Belly Shots (or Do You Only Own Brown Shirts?)

Many of you have asked for more pictures of the belly, so here you go.  You get what you asked for.  I'm not really one to take a picture every week of the progress (although if you are one who likes to do that, that's cool!), but I get it that not being around us every week might make one more curious to see how much I've grown.  Anyways, these first two pictures are from last Friday (Aug 26...33 weeks pregnant).  I think I'm bigger than this...its not a straight on shot.  

And this last one is from sometime at the end of April, right before Logan had finals at school.

Still feeling really good.  God has been gracious to us, and it has been a mostly easy pregnancy.  I'm always hot, and sometimes its hard to sleep at night, but really, no other complaints!  We go to Thailand in 2 weeks!

--da

Kill the Rat (or A Good Video for the Weekend)

The following was taken a week or so ago at our temporary location for the aquaponics systems.  We had run into a problem w/ rats, and after setting some traps, we (Logan and AHN) caught one.  But then they had to decide what to do w/ it (how to dispose of it) after it was caught in the trap.  Here's Logan's solution.  Enjoy.







--da

A Trivial Post (or The Home and Garden Update)

For those of you who care about what we've done to the house (not really a remodel or addition..just some minor things that are updated), enjoy the following pictures and explanations.

Here's pretty much the kitchen before.  A little messy and unorganized, at least in appearance.  But let's all face it, if you didn't have cabinet doors, your kitchen would probably look similar.  (Although I know there are those of you out there that are way better organizers than I am.)

And below is the kitchen after.  Additions to the top are a shelf for my canisters (I have now freed up about a square foot of counter space), my spice rack mounted on the wall, and some bamboo curtains to help block out some sun.  Oh, and my chickens on a string hung from the ceiling, and the red and orange cord you see from beneath the cooking utensils is an extension cord that runs all the way down to the ground to charge our scooters b/c they have been tearing up and replacing the concrete in our underground parking garage, and we haven't been able to charge our scooters down there.

And here's the bottom half of the kitchen.  I wanted baskets that we designed and measured to fit perfectly into these spaces, but that was a major fail, so we went looking for baskets this past weekend, and I got these plus two others for about 15 dollars.  Not exactly what I wanted, but it looks better!!  You take what you can get and are thankful and happy about it!

Ah, my favorite.  A front loading washer that has a heating element.  It will seriously heat the water to boiling if I so desire.  It will be a huge help w/ cloth diapers (that I am going to try and succeed at!), baby clothes, our normally sweaty clothes, and its much more gentle on clothes when compared to the top loading washers here.  We had a 7.5 kg washer picked out (about the biggest you can buy here), but it wouldn't fit thru the bathroom door.  So the next day we exchanged it and had a 6 kg washer delivered, but it was broken, so finally that afternoon we were able to install the third washer delivered to our house.  I'm sure the guys who work for the store we bought it from were happy we had an elevator.

Rocking chair for Rowan's room!  There's other stuff in this room, but the rocking chair is probably my favorite right now.  His room isn't completely done, but I'm working on it.

Here's the gardening section of this house update.  There's an awkward empty space between where our tv is and the wall/door connecting to the patio, so Logan bought some orchids and hung them here, along w/ an ivy that we already had.  Also note our new curtains for the living room.  And...note the beautiful, new, brown paint!  Thanks to friends from Fort Worth who spent a day working on painting our living room and bedroom.  We couldn't have done it without them, especially since I had spent the previous day in bed w/...I don't know...a stomach virus or something.

And last but not least...a ceiling fan, new black curtains, and gray paint for our bedroom.  The fan is an immense help.  We also purchased and installed one in Rowan's room (it looks exactly the same as this one) and then when we realized how great these are, we bought another one to install in the office.

Well, that's it for now.  More blog posts to come soon..hopefully of more substance than house stuff.

--da

Back Home in JH (or A Re-entry to Blogging)

Well, we've been back here in JH for over a month now.  Its been good, and we've been busy.  Re-settling in here has taken a little longer than I expected and wanted, but I do think I forgot just how long it can take to do things here.  You plan on getting certain things bought/installed/accomplished, and then you can't find what you need, the store won't mix the paint color you really want, something breaks, you get sick, it rains and no one can deliver to your house, the washer won't go through the door to the bathroom, the person who agreed to make baskets for you never follows through, and for that matter never calls...well you get the idea.  Not that I'm complaining, but it can get annoying at times, and it does drag the whole process out a lot.

Anyways, all that to say, we're back and time is going by really fast.  We leave for Thailand in 3 weeks to hang out for about a month..waiting on the baby to come!  Then we will be there for 2-4 more weeks working on getting his passport and then visa so we can return home to JH and pick up where we left off here.  Although I am fully aware that we won't pick up life completely the same...it will be different.

We are immensely thankful to be back, and have picked up lots of our old relationships, and made a few new ones too.  The fact that we're having a baby, and staying for the foreseeable future, makes some people more open to talking to us.  We're slowly building relationships w/ more neighbors and people in our complex, and although the advice some of the women have to give about delivery and what to do afterwards is not actually the advice I want to follow, I just smile and nod and thank the Lord that we'll be in Thailand for at least a few weeks after Rowan is born, and they won't ever know that, Lord willing, I took a shower, ate hot food, washed my hair, walked around (or simply got out of bed) in the hours or days following delivery.

I know I'm pretty unreliable on the blog and the amount of posts that actually go up.  Logan said we should just delete it and move on w/ life.  But...I am back again w/ a new commitment to post.  (I know, I know, pretty empty promise.)  I won't blame you if you don't hold your breath, or if you've already deleted us from your blog roll.  I would have given up on us too a long time ago.  But I'm going to try.  You can just be pleasantly surprised when something new comes up on your reader.

--da