Happy 13th Birthday, Rebecca Lee!

Rebecca is my oldest child, but not my first baby. Before you hurt yourself scratching your head, I'll explain. I was pregnant 2 times before Rebecca. Both times, I miscarried. It was such a emotional roller coaster ride! It took me a year to get pregnant, and I lost that baby at 5 weeks. It took another year to get pregnant again, and I lost that one around 7 weeks. I was fairly upset, to be sure! Rob and I were beginning to wonder if we would ever have a baby! I poured out my heart to God over this situation and eventually we came to grips with the fact that maybe a family wasn't what God had in mind for us at that time. Some time after the 2nd miscarriage, Rob and I were attending a Sunday morning Bible study out at Dunklin. (No, we weren't alcoholics or druggies. We had heard about this older man and his wife and the wonderful Bible studies they had in their home, so we went to check it out and loved it.) Anyway, almost a year passed by. Rob and I never mentioned our personal lives at this Bible study. We never told anyone that we had lost two babies and were trying again to have a baby. One lovely fall morning after the Bible study was over, I walked over to my husband to tell him it was time to head across the campus to church. He was standing on the porch talking to Lil, the facilitator's wife. As I walked up to them, Lil stopped talking mid sentence and just stared at me. I said "what?" She said that as I was walking up to her, she looked up at me and saw that I was pregnant. Really pregnant. Like 7 months pregnant. Those were her words. I just sort of laughed it off and told her, well, we are trying! The next Sunday morning, I took a pregnancy test and it was positive! God showed Lil that I was expecting and since I knew that only God could have told her that, I never once worried that I would loose that baby! And I didn't! Rebecca was born on her due date. What a good girl! She was born at the Women's Center in Stuart. I know some of you won't believe me, but labor and delivery with her was painless. I know God had his hand in bringing her into this world in every way!
Here we are, 13 years later. What a ride it has been! I love having her as my daughter. She is friendly with everyone, loves to be a helper, adores her little brothers, loves to talk about Heaven and is an all around super gal!
For her birthday this year, I decided to break from our normal way of doing birthdays and allowed her to invite 7 of her friends over for a girl's bash. We loaded up in the van and headed to the beach to take pictures and hang out for a little bit. Then we came home and ate. Afterwords, each girl decorated a 6 inch cake with Wilton cake decorating accessories. Then we popped popcorn and watched a movie about Hellen Keller. Just before midnight and before the princesses turned into pumpkins, I took most of them home. (two stayed for the night)
If you scroll down a bit, you'll see a slide show with some pictures of Rebecca from about 4 months through Kindergarten. I wanted to scan more pics, but it was getting too time consuming. So I stopped there. The next set of pictures is of the party. I put captions under the photos but they didn't show up. The girls who came to her party and who you will see in the photos are Anna Klein, Amanda Enyart, Kristie Stiles, KayleeAnna Conroy, Maddie McCowen, Heather Carroll and Caroline Hobbs.

Happy Birthday, Rebecca Lee! We are proud to have you as our daughter!