Welcome to Holland

I had a parent of a child with disabilities tell me about this poem a few months ago. It is an amazing poem that reminds me and others of how blessed we are. It also helps me to remember that I am not in control and can not plan every detail of my life...even if I would like too. God has a better plan and he choose me and Kenny to be the parents of a very beautiful and precious angel. We consider ourselves lucky and among the elite chosen ones to be blessed with our little angel. Even though we did not have the opportunity to raise our little girl, we can still very much so relate to this poem.

"I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this......When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland.""Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.It’s just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned." And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland."

So as you have read, Holland is just as wonderful as Italy. Just because our trip was different, it doesn't make it wrong. We were blessed to have had the opportunity to take a trip to Holland. And now as the arrival date approaches quickly for Asher, we do still dream of taking the trip to Italy...but we will NEVER forget the amazing journey we took to Holland and cannot wait to see our little Rembrandt when we get to Heaven.

27 weeks! Our little Ash-man is growing!!

Here is a recent picture of me and Asher. He has really grown in the past couple of weeks...and it is showing in my belly!!

Deck the Halls....

We decided we better get started on decorating for Christmas a little early this year! We are glad we did too, we are enjoying having the tree up and playing the christmas music to welcome the holidays!

The first 3 reasons why we will not be co-sleeping with Asher!

ZAK...BOB...Cessa! Need I say any more??

Twenty Five Weeks and Counting!

We are so excited about our precious little boy that will be entering the world sometime before February 18th! He has already brought much joy to our lives as we are preparing for him, praying, and playing with him. He is a ball of energy and we are gearing ourselves up for quite the little rascal! We started working on his nursery and it is already looking like a little boys room. Here are a few pictures...

Kenny's 30th Suprise Party!!!!

Kenny turned the big 3-0 today! Saturday, I threw a suprise party for him...and it was a huge success! I was so proud of myself for not blowing the whole thing!

Here are a couple pics from the party!

It could always be worse...

Can this week please leave us alone! The past 2 days have been crazy crazy crazy! First, our adorable, cute, wouldn't hurt a fly little puppies got put in the slammer yesterday. I got home from work to find that they were no where to be found. They had dug out from under the fence and went on a joy tour of the park and neighborhood. I looked all over the neighborhood for like an hour. Even our neighbor drove around to help me. Around 4:45 I decided that I better call animal control to make sure that they were not picked up. Well...after 10 minutes of being connected and passed off to the next person, I finally was able to ask about our babies. The woman was not very nice and told me that the dogs were filthy and that they appeared to have been dumped. She also told me that they were found in a location that I have no idea where it is and when I map quested it, it was all the way across town! She told me that one of the puppies was very aggressive and was growling at everyone. This is soooo not their personality! after freaking out, she continued to tell me that I needed to calm down because they were safe and no one was being mean to them. YEAH RIGHT! What planet does she live on? I wasn't even sure that these were our puppies that they had. Well, we were also informed that we could not come pick them up until the next morning. So that made me even more upset.
This morning I got up to find it rather nasty outside. I got in the shower and mid way through, the power goes out. My shower time is approxiamately 5:45-6:00ish. It is dark outside at that time...so when the power goes out...it is very very dark inside. I could not see my fingers in front of me. Thank goodness I use Johnson's Baby Shampoo, because it was all up in my eyes! I had to yell for Kenny to come and find a flashlight so that I could finish my shower. Then, continue to get ready for work by flashlight. Kenny had to pull our garage up by hand...thank the Lord for husbands! I headed off to work expecting the day to improve.
Well...I tried to call Kenny, but Verizon had messed up our bill and suspended my calls. So Kenny had to fax his payment stub to show where we had already paid our bill, and actually have credit with them! He got that taken care of and then went to bail our delinquent puppies out of puppy jail. They were super excited to see him! He put them in the truck and Ellie decided that she needed to use the bathroom...so she did! So, Kenny had to clean that up before he could head to work where there was a monthly meeting he was late for. The day settled down for a couple hours until Kenny fell on slippery metal stairs. This placed him at quick care for most of the afternoon and now he is on crutches with a possible torn muniscus (sp?).
I arrive home to find our puppies in the garage since it is raining and they have a tendency to escape the confines of our fence. Over the course of a few hours, Ellie and Aubrey managed to chew a foam matress pad into thousands of pieces...all over the garage. Thank goodness it was going to the dump anyhow. Now it will just go to the dump in a thousand pieces...after we clean it up of course!
Soooo...this is the past few days for the Chastain household. I think we better lay low for a couple days. Isn't the saying, "When it rains, it pours."? Well, we have plenty of sunshine in our lives so we can't hardly complain...but seriously...rain rain go away!