It's a Lucy!!!

A pink blog only seems fitting today!! Doc and I had our 20 week ultra-sound 2 weeks ago, and we found out that we're having another girl!!! Lucy Kay is due to make her grand appearance on February 22nd!! We're super excited!! I'm not gonna lie, there was a bit of dissappointment in Doc's face when the Nurse typed "It's a girl!" onto our ultrasound screen, but he very quickly perked right back up at the thought of having another healthy little lady to giggle all over the house with Miss Jordan :)

Today I had my 22 week check-up! Everything is going fantastic! Thus far, I've gained 3 pounds total. My Dr. is extremelyl pleased with this, as am I, so that was wonderful! If I keep gaining at the rate that I am, I'll only gain about 10 pounds total when I deliver. Did you notice that I said DELIVER??? That's right!!!! Though Jordan was born via C-Section, and there are a billion myths that "Vaginal deliveries after Caesareans are SO dangerous and should never be done" blah blah blah, I am extremely blessed to have a Dr. that believes in looking at the outcome, not the convenience!! The truth of this matter is that the risk associated with a V-Back (Uterus rupture) actually occurs in less than 1% of V-Backs. With the type of incision that I had, the chances are even lower than that! After much research about this subject, Doc and I were praying that I would be able to deliver this baby vaginally, and thank the Lord, that is exactly what we were told today! We are keeping open minds about this for many reasons, the biggest being that God is completely in control of this situation, and if for some reason intervention is needed, we will understand. We are also at the mercy of the Dr. we choose in Washington. The station we are going to doesn't have a military hospital within a reasonable driving distance, so I will be referred out to a civillian hospital. Doc and I will have to work quickly once we arrive to find a midwife, and hopefully a facility that is conducive for natural childbirth! We know we'll have to be in an actual hospital that has an OB/GYN in house as well as an anesthesiologist ready just in case intervention is necessary. We're praying that search will go smoothly!! Will you pray with us?

Our move is in full swing!!! We have dates set for our movers, hotel reservations booked, pet flights ready to reserve, and lots of stuff on the market so that we don't have to move it with us! We're slowly but surely beginning to say "Til next time..." to our awesome friends that have become family here. It's not a fun process, but we're excited for the next chapter!

Thank you all so much for your continued prayers throughout this process!!! We know that God is the reason things are going smoothly and we pray that He continue to lead us! We're SO excited to be physically SEEING many of you in the coming months!!! We'll have more updates soon! Until next time....we love you all!

Happy 4th Birthday Jordan Elaine!!!

I am in disbelief that these pictures were taken 4 years ago!!!

What a beautiful whirlwind life has been ever since....

My precious Jordan Elaine:

4 years ago you blew into your Daddy and I's world like a hurricane! We were scared to death to think that God had chosen us to be parents, thinking there was no way we would ever get the hang of it, nor that it would possibly be something "fitting" for us to do. Little did we know, you were the piece of our hearts that was missing all along!

2 Weeks ago, we celebrated your 4th Birthday! You've grown into such a beautiful little lady, Jordan! Your Daddy and I are so proud of you, and we absolutely LOVE being parents! We love being your parents, Jordy! We want you to know that you are the very best thing that has ever happened to us, for many many reasons! Though it is our hope to teach you all about Jesus, we want you to know that you are the one who led us back to Him! Through your innocence, and your love, your Daddy and I found a greater calling on our lives. We have seen the love of God through the eyes of our beautiful baby girl. We've come to know our Saviour, Jesus Christ, in a way that demands that we give our lives to Him. We see God's divine Will unfolding in our lives, and we're empowered by it!

Loving you makes time go by so quickly! It really seems like yesterday that you were perfectly swaddled (by Daddy, the Master-Swaddler) with a cute pink bow in your hair, and now here you are....4 years old, smart as a whip, beautiful as ever, polite, positive, encouraging, and wonderful in every way. You have a special gift Jordan, and your Daddy and I hope to encourage you and help you develop it over the course of your life. You are a joy to everyone that comes in contact with you, and you can find the good in any situation. You have a heart for prayer, and you use it to pray for every circumstance that you come across. That is a powerful thing, baby.

Jordan, I could keep writing all of the wonderful things about you for days, and still not have enough time to say them all! I want you to know that you have stolen my heart in a way that I never knew was possible. You have given purpose to my life, and I adore you.

Happy Birthday Baby!!!

Love,

Mommy

"Honey, we have orders!!!"

I got the best phonecall bright and early about a week ago! "You better start getting ready for our move.....because we have orders!" In 41 days, we will officially be checked out of this command and on a plane headed to our new duty station: Everett, Washington!! This is great news for us, as this was one of our top choices in orders! Doc and I have been very open with Jordan about our upcoming change and how everything will work, and she has remained completely positive and excited throughout the process so far! Doc's Dad and Stepmother live around 2 hours from Everett, so we'll be able to see them much more often! We also have family in Oregon, and some others in Washington as well! And, of course, my beloved Capistrano's just a short 8-hour drive in Boise, ID!! We already have plans to meet up with them in December, and it definitely cannot come soon enough!!!!

I know I've written before about how much Doc and I have enjoyed our time in Hawaii, and now those memories seem even more vivid and dear with the thoughts of our move coming so quickly. We've had a wonderful time here, but we are most definitely ready to move on. Doc's ready for a deployment break, and frankly, so am I. We're use to being seperated for months at a time for training, deployment, etc., and by the grace of God we handle that seperation very well, but that certainly doesn't mean that we enjoy it. The thought of spending 2 solid years with my husband makes me go weak at the knees, and he feels the exact same way. After 3 years of weekend field ops, weeks on the Big Island, months in California, and half a year in the desert on 2 seperate occasions and long work days even when he's "home", he is feeling the strain and ready for some family time as well. We know that this duty station won't be perfect, and we know that there is still the chance that Doc could deploy as an IA or a MAP, but we're excited for the change and hopeful that it will be just the break we're longing for! Hawaii has been a wonderful twisty-turny portion of Doc's and I's life long journey together, and we're ready for the next phase.

Our days now have been filled with PCS Workshops, meetings with JPPSO (our household goods shipping peeps), taking inventory and photos of all of our possessions, and many many more fun moving tasks! There's been some fun thrown in there too, but for the most part, it's all business right now! We're very much ahead of the curve when it comes to our process right now, and we intend to stay that way, God willing!

We've been in prayer every step of the way, and desire to be even more reliant on God now than ever. We ask that you all pray with us for a smooth move, and for God's direction during the transition. We'll keep you updated every step of the way, and we thank you for all the prayer and support during this time!!

I'll write a little more about the fun stuff in the next couple days, but for now I wanted to update you all on the business stuff :) I hope you all are doing well, and we love you all!

Jordan Elaine: Official Letter Writer!

Today is such an awesome day for us!! Jordan and I decided a few weeks ago that our current Home Pre-Schooling goal would be for her to be able to write all of her upper-case letters before her 4th Birthday! Today, she accomplished it!!! It was SUCH an awesome lesson, in so many ways! Not only was it the obvious lesson in writing her letters, but more so it was a lesson in setting a goal. We talked extensively about what it means to set a goal, and what we have to do to achieve it. Jordan came to me everyday and said, "Mommy! We have to do my goal today!!!" She has worked so hard for the last couple weeks, and I'm so proud of her! We will definitely be celebrating this to beat the band! As if her 4th Birthday party this weekend wasn't enough.....:)

Teaching Jordan has always been very fun for me, and very easy as well. Jordan LOVES to learn! She thrives on learning information, remembering it, and reciting it later to practice. I hope that I am able to continue to challenge her and keep her learning! She's very musical, and has probably 20 different songs memorized. Some children's songs, but some much older for her! "Lord I Lift Your Name on High" is her favorite, and she begs to listen to it everytime we get in the car. She knows all of her letters, writes them, knows every letter's sound, and even sounds out words. She does this to figure out both how to spell a word, and how to read a word that she comes in contact with. We have to help her with putting the sounds together, but she makes the sounds on her own. We're going into the beginning stages of reading, and she's exceeding my expectations constantly! Doc and I started working with her on her counting. She's been able to count to 20 for well over a year now, so we've been working with her on 30, 40, 50, etc. She caught onto that very quickly, and now we've moved on to addition, which she seems to be enjoying as well! I LOVE that learning is so magical at this age, and I love being a part of it! We even work with her on her Spanish, which is super fun for all of us!

Her biblical knowledge is the part that we really try to emphasize the most. She absolutely loves her bible stories, and it is so rewarding as a parent to watch her put that knowledge into action. We can't see an ambulance driving down the road without her saying, "Uh-Oh Mommy, someone must be hurt, let's pray for them right now!!" She'll proceed to ask God to be with the hurt person, and lead the Dr.'s to care of them, and comfort their family. We encourage her in this, chime in with more prayer, and tell her how much Jesus loves her heart for His people. She'll smile, as proud as a peacock, and say, "Yah Mommy! I just made Jesus happy!!!" It is such a beautiful thing to see my child's heart set on Jesus at such a young age, and I pray that God will lead us to encourage her in whatever He calls on her to do!

I am competely aware that this is a shameless proud-Mommy post! And I don't care! :) This little girl has my heart in ways that I didn't even know were possible, and I am so proud of her! I can't believe that she is turning 4 already this weekend, but I am so looking forward to just celebrating her and cherishing every moment!

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend! I'll update about ours in a few days, and post some pictures from the lovely lady's party :) Until then, I hope all is well!!! Love you guys!

Random Random Random

1. We're still waiting on orders. Yes, we were suppose to have them a week ago. Please pray. Please? We SO appreciate it! God will totally make this happen and ease our minds, we just have to ask! Will you ask with us?

2. I can officially feel the baby move!!! I LOVE this feeling!! It always seems to take me longer than I think it should, but when it starts, it is just magical!!! I am totally head over heels for this little flutter that I feel inside me. What a blessing!!

3. I no longer have cable :( What a sad day....however, this does 2 things: A) Helps us put even more money in savings!! && B) Gives us less to distract us from getting PCS stuff done! I am already completely ahead of the curve, and I plan to stay that way as long as possible! I know random stuff will come up, at least this way I'll be ready!

4. Inside and out, my husband is THE most handsome man I have ever seen. Hello, fabulous 5th Month of Pregnancy Hormones. How lucky am I to experience you while my husband still has to wear Desert Cami's with the rolled sleeves?? Just awesome, I tell ya!!

5. I have never been flakier in my entire life than I am right now. Something about this pregnancy just makes me a totally ditz!! Doc and I laugh at it constantly! I forget what I'm doing in the middle of it, go to the store and then wonder why I went there in the first place, forget to do simple things like put soap in the dish washer, and the list goes on and on. It's ridiculous, yet hilarious.

6. REALLY random sidenote: I HATE opening Grand's Biscuits!!! Seriously!! It's like the Jack in the Box for adults!!! Especially when you're just peeling the paper and it just POPS!! Really sudden and really loud! What a heart attack! Anyone with me on this?

Happy Tuesday Peeps!!!

Weekend Wrap-Up

It's been a super low-key weekend around these parts....how about you?? Anything exciting this weekend? Doc and I (thanks to our fabulous neighbor) had a great date night on Friday....it was a much different date night than we've ever had before, but it was so overdue and turned out to be one of our faves!! We're about 6 weeks out from moving right now, and we're trying to hoard every single dime that we can right now. We're determined to pay for this move outright, rather than putting it on credit cards and waiting for the military to reimburse us like most people due. We're Dave Ramsifying, and we don't want to use credit cards at all. That equals out to us throwing several hundred dollars out of every pay check into savings right now and basically spending nothing other than the essentials. (bills, groceries, gas....that's pretty much it!) It certainly doesn't make life fun right now, but the end will be worth the means. It's just a lesson in self-reliance, rather than relying on credit, and it's one that we want to tackle. We're not super credit card oriented, but we do have one and we do use it occasionally rather than saving and waiting to buy something that we want. That's a habit we are determined to break!

Anyway, all this considered, we had already set up childcare for Jordan for Friday night so that we could go out on a date. After much consideration, we decided not to spend the money on a meal out, even though it wouldn't have been much, it would have been completely against our principles in what we're trying to teach ourselves here. But the date WAS needed, so we had one.....at home! Jordan went to Miss Jenn's, and Doc and I hung out in the kitchen, cooked Baked Ziti, Caesar Salad, and Garlic Bread with Mozzarella together, lit the candles, turned down the lights, and had ourselves an absolute blast! We drank our favorite Crystal Lite pink lemonade out of our fanciest stemware, stole kisses as often as possible, and talked about "date night stuff"...the future, each other, child-raising, God, etc. It was awesome! And free!! I think this will become a tradition!

Yesterday we spent the day at a birthday party for some dear friends of ours' children, and we pretty much ended up just chatting with them well into the evening! Today was a great church day, and now we're getting ready to Skype with the Grandparents (and hopefully, fingers crossed, get a sneak peek at our new niece, AnamCara...and her Mommy and Daddy too of course!) Thank God for Sundays...this day of rest is much needed!!!

How was your weekend?? Anything exciting? Fun? Not fun? Anything we can pray for? I hope you all have a great upcoming week! We should (Navy willing) have a big update for you within the next couple days!!! Love you peeps!

Pregnant Lady Obsessions

Steak. A lean, mean delicious machine. MMMMM!!!

Rainbow Sherbet. Thanks Grandma, for my addiction to this delicious, amazing, low-calorie dessert! I am forever grateful and can't wait to eat some with you in heaven!

Safeway Brand Garlic Caesar Dressing - delicious!!!!

Grande Decaf Well-Stirred Non-Fat Caramel Machiatto. With Whipped.
So incredibly entertaining to hear the Starbuck's lady repeat that at Mach 40.
Thank you Diana Fuller for my addiciton to these!!
PS I have no idea what that chinese writing on the side says!

A big fat baked potato with cheese. Lower in calories than a potato with butter, and higher in calcium too! Brilliant!!