A New Year and New Beginnings

I have finally figured out that blogging is not one of my strengths.  As you can tell I don't post as often as I would like to or probably should.  I hope that you will all forgive me for this. :-) Over the past month we have had the excitement of holidays, family visiting, relaxing, and preparing more for our baby boy's arrival.

 There aren't to many things to update everyone on but I'll start with the biggest thing in our life right now...the baby!!! :-)  Baby Boy is moving around a lot and Andrew and others finally were able to feel him kick on the outside.  It is so much fun to share with Andrew the joy of being able to feel our little boy kicking around.  He is growing a lot and it shows in my belly.  We can't wait to start putting his room together and preparing for him more and more.  After Thanksgiving we were able to go to different stores and register for him and it was a lot of fun (for me at least) to pick out stuff for our little boy.

This picture is 21 weeks 

This picture is 23 weeks and 2 days

We were blessed to be able to be in NY for Christmas and spend time with family but before we went home my parents and niece Lily took a mini trip down to spend some time down here with us! They arrived the Saturday before Christmas and were able to come to church with us on Sunday.  We braved the cold weather that afternoon and walked around D.C and saw some of the monuments.  On Monday I had a check up Dr. appt. and was able to bring my mom along so she could hear her grandson's heartbeat.  I am so glad that my mom and I are so close and that I can share with her the joys of her growing grandson.  While my parents were in town I took them to a small indoor water park and Lily loved playing in the water and swimming there. We also were able to enjoy a light show put on by a local park in the area.  My parents were heading back to NY on tuesday and I had decided to ride with them and then Andrew drove up when he got off work on Wednesday.  Since I went up a day early I was able to watch my little brother play basketball as a Senior, where has the time gone.  

Lily loved going down the small slide! 

Did I mention our landlord bought a horse? His name is Gunner! 

Festival of Lights

Christmas came and went way to fast but I am so glad that we were close enough to Ny to be able to spend time with our families.  I especially can't wait until next year when we have a little one to Celebrate Christmas with.  I can just imagine bringing him out of his room and him having big eyes at all the Christmas lights.  He will still be young but being able to enjoy Christmas as a family of three next year, in a place we can call home is so exciting to me.  While home for Christmas we hosted and Ugly Sweater Christmas Party, attended two family Christmas Eve Parties, and had two Christmas' on Christmas Day.  We weren't going to leave NY until Sunday afternoon but the forecast of bad weather made us decide to leave Christmas night.  The weather wasn't bad on Sunday but we were glad we left because both Andrew and I ended up with a stomach bug that would not have been fun to deal with in a car ride.  We are so blessed and so thankful for all the gifts that we received over Christmas.  Andrew and I discussed a lot the weeks before Christmas how the true meaning of Christmas should be our central focus not just at Christmas but all year long.  We have been so encouraged by the messages preached at church on how the Christmas Story still can be related to us today in so many different ways.  I'm hoping (no promises) to put up a post about everything we have been learning in church lately.  

Francis Family Christmas

Reed Family Christmas

As we look forward to the New Year there are so many things I am looking forward to.  I am so excited to meet our little boy in April and see what things God has prepared for our little family.  God has been so good to us this past year.  The other night at bible study I was reminded that even though we may think nothing exciting is happening in our lives at the moment God is still working.  Having 'normal' lives every day is a gift from God and we should be thankful for that.  Most of the time we thank God when things are going great and exciting things are happening but what about the days that we wake up and are able to breathe and make it through a day.  As I look forward to the new year there are some resolutions I hope to achieve.  

-I want to be a more loving and gracious wife and soon to be mother

-I want to be a better steward of the money God has given us

-I want to spend more time in God's word and learning more about everything He has done for me

-I want to have a child :-)

-I want to keep up to date on my blog more, not just updating everyone on life but sharing thoughts, lessons learned, and be able to encourage others. 

I almost forgot to put in a little bit of bragging! I think I have full bragging rights to this one! I have the most amazing husband ever! :-D Andrew has been working at his job for 5 months now and a week ago he found out that he had been nominated for NOC Engineer of the year! He had to go into work and answer a bunch of questions in front of a board of managers and to his surprise he won! He has worked so hard to learn his job in such a short period of time and deserves every bit of this award! :-) Can you tell I'm proud?!  

Thankful for blue things and worship

The past few weeks have not been super busy so I am not sure why I haven't updated the blog in a few weeks.  Here we are now and there is a lot to update everyone on! I think I'll work backwards to update everyone starting with our trip to NY/PA this past weekend for thanksgiving.  Andrew had to work the day before Thanksgiving so kind of last minute we decided to leave wednesday night after he got out of work (11pm) and drive through the night.  We made it to NY/PA in record time and I think were going to travel this way every time from now on!  We woke up Thanksgiving morning to SNOW, which was very exciting for us since we haven't seen snow in virginia yet and haven't seen snow in general in about 2 years since being in Hawaii.  

We had an amazing time being home with family and celebrating Thanksgiving.  We truly have a lot to be thankful for this year! We spent thanksgiving morning relaxing with the Reed Family, ate dinner with the Francis Family later in the day, and then back to the Reed's for dessert! We were able to see all of our extended family and catch up with everyone. 

On Friday morning (black friday) I didn't take advantage of any of the sales at stores but instead took advantage of being able o get together with some close friends for breakfast.  I think it is starting to become a tradition to have breakfast together over thanksgiving break.  We were also able to go out to eat with our friends Collin and River on Friday night!  It was so good to catch up with each of them and of course eat some yummy food too! 

The rest of Thanksgiving weekend was spent doing exactly what you see below! RELAXING! It was so needed and we were very grateful to be able to go to NY/PA and just chill.  On Sunday we were able to worship with both of our families at church and then spend the afternoon playing games, decorating the Christmas tree, and eating more food with the Reed side of the family. We then headed back to Virginia later Sunday and again, thankfully, hit no traffic!

Baby update! 20 weeks today! We are half way through the pregnancy (40 weeks)! The past month of pregnancy has been awesome! I have been feeling great and love being pregnant.  Last week we headed to the dr office for a very important ultrasound.  The Dr would be taking the baby's measurements, checking its heart, and of course telling us what the baby's gender is! The technician was mean and saved the best part for last haha and as soon as she rolled over our little baby's bum bum she said "I don't think I even need to tell you what that is!"  ITS A BOY!!!! The tears immediately started rolling and she has to stop to get me tissues.  We are so excited to be having a little boy and couldn't wait to get to Ny/Pa for thanksgiving to tell all of our family! 

The belly picture below was taken at 19 weeks 5 days, this little boy is growing lots!

Before we headed to NY/PA we had to think of a clever way to tell all of our family.  We decided to make cupcakes and fill the center with blue icing so that when they bit in they would discover what the baby's gender was.  

Everyone in our families are so excited that we will be having a baby boy! It will be the first grandson/nephew on the Reed side which will be a lot of fun! 

Our little boy is making his presence known more and more by moving lots inside of me.  Andrew can't feel it yet on the outside but he is definitely in there.  We are thinking of little boy names all the time now but will be keeping the name (and ideas) under wraps until this little one is born in April.  At the ultrasound our little boy weighed 9 oz give or take and is still measuring due April 20th.  We are starting to prepare for his arrival already and are very thankful for friends and family who are handing over all their boy clothes to make his wardrobe! 

I love his little foot!

I believe it was in my last post that I mentioned how Andrew and I have been searching for a home church.  I shared our frustration and asked for prayers.  Thank you so much if you did pray because we believe we have found a church to call home.  A friend suggested checking out the Acts 29 network of churches so we did! Acts 29 network is a church planting network that plants churches all over the country and soon the world! Acts 29 was started off of Mars Hill Church in Seattle WA which we have listened to their sermons many times! We searched for churches in our area through the Acts 29 network and found one in Arlington.  We checked it out and were truly blessed.  Andrew and I both got in the car and looked at  each other and said "yea?"  "yea."  There was no doubt about it! The church is a fairly new church plant (7 months) and is renting a space in an arts center until they get their own facility.  We were so blessed to see so many young couples and families in the church.  The preaching and worship was exactly what we needed to be fed by God's word.  The church has community groups (bible studies) through out the week so we are excited to head back to church this week and get signed up for a community group!  We are so excited to get involved in the growing of the church and to get involved with the fellowship there.  Thank you so much for your prayers in this whole process and we will definitely keep you all updated on our involvement and what we learn there!  

God has truly blessed our little family this past year and we have so much to be thankful for.  Someone mentioned the other day that we shouldn't just be thankful for 'stuff' but be thankful for all God has done for us and for what He is going to do for us.