baby, meet your family:

I have had this project on our kitchen table for six weeks now. And yesterday, I decided to finish this bad boy. The idea is from Ali Edwards, taking an old type case and turning it into a picture frame. I found this type case a full year ago at a garage sale, and my sweet husband even hung it on the wall then. But no pictures filled it up until today.

When I first purchased it, I wanted to fill it with my personal cloud of witnesses...all of the people who have who shaped me in significant ways. I thought it would be cool to fill it with old, old pictures of my grandparents, church friends and family, just to always have a tangible place to find my favorite supporters.

But when we got pregnant, I knew immediately that I wanted to fill this things with our baby's cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents and great grandparents (and me and Rory!). I think we'll probably hang it over the changing table (up high...I've been warned that is a very dangerous place to hang anything if our baby is a boy...)

I started this project a month and a half ago, first by using a pliers to pull out almost half of the dividing sections. I had to do this, because I wanted bigger pictures, and my type case was divided into lots of tiny rectangles.

Then I used photoshop to resize all of my pictures to fit specific squares on my type case. I measured with a ruler, resized each picture and then tried to keep track of which picture was to go where.

It helped, but in the end, my measuring skills must be off, because each picture was just a tinsy bit too big, and needed recropping all around.

At one point, the pictures were gentle resting above their designated places, but I didn't have time to crop the whole thing before we went to California, so I layed a towel over it for when I could get back to this project. While we were in California, Toonces, our big boned cat found the towel to be a great place to sleep all day.

When I came back, each picture had been forced down by his paws, and I had to use a tweezer to individually pry each one back up before recropping, using double sided tape and sticking them back down. Annoying, double the work, but worth it. I love it.

If you ever do a project similar to this one, I'd recommend using matte finish photos. Mine are glossy, and it means that the whole display is a bit shiny. But that's minor, I suppose.

Mostly, it's just a super fun way to showcase all of my all-time favorite pictures of the families this baby is joining.

week in the life: day one!

Today was my first day of Week in the Life, and I'm excited. I started a day early, because next weekend we'll be out of town and I wanted to get pics of our church community in this album. So I brought my camera to church and got some fun pictures and have been looking for the ordinary all day long. I went to Archivers yesterday with some birthday money from Mom and Dad Groves and got this album and the picture dividers seen below. (Thanks so much!) My mom gave me the scrapbook paper at Christmas, and I am so excited by how they coordinate! I didn't plan that one!

These are the divider pockets, so that I can keep receipts, daily to-do's or anything else that seems appropriate to display along with all of the pictures I am taking. Ali Edwards showed these on her blog on Friday and I was so giddy to find them in the store and try this style myself.

So much of this project is just me trying something new. I know I'm not a master photographer, and I don't have the cute kid pics to fill my pages. It might just be filled with food and Toonces, but that's okay, I suppose. This is our life right now, and that is what I'm really trying to capture.

baby bump

Monday marks week 12 for me, and I am certain lots is happening in there. I am undoubtedly inhabited. Based on my loss of energy, appetite of a teenage boy, sudden hobby of frequent gagging, and the fact that I can put a check mark next to all of the possible symptoms listed in my pregnancy book, I think we're right on track. I am pregnant, and honest to goodness, I love, love, love knowing there is a little life growing inside of me. No matter what the symptoms, I am down right giddy with this joy.

I actually have just one thing I want to say in this post, so I'm going to get right to it.

I wrote about this briefly before, but it is the number one thing I am thinking about with this pregnancy. So here it is: I cannot get over how little I have to do with the creation of this life. On a 5th grade human sexuality level, I understand how this babe was conceived. But, come now, even that makes utterly no sense! The fact that these little itty bitty cells got together and then began to grow into a human being is absolutely beyond my comprehension. It is pure miracle.

I get weekly emails from the baby center and they tell me specific things that are happening inside of me like "this week, your baby is developing a liver" and other important things like that. And I just can't get over how little I have to do with all of this! I eat and I sleep, but at some moment when I was completely unaware, this baby's heart began to beat, its webbed hands spread into fingers, and the earlobes fell into place. And all I've been doing is sleeping and eating...and gagging...

Last night I was at a women's bible study at our church and we were talking about being a mom. I listened mostly, hearing mom's with kids of all ages talk about how hard it is to watch their kids make decisions that have life-lesson consequences. It's in a mom to want to protect their kid from all of these things. In the end, they can guide and direct, but really, at many different points, they have each surrendered their child once again into God's hands.

I listened and thought, that's actually how I feel right now (and my child could not be physically any closer to me!). I feel that sort of surrender and trust that God is shaping and forming this baby, weaving this child in my womb, and that I just get to be a part of its life. Because this whole process has been so hands off...other than good nutrition, I'm not the one forming fingernails on my babe this week.

It's all a wonderous miracle, and I get to be a part of it. It's the greatest privilege I have ever felt. To be entrusted like that. To trust God like that. To know that I have an important role (with Rory, we have the most important earthly role in this baby's life) but that from the very start, this is God's kid.

the heavens declare

I spent today and will spend tomorrow writing our summer Bible study curriculum. It is late in the game, but the curriculum arrived terribly late, was terribly disappointing and necessitated a rewrite. It's a really exciting project though...I love lesson planning, and I love using my imagination as I figure out how to best communicate the reality of our God and how knowing him changes everything in how we live our life in this world and the next.

The theme we chose is from 2nd Corinthians 5:17, focusing on the New Creation we are when we are in Christ Jesus. It's going to be good stuff and I'm so excited. The second day is all about God's creativity in creating the wonders that surround us and the scripture above gave me the chills as I worked it into the teaching lesson for each camper to hear all summer long.

I'd love for you to keep me in your prayers as I work on this project. I really pray that these days of writing can be Holy Spirit days, where I get to be a vessel, and God chooses the words and themes and focus points that he wants his campers to hear each day of the summer ahead.

a favorite website

Well, I went to work yesterday at 10:15, (two and some hours late) stayed for less than an hour and came back home to crawl into bed. Then I woke up and layed low with my laptop for a while and I came across this favorite site...ready for a revisit.

Now I don't know these girls (although I can think of a few role models from my past who might have just fit in with this group in the early 90's). I found this picture on http://www.awkwardfamilyphotos.com/ and it was a pure delight to my sicky day. Take a moment to click over to this site. It will make you laugh out loud.

I'm feeling much better today. I got LOTS of encouraging emails and comments yesterday...thank you, thank you, thank you. And I already have a lost-and-found sleeping bag rolled out on the floor for my lunch break nap. Hooray for naptime!