Moved
Find me on Facebook to get updates and to see pictures of the little one. It’s much easier to manage one website, and that is where I’m settling for a while.
Contemplation
To leave the blog world or not to leave the blog world. I’m finding keeping up with this thing incredibly difficult at the present time, and I feel bad that some people keep coming here only to find nothing new written. When work, family duties, mission work, and such begin picking up, blogging seems to be pushed to the back burner. I’d like to set up a site particularly about our mission work, and perhaps I’ll get something like that going–something that doesn’t need to be updated all the time.
I’m just contemplating. No decision has been made yet.
And His Name Is . . .
. . . not being announced yet. But, I am happy to say that the baby has chosen his own name. (Isn’t that a strange way to go about it?) My husband instructed our little guy to kick when he heard the name he wanted to be called. “Do you want to be ______?” No kick. “Do you want to be ______?” No kick. Finally, on a particular name, our son gave a huge kick. So, there it is. He has chosen his name—to be announced at a later date.
He’s a Boy!
And he wasn’t too shy about letting us know. The 20-week ultrasound revealed a still incredibly wiggly (as if I didn’t know), healthy little guy. We can hardly wait to meet him. (Here’s his profile. It looks like he has my nose!)
I’ve Done It
My mother-in-law would be proud. Last week I planted a garden. Albeit a small one, but a garden nonetheless. Death to an ugly bush at the front of the house allowed life for red and orange Asian lilies, basil, rosemary, oregano, and parsley. (I love fresh herbs. And since I’ll probably have to grow my own in Croatia, I had better get used to not killing them now.) The oregano and parsley are still tiny sprouts at the moment but seem to be doing well. The other plants flourish! I shall post a photo soon.
The LONG Weekend
Whoever knew that so much could pack into 3.5 days of freedom from work and the normal day-to-day life?
We got to see the baby again on Friday for the 17-week ultrasound. Of course, this little person (who is already demonstrating many characteristics of its father) decided to hide and not cooperate when it came to showing us the gender–so we still don’t know. However, the little wiggle worm seems to be growing well and just loves to show off “his” (I hate calling the baby “it”) hands. Again he gave us a left hand wave. He really does have two hands–we’ve seem both of them. We just seem to get photos only of the left. We still think the baby is a boy, but we should find out for sure on June 18.
I simply love Charleston, SC. And since it had been several years since we had made the trip, we decided to pack up on Saturday and head down. Saying that it was a beautiful day is an understatement. The weather was perfect! All we did was walk around the city–one of our favorite things to do when visiting somewhere–just exploring. We discovered the College of Charleston, which is now added to my list of favorite places in the world. The campus is gorgeous! I could have walked around there all day. Hours of walking, an IMAX showing (that baby didn’t seem to like much, if the amount of kicking was any indication), and a sunset stroll on the beach later we headed home–only to have the car die in the middle lane of the interstate just out of North Charleston. It was 10:15 pm.
We managed to get towed to the only place we could find that would be open on a Sunday–Wal-Mart with an auto shop–and tried to find a hotel room so we could get some sleep and deal with the car the next day. But due to a music festival going on in Charleston, all of the hotels were booked. The short of it is that we finally found a room at 3:30am. Once the taxi ride and all was over, we crashed at the hotel around 4:30am. Let’s just say that a pregnant woman with a broken down car staying up until 4:30am is not a good thing. The poor baby has now experienced his first real bout of stress. Although our situation hardly compared, we wondered if we were feeling a tiny bit like Mary and Joseph felt as they searched for a room two thousand years ago.
On Sunday (after washing clothes in the sink and drying them with a hair dryer) we had the car towed to Sears, where they were able to repair the problem–alternator. Praise God that it was something they could fix there because with Memorial Day on Monday, we would have been stranded until Tuesday waiting for something else to open. Through it all God protected and provided, for which we are exceedingly grateful. It was the most expensive “one-day” trip we have ever made (we should feel like celebrities, right–spending that much in a day), but the wonderful time we had in Charleston on Saturday made up for the trouble.
Of Cars and Stuff
We bought a new car last week. Well, a new-to-us old car–1990. It was time. Being pregnant (and in the near future having a newborn) is simply not conducive to driving one’s husband to work early in the morning and picking him up in the evening. Picking up one’s husband at 5:30pm each day is also not conducive to making any sort of an evening meal (especially when most nights seem to have fifty different things and events scheduled, usually beginning around 6:30pm). So basically, it was hard to have any sort of home life.
Hence the new car, freedom for the wife, supper, and more time to spend together. And the fact that the new car is 5-speed, which I need to learn to drive before we get to Croatia, doesn’t hurt either.
Countdown to Baby
It seems as though there is a post theme happening here. I guess the little one is pretty much what I am thinking about lately. Anyway, this is kind of cool. It should keep up, so check back periodically to see the little guy’s/gal’s progress.
Happy Day
Got to hear the baby’s heartbeat today–a strong 165 beats per minute. (I’m glad my heart doesn’t beat that fast!) We’ll find out the gender in about three weeks, which is very exciting. Still battling a bit of sickness, but it is slowing down. It’s nice to be able to do normal things like take care of the house and cook again. Six weeks of all-day nausea really is no fun.
Here is my favorite picture to date. At 11 weeks our little one waved hello. 
Another Change of Plans
I cannot hide it any longer, as I have been sick for too long. So here you go–our 11-week-old baby. (The baby is upside down with its head to the right.)
As you know from a previous post, we had planned to adopt. In February I awoke in the middle of the night and prayed the Bible story of Hannah and Samuel back to God, knowing that He could do for us what He did for Hannah if He wanted to. I fell asleep after this prayer in peace, knowing that God would do in our lives what is best for us and what would bring Him the most praise.
We went forward with the adoption process, gaining adoption approval on March 9 of this year. Three days later, I became quite sick, and a couple of days after that we found out that God had miraculously answered our prayers and has given us a biological child, who we will meet sometime around November 1. After nearly three years of marriage. God has chosen to answer our prayers. We cannot explain it apart from Him. Potentially, there were many children we could have had, but this very child is the one God wanted us to have right now. God is so good, and we are amazingly blessed. (We would still like to adopt, but we have put that on hold temporarily.)
Our baby is a wiggle worm, never staying still for a second (which is why we couldn’t get any shots of the legs). “He” is going to be just like his father 
