Life is Beautiful

Well for starters my name is Amanda Lynne Maddux Ballard, yes I threw my maiden name in there because that is a part of my life. I was born March 21, 1985 at Bremerton Naval Hospital Washington. My dad was in the Military for 24yrs!! He is my hero, one of my best friends, and my daddy. Without my life with my dad I probably wouldn't have turned out the way I did and I thank him for the wonderful life and experiences he gave me growing up. My story is a little different from some. See I was adopted by my dad and biological grandmother. My biological mother is who I grew up knowing as one of my sisters; Doris Michelle Pickering. I found out I was adopted when I was 7mon pregnant with my daughter Ekko in Japan. She and I have a interesting relationship.... see it's kind of rocky because of her own doing. My parents got divorced when I was about 11yrs old, and believe me when I say that is a good thing. I lived with my mother until I was 12 and then went one to finish living my home life with my dad.

We have lived all over the world being a Military family. We have lived in Alabama, Texas, Florida, Alaska, Turkey, Germany, Italy.. I have been to England, The Azores, Hawaii, and many other places. This world has so many things and experiences to offer that one would be crazy to not want to see the world in all it's different and unique ways. I have been to about 8 or so different schools my entire school age life.. The last place I lived with my dad before meeting my husband and getting married to start a new adventure was Dyess AFB, TX. I graduated from Abilene High School. I was getting ready to start college for Aviation Maintenance Technologies when I met my husband. See we met through a mutual aquaintance and started hanging out.. At first we were just friends getting to know one another because he was waiting for his divorve papers to get in the mail.. We didn't officially become a couple until his papers were in in August of 2003. We dated for about 2mon before he proposed to me, then December 20, 2003 we said our I do's and began our new life together.

We became Mr. and Mrs. Ballard and PCSed to Misawa AB, Japan. We spent our first 4yrs together there. Japan is a beautiful country and has a very interesting culture. We talked about having kids not too long after getting married and tried without sucess for 2yrs. I went to the doctor to try and figure out why we couldn't get pregnant, turns out I don't ovulate.. So for us to have a baby I had to go through fertility treatments, and after 4mon of that I got pregnant. That was not the beginning of a happy tale; see I lost that baby November 5, 2005. So we did a couple more months of the fertility treatments and then got pregnant with our Daughter Ekko Danielle. We couldn't have been happier than the day we found out we were expecting her. When you get pregnant with your first child it's very different, everything changes. I couldn't have asked for anything more than the beautiful baby girl girl growing in my belly. Her original due date was October 14, 2006.. She was born October 24, 2006. She was perfect. Fuzzy platinum blonde hair, deep blue eyes, perfectly colored skin, rosey cheeks; she was 8lbs 8oz and 21in long. Life with Ekko was definetly not boring, she is a spunky little girl and will be celebrating her 4th birthday soon.

I am pregnant with our 2nd and last child. It's another girl! Her name will be Ailynne Rose. Her original due date was September 14, 2010, but according to the US techs it's September 11, 2010. I am getting induced at least 2 weeks early due to the fact that Ailynne is no small baby :). I can't wait to meet her. We had to go through the same fertility treatments again to get Ailynne as well. This pregnancy has had many complications and has been very rough on my body and the doc thinks that with everything that has been going on that she should be our last. I hate having to admit that but it's for the best I guess. All I can say is how Blessed I am to have the 2 beautiful baies I do have.

I am going to close for now, but this was just a little about how my life began.. I will keep posting things here and there and I hope you all enjoy it.