SHOWERED WITH LOVE!

Today we had the most unlikely baby shower! Our good friends Alan and Amy, along with a whole host of wonderful people from Faith Memorial Baptist church gave us a baby shower for Maya Grace--via Skype! I looked up the definition of shower, and here are some of the meanings: to bestow liberally or lavishly, to deluge a person with gifts, favors, etc., to bathe in, to rain in a shower. That is exactly what this group of believers did for us. They LIBERALLY and LAVISHLY deluged us with gifts and with their love.

Getting set up for the arrival of a new baby is a very expensive and kind of daunting task here, and to be honest, after looking in a few stores at some baby items, I had become quite discouraged about the whole thing (and this is coming from a girl who loves to shop!). But Jesus is so faithful and so kind that through our friends Alan and Amy, He inspired this fellowship of people that we have never even met, to reach out to us as the Body of Christ and literally, shower us with blessings, with love, and with their support. This child will now certainly be the cutest dressed baby in the country!! And, Maya now has more aunties and grandmas than she will be able to count for many years!

It has been so hard to be away from our families for this long (it's been well over two years since we've seen many of our immediate family members) but we have also seen Jesus words' become so real to us when He promises: "and everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields for my sake, will receive a hundred times as much . . . (matt. 19.29). We are so humbled by the way this church chose to sacrificially give in order to love and bless us, and we're so moved that our Heavenly Father cares enough about our needs to meet them in such an extravagant and unlikely way--and not only to meet our needs, but to bless us with so much more than we could ask or imagine.

Faith Memorial, we can't wait to meet you all in person, and we thank you so much for counting us part of your family and loving us in this way! Alan and Amy, thank you for being the catalyst for this outpouring of love, and for your continued love and support. Words are not enough and it sounds so trite, but words are the best we can do, and so again, we say--thank you.

it was so cute how they displayed all of the gifts in the crib!

our wonderful hostesses for the shower

they projected their laptop screen so everyone could see us

25 Weeks

Well, here I am at 25 weeks. . . I feel a lot bigger than I look in this picture though! :)

This Girl Can Move

Well, don't worry, that title is not self-descriptive. I'm talking about our daughter in utero-Maya. The girl is all over these days, letting me know she is there and ALIVE! I clearly remember the first time that i felt her move (of course because I didn't write it down, i have no idea when that happened). I had decided that I was going to lay down on the floor, and be really still, and concentrate really hard, and maybe I would feel her move. It was unclear at first whether I was feeling baby movement or just normal digestion, but after rolling on my sides and pushing where I thought I felt something, the feeling moved around to different places and I knew for the first time, I had felt my child move! It so exciting! Since then it has become MUCH more obvious when she is moving, and now she's to the point where any time I am sitting down for very long, I can count on her "waking up" and stretching her legs. All this to say, I have felt kind of bad for Matt all this time, because it's like I've had this special secret exchange with our daughter that he has been left out of. Of course he also got left out of a lot of other special things, like the months of vomiting, the growing pains, the tossing and turning, the leg cramps and twitching, and most recently the tossing and turning. But this special thing I really wanted to be able to share with him, because it felt like such an important confirmation that indeed, there is a little HUMAN growing inside of me and she wakes up when she wants and she sleeps when she wants and she is getting bigger and stronger. So, with all of this in mind, and after weeks of waiting for those little nudges to get big enough for him to feel, I was determined that he too, would feel Maya kicking. I laid down on the couch, and waited until she was in the mood to really kick up her heels, and had him come and kneel beside me and put both hands on my belly. I had him put some pressure to make sure he didn't miss it. And we waited. . . and waited. . . and then she did it. She kicked (or somersaulted or punched, who knows) enough for him to feel. It was so cool! We waited for her to do it one more time, just to be sure he had felt her. It was so much fun to finally get to share that moment with Matt after weeks of feeling her on my own, and always reporting to him, "She's kicking now!". I'm looking forward to many more moments like that where we look at each other in wonder over something our child has done. We're still pretty easily impressed though, at this point, all she has to do is move around to get us teary-eyed!

5 Years Together!!!

We celebrated 5 years of marriage this past week!!! We have both commented on how it feels like we've been together forever, and we can't imagine life without "us". For our anniversary, my sweet husband planned a two-night getaway to a nice hotel up in the mountains and it was wonderful!!! He knows me soooo well, and knew that at almost 6 months pregnant, it was time to get his hot (literally) mama out of the city and into some cooler temps!

For all of you fellow Kansans, it was like getting to flee the summer heat of Kansas for Colorado! (only we have a LOT more humidity here, and only A/C in certain rooms of the house, excluding THE KITCHEN and bathrooms, and public transportation doesn't have A/C, plus we do a good bit of walking . . . sorry, end of whining). Anyway my man planned to take me away from all of that to a really nice hotel up in the ski-resort area of our country. We actually accidentally skied down a run to this resort last winter, only to find out that it is a private lift back up, only for hotel guests (which is kind of an inconvenient time to learn such information, after you have skied down what i nicknamed "the hill of death"). After a short break and an expensive bottle of water that we shared four ways at the lodge, the lift guy was nice enough to let us ride the lift back out of the area to the public areas for the ordinary folks.

So . . . matt took me to that resort for our anniversary get-away! As we drove out of the city up and up and up, the temperature dropped steadily until it was about 20 degrees cooler up on the mountain!!! We drove around with our windows down and i even wore a sweater one evening as we strolled around the hotel grounds!! For this constantly sweaty and overheating woman, it was a DREAM!!! There were a few times I got a little nervous because I couldn't seem to catch my breath (the air sure is thinner up there), but it was totally worth it!

When we arrived in our room we were initially disappointed b/c our room was pretty small with a very uninspiring view (and let me just say that during the summer, because of all of the tourists from all over the MEast and the world, hotel rooms are CRAZY expensive EVERYWHERE around here, so matt had forked out some cash for this little room that was practically in the basement) and matt was real disappointed and felt we were being WAY overcharged for the room. BUT, it all turned for the better when we realized that our room rate included not just a huge (and delicious) breakfast buffet, but also a second meal, either lunch or dinner, for each night that we stayed! We only had to eat out one meal the whole time we were there and the shower had AMAZING water pressure, there was a great pool that matt swam in twice (he LOVES to swim) and I swam with him once. We laid around and watched TV and read and it was a wonderful way to celebrate our anniversary.

Right after we got back into town we had a Dr's appointment and got to see our little Maya swimming and dancing around, healthy as a horse, so it was a great end to our weekend away, looking at what our marriage has produced and generally being in awe at all that it has meant to us (and hopefully to others) these past 5 years!!!

Baby Picture

El Rancho

This weekend we went camping!!! One of our friends discovered a place outside of town, up in the mountains called El Rancho where you can camp, ride horses, have a bonfire, and even eat "ranch food"! One of our dear friends is leaving this week, and it was her birthday this weekend (and she's an American Indian which made it so much more fun!!) so we went to celebrate her and just to have a good time. The whole place was decorated with cowboys and indians, and they even had a real life indian there teaching people about indian culture. It was really fun, and quite surreal at the same time--it was hard to believe that we were here in the Middle East, camping, listening to country music and roasting marshmallows over a bonfire!!

my favorite cowboy

matt doing some "practicing"

I wonder what happened to his hand. . .

me and a my new friend

our campsite

20 Weeks

This week I'm 20 weeks pregnant!! That means I'm halfway there, and Maya is the size of a banana! Yipee! Last night I had my first really phsically uncomfortable-I can't sleep because something big is happening inside my body moment. I don't know what it was, but I was having a pain in my lower left abdomen that just wouldn't let up. I consulted my pregnancy Bible ("What to Expect When You're Expecting") and found that it was probably stretching ligaments or something. Or maybe it was that banana-child poking me in the side! Who knows. I'm guessing though, that this is probably just the beginning of many many sleepless nights this girl will cause! Speaking of sleepless nights, I have actually been struggling with sleeping, so please pray for us (when I toss and turn Matt tends to not sleep well either). I don't know if it's the Narcolepsy or having too much on my mind, but either way, I seem to sleep okay in the late night hours, and then toss and turn all through the early morning hours.