Lucky Lady

This last week or so has been filled with some great moments. For me as a mom, wife, and friend. So here's the list of everything that God has blessed me with (especially over) the last week! -Levi has had the best blood work results yet. -Mary, John, and I got the office completely painted. It looks awesome. -I was able to get all of the furniture moved back into the office -M got furniture for her new house -I woke up on Saturday morning to the sound of Levi laughing in bed next to me -We've seen Adam and Kelsey 4 times in two weeks! -House blessing at Adam and Kelsey's was WONDERFUL! -Tonight, dinner with some amazing friends -Levi lights up when John, he and I are all together -We got a piano! -Levi is stinking adorable -I got to help a friend celebrate her upcoming wedding with a shower -People at work keep blessing me with their love and support for my goals and for my family -John never ceases to remind me how much he loves me -Bee is keeping birds away from the flowers in the backyard. -Yesterday, Levi slept from 6:30pm-7am! -I finally got a walk/run in this week, and I was able to pick up right where I'd left off! -I HAVE A GOD WHO LOVES ME UNCONDITIONALLY

34 Weeks

WE DID IT!!!!! Sorry for all the exclamation points, I hate it when people (me) do that! We've made it 34 weeks, as of tomorrow. This is huge. This means that if we go into preterm labor again, we can have Levi here in town! I'm having to resist the urge to get up and do a happy dance. Forget it, happy dance done!

We had our first real fall and cold days this week! The fall days were great, the day it didn't get above 35* until after noon was even better!

This week I feel like I got quite a bit of housekeeping items done. The nesting phase is here for sure. It's odd how it's happening though. First, I had to get Levi's room completely ready to go. It's cleaned and organized, except for carpets being shampooed and vacuumed. That's something that John will have to do because it requires odd angles of stomach bending that I just can't do anymore! Then I got my car cleaned out. If you've seen my car in the past two months, you know this in itself was a huge accomplishment. The only part of that left to do is to vacuum it all and wash the windows. Part of which, once again, John will have to help me with. I also (finally) got a diaper bag this week! If you have ever had to shop for a diaper bag then you know that there's a lot that goes into it. You have to have something big enough to hold everything, but small enough to take places. You have to decide if this will also be your purse for the next 2 years, or if this is strictly the diaper bag. Does dad need to like it enough to carry it too? How much are you willing to spend? This was the biggest deciding factor for me. I found tons of bags that I loved, but they ranged from $55-300. No matter how cute the bag was, I wasn't willing to spend that kind of money on something that risked getting poop on it. I also knew that I didn't want to get a cheapo-depot one from WalMart because of how quickly they fall apart. I ended up finding this SkipHop one online and fell in love with it!

One of the most appealing factors about it was you can remove the shoulder strap and it clips right onto your stroller handle. This is great because then you're not having to get under the stroller every time you need something from it. I'm planning on using this as my purse when I'm out with Levi, so having the option of having my stuff within reach was great! The best part of this bag was the price. I found it online for about $60. More than I wanted to spend. Then, I was in Target and they had it on sale for $35! I was stoked! This was much more budget friendly. To make things even better, I had gift cards that paid for the majority of it. Now the bag is in my nursery with stuff in it. Only thing left to do there is to cut the tags off. If you know me, my buyers remorse usually gets the best of me, so I'm waiting until that passes before I cut the tags off. Or, John will cut them off for me so I can't return things. My next goal is to get my living room purged of everything that I don't need. I mean everything. Extra dishes, books, fabric. Everything. Then to get the living room carpets vacuumed and shampooed (thank you, John, for volunteering to do that).

We also had our first weekly NST this week, and it went great! Levi let them find his heartbeat, he kicked a ton, and made me sick with all the movement. I couldn't have asked for better results! Next week we have our first BPP and we're praying that goes just as well.

I think this is the last bit of news for this week, I got to go back to work part-time! Woo-hoo! I can't sit still long enough to not be doing something, so work was a really great way to break up the monotony of the days. I'm back at the YMCA now, and I can't believe that I ever left! I love seeing all of the members, staff and my friends again. For November I get to actually be on the schedule again, I feel like a real staff member! I'm also excited to start working out again once Levi gets here. Fingers crossed that on Tuesday doctor will tell me that things look good enough that I can start walking a mile or so each day, now. I hope so!

Okay, I think that's everything for this week. I'll try to get another post out after the doctor on Tuesday. We'll have a lot more information on stuff then. Oh, also, pictures of my Halloween fun-fetti cake coming soon! I love cake time!

August Work Weekend

This weekend was our August Work Weekend with John's parents. They came up from Oklahoma to help us get some things done on the house. We had a "small" list of goals that we had for the weekend. My biggest goal was that I wanted to get our bedroom painted. When we first moved into the house our bedroom was a terrible pepto-pink color. One of the walls had tissue paper put on it before it was painted. Well, Jayn (my MIL) decided that if we were going to be re-painting, we should just do the re-decorating as well! It looks AMAZING! Here are some pictures of the during and after result of our bedroom.





And the finished project...





We even got some organization done! It is perfect. It's much better than anything that we could have imagined.


As you can see, no longer pepto-pink! It is our own personal retreat from everything!

John's big goal was to get some electrical work done out in the barn. Doug (my FIL) and John worked so hard and got everything done out in the barn, plus a bunch in the house as well. Things work now! It's wonderful! They also built an enclosure for our dogs in the barn. This will be great for the winter! It's complete with outlets and lights.

I am so grateful for their help and support of this project, our house is looking better every time they come up, and our wine selection appreciates it too!

Painting Mess

It has been a busy time for us! We have recently acquired a new member of our family, my sister Elizabeth! She is going to live with us for the next year or so. This has proven to be challenging and fun. It's odd trying to find that balance between being her sister, friend, and parent. We spent a good chunk of the past month with a family from our church living in one of our apartments upstairs. They were having most of their home remolded, so we let them stay with us during that time. It was nice to have people up there using the space again. It's odd, when we bought the house we prayed that God would give us the family to feed, the laughter to fill it, and a welcoming atmosphere to do His work in our home. We had an idea of what we wanted it to be, but God has once again proven that His ideas are bigger than our own. I never would have imagined that we could have helped people while getting their houses done, or that my sister would live with us. We had ideas of children, and family dinners. I'm loving what He has chosen to do with our space!

We've also been working on doing some projects around the house. Since Adam moved out earlier this summer we had turned his room into a storage/hobby room. Then Elizabeth decided that she wanted to live in that room, so we ended up converting and repainting it. Here are some pictures of the room now!





Our other project these past few weeks has been the kitchen. Thanks to my wonderful husband, this is actually happening much faster than I had expected! We picked a historic paint color, one that is found in and on buildings as old as our home, and used that for the kitchen. John has been in the process of refinishing all of the woodwork so that it contrasts and matches our style. Here are a few pictures of the kitchen, I'll try to get better ones up as soon as it is finished.








It's very nice to see that our home is finally coming together to suit us! I love seeing the work that we put into it. Our prayer for our home is this, that God will use the space as "safe space" for our friends and family in need, that He will find a way to do ministry within and from within our home, that He would bless the people who enter in, and provide us all with peace.

Lemonade

Sometimes, life gives us lemonade right off the bat. Right now, our house is crazy! This past week we lost a pet, a baby kitten that we had found in our yard. It was a sad loss, but we've all recovered. On June 5, we got to be a part of our two best friends wedding, Kelsey and Adam! It was a wonderful celebration, and, all in all, a great weekend.

The whole wedding party!
From L to R- Dan, me, Michael, Trina, Adam, Kelsey, Matthew, Emily, John, Bengy, and Aaron. The kids are Micah and Maddie.

For throwing together nine gal's and guys that have never all been in the same room before, most of whom had never met before, we had a great time! The night of the wedding 8 of us went to the park in our dresses and tuxes. It was great! Then 7 of us had a campfire and slept out in the tent at Benny and Jolene's. It was so nice to not have to worry about anything, just enjoy time with friends and family.


On the flip side, John lost his job last week. It's a bit nerve racking to look at all of the bills and hope that my paycheck covers them all. Right now it's comforting to know that God will take care of everything. The hard part is keeping that trust there, even when things are looking dim. We did get some exciting news this week, it looks like it's a strong possibility that my sister, Elizabeth, will be coming to live with us next year! The best part is, that it's all for good reasons. She's a senior in HS next year and I hope that she does get to live with us! Oh, how wonderful that would be. She's such a neat kid and I would love getting the time with her, even if it's only a year. I know that some people are curious as to why two newlyweds would take in a HS kid within their first year of marriage, but I promise that there is a method to our madness! When John and I first talked about buying a home a little over a year ago we set out "qualifications" for our house. We knew that we wanted something that was close to the church, had a big yard, windows in the kitchen, was old, something that needed to be fixed up, and something that had lots of spare rooms. You see, we knew that if we had the extra space, God would find a way to fill it. As always, God has provided! When John first got the house he had two roommates and we were able to rent an apartment to a girl who was in a bad situation. Then we were able to provide a comfortable home to Adam until his marriage. What we also knew was that we wanted family here within a year, in our minds that was (hopefully) a child, but I think that God has blessed us with my sister instead.

Overall, things are great. I couldn't have asked for more this week. We've had great time with friends and family, and seen the value of the love that God has given us for each other, and for Him. Sometimes it's crazy to look at everything and know that for some reason, God has decided that we deserve all of this. I guess that's why we were made to praise!

Meh...

That's how things feel right now. Just meh. This is probably a rant that is really me just preaching to the choir, but I'm not happy right now. Bills are piling up higher than our ceilings. People can't seem to figure out how to pay rent on time, which just throws us WAY off our budget. Also, the people that ordered MK stuff haven't paid either! I'm supposed to go home on Monday to see my seester before she gets deployed to Afghanistan. Now it's not looking like I'm going to be there near as long as I had thought because we'll hopefully be getting some more money in this week so we may be able to afford me going home. Plus, this wedding is getting to be SO expensive. With Mom and Dad paying for M to get all of her stuff done so that she can be deployed, they can't afford to help us out as much as they had planned. So now any and all of our extra money is going to the wedding, leaving us way broke. We have to go pay a photographer today so that we actually get one. Ugh. I'm just not very happy about all of this. John's working as hard as he can and trying to get things together for us, but poor guy, isn't 60 hours a week enough?!?!?!? Praying that God brings us through this, and that I can get home to my family soon.