Jastef

Can someone please pinch me and tell me it really *is* the middle of May?! Where has the year gone? I know this is odd for me to say (since I detest the heat) but I am actually looking forward to the summer. I'm looking forward to VBS, play dates, vacations, Marine World trips and many more.

Life has been kind of chaotic these early months of 2009. If I could sum them up in a phrase it would be, "sick and unscheduled." The kids battled several bad colds back to back, followed up by inner ear infections for the girls and an ear infection for Ethan. Thankfully, it looks like the ear infections were the last of the nasty cold, before it left us. Everyone is healthy (thank You, Lord!) and life is starting to feel normal again. In the midst of everything; a new addition to our family, the holidays, the new year, being so sick, etc... I feel like I've been in a fog since Kara's birth. I didn't "bounce back" nearly as fast as I did after Rachel's birth and definitely felt like the number 3 was a challenge for sure. I'm sure its different for everyone. Some ladies have told me their first was the biggest challenge, some swear it doesn't come until you pass the number 4. For me, it has been 3. Jason and I both feel like after having 3, any number doesn't sound too difficult to handle.

A couple days before Mother's Day, I decided to get out my journal and to do some writing, some praying, reading my Bible and taking key verses and just meditating. It was my Mother's Day gift to myself. :) To my surprise, I didn't find God saying "Take refuge under My wings, press on, these challenges will become lighter over time"... you know, the typical, "you're doing everything right, life is just hard and the world is against you!" What I was hearing was, "You need to stop complaining, stop whimpering about how you can't and remember that with Me ALL things are possible!" It hit me like a ton of bricks. I'VE been lazy. I'VE been telling myself it was too hard. I'VE been allowing myself to get on bad sleeping schedules, to start the days off wrong, so the rest of my day follows suit, I'VE been letting small discouragements become large ones... ME. And its not like life has been depressing or horrible or like I'm just bearing it day by day. Not at all! But I've felt myself little by little slipping into bad habits. Putting off house work because "I'm too tired." slacking off in meal planning/preparing because "I've been too busy with the kids", spending too much time on my computer at night because "I didn't get to get on it during the day" and sacrificing time to be getting my house in order, reading books I've been wanting to read for so long, doing Bible study homework and spending quality time with my man. It felt so easy and so normal to just say "I have 3 kids, I'm busy, what can I say?" But I quickly realized those were all excuses and things that were avoiding the real issue. And for me, the issue has literally been laziness. Just a lack in motivation and a lazy attitude toward life.

It didn't really hit me until I realized my relationship with God (on my end) had become lazy; hit or miss, full of excuses, very self focused and on some days, non-existent. I'm very thankful that God used that to get my attention. I'm overjoyed that the lack of a deep, continued, consistent, healthy relationship with my Heavenly Father, caused me to realize something was very wrong. A couple weeks back one of our Pastors asked a question in church... "if you took God out of Heaven, would you still desire to be there? Would you still long for Heaven? What's in it for you, if God is not there?" I was sitting outside nursing Kara (we have speakers out in the foyer area for Moms to nurse and such) and I just started weeping. I knew the answer instantly.

Nothing.

Heaven would be nothing without God. My life is nothing without God. I cannot function properly without Him. Life is backwards without him. I'm often telling Ethan that about our Nation. We're a backward nation because too many people want to be their own god, rejecting the One who came to save them and give them new life in Him. A life with purpose and direction and a life of peace and joy.

Why write this post? I know its long, I know its quite informative and I know for some it might be odd and dull. My reason is mainly because I am often encouraged by my "mommy blogs" that I follow. I'm often reading someones entry and then saying "so its not just me!" and also learning from other ladies' journeys through their roles as wife, Mommy, teachers, etc... I'm also quite close to many of you, attend Bible studies with you and see you during the week and so you already know these struggles I'm going through. Its always good to remember that we've not been given our perfected, heavenly bodies yet, so lets stop acting like we have. :) Its so much easier to be honest and say "I'm struggling!" than to pretend life is a gentle breeze, that never leaves me feeling overwhelmed.

What amazes me the most? Even in the midst of great trial and so much to learn and deal with... God provides moments of sweet joy and pure bliss. My husband is... amazing, to say the least. I love his even keeled attitude, the wisdom God has given him, the way he balances me so perfectly and the love he has for our kids. My 3 kids are such blessings to me. Its through them that God has taught me so much about myself. Its through them that He's pointed out areas that need more of His grace and also areas that I excel in and didn't know it until I had kids. So I don't want this post to end sounding depressed. Because that is definitely what I'm not. I also don't want to get into the habit of always having to discuss my woes and trials, as if I'm something special God has sought out to put through torture. The trials of life, great or small, are there for one purpose -  " Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing."

Perfect and complete, lacking nothing.... amen!

My very talented husband built this website from the ground up and I'm extremely proud of him and excited to finally be launching it! Please let us know what you think and let us know if something isn't working quite right for you. Registering for a username/password is easy and you do have to have login access in order to see our pictures. If you had an account with us before, your previous information (if you remember it) should still work. Also, you can use your Facebook login for this website as well. Hoping that helps keep life a little simpler for you all. Just so you know, the site is up and running, but everything is not completed. Access to our photos is not up yet, but will be soon. We will occasionally post a picture attached to a blog post, but the main bulk of our pictures will be available only after you login.

Thanks for stopping by - enjoy the visit!

I've been doing quite a bit of thinking lately, about what to do with this website. I have such sentimental attachment to it because we started it just after getting married, 4 1/2 years ago. Its done in Drupal, which I have yet to learn and so there's very little I can do with it, other than just write posts. I like the freedoms I have on my website with design, etc...

We realized the other day that we are getting very little traffic on here and thought maybe you're all just as bored with it as we are. :) We do keep all our photos attached to this site and we like that because those are set privately and we can monitor who has access. I'm not exactly sure what we're going to do, but I recently started thinking, maybe I need to learn how to use Drupal and just maintain this as our only website. I'm sure us having two is rather annoying to you all anyway. :)

My friend Krista had recently posted that she is learning HTML and PHP and that's really what started motivating me into wanting to finally learn Drupal. Plus, Jason uses it so much in his work, it would be fun to be on the same page with him in that area. In the meantime, please don't get too terribly annoyed with us and we'll do our best to keep pictures uploaded and somewhat interesting posts coming.

Last week I had my 2nd ultra sound to see if the placenta has moved away from my cervix and we got some excellent news... Its right where it needs to be! We're very thankful to God for this and so thankful to all of you who prayed for us. It was a blast seeing the baby, so developed and active with personality. We got some amazing shots of her feet and her face. The kids were thrilled to see them when I got home, though a little confused as to why I didn't go have the baby. Ethan has informed us on many occasions that this whole "pregnancy thing" it taking way too long. :) Thank you again for praying for us.

I'm going to try and download the foot picture we got for you later... we'll see how it works.

Some of you have asked about baby a registry; do we have one, where is it and how do you get to it.

We're registered for a few things at both Babies R Us and Target. I know it will shock some of you, since this is our 3rd child, but we actually do need some things. We borrowed quite a few things with our first two and had to give back most of it. Those of you who are interested, you just go to those websites and follow the baby registry instructions. I'm working on linking them from here, but so far... not quite sure I've got it down right. :)

Seems like this blog is so dull these days (aside from the pictures) and so I'm going to try and make up for the lack of posts, but posting a super long one. It would just so happen, we've had a really dull week, so there's not much to write about. I'll try to make it interesting. :)

**This is an update from the original post: Our kids appeared to have a cold over the week, but kept confusing us because the only symptom was raspy throats and Ethan complained that his chest was burning. :( Yesterday his complaining about that concerned me so I called the advice nurse to see what she thought. They never got congested, never ran fevers or anything... so I was kind of worried. After hearing a few things I said, she asked "What city do you live in?" As soon as I said our city name, she answered with "They're not sick, they're reacting to the west nile virus spray!" Turns out, our city (even over the houses and all) were sprayed for the West Nile Virus and gave us NO warning. A friend of ours from chruch confirmed that they sprayed on Tuesday night, which explains why Wednesday morning our kids acted like they had been poisoned. Apparently most cities only get sprayed over the fields, but our entire city gets sprayed, because we're so close to the Delta. Ug. I'm more angry that we got NO warning for this and I'm assuming they don't warn people because they don't want anyone refusing it or putting up a fight. Anyway, the kids seem totally fine now and I'm glad they weren't sick, but I'm not sure that being poisoned is a better option. :-\ Apparently running low grade fevers or throwing up can be symptoms as well.

We had a productive week around the house; I finished setting up the baby's room - hung pictures, organized clothes and put everything where I want it. We're pretty much done with the garage cleaning/organization until our boxes for the backyard stuff get taken out of there. We're hoping to be able to start on the backyard (not we but our landscaper) in August. I can't wait until the fort in the backyard is built... the kids are going to have their own private park back there.

Last night was our Ladies Nite Out at church and we had a fun ice cream sundae/game night. We played Taboo (one of my favorites) and I think the highlight of the night was when I was trying to get them to guess the words Ear Lobes. Between all the words I couldn't say, I was left saying "The place where you put pretties in your child's hearing device." Unfortunately I got most of them off of ear lobes and onto thinking about hearing aids. Anyway... funny moment. I love the Ladies Night Outs. We do them once a month and I especially love them during the summer, because we take a break from our Friday morning Bible study in the summer and this still gives us an opportunity to spend time together. Sadly, the kids and I have not made it to ONE pool play date this summer with our church friends. How terrible is that?! We've either had plans on the days they land on and for a while, I was under the impression that Ethan couldn't go in the water with the tubes in his ears. Last week at his post-op appointment, the surgeon let me know we are free to treat him completely normal and allow water play and all. I was happy to hear that. The ladies at church have been doing a study this summer, but it lands on the same night as our birthing class, so I had to skip it this year. I can't believe we have one month left and all our Bible studies and park/play dates start up again!

Speaking of our birthing class (Bradley Method) we're very much enjoying it! I highly recommend it, to any of you wondering or looking for one. Jason and I have both learned a lot, even though this is going to be our 3rd birthing experience. We're aiming for an all natural birth this time, so we knew these classes would help us go into it a bit more well informed and give us more of a plan than we've had in the past. One of the things I love most about the class is how its kept my diet in very well balance. I've been more uncomfortable during this pregnancy (since we're smack in the middle of the hot summer) but I've been the healthiest during this one. I love that we keep track of especially our protein intake and are making sure I'm getting a very well balanced diet. It really helps keep certain problems out of the pregnancy and its nice knowing our baby is getting good nutrition and will be better off for it.

Tonight my parent's baby sat for us and Jase and I went out to dinner at a favorite spot of ours here in Downtown Brentwood called Gratzie. It feels like a long time since we've gone out alone. We take our kids out to dinner a lot with us and its always fun, but its just so nice being able to talk to each other, on subjects we chose and to not have to help someone else eat. :)

Not sure when I'll post on here again, but I'll do my best. Because I can maintain my website a little easier, I tend to post most of my stuff over there, but I feel bad leaving this one so dull. I need to figure out what I'm going to write about on here. This one also needs new pictures at the top border... are you all sick of the same header pictures you've been looking at for a year?! :)

We have a busy month coming up in August and then September is even busier, followed with our baby's birth, so I'm sure we'll find something to post about over here. Hope you all have a fabulous week!