Wednesday, June 9, 2010

SHOWERed with Love

Today was a great day! A day I've been looking forward to for years, and thought about, prayed about, and anticipated for years- my baby shower! My grade level threw me and Avery a school-wide baby shower, and it was wonderful!

People were so generous, and we got great gifts! What made it even better was that John was able to be there for most of it, and it was really special sharing the event with him! Opening each pink gift after the other was a little overwhelming at first, but I got the hang of it...no problem!



Daddy Tool Box


Her cake


Ummmm, please let's not report on how big the belly has grown!


Our wreath-o-goodies!

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Random baby 'stuff'








She's a moving, and groovin' little girl!









The power of the registry gun!

Saturday, June 5, 2010

Ice pops, bubbles, and white cheddar popcorn...

These are the simple pleasures in life, aren't they? All incredibly inexpensive items, and all things that our 3rd graders went NUTS over on last Friday! Our grade level threw an End of SOL Celebration for our sweet 3rd graders.

SOLs (Standards of Learning) are the standardized tests students take in the state of Virginia grade 3-12. You'd think that since third grade is the first year they take these scary tests they'd go easy on them...nope! They take a test in every subject area, and let me tell you...it's rough! We spend months preparing them for these tests, and prepping them for what to expect. Our testing schedule was a little screwy this year, and it was stretched over a two week time frame. These tests lasted f-o-r-e-v-e-r! Everyone in the school was dying for them to be over!

We took the kids to the field next to the playground on Friday, the last day of testing, and rewarded them for a job well done with ice pops, bubbles, and white cheddar popcorn. You would have thought we gave them a million bucks! THEY LOVED IT! With the help of our Principal, Assistant Principal, Testing/Data Coordinator, and Reading Interventionist, we passed out about 130 ice pops, 130 bottles of bubbles, and 130 bags of Smartfood white cheddar popcorn.

The kids played with the bubbles in the hot sun, and enjoyed their treats for about 40 minutes. The whole grade level was able to mingle with each other, and the focus was on celebrating being DONE. It was so cool to see how much fun they had with such a simple concept. No pizza party. No movie. No ice cream party. We were kind of expecting them to be 'over it' pretty quickly, but they weren't!

Like I said- they loved every second of it!




Monday, May 31, 2010

5 Month Belly


Here I am with my 5 month belly. I can't believe we're half way there already! Some people ask me if it's gone by fast. In some ways it's gone kind of fast, and in other ways time is dragging on. I can definitely say that I love being pregnant, other than my really bad acid reflux/heartburn.














Your baby weighs about 10 1/2 ounces now. He's also around 6 1/2 inches long from head to bottom and about 10 inches from head to heel — the length of a banana. (For the first 20 weeks, when a baby's legs are curled up against his torso and hard to measure, measurements are taken from the top of his head to his bottom — the "crown to rump" measurement.

He's swallowing more these days, which is good practice for his digestive system. He's also producing meconium, a black, sticky by-product of digestion. This gooey substance will accumulate in his bowels, and you'll see it in his first soiled diaper (some babies pass meconium in the womb or during delivery).

Monday, May 24, 2010

5 month appointment

Well, we were reassured- it's a girl in there! It was an exciting appointment, for other reasons as well. All of her measurements (which they can tell a lot about regarding genetic disorders and what not) are perfectly normal, and the blood work last week to test if I had any blood disorders which can cause stillbirths came back negative! Praise God! I know there is always something that can happen, but a lot was ruled out today; which made John and I both feel better! I think the ultrasound pictures are pretty clear to see what you're looking at.

Here are some pictures from our appointment today:



Sunday, May 23, 2010

Beach Games 2010

The awards ceremony

Claire, Katey, and me

Self-explanatory

All the girls: dry and pretty

John and Stew competing in the wake board wheelbarrow race!

Dan and Cam competing in the wake board wheelbarrow race!


Fierce competitors

Dan bobbing for shovels...in nasty ocean water!


This past weekend we had a great time with friends at Beach Games 2010! A small group of us started this 'tradition' last year on Easter, where we played games on the beach. It was a pretty simple idea we and the Tollers came up with, and since it was so much fun, we decided to make it an annual event!

This year was a even BIGGER! There were a lot more people (18 instead of 10), and there were 7 events instead of 3. The events this year ranged from wake board wheelbarrow races to water jug relay races. It was so fun to watch the guys compete (some more competitive than others), and enjoy company of awesome friends as well!

After the events were over (which lasted about an hour and a half), we had a nice BBQ on the beach. Everyone pitched in by bringing/making food so the expense was spread amongst a lot of people.

I think the best part was just watching, and enjoying a day filled with laughter! John and I are so incredibly blessed with amazing friends! Funny, outgoing, adventerous, amazing friends!

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Fear vs. Truth

Before you're pregnant, you meet/her of people who have had miscarriages, and then when you are pregnant the stories don't stop. They just keep coming, and coming...

Just when you think you're in the 'safe' zone of being past your first trimester, you hear NEW horror stories that make you even MORE nervous than when you were just a few weeks along in the pregnancy.

I'm a little over 18 weeks pregnant, and so far this pregnancy has gone smoothly. There have been so many times however, that the words people say to me fuel fear about losing the baby, instead of fuel confidence in God, and His will for this baby.

I just in the last three days read two terribly sad stories of women who lost their babies at 35 weeks along for various reasons. And although this is very uncommon, it clearly still happens. When I tell people these stories, everyone's response (including the doctors') is "Well, that is very uncommon, and the chance of that happening to your baby is so rare." When people say that, it makes me think that it can't be that rare. I mean I hear stories almost every week about women losing their babies during the 'safe' zone. And I'm sure the women who lost their babies would never have imagined that they would be part of that very rare statistic.

Constantly I have to remind myself (with a lot of help from my awesome husband), that God has a plan for this pregnancy, and our baby. Even though I can fill my mind with discouraging stories, God's truth is so much more powerful than my fear!


The following verses have been helpful to me during our pregnancy, and I keep them in my purse so I can read them when I get fearful:

"I prayed for this child, and the Lord has granted what I asked of him"
~ 1 Samuel 1:27

"For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb."
~ Psalm 139:13

"From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another."
~ John 1:16

"For God has not gives us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind." ~2 Timothy 1:2