Getting back to blogging!

Wow it's been quite some time since we've posted a blog! Lots has changed since our last one so here's a brief synopsis of where we are today. Tanner is now 8 yrs old, Kailee is now 7 yrs old and Tatum is now 2 yrs old! In our last blog we were announcing our pregnancy so many of you know our adventures with Baby Tatum. Tatum is now a healthy, happy two year old! I am now a stay at home mommy! These years are so precious and I wont ever be able to get them back! I can work when I'm older lol! Jay and I still live in Atlanta, Williamson to be exact and Jay now works for Faith Technologies, Kennesaw Ga. where he is serving as their branch manager. So that pretty much brings ya up to date with where we are since our last blog. I'm currently playing mommy full time and have decided to start a side business/hobby with Origami Owl. It looks to be a fun venture and it's something that's really more geared for me. I love supporting my friends that are selling MaryKay, Thirty-One, Scentsy and etc but Ive wanted to begin something totally different and I believe this venture will be fun and different. Kailee and Tanner are now in school with the Pike County School system. We miss the awesome teachers and Chapel at Griffin Christian but the kids have adjusted well and are really enjoying Pike County! Goooo Pirates! Tanner is still involved with baseball and Kailee is beginning back to dance classes after taking a year off at her request. Tatum is a typical two year old and you have no idea how good it feels to say that! He's on the run (literally) all the time. He keeps mommy busy and I love it! He does take Physical therapy a couple times a week because of leg muscle development but otherwise he's your typical 2 year old that LOVES Thomas the train and Sprout TV! Next weekend our family is preparing for Thanksgiving at Disney! This will be Tanner and Kailee's 3rd trip but it will be Tatum's first trip and mommy's first since the age of 13! We couldn't be more excited! Well that's What's Shakin' with the Akin's! See you soon (hopefully it wont be a 2 yr hiatus again) lol

Big Blessings!!!

Well I haven't blogged in quite a while so there's LOTS to share!!! We are offically moved and settled in quite nicely to our new house. Although I am behind on mailing them, I have all of my "We have moved" cards addressed and ready (now to buy some stamps). It all seems like a huge whirlwind the way that time has just been passing us by in the last month or two!

Two weeks ago I had a yearly appointment with Dr. Potter and to our pleasant surprise found out that we are Pregnant! Sooooo very excited but sooo surprised when Dr. Potter traded my thyroid medication for prenatal vitamins! We are still quite early and have our first ultrasound tomorrow! Due date before U/S is January 20, 2011! Our first ultrasound will make the due date a little more final! I got the pleasure of surprising my handsome hubby and the kids last Sunday on Mothers Day! It was priceless and the 2 days of keeping the secret were sooooooo worth it.

Along with all the other happenings I applied for the nursing program last Monday May 10th and am anxiously awaiting the first week of June to see what my acceptance will be!! God willing I will begin with the July class but if not I will have the summer off and begin in October. So either way it'll be great!!! Say a prayer for me!

The kids are doing AWESOME! We are preparing for K4 and K5 graduations in coming weeks. Tanner had his last baseball game last weekend to end the spring season. GOOO BRAVES!!! Kailee will be having her first ever ballet recital this weekend which is also Daddy's birthday! It is sure to be a very special day!!!

I've gotten some free time lately to hang with the girls! We enjoyed the Lady Antebellum/Tim McGraw concert this weekend at Lakewood! Thanks girls b/c it was GREAT!!! While there we went ahead and bought our $20 Raschal Flatts/ Kellie Pickler tickets for June 27th!!! YAY!! June is going to be an amazing month!! I too have a birthday coming soon, Eclipse comes out, and then Raschal Flatts so I'm pretty stoked to be getting lots of girl time next month! Haven't have any in quite a while and am getting it all out of my system!!!!

Hope this blog finds you all doing well! Congrats to all of my expecting friends and hope those of you who just celebrated your first mothers day enjoyed it thoroughly!! Praying for some other friends that are quickly approaching their due dates Lauren Hintz, Amber Mangle, Stacey Bernritter! I love you girls and am praying over those sweet babies!!!

And that's What's Shakin' w/ the Akins'

April is an Exciting Month for the Akins'

Wow it's been a while since I've blogged so here we go!!! Spring baseball has started and we've been playing since mid March now so that's been keeping us busy outside of school, work, and other things! We got another offer on our house at the beginning of March and I winded down another semester in school and made the dean's list for my 2nd semester back in college as an "older" student, LOL.

The housing thing is going GREAT!! We are due to close on our current home this Friday (everything is set this time) and our new home the following Monday April 19th. We couldn't be more thrilled or excited about this as we've been waiting so long and trusting in God for his will for so long now!

Several weeks ago we had a huge scare with Jay's dad, Doug. He had a mini stroke and it has had us all concerned! He's doing well and has gotten a clean bill of health from the doctors and will be celebrating his 60th birthday next week!! We are moving and then heading to Tampa to be with him! It should be a wonderful time to be had by all!

Soooo much going on from now til the end of April but all great and exciting things, just pray I can keep up with this new sememster in school while all these events are taking place!!! hope your all doing well!!!

what's going on.....

Okay so it's my typical Wednesday blog for the Akin's. So here it goes. I'm finding myself in some troubling modes lately. I really think that God is trying to help me in the "being still and waiting for my miracle." As most of you know we have been trying endlessly for months to purchase a new home. Our current home has been on the market now for nearly 3 years (next week will be 3 years). In those 3 years somehow we get stuck with real estate agents that just aren't stoked about showing it or doing much of anything for that matter (we've never had an open house or anything of the sort). I have through the past 3 years gotten a great understanding of housing loans, the market (in today's economy), and pretty much everything you need to know to buy a house. Then in Sept of last year all the laws changed!

To refresh you we put an offer in on a house that we absolutely fell in love with! It took us nearly 3 years to find the perfect house for us as my mom, little brother, and grandmother will be moving in with us when my mom retires. Which we had a 3 year dead line (3 years ago) and now we are down to it, my mom retires in 2 1/2 weeks! Yeah I did say 2 1/2 weeks. We were approved for a second mortgage and were due to close on the new house Sept 30th, 2009. The loan laws changed and when our loan went to underwriting it was kicked back and denied b/c we were about $7,000.00 short in our savings of where they wanted us to be (you have to show that you have 6 months worth of mortgage on the new house and your exisiting house). I'm telling you all of this to paint the picture of the whirlwind we have been in. So our hopes were crushed and we didn't get the new house last September.

About a month later our house got shown by a visiting realtor (not our realtor) and we got our 1st offer! With it being our first offer we didn't even contest the offering price, though it was lower than we were hoping and we came out of pocket a good chunk of money (which was in savings for the new house) to pay it down so that we could close. The first closing date came and went. The second closing date came and went. And so on all the way up to the fifth closing date coming and going. By this time we are growing oh so leary and we find out that the house that we want is threating foreclosue. We just know if it goes into foreclosure then it'll be gone. We then get a call 2 weeks ago saying that all they need is 10 days and they should be able to close! Once again we have HOPE!

Last week was 14 days and we hadn't heard anything but we continued to just be still and pray. We found out last friday that our buyer couldn't get approved for her loan b/c her credit score was 9 points too low for the underwriters! Yes only 9 points! On friday and through the weekend I thought well it is what it is but it's really starting to affect me now. I'm questioning God's timing. TERRIBLE I know! But we are faithful tithers and we've been sooooooo patient! This has all been going on since August of last year. So that's it I spilled the beans! I'm ashamed of myself for questioning him but I'm made of the flesh. I've had numerous friends move and close and move and close over the past 3 years and I'm just wondering, "God how long do I have to remain still? My heart is really hurting right now! I don't understand." *with lots of tears I share this with you and I ask for your prayers* humbly I ask for you to pray for this housing situation for me and my family. Thank you and I love you guys!

Finding Joy in the small things.....

This past Sunday at church our Music pastors wife preached a sermon on Prayer in our preachers absents(sp?). What a sermon! It was such a wonderful sermon about how we take Prayer so lightly as believers. Ie. We pray and we sent our prayers up like balloons yet we make excuses when we don't get an answer. However God's words teaches believers that there is power in prayer- You speak that mountain out of your way and it shall be done. Well Jay and I really enjoyed her sermon and we were energized to be fed that word to remind us that we have POWER in prayer! So we started praying diligently about our housing situation (we haven't closed on our house yet but the carrot is still be strung along in front of our faces). We have found our perfect house and the seller is just as excited for us to have it as we are BUT we haven't closed on our house yet. For a while I have just totally written it off b/c when I talked about it I either got really upset (crying) or I got really angry about it. I laid the burden down and have for a while but the last several days I just feel a desire to pray about it and pray earnestly. So I'm praying earnestly and I'm expecting an answer to my prayer. I say this to just say that it was nice to be reminded how important prayer is for us as God's people not just for the big things but pray about EVERYTHING!!

School is going better! I got a 100% on my career project today and the quiz was postponed bc we are have a test on Monday. Hope that I continue to keep understanding it! Kailee got her little hair cut into a short little bob this week but the amazing Tara Mendias! She'd been begging and begging to let Mrs. Tara cut it again so we made an afternoon of it and she got out of school early. Tanner is doing wonderful on his reading! He makes me so proud and he's the sweetest little boy that a mama could have! My mom is doing great! She is almost fully recovered from surgery and she's ready to go back to work! Also she retires in 4 weeks!!!! 36 years of service at FT. Gordon! let me be the first to give her a shout out GOOOOO MOOOOOM! I am so very proud of her and can't wait until they get here for good! I believe that's why the housing thing really is burning at me so badly! Jay is doing great but he's SUPER busy at work right now! He's running 2 jobs out of Savannah (one is a new Mitsubishi car plant) and one out of Athens so poor guy is burning up the roads! I think that's about all that's Shakin' with the Akin's :) hope everyone is having an awesome week!

YAY for 3 day weekends!!!

So I've found that I'm not an everyday blogger! I just don't have anything interesting to say EVERY day, so here's a once a week blog! It's been a pretty busy week in our house. I started back to school this week and Jay got another job in Savannah to oversee (so now he's up to 3 now which was usually the norm before the economy hit it's lows, so it's great to see his industry re-building, thank you Lord for his job), the kids both are doing new and exciting things at school and we've had some great news from friends!!!

First I wanna say a great big CONGRATULATIONS to Lauren and Darin Hintz, they found out this week that baby Hintz is in fact baby boy Hintz officially Hunter William Hintz (beeeeautiful name). Second I'd like to say CONGRATULATIONS to Nathan and Amber Mangle as they have found out that they are now expecting! And a great big HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Erin Wicker (girl I hope it's a good one)!

School this sememster is gonna be my biggest challenge! Math for Meds is taking some time and LOTS of effort to get everything done but so far I feel like I'm getting it (hopefully that will be the case next week too). My other class is just pretty much a review as it's teaching how to do vitals, CPR, and first aid (I already have all of my ceritifications up to date so I get to exempt those.

We were going to head to Augusta for the 3 day weekend to check on mom however we had BIGGER problems here in ATL that kept us from actually traveling this weekend. Yesterday we found out that the 3 water mains in our yard were leaking and had been leaking all week! A HUGE thanks to our neighbor for finally making us aware of the situation!! Thankfully the City of Griffin came out last night and it was in fact a city problem (thank you Lord for that answered prayer) however not w/o them digging up my side yard in the process to fix! Thankfully Jay wasn't here or he would've been having an absolute fit over his sod! They recovered it the RED clay so I'm expecting today w/ the rain that it's gonna be a MESS out there.

So far we have heard nothing more on the contract or closing date on our house. Last week we had gotten the great news that they were literally waiting on 1 piece of paper to come and they were ready to close! At this point I'm just curious! Did they get the piece of paper? I'm trying sooo hard not to have my heart set on it but the new house we are wanting is pending foreclosure and we sure don't wanna miss out on the chance to purchase it (if we dont close soon we wont get that chance). So that's what's Shakin' w/ the Akin's

Back to School and Busy, Busy, Busy

Wow what a busy year thus far!!! I haven't blogged lately b/c of mom's surgery and being with her last week but I just wanna say a great big thank you to all of you who prayed for her and who called each day to check on her! I feel so blessed with so many wonderful friends/family. She went back to the doctor today to get her drain taken out and Dr. Blaney said that everything was doing great! Jay was superdaddy last week! He had the kids all week along w/ traveling back and forth to Savannah for his newest project and Athens. He was very thankful that they got a snow day on Friday but the high here in Atlanta was 19 degrees! Needless to say they hung out around the house and broke in all the new Wii games that Santa Claus brought :) Kudos to Jay b/c my house wasn't a terrible mess at all after the week/weekend in either!

Well school started back on yesterday! I am only having to take 2 classes this semester as next semester I am considered "program ready" for my nursing classes! Woohoo goodbye core hello program (God willing I'll be accepted right away). Tanner is doing soooo well in school! It's absolutely amazing to me what they are teaching Kindergarten's these days! He is starting to read now and he absolutely looooves it, he can tell time on the clock when it's on the direct hour and he's doing some addition and subtraction-Gooooo Griffin Christian!! Love my little Kay bug but she's a bit more excited about playing than learning right now but hey she's only 4 :) she also goes to an amazing school (kudos to harvest temple and Mrs. Regina)

We got news on our house contract FINALLY! As most of you know we have been waiting and waiting on the close of our house. The closing has been rescheduled 3 times now however we did hear from the lender that they are simply waiting on 1 piece of paper to come from a creditor and then we are smooth sailing! (fingers crossed) We are trying our best to be patient but we are soooooo excited about getting into our new house! Hope your all having an amazing week! MUAH!!!