Thankful

I've been meaning to write this post for a couple of weeks, but this is the first chance I've had to sit down and write it out. I've been feeling so thankful lately, not just because of Thanksgiving last week, but also because of the big changes made to my life a couple of weeks ago. Here's what I've been thankful for lately:

1. Our daughter. Despite not having many chances to sleep and moments of feeling like a cow, I am so, so, so grateful for our beautiful baby girl. 
2. Smooth pregnancy/delivery. I'm so thankful the entire pregnancy went smoothly and the delivery was complication-free. On a similar note, I'm also thankful for modern medicine :)
3. An amazing husband and happy marriage. In addition to our daughter's arrival, our 4th wedding anniversary was earlier this month - I'm so happy I get to share my life with my best friend. I can't even begin to describe how great a husband he is, and he's already such a fantastic father.
4. Supportive friends and family. We're so grateful for all the ways family and friends have helped us as we adjust to life with a newborn, especially by providing some meals and helping with housework. I'm also so thankful that both Matt and I have great relationships with our parents, siblings, grandparents and in-laws.
5. My boss. I'm so, so thankful for a boss that's so understanding and encouraging. It's hard to believe I've been with the same company for 6 years, and from the day I told my boss I was pregnant she's been so supportive and excited for me and our expanding family.
6. Matt's job. It's so great he has a job he enjoys and that provides what we need. 
7. Giants winning the World Series again. I love the team the Giants put together this year, and I was so happy they won again this year.
8. Cold, rainy weather. I just love this time of year - whether I'm bundled up inside listening to rain on the skylight or venturing outside to enjoy experiencing it for myself.
9. Our house. I'm so grateful we were able to buy the house we bought. At the moment it's perfect for us and hasn't needed a lot of work done to it.
10. Resources available to us. We live in a time and place with so many resources available to us, and I'm so glad we can use some of them.
11. God's grace. I know I mess up a lot. I'm so grateful for God's grace, and the grace of those that forgive me for my mistakes.
12. My iPhone and its apps. My phone is certainly very handy for connecting online when both hands and lap isn't available.
13. Chocolate chip cookies. C is for cookie, that's good enough for me :)

I know there's a lot more I am thankful for, but that's all I've got right now - my favorite daughter is calling for me :)

Still Waiting...

It seems like the hardest time to wait is right before something big happens. As someone that likes to know the plan, waiting for an indeterminate amount of time is especially hard for me. Despite wanting my daughter to arrive right away, I try to be an optimistic person, so I'm trying to dwell on a few benefits to her not coming yet:

1. More Time With My Mom. Because my mom wants to be here for the delivery, she came up last week so she doesn't miss it. Even though we haven't had anything happen yet, it's been a lot of fun having time with her to talk, go to various stores, walk around, watch various TV shows together, etc.
2. More Time For Organization. The extra time has given us a chance to work on putting things away better and organize more efficiently. A few weeks ago, Matt's parents came up and helped build some really great shelves in our garage. Although I still want to consolidate a bit more, we already have a lot more room and feel much more organized. The extra time has certainly given us more time to put things away and find homes for a few things we never quite got around to unpacking when we moved.
3. More Time For Work. I have a wonderfully flexible boss and a job that doesn't take much physical exertion, so I'm able to continue working and don't need to spend time on leave until the baby's actually born. 
4. More Time For Development. Ultimately, I want our daughter to come when she's ready and fully-developed. So if she's not quite ready to come out yet, I'm trying to remember that she's still got some growing to do in the womb. That and God's timing is better than mine...in my 28 years of experience, His plans have always been better than the ones I come up with.

Despite the benefits, I'm still really excited for our daughter to make her appearance and am tired of waiting. Maybe today will be the day??

Photo Credit: deux-chi

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

Go Me

I just realized I completed one of my goals last year! I updated my blog at least once per month. Well yay! Go me. We'll see if I keep it up this year, too :)

I think this will probably be a short post. As much as I enjoy blogging, there just doesn't seem to be the time as more and more activities are added to my life. The good news is we're officially house hunting now! Tonight we got to spend some time actually looking in houses with our realtor, so that was fun.

I've also been trying to make it to crew more regularly. I did pretty well for a few weeks before things started getting busy again, but we're back on the water on Saturday - extra motivation to make it!

I still haven't gotten back into TV shows - I haven't really watched TV since before Christmas! It sounds much longer than it feels.

I think that's all the energy I have for tonight. I should probably go to bed (we'll see if that actually happens).

We Meet Again

Yes, my title is referring to the time of night. Yet again I'm up way later than I should be, and am I going to sleep? No. Instead I'm blogging about it. 

The big news around here lately has been the snow. We got tons of it. I mean, usually we get a few inches and everyone flips out and has a great time until it melts the next day. But the snow has been here since Sunday. And there's been a lot of it. I mean, look at how high it comes up on me:

The last few days have been a lot of fun enjoying the snow, but then today it got really slick and icy. That and our Internet was down for about 5 hours this morning, which made working a bit of a challenge, although I was able to keep busy and work on things offline for a while. Then, a couple of hours after our Internet was back up the power went down, which meant the router turned off and, again, I was without Internet. Although my work day wasn't quite as productive as I was hoping, I still got a lot done and was able to use the time effectively.

One thing that really helped was the ability to check email on my cell phone. That's right, we upgraded from our regular old phones to smartphones! We are now two proud iPhone users. I've been having fun exploring all sorts of fun apps, etc. If you have any suggestions, let me know. So far I've got everything from social media and productivity apps to sports and games apps. I decided to jump on the bandwagon and start using Instagram. Here's my first creation:

I found another fun photo app that let me add frames, so I created these two photos:

Needless to say (although I'm going to write it anyway), I've been loving my new phone. 

Anyway, it's 3am and I have a busy day at work tomorrow, so I'm going to go to sleep now. Really. Let me know if there are any more apps I should download, and good night!

A Stream of Thought

Apparently this is one of those nights where I stay up instead of going to sleep. No, I won't make it to crew in the morning; 3 hours isn't enough sleep for me. Although at this rate I still might not get a full night.

I'm doing pretty well with my goal of at least one blog post per month. I know I don't have the most readers, but I still enjoy writing every once in a while, even if it's about nothing in particular. Besides, I'm pretty sure I have a couple of loyal readers that will read almost anything I write - my parents are dependable like that ;)

We've been pretty busy the last couple of weeks. Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, we've been pretty busy the last couple of months. Work has been insanely busy. The good part is we've been having a lot more clients come in. The challenging part is simply getting everything done. We did bring someone new in a few months ago, and she's been working amazing. That definitely helps!

But besides work, December is just always busy with getting ready for vacation, visiting friends/family in California (we had a blast, by the way), and then returning from time off. I feel like I'm finally starting to get a handle on things again - more than a week after getting home. Is that normal?

The good news is I've realized my priorities have totally shifted in a good way. I'm giving God the credit for that one, by the way. While we were in California I started seriously consider if I'd be able to make it back to crew after about 3 months off this past fall. I decided I wanted to do it, and despite being swamped with playing catch up, I've been able to make it to practice twice so far! Yes, I'm skipping tomorrow to give myself a few more hours of sleep, but I'm confident I'll be back on Saturday.

With spending more time working, adding crew back in, and taking care of various other tasks (weekly events with church, writing newsletters for a couple of different organizations in my free time, etc), I started trying to figure out what I would let go. As it turns out, that's a decision God seemed to make for me. I've lost pretty much all motivation to keep up with TV shows. Don't get me wrong, I still like my shows, but I'm not driven to watch them the same way. I'm happy to just wait and get to it if I get to it. Instead I'd rather spend the time doing things around the apartment, reading a book, hanging out with Matt or going out with friends. I'm still me, though. I seem to find ways to keep myself busy that don't include doing the dishes, housework, etc. Go figure.

We'll see if this shift in priorities lasts. I'm enjoying it while it does, though. I recently found a cute new photo album and printed out pictures from when we moved to Washington in 2009 to this past trip to California, and I'm almost done putting it together. I've also been wanting to eat food at home that's more healthy, although I haven't wanted to cook anything for a long time. It's more convenient if the healthy eating goes with a cooking phase...