Buying a house, tutoring, and time with friends

Buying a house is like adding a part time job to your life. It is very time consuming. I am glad I have such a great husband to do all of this with. There is no way I could do it by myself. Even as stressful and time consuming as it is, I have been able to go though this admiring my husband more. I love that he cares about making the right decision for our family and does such a great job of it.

We think we have found a house that we want to buy. We have also been approved for the loan. We are in the paperwork/meeting stage. It is a “For Sale by Owner” so we have to meet with a lawyer. We also are in the process of have the house appraised and getting it inspected.

The house is not a huge house but should meet our meets. The lay out of the house is nice and makes it not seem quite as small. It has real wood floors and tile. There are 3 bedrooms and a fire place in the living room. The yard is great. It is on a half of acre and has beautiful landscaping and enough room for kids to play. If all goes well we should be moving in right about the time baby is due. It is so exciting to think that we could be living in a house that is ours soon!

If we get pictures of the house, I will be sure to post them.

I started tutoring an Educational Psych PhD student from South Korea. It is a lot of fun. It doesn’t even feel that much like work. She is really easy to talk to, which is what we do most of our tutoring sessions. I also have role-playing skits for us so she can practice conversational English and not need to focus on remembering vocabulary just study sentence structure. I am really enjoying tutoring with her.

Even though we have been really busy with the house and work we have gotten to spend some time with friends. I watch Isaac last week so Katie could run some errands to help get ready for their upcoming move. Even with Isaac’s new found talent of screaming at the top of his lungs he was fun to play with. I can’t wait until my little one comes. We also had our Bible study/ good-bye to Katie and Jimmy. I love our Bible study group. I am sad we will be losing Jimmy, Katie and Isaac.

We had dinner with Chris and Jason, a couple who we have been friends with shortly after moving to Gainesville. Chris was actually my advising professor for my senior thesis in college. Josh and Jason love talking politics and did for several hours. Chris and I talked a lot about babies, birth and buying houses. We hadn’t seen them in a while so it was really nice to have dinner and spend some time with them.

Josh and I went over to the Strode’s for the youth Man Hunt. Me and Brandi stayed inside watched movies, made cookies, talked and were the time watches for “jail.” It is awesome that they have a lot of property and can host things like Man Hunt. Josh had fun playing but unfortunately pulled a muscle and had to stop earlier in the game than he wanted. He has mostly recovered now but it took 2-3 days. Poor Brian didn’t get to sleep that night since the kids stayed over and stayed up the whole night. I wish I had their energy level.

Please pray for us and North Burma Mission. We are meeting with the lawyer this week for the house and on Saturday we are having a yard sale to help raise a little more money for the Thailand mission trip coming up next week. Josh, Linda, Taylor, Jeremiah and Jamiie will be gone from August 7^th- August 19^th. Also pray that I don't go into labor early while Josh is in Thailand.

Baby pictures!, Dr. Appt (week 32), childbirth classes, bowling and other news

*Week 32

I had my 32 week appointment on Monday. Everything went really well. Dr. Marichal said the baby is looking very healthy and not to worry about the abnormality in the umbilical cord. I will be considered an “at risk” pregnancy but not “high risk.” I will not have any restrictions during labor and delivery. During the sonogram, Baby was being very photogenic so he/she was looking right at us most of the time. Since he/she is so big now we could see Baby looking around at things. I had no idea you could see that type of detail, the eye moving who would have guess it. I was impressed. Josh and I loved seeing our little one, who was 4.5 lbs and looks like he/she is going to be tall. Baby is now measuring 5 days ahead of schedule. Baby is constantly letting me know that it’s in my belly. This baby seems to a lot of strength. Also, the sonogramist told us and showed us Baby is going to have a full head of hair. I can’t wait to meet our baby!

Look at that face!

That white stuff that is fuzzy is a full head of hair.

Baby loading and he/she is almost here

baby belly at 32 weeks (front)


baby belly at 32 weeks (side)

*Childbirth classes

Josh and I had a lot of fun at our classes. It made me confidant about giving birth. I had been really nervous about the whole thing. Josh feels more informed and confident in his knowledge and ability to help me through the whole thing. It was nice having the weekend class. It was 5 hours on Saturday and almost 7 hours on Sunday. We also took a tour of Labor and Delivery. Tina, our childbirth class teacher was an amazing teacher. I am sometimes critical of teachers since I went to school to be one. I am not saying I am the best teacher in the world and I do plenty of things wrong but I know lots of the things to do right so I always watch for other teachers to do those. Since she has been teaching for 20 years I had high expectations, she met or bet all of them. I think we were blessed to have such a great teacher!

*Bowling with the youth group

Thursday the youth group went bowling and we went with them. I have never seen the bowling ball go in the wrong direction so many times. It reminded me of Wii bowling expect the crowd didn’t jump up and spin. Enjoy the pictures!!

*In other news…

For those of you who don’t know, Josh and I are looking into buying a house. We have been looking for a long time but contacted a real estate agent last week. We have driven by 17 houses. Then we narrowed those 17 down to 6 that we were really interested in. We looked at those 6 inside and choose 2 that are good possibilities. One stands out a lot more to us. We have already been pre-approved by a couple of places and comparing all the info. Now we have left is choosing a mortgage, getting the inspections, and lots of lots of paper work. Buying a house is very overwhelming and is exciting. Hopefully by the end of September we will have a healthy baby boy/girl and living in our new house. Please pray that we make Godly decisions and don’t get too stressed out about the everything that is coming our way.

Tubing down the Ichetucknee River

Last Thursday Josh and I went with Harvest’s youth group tubing down the Ichetucknee River. It was a great day to go. It was sunny but not so hot I couldn’t enjoy myself. Eleven students went and Josh, Bryan, Kyra, and I were the sponsors. We went down the 1.5 hour route, had lunch, and then went down it again.

Kyra, Taylor (one of the high school girls) and I stayed together. Most of the time, we held on to each other and the tube and lazily enjoyed the cool water and warm sunshine. There were a few times where we were attacked by boys trying to flip us, well Kyra and Taylor and I got pulled apart and pushed aside. A couple of times we were able to out swim them.

Bryan’s goal the first half of the trip was to get as many tubes as possible. Unfortunately, I couldn’t bring my camera down the river so I don’t have the pictures to show you. Bryan obtained at least 8 tubes at one point. The second part of the trip Jesse and Noah, with the encouragement from some of the other boys thought they should go down the river while they were both inside the tubes together. They got this idea after lunch when they were trying to do basically the same thing. I do have pictures of this. We were all cracking up laughing. The funniest part was once they had 2-3 tubes on them they couldn’t really get themselves out so they were stuck and could be pushed over and rolled anywhere.

We all had a really great time! Josh and I really love hanging out with all the kids. We are very blessed to have such a diverse and awesome youth group at Harvest. It is interesting to see how diverse our youth group is when we go on trips like CIY and see how many groups have a very consistent look to them. Bryan does a fantastic job of reaching out to kids who are so different but I think really benefit from the group. Like Kyra said a few weeks ago during church when she was talking about our youth group, “The kids are just awesome!”

Here are a few pictures I took before and between tubing.

The whole gang



Lunch Time





The boys version of horseshoes


This is how Jesse and Noah went down much of the second half of the trip.



They tried 3 guys but weren't too successful.

Summer Traveling: Tri-State Christian Camp @ DeFuniak, FL

I love little kids! We were surrounded by forty-one 6-8 year olds. Josh and I had a lot of fun playing with them and helping them learn the stories of the Bible and about North Burma Christian Mission. We got there on Sunday afternoon. The staff was introduced to the children and we had dinner. Afterwards, we played some games and music. Monday-Thursday were semi-structured days for the kids. They had study time, breakfast, cleaned their cabins and then went to two classes. The classes were where they learned the memory verse for the day, they practiced the skit they would later perform that night and a story from the Bible that went with their memory verse and skit. Then it was lunch time. The week we were there they had the most awesome cooks. I was a little nervous about having camp food for a week, especially since being pregnant I have a few limitations on what I can eat. Boy was I surprised, just about everything was made from scratch and SO yummy! After lunch was an hour of rest time. I took advantage of this to take a nap of my own. After rest time, the kids had activities- games at the ball field for 2 groups while the other group swam, and then the rotate. We typically went swimming with at least one group. During the other time we got ready for our presentations about the mission, talked with some of the adult staff, or helps set up for dinner and night activities. The kids got some free time before dinner. A favorite was carpet ball. It is a fun game. Josh has been playing it at camp and church for over 15 years. I bet him a few times, but I think it was just pure luck. After dinner the children rehearsed their skits and had a little free time. The skits were so cute. The kids were able to choose to reenact the story exactly like in the Bible or put a modern twist on it. If the weather was nice after night time activities we would sing songs by a campfire. On the last night we also roasted marshmallows and made s’mores (One of my campfire favorites!). Josh and I presented to the kids about North Burma Christian Mission twice. Once as a part of vespers, talking about how we are all missionaries and do different work and how praying can be done for God’s work by any one any age. We also talked during chapel specifically about North Burma Christian Mission and VBS that the mission group is doing in August when they go over there. The kids were so excited to help be apart of the mission work and help kids just like them. They also helped decorate a display board. The best part about the whole week was getting to know some of the kids. We tried our best at talking to all the children. One little girl, who both Josh and I were particularly fond of, shared Josh’s love of mayonnaise. She liked to eat it right out of the bottle and put it on almost everything. Josh was given the title, by her and later caught on by many of the other kids, of Mr. Mayonnaise. Josh gave her a returned nickname as mayonnaise girl. She loved it. I hope we are able to go next year as the sponsored missionaries. We had a blast!


Theme for this summer camp


Evening games -Bible Bingo


Waiting for dinner


Carpet Ball


Hide and Seek- Staff hide and the campers had to find them. I think they only found 1-2 staff



Mr Mayonnaise and Mayonnaise girl (she couldn't even wait to like the mayo off her finger for me to take the picture)


Music



Vespers



One of the teams doing their skit



The NBCM VBS board that the kids helped made to know about the mission



Josh talking to the kids about the mission





One of the teams preparing for a game





Water balloon fight


Amanda being dunked in the cooler


Canteen before pool time


Our Last Dinner- themed "Hawaii Tropics"



End of the week awards and good-bye

On another note, Jamiie Jo had brought us a cat that was thin and looked as if she had had kittens recently. She had an old flea color that someone had written her name on with a Sharpie. She seemed relatively healthy other than her being thin. The next day we saw her with 2 kittens that looked to be close to stop nursing. They were also somewhat thin. She took very good care of them. I was a little worried but they seemed to be doing OK. Josh and I kept debating on what we should do if anything. We knew feeding her wouldn't do any good because we were only there for a week. On Wednesday, Josh was walking to our room to wake me from a nap and in his path was the mother with the 2 bigger kittens and 2 very small kittens. He ran and got me. After seeing she had 4 kittens to care for we knew our decision had to be to take her to a shelter where her and the kittens could be cared for and hopefully adopted. I watched the mother and her kittens while josh got a box to put them all in. The mother was very willing to let us take her kittens and she came along with us easily too. On the way to the vet she crawled in Josh’s lap and passed out. I think the poor girl was so tired from keeping those kittens safe and fed she was done. She knew we would take care of her and her kittens and she needed some rest. We felt so bad leaving her at the shelter. If we didn’t already had a handful of cats ourselves we would have happily taken the sweet mommy and tried to adopt her kittens. We knew the shelter was the best and only option. Afterwards, we went out to lunch in town to try to forgot about leaving her and the kittens and think good things before returning to camp. That night I keep waking up thinking there must be another kitten somewhere, who was know lost, lonely, scared and hungry. Thursday evening as the kids were about to go for a special night swim I looked over and saw Josh across the yard carrying something. My heart skipped a beat I think because I knew it was probably a kitten who now had not had its mother for a good day and half. I ran over to him to find him with a limb kitten covered in maggots, flies, ants, and fleas. The kids were going crazy. They wanted us to help the kitten. I was so afraid the kitten was going to die. Josh grapped a towel as I ran to the kitchen to get some milk or cream. We told the kids they had to leave us alone so we could take care of the kitten (we were more worried about the kids seeing the kitten die). Luckily, this little one was a fighter. She sawed drinking the milk after a little coaxing. We took her to our room Josh gave her a quick bath to try to get some of the insects off. I got my purse and phone and we rushed over to the local vet before they closed to see if they could help us. They said there wasn’t much they could do but we should bath her and feed her some kitten milk. We went to 2 different stores looking for kitten milk. During all this we were trying to think about what to do with her. Her mother and siblings would no longer be where we dropped them off since they were taken to one of the many different shelters that works with animal control. We knew we couldn’t take her. He called Jessica, since we knew she had been thinking about getting another cat so her cat would have some company when she moves out in a couple of months. Jessica is now the proud mommy of a little girl kitten, named Bobbie. So, now we have 5 cats at the Williams’ household and a kitty is with home and safe.

Momma cat and one of the bigger kittens

Jessica and Bobbie (her new kitty)

Week 29

I had my 29 week appointment yesterday. Dr Marichal had the results from my blood glucose test. I had a blood sugar level of 100, it had to be under 130. I am slightly anemic. I am starting on an extra iron supplement to make sure it gets better and not worst. Other than the low iron everything else was great. I listened to the baby’s heart beat, which is one of my favorites. Dr. Marichal measured me and I am exactly at 29 inches which is where I am supposed to be. Dr. Marichal also said my weight gain was perfect. I am having another sonogram at my next appointment (which is the 21st of July) to check on the baby, because of the abnormal umbilical cord. It will be awesome getting to see him/her again. I also registered with the hospital. Signing lots of papers for me and baby, I never realized you had to do all that. I am certainly glad you get to do it before you are in labor because I couldn’t imagine doing that during. Josh and I have to pick out the pediatrician between now and the next doctor appointment. 11 weeks to go, and less than 80 days. It is all coming so fast!

I will be posting about Tri-State Christan Camp soon.

Enjoy the baby belly pictures! (sorry they are so dark, they didn't look that way on the camera)