34 Weeks

 34 Weeks ladies and gents!! 34 weeks of pregnancy have passed me by. Crazy!! And two remain till it's "safe" for the girls to make their debut and 6 remain till my due date (which no one thinks I'll last til then).  So we shall see.  It's a bit surreal that Hubs and I will have two little ones in our arms in a couple of weeks or more.  Seems like another world... to go from couple to family in a moment.

I can't quite wrap my head around it yet. :)

The girls are doing really good.  I'm so proud of them for staying inside and growing so big.  They were around 4 pounds two weeks ago and are probably 4.5-5 lbs by now.  We got to see them again this past Tuesday and they continue to be the cutest fetuses ever. :)  They are definitely movers and shakers.  They love music and spicy food.  Baby B (furthest from cervix) continues to lie horizontally on the upper part of my uterus or closest to my heart. (awwwww....)

Baby A was still breech last we saw.  She sits with her little legs out, bottom in my pelvis and head up near her sister.  It's kind of cute that she's reclining but it's kind of also time for her to move. ha ha!!  She's been moving and wiggling a lot recently.  I am feeling really encouraged that she will decide to go head down once the time comes for her to do so.  I have been praying fervently for my sweet daughter to do some flips and I am met with a lot of peace and encouragement when I do so.  In my head is the image of the widow who knocked on the Judge's door (Luke 18).  Even though I'm not crying out for justice in this case, I am praying to not lose heart and Jesus said to pray without ceasing. :)

In other news, my feet and hands have puffed up quite nicely in the last 4 weeks or so.  It was kind of sudden and today is the fattest they've been for awhile.  I included a picture from my honeymoon (ahhh sweet bliss) and a picture from today (ahhh sweet pumpkin feet)... can you see a difference?

And just for a fun... a collage to see where I've come from these past 34 weeks.  

 I love how big I thought I looked in the pink pants picture and again in the tank top picture.  Oh sweet naivety! (p.s. i'm holding up a "3" and a "4" in the last picture for 34~ kind of hard to see)

Keep praying for us and we'll keep you posted on sweet babies' progress, position and delivery!!

With love....

the twenty-first of june

 Some days hold just a little more twinkle in them than other days.  Do you have days like that?  The twenty-first of June is the day my Grandpa Schupbach was born, the day my parents got married, and the day my brother Jonah was born.  I've never known such a fun day (and it's the first day of summer, officially) and wanted to commemorate the speciality-ness of it all.

 Happy Birthday Dr. Jonah!

Love you more than you know and so thankful for all that God has done in your life.

 

Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad

An anniversary is an event we do not celebrate as we should.

Shame on us. Seriously!

To give this anniversary and the celebration the blog post it deserves I link you to my Dad's blog where he so eloquently remembers the day he met my mother and all the days there after.

Click here

And to my Grandpa, who has since gone Home, I remember and love you for all the wisdom, gumption and life you passed on to me.  Your footprints remain and we faithfully follow you.

Happy Birthday!

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"Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she smiles at the future.  She opens her mouth in wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue."

proverbs 31:25-26

new eyes

If you've ever seen "The Notebook" or heard about it and decided in your mind that you knew just how romantically hopeless this story was, I implore you to read this post and look at the movie with new eyes.

Notes on the Notebook

Then leave a comment here or there and let me know what you think.  I was blown away by the analogy my Dad made and asked him about it.  He said, "When I woke up in the morning, my thoughts turned to God and I thought of this".  He later encouraged me to not let my mind be made dull by entertainment but instead to see God in all things since He alone permits all things to happen.

Read the post and enjoy seeing a "chick flick" with new eyes.

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Kudos to Creator of the Cake & Picture

"Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her.  And there I will give her her vineyards and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.  And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth, as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt.  And in that day, declares the LORD, you will call me 'My Husband' and no longer will you call me 'My Baal'. For I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth, and they shall be remembered by name no more.  And I will make for them a covenant on that day with the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the creeping things of the ground.  And I will abolish the bow, the sword, and war from the land, and I will make you lie down in safety.  And I will betroth you to me forever.  I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy.  I will betroth you to me in faithfulness.  And you shall know the LORD.  And in that day I will answer, declares the LORD, I will answer the heavens, and they shall answer the earth, and the earth shall answer the grain, the wine, and the oil, and they shall answer Jezreel, and I will sow her for myself in the land.  And I will have mercy on No Mercy, and I will say to Not My People, 'You are my people'; and he shall say, 'You are my God'.

hosea 2:14-23

a great passage claiming God's promise for redemption through love and security.

we are his.

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"For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" Then Esther told them to reply to Mordecai, "Go, gather all the Jews to be found in Susa, and hold a fast on my behalf, and do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my young women will also fast as you do. Then I will go to the king, though it is against the law, and if I perish, I perish."

esther 4:14-16

courageous women rock!

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Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

Matthew 6:25-30 

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Truly, truly I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.

john 12:24

May 2011

May has been a "let's get 'er done" kind of month.
And as long as it felt at times and as many projects as we accomplished I am still a little surprised that June is here.
*gasp* Did I just say June?
Yes, yes I did.

With May came a Cubs game which they won (take that nasty Dodgers~ woop woop!), two baby showers (both lovely and over-the-top in the generousity and love showered (no pun intended) on me), the finishing up of ministry (for the most part), a little bit of reading, a whole lot of crafting, maternity ward tours, breastfeeding classes, laps swam in the pool, my childhood bestie gracing me with her presence and entertaining Hubs with what a wicked child I was (ohhhh man, I could be mean when I wanted to be), a reunion of friends, a new discovered love of quinoa, Hubs birthday, a dentist appointment, love found in a salvation army, the doctor laughing at my huge uterus and then told me said uterus was squishing my insides and that's why sometimes my legs go numb (hmmmmm....), and finally a book coming into the library that I had been waiting for which Hubs swooped up on an errand run so that I could flop myself onto the couch and put my beginning to swell feet up.

Whew, are you tired from all that?  I'm pretty sure that is all one sentence too. Woo hoo for awesome run-on sentences. :)
May was a good month to focus on the Twinkies and their soon-but-not-too-soon arrivals.  I can hardly wait to see them in their nursery.  I promise to put pictures up soon but I really feel like there needs to be one more finishing touch.  But for the most part, if I had the Twinksters tonight and brought them home tomorrow (which would not happen) then I would be all set to go.  Diapers? Check. Receiving blankets? Check.  Adorably cute and smothered in pink clothes? Double check.
Remember when I found out I was having girls and wrote this post and I said, "Unfortunately I don't naturally tend to flock towards pink.  Don't get me wrong, I love pink. I love any color that is bright and wild but so far, as far as baby stuff goes I've tended to stay around aquas and emeralds."
Well, I have definitely changed my mind and had my mind changed for me.  While I am still hoping to get all sorts of bright fun colors added to their closet, I am also not afraid to admit that I now happen to "flock" towards pink... and ruffles... lots and lots of ruffles.
It's just too darn cute!!

To top off the Narnia themed nursery which I gave a preview here I was blessed (I really believe this is a blessing) to find an affordable and adorable wardrobe at a salvation army.  I really have my friends Sam & Tivian to thank because they clued me into this fabulous salvation army which is located in a more "well-to-do" area of so cal and their selection of furniture is fabulous! And did I mention affordable? Well it was and even marked down from their first price because it had been there, waiting for me, for two weeks.  I simply had to have it.  I wasn't even looking for it and stumbled past it once or twice before I even noticed it.

Most of the crafts and focus this month have been centered around the nursery.  We finished the mobile, we cleaned out the wardrobe, we washed all the laundry, and I even organized all the clothes by age so that we can have less shuffling through clothes later on in life when my brain is fuzzier.  Now all we need are two cute little ladies to fill our lives, hearts and time with.

This month, non-baby related... I read
The Treasure Principle by Randy Alcorn and totally loved it.  It is a little book and a quick read  which is great because I feel like Hubs and I will be referencing it and folding over pages to come back too.
It's led me to some serious thought about our giving and how to encourage others to give.  Really great book, I'd pick it up if I were you and oh, look it's only a cent on amazon. Crazy!!

The first two weeks of May I did a Weeknight cookbook challenge and can I just confess something to you? I'm crossing this off my "28 things to do" list.  It just wasn't the book for me.  I made enough recipes to last through two weeks and was not overly impressed with very many meals.  Maybe they're too fancy for me? I'm not sure but I could care less.  I'm not a fancy food kind of girl.  Given the right occassion, sure, I love fancy meals.  But in my home I'm totally a "what's tasty" kind of cook and to me, these meals just didn't cut the cake. Plus, if I'm sharing these with ya'll my beloved readers I'll be honest, there was only one that really tickled my fancy and that was the previous post, Thai Chicken Satay.  Now that is a meal to make.

So I'm sorry to say but I'm crossing that off my list.... and even though I would normally feel like a failure for not finishing something on that list.... let's be honest, I'm not going to finish a lot of things on that list.  But the fun part is, I cooked and ate a lot of things I normally wouldn't have.  Veal, anyone?
That's the whole point of the list anyway, to get me out of my comfort zone.
Enough said, I'm heading back to my comfort zone for a little while and yes, I hope to finish more on the list.  I still have my eye on that.

We've had quite the month and are looking forward to some resting and relaxing this month before the girls arrive.  We're hoping for a natural mid-July birth but know that the Lord will set apart the day and the way whenever He sees right.

How was your May? Hows your summer shaping up? I'm curious what adventures people will be taking, what books you'll be reading and what new things you'll learn.  I'd love to learn alongside you so keep me posted on what is going on in your life as well.