Birthday and Anniversary

Today is July 22nd, which is two days after my 25th birthday and two days before our 4th wedding anniversary. We are still in KY but are getting ready to leave for Ohio/camp in the morning. We will get to spend our anniversary at Camp Sychar which is where we met and also where we got married. This will also be our first anniversary together! Yay! We are going to watch our wedding video which we have never seen.

I wish I could post pictures because I have been taking a lot on this trip. But alas you all will have to wait until we get back to Texas.

For my birthday my sister-in-law Jamie planned a surprise birthday party. I had no idea, which made it all the more fun. Party was attended by brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, and a few close friends. And husband, of course... We had a nice time! I felt very loved and was blessed to be surrounded by people I care about on my birthday.

Today I am getting ready to leave with a lot of packing, laundry, cleaning-out-of-the-fridge, etc. Daniel is gone all day with his brother Josh to process chickens. They should be back soon, and we will all head up to whole foods to sample chicken for "tasty tuesday". I've got garlic-lime chicken in the crockpot right now.... hopefully it will turn out well.

The baby is doing well. I am getting huge-- I feel like a whale. My feet always hurt and now it's hard to bend over, shave legs, get out of squishy chairs, etc. And i know it will only get worse. I'm 25 weeks, about to start 26.... So I don't know if that technically counts as month 7 or not. Are you supposed to count months by groups of 4 weeks? Or by an actual full month? If it is by groups of 4 weeks then I am already in the 7th month. If it is by full months then I have 6 more days until the official start of month 7. It's all a little confusing, I think, since pregnancy is actually a bit more than 9 months. ANYWAY. I had better get back to my to-do list.

Recovering toe :)

My toe is all better. The nail is still kind of weird, but it never fell off and seems to have healed and re-attached, which I contribute to God answering all my pitiful prayers to heal my toe! It is still cracked but feels fine. :)



We are up in KY again to visit family and take a vacation-- but this time we are together! Yay! Tonight I am all alone though because Daniel is out camping in a field to try and kill whatever predators keep killing our chickens (the ones on the family farm... not the ones in our yard at home). Anyhow, it just turned midnight and I have been scrubbing dishes, sweeping the floor, straightening things up, laundry, etc., trying to stay up until Daniel comes back. Of course he may be out all night.... sigh. We are having a great visit, but Daniel is staying very busy helping his brother out with the farm-- which is great--- of course--- but I miss my husband! I am proud of him though. He's wonderful.



It's fun to be up this late because the baby likes to kick now! I don't feel him move too much durring the day. I think he likes to play at night. He is getting so sooo big! we are 24 weeks and 1 day. I love this baby!



We have been having a lot of fun with big farm dinners-- me and daniel, his older brother and his wife, younger brother and girlfriend, and the other farm worker and his wife--- it creates such a nice sense of community. I can't wait until we live here! Tomorrow morning we are all having breakfast together after the guys get done with their morning chores.

Alright I think I will go now... I'm just blabbing on and on.....

OWWW!!

This morning I took a friend to the airport. I was stupid enough to pick up a slightly heavy suitcase (I know this is a no-no) and pull it up onto the curb at the drop-off area. After I pulled it over the edge it came swinging towards my flip-flopped foot and boom--- slammed into my left big toe. OW! I looked down and my nail was broken half-way down the nail bed. The other half of the nail was sticking straight up-- I pushed it back into place, but it's not attached to the skin at all. It was horrible. I sucked the pain up for a second, said goodbye, got in the car, and started crying. I cried the whole way home. I can't believe how painful it is!! This was done around 5:30 this morning. It is now 10:47 and it is still throbbing and I can hardly walk. Grrr. I had a big to do list today. I don't know if I should go to the emergency room or not--- I don't want to be there for 6 hours, which is what will happen, I'm sure. I am so mad at myself because I shouldn't have tried to lift that suitcase anyway. Tell me what to do!! I don't know!! It is very very painful.

I always dread the next painful surprise event in my life--- you know, breaking a toenail, a deep cut, spraining an ankle, bloody wounds... I hate these things and I hate that they are always a surprise. You can never predict them. Like when daniel's dad shaved off a huge chunk of the skin on his finger.... that was awful for me, and it wasn't even my own hand! Hopefully with this broken toenail I will have no more surprise painful events for a good year or so. :) Other than childbirth of course, but that's not a surprise.

You know it's summer when...

You go to a baseball game!! Our friend Seanna is leaving San Antonio to go... somewhere.. I don't remember. Anyhow, she is a huge baseball fan and for her going away party she wanted to go to a baseball game. This was the baby's first baseball game!! Go San Antonio Missions!

Here are Daniel and I at the game. I will never get sick of that handsome face!!

Our friends the Grangers gave us a ton of baby clothes on friday. Here they all are! Some of them aren't exactly our taste (sports, "I'm cute" shirts, etc.) or are the wrong season, but no biggie. Those we will re-gift to one of the eight bazillion pregnant ladies we know right now! And we are very grateful. I don't think we will have to buy this baby a single piece of clothing by the time he's here. So much cute stuff!!

They also gave us this swing! Sweet!!

Today our church had our quarterly "the church has left the building" day. Instead of having church one sunday per quarter, we plan an event to reach out to the community. For the spring quarter we had a giant free garage sale; went around the community to ask if people needed help mowing their yard, painting over graffiti, fixing something in their house, etc; and a third group went to a local gas station to pump people's gas, clean their windshield, and invite them to our church. Today our whole church paired up in groups of 2 and went door to door in all the neighborhoods around the church giving out small bags of homemade cookies (of which I made 4 dozen) and inviting people to visit our church. If people seemed receptive we were also supposed to ask them if they had anything we could pray for them about. Daniel and I went around our own neighborhood and got to meet some of our neighbors. I'm telling you, the cookies did the trick. Cookies may not seem so spiritual (or healthy... which I tend to have a problem with the church eating crap and not taking care of their bodies... but that is a whole different topic!!) but when we gave them cookies they became completely receptive to listening to us, and smiled, made eye contact, etc. I know at least in our neighborhood we get a lot of solicitors and a lot of jahova's witnesses going around, so people can tend to not answer their door or be awfully suspicious if they don't know who you are. They seemed relieved when they realized we were just being nice, weren't planning to stay, and weren't selling anything. It was actually a lot of fun (except for the 100 degree weather!)

My house is a disaster. Just 2 days of no laundry, no picking stuff up, not doing all the dishes every day, and boom! It's like an explosion. Sigh. Oh well.

YAY NEW CAMERA!!!!

I am sooo excited because we got a nice new camera! This picture is from Daniel's trip to Lima, Peru. It turns out my dear hubby has quite an eye for photography-- I never knew!!

This picture below is one that is on our fridge-- I took a picture of it. It must be 8 or 9 years old. I was either 16 or 17 and Daniel was 14 or 15. Aww!! This is one of my favorite pics of all time. We weren't dating yet at the time-- we were really just acquaintances. I remember getting the film developed, seeing this picture, and thinking how much we looked like a happy couple! I didn't even have a crush on him yet! :) This picture is our ultrasound. That was the best pic. If we had known how to use the video (!!!) function on our camera at the time we could have done that!! Oh well...

And for fun, here are 2 days worth of eggs from our chickens. We get 7 or 8 every single day!! One chicken lays green eggs, another lays speckled eggs. :)

I am soo excited to figure out how to upload videos onto here. This will be great!! my blog will rock!! :) :) :)

21 weeks

Here is a picture of me and the baby today. He turned 21 weeks yesterday. I have had 5 people ask me if I was having twins. Thanks a lot, people. Daniel says I should take it as a compliment... no thankyou, I don't think I will. I have gained 22 lbs. All the books say 10-15 by this point. My midwives think everything is just fine though, and they think my weight gain is healthy. So we must be doing ok. Sometimes I don't feel like I look very pregnant... that is, until I look at a picture like this one. Good grief! Keep growing baby!

This picture below is 14 weeks. And I thought I had a big belly then!! It was just a little pooch!

Brownies for Breakfast

I made these brownies last night. They rock--- very bad and sugary, verrrry delicious.

Cocoa Brownies

4 large eggs
1 C. Sugar, sifted
1 C. Brown sugar, sifted
2 sticks melted butter (don't use margerine)
1 & 1/4 C. Cocoa, sifted
2 tsp. Vanilla
1/2 C. flour, sifted
1/2 tsp. salt (You don't have to sift the salt ;)

Preheat oven to 300. Butter your brownie pan. Beat eggs until fluffy. Add both sugars, mix. Add remaining ingredients, mix. Bake 45 minutes or until done. Let cool before cutting. Enjoy!