Rock On

Two Saturdays ago I took the girls in our youth group to what's called Spring Sing at Harding University, about 2 1/2 hours from here. The different clubs at Harding put on this sing and dance competition each year and it is a lot of fun. They do all their own costumes, they make remixes of popular songs to go along with that year's theme, and they choreograph intricate routines. Here are the girls from our group.

The next weekend we took my mom and dad to a really nice restaurant called Gastons which overlooks the White River. My parents have been super helpful with many things along our way here in Yellville and we wanted to show a little of our gratitude. Dinner was fantastic and we really enjoyed their company!

This past weekend we took the kids from our youth group to a christian rock concert in an outdoor ampitheater. The main band was Skillet and the two openers were Decyfer Down and Disciple. Skillet put on an awesome show! Their lighting effects were incredible and I didn't realize how many of their songs we knew! If you get a chance to go see them, definitely go! It's very cool to hear these tattooed rockers talk about their faith and their humility that God loves them so much. I know that they are far more effective at reaching the teenagers that need God in their lives than some polo shirt wearing youth director because those kids can actually relate to them. I think that's awesome.

For the past two weeks we have had another juvenile host kid in our home, Josh. He has been an absolute pleasure and we really enjoyed having him. He was very helpful around the house and business, and fit in right away with our youth group kids. I know he is happy to go back home tomorrow to be with his mom, but we are grateful for the relationship we have made with him and we hope he will continue to come around and visit us from time to time!

Pregnancy is going fine, I'm mid-way through week 36, so not long to go! I have a nasty cold right now that is making me a tad miserable, but other than that life is good. Please continue to pray for little Mia that she continue growing healthy and that there are no complications as we near the end of her time in the belly. Hopefully by next week I'll have something to post about her nursery progress... as of right now... I'm still a slacker.

34 Weeks

EEK. The last time I posted a belly photo was when I was 26 weeks. That was 8 weeks ago, and quite a few inches in circumference ago! I can not BELIEVE I only have 6 weeks left! And, three of my friends have given birth in the last 2 months, and all three were early. One was three weeks early, two were two weeks early. SO, if I follow their trend, we could have a baby in as little as 3 weeks! AHHHHH!!!!! I doubt that will happen, knowing my luck I'll be 42 weeks pregnant, doing cartwheels, jumping jacks, and anything else to get this child out of me.

Her nursery is not what I would call ready, by any means, and she doesn't have anything to wear home from the hospital yet. To my shock, it is really hard to find those sleeper thingies for babies with long sleeves and the feet in them! I thought that was like the thing babies wore more than anything, and I can't hardly find one! Grrrr. Anyways, keep her and I in your prayers.

I'm doing pretty good, though I can definitely tell that I weigh a lot more than I used to! And they don't tell you all the things that get awkward when you have this belly thing in front of you. So I'm learning the hard way. Also, I've got the third trimester morning sickness that I had heard rumor about, but never in my LIFE thought would happen to me. Luckily it's only for like an hour or two in the morning, as opposed to the eight hours a day I was sick that first trimester. So I can handle this, it's just not fun.

Her movement is getting pretty vicious as she's definitely getting larger. Last night I swear she was doing some speed bag training on my bladder while doing tae bo on my rib cage. She is so far up my one side that I can't even find my last two ribs, and haven't been able to find them for a few weeks now. That side of my belly is hard as a rock while the other side is squishy because she NEVER goes over there. It's so funny. You can actually look at my belly and see how lop-sided it is! Maybe not in this photo, but in person it's very obvious.

RazorBack Ribs

I didn't mention the BBQ business in my last update. Business has been FLOURISHING! God couldn't be more evident in his blessings on us, that's for sure. Every week has brought us more income and so now the business is paying for itself and we are even making a little bit of profit! Woo Hoo! It is so hard to believe that a little mobile unit like this can support our family, but I suppose that is where faith comes in because we are doing great :) Here are a few photos of our sign, the trailer, and the inside of the trailer with my mom and Joel's bum.

End of March

Well, here we are in April. How in the WORLD did that happen? I'll try to briefly update you on what we've been doing.

We had a busy end of March. On the 22nd we had our childbirthing class which lasted SIX hours, but was really informative. It wasn't the breathing classes you see being made fun of on TV, it was more an educational class with some pretty graphic videos about the whole process. I'm really glad Joel went because he had never seen birthing videos and now he's as horrified as I am of the whole process :) After that class we met up with my parents and headed to Branson, MO, to watch the Dixie Stampede dinner show for my dad's birthday. It was a TON of fun. They have spectacular horses and do some really awesome stunts and skits with the animals. They also fed us a huge dinner during the show.

A few short days later it was Joel's birthday. We had a "grape jelly making party" for him at my mom's house (long story, it was his request...), we ate some really nice steaks, and he got a really cool touch screen camera! I know, you would think we'd have more photos posted!!!

The next day I left for the Tulsa Workshop with a group from our church. It's a huge event with thousands of people from around the country. There are different classes every hour on the hour with different speakers on different topics that you can choose to attend, and there are booths with all sorts of info to browse. At night there is a keynote speaker and lots of really REALLY good singing! Joel joined us Friday night and attended the Saturday classes with us. We got to see some old friends, and more importantly, learned a LOT about being a more effective Christian. We came back pretty excited and got all sorts of neat things going at our church to reach out and help our community.

Saturday in Tulsa we found ourselves in the middle of a blizzard. It snowed like 8 inches from 8am to 4pm with that wet, heavy snow. The roads were a MESS and since we were with a group we decided to leave a little early and get past the weather before it froze for the night and got dark. Here is a photo of us in the snow. Brrrr!