Stuff

So I'm posting when I should be sleeping but I have this awesome thing called pregnancy induced insomnia. I'm soooooooo very tired but can't sleep. Ug.

Church today was great...we had a lot of people there. Lots of new people and a few faces we know but hadn't seen at DR before. One of our new pastor's spoke for the first time and it was a great talk...I learned some stuff I didn't know and he did a great comparison of the Jewish Passover lamb and Jesus. It is amazing to me how much of the Old Testement law and reqirements for things like the Passover lamb totally reflect who Jesus was so many years later...

Brad opened up the first music set with a nice and loud version of U2's Beautiful Day and then played 2 songs he wrote. The second set was rockin' too, with some quieter moments in between for reflection...In Christ Alone was amazing. The creshendo at the part of the song lyrics talking about Christ's triumph over death was perfect...the entire congregation responded and it was very moving.

On the home front, we finally went through our pictures and decorations and put some stuff on the walls! The house looks great and it feels good and almost complete now. We've still got some organizing to do but it is coming along nicely. When we have some extra money (yeah right...) I am hoping to get a nice curtain rod for the living room and decent curtains, but that will probably have to wait until this summer when I get some extra birthday money or something.

Our 6th anniversary is this weekend! My parent's are taking the kids from friday at 11am until sunday evening. We are having a weekend away at home...friday we may paint the bedroom and Saturday we will re-create our first date and go to Laconnor and then out to dinner. I am just really looking foward to relaxing together, taking naps when we want, sleeping in on Saturday and only having to get myself ready on Sunday morning! Yay! It will be a much needed break and a nice time for it before I get too big to do anything fun.

The baby-in-utero is doing well. She's a girl if you haven't heard yet and she's moving around a ton now. We still don't have a name, so if anyone has any suggestions we are willing to hear them out! She will be born the last week of June via c-section hopefully at Providence if my insurance kicks in this week. Otherwise I'll have to deliver with my community health center doctor at Cascade in Arlington which would suck...I love my doctor there but that hospital is not equipped at all for neo-natal intensive care so if there is any kind of emergency they will have to move the baby to a hospital in SEATTLE! Stupid! So pray that insurance is approved so I can see my Providence doctor that delivered Kaeleigh, since he knows all of my previous complications and such.

Kaeleigh is walking like a champ now and I even got her first steps on video! Yay! It is the cutest little walk and she still falls on her hiney a lot but she's a trooper and never gets frustrated. I get so many compliments on how good she is, like in child care at church. I'm so blessed to have had 2 kids be such good babies, my mom is rooting for me to have a colicky screamer this time so I know what she went through with me. Thanks mom, but I had some issues having been adopted and in foster care for 6 weeks with an old lady who gave me orange juice (a newborn...orange juice? Crazy lady...) made me cry myself to sleep at night. So no wonder I was a crier! This one will be great, even if she is a handful, simply because she will be our last...tubes will be tied after she is delivered! Not so say we won't adopt an infant ever but this is the last biological baby to grow in my innards. I am so ready to be done with pregnancy!

Loren is doing good in school, but we put in for the lottery for him to go to the co-op next year instead. He'll get more one on one instruction with the parent volunteers and be able to cultivate his strengths and work more on his weaknesses. I really hope he gets in. It will be a struggle to find someone to watch the babies once a week so I can fullfill the mandatory 2 1/2 hours of volunteer time but it should be worth it. If anyone feels like babysitting a 3 month old and a 21 month old for 3 hours once a week next school year, let me know! It would be in exchange for home-made apple pie and cookies...

Well, the dog has accosted most of my side of the bed and Sprite is snoring on brad's stomach...it's all making me pretty drowsy. Night!

Oh my gosh...I cannot stop laughing....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDxBUoCN6MQ

Someone on Cat's links has this posted and I lauged so hard...

Don't censor me!

I am getting so sick and tired of people trying to tell other people what to think and believe. So I have this to say:

1. Stop expecting others to act the way you do if they don't believe the same things you do. Just don't expect it...it's not going to happen. They don't want you to 'change their minds' anymore than you want them to try to change yours. If you don't have a relationship with someone you have no right to comment on their beliefs or lifestyle. If you do and you are genuinely worried about their lives, then speak to them in love about why it worries you. Then, let it go. You are not in control of anyone's actions. Unless someone is doing something illegal, neither is the government. PERIOD.

2. Just like in feminism, any large issue that starts out with good intentions can swing too far to the other side. It is not okay to have felt oppression by being censored and then attempt to censor others in return. It makes no sense. Well, it does, because we are all hypocrites at some level. However, each and every person in this country has a right to express their opinions as loud as they wish. If we accepted this then maybe we would't gasp so loud when someone says something contrary to what we believe. We also wouldn't think such harsh things about them just because they think differently than we do. I'm sick of hearing people say things like President Bush is evil or that rap is an unredeemable form of music no matter what the lyrics say. It's just retarded. And I do mean mentally handicapped. It's like people are unable to accept that others see things differently than they do, like that part of their brain that allows for rationalization and seeing the other side of things has been permanately injured. Don't hate someone for hating you. You'll just end up on the same level of shifting sand they are on.
Let me end by saying something that may be shocking to some people. There are many people in this country who believe in something called Absolute Truth. This belief, at it's very least, promotes the idea that there are moral guidelines that apply to each and every human being on this earth. No matter what. This is the opposite of Post-Modernism or subjective truth, that says that each person makes up their own truth and they alone make the rules for their own little universe. These people cannot stand up and say that cutting the arms off a baby is inherantly wrong, because it is only wrong to them and they cannot tell someone else what is wrong for them. This belief cannot be a part of a country like ours, because we rely on people to hold to the truths of the Constitution as fact and undeniable. If you don't believe that anyone has any right to tell you what is right or wrong for you then you need to move some place where anarchy is acceptable and don't mind living in between a lady who is married to her 40 cats and a guy who tortures cats for fun.

We can take this too far and begin imposing right and wrong in very subjective places like who you can love and all that through our government. However, if someone believes that the Bible is true, then they have every right to hold to the belief that things like homosexuality and adultry and pre-marital sex are wrong because that is what the Bible says. They do not have the right to impose that belief on people who do not think that the Bible is true. If someone claims to believe the Bible yet picks and chooses what they like out of it and throws away what they don't like then they either are lying when they speak of their belief or they have not actually studied the Bible at any length.

In any event, don't censor me, damn it, just because I believe that there is a heaven and one way to get there. Don't make assumptions about me or others like me for what we believe. I don't care what other stupid people have done, we are not them and they are not us.

Tagged

Brett tagged me for this and I haven't blogged in forever, so here goes...

Here are the rules:
The game: Each player of this game starts off with ten weird things or habits or little known facts about yourself. People who get tagged must write in a blog of their own ten weird things or habits or little known facts as well as state this rule clearly. At the end you must choose six people to be tagged and list their names. No tag backs!

Ug...ten?! This may take a while...

1. I used to ride horses...a lot. In Maryland I showed and all that stuff and was pretty fearless. I did english and loved to do show jumping (a course of jumps you are timed and get points deducted for missing jumps or knocking down poles) and cross-country (a mile or so of jumps on trails...you are timed.) I loved it...but I fell off one day for a really stupid reason and got really hurt, messed up my hip. When we moved here I really didn't ride anymore. I tried, but couldn't get over the fear. It sucked.

2. I have an unnatural fear of the dark. If the power goes out unexpectedly at night I freeze up. If there is any chance of it going out I light candles and carry the flashlight around with me everywhere. I hate camping because I almost always have to walk to the bathroom at night and it scares me to death.

3. I like anchovies. Not alone, but on stuff...pizza, etc. In fact, I'm having steamed rice with cut up anchovies in it for dinner...I just can't really look at them while I'm eating them.

4. I'm a wanna be artist who has a fear of color.

5. I have never been able to understand why people have loved me.

6. I am adopted. If I ever found out I was the product of rape or inscest I would find my birth-mother and tell her she is my hero.

7. I blow my nose in the shower...like, every time. I know...gross.

8. I am very protective of my husband and it is very hard for me not to get really angry at people who hurt him or who have hurt him.

9. According to my husband I am witty.

10. I really don't mind commuting. I don't have to anymore, but when I did I kind of liked the solitude.

I tag Kandra and since only 3 other people will read this, if you read this and you haven't done it then TAG!

The Antethesis

One of the things Christianity (real, biblical Christianity, not fake, look at me I go to church and vote republican "christianity") teaches is the abandonment of self and, in replacement, service to others. This is something our culture forgets. It seems to me that most of us either make one of two common choices: Give money and live our lives as usual or put the responsibility to do something on someone else. (i.e. government, programs, charities, etc.) Why is this? The Bible is clear that our mission on this speed bump before eternity is to serve others. Are we even reading our Bibles?

I know I'm not...

When I do, like tonight, for instance, I read things I don't want to know about. Ignorance is bliss. But I truly desire to know God, to serve His purpose and live my life according to what He says is best for me. In order to do this I must pursue Him through prayer and reading the amazing, loving text He left for me.

So in the passages I read tonight He makes clear, through Paul, that where I am now is exactly where He wants me to be. Not as punishment or because I am a lowly woman who deserves nothing more than to be a housewife. But because He has this plan for me. One that is better than anything I could ever plan for myself.

This, in itself, is the rub. I must let everything I wish for myself go and trust in this plan completely. The Antithesis of what everything in popular culture tells me:

"Whatever energy you send out is what you will bring back to yourself...you are the master of your destiny!"

"You can have it all! Work full time, be a good mom and a good wife...you can do it! Ignore that guilt that is in you and be happy with parenting on the evenings and weekends! Ignore the seething fatigue plaguing you...you can do it!"

"A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle."

All of these ideas come from one central idea that we are first. We make our own truth, we make our own future, we make our own heaven and we make our own hell. We are first. So why are so many people still miserable? Why is the suicide rate for the uppper class higher than any other?

If we are in complete control, what is holding people back in their lives? Why will The Secret only work for the short term? Because we all suck, and none of us brings anything to the table. We are dead and in need of restoration. So the person who buys into things like the secret will convince themselves for a while...but shortly they will realize that life is still missing something.

Whatever could it be?

Its been so long....

I never have any idea if anyone in the world ever reads what I write...but I guess it is a good way of being able to look back and reflect on stuff later, just for me...hhhhmmmm...

I has been so long, and I really prefer to blog on here instead of myspace. Seems more grown up. I am trying hard to stick to a bed time so I can get up and go to bed at the same time every day. This is for my sanity but even more for the well being of my son who has a tendancy to have a bad day if I start it out being a cranky poop. All that to say that it is hard to get on here and write because I'm usually busy doing other things, should be busy doing other things or too sick or tired to sit up and type. I'm making excuses to myself...b zar.

So an update on how the pregnancy is going should be in order...well, lets see...

Found out about this baby in November...it was a total surprise. Not intended but definately wanted. I was a bit down about it at first...I've always looked at parents who have a kid under 2 and a baby and think "How the heck do they do it?" and I never thought I could. But here we are, new baby due in July and Kaeleigh will be 21 months old. It really didn't even get real for me until the ultrasound last week. But I am very excited now and Kaeleigh and this little girl are going to be close enough in age to be great friends (and later enemies!) and they can share a room and all that.

In December after Christmas I had an acute attack of gall bladder stones. Brad was working somewhere in Seattle and I was home alone with the kids. I had to call a friend to drive me to the hospital, have someone watch my kids and then take them overnight. My friend Caylin was with me in the ER after I had been alone for about 3 hours in severe pain. I finally got some good pain medication IV after about 5 hours in absolute agony. I can honestly say it was worse than labor pains. This was my FIFTH attach in the last 9 years and they finally were able to diagnose me properly, even though I knew the whole time what it was.

So, I have battled nausea, the inability to eat, and upper abdominal pain for the past 15 weeks and the last ultrasound showed I have many more stones again. Yay! I get to wait for the next sneak attack of stones and go back to the ER for medication. It is stupid...I wish they could just prescribe me something really strong to take at home for them, but that would be illegal I think because dang, that was some goooood stuff.

I have scheduled c-sections so this time we are going to take my stupid gall bladder out at the same time and I'm going to ask them to put it in a jar for me so when I'm recovered I can throw it down, stomp on it and then put it in the path of the nearest freight train.

Splat!!!!

In better news, the baby is healthy and I can already feel her moving around in there! I am trying to remember every moment since this will be my last pregnancy. (I'm also having my tubes tied at the same time as the c-section.)

It will all be over soon and that is what I keep telling myself over and over! And, unlike cancer or some other sickness, I get a baby out of the deal!