It's A...

We recently gathered our family and a few of our close friends for a little gender reveal party.  I had fun planning for it and putting it together. Here are a few snap shots thanks to my sweet friend, Noelle! 

Of course we had plenty of food! 

The cake was just plain white.  No color inside. 

We all "wore our guess".  Those who thought it was a girl got bows and those who thought it was a boy wore bow ties.  I TOTALLY forgot to take a "Team Boy" and "Team Girl" picture, but the boy team definitely would've won! 

 I was pretty sure it was a girl and hubs was pulling for a boy!

Then it was time for the reveal! (Actually, we did this part first because we both knew and couldn't contain ourselves any longer! Christmas was hard enough!)

I used this tutorial to make confetti poppers.  I will say, they took us about 3 hours total to create, but it was SO worth it!! We have a little video of everyone with all of the colored confetti going everywhere. It was so fun!

Are you ready?!? We didn't make a popper for ourselves, but we did take some fun pictures to share with the world!

 Ignore my weird eye! I was trying to watch the confetti AND look at the camera. Ha ha!

My best friend is also pregnant!! At her gender reveal, I was pregnant and had no idea.  It has been fun for us to walk through this together, as we have many other life events.

We are BEYOND excited and blessed to have this little boy join our family.  I am currently searching for Big Sis and Little Bro shirts.  You better believe my kids will wear matching outfits at times, along with monogrammed things galore!!

Richardson, Party of 4!

Here is a little blurb that Ryan wrote a while back.

"Last night I found out that my wife is pregnant.  Whew!  There, I said it.  It will be quite some time before I am able to say those words out loud.

Unbeknownst to me it is customary to wait a certain amount of time (8-12 weeks) before you tell anyone about the pregnancy.  I have never gotten this...  I just got the biggest news of my life.  I am excited beyond belief but I cant share any of it!!!  Dang it!"


Just to let you all in on how this little journey has gone so far, I thought we'd share our story.

All along we have known we wanted to adopt. When we finally got to the point of wanting to grow our family, we battled with "Do we adopt first or do we wait?" We decided to try for biological children first.  Less than a year into that journey, the Lord continued to speak to us about adoption.  We weren't pregnant yet and doctors told both of us, "There is no reason that you can't have your own biological children." That was the moment that we just knew.  We just knew the Lord was leading us to adopt first.

5 1/2 months into that journey we received our referral for a precious, precious little girl.  We never knew we could love a child so much who has never even been in our arms. I remember looking at Ryan with tear filled eyes one trip down to College Station and saying, "We can't get pregnant now. It will mess up when we go get her!"

Little did I know we already had a little one growing inside me.

2 weeks after we accepted our referral for our little girl, we found out we were expecting. We were overwhelmed with emotion. Everything from, "What about the shots I need to get?", "What about the timing?",  "When will the doctor release me to travel?", "How can I prepare two rooms at once?", "Holy moly...we are going to have two munchkins here at about the same time!!" to "This can ONLY be explained by God."

I'm almost 15 weeks and while you think I'd be feeling better, I'm still throwing up when I least expect it.  So far, both the adoption and the pregnancy have been a roller coaster.  The Lord taught us early in the process that we MUST trust him with both.

So, it is with JOYFILLED hearts that we share that we will soon be "Richardson, party of 4!"

In Case You Haven't Heard...

Amanda and I shared some big news a couple of weeks back:

We will be trying to use this blog as a means to keep everyone updated on what is going on.  So follow along and be a part of this great journey God is leading us on!

Matrimony in Marfa

So this weekend Amanda and I had a pretty long and eventful road trip to Marfa, TX.  Where is Marfa you ask?  It's in West Texas... and by West Texas I mean 3.5 hours past Odessa... yeah... that West Texas.  I will say that after we got past Odessa the drive was not too bad, but that was after a good 5 hours on the road.  After Odessa the rest of the drive looked like this...

Along the way we passed this town and Amanda and I laughed for a good 20 minutes while we made up sentences with the word "Merkel" in it.  Some of my favorites were "Do you believe He still performs MERKELS today church?!?!" (best Southern Baptist preacher voice) and "If we get there on time it will be a MERKEL!!"  This was a fun game so we played it on the way back as well!  Please ignore the bug guts in the next picture.

After we got off of I-20 and on to Hwy 17 at Pecos the speed limit changed like every 3 miles.  Because I am a man and have no use for such trivial things as speed limits I just set the cruise at 83 (most limits were 80) and away we went.  

"Mr. Richardson I stopped you because I got you going 83 in a 70.  Can I have your drivers license and insurance please?"  Dang it!  Yes, I got pulled over.  (My first draft of this blog had the word "we" in it, as in "We got pulled over."  I have since changed that under my own will and under no duress, because I am a man and have no use for... OH NEVERMIND!  Yes I got pulled over!!!)  One of the first things my sweet wife said to me after we pulled over was "I love you."  It was like this guy was going to take me away.  More on the conversation that followed later.  Long story short, he asked why I was speeding, I said "Because I'm not from around here and the speed limits change every 3 miles it seems like." He agrees, tells me to slow down, and sends me on my way.  Really nice guy!

Once we finally made it to Marfa, we had just enough time to check in, change and head to the rehearsal.  Amanda did splendidly, standing there like a statue of a Greek goddess.  Then we went to the rehearsal dinner and had a great time and some great food.  After the dinner, some of the guys went back to the grooms suite to have an after party so I joined them but Amanda went back to the room because she was pretty tired by this point.  It had been a long day!

When I got back to the room and got ready for bed I asked Amanda why the first thing she said to me was "I love you." when we got pulled over.  She said, "Because I was trying to not be mad at you."  At first I laughed and accepted it as just one of the many cute things my wife tends to say.  But as I laid there thinking about it I realized how lucky I was to have a wife that made a conscious effort to die to herself, put her anger or frustration aside (of which she had every reason to be angry, she had reminded me of the speed limit several... dozen times this trip) and just show me love!  I went to sleep that night thanking God for such a gift!

In an effort not to make this blog post the longest ever... I'll sum up Saturday and just touch on the things we did that day.  First, skeet shoot at a beautiful ranch, then a chuck wagon BBQ, back to the hotel and Amanda went with the girls to get ready and I stayed in the room until the wedding.  Wedding ceremony then a night of dancing and fun with our new friends and a ROCKIN country band from San Antone!  All in all it was a great week.  Feast your eyes on the West Texas scenery below!!!

Me killing those clay pigeons!  

Just wow!!!

Me and my gal... and a gun... can't get much better!!

Cuddos

Ok, so I am normally not the one who posts on here but I decided that since I was trying to help out the wifey with her "blog management" I would take advantage of the opportunity to do a guest post.

Many of you know, well I guess all of you know, that my wife is a teacher.  Her commitment to her kids, her classroom, the other teachers, the parents, and to the betterment of education as a whole makes me want to be better.  Her work ethic rivals those of most professional athletes and her talent, with respect to her own field, is equivalent.  It seems like she is always working on something for her classroom, her blog, or her TpT store.  It's amazing!

As you can see our name has changed.  I'm sure Amanda will have more to say on this update, but I find it fitting that she chose this new name.  Amanda does immeasurably more for her kids than anyone else knows.  She does immeasurably more for me that I think I will ever know.  She desires to experience immeasurably more from Christ that even she knows.  And she is immeasurably more than I could have ever asked for in a wife.

I love you babe!  So proud of you!

The Hubs... Out!