Pigs, Plates, Pigtails, Parks & Potty-chairs!

Pondering the pigs prow, perhaps?

Noshing on Noodles, no need to be neat!

Parents have a penchant for princess in pigtails.... progeny has pizzazz!  

Sweetheart sporting shades swings satisfactorily in the sunshine!

Potty-chair produces prompt product! (Probably providence in place of prowess!) 

Alliteration allows an abundance of awesome adjectives! 

picture-perfect

Just a smattering of pictures and some captions.... Enjoy!

Josh & Brenda- Engaged, in love, awesome to photograph. One of my favorite shoots to date.

 
Keegan- this little guy made me work for those smiles. He's so handsome!

Leo- I'd be lying if I said that he didn't give me a bit of baby fever! He's such a cutie-patootie! His parents are awesome too.  He gave his smiles away a little more freely...

Little toes. Sigh.  I need another niece or nephew, quick! *hint*hint*  :)

Maybe a favorite....    This was at my dad's 30th Ordination Anniversary celebration.  Madigan is as happy as a clam when Grampy has her. She's been in hog-heaven since grandpa and grandma Gibbs are here this whole week! Spoiled girl, she might be hard to deal with once they leave...

Anyone have a favorite of the above pictures?

It's my Soap Box...

If you ever ask me about how Madigan came to be, I wouldn't hesitate to tell you that my freshman health teacher was a liar about how easy it is to get pregnant. 

When we first talked about having a baby, we gleefully told God how to put this child together. 

Please God, from my genes give this child my nose and cheeks, my sense of humor, and my love of the water. From Brett's genes, give the baby his eyes and mouth, his patience, and dear God, please give it his head circumference. Is that too much to ask?

Then after almost 2 years we changed our demands a little bit:

Dear God, please give us a baby. Amen. 

The short story is that we had to try a bit harder than your average couple to get pregnant, and in the end we learned an important lesson:

Patience. 

Modern medicine is wonderful, but it's not fail-safe or fool-proof. I left the clinic after hearing my doctor tell me "You can't get pregnant this month, so don't get your hopes up" and came back 6 weeks later for an ultrasound where I saw and heard a beating heart. My doctor then said with a wink "There you have it for modern medicine...." 

That little 6 week sac of baby and beating heart is now a 1-year-old, 22 pound sassy baby girl who owns her mother and father in the best kind of way. 

Although what we endured to conceive Madigan is most definitely considered "Infertility Treatment Light" I won't hesitate to tell our story to anyone who might listen, in hopes that it alleviates some of that loneliness that is inevitable when (in my own words) "you can't even get done with money and medicine what two teenagers can accidentally do in the back of a car". 

Infertility (the inability to conceive after 12 or more months of trying) affects 1 in 6 couples. 

Think about those odds. 

So thank your lucky stars if you happened to have all your prayers answered the first time around. 

Heck, I thank my lucky stars that I didn't. 

Because the lessons I learned along the way were indispensable to my ability to be a better mother. I realized that when I stopped telling God how to do his job, I could hear him telling me how to do mine. 

In the end, we didn't get that baby we special-ordered from God...

We got better.

Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder... ?

Yeah, Yeah, it's been a while.    We've been busy. 

We found and removed mold from our basement. (Made possible by the generosity of my family- thanks guys; without you, there'd be a "fungus among-us"!) We are slowly putting our basement back together, and will hopefully have the house on the market by the first of August. The winds of change are blowing us, we just don't really know where!

Then, our baby turned one year old.  *sob*  I'm still calling her my baby, even if she's technically in "toddler-hood". You must have known that a child of Gibbs-Hille genes would know how to eat a cupcake. Even if she's never had one before- (and yes, both Brett & I are well aware that some of you make fun of us for withholding sugar from our daughter. And so you must know that we make fun of you behind your back. So there.)

She figured out very, very quickly how to eat a cupcake. 

Face-into-frosting-first! 

Atta Girl!

She at the whole thing. At least the parts that she didn't end up wearing. 

Then she proceeded to have a serious sugar crash, and napped on daddy (who was happy to provide a lap).

We also were very sad that Brett's great-grandmother Josephine, (fondly known to many as simply "Gram") passed away on the morning of Madigan's birthday. At 107 years old, we knew this was imminent, but we greedily hoped that we'd have more time with her. We were so grateful that we made it back to WaKeeney in time to see her. 

Although a recent stroke took her ability to speak, Madigan and Gram made a wordless connection during our last visit. It was obvious that Gram knew who Madigan was, and we will always have memories of Gram reaching up to touch Madigan's nose, and Madigan leaning in to kiss Gram before we left. 

Gram was born on St. Patrick's Day in 1902, and she left this world on the birthday of the last great-great-grandchild who got to meet her. A life worth celebrating, indeed.

Lastly (for now), Free Range Photography has been busy too! This is an engagement shoot I did last week. I need to get them finished before my three upcoming shoots this week.... 

No time to be idle in this house....

Just the way we like it!