baby boom

Wow... busy days have lead to busy days and it's been forever since I've had time to be online for longer than 30 seconds.

Updates are:
2 new friends are pregnant (wooo!)

I'm so overwhelmed by the baby boom thats hitting my church and my work (by next year at this time there will be 7 new babies at the Winter Conference in Toronto!). It seems like everyone is picking this as the time to start trying or are lucky enough to have conceived.

It makes me long to be able to post "YAY I'M PREGNANT!" and it also makes me nervous knowing how possible miscarriages are. For some reason this is plaguing me the more I hear of friends being pregs (normally because it's during their 1st or 2nd month).

For now, the baby boom is an exhausting, emotional reality. I think I'll be in it for a while so I'll be posting my thoughts as they come :)

My "Ga" and I (Mom's Mom)


Ga and Lisa's favourite gift from Andrew - A Snuggie!


:)



Our Christmas Eve feast tradition - Dad makes the chicken wings, ribs, and we all drink champagne

Christmas with the Family

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Spas have nothing on the relaxing sensation of staring at your parents 12 foot Christmas tree on a comfy couch with Mom, Dad, and Brad. Nothing!

We've done a lot of traveling from North Africa to France (for work the week before the festivities began) to Newmarket (Brad's mom and her husband, his kids, her kids, 8 people in total!), to Fonthill (my family - Lisa and her boyfriend Andrew, about 5 aunts and 5 uncles, 2 grandmas, and lots of lovely reunions) and now to Toronto (Winter Conference, again with work) but I am relaxed indeed.

Maybe it's the turkey drugs hitting me from last night, or the glow of the tree that is the largest residential tree I've ever seen, or the peace of Christmas - knowing that Jesus was born to bring the ultimate peace between man to God. But I am loving this Christmas, dispite the hectic travels and commotion.

How wonderful would it be to spend next Christmas with a baby??

In the trail of my addictions...

Lately I'm hooked on candles. I blame Jamie, who needs one burning to survive. She especially introduced me to the scented jar candles that we found for $5 at Zellers, but their much-longer-burning-higher-class counterparts are from Yankee Candle. Either way, I'm burning them often and ending up with unburned wax and empty jars galore.

Enter the creation of scented wax tarts and more storage for my kitchen!

The wax melts really evenly, I use muffin tins but would use mini muffin tins if I had them. Make sure you don't put too much wax in each because the wax may melt over once you put it in the tea-light holder. Those were form Dollarama for $1 by the way.

So just put them in the oven at 150 or 200 for 10 minutes or so and let them harden afterward for at least an hour or pop them in the freezer and voila!

where it all began

Today Brad and I leave for North Africa - the part of the world where we first met officially and soon thereafter fell in "like".

Brad was leading a Missions Trip and I was a 3rd year student at the time, with intentions of joining staff with Campus for Christ. He had already been working for C4C for 3 years at the time.

I remember the first day I saw him I thought he was cute and that he spoke really good French, but it was still pretty superficial until fate would have us on the same team and we got to know each other more... It wasn't long until I had a huge-must-be-kept secret crush since dating on the project wasn't allowed and let's face it, it was kind of sketchy that he was the staff and I was the student even though we're 4 years apart!

Anyway, years later we're married and returning to the same place where it all began. We're going for 1 week to visit with missionaries over there and also do some planning for the trip we're going on this summer with a bunch of other staff and students for 6 weeks.

How weird will it be to be back there as husband and wife, trying for a baby???

on worry.

a friend of mine (and not Ryan and Ashley, yes it's true, women are becoming pregnant left right and center in my life right now!) just announced that they're pregnant and the first additional piece of information was that she's worried. They're about 6 weeks along I think, and are worried since they're not "out of the woods" in relation to the higher chance of miscarriage in the first trimester. I can imagine her worry and relate to it which is the point of this post.

Worry. Is it a woman thing? A human thing? A beatable thing?

I'm not pregnant but I have heard of so many couples recently who are. For some unknown reason it makes me worried we won't become pregnant, even when there's no evidence to support that (heck, we are officially "trying" for the first time as we speak!). My friend is pregnant but is worried of a miscarriage. Even when one obstacle is overcome (conception) another looms.

In addition I have another friend who has experienced the tragic death of a child and has just reached the due date for her second child. I can only imagine the worry that was present for all 9 months even when you're "out of the woods". But will her worry disappear when her baby is born healthy? Will our worries ever disappear?

Other friends are moms and they worry all the time. At a young age it's about health, development. As they age it becomes about school, friends, hopes and dreams. Can a mom ever not worry? Can a woman ever not worry? I want to say yes. I want the verses I found today in God's Word to be my yes while I'm worried about conceiving, carrying, and caring for child. But I don't know if it's a decision to make today forever, I think it's a daily choice to trust God with what you can't control and know that what He has for me if best, because it's His, not because it's my perfect plan.

Proverbs 12:25
Anxiety in a man’s heart weighs him down,but a good word makes him glad

Matthew 6:25-30

"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?

congratulations are in order

Our friends who also work for Campus for Christ, Ryan and Ashley just send out the 1st trimester "We're Pregnant"! e-mail. They're 3 months along now, so technically in the safety zone to tell people, and we're so happy for them! Also exciting to know if we become pregnant soon our kids will have other friends their age at the many conferences and trainings and events we have with work each year that require distance travel and I can only assume are difficult with kiddos :)

here we go again

official try #1 this month! So much is going on this month for us with traveling to Ontario to visit both sides of the family, a huge conference starting on boxing day with work, and a work trip taking place from the 11th-18th in Africa... Should be interesting, joyous, visionary, but a bit stressful (those who know me better are laughing and saying "you mean a LOT stressful").
Knowing that stress can largely effect the results, I wouldn't be surprised if it took until after this insane season :)
But we'll have fun tryin'!