welp it's now 4am on Sunday and it appears as though the ball is rolling finally! i started having contractions at around 2:30am and they are about 7-9 minutes apart. they definitely aren't pleasant, but so far they are tolerable. i'm trying to let Ryan get some sleep, before I wake him up, so I thought I would try and distract myself with blogging and cleaning. i am hoping to go without an epidural, but since i won't be getting much sleep if any tonight, I'm not sure that will be possible, but we'll see. anyhoo i'm going to empty the dishwasher now and clean up the place a bit since we may be having company soon! i'll keep everyone posted!

Yesterday was full of disappointments for me, so I hope today is a better today. It started off good....my mom came over and we went to lunch and did some shopping and we had a fun time. Then she came with us to the doctor appt. I needed to be at least one centimeter dialated for them to do their little trick and i hadn't progressed any further, so now I have to wait until Tuesday. She can still come before then, but I was bummed that we weren't able to help her along. But I know she'll come when she's ready.

But the worst part of the day came at Alpha that night. This Alpha has been one of the best ones and the people who are coming really have a hunger for the truth and are really seeking. Well there was supposed to be 7 more weeks of Alpha and Mark, the evangelism pastor who oversees Alpha and all of evangelism for Southland was informed yesterday morning, that him along with 18 other staff have been laid off and that last night is the last Alpha. So needless to say the news was not taken very good. We were just saying how smooth of a transition it has been with our new pastor and then this happens. There are still a lot of unanswered questions and it doesn't appear that it was handled very well, but I am still trying to give the church and our new pastor the benefit of the doubt. I know that their finances were really tight and that budgets were going to have to be cut, but to cut out the evangelism and missions department and to have to tell people at Alpha, um yea I know you have a lot of questions and are seeking God, but we just can't afford to reach out to you right now. It just seems absurd. But anyhoo, i'm venting and the shock of it all is still new to me. The good thing is that God is still in this. We have had 3 people accept Christ and be baptized just this Alpha alone and we usually don't see that happen so early, so God knew the sense of urgency and apparently a lot of the groups are agreeing to still meet even though there won't be free food or a talk. So that is awesome to hear and I hope they do come back and get their questions answered.

so anyhoo, this isn't a very cheerful blog and i apologize, but i just needed to vent. welp back to work for me. have a great weekend all!

my sister sent this to me and i thought it was pretty interesting so i'd thought i would share.....

"Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe."

It's Wed and still no Hannah. Tomorrow is my official due date, but they say that only 5% of women actually deliver on their due date, so I'm not getting my hopes up. But at tomorrow's appt, they are supposed to do this little trick that will put you in labor if your body is ready, so we'll see if it works. Hopefully by this weekend we will be new parents! As Ryan mentioned in his blog, we talked my mom into all you can eat Skyline. It was sad though, because she really didn't get her money's worth. She only ate about $7 worth of food which is the price of all you can eat, where as Ryan and I were over the $10 mark! And yes we are very proud. I had a greek salad, 2 cheese coneys, a small 4 way and some black beans and rice. Wow the gluttoney! I'm sure Ryan did burn off some of the calories with his run, but my 3/4 mile slow walk probably didn't do much good. I shot some hoops with Ryan last night to warm up before his run. I'm sure that was a sight to see.

I do need to brag as well, because on Monday we played Catan with Dan and Lisa and I won both games!!! I could tell Ryan's pride took a beating, and it was a well deserved beating!

Today could be my last official day of working for a couple of weeks, so I'm trying to make the most of it. I'm actually having a pretty productive day, so that's good. Just thought I'd take a blog break.

Trace I hope your week got better with that boy...i've been praying for ya! And Mary I hope you make it to the mountains to get away from those walls around ya!

See yas!

Happy Monday all! We had a nice weekend this weekend. Another relaxing one. Ryan and I ended up doing the dinner and movie thing for our date night, but we had a lot of fun. We were going to have a picnic at our house site, but it was getting dark and drizzly so we just took pictures instead. So we went to Mancinos which was quite yummy. Other than McDonalds, it's the only other restaurant near our house right now, so I have a feeling we will become regulars there. We did see a Papa Johns too, so that will be good for those nights of not wanting to cook yet can't get out.

We then stopped at Olive Garden for dessert. Wow they have good cheesecake. We were going to see Seabiscuit, but I read a review on Matchstick men from a site that I usually agree with that said it was the best movie they had seen this year and Matt gave it a B so we saw that instead. I guess it was talked up too much on that review, because I walked away a little dissappointed. But overall it was good and I agree with Matt, the acting was good. I'd also give it a B.

Saturday I slept in until 9:30am! I was very excited. Ryan does service projects for church once a month so he went and did that and I decided that the closets needed reorganizing. So I emptied our linen, hall, bedroom and bathroom closets and rearranged and reorganized everything. Then I took Reeces to the dog park. It was such a beautiful day. 70 and sunny all day. He had a fun time romping around with the other dogs.

Saturday night we went to church and the message was awesome. The topic was on corporate worship, but he first went through a quick summary of the old testament which was pretty insightful. And then he talked about what the bible said about how we are to worship.....by song, by dance, by shouting and lifting hands. He used a great analogy of how if we were at a UK basketball game and at the last second they hit a basket to win the game that we wouldn't just sit there with our hands folded and nod and say, "oh that's nice that they scored". No we would be lifting our hands and cheering and celebrating. And his point was how much more we should be celebrating that once we were going to hell, but now we are going to heaven because of Jesus. You could feel a revival of the spirit in the church which is something we have been needing, so hopefully it will stick for a while.

Sunday we went to the camp site where my mom will be living for the next 6 weeks. My dad and sister were there and we brought them lunch and helped set up. We then went to visit our house again. It's unbelievable how fast they are flying on it now. When we went there on Friday, there were 3 lots that had foundation poured and the plumbing pipes in. And 2 days later they had 2 of the houses framed with windows and doors and ours was halfway framed. Unfortunately it's been raining all day today, so they probably didn't make much progress, but they should probably have it framed by this week. It's pretty exciting.

Ryan went up to cincinnati last night and i watched can't buy me love and ate a whole box of mac and cheese for dinner. I could eat that stuff everyday. I don't know why it's so good. And then I got to chat with Tracey for our usual 2 hour conversation! It was great catching up with ya Trace!

I really hope I can have a productive week. I'm really not a fan of documentation, but it needs to get done.
Welp, have a great week everyone! I'm outta here!

Fun reading of the blogs today. I was cracking up at Justin's cereal box reading memories. I guess we weren't the only family that did that! I had completely forgotten about those days. I don't know how many times I would read the same box of cereal. But the best was the part where you would wait until the other person was finished and then you turn it. Especialy if you got stuck with the front of the box first. It's never as exciting reading material. That's when we would angle the box so one could still read the back and the other could move on to the side.

And funny kid quote Tracey. Poor little guy. I hope Terra realizes what a catch she's missing. :) It was good hearing from Grammy again! I'm glad to hear that your arm is getting better and that your therapy is almost done. Not a fun way to spend a summer, but you are definitely a trooper!

It's Friday. Still no Hannah. I had a doc appt yesterday and I haven't progressed very much. So much for the feeling that I will be going soon. She's in position ready to go, but my body is just not cooperating yet. But oh well, I guess I'm techinally not due until next week anyway. I was up at 5:30am today, so I decided to do laundry and a little grocery shopping. Yesterday morning I dusted our ceiling fans. Pretty sad eh? But I did take a 2 1/2 hour nap today, so that felt good. Hopefully I can have a productive work day today. I've been trying to do work work when I get up that early, but it's just too early to really have to think about anything.

Today is a day when I wished we lived in a more exciting city than Lexington. Ryan and I wanted to have one last hoopla tonight before Hannah comes and there is absolutely nothing to do in this city. I looked at the weekender and it consisted of movie reviews and restaurant guides. ooo dinner and a movie...how original and exciting is that! And since neither of us is very creative, we're not good at making up our own dates. Any ideas anyone? Oh well we'll still have fun whatever we do.

My mom and dad are coming down on Saturday and my mom is staying in an RV park for 6 weeks. It's about 45 minutes from here. That should be interesting. It sounds so relaxing and refreshing, but I don't know if I could go 6 weeks. But she'll have her grandbaby soon to come and visit, so that will keep her occupied. And it will be nice having her so close for the first few weeks, especially when Ryan goes back to work.

Last night we had Alpha and it was so good. I'm kind of sad that I'll have to miss some this time. Our small group is really seeking and asking a lot of good questions. It's so exciting to watch their journey. Unfortunatley my friend Angela's group was not quite so stable. I guess they had some new guys in their group last night and apparently their elevators didn't quite go to the top. Angela and the other leader would ask the group about how they felt about the talk which was on who Jesus is and his claim to be God and their answers consisted of...."you don't really believe that a man walked on the moon do you?"....or "so what do you feel about lightening storms and fearing God?" because you know those are so related. and i guess one of the guys went up to Angela afterwards and scared her from behind and asked completely out of the blue..."so how do you feel about flat screen tv's?" That has to be hard, because you know that God loves them and wants them in a relationship with Him too, but when you can't have a normal conversation with them, it makes it a little more difficult. It was pretty funny though hearing about their comments.

They are apparently fixing some roofs in our apartment so all morning i've been hearing this drill that sounds like a dentist's drill. It's going right thru me! anyway..had to vent.

well i guess it's time to get some more work done. hope everyone has a great and relaxing weekend except for matt who has to work which stinks, but hopefully some fun can be had in there somewhere. and i look forward to reading all about them next week!

I feel so smart, I put a link to my pictures on the side!

I posted some pictures of our nursery and my big belly and one of sweet reeces if anyone is interested. the website is http://www.villagephotos.com/pubbrowse.asp?selected=495076

Peace!

It's now my second day in a row getting up at 6am. I guess I better get used to it. It's only the beginning. I am usually not a person who worries about much, but pregnancy sure knows how to find it in you. I woke up today and thought I haven't felt Hannah move much, so I got up and ate some blueberry waffles to try and get her going and of course she did. So now I'm wide awake and trying to find stuff to do. Last night I got banned to lying down since my blood pressure was a little high, so we ordered Pizza Hut and rented Identity. There's a good movie to keep the blood pressure down. A nice suspense thriller. I really enjoyed the movie. I was expecting just a fun predictible thriller, but it actually had some good twists and a good story line.

Today I have a doctor appointment to see if I have progressed any. Have I mentioned what a test of patience this has been? I'm hoping they have some good news for me.

Well I guess I will try and get an early start on work. Have a great Thursday!

Awesome quotes Matt. What Shaun Groves song is that from? I may send that one to our pastor. It fits perfectly into his sermon series he is doing.

"Cut through these chains that tie me down to so many lesser things. Let all my dreams fall to the ground until this one remains.......you are everything I want, you are everything I need. Want this to be my one consuming passion. Everything my heart desires Lord I want it all to be for you Jesus. Be my magnificent obsession." -Steven Curtis Chapman

It's Monday afternoon. Still no Hannah. We had such a good weekend of relaxing though and hanging out with friends. I told Ryan we really need to enjoy it because it may be our last. It's so weird to think that today could be our last Monday of just the 2 of us. well i guess 3 of us if you count mr. reeces. Of course we may have 3 more Mondays of just the 3 of us, but I'll keep believing the other!

We ended up not going to the parade of homes yesterday which was ok by me. It was kind of drizzly day, so not a real good one for walking around outside. Instead Neal and Ryan watched football all day while I went out shopping. I had to return some stuff to Babies R Us and Target, so of course I got a soft pretzel with cheese! And now they have vanilla flavoring, so I washed it down with a vanilla diet coke. yum!!

And then I went to Michaels because they were having this 50% off sale. I got a great deal on these scrap book scissors. They aren't the real "sturdy" kind, but they will work for me. I got 12 of them for $5! I got this idea from a friend of mine to have the folks who visit us in the hospital write a little letter to Hannah. And then we'll take their picture and have their note next to their picture in a scrapbook. So I bought some pastel cardstock and used my scissors to make different shaped note cards. It was fun. Who knows when it will ever actually get into a scrap book, but at least the thought is there.

I am really hoping to have a productive next couple of days of work so I can officially have a clean plate before Hannah comes. Plus it will be nice to actually get some hours in and get paid. That always helps the budget out too. And since it's now 3pm and I have worked about a half an hour so far, I'm not off to the greatest start. But Ryan won't be home until 8pm so my goal is to get maybe 3 hours in today. I can't believe Ryan is playing 54 holes of golf today! That is just insane. But I'm sure he'll have a great time.

I've starting going through this study I started a while ago called Experiencing God. I'm sure some of you have heard of it or may have even done it. God gave me a really great revelation about myself last week as I was reading the power of a praying parent. The chapter in the book was talking about helping your kids have a healthy fear of God and I realized that that is probably one of my biggest problems with my walk with God. You always hear how your parents growing up can really affect your view of God, but it's always in reference to having cold or abusive parents and that's how they see God. But my parents have always been very loving, so I never thought it really affected my view of God. But then I realized after reading that, that even though my parents loved me, they weren't the greatest at following through with discipline so we would really take that for granted and would get away with a lot of things. Well I realized that that is exactly how I see God. That I know he loves me and I take advantage of that and even though it's not a conscience decision, I make wrong choices and I don't spend time with him, because deep down I think, "well he loves me and he really won't let anything bad happen to me." which is somewhat true since He is so merciful and loving, but then I am missing out on such a more abundant and fruitful life that I could be having. So I am praying that through this study, I will learn what God's will is for my life and really come to true revelation about who He is and develop a healthy fear of God.

So that's my as you all call it, "emo" blab for the day. I'm really thankful for the revelation, because it is something that I desire for Hannah. Fortunately Ryan has a pretty good fear of God and authority, so hopefully she learns that from him. But of course I'll want her to push the envelope sometimes. You gotta live life on the edge at times. :)

Hope everyone had a peachy Monday!

I'll leave you with lyrics to one of my favorite worship songs right now by Phillips, Craig, and Dean....
"Like oil upon your feet, like wine for you to drink, like water from my soul, I pour my love on you. If praise is like perfume, I lavish mine on you, till every drop is gone."

Let that be our heart's desire! I'm outta here!

And who is the Lord of Catan Mr. "I know one thing, Michelle will NOT win"??? After a 2 1/2 battle of Settlers of Catan I pulled off a victory one turn from Ryan winning!!!! It felt so good! I think Ryan took the defeat pretty hard and of course I made sure to rub it in!

No Hannah yet. :( This is definitely a good test of waiting on God's timing for me. I've never been this prepared for anything, which is a big step for me. Last night I woke up at 2am and couldn't sleep, but there wasn't anything for me to do to get ready for Hannah because we've already done it all, so I ended up whining to myself about not being able to sleep and watching the end of Reindeer games. Now I want to see the beginning of it, because it looked pretty good. We got a new recliner which has been Ryan's new home this football season. He's trying to get as much use out of it as he can before it becomes the "dairy mart" chair. :)

We went to Olive Garden last night with our friends Jamie and Donny and their little girl Olivia. It was quite tasty! We got the all you can eat pasta bowl. I guess we are big on the all you can eat meals it seems. Which probably isn't a good habit to get into for the sake of our bellys. But I figured I better use the excuse while I can. I was actually hoping that mabye if I put as much food in my stomach as possible that Hannah would run out of room and want to come out. But the theory did not prevail. Jamie told us this funny quote from this random guy she ran into while doing errands. Jamie said that he was a bit feminine and he had asked her the ever so popular question, "is it a girl or a boy?" even though she had this girly outfit on. Well then he told her, "yea sometimes I have a hard time figuring out what I am." That's something you don't hear every day!

Today we are going on this parade of homes with some other friends. We get to look at these huge expensive houses that we will never be able to afford. But it will be fun to dream for a bit. Plus we may get some decorating ideas for our new house. Which as you read on Ryan's blog that they have officially broken ground on our home!!! We went to go see it with our own eyes yesterday and sure enough, there it was. We were supposed to be like 11th or 12th on the list, but it looks like we ended up being the third. So that was an awesome blessing. So it may actually be before the end of the year that we move in!

Mary I didn't see any Alaska pictures on your picture page. Did I go to the wrong one? All I saw was your bug and the funny toll booth manican (sp?).

Hope everyone had a good weekend!

Welcome back to the blog world Ry! It was good reading everyone's blog. And Tracey..so awesome about the slam on your chiroblabber. A much needed one it sounds like!

And thanks for sharing Matt. I remember when you started having those heart problems and Tracey mentioned she thought it was related to 9/11. It's good to see you living up your dreams now with no heart problems. Stress is such a scary thing how it can affect us in such sneaky ways. And it is a good reminder for all of us to live life to the fullest. It is sad that that saying has become such a cliche because it takes away the meaning of it and I don't think we really appreciate what it says. At least I know I don't.

Tonight is our kickoff to fall Alpha. I think it's very appropriate night for it, which I'm sure is God ordained. What better way to reach out to the lost then to remember how precious life is and that it can be gone like that and you better know where you are going. We decided to make a mix cd for the dinner with fun secular songs to make people feel comfortable and have it be something familiar to them, so I got to make one of them. It was very fun coming up with a good mix of songs. It was a little hard putting country songs on it, but we do live in Kentucky, so I knew it had to be done. Of course the week I'm making this cd is the week where all the stories of the lawsuits are coming out with record labels sueing folks for downloading music. so now Ryan is afraid I'm going to end up in jail and he's going to be a single father. But it's for the kingdom right? So isn't that considered martyrdome?

anyhoo, I really don't have anything important to say as you could probabably tell. But at least you got to click on my blog page and say "hey a new one!" i know that always gets me excited when I click on everyone's pages.

tomorrow we are getting together with our friends to play settlers of catan, so that should be a good time. I'm hoping for my win number 2 out of like 20 games I think. But hopefully Hannah will decide to come before then, but I won't count on it!

have a great weekend everyone and we'll blog at ya later!

Hi all! Well I had a big long blab blog the other day, but it appears as though it didn't get posted and is forever lost in the blog black hole. so now i'll have to do the shortened recap of things.

First I wanted to say welcome back Tracey! I've missed your blogs! I hope you are getting back into the swing of things at school. And it was good to hear from you too Emily. I'm sorry you don't have a computer anymore, so we might not be hearing much from ya.

We are basically just in waiting mode for our little Hannah to come! I'm 2 weeks away from my due date, so she could basically come any day now! It's kind of scary and exciting at the same time. We've made a list of things we need to get done before she comes and we pretty much have it all done now, so she can feel free to get things rolling anyday. My friend Heather who was due a week before me had her little girl last week. I was so excited for her, but I am a little jealous too. But I know God's timing will be perfect. I still can't believe that we are going to be parents. I look in her nursery and it's so weird to think that this stuff isn't just decorations. We are actually going to be using it and she is going to be sleeping in that crib. It's a little too overwhelming for me at times. I think the hard part now is just waiting and not knowing at all what's it's going to be like.

We got our digital camera and camcorder last week, so that's been fun to play with. We've been taking lots of pictures of Reeces, before he gets the shaft and becomes the forgotten child. It will be fun to see how he does with Hannah. I think he'll be very sweet with her. As long as he doesn't try to "hump" her, we'll be ok. :) sorry for the image.

We also had our preconstruction meeting for our house last week, so that is very exciting! It should be only about 2 or 3 weeks now before they break ground. I drove by there yesterday and they have started on other lots, so that is a very good sign. They are guessing January is when we'll be in, so hopefully we have a pretty mild winter so it wont' be too cold to move. I'm in no hurry now that we've got this place in order, but it will be nice to get moved in and have a place of our own. I'll have to check out that site that you put pictures on Matt and I'll post some pictures of Hannah's nursery and Hannah when she's born. I can't wait to see what she is going to look like!

Not a whole lot of exciting stuff has been going on other than that. I think we've hit a record with being home 4 weekends in a row. We haven't been too stir crazy yet. The next time we'll travel is for Kevin and Emily's wedding, so this will definitely be a world record for us. It will be interesting to see if how different our lives will be with Hannah. I have a feeling she won't slow us down too much, but definitely a little, which will be good for us. I just hope she likes car rides or we'll be really in for it!

I do have one funny story I thought I would share. I think you'll like this one Matt. We have one skyline chili in Georgetown which is about a 30 minute drive from here, but somtimes we just have to make the trek up there to get our fix. Last time we were up there we saw a sign for all you can eat skyline for $6.99 on Tuesdays. We joked that we would have to do that sometime. Well last week we were waiting for our digital camera to get delivered by FedEx and I had been home all day and I never heard a knock. Well finally at 6pm I checked the website to see the status and it said delivery attempt failed at 5:50pm. Talk about fast updating! Well sure enough I went to the door and there was a note posted on it that said that they had been there. Apparently they don't like to knock I guess. Well the pick up place for FedEx is near Georgetown and wouldn't you know it, it was Tuesday. So I told Ryan that it was a sign that we need to go to skyline. He hesitated for a second, but I knew he wouldn't turn it down. So we headed to skyline for all you can eat. It was so glutteneous and so good! The best part which still makes me laugh was hearing Ryan tell the waitress, "um yeah, I'd like to START off with the deluxe burrito and 2 cheese coneys." So we managed to put away between the two of us, 2 deluxe burritios, a small 4 way, 3 cheese coneys, an order of chili cheese fries, and 2 diet mountain dews (because we had to watch those calories you know!) It still hurts my stomach thinking about it. The best part was when we took the checks up to the counter apparently they have to ring up everything individually on the check and then they do the discount at the register. Well the cashier did some figuring and said that the total was $10 something. Ryan pointed out that shouldn't it be more like $14. But he just shrugged and said he wasn't very good at math and still only charged us the $10. So not only did we make complete pigs of ourselves we only paid $5/each for it! We were definitely hurting afterwards, but of course we'll probably do it again sometime. We may need to fast the day of.

So if you're ever in the neighborhood Matt, you'll have to come join us sometime. Of course we may not be able to get you in skyline since there is a sonic right across the street. But we could always end our feast with milk shakes! :) That would definitely help out the "pretty gut" huh?

Well I guess I actually do have a little work to do today, so I will get started on that since it's 2pm now. I really love my life by the way! I hope I never forget how incredibly blessed I am with my job. Even though there's not a lot going on right now which means I'm not getting paid, but it's been so great being able to get everything ready for Hannah.

Have a great rest of the week everyone!