Due Date, Shmue Date

May 30th, the long anticipated goal date, has now come and gone and I am still greatly with child.   And mostly, I'm ok with that.  The last couple of weeks have been kind of crazy anyway.  I've been sick, like sicker than I can remember being in a long time.  And then its moved its way throughout my family, manifesting itself in nasty coughs, fevers, and pinkeye, in different configurations of family members on any given day.  I really think today we're finally on the upswing, so I'm glad we didn't bring a newborn home to that these past few days.

And then to top it off, I got rear-ended in a hit-and-run accident yesterday.  I was driving home from my midwife appointment and got hit at a stoplight which then caused me to hit the guy in front of me.  The jerk who did it took off but luckily the guy behind him got the license plate # and stuck around to be a witness.  So thankful for people who take time out of their own lives to do something for someone else--doesn't that seem pretty rare these days?  Any hope that getting into a car accident might throw me into labor has been squashed as I woke up this morning with bun decidedly still in oven.

But today's a new day and gosh darn it, I'm going to blow dry my hair (for the first time in weeks) and put on some makeup and get my kids out of this house if its the last thing we do!  Who knows, maybe we'll live on the edge and eat nothing but frozen yogurt with various sugary toppings for lunch!  And hopefully tomorrow I won't have to give myself this pep talk and we can get this show on the road.

A Few Things From Around These Parts

 Look at the pretty new table I just had delivered:

 My dad and I built it (ok, my dad built it and I showed up periodically and got to use a couple of power tools) and he hand delivered it last week.  We used these plans from the Ana White website.  I love it and I love that we have the memories of making it together.


And here's a close-up of those beautiful roses my sweet hubby brought me for mother's day:

Made a meal for a family from church today (which means we eat good too!) and C helped me bake these cookies I had pinned.  Just a sidenote in case you make these, for some reason the recipe for the marshmallow creme makes like 4 times more than what you will actually need.  We will be eating marshmallow creme on everything (which I guess isn't necessarily a bad thing).

 Lots of listmaking lately including things to get done around the house before baby boy gets here (still on that list: clean the carpets, clean out the car, and take a big pile to Goodwill) and a summer ideas list.  I gotta be honest, I'm kind of freaking out about what we're going to do this summer when its 195º outside and I've got 3 kids to entertain while caring for a newborn.  But I'm praying that God will give us a GREAT summer and I'm trying to plan a little structure into our days, so that's giving me some hope....

 I've been a crazy painting machine lately.  Painted 2 bathrooms, L's room which will eventually be little brother's room, and a wall in the master bedroom.  I guess the nesting thing finally kicked in (but my house is still a mess).

 Let myself buy 2 things for the baby when I was at Carter's recently.  I love newborn jammies, there's nothing better.  I'm a little afraid to take the tags off though since I'm not entirely sure he won't skip the NB size and go straight to 0-3 mos.

 I am a crazy ice-craving machine during the last trimester of my pregnancies.  I stopped at Sonic a couple of days ago and picked up a bag of their ice.  Ahhhh, heaven!  I think I'm already almost through the entire bag.

 I let our Netflix account expire recently (which I may kick myself for in a few more weeks) because I felt like my kids were getting totally addicted to it.  Its been nice to see them actually find other things to do besides watch tv over the last couple of days...

 things like get into my hope chest to play with my wedding paraphernalia...

 And we haven't completely given up on tv.  This little boy has just been introduced to "Veggie Tales" and now he's hooked. 

The Ghost is Clear

That's a C-ism for "the coast is clear".  Love that girl.  Being 5 now, she's outgrowing a lot of those funny little mis-statements and I just want to cling to the few that are left.  Another one is "poor Jesus" instead of "dear Jesus" when she prays.  I love that.

We had a great Easter yesterday.  It was nice to be with family and watch the kids run around with their cousins.  And the food was amazing.  My mother-in-law made these really good chicken roll-ups with cream cheese in the middle and my mom brought a turtle cheesecake.  Yum!  I truly believe that one of God's greatest gifts is good food!  :)  But seriously, Brian and I were talking about how God  is the giver of celebrations and how apart from him these holidays are so meaningless.  If you take Jesus out of it, all you have left at Easter is a dumb bunny who for some reason gives out eggs.  I'm so thankful we have deep, true reasons for celebrating and that God instituted these days of joyful celebration into our lives.

 Brian's parents with all the grandkids who were able to make it yesterday...

 My mom and dad.  I love this picture of them....

 But I love this one even more.  This is them.  My mom laughing out loud (usually at something he said) and a grin from my dad. 

I really hope the nesting thing is gonna kick in soon.  I've been feeling the exact opposite lately....no energy and craving naps starting about two hours after I get up.  I was so much more motivated to do a bunch of house projects last month.  Now I just look around at my messy house and hope the motivation fairy is going to find me soon.  Here's a picture from yesterday--I made Brian grab the camera since this is the first time in days that I've actually made an attempt at my appearance.  The norm has been baggy tshirts and gym shorts and hair in a ponytail.  We'll let this baby think this is how his mommy always looked while pregnant with him...

And lastly, we're nothing if not multi-tasking over here.  This boy was simultaneously practicing on the potty chair and getting a hair cut all while watching a movie and eating a snack.  Hopefully the sanitation police won't be knocking on my door after this....

Today's the Day

Well, I guess 319 days is long enough.  Why the hiatus?  I'm not even really sure.  I guess I just got kind of sick of my own voice.  But I know how much I love looking back at all the big and small things I've documented here over the past several years even if I do cringe at the way I write sometimes, so I knew I'd be disappointed to not have these memories somewhere if I gave up blogging completely.  So here's to another go at it....

Where to even begin?  I don't know.  I guess the biggest thing around here (literally) to report is this....

(If you can't tell what you're looking at, that is my 31 week pregnant belly.)

We'll be welcoming Baby O #4 sometime at the end of May (beginning of June?).  We were thrilled to find out it is another boy which will round things out around here nicely.  And he can't be coming a moment too soon since his poor brother has gotten just a little too comfortable playing baby dolls and Barbies and succumbing to whatever dress up game his older sisters like to inflict on him...

I am really excited to have a newborn around here again.  I know I've made this claim here before but this really will be the last time we'll go through this (at least if it involves me having to carry/push it out), so I'm really anticipating this go-round, especially knowing how fast it goes.

Hmmmm, other news to report.....Brian got a new job and has just started these last couple of weeks.  We're kind of in transition mode right now, so I'm really curious to see once we settle in a bit more what our daily lives are going to look like.  So far, he seems to really like it and I feel like it was definitely answered prayer that he was able to switch.  He's in an industry he's just so much more excited about now and he's doing what he's best at which is building relationships and putting together programs.  I'm happy for him.  Figuring out balance in life is hard, isn't it?  I feel like that has been an ongoing struggle for us--trying to match up our differing expectations on how life should be divided between work/family/ministry/etc.  Will we be happy with the way we chose to prioritize things when we look back someday?  I pray so.  At the beginning of the year I decided to create monthly goals for myself, rather than new years resolutions, and its amazing what a difference its made in my life.  I bought myself a binder with tabs and at the beginning of each month I create goals for myself in the different categories of my life such as: physical, spiritual, marriage, kids, house, and ministry.  I try to include some fun goals that I know I'll actually want to complete so that its not just a huge list of chores.  So far, I feel pretty happy with what I've been able to check off and its really helping me to focus and be more intentional, things I've always struggled with.  Another thing I started doing is sitting down on Monday and creating a dinner plan and grocery list which also helps me to think about what's coming up in the week ahead.  I really like it because I know that every Monday is grocery shopping day and its not too overwhelming to think of a grocery list for one week at a time.  Plus its so good for me to have something set into my week that I know I will do every week on the same day.  Its just amazing to me that I've been married for eleven years and I'm just figuring this stuff out.  I've noticed I haven't had as many "funk" days since I've started giving myself these goals and more structure to my weeks.  It really is the little things....

There have also been hard things going on.  Someone very close to me is really struggling and its a heavy burden I've never really had to carry before.  I've walked through hard things with friends before but its just so different when its your own flesh and blood....the weight doesn't lift.  But God is faithful and He's using the things this person is struggling with to reform me.  That's what is so amazing about God.  He can use someone else's junk that really has nothing to do with you personally to reveal your own junk to you.  He's drawing me closer to Himself through this and I am humbled by it.

I feel like I'm really learning a lot about myself too.  I'm realizing that I tend to kind of keep people at arm's length until I feel like I can go all the way deep with them.  Its hard for me to float somewhere in the middle.  Don't know if that's good or bad, but I'm evaluating it.  I'm learning to be more honest with friends, even when its uncomfortable and its refreshing.  Learning to speak the truth in love, that's where I'm at.  I'm sure its a lifelong lesson.

Ok, I got more reflective than I knew I was going to.  I'll finish out with some photos that have just been sitting on my computer.  These are just the little things I want to remember....

 Making Valentines....

I love the way 2-year-olds color...

Concentration face...

 

A normal day, home with Mommy while big sis is off at school.  I want to remember to document more of these ordinary moments...

 Watching monster trucks on Mommy's phone....

C's 5 year old photos....I was thinking I'd wait for a day when we could pick out a normal outfit and do her hair and all but then I realized I should take photos of what she's really into right now, which is dressing up in mommy's scarves.  I'm so glad I did.  This is the real her.

And lastly, Miss A got glasses.  I think she looks adorable, but way too grown up in them....

So that's it for now.  Be back soon (well, soon being a relative term)  ;)

May 13, 2011

Another post of random information dotted intermittently with photos that may or may not have anything to do with what I'm writing about.  I've decided to stop trying to come up with clever post titles for my randomness.

 

• First off, hapy birthday to my wonderful mother-in-law!!  We're having a badminton tournament tonight to celebrate her birthday, how fun is that?  From what I hear she used to be a tennis superstar and we had to dumb it down to badminton so the rest of us could hang with her.  I really am so thankful for my loving and supportive in-laws.  We're blessed to have them!

• We’re closing in on the last week of school and I’ve got mixed feelings about it. We’ve decided that A will go back to school next year mostly for her younger sister’s sake (she kind of got lost in the shuffle this year) and there’s a small part of me that will miss being A’s teacher. I like watching her learn and I like learning a lot of this stuff myself (its seriously pathetic how much of the first grade curriculum was basically brand new information to me: some of the rules of phonics, “Ohhh! So that’s why we pronounce that that way!”, things we’ve learned in science: telling my husband, “I never realized that fruit comes from flowers!”, geography I’m just now figuring out, the list goes on!  Who knows what I could learn in second grade!) I’m not all sad about it though, I’ve already got a list a mile long of projects I hope to get done around my house next year when I have my time back and I’m super excited about the one-on-one time Miss C and I will get that I think she has been seriously missing this year.  Its just weird knowing this season is coming to an end already.

 

• I am cracking up at my baby boy lately. His little personality is blossoming and I love it and struggle with it all at once. He thinks he’s such a big boy already. The kid wants to play sports already. There was a free throw competition going on for like eight year old kids recently and L found a ball along the sidelines and was toddling out onto the court with it (someone was talking when he was on baby-duty and I won’t mention who) and got himself right up underneath that basket and you should have seen the look of determination on that little man’s face…he seriously thought he could get in on the action. Again last night we were at a park and there was a group of high schoolers playing volleyball and my boy threw a fit when I wouldn’t let him out there to show his stuff. You can be sure that his daddy is thrilled and can’t wait to see where this is headed.

 

• I’ve been reading “Forgotten God” by Francis Chan and its given me a lot to think about. It’s a book on the Holy Spirit and how we’ve kind of set him on the shelf in a lot of American Christianity. We don’t take Him up on the power He’s offered to unleash in and through us because we’re scared in many cases of abuses of that power. This book has hit home in a lot of ways. Its made me so much more aware of the fact that the Sprit of God dwells in me! How should my life look if that is true? One quick little story about this. I was driving home by myself about a month ago and was thinking about a wedding I was shooting that was coming up. For some reason I was super nervous about this particular wedding and I had really been wallowing in self-doubt about my photography abilities for a while. I was getting that frozen in insecurity feeling and was just dreading this wedding. I started praying about it and telling God how insecure I felt about all that I don’t understand about photography and how I just felt so ill-equipped to be asking other people for money for doing it. As I was praying, I felt God remind me of what I had been reading about the Holy Spirit and that the Holy Spirit could open my mind and help me understand things that in my humanity I might not be able to grasp myself. It was like He was saying, “Ask me for help to understand what you don’t know. Ask me to physically allow your brain to function beyond its normal capacity”. That sounds so funny now and I realize there are so many other capacities that I need help with brain function in. “Uh, God? Could you help my brain to stop farting? That would be great”. But it was like an "a-ha!"  moment and I just felt this peace wash over me. And what is so cool is that He totally did. I felt like He guided me to some things that better helped me prepare for the wedding and reinforced a lot of things I already knew. The wedding was a couple of weeks ago and I feel like it went really well. It was a good lesson for me that I can take even the most mundane, seemingly trivial things to Him and He will walk me through them.  Who knows what kind of power He will unleash in me if I will just seek Him and ask for it. God is so good!

 

• We’ve got this cool little courtyard space at our house that has been nothing but dirt and weeds for the past three years that we’ve lived here. We finally set aside a little bit of money from our taxes this year to do something about it and I’m getting so anxious to get it done. Especially before it turns into a blazing inferno here and we’ll have to wait another six months to actually be out there. We’re struggling with how to go about getting it done though. We got one estimate that was waaaaayyy over what we were thinking we could afford (they would do a really amazing job though) and another guy came out and looked at it and then just never called us back. The third guy we called we’re having a hard time getting a hold of to give us the quote as well. I’m seriously contemplating just doing it ourselves, especially after seeing John and Sherry tackle their patio themselves. They made it look do-able and their budget, while still being a lot more than we had anticipated just for the pavers, is a lot more realistic than the other quote we got. The only problem is Brian and I are not really the diy types. I like trying to tackle small projects myself but I’m afraid since there’s stuff like being accurate involved, this might be over our heads. I don’t know, we’ll see. I just want to get this show on the road already!

 

• Oh yeah, one final thing. I wanted to give an update on The Shred. I did the full 30 days and I don’t think I dropped a single pound. Might have something to do with the fact that I probably ate back every single calorie that I burned. BUT I did lose some inches and I feel more toned, especially in my shoulders and arms and maybe even in my waist so I feel good about that. Mostly I’m proud of myself for doing all 30 days—I did at least 5 days workouts every week, sometimes even 6 so I was happy with that. Now, I’m still doing 5 days a week and alternating between the Shred Level 3 video and two of her other videos that I can’t think of the names of at the moment. They’re both 40 minutes long and are circuits as well. They’re actually quite a bit harder than the Shred so I feel like I’m accomplishing a lot to be working out as much as I am right now. Now if only I could get my eating under control as well. I need an eating plan that is does not feel mentally like a diet. I hate feeling like I’m restricting myself because it makes me so focused on food and I just count down the days until I can eat what I want again. I need a brain shift—something that’s going to flip a switch mentally for me.

 

Camera (and brain) Dump

• Went to see Soul Surfer yesterday and loved it.  The surfing scenes are beautiful and Bethany Hamilton's heart is amazing. 

• Now, I can't wait to see Jane Eyre.  Its rare to have movies that I'm excited to go see but this is one of them.  I just finished reading the book for the first time and loved it.  I hope the movie lives up to the book.

•  The little man got a haircut recently.  His hair had gotten out. of. control.  I don't know why but it makes me sad to go and get his hair cut every time.  I think because it keeps lightening up and it makes me sad to cut off all that dark hair.  Here's a before picture I was glad to discover I had when I was getting all the photos off my camera last night:

And here he is, freshly shorn:

•  March Madness:  Brian is so happy to have a little buddy to share his love of basketball with.  Brian couldn't be happier than a puppy with two peeters (that's a Brian-ism, btw).

• A's friend spent the night about a month ago and we let the girls watch a movie before bed.  When I came back in the room about half an hour later, this is how I found the three of them.  And I was prepared for hours of giggling and telling them repeatedly to go to sleep.

• We took a much-needed family day trip up to Sedona a few weeks ago.  Perfect weather+ windows down+awesome playlist=perfect day.

This photo just cracks me up.  We had had grand plans of stopping for sandwiches and then finding a beautiful spot to have a picnic but we were so starving by the time we got into town that that plan got thrown out the window in favor of grabbing Subway and eating out of the back of the van.  It was just as fun.

• I started The Shred last week.  Today was day six.  I'm liking it so far.  Its only twenty minutes a day which feels so do-able after the hour long workouts with P90x.  I still like P90x, but was doing three times a week max (usually more like twice a week) and I needed something new to give me a kick in the pants again.  We're really excited about a trip to the beach in July and I am bound and determined to get in shape before then.  There's nothing worse than feeling disgusting in your own skin at the beach.  I have no vain aspirations of having Jillian's body by July but even just to lose a couple of inches here and there and to tone up some would be great.  I already feel so much better just from doing it a week.  I'll let you know if I see any major improvements at the end of the thirty days.

• I've done a little Spring cleaning/sprucing around the house lately.  Sure feels good to get the house a little more organized and a little more us.

Added a few more frames to the gallery wall.  I still need to get a couple more frames for the left side.  Its hard to take a photo of it in our hallway, but I love all the color up on the wall.

Got a new Ikea shelf to get Brian's office more organized.  With him working from home for his "real" job and trying to run a small business from our home on top of that, his office was getting out of control.  We spent an entire weekend a couple of weeks ago, clearing it out and reorganizing it again.  Its so nice in there again.

This is my little office nook off our master bedroom.  I've been slowly trying to get this area more organized especially since we started homeschooling this year.  I just bought that hanging organizer thingy on the left a couple of days ago.  Found it at Goodwill and its already helped a ton.  Its amazing what the simplest little things can do.

• Speaking of homeschooling, April has been my month to plan activities for our little homeschooling group.  Last week we had them all over for a cooking lesson.  We made soft pretzels (you can get the top secret Auntie Ann's recipe here--they're sooo good!).  It was so much fun to do this with all the kids.  A little crazy, but fun! 

• And continuing on the homeschooling theme, I love to see Miss A becoming an avid little reader.  She's just exploded with her reading abilities, I honestly can't believe how far she's come since the beginning of the year.  I love to see her carrying books with her now and reading to herself.

Its gotten to the point I can pretty much sit back and eat bon-bons now--I've even got her teaching little sister. 

• And lastly, just a couple of cute photos.

L is growing up.  He can ride his pony like a madman.  And he tells me "no" (actually he says it "mmmooooo!" ) all the time.  Its cute right now but I can tell we're edging in to the terrible-twos.  Which makes me want to scream "MMMMOOOOOO!!!!".

And a spontaneous face-painting session done with paints that were not meant for that purpose which meant my kids looked like this for several days.

And its now been two hours of my life just trying to put this stupid post together.  Why is it so hard to move photos around with blogger??    Maybe if I didn't try to put two months worth of photos into one post I wouldn't have these issues.  :)