18 weeks

Here is a new picture at 18 weeks. Everything here is going well. The days are going by so fast right now with all of the summer activities we have going on and the preparation for our 2 English camps coming up in July. I'm enjoying feeling the baby move a lot and I can tell it's getting a little stronger each day. It's such an interesting and wonderful feeling and it definitely makes things more "real" than before. Other than that, not much else has changed over the last week. Enjoy the pictures!

Celebrations!

Well, there are not any pictures to go with this post, but I will have some new ones for next time. I just wanted to give a quick update to all of you blog stalkers out there:) - we had a wonderful first Father's Day for Josh. We started the day with a nice breakfast made for him, which included blueberry muffins (not something we can make here very often). We had a wonderful time of worship with our teammates and two Czech friends who joined us. Then, we went to dinner at a favorite Italian restaurant (a treat for both of us really, since no one had to cook or do dishes:). Corey and Sarah joined us for a double-date while Christie and Melinda watched Evan for them in the park. It was nice to have "couple" time together with them. We then ended the day with phone calls to our families back home.

Another highlight from the past few days is that I have begun to feel the baby move! It's a strange feeling, but so wonderful at the same time! It doesn't feel like butterflies or some other things I've heard described before, but like I'm being gently pushed at and poked from the inside out. I know, I know, it won't be gentle for long:) I really do love the feeling and am thankful for this new experience! I look forward to the day when Josh can see and feel it, too.

And today- my sister, Hope, graduates from nursing school!! Yeah, Hope! I'm so proud of her and so excited for her. I have no doubt she will make a very good and compassionate nurse. I am looking forward to hearing many of her stories from work:) I remember those days and miss them now. I know all of my family is together right now at her graduation and I look forward to seeing pictures and hearing stories from her very special day.

Ultrasound #4!

Well, it's a...baby. :) I know, not funny to those of you dying to know the gender. Thankfully, it's not something that bothers me and Josh. We like the surprise of it all for as long as that lasts. Maybe next time we'll get to know, if we want:) Today we went to the doctor for our 4th ultrasound and check-up. Praise God! Everything is going well! Unfortunately, the baby wasn't cooperating with us today and wasn't in a good position to get any really good pictures of anything except this precious little face. We were able to see the head pretty clearly, a bit of the heart and abdomen, and some femur bones. All of the size measurements were good and the baby measured around 8 oz and 3 days ahead of the due date. The heart was beating away at around 140 bpm. It was also sweet to see the baby opening and closing it's mouth like it was playing a game. It was also playing with its hands in its face again, which made it hard to see the face or a profile well. This one picture we were able to get was a good one, though. You can see one of its hands by its right eye.

I had bloodwork done today to test for any genetic abnormalities and I will have a diagnostic ultrasound done soon, which will look for any abnormalities occuring now with the baby. These are routine exams they have patients do around 16-20 weeks. Please be praying with us that the baby is as healthy as it appears to be now. I will let you all know the results as soon as these tests are done.

Our next regular OB appointment will be July 22nd. I'm already looking forward to it:)



After our examination today Josh and I took a moment together to thank God and to celebrate together. We visited a local cafe in the square that is known for it's breakfasts, coffee drinks, and desserts. We each had a version of the "palacinky" (pal-a-chink-ee). It is a famous Czech dish and is similar to crepes or very, very thin pancakes. Mine had hot rasberries and cream with it. It was delicious! It was nice to have this moment together to celebrate and to be thankful for how we are blessed by God.

Birthday Celebration

We celebrated my birthday on Monday night with our friends. We had a great time together! After having lived here in Olomouc for more than a couple of years now, and having become busy in daily life, we've commented that we don't often get together anymore just to have fun. So, we take advantage when we can and our birthdays are always a great occasion for some fun time together with our teammates.



They made me some of my favorite foods- grilled shish kabobs, a loaded salad with some fruit in it, and baked fries. It was all so wonderful:) Thanks to Josh's Mom we also had some fun decorations/plates to use as well! They all made me feel very special.


Here is the cake that they made me. It was strawberry, which is my favorite kind, and it had a precious picture of a pregnant woman on it:) If you can see it, there is a heart-shaped jelly bean in her belly! It was a great cake! It's a tradition with our team to make a cake for the birthday person either in the shape of something special or around a special or funny theme related to that person. Last year they made me a cake in the shape of my favorite mask from my trip to Venice last summer. We've had a lot of fun and funny cakes over the last few years:)

After dinner we played a dice game together. We've always enjoyed playing games together when we can. Most of us are pretty competitive, which can make for some really fun and heated game time! Thanks again to all of you for making my birthday this year a really special one.

Utopence!

Last Tuesday, as we do every Tuesday evening, we got together with the Keens and with several of our Czech friends for dinner. Usually, we play sports games with these other couples and throughout last fall and winter we played floorball at a local high school gym. Floorball is a lot of fun and mostly like playing hockey, only in a gym instead of on ice. We've stopped for now because it's too hot in the summer to play in gyms here. Instead, we've begun meeting each week in the park across the street from where Josh and I live. After playing Frisbee we usually end up at our home or at the restaurant nearby for a light dinner (Czechs eat their largest meal of the day at lunch). Three weeks ago our friends taught us how to make Utopence (ew-toe-pen-se). As seen above, it's a pickled sausage stuffed with red bellpeppers and onions. You leave it for 2-3 weeks and then eat it for dinner with fresh bread. It was so much fun to learn to make this with them and to try something new together. I really enjoyed learning how to make it, but I wasn't looking forward to eating it. Don't get me wrong, I am a fan of sausage, but I had never had pickled sausage and having been so consumed with nausea I was afraid to eat this with everyone watching:) So, I enjoyed serving others their food and I enjoyed great conversation with our friends, and then I tried a little after everyone had gone home for the night:) It was good and it wasn't much of a problem in the end:)



Thank you for all of the birthday messages I have received over the last few days!! I appreciate it so much! I've had a wonderful birthday weekend. On Friday mornings our team gets together for some time in prayer. This Friday, they surprised me with a pancake breakfast at the Keens. Then, for dinner, Josh suggested he and I make homemade pizza together. This is something we haven't done in a long time. We've been pretty busy over the past few months, and it's only increasing as we get ready for all of our summer activities, so, part of my birthday gift this weekend was 2 days of togetherness and hardly any work. It was awesome. We read and listened to music outside on our balcony in the gorgeous weather, we made meals together and also went to dinner together last night, we went shopping at Globus for a few things we've been wanting for the house, we watched a little t.v. together, and we slept in late. All things we don't normally do, so it has been a really relaxing and enjoyable weekend. This picture above is one Josh took this weekend. It's been 16 weeks now. It's starting to go by faster now that I feel better:). I still have days when I am sick, but it's not as often and I'm so thankful. I'm enjoying food more now, but still not like I used to. I've heard from some friends that they never fully enjoyed a meal again until after delivery. Otherwise, everything seems to be going along well. I'm looking forward to our appointment on Friday. No, we still aren't sure whether we want to find out the gender yet:) We may at least wait until the next visit and maybe we'll have decided by then! Thank you for your prayers. Please continue to pray that this baby is healthy and pray for us as we prepare together for it.

Planes, Trains, and Autobuses...

Unfortunately, I don't really have any pictures from the events over the last week. I'll try to do better in the future. It's been a great, but hectic, last week. We left last Thursday for a 4 day stay in Vienna. A good friend and mentor of ours came to do a church-planting seminar for us, and for some other missionaries from Austria, Croatia, and Slovenia. We had a nice time and were encouraged by being with our friends from other countries around us. The days were filled mostly by the seminar and some discussion time, so we didn't do any site-seeing on this trip. We have all been to Vienna before, so this time it was more about being with our friends there and enjoying fellowship time together. I handled the traveling and time there pretty well. I wasn't too sick, for the most part, except for riding the local buses and underground metro.

We returned from Vienna on Sunday night and then enjoyed a day of rest, and catching up on work, on Monday. On Wednesday morning Josh and I left for Prague (picture above is a view of Prague Castle from the famous Charles Bridge) to pick up our summer intern, Melinda, at the airport. Unfortunately for her, she had some delays and setbacks, so we hung out at the airport most of the day waiting on her to arrive. She did, safely thankfully, and we quickly set out for Olomouc and arrived back later that evening. We're looking forward to having her here with us this summer to help us in our work here- especially getting ready for and hosting our first 2 English Christian camps in July. We helped her settle in today to her room at a local dormitory. She'll be living there for the summer and will have a Czech roommate for the next month. I think that will be a really enjoyable experience for her and will help her in learning more about the culture and the people here- thankfully her roommate is a student of English and can communicate well with her.

So, it's been a great and busy last week. As for the pregnancy, it is continuing to go well. I'll post another belly picture soon:) I've grown a little since the last photo, but not much. The nausea and sickness is continuing to be better, but not gone completely yet. I continue to feel exhausted, but hope that might ease up soon, as well. Still not really having any cravings...still not always enjoying eating very much, but have definitely noticed an increase in hunger over the last week. I'm looking forward to our next appointment, in about 2 weeks, and to seeing the baby again. I'm also looking forward to feeling it move, whenever that happens. It's still so strange to me to imagine it inside and to know it's moving around, yet not be able to feel it moving:) That's probably why I'm so anxious to see it again. We still aren't sure whether we'll find out the sex of the baby.

Thank you to all of you for your encouraging comments and prayers. They mean so much to me. Thank you also for the many cards and gifts we have already received! We are truly blessed.