home stretch

I'm on the home stretch! Today was my last day working at the Children's Ministry Center at First Baptist Church in Covington (wow that's a long name!) Baby Boy isn't due for another week but I wanted to have a little time to myself next Tuesday and Thursday while Micah is there to rest and think...unless of course he decides to come early.

I really enjoyed my year in the preschool. It was definitely a challenge at first!!! Six one year old boys demand a little different side of you than a classroom full of 2nd graders. I grew to love them all though and will miss the extra love from them as well! I also met some great new people who I hope to keep in touch with and not just through blogs and facebook :)

On the home front, the room is organized, the bags are packed, arrangements have been made for Micah and we are waiting patiently, or atleast trying to. The only thing we haven't done is settle on a name, but hopefully we will soon. This week has been a whirlwind of emotion. While we are excitedly awaiting the birth of our 2nd son and anxious about meeting him a dear friend's daughter lost her first child, a boy, during childbirth. My heart absolutely broke when I heard the news. I can't imagine how that feels, it's horrible enough being on the outside looking in, but to be living it...unimaginable, unbelievable, just...I don't even know. I've been praying for this family constantly all the while feeling a fear creep up inside of me about the safety of my own sweet boy. The only thing we all can cling to is the fact that God is Sovereign and will take care of me, him, them no matter what.

strawberries

Before I show you all the cute pictures of Micah picking strawberries and tell you how fun it was to have this little family outing I want to inform you of the annoying morning and all the random things that delayed our adventure.

1) roof guy was supposed to come at 9:30 and didn't show up until 10:15
2) went to bank to deposit insurance company's check and about 100 other people had the same idea.
3) bank would not deposit check because it had not been approved by Bank of America
4) went to Bank of America to get approval and gas light came on
5) got approval and headed back to our bank to deposit
6) check will be held for 5 days *seriously why is that...all has been approved, obviously we did not forge anything!?!?!?!
7) went to gas station to fill up
8) wondering why no outing we ever plan can happen smoothly

Yay! Now we get to go to the strawberry patch. By this time poor Micah had been sitting in the car for almost an hour asking about the strawberries and was probably sure his parents were liars :)



Micah was definitely excited about picking strawberries or stawderries as he says. We went to Southern Belle Farm to do the picking. It is the same place we went for the pumpkin patch but this time there were no extra events just fields of plump, juicy berries. We made sure to tell Micah not to pick any of the green ones and then after a few minutes also had to tell him not to pick any that were 'kinda orange.' Usually Zach or I would find one that looked pretty good and call him over to pick it. Then we'd laugh to each other about how cute he was getting so excited about whatever one he picked and threw (and I mean threw) in the bucket! He only ate 2 while we were picking which I thought showed great restraint and then chowed down on four more HUGE ones on the way home. He was definitely stained by the time we got back!












Once we got home with our strawberry harvest I had to figure out what the heck to do with it. I might as well admit that I don't eat strawberries. I like the juice from them but the actual berry has a tartness to it that I'm just not a fan of. I ended up cutting some up for the boys to eat now, freezing some whole for later and making a strawberry pie for dessert last night. Now if you remember I eat raisin bran without the raisins so obviously I love strawberry pie without the strawberries. Basically I just mix cool whip with the strawberry gooey stuff and it is oh so good. So when I made my pie I made sure to leave myself a nice piece of goo, just like my Granny used to make for me :)

photography

Zach has started a blog to post the pictures he takes for people. Check it out!

Zach May Photography

scary book

Last night, or I guess I should say this morning at 3:30 AM, I woke up to the sound of Micah crying in his room. I walked in and he was boohooing on his bed and when I asked him what was wrong he pointed to his book shelf and said that book. Silly me assumed he meant he wanted to read a story so I told him no story to which he continued to cry, wanted me to hold him and wanted to sleep in mama's bed.

Sadly, when it comes to me getting sleep, any responsible parenting goes out the window. If it will make him sleep and get me more sleep I'm all about it so into our room we went. However, it was not that easy this time. He tossed and turned and talked and poked until finally I said let's go back to Micah's bed. So I went and laid down with him. Well he tossed and turned and talked and poked until I finally told him mama was going to her bed and he needed to stay in there. As soon as I shut the door he started crying again so I got in bed and told Zach it was his turn. By this time it was about 4:45.

Zach went in and rocked with him and put him back in his bed and left and Micah was quiet...Yay! It's now 5:17. I had just fallen back asleep when I heard him crying again so I waited and after I knew he wasn't going to get quiet I brought him back to our bed, put him in a different spot and PRAISE THE LORD he fell right asleep...5:30.

Briefly today Zach and I talked about the fact that it will be so nice when he can tell us why he's awake. Well if his mother would have just listened the first time everything would have been fine!

ANSWER TO OUR TROUBLES: This afternoon Micah woke up crying from his nap. When I walked in to ask him what was wrong he again pointed to his book shelf and said that book. Well this time I looked and saw the cover of a book facing his bed and thought yeah that'd probably scare me too. I asked him if the book was scary and he said, "Yes, scared Micah, there's a bee on it." So I hid the book and now everything is a OK!!

So now you tell me...do you think it's a scary book?

my mondays

For the last 4 weeks we have had another boy come visit us while his mom is at work. While it took some time for them to adjust to playing together, Micah gets super excited on the days Nathan comes to visit. It's amazing how different it is watching them play together in comparison to Micah and Isabella. For one thing my house gets WAY more trashed when the boys are finished!!! Their favorite things to do are play with the tunnel that Haley gave Micah for Christmas and to argue with each other about what things are called. It's pretty funny!

Micah and Nathan

The Tunnels

The Aftermath!

37 weeks

Another busy week. I think my future holds many busy weeks the next few months :) I started washing and putting away baby clothes. It was so odd to look at all those little things and think that Micah actually fit into them two short years ago. Yesterday we finally had the opportunity for Zach to take 'real' pictures of me and my pregnant self. They turned out so good!! I am going to share a few of my favorites but he's going to post them on his web site soon so I'll link you over so you can take a look. Tim beware...there are some bare belly shots!












I definitely feel 3 weeks away and am starting to get all of my end of the road symptoms. Things like hitting Zach in the middle of the night to push me out of the bed, swollen little fingers and feet, out of breath after walking to my car. Basically, all that fun stuff that happens when you are carrying around 30 extra pounds!!

easter weekend

We had quite an exciting Easter weekend. On Saturday we put up Micah's big boy bed and went to an Easter egg hunt with the Cardozas at the church where Isabella attends preschool. Leslie was in charge of taking pictures since we were still camera'less'. I think she got some really cute shots of the two of them hunting! However we got our camera back so Easter morning we were ready to go!

After a really good first nights sleep in his new bed Micah woke up to Easter surprises!



The "bunny" left him a Curious George DVD set (8 great hours of monkey fun!), Curious George markers, a bubble wand, a shape puzzle and the book The Legend of the Three Trees. He was so cute finding all of his goodies and wanting to play with each one immediately. We definitely had plenty to keep us busy before we left for church!


Since both of our families live away and I am 3ish weeks away from baby boy we decided to stay in Conyers and have a quiet Easter afternoon. I cooked lunch at home and then we got some pictures of all of us in the backyard.












After Micah's nap we spent the rest of the day watching the Masters at the Moons' house, eating dinner and watching Micah act like a goof ball!! It was such a fun, relaxing day!

Easter sunday song

High Noon

High noon in the valley of the shadow
When the deep of the valley was bright
When the mouth of the tomb shouted,
"Glory, the groom is alive"
So long, you wages of sin go on,
Don't you come back again
I've been raised and redeemed;
You've lost all your sting
To the victor of the battle at
High noon in the valley
In the valley of the shadow

And the demons, they danced in the darkness
When that last ragged breath left his lungs
And they reveled and howled
At the war that they thought they had won

But then, in the dark of the grave
The stone rolled away
In the still of the dawn on the greatest of days

High noon in the valley of the shadow
When the shadows were shot through with light
When Jesus took in that breath
And shattered all death with his life
Be gone, you wages of sin
Go on, don't you come back again
I've been raised and redeemed
You've lost all your sting
To the victor of the battle
High noon in the valley of the shadow

Let the people rejoice
Let the heavens resound
Let the name of Jesus, who sought us
And freed us forever ring out

All praise to the fighter of the night
Who rides on the light
Whose gun is the grace of the God of the sky

High noon in the valley of the shadow
When the shadows were shot through with light
When the mouth of the tomb
Shouted, "Glory, the Groom is alive"
Be gone, you wages of sin
Go on, don't you come back again
I've been raised and redeemed
All praise to the king
The victor of the battle
High noon in the valley
In the valley of the shadow

Andrew Peterson is an amazing singer/songwriter and Zach's absolute fav! Here is a blog post a fellow musician wrote about the meaning of this song.

big boy bed

Micah has officially switched over to a big boy bed. I will post pictures of his new room as soon as we get our camera back, but for now here is a shot Zach took with his phone of him taking his first nap in the new bed!!!

chateau elan

Yay for husbands who plan amazing relaxing surprise evenings! This past Friday he planned an overnight at Chateau Elan. It is a french (of course) inspired hotel with a winery, racetrack, SPA!!, and yummy restaurants. We met Zach's mom off an exit on 985 to drop off our children Micah and Daisy and then he told me where we were going. I had mentioned this place before and was hoping hoping hoping it was where we were going but didn't want to spoil the surprise or get my hopes up so I hoped internally.

When we got there we checked into our beautiful room with the nice big king sized bed and then I got to go to the spa and get an hour long massage....awwwwww!!!! Stress just melted and I was very relaxed by the end. Of course after the massage I needed to test out the huge tub in our bathroom and by the end of that I was so relaxed I could barely move. Thankfully I was also starving otherwise I might have just crashed right then at 6:00 and missed the yumminess! We ate at Cafe Elan because it was fancier than one of the restaurants and actually had food we would eat which the fanciest restaurant definitely did not!



The next day we only had a little bit of time before check out. We ate at the breakfast buffet which was yummy and I went and had a french (of course) manicure while Zach walked around the nature trail and took pictures. We were using his mom's camera because we loaned ours to Michael and Krista for their honeymoon. Even without his treasured possession he did a pretty good job!

It was a very nice little getaway and it was definitely needed. Especially since we will be working all day and night this week organizing the boys' room (just in case we will still be in this house) and preparing for Micah's big boy bed adventure this weekend. Wouldn't mind if you'd pray about that one :)

sunday song

Micah hasn't been feeling well the past few days. I'm not sure if it's a cold or allergies but his nose is running like crazy and he wakes up with crusty eyes. This morning the two of us stayed home so he could get some R & R. Since I couldn't be at church to be inspired with my Sunday song I am sharing one of my favorite songs from my RUF days. With my constant problem with fear of all kinds this song has reminded me on multiple occasions about what to do with my fear.

Isaiah 43

When you pass through the water I will be with you,
And the waves they will not overtake you.
Do not fear for I have redeemed you.
I have called you by name.
You are mine.

For I am the Lord Your God.
For I am the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.
I am the Lord. (Women: Do not fear.)
I am the Lord. (Do not fear.)
I am the Lord. (Do not fear.)
I am the Lord. (Do not fear.)
I am the Lord.

When you pass through the fire I will be with you,
And the flames they will not overcome you.
Do not fear for I have redeemed you.
I have called you by name.
You are mine.

For I am the Lord Your God.
For I am the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.
I am the Lord. (Women: Do not fear.)
I am the Lord. (Do not fear.)
I am the Lord. (Do not fear.)
I am the Lord. (Do not fear.)
I am the Lord.

hoodie towel

Poor Micah has been using little infant bath towels his whole life. I've always planned to get him a child size hoodie towel but they are so expensive we just made due. With baby boy coming soon I figured I needed to get on the ball with some "big boy" stuff for Micah. Apparently a towel was the first thing on the list. I refused to spend $20+ on a towel with some sort of animal decoration, etc. so I went to the internet/blogging world trying to track down a way to make one. I saw a couple descriptions but nothing I really like until the next day when I accidentally found my way to make and takes and the post they had up was for a child's hooded towel!!!! It was so easy!! I made two for Micah and one each for my niece's Keelie and Haley. Leah don't worry you will get one soon, but since I used towels and hand towels I already owned but never used I ran out fast!




It really was the easiest thing I have sewn (except for the quilt binding around Micah's hood which was hard as crap and I will never sew that stuff on a curve again!!) I even bought little iron on patches to decorate the towels. If you are a beginner sewer like me and want an easy project check out make and takes for some fun ideas.

easter egg hung

Today at preschool Micah participated in his very first Easter egg hunt. We are on spring break next week which is why it was a little early. The teachers in his class made cute buckets for them to hunt with and each parent sent in filled eggs. Before the hunt began they fueled up with pizza and rice krispie treat bird nests.

Micah was a little unsure at first as to what he was supposed to do. He saw plenty of eggs on the ground, shelves, etc but didn't think he was actually allowed to take them. He got in the groove soon enough though and got himself quite a catch!

baby shower

Last night some wonderful ladies hosted a baby shower for me. It was rather relaxing having a midweek casual dinner shower. The food was yummy ( I even got two new recipes) and the company was of course amazing!! I (we) got many great things. Lots of essentials and some fun thrown in. I opened diapers, wipes, washcloths, towels, blankets, shampoo, lotion, laundry detergent and cute boy clothes. Along with a massage gift certificate (awww), a very popular shampoo cup, candy, and a very necessary bag full of hospital must haves complete with a bottle of quarters labeled for purchasing Dr. Pepper (don't you just love when your friends know you!)

Thank you all so much for coming/helping/celebrating me and baby boy #2!