God has sure been good to us this past year! He’s always good! With your help and generosity, we’ve raised nearly 2/3 of the cost of IVF, making leaps and bounds toward our goal.

Sadly, insurance in Tennessee still will not cover infertility treatments, so we’ll need to continue to raise the money for the procedure, which we hope to have complete in the next few months. With your help, we can meet our goal!

As of today, we have 1,086 puzzle pieces to sell to meet our goal. If this post could reach 1,086 people, and each bought just one piece, we’d be at our goal! Please share this with your friends on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or any other social media outlet you use. Encourage them to share as well. I know we can get it in front of 1,086 sets of eyes. If we can do that, then just $5 will go a long way!

As always, we covet your prayers as well. Without God’s help, leadership and guidance, this is all for nothing.

I hope all of you had a wonderful Christmas! This year I decided I wanted to start some new family traditions. I’ve come up with a few small ideas on my own and found a few other ideas online. We did a couple of these ideas this year to see if we would like them but the rest I am saving and thinking ahead just a little for Christmas 2014. 😉

Anyway, I wanted to share a short story with y’all about something that Jonathan and I received this year as a Christmas gift. The picture to the right shows the beautiful blanket that we were given. I had been in Hobby Lobby many times and saw this fabric but did not have the extra money to buy it. My Mom bought enough fabric so that it would be a blanket big enough for me and Jonathan to share. I hope to someday soon buy more of it to make for our own little one. I also saw some fabric in Walmart with puzzle pieces on it which I plan to buy someday for making a baby quilt. As you can imagine, I love anything now that has to do with puzzle pieces. 😉 So many plans and so many ideas… maybe it won’t be much longer until we can make them reality.

I hope you enjoyed this sweet Christmas story. Honestly… This blanket matches absolutely nothing in my house, but I could completely care less because what it represents is so special to me! Its new home (when not in use) is spread across the back of the couch where it can be seen by all, and on these very cold days… used all the time. 😉 We are thankful for everything we received this year and for the time we were able to spend with our family and friends. We are so blessed!

It is of course also $5 Friday so we are sharing our blog in hopes that you will pass it along to those you know. Please pray for us and if you have it to give please help us raise the money we need for our IVF Fund. May God bless you all abundantly for what you’ve done for us!

It’s so hard for me to imagine that Christmas is just 5 days away! It seems like we were just cooking turkey and dressing for Thanksgiving a week ago. Where did the time go? I finally finished all my shopping yesterday which also included buying groceries and food for dinners we will be going to over the next several days.

While Christmas music rings through the house and I sit wrapping presents I am reminded of so many Christmas memories from past holidays as a child to the new ones Jonathan and I began when we got married 8 years ago. I love this time of year and all that it holds… Giving to those in need, saying “Merry Christmas” to someone and seeing the smile as they respond with the same, watching someone open a present they have wanted so much, baking goodies, and cooking a special Christmas dinner that is just for the two of us, making Christmas cards, decorating my house, the smell of cinnamon, being involved with the Christmas play at church every year, watching the bright eyes and big smiles of my nieces and nephews as they see Christmas lights and point with glee while saying over and over “Look at that house!” But….

The best part of Christmas to me… (and its not just a cliché) is remembering that Jesus came to give us hope and life through Him! I love when Jonathan reads the Christmas story every year on Christmas Day! I love the carols we sing that bring Him glory, I love being in church and hearing preaching that tells us of this beautiful story of our Savior! While I love the story of how He came, I also cherish that He is not a baby anymore. He is personal to me, He is always there for me, He guides me and protects me, He loves me… always! I hope as we celebrate this season that we will not forget that HE is the true meaning of “Christ”mas!

Please continue to pray for us and if you have it to give this Christmas, help us along the way to making a new Christmas memory of someday having a little one of our own to cherish!

Thank you to all who have given. May God bless you all with a very Merry Christmas!

It’s a sunny (but cold) Friday here in East Tennessee! I know God knows what we need, but I was certainly ready for all the rain to end!

Becky has been selling bracelets, and we had a Tupperware fundraiser done for us by a friend of ours. That has brought a significant increase in our funds, but we’ve still got a long way to go. Along with the bracelets and Tupperware, we’ve sold one whole puzzle, and 589 pieces of a 2nd puzzle. Here are a few numbers to help make a picture of where we’re at, and where we need to be:

• Total raised: $8,465
• Total need: $14,030
• Still to raise: $5,565

There are 411 pieces left in the second puzzle. At $5 a piece, that would bring $2,055, bringing the total up to $10,520, leaving only $3,510 to go!

We want to say thank you again to all those who have bought puzzle pieces, bracelets or Tupperware – you can see here how much it has helped! We especially want to thank you for praying for us!

Today is another $5 Friday! We are very excited about how the Lord has been working for us and how we have seen Him provide this GIANT of a need in our lives. We knew once we started this process that it was going to take a miracle for this to happen for us. Through the money, and the procedure itself. We certainly knew that the Lord was very capable of providing this for us, but I’m not sure that we thought it would happen so fast. We do still have a ways to go, but from the start we began setting smaller goals for ourselves of what to reach rather than always looking at it as 14,030. We have been so blessed to see each one of those goals met!

Our latest goal was to reach 8,000 and we have definitely passed that one so we are now getting close to reaching a new goal of having sold 2 puzzles. Once that goal is reached we will have 10,000! :O The amount of puzzle pieces we have left to reach that goal is 413.

The picture to the left (as you can see) is of a puzzle piece frame. It was given to me by my secret sister this year for Christmas. I immediately fell in love with it because I decided from the start that I wanted to have something like this for after we have our baby to put their picture in! Of course… prayerfully that we do IVF and it is successful. 😉 So… If you are able today, please help us get a little closer to this new goal and in doing so it will also bring us closer to bringing home our baby someday and having a beautiful picture to put in my new special picture frame!

God bless each one of you during this Christmas season! Thank you to all that have given and most of all for your prayers, and love shown to our little family. The Lord sure is using all of you in a very special way!

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above… James 1:17

It’s the day after Thanksgiving, and we have so much to be thankful for! God has blessed us abundantly, meeting all our needs and many more of our wants than we deserve! We are also thankful for what God hasn’t yet done for us. We are thankful for all of you who have generously given to help us meet our financial goal to have an IVF procedure. ‘Thank you’ simply doesn’t seem to be enough to truly express our gratitude for all of you!

On this $5 Friday, we still ask those of you who can to buy a puzzle piece, but most of all, please pray for us. Pray that God will have His way in all of this, in a way that only He can do it so that He will get the glory. For that we are most thankful!

Please spread the word, and encourage your friends to do the same.

Good morning everyone! It’s been a long, but good week. We’ve had revival services at church all week long, and while it lifts our spirit, it wears on us a little bit physically. We’ve enjoyed and gotten help from the preaching!

Another good thing going for us this week is the Tupperware Fundraiser. A friend of ours who sells Tupperware suggested the fundraiser and she got it all set up. 40% of purchases during this fundraiser will go toward our fund.

Speaking of our fund, it’s $5 Friday again. We’re humbly asking you to give $5 for a puzzle piece if you’re able. Share this post and the rest of our blog with your friends, and encourage them to share it with theirs. We’re nearing $8,000 raised, and it feels more and more like the goal is in sight.

Thanks most of all for your continued prayers for us. We are truly humbled and very thankful for what God has done through all of you so far.

Another week has come and gone and it’s friday again! As usual we want to share our blog with everyone as a reminder to please be praying for us. The other day Jonathan added the new total of what we had to the right. When I saw it I realized we need just a little more than $200.00 of having $8,000 saved. This is so amazing to me! We crossed the half way point and the end is finally in sight. I told someone the other day that we were almost down to just having to raise about another 6,000 and they looked at me like I was crazy to be excited about that, but I don’t think they realized the full amount that we needed. Once I explained that their eyes got really big and they replied with a “No wonder why you are so happy!” It was then that the door was opened for me to tell them how good The Lord has been to us in supplying the need and He used all of you to help with that.

Of course though today is Friday so we are looking to y’all again. Every little bit helps and so if you have it to give then we would really appreciate it but if not, the greatest thing you could do for us is just pray. It’s the greatest blessing knowing that we have the love, prayers, and support of our family and friends! We don’t take for granted all that y’all do for us! I pray God will bless each of you for the blessing you’ve been to us. 🙂

Another week comes to a close, another Friday rolls around. Fridays are like the downhill sprint at the end of a long race of school or work. We made it to this day and are ready for it to come to an end so we can enjoy the weekend!

But to Becky and me, Fridays have taken on a new meaning for us. It’s the day we reach out to you, our loyal readers, friends and prayer warriors to help us get our story out and ask for contributions.

If you haven’t yet read our story, I encourage you to. It isn’t a very long read, and it will go a long way to let you know about our situation and our hearts’ desire.

To those of you who have contributed, we thank you so much! To those of you who are praying, we thank you! Please help us get our story out to more people!