....meanwhile down on our farm.....

4H Dairy Feeders

MOO....

Little Moo....

CrabApple Tree starting its amazing blossoms....

Chores...

Spring is in the air.....

Early Spring 2012 has sprung in NE Indiana.  Myself and my family have been enjoy the 80+ degree weather.  Hubby has been planting early corn and I've been out snapping some photos of the early blooms. 

"For behold the winter is past,

The rain is over and gone. 

The flowers have already appeared in the land;

The time has arrived for pruning the vines, 

And the voice of the turtledove has been heard in our land. 

The fig tree has ripened its figs, 

And the vines in blossom have given forth their fragrance. 

Arise, my darling, my beautiful one, 

And come along!"

Song of Solomon 2:11-13

~Happy Spring 2012~

~Stay Beautiful Within, Erica~

~Happy 3rd Birthday~

~~Spring is in the air and our baby girl turned 3!~~

Happy Girl!

Party starts with a simple pink table setting including bubbles to blow! 

Pretty in Pink!

My homemade 5 layer "lopsided" cake. It weighed 3 pounds!

Cake Pops are always a great hit at parties!

#3

Pretty Cake for the Princess that she is and always will be....

Amazing!

The cake turned out perfect. Love the color variation of pinks!

Happy 3rd Birthday Baby Girl!

~Stay Beautiful Within, Erica~

~Pop Bottle Art~

Stop! Don't recycle that 2 liter Pop Bottle yet! Lets create some  SPRINGTIME CHERRY TREE BIRTHDAY ART! 

Items needed: black paint & pink paint

rolled paper

paint brushes

2 liter plastic bottle

I rolled out the paper across the dining room table.

Start by using a thicker brush to paint your tree and branches.

Dip your pop bottle in pink paint..

With light pressure place the bottle onto the paper and lift up.

You'll want to "blot" the bottle on other paper first to get off excess paint. 

Don't press to hard or your bottle will slide. 

Use a small paint brush to create "center" of the flower and fix any unwanted mistakes.

I added a Happy Birthday message to our darling daughter Natalie.

This banner was SOOOO easy and fun to make.  Gorgeous for a  

                                   Springtime POP of color!

Hope to see you on my facebook page: Stay Beautiful Within

HAPPY SPRING!

 ~Stay Beautiful Within, Erica~

~So What Happened With Natalie?~

 Being the worse blogger in the world, I'm cringing just sitting down to type this up. Today... the day after... I'm tired, exhausted, body aches,  head hurts and no amout of caffeine is helping me cope with the chronic fatigue feeling I have. 
It looks like my Facebook posts have confused a few people and many have asked "What Happened To Natalie?" 
I'll start from the beginning (and try hard to make a long story short)
Ted and I take Matthew down to a Childrens Specialist Dentist down in Indianapolis. Two weeks ago we took Natalie down and she had a rather horrifying experience with the dentist. We (Ted, myself and the dentist) all agreed it would be in Natalies best interest to be put to sleep for him to continue his dental procedures on her.  So yesterday was her procedure day down at St. Vincents Hospital in Carmel, In. 

Matthew supporting his baby sister.

Everything went well according to the dentist and anasteologist, but when they brought Natalie back to us she was thrashing around on the gurney and her left eye was nothing but a huge black pupil. 
The dentist and anasteologist both left and we were in the hands of nurses. My STRONG motherly instincts took over and I knew something was wrong with her. The nurse agreed and called in a different anasteologist to come take a peak at Natalie. The thrashing around, crying and having a hard time waking up was pretty "normal", but the one eye being one HUGE PUPIL was NOT NORMAL.

Matthew will always protect her.

The 2nd anasteologist wanted us to get her over  to Peyton Manning Childrens Hospital Emergency Room ASAP! 
So off we went to our "home away from home". We are very familiar with PMCH since Matthew is a regular patient there. Calls were made while we transferred over and they were expecting us.

At PMCH ER

So in a "nutshell" they were checking to make sure that Natalie didn't have a stroke. Everything checked out fine, PRAISE GOD!, except that crazy eye. Well the original anasteologist showed up in our room in the ER. He had been on the phone with an opthomologist and was "covering his tracks". Come to find out, the anasteologist accidentally got some nasal dialating mediciation in Natalies left eye. (He had to dialate her nostrils to insert the tube for her anastetic so the dentist could work in her mouth). Even though he taped her eyes shut he over sprayed and it somehow seeped into her eye. With that being known, the huge question was, "When does her eye turn back to normal?" The ER doc wanted to keep her over night for observation but the eye doc seemed to think it would eventually go down on its own, which it did. They kept her an additional 3 hours in the ER for observation. Natalie needed that LONGGGGGG nap. 

After a LONG 3 hours nap in the ER she was good to head home.

By this morning Natalie was 100% back to her normal self. We had a good lunch my great friend Kim and got to do a little "treasure hunting" too. 

~Momma and her baby girl~

I'm SO TIRED today, but I know WHO carries me through...

Thank you ALL for your prayers. HIS Grace and Mercy covered us all day long. 

                      ~Stay Beautiful Within, Erica~