A Newfound Skill

Yawning.

While James's mom was taking a photo of this lovely bridge, I was caught in the act doing something I seem to spend a lot of time doing lately.

I've heard lots of ladies describe the exhaustion they feel while pregnant, so it was a symptom I expected to experience. But what I didn't realize is that pregnancy exhaustion is an animal unlike any other kind of exhaustion. One thought that continues to pop up in my mind every so often is, "what must it be like to be pregnant and have other kids to take care of?!?" My respect for you ladies has grown exponentially!

Though the last two weeks have seen a marked decrease in my rate of yawn's per day, quite a few still escape each day. But please know, I'm not complaining; I am totally embracing this, and every other pregnancy symptom I've had and will have in the future because it means a miracle is taking place...inside my body of all places!

Catching Up: Holiday Bible Club 2009

I'm going back in time a bit to review some of the events of the past few months. We've been so busy with said events that I haven't had the chance to share the details with you. So here goes!

The Dornoch Free Church hosted their second annual Holiday Bible Club (known in America as Vacation Bible School) during the school's Easter Holidays from April 6th-10th. A group from our home church in Richmond returned again this year to help us in putting on the event. We made some changes to this years club mainly in the teaching department.

Since we're preparing for our departure, our current focus is on guiding people into positions of leadership to take over for us when we leave. We hope to be able to come back for future Bible Club's, but there's no guarantee we'll be able to, so the plan was to train people from the Dornoch church to take on new roles as teachers and leaders. Bill & Kathy's visit was the integral part of that training.

Here you can read a quick summary of how many came from Stony Point as well as a link to 100's of photos from the week. If you don't feel like sifting through all those photos, here are a bunch to sum up the week. First are photos from the Club itself, second are photos of some of the sightseeing we did with the team from Stony Point.

































It was an amazing week!

Today's Photo Shoot

Mostly I loathe the National Health System in the UK (and I'm not looking forward to the day when there might be one in America. Seriously people it won't work in America. Don't believe me? Live here for a while.) but today I'm okay with it because we got to have another ultrasound and see our beautiful baby again!

Everything's coming along very nicely, he or she (who will be called "he" until we find out the sex in July because I'm not saying "it" or "he/she" for the next six weeks) is developing and growing beautifully. The detail we could see and the amount he's grown in the last two weeks were both astounding. The technician pointed out all sorts of cool things: kidney's, the incredibly straight spinal cord, the cerebellum, all the bones in his legs, the diaphragm, the four chambers of the heart, the umbilical cord; it was incredible! All that and more visible at only 14 weeks! Technology blows my mind sometimes. But what's more mind-blowing are the Hands that created this little miracle!

The funniest part of the appointment was when the nurse kept referring to the baby as "Tootsie." I couldn't get the image of Dustin Hoffman dressed up as a woman out of my head. No worries, Tootsie definitely won't be an option when we start thinking about names.

Year of the Visitor: Part 10

With all the excitement of the last few days, I've neglected to inform you of our most recent visitors. James's parents, Paul and Janet, have joined us in Dornoch for an exciting two weeks. We picked them up from the airport in Edinburgh on Wednesday morning and drove back to Dornoch, taking the rest of the day easy since that flight is a difficult one to recover from. Thursday we took them on a hike to our favorite local waterfall spot: Big Burn.

We're looking forward to doing some fun sightseeing things, and also including them in our work with the kids. Should be fun times!

Guess what guy's'...

A Baby!!! Our Baby!!!


Excitement, joy, relief, and overwhelming gratefulness don't even begin to express what we're feeling.

Since we lost our first baby to miscarriage, we were a bit apprehensive this time around. Well, alright, more than a bit. I couldn't let myself think about actually meeting this baby in this life. Planning for the future was out of the question. I almost expected to get the same results as last time.

But on Tuesday, that all changed. We had our first ultrasound and the fears of the last 12 weeks melted away when we got to see that adorable, healthy baby, jumping around. Seeing that heart beating like crazy was so incredible.

What a gift to be entrusted with the life of another human. We are so grateful God has allowed us to see these pictures of the child he has blessed us with. What an amazing miracle.