Audrey's Appointment 12.7.09

We had Audrey's 24 week appointment this morning. I had Tim come with me today because I wanted to make sure I explained to my doctor why we decided not to see the specialists and to make sure that I wasn't pressured into making any medical decisions I wasn't comfortable with.
Needless to say, it wasn't necessary. My doctor was very understanding about our decision not to see the specialist and when Tim said regardless of the diagnosis we were going to keep the baby and let the pregnancy proceed normally, our doctor was like "yeah, it makes sense why you wouldn't see the specialist."

The appointment went great - I gained 6 pounds!! (I was a little shocked! Up to this point I have only put on a pound or 2 between appointments) Baby's heartrate was great - it took Dr. O a little while to find it because Audrey was moving so much (which Tim and the doc witnessed by the waves on my baby bump). I am measuring right on as well.

We have another appointment in 4 weeks where we will have another ultrasound to monitor the amniotic band/sheet (whatever it is) and will also have my glucose test done. This appointment is after the first of the year.

More Thanksgiving Pictures

I got some more pictures from our family (my side) thanksgiving and there were some that I just had to post....

Here is Lexie without a nap

This is me and my nephew Ryan we share the same birthday so we had to take a special picture for the family calendar

Big Mama's Baby Bump

Big Daddy's Baby Bump

Grandma Lex with Baby Lex... two peas

Here is our thanksgiving table (for the adults)

The Williams' exhausted after a great meal

Ryan and Treyton - our artists

Lexie mooching pie from Papa Luke

Williams' putting together our annual homemade ornament together

Mom and Autumn putting their ornaments together - this year we did coffee bean ornaments

Me and all three kids in my lap.... my kids were tired!

The final two in our spoons tournament

Spoons Champion 2009 - Autumn!!

I couldn't upload a picture of the Williams family last time... so here they are!!

I hope you enjoyed taking a glance (a long one) at our family thanksgiving - we really did have a great holiday.

Fall Into Reading: I'm not Wonder Woman but God Made me Wonderful

Fall into Reading continues... as it draws near it's end I am hopeful that I will have one more book read and post written by the 21st.

The latest book I finished is "I'm not Wonder Woman but God Made me Wonderful" by Sheila Walsh - I actually finished it a while ago but it's taken me forever to post on it.

I have seen Sheila Walsh several times at the Women of Faith conferences so it was actually a little strange reading her book... I could still hear her Scottish accent... kind of cool.... kind of freaky :)

The overall message of the book was that somewhere along the way we, as women, have set ourselves to live a fulfill a role that is both unrealistic and unbiblical. And through doing this we begin to wear baggage that wasn't intended for us (fear, disappointment, insecurity, shame, etc).
Sheila starts the book by discussing some of these areas of bondage/baggage and moves on from there to some ways to move past the life we've been living into the victorious "real" life God has called us to and the third section of the book is based on the "clothes" that God has for us (some of these include, a new way of thinking, guarding our heart, feeding our spirit, etc.)

Certain chapters affected me far more than others, and I would think this is normal, we all have our "areas" don't we? One that certainly touched me deeply was near the end of the book in a chapter called 'A Strand of Pearls' I will guard my heart. Some of the quotes I underlined in this chapter were:

"I believe that when God has our heart, really has it, when there is nothing in life more important than serving and loving Him, only then do we feel really alive.... we were made to be fully alive, engaged, committed, and when we are not, we can get into all sorts of trouble." 


"God wants more than our time and our efforts; He wants us. He wants us to be fully engaged with Him in the matter of living and loving rather than just ticking jobs of a long to-do list." 


"No matter how faint our desire is to change or how weak our resolve, if we will come to our Father as we are and ask Him to rekindle our hearts with fire for Him, He will do it." 


"That vast grey area of justification and negotiation has always been there. Compromise can easily be confused with grace, but they are not the same." 

I wanted to take alot more time to go through some of the other aspects of the book, but for now, this will have to do. I would recommend this book. It is simpler reading than some of the other books that I have recently read, but packs just as big of a message.

Advent Calendar & other Christmas Traditions

* For those of you that read both of my blogs, this is a duplicate post, posted on both blogs.

I posted on my facebook that I had set up my advent calendar and I got a couple of emails from my friends asking more about it. Those emails inspired me to put a little post together on our Advent Calendar tradition. 

Starting last year, our family started the tradition of using an advent calendar. To be completely honest, I don't know how an advent calendar is normally used or what it's real purpose is. I kind of just "winged" it last year and I liked how it turned out so we're continuing on with that  tradition this year.

I picked up our advent calendar at Hobby Lobby for under $10 (it was on sale), but you can find them almost anywhere. Ours is a cloth/felt type calendar with with pockets. However, there are all different kinds, my sister picked up a wooden box one that I absolutely love and hope to one day upgrade to. I believe she got it at Target for around $30.00 - super cute!

For us, our calendar starts at 1 (the first of December) and goes to 24th (Christmas Eve).
In each pocket I have cut white card stock paper into the appropriate sizes, and folded them in half to fit into the pockets. I have written a verse on each piece of paper for each day.

Last year, our first day started with a larger reading from Luke on the Jesus' birth, this year I started with a Christmas book that we have and have the Luke story as the second day. However, most days are smaller readings of scripture (including old and new testament) regarding the birth of Christ, why Jesus came as a man to earth, and related prophesy's.

A few of our scripture readings include:

John 1:1-4
Matthew 2:1-12
John 3:16
Isaiah 7:14
Isaiah 40:11
Luke 2
Titus 3:4-7
John 14:6

I literally just went through a picked out a few of our cards at random, there are a total of 25 verses (I believe we read Luke 2 twice) but in general the only "rule" I followed was to try to keep them short, due to the ages of our children.

For us, we give our children 3 gifts on Christmas morning to represent the three gifts from the wiseman, they are from us (not Santa). We try to do one "larger" gift and 2 smaller gifts, but even this varies year to year. We are not a real "fair" family, year to year the amount of money we spend on individual children fluctuates, last year we spent more on Treyton, this year we are spending more on Lexie.... just by chance... we do not play favorites, we do not try to make it equal, we only try to get them gifts that they enjoy and we approve of.
In addition to those gifts, for our advent calendar I pick up several "smaller" gifts - I try to keep them under $10 to randomly place on the advent calendar to open throughout the Christmas season. These gifts include family games, DVDs, books and small trinket toys (this year I have a little lamby purse on there for Lexie and a nerf gun for Treyton) . The kids do not know if there will be a gift on any given day.Traditionally, on Christmas Eve I have given the kids PJs so this has become their final advent gift that they open on the 24th.

Last year this system worked very well for us - we had almost all "family" gifts (games and DVDs), Lexie as you can imagine was uninterested and mostly unaware of what we were doing so it was primarily Treyton participating. This year I have included a few more personal gifts for the kids, on those days both kids will open a gift. We will see how it goes this year with both of the kids wanting to be more involved.

Overall, I believe if done right, an advent calendar is an excellent way to incorporate Jesus and the real reason for Christmas throughout the holiday season.

I found some other Advent Calendar ideas made from moms of young children at ABC and 123, if you're interested check them out here.

Family Thanksgiving

This year for Thanksgiving we had my side of the family over to our home on Thursday and then went to Tim's sister's home on Friday to spend time with his side of the family.

We had a great holiday - very relaxing.

Here are some pics from Thursday: 

 This is my sister with her husband and 2 of their 3 kids

These are my grandparents (by the way my grandpa just turned 83 years old and is as full of life as ever!!)

 This is my grandma and adorable niece, Shayla

Here are me and my man - there aren't too many of these pictures of us alone! 

 

Here is my mom and step-dad Luke

And here they are with most of their grandkids

 This is my grandparents with my Uncle Todd 

For some reason I am having a hard time transferring a picture of my other sister, Skye and her family, but I'm going to try again later.

Here are some of our pictures from today (friday):

 Alexa playing around

 Dance Time for the kids

 Me and my cutie pie nephew, Sawyer

 My niece Ava - (Sawyer, Ava and Alexa are all within 6 weeks of each other it is so awesome to watch them growing up together!)

This is the Way

The last few months of my life have been... unexplainable. I mean, seriously, I don't even know where to begin. I look back on my journal and I'm like - wow! "God, I know you know what's going on and I am thankful because I am absolutely overwhelmed by who you are."

For the longest time I felt as though I were going through a desert, a long painful journey. Since then the Lord has continued to take me on a journey that can only be explained as "life changing". I have heard and felt the Lord in ways I never have before and I have been required to have faith more in this season than maybe any other. The Lord is continually teaching me to trust and to stand on His Word rather than my feelings, this has not been the easiest lesson I have ever learned!

It has been during this time that the Lord has faithfully provided some clear cut "words" He had for me --- you know what I mean, those times that you seem to be hearing the same verse/word over and over again in the strangest places. And after about the 3rd or 4th time you think "hmm... maybe God's trying to tell me something"

For me it went something like this:
1. Wait on Me - Trust Me - not what you are feeling (Isaiah 40:31, Psalm 37:5, Jeremiah 17:7-8)
2. I love you & I am here- (Ephesians 4:14-19) (another post here)
3. I am: your everything - your strength, your provider, your healer: I have great plans for your life and it is through Me and by Me these plans will come to pass (Ephesians 1:18-20, Hebrews 13:20-21, Deuteronomy 31:1-8) call on Me and let Me do My work in your life.

4. Follow Me I am leading you (Isaiah 30:21)

The last week or so the verse that comes to me over and over is Isaiah 30:21... I had actually heard it for the first time over 2 years ago at a women's retreat I went to, and to be honest, I wasn't impressed at the time. But for some reason it just keeps coming up - so finally today I decided to go and read the section of scripture it was in and all I can say is....

God is faithful!

The entire section spoke to me and applied to the journey and the process that God is taking me through.

This is what Isaiah 30:18-22 says:

"Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you, and therefore He exalts Himself to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of Justice; blessed are all those who wait for Him.
For a people shall dwell in Zion in Jerusalem; you shall weep no more. He will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry. As soon as He hears it, He answers you.
And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide himself anymore, but your eyes shall see your Teacher.
And your ears shall hear a word behind you saying "This is the way, walk in it," when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left.
Then you will defile your carved idols overlaid with silver and your gold-plated metal images. You will scatter them as unclean things. You will say to them, "Be gone!"

The beauty of this verse is that even though there were main words that God was speaking into my life there were also little lessons and messages that God was teaching me through this time as well and some them included: getting rid of my idol (myself), that God was going to reveal Himself to me in a powerful way, and that God is True and Just - as I was dealing with some of my "relational issues" I struggled with the truth that God was the ultimate Judge and Revenger of my pain - not me.... these verses speak to those struggles and lessons as well.

I don't really know how clearly this is all coming out (if at all) but the real message I wanted to share with you guys this morning was that:
God has shown Himself to be a gracious God. I can't help but worship the King who is more powerful, more complex, more magnificent and more sovereign than we will ever be able to comprehend. He has not only the world in His hands, but our individual lives - He is certainly a God of detail and order and NOTHING, absolutely nothing is by coincidence. Go through this day looking for the messages and words that God has for your life He is speaking into your life... are you listening?

What's a Classifier to do?

Last week I posted the most adorable video of Treyton playing with what we thought to be a ladybug.
Later that evening my mother called me beside herself with the cuteness of the video and one small teaching moment for her lifetime student (me). "By the way" she says "it was probably an asian beetle that Treyton was playing with, not a lady bug. Asian beetles are more common, usually have more of an orangey color and another way you can tell is that if it is a ladybug their dots should be symmetrical."

"Interesting" I say, and I pass the information on to Treyton (who could care less).

So this morning I'm sitting here working on lesson plans for the next "spurt" of school and I look down and there crawls.... a lady bug.... or is it an asian beetle?

I lean in to take a closer look:

it's more of an orangey color so I'm thinking asian beetle
then I look at the spots and they are symetrical!

So which is it - asian beetle or lady bug?
What is a classifier to do when a situation such as this arises?