Mitchell Family Calendar Pages

I tried to post these pages yesterday, but Blogger was giving me fits! Here are the Mitchell Family calendar pages from 2008:

JANUARY

David & Kim Fox, Korissa
(Kim is Chris' sister - #5 out of the 8 kids)

FEBRUARY

Mom&Dad Mitchell
my in-laws

MARCH

Chris & Heather Mitchell (that's me!)
(Chris is #2 out of the 8 kids)

APRIL

all of the nieces and nephews on the Mitchell side
top left, clockwise: Korissa Fox with Kimberly & Kailey Mitchell, Nathan Mitchell with Korissa Fox, Jacquline Mitchell, Tynan & Tron Rhodes

MAY

Jonathan Mitchell
(Jon is the "baby" of the family... #8 out of 8)

JUNE

Tyson & Sandy Rhodes, Tron & Tynan
(Sandy is Chris' oldest sister, #4 out of 8)

JULY

Julianne Mitchell
(Julianne is #6 out of 8, and is twins with Tiffany)

AUGUST
Tim & Cristina Mitchell, Kimberly, Kailey, & Nathan
(Tim is Chris' oldest brother, and #1 out of 8)

SEPTEMBER
Burt & Julie Mitchell, Jacquline
(Burt is #3 out of 8)

OCTOBER
The nieces and nephews again: Top left, clockwise, Kimberly Mitchell, Kailey Mitchell, Nathan Mitchell, Jacquline Mitchell, Korissa Fox, Tynan Rhodes, Tron Rhodes

NOVEMBER
Tiffany Mitchell
(Tiffany is #7 out of 8, and is twins with Julianne)

DECEMBER
Nieces and Nephews by family

I tell you, it is a lot harder to do the Mitchell calendar than the Chromy calendar... just because there are so many family members! With only 3 extra pages not taken up with Chris' parents and siblings, it was hard to figure out how to do the pages with our nieces and nephews. Now that there are 4 families with kids, I had to be a little more creative with the 3 extra pages! :-) Hope you enjoyed seeing pics of our families!

Flower Challenge...

I'm taking up my friend, Tricia's, flower challenge.

The Morning Glory stamp is from Stampendous, and is the one my mom gave me for Christmas. I stamped it in VersaMark ink on vellum paper, then embossed it with SU!'s black embossing powder. I then flipped the vellum over and colored the back side with watercolor pencils (Crayola and Staedtler) and an SU! blender pen. I mounted the vellum on a piece of white cardstock, adhering it with Scotch double sided tape placed on the back of the image. (That way you can't see the tape. I then placed the silver eyelets. I matted the image with SU!'s Elegant Eggplant and Lavendar Lace cardstock, then mounted it on another piece of Elegant eggplant. I'm not sure who made the ribbon, but it was part of the blog candy I won from my friend, Tricia (the same mentioned above!) It seemed to work PERFECTLY with the image. I then mounted the silver button (after clipping off the loop for the thread) with glue dots. It was a little too bland, so I stamped the "Love You" (SU!'s Fancy Flexible Phrases) and punched it out with my SU! punch.

I have several more flower cards, but I love the simple elegance of this one. I also enjoyed the coloring... I haven't done that in a while; choosing rather to stamp images in color and leave them that way!

So, Tricia ~ how did I do? :-)

Chromy Family Calendar pages

This is the third year that I've made family photo calendars for each of our families for Christmas (though they don't usually get done until February!) Here are the pictures from my family's calendar:

JANUARY

Tom & Heidi Thomann (My sister and oldest sibling)
Tyler (13 yrs), Jacob (10 yrs), and Emma (6 yrs)

FEBRUARY

Grandpa & Grandma Decker
(my mom's parents and my only living grandparents)

MARCH

Dad Chromy (and Mom, too) :-)

APRIL All of my nieces and nephews:(from top left clockwise)
Tyler Thomann, Jake Thomann, Aksana Chromy (1 yr), Emma Thomann

MAY Mom Chromy (and Dad, too!)

JUNE Chris and Heather Mitchell (that's me!)
(I'm the middle child of 5...
I have an older sister and brother, and 2 younger brothers)

JULY Nieces and nephews again (from top left clockwise)
Jake, Emma, Tyler, and Aksana

AUGUST Steve & Kathryn Chromy
~they are expecting their first baby - a boy - in June~
(Steve is my older brother)

SEPTEMBER Nathan & Caroline Chromy ~ the newlyweds :-)
(Nathan is my "baby" brother - they got married in June 2007)

OCTOBER

Nieces and Nephews once again...
Ty, Jake, Emma, Aksana (with Jovi the dog), and
Emma & Aksana playing piano.

NOVEMBER

Greg & Rachael Chromy
Aksana
~they are expecting baby #2 in September 2008~
(Greg is my middle brother)

DECEMBER

Two pics of the whole Chromy clan...
The 1st pic is from April when we all got together in FL for Easter weekend and to celebrate my mom's 60th birthday
The 2nd pic is from Nathan & Caroline's wedding in June 2007

Well, that's it for the Chromy's! Hope you enjoyed the pics! :-)

Just to clarify...

Several people have asked when we will have an update on the baby. We will not know anything until the first week of March, when we have our pregnancy test - 03/03/08, at 10:30am - if you want to pray specifically! :-) We probably won't post anything right away, just to give us time to call the people that we need to call first. Also, if the pregnancy test IS positive (as well as the bloodwork indicating pregnancy), they do a follow-up bloodwork two days later. If all goes well, I probably won't post anything until after that bloodwork. In December, the pregnancy test was positive, but the follow-up bloodwork showed that we would lose the baby, which we did. I don't really want to go through calling everyone to tell them that we're pregnant, just to call back 2 days later and tell them that we're going to lose the baby. I'm sure you all understand that! :-) So - look for a post probably toward the end of the first week of March... and please keep us in your prayers! Thanks so much for your prayers... we appreciate them more than you know!

Oh, yeah, by the way... if you want to pray REALLY specifically... we're praying for a baby boy (twins would be good, too!) The REASON that we are praying for a boy is because his name has a very significant meaning to us - much more so than the girl's name we have chosen. Our little boy's name is Jadon Christopher (Christi - I hope you don't mind us using your Jadon!) :-) Jadon is a Bible name, and you can find it in Nehemiah 3:7. Basically the Bible mentions Jadon as a man who was just building his part of the wall. Jadon also means "Jehovah (or God) has heard." Very fitting for our situation, don't you think?! Christopher, obviously, is after his daddy, Chris, but also means "follower of Christ." If God chooses to give us this little one and any others He might surprise us with... more than anything we want our child(ren) to be followers of Christ. Now, I must say, too, that we would be THRILLED with a girl, too, and have her name picked out as well. Chris and I just feel like this might be our boy, and every time we hear his name, we'll be reminded of what it means, and that God HAS heard!

So AMAZING...

... and people say that there is no Creator!

I just wanted to say THANK YOU SO MUCH to all of you who have prayed and are praying for us through this time. I also wanted to share these pictures with you, because I think that they are SO AMAZING! Though Chris and I would never have chosen to go through in vitro fertilization to have a baby, we have received many blessings through this trial. One of which is that we have actually seen pictures of all of our embryos (babies, in our minds!) It is just so amazing to see what God is doing and most parents have no idea that their babies have even been conceived at this point, much less SEE them!

Our embryologist, Dr. Cristina, likes to take pictures of the embryos within an hour of the transfer. We went in for the transfer at 2pm, and she showed us the first picture (taken at 1 pm). She said it was OK, but she would have liked to see a little more definition. Dr. Homm, my fertility doctor who actually does the transfer, got delayed with another patient for about an hour. So, Dr. Cristina took another picture at 2:20pm. That is the second one you see below. She was very thrilled with the growth of the embryo, and was very positive.

This is a picture of our embryo at 1pm... as you are looking at the picture, the baby forms to the right side, and the bumps on the left side are where the embryo attaches to the uterus.

This is a picture of our embryo at 2:20pm. It is so amazing to me to see how much it had grown in just 1 hour & 20 minutes! Chris and I feel SO BLESSED just to be able to see these pictures. Most parents don't even have a clue that their baby exists at this point!

There are still no guarantees... it is totally up to God to choose to give this baby life and breath. However, we continue to pray as we wait, and have faith knowing that WHATEVER God chooses to do... "As for God, his way is PERFECT."

Again, we appreciate so much your love, prayers, and support! We will know the first week of March whether or not we are pregnant, and we'll let you all know when we can! :-)

As promised...

As promised... FINALLY - here are a couple of cards that I made with the stamps I got for Christmas.

This flower I stamped on vellum and embossed with black embossing powder, then used markers on the back side to get the softer looking colors.
This is my ADORABLE gingerbread girl! This card is pretty simple, but I like it just the same.

This is another Christmas card that I made. This particular one has a very busy background... I fussed with it until it looked better (and made about 5 different versions until I really liked it. If you look closely, the snowman has some glitter and silver paint accents to make him nice and sparkly!

Sorry, I don't have time to embellish the details right now, but I wanted to at least START posting some of the many cards I've made recently! :-)

For any of my faithful readers...

if there are any...

I have tons of stuff to post, just haven't had the time to sit down and post all of this stuff. Hopefully by the end of the month I'll have caught up! Stay tuned... it's coming...