Here's a Picture of my son Chances foot print when he was born. As you can see he was very very small. My sister actually took this picture it was her idea to put the quarter next to his foot print which I thought turned out really cute. Your just don't realize how small his little foot really was until you see it next to something like a quarter that you hold in your hand on an every day basis. The next picture was taken when he was just 2 1/2 hours old. That's my hand next to him holding his little hand as you can tell I still had the IV in my hand too. That was actually the first time I had really gotten to see him.
They held him up for me to see him only for a split second before rushing him off to the NICU. When he was born he weighed 15.2 oz. thats not even a pound and he was 11.5 inches long and thats not even as long as a normal shcool ruler. He was so premature that hes eyes were still fused together so he never opened them. So anyways to make a long story short on what lead to his premature birth. I have what is called an incompetent cervix. Of course not knowing this before getting pregnant I had no clue as to what could happen. I had actually went into labor just 4 months into my pregnancy they was able to stop my labor but the only problem was that I had started to dilate I went from 0 cm to 8 cm in only an hour. They kept me in the hospital for a month on complete bed rest then one day my water broke. Welp when that happened there was nothing they could do but to med flight me to a larger hospital and go ahead and deliver. So that's just what they did. He was born in Charleston WV and lived 8 days after his birth. He actually to be so small did really well for the first 4 or 5 days but then made a major turn around for the worse. So after talking it over with the doctors they had pretty much explained to us that at the 8th day the only thing that was keeping him alive was the machines. So we took our son Curtis which was 5 years old at the time to the hospital chapel and explained to him what was going on and that his brother was not going to be able to come home with us. Of course little Curtis wanted to see his brother so the doctors and the nurses let him go into the NICU which normally they dont let little children in there and see his brother and talk to him. At that point they let us hold him for the first time so we all took our turns holding him. But, when it came to the point just hours later where we decided to take him off of the machines I wanted to be the one to hold him. So I held him and talked to him and of course cried hysterically as he slowly and peacefully passed away in my arms. That had to have been one of the hardest things I have ever had to do but, I just knew that he was suffering so much and as much as I didn't want to let him go. I also couldn't bare the thought of him suffering so much. So there is the story of my other mirclbabe too. Now hes my miracle angel.
Now I'm not just being partial here but I do have to admit out of the 8 Lemonade Stands that were entered into the contest ours was by far the biggest as you can tell and the best. Of course the kids didn't win. But, that's ok what matters is they had a blast helping build the stand and of course saleing their lemonade. I wish I had a picture of the big orange sign that they drew. It was so cute it said "Welcome to our Tike Hut Lemonade Sale" notice the spelling in "Tiki" we had to X out the letter "E" and put the letter "I" above it. Everyone thought it was so cute. The above picture was taken close to the end of the sale as you can tell the kids were getting hot and tired they had to take a break sitting on the curb with my brother Dwayne. They started out wearing some cute grass skirts but it was just so hot and yet windy too that they didn't last long. And as you can tell by the time the contest was over the wind had just bout carried our tiki hut away. Especially the top of it. We shredded up a bunch of paper bags and I do mean a BUNCH of them and used some spray on glue to stick them to the top of the Tiki Hut. It didn't take long before the streets of Bluefield was covered in strips of paper bags every where. LOL So after the contest we loaded our Tiki Hut back up into the back of the boxed trailer and took it back to the shop and set it a blaze. I sware I think the kids had just as much fun watching it go up in flames as they did saleing their lemonade. 
