The LORD is my rock, my fortress, and my savior; my God is my rock, in whom I find protection. He is my shield, the power that saves me, and my place of safety. I called on the LORD, who is worthy of praise, and he saved me from my enemies. Psalm 18:2-3, NLT

I love this verse, don't you? I find such peace in reading that God is my rock. We might say that so many people or things are our rock, but truly God is the only one that fulfill that role for us. Man my little girl is 6 months old today. I am so excited to watch her grow every day, yet get a little sad when I think how quickly her little life is flying by. I love every second and love that I get to savor all the time I have with her!
She had her 6 month check up today and she is doing great. We continue to get comment after comment about how small she is, but her doctor is pleased with her growth. She continues to be moving up on her little growth curve on the chart even though she's only in the 25th percentile for weight and 10th percentile for height. Who would have ever guessed that I of all people would end up with a small baby? I am definitely surprised, but just as I told Brent there are PLENTY of up sides to a little baby: 1. She doesn't outgrow her clothes as fast 2. She has stayed in size 1 diapers longer which is awesome because I have a whole closet full thanks to my parents 3. She will stay in her carrier longer which means I can keep her sleeping longer on our outings.
So there are plenty of good things about being small and I'm very sure that one day soon I'll be talking about how big she is! I mean it is inevitable that the child will be the tallest girl in her class one day - her mother is 5'10" and her father is over 6'2".

Here's my little lamb as of late....she's an angel and I love her more and more every day!

Becoming parents is a whole new ballgame. I know. That's not so profound. But seriously you start to realize all the responsibility that God has put on you when you are given a child.
That responsibility becomes even heavier when you start to think about leading and directing your child to love God and teaching them that He is the Lord of your life. (and oddly, I'm not sure most adults know what that means, much less how to teach their child what that means...)
I suddenly just thought of Proverbs 22:6, "Train a child in the way they should go and when he is older he will not turn from it."
That's all of our goals as parents, right? Teach them. Train them. Make them the best little people we can.
This past week we dedicated Gabbie at our church. We had to go through a brief class a few weeks ago at our church to help explain what dedication is as well as what it is not. It is not salvation, but rather a promise, commitment to raise your child to love God, and know all that they can about Him.
I can't wait to tell Gabbie all about her dedication because it sure ended up a little different than we originally planned (doesn't everything!)
Originally we were going to dedicate Gabbie 2 weeks ago. Well if you flip back through my posts, you'll see that was the weekend of our Winter Storm of the century. The Moncriefs were planning to come up on Friday for the dedication on Sunday, so they started their trek. What should have been a 2 hour drive turned into 5 hours because of the crazy snow, but they persevered and made it here for a great weekend. Unfortunately none of our other family was able to make the trip as originally planned because of the crazy weather - both of our parents as well as some extended family in Alabama were all planning to come.
Obviously we felt bad because the Moncriefs had made the trip and wouldn't be able to come back the next weekend, but our church chose to reschedule the dedication to the following weekend. So this is my opportunity for a big THANK YOU to the Moncriefs for coming up - enduring the elements and having a great weekend anyway!
So this past weekend, we finally got to do the actual ceremony. Usually there are several families participating, but we were the only ones. It was really special being all by ourselves. My parents, Brent's parents, and my cousin and her husband all came on Sunday to witness Gabbie's dedication.
It was a really special time and our church definitely does a very stellar job at making this a very unique time for families.
We chose a life verse for Gabbie which is:
"Be not weary in well-doing for you shall reap if you faint not." - Galatians 6:9
Brent and I have always noticed how determined Gabbie has been from day one: from holding her head up really early to being determined to get her little arm out of her swaddle so she could suck her thumb (Brent does a really good impression of her using all of her little might to get that arm out). We picked this verse to coincide with that determination and hopefully encourage her to continue that determination throughout her life.
Thank you to our parents and the Sapps for coming to to the dedication, as well as to the Moncriefs for coming the weekend before and our extended family for planning to come even though the weather wouldn't cooperate.
Here are some pictures from our special day....

Before we went into the service, our preschool minister snapped a quick family photo. A few minutes into the service, she presented this picture in a frame for us to keep. So special!
Our community life pastor, Brent Hutchinson talking about Gabbie and the specialness of dedication. Gabbie was enthralled with him.
Praying with Brent - Gabbie was definitely more interested in him than praying...



I forgot to take pictures with the grandparents and the Sapps at church, but we got them at the house. Here with Mammaw and Pappaw.

and with Pop Pop and Ti Ti.

very excited to see her Pappaw...

I keep saying how busy we've been but I think this past weekend was definitely the epitome of that...

We started the weekend by delivering a cake to a new friend from our church - this might be one of my favorites so far.

Then we got invited to lunch with some new friends we've made: Katie and Dave. They have really neat life stories selling their apartment in New York and literally traveling the world for the past year. Of course Brent and I love to travel, so this resonates with us. Anyway, they were house sitting at a fabulous place so they invited us over for a delicous-o lunch. Katie is a fantastic chef - rubbing shoulders with lots of foodies, including food editors for Real Simple. Pretty cool, huh? *sorry no pics of our yummy lunch, but it was awesome - take my word for it.*

From there we met my parents at the Country Music Hall of Fame. If you've never been, it's actually really interesting. Brent had learned that they were offering free admission all day Saturday, so we took advantage of that and had my parents meet us there. LOTS of pictures from that day (check out the album to the right), but here are a few of my favorites...

Brent's favorite country music singer...pretty sure Gabbie doesn't have a clue, but let's not tell Brent...
mi padres

a big wall of platinum and gold records..oh yeah and brent :)this was probably my favorite thing in the whole museum: this is the dress that Carrie Underwood wore to the Grammy's one year. It is made from over 120 yards of fabric and the train is over 8 feet long!! RIDICULOUS

Sunday was another eventful day as we dedicated Gabbie at church. We were supposed to do it last weekend, but of course we had the Winter Storm of the century so none of our family was able to make it up AND church was canceled. Funny story to tell Gabbie one day...
So we rescheduled this fabulous little ceremony to this past weekend. Brent's parents drove up on Sunday morning, the Sapps came and of course my parents were in town as well! We had a great morning and it was really neat because we ended up being the only family participating in the service that we went to. I'm going to do a whole separate post on her dedication - it was really special and deserves more space than this...
Sunday afternoon was filled with football - of course! We had a great time with some new friends from RHCC and a fabulous partay.
Now on to another busy week full of friends, appointments, and getting ready for some exciting times in the life of A Cake Boutique!
Here's to a great week to each of you.

I was looking through all the pictures I've taken since my last post and realized not only have we done a lot since my last post, but man, we stay busy. I thought when I started staying at home that we might become hermits, but we haven't. God has been so good to us and He continues to show his faithfulness to us every day. We are really excited about the opportunities to come in 2010!
So we had the Winter Storm of 2010 a few weeks ago. I was sooo shocked the day it started snowing. They call for snow here ALL. THE. TIME. I get excited every time, so I decided this time around I would just play the laid back game. We had all of our family coming in for Gabbie's dedication at church, so I went ahead with all those plans. I took a trip the grocery store late Thursday night, spent all day Friday getting the house spotless - you know, the usual stuff. So it's Friday around 10:00 a.m. and I'm upstairs cleaning the bathroom with the news on and I hear, "Snow has started falling in the Nashville area..." I look outside and this is what I see:

I was in the process of calling and emailing Brent pictures because so much snow had already fallen. By the time I had posted pictures on Facebook and emailed pictures to mom and Brent, I look outside (less than 10 minutes later - I know this because of the time stamp on my camera) and THIS is what has fallen:
So at this point I am so excited, but a little nervous because the Moncriefs are supposed to be in the car on their way to our house for the weekend. Much to the surprise of many, they actually decided to make the trip. They did really well with their time making it over Monteagle and into Murfreesboro with no problems. (of course all that with a lot of praying from both sides) Then they came to a standstill. Literally. For 3 hours they sat on I-24 with their engines off in freezing cold weather, ice, and snow blanketing the roads. All because of a really really bad accident involving over 14 cards.
Thankfully they finally made it to our house and we had three fabulous snow days together. What better way to spend snow days than with your best friends? We ate way too much bad food, played a million and one games of Settlers of Catan (AWESOME GAME!), watched the girls interact, we even ventured out to a HUGE hill in our area to go sledding on Sunday with the Sapps - now THAT was a lot of fun.

This one's sooo cute: Brent teaching Ada how to play ping pong. What was really cute was the next morning, she went in the room and pulled this little chair up to the table and waited for Brent to come in there again.

I love this one - the girls look like they're talking to each other. Ada is really really good at sharing - she loves to share her breakfast or any food for that matter with her buddy. She even lets her have frog sometimes which is a biggie!

This picture looks like we're at a ski slope - so funny!


Gabbie showing off her skills of sitting up and Ada getting down on her level so they can play together. So sweet!There were about 50 other people on this hill we went to for sledding. We even had someone feel sorry for us and let us use their inner tube and really really good sled. We had a blast!!
Ada is definitely at the age where she copies everything she sees. Here she's got my nursing cover and her frog - we just missed it, but frog was under the nursing cover and she was talking to him. SOOOO funny. We were all crying laughing.

We also attempted to do a little sledding in our backyard with our neighbors. This was before we hit the HUGE hill. Our neighbors are from Canada, so they schooled us in sledding....


Here are some more sledding shots from the big hill we went to:

This was SOO much fun: Brittany, Casey and I all on the inner tube together FLYING down the hill. Of course we didn't make it ALL the way down, but at least 3/4 of the way before crashing....Brittany has the whole ride on her Flip video - it is hilarious! I really love this first picture of all those kids just standing on the hill watching us. LOL
...and the crash. Brittany had actually fallen off about 2 minutes before, but she ran down to us and has it on video. That's Casey on the left crawling back over to the tube. I have a nice big black and blue bruise on my knee thanks to this thrilling ride!




A few pics of our precious girls:


Yep, she's sitting up. Of course I'm having to hold her hand a little to get a get picture, but she's doing great. What a champ!And this is what Fletcher thought about this post and the weekend activities:

More posts to come of all the other stuff we've been up to these past few weeks, but I think this post probably is more than you all wanted to see or know about the Whitakers....