20 weeks and more

Merry Christmas...and a Happy New Year very soon. We finished up our Christmas week spending time with the Shipley's, driving to Grandbury to visit grandparents, helping with Christmas Eve Service at WM (with IHOP in between services) and another week old in pregnancy. The week of Christmas I was 19 weeks pregnant. Blake took the pic. below with my matching Christmas pajamas on...matching to his mom and sister, not Blake!

Cathy (Blake's mom) got us the little gift below. It is an angel holding a baby. It represents the baby we miscarried. It was very sweet and thoughtful. It is a special present.
I am about to start turning our guest room into the baby's room. I picked out the fabric below and it is being made right now. We plan to paint the room soon and start on some little things. I said I would start reading books and actually preparing for the baby when January came...It's here! So here we go...I'm excited to pull it all together. I hope I get to do a few craft projects a long the way. It brings me so much life, I love doing little things like that. Blake has the majority of the responsibility when it comes to painting, sanding, re-painting but after that I think I'll set him free of the decorating responsibilities.
This pic. is of me at 20 weeks. Today! Half way there. We had a big sono this week and the baby is 9 inches long! Much bigger than "What to Expect" told me :)....The pictures are just awful from the sono so I won't post them. It was mainly to look at organs, bones etc. so he didn't really try and get any good face shots. Plus, the baby likes to look at my back..a lot! We still aren't finding out. I mostly refer to the baby as a he, mainly out of neutrality but also because if I tend to think one way or the other...I think it's a boy. And of course we do not have a boy name b/c the one we thought of 2 years ago...is used....a lot. We'll figure it out but it runs through my head 24/7. I mainly come up with names and Blake mainly says no! I am enjoying the pregnancy. I'll write more about that another time. What my little mind tends to go back and forth about. I think it's a little different for me being pregnant after infertility and miscarriage. Not sure how to put it into words...but different. Anyway- that is for later. Have a great break (if you are still on one like me)!!

Christmas Week

Our week has been a lot of fun so far. BTW: We did not send out Christmas cards this year (again), so it's not that we don't like you that you didn't get one...we saved a few dollars instead!

Friday was my last day of work for a while and I really needed the break to rest and have fun. We started our week out with a little party with our community group. Here are the girls below. We haven't had a pic. of the 4 of us in a long time so I had to get one. These are the girls I write about often, my best friends...we have walked through a lot together...I am blessed. Katie, me, Sara, Veronica

My parents make the best stockings for us each year. It's one of our favorite parts. So they made one for the baby this year, it was cute.
Another present we got was our stroller. It's pretty cool. Blake and my mom are putting it together below. It was a lot of fun at Christmas to get little things for the baby. We spent the whole weekend with my family acting like it was Christmas Eve/Christmas! We lounged around, stayed in our pajamas and enjoyed our time together.
Finally, something that always makes my day is to drink a hot drink out of a wonderful mug. I love it. For some reason it refreshes me and makes the whole drinking experience better. So Blake and Megan bought me a few mugs for Christmas. I love them. I wish I could have all sorts of different mugs and plates for that matter...I'm working on it!
The season isn't over and I'm excited to celebrate Christmas Eve at Watermark and have time with Blake's family too. Merry Christmas....

16-17 weeks

For those who don't see me every day, I kind of all the sudden popped out one week. My tummy is growing and so is the baby. The baby is about 5 inches now and my stomach is a lot bigger then that! Here are some pic's. I started to feel the baby move yesterday.

The little dot above the face is his/her fist. We have 3D sono pic.'s as well but I just think those can look kind of freaky!

Names

What’s in a name really? What happens if you name your kid something and come to find out the meaning isn’t that great? What if you choose a name and they get teased for the rest of their life? Or they interview for a job and their resume get’s passed over because of the name you gave them!

Yes, we’ve thought of names. In fact, we’ve been thinking of them for 2 years. One of the names we came up with 2 years ago (yes, before any of you did) has now been used, I hear it often and don’t know what to do about that. Do we nix it or go forward?
And…where on earth do people find names? It seems everyone has the same idea but then I hear a name I’ve never heard before and I think: now what website did you go to in order to come up with that.....

So…when you pass by a name, throw it out there... We’ll see what happens. We aren’t finding out the gender so we have to come up with boy and girl names. We have some in mind but of course this runs through my head all the time!

Summer and Winter

I was looking at blogs last night and stumbled upon this. It is from Matt Chandler's family blog. I hope it blesses you today.

"Thou hast made summer and winter."
--Psalm 74:17
My soul begin this wintry month with thy God. The cold snows and the piercing winds all remind thee that He keeps His covenant with day and night, and tend to assure thee that He will also keep that glorious covenant which He has made with thee in the person of Christ Jesus. He who is true to His Word in the revolutions of the seasons of this poor sin-polluted world, will not prove unfaithful in His dealings with His own well-beloved Son.

Winter in the soul is by no means a comfortable season, and if it be upon thee just now it will be very painful to thee: but there is this comfort, namely, that the Lord makes it. He sends the sharp blasts of adversity to nip the buds of expectation: He scattereth the hoarfrost like ashes over the once verdant meadows of our joy: He casteth forth His ice like morsels freezing the streams of our delight. He does it all, He is the great Winter King, and rules in the realms of frost, and therefore thou canst not murmur. Losses, crosses, heaviness, sickness, poverty, and a thousand other ills, are of the Lord's sending, and come to us with wise design. Frosts kill noxious insects, and put a bound to raging diseases; they break up the clods, and sweeten the soul. O that such good results would always follow our winters of affliction!

How we prize the fire just now! how pleasant is its cheerful glow! Let us in the same manner prize our Lord, who is the constant source of warmth and comfort in every time of trouble. Let us draw nigh to Him, and in Him find joy and peace in believing. Let us wrap ourselves in the warm garments of His promises, and go forth to labours which befit the season, for it were ill to be as the sluggard who will not plough by reason of the cold; for he shall beg in summer and have nothing.