understatement. So with much prayer, thought and counsel from family and friends, we decided to pursue adoption of them to make them a forever part of our home.

We did our best to reach out to all of you who have donated through the site or gave to us in other ways to let you know what was going on. We used the money that we had been raising for IVF to pay all of the fees associated with the adoption. Because of those costs, along with the fact we hadn’t yet raised enough of the money to cover IVF, we aren’t able to do both. As we discussed that thought between ourselves, we finally (and almost reluctantly) dealt with the ‘elephant in the room’ and asked if we were ok with not pursuing IVF and not having our own biological child. I think we were reluctant because we feared what the other’s answer might be, not because we were afraid of answering it ourselves. But when we finally did, the answer was an immediate and definite “Yes! I’m totally ok with that!” You see, we’ve been praying for years for children, and many of you have been helping us pray. Though we sought God in our decision to pursue IVF, He obviously had different plans. When we started this site and began asking for financial help, Dane hadn’t even been born yet. But He had made it clear to both of us that this was the direction we should go.

Once the decision was made, we spoke to lawyers and more friends and got started with the process. I won’t go into a lot of detail here (maybe in future posts if you all are interested), but dealing with lawyers, home study people and paralegals was something we’d never gone through in any way, so we were like a couple of fish out of water. We felt like every question we asked were stupid ones, but everyone we dealt with was very helpful through the entire process. We were nervous about different things, but looking back we can see how God had His hand in it, helping things move along very smoothly.

So as of July 1st, we are officially and legally Mommy and Daddy to Kyeli and Dane! We love them in a way we could never have imagined loving two little people, and I can’t tell you how many tears of joy have been shed.

‘Thank you’ seems like such weak words to say how grateful we are to each of you for your prayers and for your financial help in this process, but it’s all I know how to say…thank you!

Big News!

Posted on July 1, 2015 by Jonathan Snow

Hi everybody! We have some big, no, huge…no, ginormous news! But we can’t share it yet. Soon, we promise!

Our Vacation

Posted on August 22, 2014 by Becky Snow

Last Thursday was Jonathan’s Birthday so we left Tennessee and drove to Atlanta to see the Braves play some ball. Jonathan has been wanting to go to a game for 2 years but we never have been able to go. Jonathan got some coupons that were B1G1 free so we all got into the game for a really good price! Jonathan LOVES baseball so this was a special and fun treat for his birthday! It doesn’t take that long for us to get to Atlanta so I hope we can go a little more often since its something he likes so much and especially when we can get in for as cheap as we did this time. 😉

Loving us some Braves baseball!

Even though the kiddos didn’t know what it was all about they loved looking at everything there was to see there. Dane was fascinated by the jumbotron and Kyeli went nuts when she saw the big Chick-fil-a cow they had there! ‘Moo’ as she calls them is her favorite animal so anytime she sees a cow she gets very excited. 😉 She loved clapping and cheering with the crowd even though she didn’t know what it was all about. They were both very good and surprised us with how well they did at the game. Bless their little hearts though, they both got a little tuckered out and fell asleep for the last few innings. It was amazing to me at how they could sleep through all that noise. LOL

Dane wearing his silly hat!

We had been wanting to get away for a few days so after the game we drove to Pigeon Forge where we stayed for a couple days. On friday morning we woke up, grabbed some breakfast and headed for Dollywood for some fun! This was why we didn’t have a blog post last Friday. I thought of it late Thursday night but then with everything going on Friday morning I just forgot all about it. We had a good time at Dollywood though. When we got inside the park we took Ky to their measuring station so we could see what all rides would be available for her to ride. She is not even 36″ tall yet so she was a little limited in what she could ride but she didn’t mind. Of course we couldn’t ride any roller coasters 😉 but I was actually surprised at how many little rides they do have that she could ride. She was as happy as could be riding the carousel, ducks, dumbo, bumble bees, little pigs, and the shooting star. We could have also ridden the ferris wheel but decided not to. Its funny how time flies when you’re having fun cause we had been there for several hours but it didn’t feel like it.

J.J. and Kyeli on the carousel

We also went to see the Wings of America show cause Ky also loves birds and we listened to the Kingdom Heirs sing. These were both fun but gave us all some time to rest up a little bit between rides.

Jonathan says he thinks we are raising a monster when it comes to rides with Kyeli cause she was not scared of anything and was even begging me to take her on the little kid roller coaster but she was still to little for it so we were not able to ride that one. I have NO DOUBT that as soon as she is big enough she will ride every roller coaster available. Even the shooting star ride I thought would scare her but it was right the opposite. She laughed so hard she was cackling and as you can imagine this had me and Jonathan rolling with laughter too. Its going to be even more loads of fun when she is old enough to ride the big rides too but for now I kinda like riding Dumbo! 😉

Later that evening we were looking for something to do inside and that would’t cost a fortune so we went to the Titanic Museum. I’ve heard a lot of people talk about it. I’ve heard its great and then I’ve also heard its not worth the money. So we decided to form our own opinion and go see what it was all about. Dane and Ky got in for free because there is absolutely nothing for kids that little to do in there. They didn’t mind though and rode around just looking. It is a little bit pricey but I still enjoyed it. While I do believe the story of what happened with the titanic was very sad I still enjoyed learning more about its history and seeing some of the artifacts they had at the museum. It really was a beautiful ship and the architect that designed it must have been brilliant until his very popular phase that “Even God Himself Couldn’t Sink It”. I can’t help but wonder if he had sealed his fate after such a statement as that and then learned a very valuable lesson on that sad day. If you are a history buff or just love the story of the Titanic then I would definitely recommend this museum to you.

This was taken right after she saw the first fish tank and she was so excited!

We were planning to come home on Saturday but decided to go to Ripley’s Aquarium first. They have a deal going until Sept. 1 that if you show a Tennessee drivers license you can get in for $10.00 which is awesome because otherwise their tickets are very expensive. On saturday morning we started telling Kyeli what we were going to do and she couldn’t hardly wait to see the “shish” as she calls them! Since we were coming home that day we went ahead and decided to check out of our hotel room so this made things take longer because of having to pack up the car. Every so often she would ask Bye Bye… shish? It was so sweet to see the look on her face when she saw the first tank. I wanted so much get capture a picture of that first moment but wasn’t able to get one. I did take several pictures while we were there though. I think this one is my favorite from that day!

We came home to quite a bit of work to do in preparation for church on Sunday, and also had to go grocery shopping since there wasn’t much in the house from our trip. This picture was taken after we got home from grocery shopping that night. This position for her is not lady like at all but it must be comfortable because 90% of the time this is how she sits in her car seat so I wasn’t too surprised to see her asleep that way too. The day was done and she was out like a light. We were all so worn out but we all had a very good time on our trip and we made some awesome new memories together! I hope this post didn’t bore you but I just thought I’d share about our vacation!

As far as our progress towards our IVF procedure… We now have over $10,000 saved! How AMAZING is that?! We are thrilled and can’t wait for that special day to finally come! If you have it to give today $5.00 goes a long way in helping us reach that goal. 🙂

Refreshed

Posted on August 8, 2014 by Jonathan Snow

It was refreshing to wake up this morning and see that it had rained some through the night. It made for a cooler morning, and things just look a little more fresh after a nice little summer rain. It also made me glad I got the yard mowed last night!

It’s also been refreshing, exciting and humbling to see how God has worked in this area of our lives. Becky and I are amazed when we look at the bank account where we’re putting our IVF money and see over $10,000! In fact, we are now just under $4,000 needed to reach our goal. We are thankful to God and to all of you for your part in helping us.

Please continue to share our story and encourage others to give. Even just $5 will be a help and a blessing to us!

We broke $10,000!

Posted on August 1, 2014 by Jonathan Snow

Last week we passed $10,000 raised! We now have just over $4,000 to go to reach our goal. God has been so good to us! We feel like we’re on the home stretch now, winding things down.

But we still need your help! If you are able, please give – just $5 will be a help and a huge blessing to us! Please share our story with your Facebook and Twitter friends and help us get the word out!

Changes

Posted on July 25, 2014 by Jonathan Snow

Some of you probably noticed we didn’t get to do a blog post last Friday. That was because of a situation that arose that forced us to buy another vehicle. So we spent most of last Friday dealing with that new purchase.

Meet our new (to us) 2010 GMC Terrain. It’s much bigger than the Prius and will be much easier to get everybody into when traveling around with the kiddos. It’s a very comfortable ride, and the extra weight smooths out the bumps in the road that we could feel very distinctly in the Prius. Don’t get me wrong, the Prius was a great car, and we loved the gas mileage, but God was so good to us in allowing us to get this vehicle. Holly Davis at Jerry Duncan Ford got us a great deal on it.

So while that’s a pretty big change for us, not much else has changed. We’re loving taking care of Kyeli and Dane…in fact, Kyeli just brought me a seat to fix from her dollhouse that had come apart. So she was pretty tickled that it was back together, but now she’s already moved on to something else. They sure do keep us on our toes!

We have $50 left to make it to $10,000. Would you consider helping us as we press forward to having an IVF procedure done? We still feel the Lord leading us in that direction, no matter how long we have Kyeli and Dane with us. We love them completely and are enjoying having a ‘full’ house, but we still seek to follow His will for us.

$60 to get to $10,000!

Posted on July 11, 2014 by Jonathan Snow

Happy Friday everyone! In about a year and a half, we’ve raised nearly $10,000! It’s hard to believe! As of this writing, we only need $60 to make it to that point. I’m amazed at how much we’ve been blessed. God has worked in a great way!

Last Wednesday night, our pastor preached from Psalm 100. It’s long been one of my favorites. It’s a Psalm of praise, the only one labeled as such in the Bible. God is always worthy of our praise, in the good times and the bad. It’s really kind of obvious why He’s worthy in the good times.

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. -James 1:17

But why is He worthy in the bad times? Well, who’s to say they’re bad? Don’t get me wrong, there are definitely times where things are hard, there are struggles, there is pain, there is loss. We would definitely classify these things as ‘bad’. But you know what? God is in control of it all. He knows what’s best for us.

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. -Romans 8:28

So yes, even in the bad times, God is still good. He’s using everything in our lives to work good in our lives. Yes, God is worthy!

We’d like to say “thank you” again to those who have given. Thank you to all who are praying for us. We could never express what it means to us that you’ve given of yourselves to be a help to us.

Please help share our story. If you have even just $5 to give, it would be so much appreciated! I was looking today at the list of names of all who have given…I’m so overwhelmed! Thanks to all of you, and thanks and praise be to God!

Praying For A Little Snow

…our journey has begun!