A crazy couple of weeks!

So much has gone on around here in the two weeks since I last posted that I hardly know where to begin! So I am sorry if this post is a little rambling, but oh well!

Last Monday we closed on our first home! We (well, along with our bank!) now own a 1940's mill house in the historic mill village district of our little town. We absolutely love it and are so grateful for God's blessings in providing a more permanent place for us to live (as this is our fifth home in four years!). As it turned out though, we didn't get to move in right away because we literally headed straight to Charleston from closing on the house! Each year our church takes a family mission trip to another city for a week. This year we had about 35 of us head to Charleston to help a couple of new church plants get their presence known in their communities. We spent our days fixing up a YMCA where the people from the church are doing a lot of mentoring of kids. Another day we went and helped with various projects at the neighborhood schools. On our last night we helped to throw a "Movies in the Park" night complete with cotton candy, popcorn, and inflatables! Anna Kate was pretty much in charge of the smallest bouncy house for kids two and under. This was her first experience in anything like that and she had a BLAST...even staying up past her bedtime! She really was quite a trooper all week long and while I tried to make sure she got her usual naps and went to bed and a decent hour, she did have to be flexible and she did great. She even tried to help with some of our service projects (e.g. sweeping the hallway at the YMCA!). Unfortunately I was a TERRIBLE photographer and didn't even take out my camera until the last day...so all we have are pictures of the Movies in the Park...but I got some cute ones!

Setting up for the big event

Helping Miss Courtney at the popcorn station!

Anna Kate doing what she does best...eating!

Testing out the bouncy house with two of her best church buddies before the event...
they had to make sure it was safe for all the kids in the neighborhood!

Our first family mission picture! All four of us!

We came back from Charleston on Sunday which just so happened to mark the beginning of my third trimester! Sometimes it seems like this pregnancy is taking forever since we are so anxious to meet our sweet girl, but at other times it seems like she will be here before we know it and we better start getting ready! I really am feeling great these days except for fairly frequent heartburn and some stiff joints. This little one moves around a lot and I can tell she is getting bigger because sometimes I'll feel her stretch out all the way across from one side of me to the other! For those of you who are wondering, she still does not have a name. We have a couple that we are strongly considering, but nothing set in stone yet. We keep saying we need to decide already, but with everything going on we just haven't yet! Well, that and Luke knows/knew someone with every name that I suggest and rules them all out! We promise that by the time she is born she will have a name! Here I am at 28 weeks today:


So we got back from Charleston on Sunday and hit the ground running with packing and moving! Here is a picture of our new house. If you look closely (or click on it to make it bigger), you can see a cute little girl on the porch swing!


We are so grateful for all the help from Luke's family as well as our church family to get us moved in. We have a couple of really heavy pieces of furniture (e.g. a 700 lb piano) so we so appreciate everyone who came to help! We could not have done it without you all (especially since I'm not supposed to do much lifting right now!). While everything is moved in, we still have a bit of organizing to do, as well as a lot of babyproofing. We have some extremely steep hardwood stairs going up to the bedrooms, so Luke spent the afternoon installing a nice handrail for the wall opposite the banister and some very secure baby gates at the top and the bottom. I feel much better now that AK can't get to them!

Speaking of Anna Kate, I thought you all might enjoy a little list of what she has been up to these days:

~She LOVES to do her animal sounds. Her new favorite is the gorilla where she balls up her hands into fists and beats her chest while she makes a Tarzan noise!
~Speaking of animal sounds, my wonderful husband taught her to respond with a "ROAR" when asked "What does Mommy say?" Isn't that sweet?
~She is convinced that there is a baby in not only mommy's tummy, but her tummy as well as the tummies of everyone else that she knows/meets. So I truly apologize if she comes up to you and points to your midsection and says "baby!" She really doesn't think you need to lose a few pounds, she's just confused!
~She is getting very good at letting us know exactly what she wants when she wants it. Oftentimes she will point to it, or try to say the word and then say please, but at other times she is not so polite and will throw quite a little hissy fit. We are working on it, but suggestions would be appreciated!
~She has become extremely loving lately offering hugs regularly to everyone she knows as well as to any child she meets!
~Her hair is FINALLY long enough for me to put it in two little pigtails in the back! I still have to pull her bangs back with a bow since they won't fit in the pigtails, but this mommy thinks it's absolutely precious!


Well, I think that's about all there is to update on our little family for now!