{i am so blessed}

I thank God for all I've been given at the end of everyday.

Enough with music lyrics today. We've been mostly listening to holiday music at my house for the last couple of weeks. We put up our Grinch tree. I just love cherishing Thanksgiving and Christmas all at once. I just feel that this season is so wonderful, and I have much to be thankful for everyday.

I've been overwhelmed at school as of late, but I feel quite caught up at this moment. It feels better now that I have a couple of exams out of the way. I need to finish a big project in my Disasters class, and I need to write a research proposal, so that requires real research on my part, eek.

Tomorrow I visit the doctor to get my check up; if I'm lucky maybe I'll get my first sonogram. Looking forward to seeing my little peanut. I'm pretty caught up at work right now, so there isn't much going on really.

This weekend I attended a Slop Crop and I was able to use my Silhouette Cameo for the first time. It was amazing!! I love it. Very cool, and it was a lot easier to use that I thought it would be. I was surprised. I'm looking forward to making many wonderful things with it and getting a little bit crafty.

This weekend Harper did so great. She rode on her tricycle around the park; she went potty in the big potty, and she shaved her face and legs with her new Spiderman Shaving Kit :) That's the life if you ask me!

{they who sow in tears shall reap in joy and singing}

I stepped away from blogging for a couple of weeks due to some tragic and happy news that I feel ready to share with my readers and friends. Many of you already know from Facebook that my grandmother recently and very tragically passed away. We had her funeral on Friday, and I am finally feeling a sense of closure and hope now that she is at rest. Many tears were shed for this beautiful woman. She will be missed, but we find comfort that she is all around us now, and she has a beautiful room made up in Heaven just for her.

Friday October 28th, my family and I celebrated my grandfather's retirement. It was a beautiful breezy day, and it was an emotional roller coaster as my grandfather and mother begin this journey in their life together.

Saturday morning I got a call that my grandmother had a heart attack in the wee hours of the morning, and that she was at DRMC. I got up immediately showered and headed down to the hospital. When I got there, they had found bleeding on her brain, so she had also had a cerebral aneurysm. We had her care flighted to Baylor in Dallas where my family sans Gavin and me stayed the night in the waiting room outside of the ICU.

Sunday morning we headed back to the ICU. The neurosurgeon told our family that she woke up that morning probably with a bad headache, then walked to the restroom and passed out into an irreversible coma. The doctor explained to us that she was instantly brain dead which led to her cardiac arrest upon my Aunt and cousin finding her. She was not in any pain, which gives us much comfort, and the passed quickly once we turned off the machines. We were all present at that moment on that very sad Sunday afternoon. My grandmother was 65 years old and in wonderful health. There was nothing that she nor any of us could've done to prevent this from happening or save her once it occurred. It could happen to any of us.

Her visitation on Thursday evening was full of much sadness, heartache, but it was really wonderful to see all of her friends and our family come from long distances to pay their respects to such a wonderful lady. Her celebration of life was Friday morning at Cross Timbers Church of Denton, and it was a very beautiful service. I sang Ave Maria because my grandfather had requested it to be sung at her service, and I know that my grandmother was watching from Heaven, excited that I was singing at her celebration. She always asked me to sing at family gatherings and events, and I was always too shy to do so, so I felt honored that I could bless my grandmother with this final gift.

I will always treasure and remember you dear Patricia Strickland. You were a wonderful daughter, mother, sister, grandmother, great-grandmother and friend, and you will be missed dearly in all the remaining days of our lives. I hope to see you again in the great hereafter when God calls me home.

Love your granddaughter,

Gabrielle Kronenberger Watson

PS. My heart has been heavy for the last week, but full of joy too. It's so hard feeling conflicted between joy and sadness at such a moment of loss, but as the Lord takes one life from us, he blesses our whole family with another. Gavin and I expecting our second child. I'm 7 weeks, so still very new and in my first trimester. I leave this in God's hands. If this child is meant to be, it will be. I think that he is giving us this life to help us to overcome the sorrow that he knew that we'd be feeling with the loss of the matriarch of our family. We found out the week before my grandmother passed away, and I told her while she was in a coma at the hospital. I know she heard me. I know that my family has been suffering, but I also think this news is helping to alleviate some of their suffering; God has found a way to ease our sorrows and is helping us to come together to usher new life into this world and our family.

Psalm 126:5

They who sow in tears shall reap in joy and singing.

It came

My silhouette cameo arrived today, yay!

{new blog}

Well it certainly took me HOURS to do, but I've updated my blog after many, many, many moons. I hope that you all love it! It was a free template that I found online; there are a couple other free ones out there that were mega cute :)

{creative weekend}

Although I'm having a busy and restless kind of week; I did have a wonderfully creative Saturday. I made just a few layouts, so here they are for your enjoyment!!

{scrap room photos - image heavy post)

This has been such a fabulous weekend. I didn't work on any of my homework (I'm ashamed), but I did get a bit scrappy at my monthly Slop Crop (feel free to join me anytime, really) on Saturday. Friday night I helped my mom purge a lot of OLD, OLD, OLD scrap stuff and reorganize some things and ate a delicious dinner cooked mostly by her (I helped a little). Saturday was an all day affair (that's usually how Slop Crops go). Today (Sunday), we slept in late (till 9), then I studied for a little bit, took a cat nap (I NEVER get to do this), showered, took visited the Big Orange Pumpkin Patch for a few hours, then came home slipped into PJs, made a delicious dinner (baked chicken, garlic butter rice, and steamed veggies), and got Harper into bed ON time after watching The Hutchback of Notre Dame and reading 4 books before finally putting her into bed.

It has been a swell weekend. Gavin is now taking a test online. I aced my online quiz, and I going to complete my reading assignments until Gavin is done with this exam, then we will watch either Boardwalk Empire, Dexter, Homeland, Hung or the Walking Dead. We NEVER get to watch television, thank goodness for DVR!

So finally after weeks of anticipation.... I've uploaded images of my scrap room just for you! Enjoy, relish, and roll in it; I love my crafty space. It is still a work in progress. I would absolutely love to replace the Mickey Mouse TV with a flat screen, but HECK it was free, and it works amazingly! I would also love to replace the TV stand that it sits on with another black wire rack like the one in the photos. Those are usually inexpensive (go on sale often at Target), and they are just plain handy dandy. I love the industrial look. I would LOVE, love, love to pain my hutch but not sure what color, and it would be fabulous to brighten up the scrap room with better lighting and a different wall color. This is the color of all the walls in my house except the bedrooms, bathrooms, and office. EVERY room and ceiling in the house though :) - AND I would love to hand some stuff on the walls. I plan to make a 'brag rack' with clips from IKEA, but I just don't have the time or money to invest in little wants like that. The holidays are coming up so I have to start thinking about that!

{weekend wrap up}

Let me sum up this weekend for you in a complex sentence. Gavin and I watched Transformers Dark Side of the Moon; then we studied the rest of the weekend, but I did take a time out from studying to get my hair cut and to scrapbook a little, and I even took photos of my *new* scrapbook room.

Haha, that's the longest sentence really.... :)

Well I mentioned that I took pictures of my *new* scrap room, and I did. It was the formal dining room, but then I told Gavin that it was pointless and a waste of GREAT space and light, and that it MUST be my scraproom, so it is yay!

It's been my scapbook room officially since August, but who cares? I'm just glad to have such a large space. I haven't uploaded the pictures online, but I will this evening after I'm done taking my test before I pick up Harper girl from her Lita's house.

Despite all the hours spent studying for my 3 (yes, 3) upcoming exams; we still managed to have some fun fitting in a couple of flicks with Harper a two hour trip to Stonebriar mall in Frisco, and last nights episode of Boardwalk Empire. I love that show *squeel*.

We also produced a short film (it's 24 seconds long) of the Birthday Song to my very good friend Robin!!

And I'll share that with you now!
Enjoy the rest of today and enjoy this short clip of Harper and her mommy ;)

With Love,
Gabi Watson