Life in Denver!

I don't even know where to begin when I haven't written anything on here for almost six months now! I've wanted to sit down and write something on here for forever and every kind of excuse - mostly forgetfulness - kept getting in the way... Goodness! I know there aren't tons of people who read my blogs, but I really did have good intentions to write more once we moved over here to Denver and began this new stage of life... Yeah. That didn't happen at all! :( I just read my last blog post and all of that seems like SO long ago! We are still sad and still talk about baby Kalen up in heaven especially with Daniel who will bring "him" up to us... We are still so excited to see baby one day! Since losing our sweet little one, though, we have also lost another nephew, Kamani Kai, the son of my sister and brother-in-law, Lelia and Wayne. He was born and passed away on Oct. 25th over here in Denver after a long last few weeks of the pregnancy. So much to say but I'll just say that we miss him, too, and we are so looking forward to our reunion in heaven one day with all these little babies! Then, on January 11th Scott's oldest brother, Geoffrey, went to heaven after just under a month of the leukemia returning to his body. Yeah, things have been crazy and sad and so full of hard times but through it all God has brought such joy to our family and our life. It's so great seeing His love and comfort with every step we take and we are learning more and more that we can never go through life alone without Him! 

The top highlight of the past six months is that right around the time I wrote last we found out that I was pregnant again! Everything has been going great and I am now seven months (30 weeks) along with our active, sweet little girl growing inside me! My due date is April 28th (just a week after Daniel's 4th birthday!) and as the date gets closer I'm getting more and more excited to meet baby Joanna Beth, but more and more nervous for the labor and delivery... I think it's a good nervousness in some ways because I feel like I need to prepare more for it, but it's also been so hard with all the little babies going up to heaven in the past few years between my sister, us, and so many friends that I think I'm still worried in some ways that something might go wrong. :( This little girl has been covered with prayer since we found out about her, though, so that has been so encouraging to us! So far everything looks like it's going great. Other than having to take the "lovely" glucose test twice (the 1 hour one I didn't pass so I took the 3 hour one, also - but then I passed that with total normal results!), I haven't had other big issues come up. She's measuring 1 to 2 weeks bigger than "average", but that makes sense with our bigger babies! I'm still hoping she ends up being closer to her sister, Lydia's, birth weight of 8 lbs. 5 oz. than to her brother's 9 lbs. 9 oz. but I guess we'll see in a few months! :) We are hoping to have a birthday center hospital tour soon so we can check out the hospital, but I've heard many great things about the Lutheran Hospital near us so I think it'll work out great! And, my mom is planning to be here for the delivery if at all possible and for a few weeks afterwards to help out with stuff, so that is SO nice and such a blessing! I can't believe we'll have three little kiddos in our house! CRAZY and SO amazing! :)

College ministry with Master Plan Ministries has been going awesome! Our first semester was so great but also very full learning everything about being staff with college ministry and getting used to the schedule of everything. This semester has been going great, though, and I am loving every bit of it! Our schedule is very much the same, but Scott and I are meeting with other guys and girls now for one-on-one discipleship and we have been able to help with other staff team stuff as we learn more about doing various things. Austin and Laura just switched over officially to their new positions with MPM (helping our President do much of his work in all the inner details of the ministry) and Jesse and Rhonda are officially our new directors which has been exciting! We have an amazing servant team of student leaders and our spring retreat is coming up this weekend! Be praying because we have around 30 students coming right now with more possibly signing up tomorrow! I'm so excited to get to know all the students better and to see God work in awesome ways through the talks and discussions this weekend. 

We still really enjoy the location of where we are living even though our house is getting a bit small for our growing family. I'm sure that has to do with the amount of stuff we seem to accumulate, but right now we are trying to make it work! We are so thankful for the sun room because that has allowed me to set up a school room area for the kids to do preschool in! It's so much fun having posters hung up and calendars, clocks, etc all on the wall. Both Daniel and Lydia LOVE preschool time! We have been doing Beyond Five in a Row all year which has been so great, easy, and fun and I love all the new books we have been able to read and do activities for! Lydia wasn't that interested in a lot of it this past fall but since Christmas she loves preschool just as much as Daniel! It is seriously one of the biggest highlights of their week and it has been for me, also! We try to do the reading and activities in somewhat of a structured time-frame (because that works SO well with all of us) on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday mornings and I'm so amazed by how quickly they are both learning new things! In the past month we also decided on our plan of action for homeschool for at least the next year and hopefully their entire school years! We are going to sign up Daniel into a group called Classical Conversations which is a Christian classical program for homeschoolers that has a lot of support through a co-op community which meets for a day each week... We tried out one of the communities near us last week and loved it and them and Daniel loved having the structure of being in a classroom doing activities with other kids while also having me there helping with whatever I could. I think it'll be a perfect balance between the social life and having a tutor to help with ideas and teaching and homeschooling which I'm really excited about, too! Plus I LOVE what and how they teach the classical education! 

There are so many other things I could talk about, but I guess that means that I really should try to write on here more often so each of my blog posts are not novels about our life. :) Thank you for reading this if you made it through! Next time I write I really want to have an update about Daniel and Lydia and how they are doing! :) I love those kiddos and every day I'm amazed more and more by how much they have blessed our lives in so many ways! But for now I've got to go! Night!