Gender Reveal Party

I apologize for then delay. We have been so busy with the party and then flying to NC for the ultrasound that this is the first chance I have gotten to download everything and write it all down. Plus we did a Facebook Live during the party so everyone knows anyway!!

Our gender reveal party was November 12. It was mostly family with a few close friends. Katie was able to come and so this meant the baby was there for his/her own party! That meant so much to me to have them both there. Not many surrogates would pay their own way to come to this but she isn't like most surrogates. We are so blessed!!!When God designs your plan, everything is always so perfect and that was exactly what this day was for us. Absolutely perfect.

The theme was Putters or Pom Poms which is so us. Brad is a huge golfer and I cheered all through school so it was an easy theme choice. We ordered a golf ball for him to hit that would reveal pink or blue when you hit it.

We started the party with food of course! The food was all golf themed and the desserts were cheerleader themed.

PUTTERS!!!

19th Hole

Beverage Cart

or

POM POMS???

Worth the wait

Megaphone cake made by Aunt Carrie

Cheer hairbows

Cupcakes made by Grandma Davis

Rice Krispie megaphones

After everyone's bellies were full, I went into my bedroom, changed out of my dress and into my cheerleading uniform! It was time to hit the golf ball!

Brad wore blue with a pink pom pom button. I was wearing pink with a blue putter button. 

This is a picture of the guesses for boy or girl. Only four guesses for boy and the rest all for girl!

IT'S A.............

BOY!!!!!!!

I wish I could upload the video of the shocked faces on team girl but it's way too much trouble to do on blogger. Needless to say we had a lot of people that were very surprised. After the cat was out of the bag, I decided to do a cheer to spell out our SON'S name. 

After the shock wore off a bit, we all went back inside to open the gifts that no one was even supposed to bring. :) I would say my sister-in-law, Michelle, may have been the most confident that this sweet baby was a girl since she only bought girl gifts! I guess I'm pretty good at keeping secrets!

Graham may have to save these for his sister one day!

Graham Bradley Davis, his first item with his initials from Grandma Davis

Crying at the words Brave & Strong (like Mama).
Partially because I'm finally a mom but also because of all we had to do to get to this sweet baby boy. 

Graham's first set of golf clubs

Our aunt had these shirts tucked away since my first pregnancy with Grant over 10 years ago. Notice the tears again. 

Here are pictures of most of the wonderful attendees that came to celebrate Graham's life. This little boy has been prayed for by all of these people for soooo many years. He wouldn't be here without their love and support. Sorry for those of you I got with your mouths full but wasn't the food fabulous?

And the most important people at the party......
Graham and Aunt Katie!!!!
So excited that she is already showing.

It's finally happening. It's been a long, tough road but we woundn't change one thing because it led us to our precious son. This was the child meant for us all along. We were destined to be Graham Bradley Davis' mommy and daddy. We can't wait to see what the Lord has in store for you buddy.

Daily reminders

It's strange to not be at an ultrasound this week. Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled we are out of the danger zone and we are being treated like any other regular pregnancy but when you get used to checking on your baby constantly it's a little scary to just trust everything is ok.

Luckily we have the most AWESOME person carrying our child and she sends me a recording of the baby's heartbeat almost daily. She's still only 10 weeks so it's kind of hit and miss on hearing it with an at-home doppler but she still tries. She also says she can already feel the baby moving when she sits really still. I'm so thankful that God allows us to know he/she is thriving inside of her!

So I think we are doing really good for now. We have planned our Gender Reveal Party "Putters or Pom Poms" for our family for November 12 so that's the big exciting event to come. Our next ultrasound is on November 21. Until the next picture of our little gummy bear, I just have to share the last one again. Cutest kid EVER!!!! So thankful to God for giving us the chance to dance. I feel like this chance might actually become our first-born child.

Weathering the storm

October 24, 2017 will go down as one of the best days of my life...

It was Monday night and we were trying to get to New Bern, NC for our child. We flew out of Knoxville into Atlanta. When we got on our plane to NC, there was an issue. A huge line of thunderstorms was covering the area we were trying to get to. The pilot told us he would try to fly into the storm and find a hole but couldn't promise anything. He said he would have to take us back to Atlanta if we couldn't fly through it. Here's our flight track:

So as you can see, we didn't make it through. He came over the intercom saying he had to take us back to Atlanta. Although I was really disappointed as were all the passengers, I wanted to make it there alive to see this baby. About 5 minutes pass and he comes back on to say he is going to take us to Columbia, SC to get more gas and try to fly around it. This was a HUGE blessing because there weren't any other flights we could take to get there in time for the ultrasound. We land there and sit on the plane a few hours to try to wait out the storm. If we wait too long then the storm will be directly over the place we were to land. We finally fly to New Bern. No one was screaming but the turbulence wasn't great. I was holding onto Brad with all I could and started to feel grateful that we had already made plans for this baby should we not make it out of here! I'm a tad dramatic on planes. 

We land safe and sound and luckily had a room about 5 minutes from the airport since we were SO tired. I actually slept that night because I was so glad to be off that airplane that I think it helped me not worry about the magnitude of what we were flying to go see the next day. 

We wake up the next morning and I had this strange sense of peace. There was no reason for it other than so many people were praying and so God just allowed it to happen. It's not that I believed everything was going to be ok. I didn't know that for sure. All I knew was that I had to be ok with whatever we saw on that screen. If God decided this wasn't the one, then I had to accept it. There really wasn't any other choice.  

We head to Katie's house to pick her up and I told her daughter that I would see her afterward for lunch, just hoping that this would go well so we could even go have lunch. As soon as the doctor put the wand in, we knew it. We knew God had spared him/her. We knew He had also spared us from the extreme pain we had anticipated yet again on this journey. The sac that was too small last week had grown HUGE! So big that the doctor didn't even need to measure it. This baby was literally DANCING!!!! You could see its arm bent, its tiny toes and that FACE! I have watched this child move since the day it was 5 days old busting out of its shell. The doctor said it looked absolutely perfect and the heartbeat was beating away at 168bpm. Here he/she is and its here to stay this time. 

I title this picture "Cutest baby ever!"

Look at the size of this sac now! Praise the Lord!

                                     

                                      

                                       

So here we are. On cloud 9! We are so thankful to the Lord and He has once again shown His power when things seem hopeless. Katie and I had talked about if this baby made it and the sac grew like it was supposed to, then we wanted steak for lunch. So that's exactly what we did! I've never felt so much joy. 

To top off this fabulous day, Mia brought us a book to lunch. If you have ever waited for your child or know someone that has, I strongly recommend purchasing this book. I cried just reading the jacket cover. 

I can't wait for the day I get to read this book to this child. I can't wait to tell him/her the lengths we went to just to have a chance of getting them. I don't know if they will ever be able to understand just how much they were wanted and loved by so many people but especially Mom and Dad. I think we are going to have a baby. The flight home was so much better but not just because there wasn't a storm anymore. Maybe the storms are really gone for good this time.