My Own Personal Advent

As I was lying in bed a few minutes ago, I realized I'm kind of in my own personal season of advent. I grew up in a church that followed and celebrated seasons, one of them being advent. The color is blue, and it's a period of time where we're waiting, or anticipating the arrival of Christ. 

As I was thinking about that this morning, I started to realize how different that period of advent would have been for Mary than it ever was for me growing up. We celebrated by using the color blue throughout the sanctuary, and on Sundays we would light one of the candles on the advent wreath and sing a song about hope, love, joy and peace. 

Those four weeks before Jesus was born were probably a little different for Mary. If I feel anything like she did, hope, love and joy were there (although I'm not expecting much peace for at least the first few weeks), but there are a lot of other elements mixed in, too. As much as I wonder if I'll be a good mother and teach my daughter what she needs to know, I can't imagine what it would be like to anticipate raising the son of God.

I also can't imagine what the journey to Bethlehem was like for Mary and Joseph. It must have been long. I've got 7 weeks until my due date, and I'm moving pretty slowly (at least, compared to my normal walking speed). Traveling by car isn't bad, but sitting on a horse or donkey for long periods of time couldn't have been comfortable, and then the extra movement would have forced additional bathroom breaks...crazy.

Regardless of the fears, Matt and I are so excited to meet our daughter. I'm just so glad that, in addition to the support of our family and friends, we have the reassurance that God wouldn't bless us with her if we couldn't handle being parents. I know I haven't been as good about keeping up with my blog in recent months, but I'll keep on sitting down and typing out a post here and there when I can. No promises on how often, though - my world is about to make a big change :)

Photo courtesy of John-Morgan

Guess What! It's A...

For my 100th post, I thought this would be an appropriate subject.

Today was an exciting day; we just got back from an ultrasound where we got to see the baby pretty clearly. We could see the head, spine, heart...plus the legs and arms were moving around, which was pretty cool (and super cute!)

We also found out that we're having a...girl! Although the technician couldn't see extremely clearly (the baby was moving around enough, and kept finding a comfortable spot obstructed by my belly button) there's a 90% chance it's a girl (based on what she saw and also what she didn't see).

Of course, we would be absolutely thrilled with either a boy or a girl. I think my favorite part was just getting to see her move her arms around and kick her little legs :)

Photo courtesy of jmlawlor

Getting Crafty

Looking back on my posts, I guess I never updated my blog with the news that we're expecting...well, good news - we're expecting! I'm due in November, which means I'm solidly in the 2nd trimester, and I'm pretty sure I'm at the beginning stages of what's called "nesting."

For most of the pregnancy, I haven't really felt like doing much (which was great for moving right at the beginning). Although I can't complain (I haven't had any major discomfort yet), I've still been tired and just want to relax by the time I reach the end of the work day. That changed earlier this week. I decided that we need to get better at planning our meals ahead of time. The challenge is that Matt and I both take turns making dinner, but we're wired completely differently, so where I might be happy sitting down and filling out a list of meals and groceries, he's not going to want to take the time. Enter my brand new system: A menu board!

I saw this idea on Pinterest and, although I'm not the craftiest person, it looked like something I could handle. I have to say, I'm very happy with the outcome:

What I like about this menu board is it's very easy for either one of us to pick out the meals and put them up on the board. Then, I can go through and look at the back of each one (which lists the necessary ingredients) to create a shopping list. Here are pictures of the process:

So now I need to type meals & ingredients up and print them out onto cards, but I figure that can be an ongoing process as I find dinners over the years.

I also made a list of everything I want to start working on, and I have a lot of ideas about how to do them so the areas remain easy to maintain. Here's just some of what I want to get to in the next few months:

• Organize the pantry
• Get my bedside table set up and organized
• Re-organize the linens (dining, bedding, towels)
• Go through boxes in the garage
• Organize the closet in the office
• Organize the closet in the master bedroom
• Find homes for everything not baby related that's currently stored in the baby's room
• Rearrange the bookshelf in the office

We'll see how it goes!

Crazy, But Good Crazy

We have now officially moved into our new house! The last several weeks have been crazy, so I'm excited that we've started getting back into our regular rhythm over the last couple of days. But things were crazy a few weeks ago for several reasons (all of them good):

• A lot of paperwork had to be collected and signed to get our house.
• We made time for a quick trip down to Portland to see Wicked!
• Within one weekend (actually, it was Easter weekend) we painted six different rooms in our house and moved everything in (a BIG thanks to everyone that came and helped - we couldn't have done it without them!)
• We hired 3 new people at work and I did training with them last week. I'm super excited the team's expanded, though, and all 3 of them are doing a great job!

It's amazing how much calmer I've felt over the last few days. I mean, I wouldn't say I was exactly stressed a few weeks (or even a week) ago, but more...overwhelmed? That doesn't seem like the right word either. 

I know this is a short update, but I don't really have much else to include at the moment. I'll leave you with the hallway in our master bedroom (perfect for my solo dance parties!):

This Month's Update

Warning: This post will be rambly. I just haven't felt like updating my blog recently. One big reason is once I get done with work I just don't want to be on a computer anymore. And blogging without a computer is kind of difficult. We've also been busy enough that when I do have downtime, I just want to veg out and turn my brain off for a while.

Big news in our life? Well, a few weeks ago we put an offer on a house! It was accepted and everything seems to be underway to close towards the end of the month. I'm excited to paint its rooms different colors (I've wanted to paint our apartment for a year, but that's not really allowed). The way the timing will work, it looks like we'll have our apartment for a couple months of overlap, too, so we'll be able to take our time moving out without a lot of stress. Yay for that :)

What else has been going on...? We went to a conference with our high schoolers earlier this month and learned about prayer. It was lots of fun! We also saw the Hunger Games twice this weekend: Thursday night at midnight and Friday night. I really enjoyed it. Yes, the book is way better, and there were a few things I would have done a little bit differently, but I thought they did a good job of capturing the book on film. Since the book is written completely from Katniss' point of view, it made parts of the story hard to capture (or at least her thought process and how she feels about things). Overall it was great, though!

Oh, and I wanted to mention my grandpa turned 99 this month! I was a little sad we weren't able to make it to his birthday party, but I did get to talk to him on the phone and it sounds like he had a good time :)

On that note, I'm calling it a night. Good night!

Another Blog

Well, I started another blog (this song just popped in my head when I typed that). Basically, I'm going to use this blog to call attention to the various things I'm learning, so every post will start with "what I learned." For those of you that don't follow me on Google+, Facebook or Twitter, here's the first post: http://recentlylearned.blogspot.com/2012/02/wonderful-array-of-apps.html.

I'll keep updating with random streams of consciousness, etc. here as well. This blog is still my catch-all. The other is more to be used as a way to keep track of what I'm learning, and should be fun to read over in a few months/year.

Hopefully that last sentence made sense. I'm rather tired.

Your Opinion, Please

Would you mind giving me some feedback?

Lately I've been thinking about the idea of starting another blog. Not to replace this one, but to instead be about something specific. This blog is basically a random stream of my thoughts about whatever is going on in my life, which is great for a few people that know me and care (especially those that live farther away that I don't talk to very often), and I plan to continue using it, but I kind of want to start one that's all about one subject. In addition to giving me something to learn more about, it would give some of the posts I write more focus.

I have a few ideas floating around, but nothing has really jumped out at me. I think of myself as someone that dabbles a bit in various subjects, and I find it interesting to learn a little bit about different things...perhaps that's an idea to run with? A blog that chronicles what I'm learning? Or should I go in a completely different direction? Do you have any insight for me? What subjects do you think of when you think of me?

Photo Credit: mrsdkrebs