Happy Birthday Madi--a day late!

Monday,December 30th 1996, Madison Noel Gourley was born at 5:15 A.M.(which means I was in labor all night!). She weighed 7lbs, 8oz. and was BALD! Since then she has grown some hair and is now in the 5th grade.
Yesterday for her birthday she had her good friends over, Sydney, Audrey, and Erica to play in the afternoon and then her Uncle Ray and grandparents came over for dinner. After dinner Shannon, a.k.a. Sha Sha, came over for a sleepover. We had celebrated her birthday earlier in the month with cake and presents, so today was just a day to enjoy with family and friends and celebrate being 11. As her younger sisters say, Madi is now a pre-teen! Oh No! We are definitely not ready for what's in store, but we are excited to see what God has planned!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY MADI
WE LOVE YOU!

The Perfect Presents

Merry Christmas everyone...it's me, Madi. This Christmas I didn't know what to think at all. Merrill and Mollie slept in my room on Christmas Eve. I talked Merrill out of waiting for Santa..but still we couldn't fall asleep. Finally, around 12pm we hit the hay. Mollie had fallen asleep about 10 pm on the floor. In the morning when we all finally were awake, we opened presents. Starting with one of those new ipod nanos for me! Then came Merrill's video camera and Mollie's pink DS. When we went to stockings we got lots of other cool gifts. Then we insisted Mom and Dad open presents next. They did. Then came all the other presents. But four special gifts made this Christmas great. #1 the ipod. #2 the Wii. #3, a box full of puppy things and a puppy. A beautiful black lab. And #4 is Jesus. Who came along a long time ago. He was born of the earth from a virgin, named Mary. Later on, which is what we call Easter, years later from this birth, Jesus died from our sins. Now that is a great present. If you want to know more about the puppy, my mom's post under this explains it. Well, I wiss everyone a Late Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Our Christmas Surprise!

Merry Christmas...a couple of days late! We have had a few fun days playing with new gadgets, (still figuring them all out), visiting with family, and eating lots of yummy food. However, the few days before Christmas found myself and Madi in bed very sick! But thanks to our favorite Dr. and some prayers we were able to roll out of bed and make it to our Christmas Eve service at church. By Christmas morning we were much better.
This Christmas was special for a few reasons, one, it is the last Christmas we will spend in this house (hopefully), and it was our first Christmas without Cocoa in 5 years. So as you can imagine the girls (and Dean and I) were pretty emotional when the girls opened a box filled with a green leash, collar, and a book about Labs. At first they weren't sure what to think, but then we explained that a couple of weeks ago we had picked out a black male lab puppy for our family. He isn't quite ready to come live with us yet, but very soon, maybe by this weekend or early next week. So yesterday we headed out and visited our new puppy for the first time. When we arrived at the owner's home they had just let the puppies (all 11 of them) outside for their first time ever! We spent about an hour playing with our new puppy and his siblings and visiting with the owners. Merrill was able to capture some video of our visit on her new flip video recorder, and she made this movie earlier today, very cool!! Now we just have to decide on a NAME!!!

Happy 6th Birtrhday BIG MO!

I can't believe it! Mollie is 6 years old today. Our family had fun at dinner time looking and reading through Mollie's baby book. She was born at 1:08p.m. on a Thursday. Big sisters and grandma and grandpa were the first one's to greet us in our room at the hospital. The first gift I recorded that she received was a soft, pink blanket from our sweet friends Kristin and Shane and MaKenna, which also happens to be the same stinky, ugly blanket that she still sleeps with today! It is unrecognizable!! But that is for another post:) It's fun to think back on all of that (now that I get a full 8 hrs. asleep each night, and if I don't it's my own fault) and think about our young family of girls.
Today we decided to celebrate Mollie's birthday after Kindergarten with her V.B.F.F.L. Jordan Randolph. We ate lunch at Mollie's favorite restaurant, McDonald's, and headed to "Build-A-Bear", which was more like "Build-A-Bunny". After much indecision Mollie chose the same Bunny as Jordan and then they picked out coordinated outfits in pink and black for their "bunny twins." They are fun girls to hang out with, they enjoy each other so much, God has definitely given them a special friendship which started from the very beginning of their lives.
Happy Birthday BIG MO!
We love you smooch!

Closing Day!

We signed all the papers today to close on our construction loan. Now what you ask? Now our builder can get to building and digging and all that stuff that takes money. However, we will see how fast this starts due to the small mountain of snow that fell on the ground this past weekend!!

For Cocoa and Harley, our WonderDogs!

Yesterday marked the 6 week anniversary of the departure of our beloved dogs, Cocoa and Harley. They took off for a walk together and we have not seen them since. We would have had Cocoa for 6 years this coming April, Cocoa was 3 months old when we drove to Southern Indiana and picked her up, the same age as our little Mollie. As far as the girls are concerned we had Cocoa most of their lives. And so now life without Cocoa has been heartbreaking to say the least.
Harley came to us by way of The Timmons this past spring, when Brock spotted Harley on the side of the road and talked his dad into picking him up, in hopes to find a home for him of course. So we willingly took Harley off of their hands. As far as our vet could tell Harley was a Bernese Mountain dog, less than a year old. He was a great dog. He and Cocoa hit if off right away.

So after many, many, many, prayers that continue daily, fliers, phone calls, drives looking for our beloved dogs I finally right this blog. I love the fact that my girls have all this love they want to share with animals and I know they get it honestly from their father. I think he has been rubbing off on me too because I have never loved an animal in my life until Cocoa and surprisingly I fell in love with Harley right away too.

We have no idea what has happened to our dogs, but I do know that many tears have been shed for them and that they were very loved, what more could a dog ask for!!

A night at the Symphony!

It was magical, beautiful, wonderful. We headed downtown Indianapolis to go (for our first time) to Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra's Yuletide Celebration. As we drove downtown we admired all the decorations and Monument Circle's Tree of Lights. We parked and walked to the Hilbert Circle Theatre where we were greeted by Reindeer! The City was beautiful with people taking carriage rides and walking downtown enjoying the Christmas attractions. We entered the Beautiful Theatre and we found our seats. As we waited for the lights to dim and the curtain to go up, I watched the girls, they looked beautiful in their new dresses with their hair done, so "grown-up" as they browsed through their program given to them by the usher who greeted us. We were so excited to see what was about to happen on the stage below us. Sandi Patty was the host and let me tell you, she looked beautiful, and her voice was amazing. She did an incredible job and what we were so amazed with was the 10 or so gowns that she transformed in. Every time she left the stage she appeared in a new amazingly gorgeous dress, with diamonds, glitter, trains, beautiful! And she was so fast!! However, that was only the beginning, because the African Children's Choir was the special guest this year for the show. They were WONDERFUL. The children were very involved in the show and show much FUN to watch, it was beautiful to hear them sing praises of our Lord and Saviour Jesus. The other special treat was one that will not be there for every performance so they did not promote it. Ben Utecht from the Indianapolis Colts showed up in his "Colts Blue" Tuxedo for a duet with Ms. Sandi Patty, she of course, was wearing a beautiful "Colts Blue" gown at this time with lots of diamonds, and it was fabulous. She walked off the stage with a white fur given to her by Mr. Utecht that proudly had his name and number on the back in lots of glitter!! Very Fun! And that was all before intermission. The show ended with the telling of the story of Jesus' birth, it was beautifully done. After the show we headed home and made a dessert stop at Steak and Shake, don't you love that Steak and Shake is open so late! (We even saw Tom and Terry Camp there, Jeremy's parents)
So this is where I would show you all the beautiful pictures that I took of the girls and the lights and the theatre. Where you would see pictures of me and Dean looking, might I say, the best we may have ever looked (wink, wink) But, unfortunately, when my parents stopped by before we were leaving to take all these beautiful shots I realized my battery to my camera was going DEAD and this is the ONLY picture that we have of the night. I am so sad about this, hopefully I have learned my lesson. Today we go get our tree and my battery is FULL.