Sunday wasn’t a good day for me, so we didn’t get a picture at exactly 34 weeks. Then Monday and Tuesday were really busy, and by the time I thought about taking a picture I was exhausted and looked like something the dog dragged up. So here we are, 3 days late.

I’ll be going to the doctor every week starting next Tuesday. In two weeks we’ll get another ultrasound. I can’t believe how close it’s getting, but at the same time I am SOOOO tired of being pregnant.

I’ve been having Braxton Hicks contractions for the last couple of months, but they haven’t hurt at all…until this week. At first it was just this really weird feeling of my stomach tensing up into a tight ball. Like I was getting an ab-workout without having to actually do anything. But now they’re starting to feel more like bad cramps. And I’m pretty sure it only gets worse from here…

I’ve been cooking and freezing some meals for after Noah’s born (since Jake’s idea of cooking is ordering pizza…not that I mind that, but it’s not so healthy for us or for our budget to do that too often). I’ve got lots of BBQ pulled pork for sandwiches, homemade baked beans, red beans & rice (w/sausage), marinated grilled chicken breasts (cut up into pieces for salads, pasta, etc.), and spaghetti sauce (w/italian sausage & ground beef). I have all of these divided up into 2-3 portions per freezer bag so that we can heat up only what we need. I have a few more dishes I’m planning to make, but I was hoping to get a little input from all of you wonderful blog readers. Soooo….

Do you guys have any ideas for meals that are easy to freeze and reheat? Leave a comment and let me know. A link to a recipe would be nice also. :-) Thanks!

Have you ever wondered what’s lacking from your facebook profile pic? Do you want people to see your picture and think, “omg, he/she’s so awesome!” Well, dear children, I’m here to help. You see, in order to have that I’m-way-cooler-than-you look, your photos need to follow two simple rules:

Rule #1: There must be other people in your picture, proving that you are popular and people like to take pictures with you.
Rule #2: You must cut all other people out of your picture, proving that you are in fact the coolest one of them all, and they just don’t quite deserve to be in the picture with you.

Bingo! Now you have a picture that truly represents the height of your eg…ahem…I mean, coolness. Take a look at some examples with me for a moment:

Here we have a perfect example of a girl who is not only following both rules, she’s made sure that the person in the picture with her (and subsequently cut out of the picture) is of the opposite sex, AND he’s cuddled up nice & close to her. Clearly this means she’s not only popular, but also attractive.

Next we have the classic unnaturally long & skinny photo. This happens when the picture has to be cut extensively from both sides to remove any other people of lesser coolness from the photo. Some may say that it makes your picture look weird with such an odd aspect ratio. I say it makes it even more obvious that you are following Rules 1 and 2. Good for you.

Just as the first example showed us, it’s always nice if you can leave just enough of a person’s face in the picture to let people know that there WAS someone there wanting to be in the picture with you (rule #1), but you have most definitely removed them (rule #2).

It seems that girls tend to follow these rules more regularly, thus appearing much cooler on facebook. However, you will find the occasional guy who has caught on to the cool-profile-pic secrets and is putting them into practice. This guy right here, for example, has even left in the random female hands around his waist. If THAT doesn’t make the ladies swoon, I don’t know what will. Kudos to you, kid. Kudos to you.

One last example… If you’re picture is taken very close-up, there’s always the possibility that it won’t be quite as obvious that you’ve cut out the not-as-cool people. Solution? Make sure the picture is a full body shot with some space out beside you to one side. Then when you cut out the other people, nip off a little bit of your leg or arm or something. People HAVE to know you’ve doctored the picture then.

I’ve decided to put these rules to work for my current profile picture and Jake’s current profile picture. Here they are before:


Not too bad, but we definitely aren’t looking as cool as we could be. Applying my simple rules, though, we wind up with these awesome pictures:


Voila! No more is the surfboard cramping Jake’s style or Noah getting in the way of my coolness. It’s just that easy!

Disclaimer: I don’t personally know any of the people shown in this post (except of course myself and my husband). I conducted a random facebook search and pulled some of the profile pictures that just jumped off the page and said, “I’m so cool, you only WISH you could be my friend.” And then I blurred their faces just so nobody gets mad at me. Because I don’t like it when people are mad at me.

We had our first baby shower this past Saturday evening. This wasn’t your typical women-sitting-around-munching-hors-de-ouvres kinda shower, either. It was a small co-ed gathering of our Sunday School class from church at one of their homes. We had grilled shish-kabobs, loaded baked potatoes, homemade cake, and lots of other wonderful things to make my bathroom scale wonder what the heck it ever did to make me punish it so. We mostly just sat around and talked and laughed. Oh, and tried to convince Jarrod that attacking the “cheaters” wouldn’t really solve anything… Apparently a competitive spirit is pretty consistent, whether we’re talking basketball or estimating the girth of a pregnant woman’s belly.

We had so much fun, and we got a few nice baby items, too. :-) First on Jake’s list: Noah’s first soccer ball. Yes, of course, I understand that this isn’t technically a baby item. But I dare you to try convincing Jake of that…

Can I just say, I hope to goodness this kid likes soccer, because I don’t know what I’m going to do with my husband if Noah turns out to be a football player, or a basketball player, or *gasp* not really into sports at all?

Of course we got some other really nice, helpful, adorable, and useful baby things too. I’m going to spare you the full list, but I did want to share at least one more of the gifts. Now, please understand that we are SUPER thankful for ALL the gifts that people have given us. There’s no way we could even begin to get all the things we need on our own. We have been SO blessed with wonderful, generous friends and family, and we love and appreciate you all so much! So just because I didn’t post a picture of all the gifts on here doesn’t mean we don’t love them…I just had to narrow it down for this blog post. And I just seem to have a thing for shoes…

Aren’t they ADORABLE!?!?! I can’t wait to see our handsome (because he WILL be handsome, mind you) little boy in these! Just so you get a better perspective on their tiny little size, here’s one of Noah’s shoes up next to one of Jake’s shoes…

Agh! I can barely contain myself. You know seeing little shoes like that just makes you smile and go “Awwww…” Don’t even lie.

As many of you know, last weekend Corey Hicks came to our little town and had a concert. You also know it was off the chain! Well, someone (who will remain unnamed) insisted that I record the concert. So I did what any uber-geek would do–I brought my Mac and hooked it up to one of the best sound set-ups I have ever seen. Especially for a small concert. (Thanks to James Helton of Audio Plus in Atmore for the great set up.)

I went ahead and created a Garage Band file named “Summer Jam 2010.” I was busy with a lot of other things, so I had someone just press record on the laptop when the concert started. After the concert they just shut the lid without saving. No big deal, though, because Garage Band was still open and running. When I got home I immediately started playing with the audio. I was frustrated with the edits I made and I didn’t want them saved, so I quit Garage Band without saving in order to start the next day fresh.

To my horror, I realized that I quit Garage Band without ever having saved ANY of the show! I panicked and almost began to cry. Diana was trying to console me, and we figured that surely the audio files HAVE to be somewhere. We did some looking around, and were able to recover the entire show, even though we had never saved it. I am not sure if this will work every time, but it worked for us.

I opened my project after closing it, and this was what I was greeted with:

If this happens to you don’t panic yet… Go back to the Finder, find your Garage Band project file, right-click on it, and select “show package contents.”

Navigate to “Media” and you will see some audio files (the ones with the .aif extension).

Select these files and drag them to the desktop.

Finally, open your Garage Band file and drag the audio files back in.

Save your project immediately! You now have your lost Garage Band audio back! Hopefully you won’t ever lose your files, but if you do, now you know how to find them again.

I had been posting a picture about every 4 or 5 weeks, but I’ve decided to try to get a picture every 2 weeks now as we approach the finish line. I mean, my doctor wants to see me every 2 weeks now, so I figure you guys can too. I may go down to once a week pictures after 36 weeks…

Can you believe we’re only 8 weeks from our due date?! When the heck did that happen?!! Noah’s gaining around 1/2 pound or so every week now, (we won’t talk about what Diana’s gaining…) so I can almost feel my belly stretching and expanding by the day.

My doctor checked last week and said that Noah is now turned head-down, which explains the kicks I’ve been getting it the ribs lately. She says his movements will slow down soon as he gets more and more cramped in there, but so far he’s doing a pretty darn good job of making the most of his space. If anything, he’s just getting more and more active. And MUCH more aggressive with his movements. I don’t mind it so much, though. It’s kinda reassuring. However, if he’s half as hyper outside the belly as he has been in the belly, Jake and I are in for some fun. :-)

The backache from last week is mostly gone, as long as I’m careful about the positions I put myself in. And the heartburn isn’t too bad, either…I just burp a lot. :-) But I’m definitely feeling the little guy invade my lung-space. I’m forever running out of breath. He’s also really sapping me of my energy. I try to get as much as possible done in the mornings, because I seem to just crash after lunch. Other than the breathlessness and tiredness (oh, and the HEAT!), I can’t really complain. I’m just tired of being pregnant and ready for him to be here already!

Just for fun, here’s an illustration of about what a baby looks like at 32 weeks. Isn’t it crazy? It’s hard to believe the little Tasmanian devil of a creature inside of me looks just like a baby! (Oh, and I added the nice little maternity shorts for those blog readers who may not want ALL the details… You’re welcome.)

Here is another installment of Andrew and Diana’s living room recordings. It seems like anytime Andrew comes home he and Diana spend a few hours playing & singing, but this time we actually got some of it recorded. This song is an Andrew Lambeth original. It’s called “Naysayers.”

Click to Download

Update: We’ve had a request for the lyrics:

I was drinking poison instead of sweet red wine
And I made my bed in the thorny entangles of the vine
The willow folded towards me like a weary drunken soul
And he gave me two-piece wisdom: “to get up and to go”

And the naysayers they come around so slowly
When the Broken Man He stands in my defense
And the naysayers they come around so slowly
When the Broken Man He stands in my defense

For those of you who prayed, thank you. This weekend was fantastic. Corey and his wife Nicole were incredible. God is even more incredible.

If you missed the concert, here’s a taste of it for you. Corey says this is his favorite song because it’s his testimony of God’s Grace in his life. Be sure to keep an eye on his website (coreyhicks.com), because he’s got a new CD set to come out at the end of September, and it will DEFINITELY be worth picking up.

Andrew came home today and he and Diana recorded a song she has been singing for a solid week since we bought Karla Adolphe’s cd. It is called Orphan’s Song. (Andrew learned the guitar part in about 3 minutes. I just like to remind him that I taught him how to play.)

Download

We don’t often get too serious here on the blog. Life’s too short to be serious all the time, that’s our philosophy. Especially on a blog. But today, we have something we’d really like you guys to pray about. Corey Hicks is coming to Flomaton High School tomorrow night for Summer Jam 2010. He’ll be performing, sharing his testimony, and presenting the Gospel. We met Corey last summer in New Orleans. He came to Grace BC for our end of the summer family day, and it was awesome. He has a heart for kids and a passion for reaching the lost. When we contacted him about the possibility of coming all the way from New Orleans to little ‘ol Flomaton, he responded with a resounding YES!

We are excited about the opportunity that he’s going to have to reach kids that may not listen to the rest of us (even though WE know that we’re the coolest people ever, somehow all the kids don’t seem to get it…weird.) ;-) Anyway, here are some things we’d like to you to pray about:

1. That people, specifically non-believers, will come (we’ve worked really hard at publicizing the event, but you just never know what turn out will be like).
2. That they would listen to what Corey has to say.
3. That God would open their hearts to the truth of the Gospel and His love for them.
4. That we as believers would be ready to continue the work that is started tomorrow night (reaching out, loving the people of our community, discipling new believers, etc.).
5. That God would be glorified through everything that’s done and said.

Thanks for joining with us in prayer. And if you live close by, we’d love to see you tomorrow night! The concert is at the Flomaton High School auditorium and it starts at 6:00 p.m. Admission is only $2.00 per person.

Just to give you a little more info about Corey, here’s a video of him sharing about how God rescued him from addiction:

“Answer me, O Lord, answer me, that this people may know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back.”
-1 Kings 18:37

Wow. 30 weeks just sounds SO far along. Do you realize most people consider a baby to be full-term at 37 weeks? That means that although my due date is still 10 weeks away, in just 7 WEEKS I will be full term. WHAT?!?! I realize that Noah will probably be late, and I’m preparing myself for that, but still…

So, uh, I’ve done a lot of growing in the last few weeks if you haven’t noticed. And PLEASE don’t even try to tell me that I “don’t really look very big,” because I know you’re lying. People amaze me. It’s as if they don’t realize that I have eyes (with 20/20 vision, I might add), and I look in the mirror every day. I can see for myself. Not to mention I’m now starting to outgrow some of my maternity clothes…you know, clothes that are specifically made for pregnant women with large bellies? Yeah, I’m totally dominating them.

On top of that, getting up off the couch or any other cushy seat involves a process of using my hands to help me slide myself to the edge and then push myself up. Frustration for me; entertainment for my husband.

Standing at the counter to wash dishes is interesting as well. The belly prevents me from getting close enough for my arms to actually reach in the dishwater. I tend to rotate between several different alternative dishwashing stances:

1. First, there’s the bend at the waist and prop the elbows on the edge of the sink.
2. When that gets old, there’s the turn slightly sideways and lean with the side of your waist against the counter (probably the least comfortable).
3. Finally, I finish out the rotation with the “Plie squat position.” …standing with my feet wider than shoulder width apart, which brings my arms down closer to sink level, and the belly below where the edge of the counter sticks out.

I’m telling you, it’s a process.