August 10th

Exactly one year ago today I found out I was pregnant with Carleigh.

I had taken a test on the 8th that showed up negative and then took another one of the 10th that showed up faintly positive. Boy, was I excited! I wanted to come up with some cool way of telling everyone but couldn't wait long enough to even think of much so I ended up just telling everyone.

Never thought I'd be where I am now then.

What was it like the day you found out? If you have BlogFrog you can go here to my community to join in on my discussion.

Early morning randoms

Just some early morning random things to say. (Yeah, I am normally up this early.)

A lot of you know about TheBlogFrog. But for those of that may not know here's a little more info:

TheBlogFrog brings social features like you would find on other social networks (like Facebook) to Blogs! If you are a blog author, you can install "social widgets" on your blog that let you and your readers interact with each other. If you are a blog reader, you can participate in "blog communities" where all the readers of a blog interact with each other. This is much more fun than just commenting on what the blog author happens to post about that day. TheBlogFrog can also help you find new blogs to follow. It goes beyond the standard topic recommendations and helps you find blogs written by people you know from High School, College, Email, and more. TheBlogFrog will even look at the current blogs you follow and suggest new blogs to follow!

How does it work?
After you sign up for TheBlogFrog, you begin connecting with blogs and blog communities. If you have a blog, TheBlogFrog will connect you with the blogs you link to on your own blog. You can start finding new blogs and participating in blog communities. If you have a blog, you can even install a whole community for your blog. After you sign up, you can enter in private profile information like High School and College. This information is not shared with others and is only used to connect you with other bloggers from your life.

If you haven't noticed already, TheBlogFrog has launched a new site and will be introducing some more social widgets soon! So stop by TheBlogFrog and check it all out! The widget that I have is the community widget located on the lower right sidebar.

Goodsearch is a search engine powered by Yahoo but they also help charities. For every search you do using them they will donate 1 cent to the charity of your choice. Sufficient Grace Ministries is now part of this. I've already downloaded their toolbar and using them like crazy to do all my searches. I hope you'll use them too to help raise money for Sufficient Grace or some other worthy organization.

Thank you to everyone who expressed interest in writing Carleigh's name. That would be so wonderful! If you do end up taking a picture, I would love to know your name, the date the picture was taken, and the location so that I can put all that information in her name scrapbook. You can email me all the info at caring4carleigh@yahoo.com. In case you are wondering, too, I am still working on her regular scrapbook. I am *almost* finished. I got quite a bit done over the weekend. My goal is to finish up this weekend and I hope that I can do that! Once I finish up my plan is to either do a slideshow or a video of the pages since many have requested to see it.

I plan on doing another Q&A post and I'll be putting that up tomorrow. So if you want to know more about me and my life check in and ask a question.

A big thank you to Mary Ellen for her wonderful editing on my NILMDTS photos. They are beautiful!! I love the version of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star that you put with the slideshow. I've already shared them with some of you yesterday. (Mary Ellen put some of them on her website gallery for me to see.) You can check out her photography website Lighthouse Photography. If you're really interested in seeing the pictures just email me.

Along with this, I have a praise to share. Mary Ellen had taken a break from being a NILMDTS photographer and has decided to become active again after working with my pictures. She felt God was leading her to do this. I know God is going to use her to touch many families, so thank you, Mary Ellen, for listening to His call! I also thank God for His amazing way of bringing people together for His purpose.

I have some great news! My friend Stephanie has launched her new website My Very Own Angel and a new blog I Have My Very Own Angel. Please check them out and help support her! Stephanie has a tshirt on her Angel Store that I plan on getting and wearing proudly!

Update on me & a few other things

I hope everyone's weekend has been good. I've taken several much needed naps and would love to sneak another one in. I've been feeling quite tired lately. I just wanted to take the time and let everyone how I have been doing lately and let you know of some things to look out for in the near future.

Aside from being tired, I have been doing well. I've been missing Carleigh like crazy lately and I've had some emotional times. I am ok. It's not sad for me, really. I'm actually quite happy and a joy radiates my soul when I think of my daughter. But I miss her and as I see babies around her age I miss her even more because I wonder what she would look like now and what cute things she would be doing. I'm so blessed to have Kyndra to love on. It really would be much more difficult without her.

Speaking of Kyndra, I find myself not wanting to be apart from her for long when it's not necessary. Today in church she was starting to act up so Anthony took her to the nursery. When he left with her I felt so strange because there was nothing in my arms. It felt wrong and my eyes started to swell with tears. I almost got up and left but Anthony came back and he had her blanket and bunny with her. I took them from him and held them the rest of the service. I felt better just having something in my arms to hold. Hopefully I can learn to be a little less anxious with this.

Anthony and I are TTC and haven't had any luck these past 2 months. AF came very unexpectedly this month-just the day after our supposed best day to conceive. I was so bummed. So thanks to my friend Laura (thank you!) we have some OPKs to help out this next round. I'm hoping for a BFP soon! (Confused on my abbreviations? Click here. I know all my fellow CMers will get me. lol)

Carleigh's headstone is still not up but we should be getting a call soon from Brian telling us it is.

I have a giveaway I plan on doing sometime this week so keep your eyes open for that.

Are there any BlogFrog users out there? I have one of their community widgets on my right sidebar. Well, I am now one of their superusers (aka community leaders). :) I'll be trying out new tools and widgets for them and giving them feedback. In trying out these things, I'll be testing them on my blog! I've started some discussions in my Caring for Carleigh community on the BlogFrog. Stop by and check it out because I'd love to hear from you!

Have you been wondering something about me or want to get to know me better? You'll soon get your chance! I'm going to have a Q & A post at some point this week where you'll get to ask me some questions and I'll have the privilege of answering them all! And then I'll turn the tables and ask you some questions to get to know you all better! (Thanks to the recent blogs who did posts like these for the inspiration.)

You may have noticed some changes in the look of Carleigh's blog. Christina added a navigation bar for me and did a great job! (She's designing blogs again if you want a new look!) The navigation bar frees up some space on my sidebars. The only link still not working yet is Carleigh's Story. I'm still in the process of getting all of her story down and it may take me the whole week to do it. Rest assured I will get it done!