Hi everyone!
Isn't life crazy?! Crazy busy, crazy amazing, crazy ups and downs... so much craziness! It has been beyond crazy for us these past few months, especially since I last wrote on here! I don't hardly know where to begin with this update, but I do know I probably should have started at not quite so late an hour... This might have to be something I work on for a few days, but we will see!
I think I wrote my last blog post at the very beginning of June. Since then we have definitely gone through both valleys and mountains in our life. I guess I'll share somewhat in order of how everything went...
On June 16th, we spend Father's Day with my family in Delta (playing croquet in my parents' front yard and then driving to Montrose for a family Frisbee golf game and picnic). On the way home we drove by Walgreens in Fruita to pick up a pregnancy test! Before heading over to Scott's parents' for dinner, I took the test and found out that we were pregnant with Baby #3! It was so awesome to get on the phone and call my parents and to tell the kids and see that even though they didn't fully understand how that could happen so suddenly (lol), they were still full of excitement and Daniel started talking about his new baby "brother" right away! We celebrated more that evening with Scott's family and overall it was an amazing Father's Day! :)
That next week I got sick with something and had some of the worst days of sickness I had ever had... :( I remember we had a few of our really good friends come into town that week and I could barely make it over to see them because of being so weak and just plain exhausted! I didn't think that anything was really wrong with the pregnancy because along with being sick I was having some pregnancy type symptoms, so I just figured this pregnancy might be a little tougher than the previous two... On Sunday, June 23rd, a week after we took the positive pregnancy test, I began feeling SO much better and had the energy to go to church and hang out with friends that evening. Then, at the end of a wonderful evening with some friends, I noticed that I was bleeding and instantly began crying. I don't even know why I went straight to assuming a miscarriage in that minute, but I was so scared... Everyone was amazing and began praying for me and the little baby inside of me and I was actually able to sleep well overall throughout the night. The next morning I got ahold of my midwife after the bleeding was progressively getting worse and not better. She had me go in for a hormone test. I took that which came back lower than they wanted it to be, and after hearing those results and researching as much as I possibly could online, I was losing most of my hope that everything would be okay.
Gosh it was hard to make it through those days up until Wednesday morning when I could head back over to take the second round of hormone tests. The whole time I was thinking of my sister, Lelia, and others I know who had gone through miscarriages and the loss of babies and I was realizing that as much as I had wanted to be there for them before, there was no way I knew what they had and were still going through... I seriously had never pictured myself in that position of going through a miscarriage of my own, but it totally changed my view of babies and pregnancies forever. First of all, as I got the call Wednesday afternoon from my midwife who said that my numbers had dropped and that I was for sure going through a miscarriage, I remember just crying and crying and then opening up my journal and writing. It's so amazing to me how much love a mom can have for her baby even when that little one was only around for a few short weeks inside her! I'm so thankful that God allows us to have that much love for our little ones, though... They are such a miracle even from the very beginning of conception and I am beyond thankful that I KNOW that one day I'll be able to meet our sweet baby up in heaven!
One of the most difficult times after the miscarriage was having to tell Daniel and Lydia what happened. I mean, they are only 3 and 1 and so at first I didn't think they'd really understand, but Daniel understood so much more than I thought he would! He was the first one I actually told because he climbed up on my bed right after I talked to my midwife... He asked me what was the matter as I was crying and crying. I told him that our sweet little baby had gone up to heaven to be with Jesus. He asked why and I didn't really know what to say... I just said that Jesus must have really wanted baby up there. Then Daniel started coloring next to me while I was journaling and I thought that was the end of that and then like 10 minutes later he started bursting into tears! I've never seen him so sad! :( He cried and cried leaning against me and kept asking why God took the baby away and he kept saying that he thought he was supposed to be 4 when the baby came... It was so sad! :( He has gotten much better with it all since then, but he still talks about his baby "brother" (he's convinced it was a brother) and talks about how God can't have anymore of our babies because he has cousin Makaio and cousin Kanoa (my sister's two babies - a still-born and a miscarriage) and our little one... It's hard knowing what to tell him about it all, so we just make sure we listen and try to answer whatever questions he has.
In the few weeks after losing our little one, Scott and I took time to read through baby names trying to find a name for it. The hardest part of losing a baby so young to me is not knowing if it was a boy or a girl! :( Although we end up calling the baby "him" most of the time (probably because of Daniel being so certain :), we still ended up going through gender neutral names and ended up choosing the name Kalen which means pure. It was so nice finally having a name and we love it! It's so nice knowing our little Kalen is up in heaven and one day we can finally hold him! :)
So, going on to the next part of our busy past few months... As we were still grieving over our sweet baby's loss, we also began trying to make decisions on what to do about our house which was STILL on the market and which had STILL not had a single offer in the almost year we had had it on the market! We were getting ready to go to Lake City, CO for 4th of July weekend so finally decided to go ahead and put the house up for rent after we got back if we didn't get an offer beforehand. Then... on the 4th of July as we were driving down to Delta to meet up with my parents as they were going camping with us, we got our very first offer and our house was under contract in a few hours! It was amazing seeing God's timing through it all! Our house closed on July 31st, and we ended up moving out the weekend before to head down to Durango for our staff conference with Master Plan.
The other exciting news at this point was that as we headed down to the staff conference we were right around 73% received and like 91% committed support which was awesome! We had a wonderful time down in Durango with everyone. I just LOVE all the staff we work with and it was such a great time to rest, focus, and hear the vision for where we are praying MPM is heading towards!
We left Durango and went to stay with my parents for a week which was fun. We celebrated Scott's birthday with family on the 5th and then came back up to GJ the next night for a wonderful going away party with many of our amazing friends and family! Gosh we have such great friends over there! I miss them all so much, but I'm really praying that many of the friendships stay strong even over the coming years!
I helped Scott and some of our friends load the moving truck on the 9th and then we all left early Saturday morning, August 10th, to drive over to Denver. Scott's brothers and sister-in-law and mom came and then my parents came over so it was awesome having all their help unloading the moving truck! My parents stayed until the next afternoon which was amazing help to somewhat rearrange furniture, unpack the kitchen and bathroom, and get some of the other stuff unpacked. It was sad seeing them leave with Lydia crying and crying because she wanted to go with them :( but it was nice knowing we'd see them in just three weeks and that we'd be talking to them a lot!
By that point we were right around 98% committed in support and I think around 90% received so after much discussion with our campus director over here he decided that we could go ahead and step on campus doing most everything except for leading a Bible Study or starting any discipleship (any longer term things) and then we will re-evaluate the beginning of Sept to see if we were almost at 100%. It was SO nice knowing we could go onto campus and very encouraging as we were able to get ahold of many of those who had made commitments to see when they were sending in their first gifts!
SOOOO, we started our first week of Master Plan Ministry campus work on Tuesday, August 12th, with a great staff planning day getting ready for the upcoming semester. It was great getting together with the Denisons (Jesse and Rhonda) and Austin and Laura to plan, pray, and eat together. :) Then, on Friday that week we went back over to Austin and Laura's house for the Servant Team planning day which was also great! It was so nice meeting and getting to know everyone on the servant team. I'm so excited to see this team reach out to the new students on campus and see them grow in their walks with God!
August 19th was the first day of the school year here at the Auraria Campus. Mondays are our very busy day because we have staff meetings in the morning and then Servant Team dinner and meetings that evening and then we have a student Bible study at 7 p.m. It's so much fun, though, because I love being around the students and hearing how they are doing! Tuesdays at least for now will be my campus day, so I've been going onto campus with Laura doing information tables and surveys the past two weeks. It's been a great time meeting students, inviting them to our events, doing the Soularium surveys with them (an awesome picture survey that they choose a picture to answer each question), and getting into some great conversations about God and the gospel with them! Starting next week I will be meeting girls for coffee during the day and then I'm hoping to start up a Bible study over the lunch hour if I find much interest from girls! As soon as I get home on Tuesdays Scott is off to campus to go to the weekly AMP meeting which he has really enjoyed. As much as I'd love to be there with the students, I also enjoy having an evening off with just the kiddos and then by myself once they are in bed. :) Wednesdays and Thursdays are Scott's days on campus so he is usually gone from 8:30 to 5, and then Fridays are our ADMIN day to get stuff done! I'm excited for Dinner and Discussion evenings with the students to start up on Friday evenings soon! There is a possibility we might do those here or we might wait until next semester for that... we'll know soon. :)
Well, that's a very short outline of what our weeks have been like on campus these past two weeks. I have been loving it! Trying to get a bit better at balancing stuff, but overall it's been awesome and Scott LOVES it! :) He has gotten to know some great guys and is already excited to start meeting guys for coffee this next week.
I just got our sun room mostly unpacked yesterday which was our biggest amount of work still to be done. We now just have about a day's worth of rearranging and unpacking boxes of stuff we need to find a place for and then we should be DONE! :) I love our home and I'm so excited to get these last boxes unpacked so I can take pics and let you all see what it looks like! I love the neighborhood too and all the great shopping areas although I haven't seen everything yet! All the nice parts of being in a big city! :)
Well there is so much more I could say but I think I'll go ahead and post this considering it took me a week to write it. Hopefully I can write on here more frequently!
