Arrival

God blessed us with another son that came into this world Friday night.

Ellis James Bowick
8/13/10
9:36pm
6 lbs. 6 oz.
20" Long

We are all doing well and we will post pictures and links to video soon.

Thank you God for blessing us and keeping us all healthy.

Perfection & Pregnancy

This summer has been quite crazy, to say the least. Our family has been under attack from the enemy since Fall of 2009. Thanks to so many of your prayers what the enemy meant for evil, God has turned to good. We felt called to leave the state of Florida, but took everything slowly since I was pregnant and we would need income to support the family. Then the spiritual battle took some physical form and the following happened:

- Our House was rented out in a couple of weeks, with no place for us to live
- Tony's last day of work at IRC was the first Friday of May
- We all lived out of suitcases and parents houses almost 3 months
- Ellis is so active that he dislocated my pelvic bone around Week 25

We were sad that things ended so quickly at IRC and miss many of the people there. However, I was so excited to be out of the storm and moving forward to a new dawn. God was so amazing through this whole process that I find it very hard to put it into words. And this brings me to the title of this post.

For those of you who don't know, I struggle with perfectionism. I did not know this fact about myself until about 4 years ago. This is how my perfection takes form. I think/feel that if I cannot do it perfectly or as good as "so and so", then why even try. It is truly debilitating! I am surrounded by so many gifted people in my life that I feel "hopeless" of any gifts that I may have. So I sit on the sidelines and awe at all the talents of my friends and family. Unfortunately, this post site has been part of this tragedy. When I have a chance to get online I immediately check all my friends blog sites and am sad when they don't update it daily. However, I have maybe done 3 blogs during the entire summer. The pictures from my sister-in-laws blog are amazing and plentiful. Articles and the amazing writing post from some of my friends are on a professional/epic level. So here I am sitting with very few photos (Eldin is SO fast and I've been exhausted in pregnancy/life) and not gifted in writing well - I have a husband that has a degree in English. Don’t get me wrong….I don’t think a lot of people read this blog, but for those who have/do I am sorry. I know there are a few family members that rely on this site to keep them updated on our life since we all live in different states. After a rough night and morning I have made a decision to not sit on the sidelines. Will I relapse? – Probably. However, I’ve been waiting for the answer to this question has been part of the problem. I feel guilty that I might relapse and “fail” again so I have been stagnant. Well, no more…I’m on the move. I have had some very funny, difficult, and glorifying events occur in my life over the last 6 months that I want out so I don’t forget them years down the road. I need to do this before Ellis gets here or who knows what I will lose.
This is probably a “boring” post, but I felt I needed to put this in “writing” to hold me accountable. As proof I'm working on my perfectionism, here is a picture that is far from perfect :).



This boy and pregnancy is so different from Eldin that half of my maternity shirts cannot even contain him/me anymore. I am truly all belly and still have 3 more weeks to go (4 from the picture). We are blessed and I hope that some of our adventures are recorded sooner than later.

We're not in VA anymore - we're near Kansas

The Bowick Family has found it's new home - Searcy, Arkansas. We are very excited to be part of a new church family here.

We moved in Saturday, July 11th, thanks to the help of many people, especially Jon & Preston McLester from Orlando. They drove all our stuff from storage from Orlando up here for us...all we had to do was rent the van and fly them back - they blessed us SO very much! Numerous people from Fellowship Bible came out and unloaded us. Some of the ladies also unpacked my kitchen for us and have been blessing us with a couple of dinners as we settle into the new place.

Eldin is doing great with only a small set back of strep/cold, which he was nice to share with me and the baby. I'm currently 34 weeks pregnant and HUGE. We also have announced the name that God has blessed us - the new baby's name will be Ellis James Bowick. Ellis comes from Elijah and means My God is The Lord. We also wanted to honor Tony's step-dad Art Ellis. James is a strong biblical character and also in honor of Abbie's dad James Graham. Ellis is due August 25, 2010 - we will see :).

Tony will officially start work on August 1st, so we are blessed to have him at home to help us unpack and settle.

At some point I promise to post pictures! Unfortunately, I'm not able to at the moment. My goal is to post some needed updated photos BEFORE Ellis gets here, because after that this site will be about the Bowick boys :).

Update

We are in now in Virginia after spending a little over a week in Charleston, SC. I would love to upload/share some pictures, but this is just a quick update. We had a wonderful time in Charleston and hope to return sooner than later. We had a long, but safe drive up to King George, VA (near Fredericksburg).
Last weekend we went to the National Zoo and had a great time seeing all the animals - Eldin is still talking about it all. This week has been a little rough as Eldin has had a small relapse of an ear infection and I have gotten a full blown nasty sinus infection. We hope we heal as fast as it came on.
This weekend my parents are adding to the family with a new Golden Retriever Puppy! This is turning into a zoo itself - with the new puppy we will have a total of 4 dogs and 1 cat. Then in a few weeks my brother and his family will be visiting adding another dog to the mix and our beautiful niece, Olive.
I hope to post zoo photos, but until then I wanted to update that everyone is doing well. Baby "B" is doing good and giving his brother a run for his money with the kicking.

Please don't forget to thank any veteran or active military person you know and please pray for our leaders and those in the military.

Easter 2010

2010 Easter was a great celebration of our Amazing Lord! We had a great time during all the services. Eldin would repeat "Jesus" and "Risen" - oh so cute! Although his favorite part of the day probably was driving the cart with Terry Coon at IRC. We are so blessed.

Candy and his Basketball from his Easter Basket

2nd Birthday

We had a wonderful small birthday celebration this year. We shared the time with family friends, The McLesters, and "Uncle Bob" dropped by and gave Eldin the world. The McLesters hid Eldin's gift under balloons instead of wrapping. Little did we know, but the balloons needed up stealing the party. In trying to do something small we went with a cookie cake this year. Publix gave us a HUGE cookie cake. The cookie was almost an inch thick throughout! It was insanely and insanely good. Eldin opened gifts from family that could not be there in person, but will get their personal hugs soon.

Aunt Holly, Uncle Daniel, and Olive gave me an AWESOME outfit

Cappy & Gram gave me a great puzzle book, sailor hat, & a Rescue Center for my cars

Grandma Rose and Larry sent me a HUGE box with fun stuff

Preston helped me look & show off my awesome gifts

Blowing out the candles

Under a Spell