Trip to Royal Oak

We also celebrated Hannah's birthday up at Mamoo and Grandpa's house with the Lansing Harlans, too. Everyone spent the day together at the Henry Ford Museum's Greenfield Village, which was especially fun because they had the Thomas the Train exhibit there... and we took a ride on him first thing... Stephen was enraptured (thanks again, Bill and Deb!)!
Note to self: Stop trying to take pictures of everyone when they're riding the merry-go-round until you get an SLR or your timing improves!!! :) And, Stephanie- I don't know what the deal is with that picture of you on the merry-go-round, but it's so funny that I thought I'd post it just for laughs... if you want me to take it off I will! :)
Hannah really asked Deb to put Happy Horse on her cake... how cute is that? I just made a sundress for her a few days ago and took her to pick out fabric. You'll never guess what the print of the dress is! :) I'll have to take some pics of her in it and post them later!
Please excuse the immense amount of photos- I want to share them with all of the family far away, so I have to include a lot to satiate them! :)

Hannah's Birthday!

Hannah turned 6 on the 26th of April. She requested a strawberry shortcake cake, and her favorite meal... my homemade mac n' cheese with ham and veggies mixed in. I cannot believe my tiny Hannah Bear is 6 now (she was only 6 lb. 9 oz. six short years ago)! She got pink and white roller skates and a pink catcher's mitt and matching ball, and she immediately tried on her roller skates and the mitt and wanted to play catch while roller skating in the living room! :) Happy Birthday again, Hannah!!!

My birthday!

As you know, my birthday was now over a month ago, but I am only just now at the point where I can catch up on all of these pictures and updates, so please forgive me as almost all of these forthcoming posts are outdated! :) Nate took me out to eat again this year... we had so much fun these past two years we've decided to make it a tradition. We ate at Ruby Tuesday's and then had an ice cream cake from DQ (yum... and I didn't have to make it!). We were the only ones in the restaurant because we waited until we were done with school and Nate had finished most of his work for the day. Let me tell you, 2:30 on a weekday is awesome for getting great service and atmosphere! :) Thanks again, Natie (and kids) for a great day!!!

Scary Day

On Wednesday Nate and I had a hard day. Did I say hard? I meant emotionally exhausting...
You see, the reason I have been so infrequent on here is because I am now 17 weeks pregnant. I was going to write it on here- honest!- this weekend when I updated everyone on our happenings. Then my appointment with the midwife happened. And I realized how dependent upon Him we really are (for the sixty millionth time). The visit was great... I'm measuring 2 weeks ahead, which I seem to do until 20 weeks (it's happened every time), and my blood pressure was great, etc... Then she went to find the baby's heart tones. And searched and searched and searched. At one point, we thought we might have heard them very faintly for about two seconds. And then they were gone. You might expect this at 7, 9, or even 13 weeks, because the baby is so small... but not at 17. The baby is over 5 inches long, which makes the heart a lot easier to find. So, after doing a great job of trying to find the heartbeat for over 10 minutes (and remember, I have 7 years of experience at that... so I know she did everything right!), she said she'd really feel better if we'd get an ultrasound. That's when it started to dawn on me that there could be more issues than just having a really wiggly baby that wouldn't sit still for us. We were able to get an appointment for 3:30 that afternoon. Did I mention that it was 9 am during my appointment? That meant we had 6 hours to wait and see what was going on... I did school with the girls, made some bread, made lunch, got some laundry and cleaning done- but all the while I was an emotional wreck. The Bushongs were great enough to let us drop the kids off at their place (it was on the way) before the appointment, and we had several church families praying for us, too... Nate prayed in the car with me before we went in and asked God to show us that our baby was healthy right away if it was His will.
The ob put the wand to my belly and the first image we saw was our little one's beating heart in his/her chest! Praise our great Lord! This little one was very wriggly during the ultrasound, which may have caused all of the difficulty earlier. Everything looks great, and we are so incredibly grateful to have more time to get to know this baby. Even as I write this, I'm feeling him/her move and feeling so blessed.
After we left the ob, we were so shaken up (and beyond thankful)- and Nate explained our emotional turmoil perfectly. He said that it was so hard because we know what it's like to go for an ultrasound and not see a heartbeat, and for the ultrasound tech to call in your ob to tell you that your baby has died. That knowledge affects me every single day of every pregnancy that I have had. I've learned to be grateful for every day that God blesses us with our little ones, whether they'll be born at term or not. Life is a precious gift that we do not deserve, but we should cherish completely.