sucess!

Well friends, I did it! I successfully went out of town, stayed the night, enjoyed myself, and came home to what I left.

~~~sigh~~~

I was so very nervous, more than I am afraid to admit.

I have never left Emily overnight. Tried once last year, it ended in failure and a trip to the er.

I can not tell how much this trip to Women of Faith helped my soul.

I missed Emily but I did not worry (Much ;))

She was well, happy and I had lots of pictures texted to me.

She did great and slept ok(ish) and ate most of her food.

All the things I worry about.

To be able to have a girls weekend, enjoy fellowship with 33 members from our church and 10,000 women in one arena was amazing!

Our group!

Michelle, Angie, and myself.

Jordan, refused to conform and wear pink.

My best-friend. Angie, it's a good picture!

At one point they had us all hold hands. In the row in front of us were a mother and daughter, Sha and Vicki. I just love this picture!

Worshipping.

I was so excited to hear Angie Smith speak. She has a blog and has written a book about loosing her daughter. She just started on the women of faith tour this year.

She is a fantastic speaker and so real! She had us laughing and then the next second crying.

I had already read her first book about the lose of her daughter and I bought her 2nd book while we were there.

It is about fear.

How appropriate, huh?

As a mother to a little girl with lots going on, I fear a lot.

What happens to her when I am gone?

What if we loose her 2nd insurance?

What if Joe lost his job?

What if we lost Joe, how will I provide for her?

What if I get hurt and can't take care of her?

What if I have to put her in a home one day?

What is she is a statistic and does not make it though childhood?

How would I live without her?

This list really is overwhelming but sadly I think about these things often.

Telling myself to trust in the Lord, He will provide, does not comfort me as people say it should.

Praying does not take those fears away either and telling me they are irrational will just make me angry at you.

They are mine and they are all real!

I have to learn a healthy way to control them.

So I was pretty pumped when I got to meet Angie Smith!

AHHH, I know right. I wanted to scream too but I totally had to play it cool.

I wanted to say many things but I am afraid it all came out in one word.

Ohmygoshyouaresuchablessingthankyousomuchforbeingsohonestandopen...breath.

She just smiles and asked a few questions about Emily.

I know she is just a person but i got to meet her!!

ok I am over it now ;)

I came home to a happy girl ready to eat her spaghetti!

Bathtime followed!

We even had a shirt made for Emily.

Sunday, Joe let me sleep for a few hours in the other room. Emily was up for a while and he knew how tired I was.

I went to get them up for church and this is what I found.

Yes, I crawled in bed and snuggled!

I love them!



Happy Father's Day

Father's Day is very bitter sweet for me.

I love it because I get to celebrate the wonderful father that Joe is. Emily is lucky to have such a devoted and loving daddy.

It is hard because my biological father has not really even been in my life. I think I was 11 or 12 the last time I saw him (which was in the court house).

My step-dad, Mark, came into our lives when I was just 7. He really is the only father I have ever known.

Sadly, I lost him 3 years ago next month.

I often wonder how things would be now if Mark was still alive.

If you really knew Mark you know he could be loud, rough, and he cussed constantly! BUT, he was always there for us! Every time me and my sister moved he helped, every time our car broke down he would help us fix it.

He was literally cleaning his shot gun when my first date picked me up!

He was protective of us!

He NEVER turned his back on us.

More than anything he loved us!

I wish he could have met Emily.

He will one day though.

So, today I will focus on the wonderful father Joe is.

I think a lot of times special needs father's don't get enough credit. They are expected to be strong all the time. Most of the work outside of the house.

They miss out on a lot of things because they are working 50-60 hour work weeks to make ends meet. If you did not know raising a child is very expensive when you add tons of medicine, therapy visits, multiple specialists, equipment and specialty toys if can get VERY expensive.

Joe works hard for us.

On the weekends Emily knows that is her daddy time.

Her face lights up when he talks, I am pretty sure she thinks he hung the moon.

Thank you, Joe, for doing all that you do for me and Emily.

Thank you for loving us just where we are.

We love you so much!!

Happy Father's Day!



Marry me...again?

7 years ago I married my best friend.

From the moment I met you I told everyone that I was going to marry you. They thought I was joking.

They told me "don't do it", "you don't know him well enough", "it is just lust", "it won't last".

There has NEVER been a doubt in my mind that you were the one.

It's the little things you do that show me how much you love me.

Leaving me notes around the house, letting me sleep in on the weekends, and the way you love Emily.

You love me at my worst and help me to be my best.

 

I would not want to go though what we do with anyone else.

We do not have a typical marriage, our live is not typical. We have to fight for things most couples don't. We take nothing for granted and are thankful for every minute we have.

Joe, I would marry you over and over again.

I love you!

more updates

Two posts in one day!! AHHH!

Emily is doing much better the past few days. She is finally over the uti and her first TWO teeth have broken through. I thought this girl would never have teeth. She now has two bottom teeth that came one right after the other.

She is still having clusters of spasms and a few seizures daily. The past few days her seizures have been down to 3 or fewer.

So now we know that a uti and teething are seizure triggers for Emily. Now we are dealing with biting. Fun.

Visually, Emily is really progressing. She is seeing so much better and is tracking and following more objects. Used to you would have to introduce something to her from the side and hope it would catch her attention but now we can start closer to mid line.

Another big thing is she is interested in the TV! She does not care for therapy so her PT suggested we turn on cartoons, I laughed to myself because she has never been interested in cartoons before, well she proved me wrong! She loved it and we got through PT without any major melt downs!

A friend gave us some DVDs to try and she loves them!

Here are a couple pics of her watching TV.

She really likes baby Einstein.

Emily and her daddy watching videos on the computer.

I want to get her an ipad so badly. I know she would love it!

We are weaning her topamax slowly and when she is off of that she will only be on phenobarb. We are defiantly seeing more of Emily since we began weaning meds. She is pretty happy but she is very opinionated if she does not like something. Especially when she is tired.

She finally broke the 20 pound mark! She has always been on the small side and now that she is on the ketogenic diet she does not gain weight very quickly. She is small but proportionate.

We did get Emily's bath chair. We decided to go with the Rifton Blue wave bath chair with a tub stand to make it taller when we need it. Emily seems to enjoy it and it supports her so much better.

All of the support straps are movable. We don't use the chest and leg straps because she does not move enough to use them yet. She loves kicking her legs in the water.

We also got her stroller. We decided to go with the Special tomato EIO. I don't have a great picture of it yet. There are many reason we chose it. It holds up to 90lbs and it reclines all the way back so she can sleep. We also got the special tomato soft touch liners to support her better and they can also be removed and used in a chair for more support later.

So far I am very pleased with it. I wish it had a bigger basket under the chair to hold her diaper bag. We carry so much stuff when we go anywhere.

So that is pretty much it. Oh and I turned 30.

Looking forward to some more good days.

Not too bad

Things here are going ok. Emily had over 2 1/2 days with no seizures, just spasms, but they returned.

They are much much fewer and seem to be weaker.

Emily's seizures are not always what they seem. Not all of the things that look like seizures show up as seizure activity on an eeg. There are subtle differences that we are learning over time. Most of the time when she has an actual seizure she is dazed and very quite and you can't bring her out of it. The other thing she does that looks like seizure activity can be stopped by blowing in her face or doing something else to get her attention and she also does not get dazed and still will interact with us.

She is starting to hold her head up pretty consistently with the exception of seizures and when she is sleepy. She does not require max assist to set up, she still requires assistance but I think that within a few months she may be pretty close to setting by herself.

She is getting stronger everyday and her vision has improved tremendously. Some days are better than others but it is amazing to see her seeing things, she looks with this amazement and I love it!!

We got to go to church as a family for the first time in months. It was so nice to see everyone and Emily did great. She got overstimulated with worship music but we set in the front row ( you know the closer to the front the closer to God right? haha) so I think next time I will keep her out until the last song is on and slowly get her used to it. After church our friend Rebecca took us out for lunch and Emily still did great. I was nervous because she has been quite vocal lately but she sat quickly and watched football on tv.

Speaking of football, we love college football, specifically Louisville Cardinals. Eh, not the best team and they did not beat the rival team, Kentucky, but we still love them.

 We got Emily ready for the game!

On the sleep front: she is still not sleeping much at night, hence the blog post at 2:30am. Sucks but we have a nurse 4 days a week so I sleep then. I literally can sleep anytime of the day. If you knew me prior to having Emily you know that I LOVED sleep. I looked forward to sleep. I bought a 1200 thread count sheet to make my sleep better.  Oh well she is worth it.

It was so nice to have Joe home for a 3 day weekend. We got real spoiled and last night I was putting Emily in her pj's and Joe was kissing her good night and she almost started crying because he was leaving the room. It was the sweetest thing. She loves her daddy. I am so thankful Joe is so helpful, I know a lot of dads that are not or they work out of state or they just are not around. It takes a very strong women to raise a child with so many needs alone. I do not take a single moment for granted.

Hope you all had a wonderful weekend.

Soooooo

I did not quite make it to the women of faith conference.

I did get to go shopping with the girls at an outlet mall and check into the hotel but that is as far as I got.

Joe took off work to stay with Emily and he called while I was shopping and told me she had been seizing and he had given her just about all the meds he could. I told him to give her the last dose and call the on-call neuro.

So I am sure you can guess the rest of the story. I made it home pretty quickly  and met him in the ER and they admitted her.

IV steroids and Valium did not do a lot to help but we did find out that her labs are off. Because of the zonegran and the ketogenic diet she has metabolic acidosis the short description is-----metabolic acidosis is a condition that occurs when the body produces too much acid or when the kidneys are not removing enough acid from the body. If unchecked, metabolic acidosis leads to acidemia, i.e., blood pH is low (less than 7.35) due to increased production of hydrogen by the body or the inability of the body to form bicarbonate (HCO3-) in the kidney.

We are now taking her off the zonegran, she has been on it for several months and have not seen enough improvement and we added sodium bicarb.

We also are going to retry topamax. The 1st time she tried it she stopped eating and at that point she did not have her g-tube.

On Friday she had over 166 seizures and yesterday she had 83. That is a 50% reduction.

We are also going to adjust her ketogenic diet to allow more protein and see if that helps with some more seizure control.

Joe did such a great job on Friday, checking into the ER with Emily is no small task! I am thankful to have such a hands on husband. I just hate that we feel so confined to home. I was so afraid and nervous to leave and all this did was make those fears worse. So no trips for momma any time soon!

Momma's weekend

I am leaving Friday morning to go with a group of women from my church , along with Emily's nurse Courtney, and we are to the Women of Faith conference. 

I have been several times before and it has always been an amazing experience.

I have to be honest though, this is my very first time to spend the night away from Emily and I am super nervous about it.

Emily's grandma and grandpa (Lonnie and Brenda) will be coming down Friday evening to stay the weekend to help Joe out.

Thankfully since she is still on the ketogenic diet I can make her meals out before I leave so Joe does not have to worry about that.

I know she will be fine with them I just think it is more me that I am worried about. I hate being away from her and since she has been diagnosed with epilepsy I don't think I have spent more than a couple hours away.

Please pray for Emily and that she will have a boring uneventful weekend. Pray for safety for everyone traveling to Indianapolis.

I am looking forward to sleeping straight through the night! I may end up trying to put a paci in someones mouth in the middle of the night though. :)

I am also really looking forward to just spending some time with my Jesus. It can be really hard to focus on Him while I am doing everything else with Emily. I know this is an area I need to work on. This will be a good weekend for everyone.

Also the DME guy is coming out tomorrow so we can pick out a stroller/wheelchair and a shower chair for Emily. It will be an interesting meeting because I do not want the chair he thinks is best for Emily. I do not want a chair that looks like a wheelchair, not yet. She is only one and I know this sounds vain but they have so many other medical strollers that will work.

shhh I am whispering this-no seizures yesterday!!! yay.

Have a great weekend everyone!!!

Just here

Emily has been doing good that past couple days. Minimal seizures, no extra rescue meds and spasms are pretty low too. That is all good!

She is super sleepy though which is not good.  She sleeps through most, if not all, of her therapy which does little to nothing for her. It gives me an hour to talk with an adult (which is nice by the way) but for Emily all it does is stretch her and she has such low tone I am not sure she really even needs that.

We changed meds a couple times and I am working on her diet. She is still on the ketogenic diet but now she is on all food. What she does not eat I just put down her tube. It is much quicker than giving her 6 ounces of formula over an hour and she is not gassy at all either! I am learning things that seem to help, for instance it seems when she has a meal with higher protein she does not have as many seizures. So I have been trying to give her more of those meals the past two days. Seems to work, who knows with Emily though.

When she is awake she is pretty happy. We are still getting some smiles and occasionally some laughs out of her.

Joe's grandma and grandpa came in for a visit last weekend. Joe adores his grandparents and he tells me so many wonderful stories about her grandpa. They are such sweet people.  They only stayed for a couple hours to visit with us and Joe's mom, step-dad, brother and sister. It was nice having family visiting. Emily of course slept the whole thing but we got some great pictures.

 He has the best smile!

4 generations.

Lately

It has been a pretty eventful week or so.

Emily's seizures were still pretty frequent after her last hospital stay so Last Monday I called her neurologist to talk about what is next and we decided to bring her in to do a couple days of IV steroids. In the past it has always worked very good for her.

It seemed that they got worse this time. We made a few med changes and sped up the process of switching her to food from formula. She is still on the ketogenic diet I just make her meals now instead of the ketocal formula. Personally i think that has made a difference. She is not nearly as gassy and hardly spits up at all.

She is eating at least a portion of each meal and what she does not eat I just put down her tube.

We finally have stopped her clonazepam and as of Monday she will be off her lamictal too. I never saw any side effects of the lamictal but we also never saw an improvement.

Stopping the clonezepam has been such a blessing though! Emily is so much more alert and you can see in her eyes that she is seeing more too!

On Saturday while I was sleeping Joe got a video with his cell phone of Emily laughing. It is the most awesome thing ever! She has not laughed (awake) in so so long! Joe said that he opened his pop can and she cracked up so he snapped his fingers and she laughed again. He then coughed and she was laughing so hard all she could do was squeal! She has done this two nights in a row now. I got a video but it is too long. I will work on getting a shorter one to upload.

She is also resting so much better. She is sleeping at least part of the night since we got home and just seems much more rested when she wakes up.

Since leaving the hospital her seizures have gone down to 5-10 per day plus her spasms. They are super short too.

It was a long hospital stay and it always sucks but since Emily has been in so many times we have really gotten to know a lot of the staff and it is nice to have friends while we are there. People that set down and pray with us and for her or just set down and talk. There are a couple of night shift nurses we have grown to love, Alisha and Stephanie kept me company many nights and I am thankful they love Emily and take such good care of her. There are so many people there that love her!

I had a couple rough days in the hospital watching my baby seize over and over for hours on end. Over the last week I have had a couple of wonderful emails from parents who understand, I know I am not alone in these emotions.

On a completely different note...

I was thinking about my post a little while back where I was just honest and raw with my emotions. While I am terribly sad that people have chosen to remove themselves from our lives I am much more sad for them. They are missing the opportunity to get to know an amazing little girl. Emily is such a blessing and to see her smile and laugh brings such joy to my heart.

Thank you all so much for the prayers

Happy Father's Day!

Emily has an amazing father. I know I am biased but he really is a great dad!

Being a parent of a child that has special needs it hard. Much harder than I ever thought it would be.

Emily does not show her love like "typical" kids do. She may not crawl, roll over or play with toys but we know she loves her daddy!

When he comes home from work everyday she hears the kitchen door open and she turns her head in that direction knowing her daddy will be walking in soon.

As soon as he says one word her face lights up and soon to follow is usually a big ole grin!

Thank you Joe for being the daddy that God has chosen you to be.

I love this song! You may not be chasing monster from under her bed but you sure do chase a "monster" from her!!

I love you daddy -pretty pretty!

impressive

Emily continues to impress me daily with the little things she is doing!

Yesterday, she was laying on the couch and her paci fell out and the nurse was getting ready to put in back in her mouth but Emily beat her to it and was trying so hard to push it back in her mouth! With a little assistance she finally got it.

Then she had OT , while I was sleeping, and Joe said that they laid her flat on her belly and Emily lifted her head off the ground for 5 seconds!! She also held a rattle in her right hand for a little bit.

The night before last I sneezed and she jumped and then stuck her bottom lip out because she was startled! She never gets startled or reacts to most loud noises.

All of these things are progress. This makes us very excited to see her learning new things!!

Everything on the seizure front is still going great!! I can't believe its been 11 days now. I honestly never thought we would see a week, now she is almost to 2 weeks!!! I pray that this lasts through her birthday party.

Speaking of which, just reminding everyone her party is Sunday at our church at 3pm. Everyone is welcome and if you are coming please email, call or comment so that I have a head count for dessert.

On Sunday I had plans to go out with my friend , Angie, to get some birthday party supplies and Joe was going to stay home with Emily so I did not have to take her out. He got up with her at 4:30am so that I could get some sleep before I went out. I am so thankful that he did that too!

It was so great to get out of the house but before I left they both fell asleep in our bed. It was the sweetest thing every. Of course I got picture of it!! I am a blogger now! Ha!!

My two favorite people!!

Is that not the sweetest picture ever!! They look so much alike here too.

yea right

This is a picture of Emily I took yesterday a couple hours after she got her first dose of chloral hydrate. As you can tell the last thing she was was sleepy! She was talking and what I call singing NOT SLEEPING!! Hey at least she was happy.

Then after that she did not really ever sleep much until after 4pm. She needs her sleep so badly and I don't know what to do. I guess we will have to increase the dose. I hate giving her so much meds!!!

So far tonight she is sleeping but how long is the million dollar question.

Busy busy day tomorrow so I am praying for sleep, at least a couple hours.

My dear sweet husband was my hero yesterday. I finally got to go to sleep at 6am and I asked him just to let me sleep 6 or 7 hours, that would have been noon or 1pm. When he came in to wake me I could have sworn that I had only slept 2 hours and he said it was 4pm!! I slept for 10 hours!!!

The sad thing is that I honestly could have slept 10 more. haha

Sleep? and a little random

After the night we had the other day yesterday was quite refreshing!

Emily slept a lot more, which I am sure is due to enormous amount of drugs she had in her system. Sleep was good though that meant I got to sleep more too. I do love sleep.

I think it is borderline sinful really. Before Emily I could not wait for Saturday morning when I could sleep as long as I wanted, seriously noon, 1 o'clock was not out of the ordinary for me. I could sleep an entire day away if I was allowed.

Not so much now :) Although I adore my reason for not sleeping, she is quite a little cutie pie, I do miss it most days.

Sleep is a daily conversation with Joe and I. Everyday he asks if I got any sleep. A few days a week I get to sleep in with Emily. She has two therapies per week but only one comes in the morning. Yesterday I just had a phone interview with medicare. Which reminds me (new subject now)

I spent two hours on the phone applying for medicare/medicaid (can never remember which one is which) and I was so surprised at how nice and sweet they were.

I spoke with one girl most of the time and she was sweet as pie and when our conversation was over before she transferred me to the social worker she said " I really enjoyed our conversation, you were very nice to interview and I will pray for Emily and your family I just know she will be ok one day"

I was taken aback because most of the time it is just not pc to say that. You could tell that they genuinely wanted to help Emily. It was nice to not have to fight to get something for her for once. Which reminds me we got a new home health company!!! YIPPEE NO more crappy home health!

The new company brought the pump we wanted, which weighs one pound and comes with a little backpack we can take with us and it come with a super light portable pole. Together it weighs maybe 3lbs.

Emily has been a little "high maintenance" too. She has really wanted to be held a lot more. I am pretty sure she is teething now. Every time I pick her up she bites my shoulder or anything else that comes near her mouth, good thing so does not have teeth now huh? HA! She is super drooly (is that even a word-i am pretty tired and a little slap happy too) She will have teeth one day or so I keep telling myself.

Last night when Joe went to bed Emily kept yelling Dada and he could come back and tell her goodnight again and she just kept up. It was very sweet, she really loves her daddy.

sched

This weekend was pretty uneventful for us here in the Rollins' house.

On the weekends Joe really helps out a ton! That mean sleep for mommy!

Emily is such a night owl, normally she won't go to sleep until somewhere between 4-6am. Yup you read that correct. It is currently 2am and she is no where ready to fall asleep.

Everyone keeps telling me to sleep when she sleeps. That would be ideal BUUUT her schedule in the morning is a little busy.

I get up between 6-7am to take her off her feeding pump.

9am meds, g-tube care, change diaper.

10am check blood sugar, bolus her tube feeding (since she is sound asleep)

Fridays she has PT at 11am

2pm bottle or tube fed

3pm meds, g-tube care

6pm bottle

Mondays she has OT at 6:30pm

8pm make the formula for the next day

9pm meds and bath, g-tube care

10pm bottle

1230 am start tube feeding

3am change tube feeding(it clogs if I put to much in at a time)

start all over again.

Plus I have to make appts, talk with home health, nurses, insurance, people wanting their money (ha!) and at some point during the day I have to eat. So my point is I love the weekends!

Joe gets up around 6am and let me sleep as a long as I want to. Yesterday I slept until 1:30pm! It was pretty heavenly, plus he does lighten my load too with helping out a lot with all of Emily's care.

So this weekend I changed out Emily's clothes from winter to spring and summer clothes. I love summer clothes for little girls, they are just too darn cute!

Emily did not have a seizure free weekend but the few seizures she did have were super short, I think the longest was 15-20 seconds, but most of them were under 5 seconds. Before the ketogenic diet she would have countless seizures in clusters for hours so we have seen a HUGE improvement.

She has gotten such a personality to her lately too. Joe was holding her and he laid her down on the couch for a little bit and she laid there saying dada over and over until he picked her back up. She definitely has daddy wrapped around that tiny finger!

Also Joe and are such procrastinators. We just got out taxes done. On our defense we have been in the hospital a ton lately and that was the last thing on our minds. Since Emily was up until 10am that morning she slept through the whole thing!

Doctor, doctor, doctor!

Between Emily and myself we had 3 doctor appointments yesterday!

I was very nervous about driving with Emily by myself but it all went well.

I did not realize how much stuff I needed to take for a day out. I had 2 diaper bags packed plus her backpack with her feeding pump and my purse. There is just so much stuff that could go wrong and if I forget something important it could mean a trip to the ER.

First up was Emily's neurologist. The appointment was pretty uneventful. Same ole same ole. Her 3rd round of genetic testing (lumbar puncture) was normal. We are waiting for one more test to come back though. They did check her carnitine level. (click the word for the long explanation)

Carnitine plays a critical role in energy production. It transports long-chain fatty acids into the mitochondria so they can be oxidized ("burned") to produce energy. It also transports the toxic compounds generated out of this cellular organelle to prevent their accumulation. Given these key functions, carnitine is concentrated in tissues like skeletal and cardiac muscle that utilize fatty acids as a dietary fuel.

Emily's was a little low so we are starting her on a supplement to bump that up.

The neurologist was very pleased about Emily's progress with talking and her alertness. She of course, in true Emily fashion, would not wake up for him. I honestly think he has seen her awake a couple times. We go back in a month and he said hopefully by then we will have an appt to go to Cleavland.

Joe called while I was parking and said his work was sending people home (involuntary) for the day and he got cut so he was going to be able to come to all the appts and help me (YAY for help but BOO for no money). Speaking of daddy he is a quick video of Emily saying dada. I think it is around 21 sec where she says it the best. She has him wrapped around her little finger. WARNING: Be prepared to turn your volume down! She gets so loud! Its funny but loud. I warned ya!

Next up was my appointment. My blood pressure has been high and the med I was on was not working any longer. So new med. Done.

While I had my appt Joe took Emily next door to her pediatrician to see if she needed reflux meds. The answer was we don't know yet. HA! The reason is that we have a very long appt with the main pediatrician next week. Because of Emily's needs we needed one with a little more experience with Emily's condition. So we are going to wait until we see her plus that gives us a little more time to see if it is truly reflux.

Beautiful week ahead so hopefully we can get out and to the park!!

Happy Anniversary!

Yesterday was mine and Joe's 6th wedding anniversary, and we spent it in the hospital.

Needless to say this is not how we expected to spend this day. It is ok because I would spend as much time as I had to to help Emily get better.

6 years ago Joe and I along with his mom and step-dad, my mom and step-dad, and my best friend and her husband went down to Gatlinburg for our wedding.

We got married in a beautiful chalet on top of the mountain. Me and my best friend Angie decorated the chalet with white Christmas lights and tulle, tons of white candles of all shapes and sizes, and rose petals all over the place.

It was perfect!

We came back home and had a fun reception with the rest of the family and friends who could not make it to our wedding.

Funny thing though, when we returned to our rental house the electricity was shut off. I called and they said we never paid our deposit and no one was available to turn it on until the next day.

It was cold and very dark but we made it haha. I still swear we never got a bill!!

Joe and I met at work. I was working in a hospital in Louisville and Joe had just moved here. The moment I saw him I knew he was different than anyone else I have ever dated.

I asked him to lunch one day and the rest was history!

Our first date we walked around the waterfront then went back to my apartment and watched sweet home Alabama, he was such a gentleman.

The next day I went to work and told all of my friends that I was going to marry that man! No one thought I was serious but I really was.

We began dating Oct. 24 and we were engaged Nov. 16th. We were married March 16th 2004.

Our marriage has not been a piece of cake. We have gone through several struggles. We have suffered infertilty and the loss of a pregnancy. Most recent we are struggling with our precious Emily's diagnosis of infantile spasms.

"There is no one else in the world I would rather go through this with"

Joseph Edward Rollins,

I love you more today than I could have ever imagined loving someone. You are truly my best friend. Some days when I am nothing more than just a puddle you become my rock. You are my hero and I honestly have no idea what I would possibly do without you. I promised you on March 16th 2004 to love you no matter what, sickness and health, til death do us part and I meant every single word! You are an amazing dad. Emily looks at you with such love and amazement. She adores you almost as much as I do. Thank you for loving me even when I am horrible and moody and don't deserve it. Thank you for being my provider, cheering section, companion, comfort, hand to hold, baby daddy :), and my lover. My world is complete with you and Emily.

Thank you God for my wonderful family!