16 weeks to go!

Today marks 24 weeks of pregnancy. Justin and I are looking at about 16 weeks until life really gets cray cray. We're enjoying every moment. Not stressing too much about getting everything done. I'll be done working in mid-February. And I'm sure that will give me enough time to make adjustments to the nursery, shopping, etc. It does seem to be going fairly quickly!

Latest news is that we're having a BOY!! Could not be more thrilled. We could have sworn it was a girl, so it was the ultimate awesome surprise to find out a little man was coming our way. He's given his mommy the easiest pregnancy ever, so I could not be more happy about that. And for all of those wondering if we have a name picked out...we're keeping his name a secret until his birthday! :)

I really love my job, so in a way I'll be sad to say goodbye. But it's been a great chapter and it's a great addition to my resume. Having special forces soldiers for students has been hilarious and a bit challenging (you can't write a tough guy's name on the board to give him a warning...). But, I've made great connections with other instructors and God knew it would be another piece in his giant puzzle of a plan for me. I feel blessed. And after taking some very important time to be a full-time wife and mommy, I know I will be in a classroom again one day.

Justin got a promotion a few weeks ago, and now has a permanent Systems Engineer position at ISS. He loves his job and coworkers. I feel thankful that he feels fulfilled and respected in a job he really likes. He feels pretty blessed, too.

Justin's mom, brother, and one of his sisters are coming to spend Christmas with us. We look forward to a fun time relaxing with everyone in our jammies. Showing them around Colorado Springs will be great fun too!

So here's to the time between now and April 8th (or somewhere around there, since only 4-5% of babies come on their due date). We can't wait to meet our little guy, and then introduce him to everyone else! The joy and support we feel with his arrival is exploding compared to the joy we felt on our wedding day! It's pretty spectacular to see how love multiplies. God is good!

15 weeks!

The pregnancy insomnia monster has struck. I've been sleeping so hard the last few months that this seems uncanny to me. Achy back, rumbly tummy, and mind spinning all make for a bad night's sleep.

My 15 week mark has hit. This is going by really fast and really slow at the same time. It's safe to say that I'm officially starting to show. Any pictures I've taken until now just looked like crazy bloat, so I won't be cataloguing those. I wish we would have been better about documenting weekly pictures, but from here on out I will...now that I have a 'goomba,' as Justin likes to call it.

It sure is an exciting time for Justin and me. Knowing these next 5 1/2 months (that's it??!!) are the last we'll have as just the two of us is CRAZY. Since I was 15, it's been just the two of us...in our adorable, lovesick little bubble. Crap be getting real! I look around, and seriously wonder where the time went. We're grown-ups, with a house and pets, and are gonna be parents. I'm just not sure when it will feel real! God is good.

I've started looking at what types of things we'd might want for the nursery and that has been fun to go online "shopping." Hoping not to be overwhelmed once I go in-store to revise my master list. Prayers will be appreciated. (only half kidding...)

I'm really looking forward to meeting whoever is growing inside me. First, I'll settle for finding out if it's a boy or girl. Only a few more weeks until we find out! This does put a temporary damper on planning purposes. Then, I'd like to be sure I've felt him/her move in there. Pretty sure I've felt it, but it's a real bummer when you can't tell the difference between your unborn and digestion.

All sarcasm aside, thanks to everyone who is feeling joy with us. It's been a real blessing to know others are sharing in our excitement! :)

We're having a baby. Whoa.

I suppose this is more like two seperate blog entries, but it seemed fitting to keep them together. We've recently found out and announced that around April 8, 2013, we're going to be parents! What??? Yeah. It's pretty awesome. I'm now 12 weeks, was blessed to only be exhausted and have no appetite, and we saw/heard the heartbeat. What a cool experience. There's a beautiful side to all of this, and an interesting side that I didn't know to expect. The interesting part started to manifest itself once we told people. (Read below for all of that.) The beautiful side is exactly as we imagined. We already love this little baby, we love eachother, and our family is expanding in both love and size. I get weekly email updates reminding us what size the baby is this week and how it's developed over the last week. (It's a lime right now!) God's intricate creation is happening inside me right now. It's unbelievable. What do you mean it's the size of a lime, and already has fingernails?! It's made me think twice as hard about the value of life and how quick people are to dismiss a pregnancy. God is good to give us such a gift.


***This part is really not meant for the masses. We know so many people that love and adore their children. All parents are of course entitled to vent, be exhausted and have a break. I suppose this is more for the people that choose negativity over positivity while raising their children. Read on if you would like.

Let me start with something I'll never forget. There was a family I watched recently while I was waiting to get a haircut. She had 3 sweet kids with her, all well-behaved and relatively quiet for young children. She was upset with them for no reason, like they were bugging her just by being there. You could tell how broken their little spirits were, and it made me want to cry. I suppose it was because of this that reminded me of people who can't look past the burden of parenthood...thus producing this rant and going hand-in-hand with a few comments made to me about becoming a mom.

"Our new chapter" is the best way I can refer to the newest development in our lives. It doesn't convey negativity or unreasonable expectations. It just conveys a continuation of our journey. Are we freaking thrilled?? Heck, yes. :) We are going in with an open mind!

 Since we've announced our pregnancy, I've received a myriad of reactions, such as those below (Pardon the sarcasm about to ensue. Perhaps it's my RAGING hormones. Ok, not really.)

- ::cackling laughter from a coworker I barely know:: then he said, "Just you wait until that thing comes out. EVERYTHING will change." (To which I replied in thought, "No, really. Perhaps, that's why we chose to wait 7 years into our marriage. Plus, that's just rude.")

- "Are you excited?" (This one should be a given. We're married, have stability, and I'm not a teenage drug addict. Of course, we're excited!)

- "Congratulations, you two will make great parents!" (Why thank you! We love that most people are excited for us. We feel prepared in the sense that we can find strength and wisdom in the Lord. And He is the best parent, can I get an AMEN?)

The best one I keep hearing is, "Just wait until you have kids!" So, is this supposed to be some kind of sage wisdom?? I don't really get it. Apparently, all of our time, money, and sanity will be lost on this new creature. Oh boy, we can't wait.

Instead, I would like to focus on the good of having a child. God is blessing us! We both realize what a cherished gift this is. If I'm not mistaken, Psalm 127:3 says, "Children are a gift from the Lord; they are a reward from him." Cool. Let's focus on that! We get to train this kid in the way he/she should go! I get to do my daughter's hair, or help my son look for bugs. Parenthood is going to be epic!

I'm sure some sleep deprived parents might feel like I'm coming from a place of ignorance because I haven't been there. But, we have seen many friends and family members go through the ups and downs of parenthood, so we feel like we have at least a 1/1000th of an idea of how hard it might be. It simply saddens to me to hear parents talk about their children like they're a burden. Plenty of people out there wish they could have that burden, with sleepless nights and all.... We're praying God will provide us the patience, energy, and excitement to do right by this little lime. Thankful we have him to lean on.

A new record...

...for not posting a darned thing. It's nearly the end of August, and I have been neglectful since January? Yeah, that sounds about right. Bust! Blog fail. Well, I'll do my best to pick up the pieces and start anew.

Things are pretty spectacular. God is good. He provides everything we need. His timing absolutely blows me away!

So, in June I felt the need to step back from my church responsibilities and find a new job. We still love our church and are so thankful to be able to continue to go there. I just realized I wasn't managing my stress very well. At all. God had already ligned someone up to take my position, too! So, I took the summer off and started looking for a teaching position. Had an interview, and a couple of phone calls, but no real leads. But, trusty old craigslist (I don't always recommend this, folks...) led me to a full-time, temporary contract position on Fort Carson teaching German to SF soliders. Whaaaa? Freaking AWESOME. The contract lasted 7 weeks, and here I am with 2 weeks left. I've been able to meet lots of great people and will have a place here in the future should they have a need for extra German Instructors. I finally can say I used my degree, if even for a short time. Life is Good.

On to my story about how fabulous God's timing is:  About the time that I felt the pull to stop working at our church, Justin got an incredible paid internship at a software company. It was to only last the summer, but he's been asked to stay on with the possibility of a permanent position/raise in the near future....again, about the same EXACT time that my contract position ends. Allow me to say, "whaaaa?" again. Because that's the only sound I can make with how excited I am.


Some of you might be asking "What will you do next, Lauren?" (I doubt you care that much, but I will still humor you.)  God knows. :) I have a few ideas for the near future, but as of now, I will devote myself to keeping up with the house and doing home projects. I'm pretty content with whatever God has for me. He knows what I want before I even know!


Ohhhh, and my brother got engaged!!! Which triple rocks!! We're really happy for them and will be attending their "nuptials" (I really hate that word...) sometime in May 2013. What a party!

That's all for now, my friends. Until next time. (Maybe not as long until next time, but no promises.)

5 months?!

Sad day. My last post was 5 months ago. Maybe life became boring enough to me that I didn't think you all needed an update? Or we got REAAAAAAAALLLLLLYYYY BUSY. Yeah, that one.

August and September passed, and I settled into my job at the church. Many people don't realize what that entails. I didn't either! Thank your local church office and/or pastor today. They work their booties off.

We realized in September that we could actually qualify for a home! God bless the VA and the loan they granted us for 3.75% and no down payment. We are eternally grateful, and would have had to wait  LONG time to ever purchase. We found a fantastic house smackdab in the middle of everything we love, and closed on Oct. 7th! That means we have officially been living in our new abode roughly 3 months. Come visit!

Christmas has since passed and we had a lovely time celebrating in our new home, not traveling anywhere. No stress of catching our flight on time. Just a nice hot cup of brew and fuzzy slippers. Sigh.

We spent the new year with some of our dearest friends. And now we will look forward to what this year holds for us. 2011 was solely spent cultivating our new life in Colorado springs. Now, 2012 might be a time to relax? Probably not, but we are grateful for the excitement and how-not-mundane life always seems to have. Now, I have to clean and grocery shop. I guess that's pretty mundane. :)

Since May....

Since May, a few things have changed. But...most things haven't. We still love our apartment, our pets, and living in Colorado Springs. Justin took summer classes, and is really enjoying and excelling in school. I'm glad he is able to focus on things without having to stress about a job. He starts fall classes on Monday, and is pretty pumped.

I continued my job through August, and my director position turned into day camp counselor for the summer. It was exhausting and stressful at times, and ultimately I wanted to be doing something more. I started my job search again...much to my dismay. As if I hadn't done that enough since I graduated... I was ready to be settled into a position.

And God worked in his perfect timing yet again! I was offered two wonderful jobs within hours of each other. I prayed for discernment and hoped I would make the right decision. With a huge peace in my heart, I was offered and accepted a job at our church as the office administrator! I just ended my first week, and I'm amazed at how fulfilled I feel. I am finally using the extent of the gifts God has given me! I love people, helping them, organizing, and creating. All of the reasons I wanted to go into teaching! But with the doors continually closing on teaching positions, I feel this is another great way for me to use my gifts to glorify God. I am thrilled to be working with such a great team of people!

Justin and I have also started training for my first (and his second) half marathon in October. We have been fairly active for the past couple of years, but this is the most I've ran in quite awhile. The closer we get to the race, the more running feels like a part time job. It feels incredible to be in this great of shape, and we still get to eat almost everything we want. :) We're still hiking, swimming, and biking on our off days for cross training. LOVE living in Colorado.

Summer here was not as hot as I imagined it would be. It topped out at mid-90's, and there was usually an afternoon thunderstorm to cool things off. I love the rain!

Now that we've been in this apartment 5 months, we have decided to resume our house hunt in December. Living in the apartment was great for saving money, but we're ready for a bit more space again and a yard for the pets. Excited for that chapter to unfold!

Since life has become a bit more uneventful, my blogging has become less frequent. That's all. Nothing personal. :) Til next time!! <3

All settled in.

Things are great. We moved into that apartment we wanted. We have two pets (Marty, whom we have adopted back into the family from some awesome people that had him the last year or so since my mom couldn't have him anymore, and Piper, our new kitty from the pound). They didn't get along at first, but now they're quite sweet with eachother. :)



Piper is the most talkative, playful, loving cat there ever was! We got pretty blessed finding her!

Here's Marty with his cool hair cut a while back before we got him. :)



We finished decorating our place, too. What a relief. Here's a few pics of our favorite features! We've done even more work since I took these...



Our neighbors here are relatively quiet, but sometimes things get "exciting" around here. haha We have a nosy old lady neighbor, but everyone needs one of those! She's very nice.

My job is going well, and I'm gearing up to close our site for the summer and work as a summer day camp counselor. That should be great fun. I am, however, looking and praying for a teaching job in the fall. God is good and will have me where he wants me, whether that is in my current job or in the classroom. Justin's taking summer classes and continuing to go to Army Reserve drill once a month. We're hoping to get to California in spite of all that this summer! It's been too long since we've seen some family!

Other things keeping us busy are checking out trails in the area. We hit one today, in fact, with Marty. We've been so much more active since moving to Colorado. Being outside here is contagious. Most everyone here appreciates being in nature so much, that you can't help but join in. So, that's exactly what we've done. We have plans to buy bikes soon and trailblaze that way. We live NEXT DOOR to our gym too, so that helps us out just a bit as well. :)

Hope everyone's doing well. We're so happy and content where we are right now. It's been great to add pets to our little family! Good training for parenting one day! ha.