Cafe de Valentine

Natalie over at http://www.onceuponacline.com/ did this a few months back and I made a mental note to do it in the near future. I'm Melissa Valentine and I'm the author this here blog. I am rapidly approaching 30years old, and i don't really care to talk about that. I am married to Mr. Valentine and we have a puppy named Indie that we adopted January 2009. We were married in the same church my parents were married in here in Fresno CA in 2006. We still reside here in Fresno. We met at Redwood Christian Park summer camp in July 2005 where I worked for 4 summers and the summer I left he worked there, I went up for a week to help out and the rest is history. We were both dating other people at the time, but neither were meant to be. We didn't actually start dating until Dec that year and by April we were engaged and married in August 2006. I was born in Oakland, CA and hubs was born here in the valley. I did some college for 3 years and have enough credits in just about e...

as 2009 is coming to an end, thanksgiving has passed us by, and christmas prep is in full swing; i wanted to take just a second to give thanks. i wanted to do this last week, but hubs and i actually were able to spend each evening together running errands, cooking, planning black friday shopping trips, and decorating our house; so it will have to be a week late. in no particular order what-so-ever i'd like to share with you the things that i'm ever so thankful for. both big and small. *my stead fast faith. it still shocks me that there are people who think that they can face this world alone. i can't. i know this, i embrace this, and i'm so thankful that i don't have to. God is good, i am not. *my fantabulous husband. he keeps me calm when i'm stressed, he keeps me laughing when i'm frustrated, he keeps me guessing when i want to have a plan. i love the balance, joy, friendship & love that he brings to my life. *family. sometimes it overwhelms ...

kate was all checked in and ready to go by 830am on nov 11 th . when she arrived at the hospital her contractions were about 3 min apart and she was dilated to a 3. in between contractions they were making phone calls. we arrived a little after 9am and they had her hooked up and ready to go. we had lots of time for a photo shoot or two at this point because they'd given her the epidural about 1030am and she was feeling great. they checked her just after that and she was already dilated to a 6. none of us had eaten breakfast so we made the mad dash to mcdonald's just up the block to grab food and tara was scared she was going to miss it so we came back and ate at the hospital. i enjoyed watching the "big" contractions on the monitor since she wasn't feeling them. this looked like a good size one to me! i'm fairly certain the hospital wanted to kick us out half way through the day. we had quite the crew! rick and mary stryd were there, lyndsie cradduc...