getting ready for baby z

in 5 weeks or so baby z is expected to arrive! this pregnancy has flown by. it is hard to believe i have had this little one growing inside me for almost 35 weeks already. with z’s due date starting to quickly approach we have started to prepare our home and most importantly z’s big brother for our family’s new addition. hudson is bit of a jealous toddler. he believes that his mommy is his and his alone. that i should not be allowed to hold other children. so, we have had to practice this quite a bit. we started with getting him a boy doll. his name is louis. louis has become part of our family and we all take turns holding him, kissing him, and hugging him. hudson now loves to feed his baby water, food, and put him to sleep. since louis entered our family hudson has made much improvement on seeing me hold other babies. i can’t say he never fusses anymore, but he is getting much better.

we have been preparing our home for baby z’s arrival by purchasing a new dresser for hudson’s room so the baby can have his old one. we also bought a new crib and light fixture for z’s room. hudson has enjoyed helping daddy put all these new things together. he gets extremely excited when brad asks him if he wants to help with the tools now. hopefully he will be as excited when i ask him to help with his baby brother or sister one day soon. until then he can enjoy being an only child.

**i’ll post more pictures of hudson’s updated room and baby z’s room when they are a little more complete.

oikos

brad had the opportunity to preach at church this past sunday. this was his second time ever. last summer he taught for his first time and did such a great job that our pastors asked him again this summer! brad’s message was about sowing the gospel in our oikos. in other words, sharing the truth and love of jesus with the people we interact with everyday. you can listen for yourself if you click on this link and go to Oikos on 8.19.

since brad challenged us to share what God has done in our life with our oikos in his message i thought it would be appropriate to share my testimony of how i came to know Jesus on my blog. after all, you are my oikos!

i grew up in a very loving home. my mom took me to church almost every sunday. she taught me to pray, brought me to church camp, encouraged me to teach sunday school, and drove me to every church function that i was ever interested in. for as long as i can remember i have believed in God, knew Jesus died for my sins and prayed to Him on a regular basis. but, it wasn’t until i was 19 years old that i learned i could be in a relationship with God. this sounded a little funny at first but i can tell you that it has changed my life in the most amazing ways. i read the book left behind during the summer after my freshman year of college. this book is a fictional story of the end times that are described in the last book of the bible, revelations. the events of the novel are based on what the bible says about the end times. one of the events is called the rapture. this is when jesus will come back and take his children to be with him while the earth and those who have chosen not to know the lord will go through the 7 years of tribulation. the main character of the book wakes up one morning to find his family gone. this character could be described very similarly to how i felt about God at the time. he went to church every sunday with his family, believed God existed, and  prayed. yet, he wasn’t taken to be with Jesus during the rapture. i was confused. i talked my best friend, who i noticed had a different faith than i did yet was also a christian. i explained my confusion and anxiety that i would one day not go to heaven since i was just like this man in the book. i knew it was a fictional story but felt that there was truth to this part and needed someone to explain what i was missing. she shared that i could be in a relationship with Jesus and accept Him into my life. that just believing He exists was not what God intended for our life. she told me that Jesus loved me, died for my sins, and only asked in return for my repentance of sins and to accept Him into my life. so, i did just that! since that day God has revealved himself to me in the most amazing ways. he has taught me to trust in him when my life seems too difficult to handle on my own. he has given me a purpose for my life that is far greater than what i thought before. a purpose that gives me life and joy every time i am reminded of God’s great love and sacrifice for me. i now know what it truly meant for Jesus to die on the cross for my sins. i also know with full confidence that i am going to heaven one  day. that day when i decided to accept Jesus into my heart, not just someone i believed in, my life was changed for eternity!

“if you confess with your mouth ‘Jesus is Lord” and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” romans 10:9

eighteen months

my baby is turning one and half tomorrow! i can’t believe he is that old. it seems like yesterday we were bringing him home from the hospital. i remember nursing him for the first time in his room. it felt like a dream. i had thought about what it would be like to bring my baby into his room for the first time so many times. i was so overwhelmed in that moment that i cried for a good hour. as i sit here 18 months later i am still overwhelmed at how much joy hudson has brought to our family. he makes us laugh more than i ever could have imagined, has filled my heart with more love than i have ever felt, taught brad and i so much about life, love and what it truly means to surrender our life to Jesus.  he has done all this in 18 months. i can’t wait to see what the next 18 years bring!

a few things i want to remember about my sweet boy at this age.

• mad obsession with tractors and lawn mowers
• loves to give hugs and kisses
• barks at all dogs with very high pitched yelp
• loves his daddy just as much as his mommy
• climbs up the ladders at the playground and goes down slides all by himself
• gets extremely excited to eat a banana first thing in the morning
• loves to swim and play in anything that has to do with water
• call his auntie chelle kee-kee (no idea where this came from)
• has more energy than anyone i know
• reaches up for my hand when he wants to show me something
• climbs up on everything
• says the number 9 with much enthusiasm when we count to 10
• has the sweetest smile

the summer of cucumbers

we planted our first cucumber plant in our garden this year. i always heard how big the plants can get, but definitely underestimated how many cucumbers will grow on one plant! i should have started counting from our first harvest. i would guess that we have grown 15 cucumbers so far and have about 10 more growing right now. all from one plant! if you are a gardener this probably doesn’t come as a surprise. but since i am still an amateur i am amazed each time i go out and find another cuc. it’s been a fun adventure trying to come up with different combinations to avoid getting tired of eating them. i did this last year with all our kale!  i have made cumber salad, cumber soup, cucumber water, and most recently cucumber sandwiches. the sandwiches have been my favorite so far. i found a recipe on epicurious that i highly recommend.

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Roasted-Cucumber-Sandwiches-366725

the recipe tells you to roast the cucumbers which i have never done before. they turned out pretty good, but i don’t think this step is necessary. i made a tomato salad and sautéed onions & green beans to complete our meal. we definitely got our servings of veggies for the day! oh how i love summer.