heartbeat.

Today I woke up and my paper chain had a heart on the next ring. It means we had our heartbeat doctor appointment today. I've been waiting for this day with serious excitement and anticipation and today was finally the day.

I get a daily devotional in my email every morning. Today, the devotional was based on the verse above and it seemed more than perfect. It seemed like a sweet reminder from my loving God, reminding me that the heartbeat we would hear was created SOLELY to worship him. It is for this reason that my own heart is beating. This baby can do anything it wants with its life, but it only has one purpose: to worship God forever.

I've been reading and rereading this verse all day long, thinking about the last part...that worshiping God is for our own good. And not only our own good, but for the good of all of the generations to follow. It dawned on me that I am growing my very first descendant.

We're hopping in the car in a moment to drive to the farm. The farm is really four family farms within 15 minutes of each other, and my grandma is in the middle of them all. This weekend a great number of my relatives are all spending the weekend together and I'm so excited.

My grandma has seven kids of her own, 23 grandchildren, and now with spouses included and great, great, great grandchildren adding to that number, she has over 100 descendants. At last count I think it was 106, but I haven't counted since our last family reunion and babies have been born since then.

This verse grows even bigger when I read it and think of my grandma. She and my grandpa faithfully worshiped the Lord and raised their children with the same purpose. And now, for the good of Grandma, but also for the good of her 106 descendants, she gets to enjoy family weekends with a family that shares one heart and one purpose.

It's inspiring to think about as I try to comprehend the galloping heartbeat Rory and I just heard. It was strong, loud and fast. And created for only one purpose: to worship God forever.

And yes, I cried. Still am, actually.

fried pickles, please.

Just wanted to drop in and mention that I'm still here. I usually blog almost every day, but lately I just work and come home to sleep a lot, and my serious love of naps and an early bedtime are getting in the way of my blogging...

Tonight we went out with the friends we had over for The Olympic Buffet. We met in the Old Market, the most charming corner of Omaha and ate at a great restaurant called the Twisted Fork (I think...). I had that one salad that layers tomatoes and mozzarella with a vinegar dressing. Oh, that's my favorite. So stinking good.

But stealing the show, and my heart, were these appetizers: fried pickles with a horseradish dipping sauce. I don't like horseradish, usually, but tonight turned me into a horseradish believer. In this pregnancy I am craving all things salt and vinegar. And honestly, I could do without anything sweet. The pros and cons of this is that my baby will probably not be at risk of diabetes, but it might come out very hypertensive...and dehydrated. The pickles were like a whole new world of perfection, and all four of us enjoyed them very much.

Plus, they reminded me a lot of the Minnesota State Fair. Which is only 126 days away!

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.