Not Quite the Winter Break I Had Planned

Well, here we are at the end of winter break. It hasn't been exactly the week I had in mind. Eric got a nasty virus on Monday and Ella followed on Tuesday. Praise the Lord, the rest of us haven't gotten it. Eric is finally feeling like himself today. Ella didn't have it nearly as bad, but she still doesn't feel great today, and she is not eating. Which is very much out of the ordinary for her. She is definitely our "eater". I finally went out last night to the grocery store - yes, I know - how exciting! But, it was nice to get out of the house for a bit. So, I don't have any cute pictures or cute stories this week, except that Maddie did lose another tooth. But, that is life sometimes. Things don't always go the way we plan them. Maybe next week will be more exciting. :)

Just a note: for those of you who know Brittany Moncrief, I've added her blog to my links. She had her baby and she is gorgeous!

Valentine's Day and a Missing Tooth

Hope you all had a wonderful Valentine's Day and got to spend it with the ones you love! And most of all I hope you were reminded of your valentine who will never stop being head over heels in love with you!

We started a new tradition last night. Our ladies ministry team at church coordinated a valentine's banquet. It was a huge undertaking, but soooo worth it. Greg and Nicole Sponberg were our entertainment. She was a member of the group Selah, and has a beautiful voice!! Our parish hall was transformed. I couldn't believe how beautiful it was. Ladies from our church were hostesses for the tables, which meant they were in charge of decorating their table. It was so cool to see how unique each table turned out, and yet they were all gorgeous. Here are just a few pictures. We had 23 tables in all so I couldn't include all of them. :)

This one was my table. It is kind of hard to tell by the picture, but my theme was "Every good and perfect gift is from above, James 1:17" Those are packages in the center.

I had to include this - A couple of weeks ago, Maddie lost her first tooth. I can't believe how much older it makes her look!

The tooth fairy was kind enough to let Maddie keep this one, since it was her first. :)

A New Look

Well as you can see, I have changed our look. Thanks to my good friend Shana, I have been introduced to http://www.pyzam.com/. There are literally hundreds of free templates to choose from - which works out great for me because I have some sort of disease. I constantly need some kind of change in my life. When Eric and I were first married, he laughed because he never knew what the house was going to look like when he got home. I don't know what is wrong with me - I just like to rearrange. I love my house and am incredibly thankful for it, but it "stiffles" my creativity. EVERY room has doors and windows situated in such a way that you simply cannot rearrange. There is only one way that the furniture will fit. So, now I have a new outlet. I can just rearrange my blog from time to time. :)

I will say if you are interested, and more computer savvy than I, be careful that you don't delete all your links. That is what I did. I've had to reenter them all and am short a few - Cindy, I need your blog address! I will try to avoid that next time, and there WILL be a next time. :)

A Lesson From the Teacher in Me

OK, this isn't a cute or a fun post, but several people have said they don't know how to leave comments, so I thought I would do a quick lesson. We "bloggers" LOVE reading your comments, don't we Shana?! So, here is how you do it:
At the end of each post you will see "comments" with a number beside it. That number tells you how many comments have been made. You click on "comments." You will see "Leave your comment" and a box with a cursor underneath. Simply type in whatever you want to say. Under that you will see some crazy looking letters that do not spell anything. You do not need to unscramble the letters :) , simply type them beside "word verification" just as they appear. The last thing you need to do is choose an identity. If you have a blogger or a google account, you can sign in and choose this one, if not choose "anonymous." Then you click on "publish your comment" and you are done! It really is pretty easy. Try it, I would love to hear from you!!

Pastry Chefs in Training

Last weekend, Maddie had her friend, Malley, over to spend the night. That of course was a perfect excuse for baking cookies! Here are some pictures of the girls at their finest. The cookies turned out very yummy! I think they make fabulous pastry chefs.

Blessings in Savannah

Alright, I am going to make up for my lack of posts the last couple of weeks with one really long one! Like I said in my last post, we finally took our trip to Savannah this past week. I say that because we planned it a year ago and had to postpone it twice. It turned out that it was perfect timing. Eric's business has been kind of slow lately, so had this not been paid for a year ago, we wouldn't have gotten to go. God blessed us tremendously on this trip. We are learning to bring God into the details of our lives. He loves us and wants us to involve Him in every aspect. It is easy to leave on vacation and leave "prayer time" and "bible time" at home. Through a couple of circumstances that I won't go into, Eric and I spent much of this vacation in prayer, not just between the two of us but also with our children. I think God was pleased because He sent us several blessings along the way. I'll share a few as I go through the pics



The picture above is the townhouse that we stayed in. We stayed on the first floor. The people who own it, live on the 2nd floor half of the year. But, they weren't in town this week. When we got there, the house had not been cleaned from the previous guests. Eric called the owner, who very much apologized. He was ready to put us up in a hotel, but we had already unpacked, so Eric told him it wouldn't be a big deal for us to clean it ourselves. The owner was incredibly thankful and told us that he would send us a refund for one night. (we were to stay 4) As you can see, there was a mail slot in the front door. This fascinated the kids. They were constantly peeking through it.

This is just a pic of the living room. The townhouse is located on Washington Square and is just a block from River Street. It was a fabulous location!

Maddie and Ella are huge Paula Deen fans, so we took a "Paula Deen" tour. Let me back up a bit and say that one of the reasons we chose to go to Savannah was that the girls do love Paula and wanted to eat at The Lady and Sons. But, of all weeks in the year, they were closed Jan. 2-6; the exact days that we would be there! What do you do? Back to the tour, this is Polk's Produce. They helped her get her start by letting her have groceries on credit when she was just starting The Bag Lady

This is the chapel where Paula and Michael were married. I talk as if I know them don't I?

Sorry for the glare, I took this from the bus.

This is in Uncle Bubba's, which is her brother's restaurant. If you look to the left, you can see the prep station that she stands behind in Paula's party(which is filmed here)

Outside of Uncle Bubba's

When we started the tour, the guide told us that we would not be able to drive by Paula's house. She said that neighbors do not like it. So, when we got off at one of the stops along the way, Eric stayed on the bus to talk to the guide. And, in only a way that Eric can, he got her to give him directions to her house. I will say that her directions were terrible and if we had to go by them, we would never have made it. We even called my dad to get him to mapquest the name of the street she had given him. It did not come up. But, we rode around anyway. We turned on this little side street that looked like it headed nowhere. The houses were very small and very plain. We saw a little old woman checking her mail, so Eric rolled down his window to ask her if she knew where this road was. She had never heard of it, so then Eric said, "Do you know where the Paula Deen residence is?" She pointed to the end of the street and said, "Right there." Now this may not seem like much, but for us it was a sweet little blessing from above. Maddie was thrilled that she got to see Paula's house. And, I love how God just led us there!

This is taken from River Street. The kids loved watching the huge boats go by.

We ate some really good seafood while we were there. I am sure that I gained five pounds while we were there, but I am not checking the scale! This is Maddie eating a raw oyster. Now, she is like me in almost every way. But, she does not get this from me. That is all Eric! He was really excited to have someone to eat oysters with.

This was taken in Washington Square which was right out our front door. Maddie took this picture. She has discovered photography. If she asked me once, she asked me a thousand times if she could take a picture. I just may hand this job over to her soon. It looks like she might be pretty good at it!

We did a carriage ride one night. The kids LOVED riding on the carriage, and Eric and I really enjoyed hearing some of the history of the city.

Maddie practicing her princess wave

There was a "bar" inside the townhouse, and Maddie and Ella loved sitting there to drink their "coffee".

They thought they were quite the pair.

Sunday morning, we got up and packed up the car. We were going to eat a late breakfast and head to Tybee Island to see Ft. Pulaski before we headed home. We just couldn't find anywhere in Savannah that peeked our interest for breakfast, so we decided to head on over to Tybee. We saw several places before we noticed this "hole in the wall" place called The Breakfast Club with a line out the door. We figured if there was a line, it must be worth a try. We sat down and ordered. Then I looked up at the window. I punched Eric's arm and asked him who that was, just to make sure I wasn't seeing things. Sure enough, in walks Jamie Deen with his wife and son to have some breakfast too! They sat one table away from us. Eric discreetly took this picture. I was too afraid to. When we walked out Eric looked at him and said, "Now are y'all gonna be open tomorrow?" His response was, "Yes, thank goodness, it has been a long week!" Eric and I had already been discussing that it would be great to stay one more night so that we could eat at The Lady and Sons, so Eric called the owner of the town home and asked him if that would be ok. He said he would love for us to. Now, remember he was going to refund one night anyway, so now we were getting to stay an extra night for free! Another sweet blessing.

We did still go to Ft. Pulaski before we headed back to unload enough stuff to get us through the night. :)

Because we had done the Paula Deen tour, we had a pass to be able to call and get a reservation without standing in line. So, we were able to get in at 11:00 which is when they open. When they open, this lady comes out and rings the dinner bell and yells, "come and get it!" How cute is that? Had we not had reservations right when they opened we would have missed that!

Our waitress took our picture.

I had to take a picture of the food. It's making you hungry right?! It really was delicious and a perfect ending to a wonderful vacation. I think I will invite God to go along every time!

We are still here

Hey all - Just wanted to get in a quick post to let everyone know the Hildebrands are still here! We got back Monday from a vacation to Savannah. I'll do a post with lots of pictures when I have more than five minutes. I have a prayer request for anyone willing. After a discussion with our pediatrician and an appointment with a Dr. who deals more with behavior disorders, we are convinced that Ethan has an autism spectrum disorder. Autism presents itself in sooooo many different ways, that is just a "blanket" term. I brought home a very large stack of papers describing the different approaches we could take. We have decided to go slowly and try one thing at a time. Starting with his diet seemed to be the best place to start for us. I have spent the last 2 days cleaning out my pantry and fridge. I have a book of acceptable foods. So I have to check off absolutely everything, right down to his toothpaste! Please pray that we will all be disciplined enough to do this and that Ethan would understand that we are trying to help him. Thanks bunches!!!! More later