for the eager readers :)

so i know that it has been forever since i've written. time really has flown. school has started and we are super busy with sports. God has been good. but there isn't much to write about right now so i thought that i would upload some pictures. i took this picture of charlie. this was when he was being good. probably tired from a walk. :) and this picture of us is from our anniversary trip. we had a lot of fun spending time together. it was very relaxing.

the beast...doesn't he look so innocent...that should give you a chuckle those of you that know our dog. :)

the angels are rejoicing!!!

well - i hope i get all the details right here...i wanted to share this with the many of you that have been praying for us.

last night mark was talking to a former student from s florida on facebook. she said that she had a co-worker that lost a baby. so this girl showed her the notes that we've both written. she said that she would like to have the same faith and hope that we have. so she showed her the gospel and the girl got saved!

this is so exciting to me to know that God is still using Annika to bring others to Him. each day He shows us a little more of His master plan. thank you for all of your prayers! please continue to pray that God will keep using us and Annika to bring more people to Him!!!

GOD IS SO GOOD!!!

the One who holds your hand

the other day i was looking through the journal that i keep, and i found some verses that i had written down during my devotions a couple of years ago (when we lived in s florida during hurricane wilma). and i thought that these verses were so neat and really encouraged me during the time i'm going through now. so i though i would share these with you now to hopefully be an encouragement to you.

Romans 8:37
but in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.

- i love this verse. we won't just conquer, but we will overwhelmingly conquer.

I peter 5:10
after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.

- yes life will be hard, but THE GOD OF ALL GRACE will use it to perfect you!
this last verse is my favorite...

psalms 37:23-24
the steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, and He delights in his way. when he falls, he will not be hurled headlong, because the Lord is the One who holds his hand.

- this verse is so encouraging to me...we won't be hurled headlong, because the Lord is the One who holds your hand...it just reminds me of the verse that says that (and this is jen version) God won't give you more than you are capable of handling. and all the while you're going through this hard time He is holding your hand! so cool!

these are some quotes that i found in a great devotional book called STREAMS IN THE DESERT.

"God turns our lives upside down so that we might see Him in a completely different and unforgettable way."

- so true...and if He didn't turn our lives upside down, we wouldn't get to experience the new things we learn about Him.

"Jesus Christ is not my security against the storms of life, but He is my perfect security in the storms. He has never promised me an easy passage, only a safe landing."

-sometimes we think that life is going to be easy because God is in our lives. but He never tells us that. He does say that He will be with us the whole time and that we can trust that He will never leave us or forsake us.

i hope that this is an encouragement to you. even if you aren't going through a hard time right now, its an exciting reminder of all that God does for us!

again thank you all for your prayers, please continue to pray for us as each day brings new reminders of our precious annika

God is good.

i have been wanting to post some pictures of annika so all of you could see her. i'm a little nervous about it which is kinda dumb i know. i just don't want any of you to be hurt. i want you to be able to see what a special gift God gave us.

by the way - she does have the levis nose for sure. :) mark thinks that she doesn't really look like him, but she did have pretty big hands (basketball player hands) :).

annika ruth corbin

june 9, 2008

8 lbs. 2 0z.

21.5 inches long

the picture below is from the private viewing we had at the funeral. she looked so pretty. although the shoes that we had for her were just a little too big :) . this picture is probably my favorite of all of them. its so neat to know that she is enjoying God's presence right now.

tomorrow will be one month since annika was born. i was just telling mark that it feels so much longer than a month. i think that its been so neat to see how God has taken care of us. people we don't even know that well have been sending us cards. words can't even express how much it means to us. yes we have our hard days, but God is good. He tells us to cast our cares upon Him because He cares for us. that was something that i never really did before and definitely didn't understand fully. but God has made that so real to me now. i know that i can trust Him with anything that comes my way. He is in control and He knows what is best for my life.

when we first got pregnant i was so worried about how we were going to pay for everything because we didn't have insurance at the time. i worried so much. we had so many costs come up as well as extra blood tests (fun ;)) but every time God provided. He took care of us. and in my journal every entry i wrote about how we can trust God and He'll provide and take care of us. little did i know how God would test us. But now 1 month later, i can say without a doubt that i trust God and He'll provide and take care of us.

Remember, no matter how horrible the situation may seem, God has a plan. He can see the big picture. He can see the road ahead. i just need to trust Him and He will take care of the rest. i just want to thank everyone so much for all of the prayers and support that you have given us. There is no way that we would be making it today without them. and if you don't know Jesus as your personal Savior, i hope that you will accept Him today. with Him your life can be an abundant life.

a bend in the road

this has been a week that will be etched in my mind forever. it all started on sunday, i was 4 days past my due date and contractions started. at first i didn't really realize they were contractions so we went to church where they continued and then out to eat afterwards. by the time we got home i finally realized what they were and we started keeping track. we went to the hospital around 12 that night and they admitted me right away. the contractions were really close together and mark kept telling me to just relax. whatever obviously he hasn't experienced contractions before :). finally the doctor with the pain medicine came in (i couldn't figure out how to spell it correctly :) ). the epidural was fabulous. i was dilated 4 cm when we came in and by around 6 i was fully dilated. they wanted to wait a little longer so that the contractions were closer together and the baby would face downward. then they lost the heartbeat. there was a bit of panic and they had me in a couple of different positions. finally they rushed me in for an emergency c section. which i must admit was really scary. the doctors took really good care of us and tried to calm us down. all the medication that they gave me combined with the hormones made me shake really bad. mark was really scared and we prayed probably the entire time. God really took care of us. when they took the baby out they found a heartbeat but she wasn't breathing on her own and she wasn't moving or responding. her eyes also weren't dilating which means her brain was probably damaged too. they finished the surgery and took us back to our room. we talked to the doctor and he gave us a very grim picture. at this point we didn't know that she had a heartbeat. after he left we prayed that God would work a miracle and He gave us an amazing peace. we asked if we could go see her and the nurses made sure that we could they even rolled my bed into the nicu and we got to see her and hold her. they even took her off the ventilator and unhooked all her tubes so that we could see her. my mom was there along with mark and our pastor and the rileys. it was the hardest thing i have ever had to do, but amazingly God gave us the strength and we said bye to our baby girl. we knew deep down in our hearts that God had a specific purpose even if we couldn't see it right then.

we had the funeral yesterday. i kept telling mark that i feel too young to have to do this. we had a private viewing which actually was really nice. both families were able to see her and she looked so perfect and peaceful. we even got some more pictures of her since she was all cleaned up and in a beautiful dress. the only problem was that her shoes were just a little bit too big. ;) we had the memorial service around 2 yesterday. it was beautiful. there were so many flowers and so many of our students and athletes came. the whole time i was a little worried. i really wanted to see a slight glance of God's purpose and at the end of the service Bro. Marne (our pastor) gave a salvation invitation and at least 2 people got saved. it was so encouraging to me. i knew that annika was special, but it was so exciting to see results of her impact so soon!

and lastly i want to thank everyone for all of your prayers and support. i don't know how we would have done it without our friends, family, and especially our relationship with God. and we want Him to get all the praise and glory for everything that has happened!! God makes no mistakes!!

baby update!

sorry about the last blog. i'm so tired and cranky that i had to vent somewhere! ;)

we were just at the doctor yesterday, and he said that i'm progressing nicely but it doesn't look like she will be early. which is good for me if you read the last blog. it will be nice to have the baby when i don't have to worry about my class behaving and getting things done for a substitute. as reassurance the doctor told me that he wouldn't let me go past 41 or 42 weeks. ugh!! i don't think that i want to wait that long. but so far everything seems okay.

we have the baby's room all ready to go. we picked up the last few little things that we need last weekend so we're ready when she gets here. we will definitely post pictures of her and her room as soon as we can!

through all of this it has been neat to see how God has taken care of us and the baby. i'm excited to see what she looks like and how God continues to take care of us in the future!

another update

well - here we are may 19 and only 11.5 days of school left. (that doesn't include the weekends!!) that also leaves me with only about 2.5 weeks until i'm due. everyone has been giving me encouraging words about how i'm going to go early. but for me its not that encouraging. pregnancy has not been that horrible for me except that i'm so tired and have to use the restroom all the time. plus if i go early then i have a substitute for my class the rest of the year - which i am prepared for but would rather not have. so i guess i selfishly want to keep my baby where she is until june 4 then by all means let her rip!! :)

sorry if i sound a little bitter. i just get irrritated because every day someone is telling me - oh you look like you could go any day now. and really i would rather not go any day now. i just need to remind myself that God is in control of the timing of the birth and not those around me. his timing will be perfect.

anyway - sorry about that. so far so good. the doctor checked at my last visit and i wasn't dilated at all and i haven't had any contractions so we're doing okay. we did visit the hospital and pre-registered and saw the rooms and its actually really nice. i think that its neat because we kinda just picked a hospital without knowing anything about it. God really worked it out. this whole pregnancy has been a trust issue for me. God has really proven himself to us! well we go to the doctors on wednesday and we'll see if he has any new news for us. otherwise we are just trusting God and waiting on HIS perfect timing!!!

a short update!

i know i haven't written on this in awhile. i feel like i say that all the time. oh well...i just wanted to write, because God has really been at work in our lives lately. first i had to have some blood work done. those of you who have been pregnant will understand the hated sugar test. well the first time i had it done they didn't tell me what they were setting the appointment up for. it was also the day of our carnival at school. so i was hungry (what else is new) and i ate a bunch of cotton candy. of course that didn't help my plight and i failed the first test. so they scheduled me for another more in depth sugar test. this one would take 3 hours and i had to fast. what a pain. well...i failed the first of the four blood tests by one point. the rest i passed. when we talked to the doctor he said that one abnormal made the whole test abnormal. he said that they could treat me as gestation diabetes or we could do the test again. well since i have a dread of needles and a lack of money to pay for all the stuff necessary we decided to take the test again (it wasn't really that hard of a decision). so on thursday last week i did the 3 hour fast test again. i was really praying. it is so hard for me to not worry about these stupid things even though i know that God is in control. finally i just relaxed and realized that God was in control and if i had this diabetes that he would provide and give MARK (because i of course couldn't do it myself) the strength to give me the injections :). and the tests on thursday went fantastically. God really worked it out. everything was low so no worries.

its also been neat to see how God has provided money for us. our insurance is lacking so we've been paying pretty much out of pocket for the doctors visits, blood work, and ultrasounds. and when they told us how much we would have to pay a month i freaked out. i had no idea where the money would come from. (you can now completely see how much a worrier i am). but each time we had to pay somehow we had the money. it didn't come from miraculous means necessarily (like george mueller) but we had it. now we only have one payment left. and i don't know how we made it. bills were paid; we had food. God is good! that's all i can say. so if you are discouraged today or you are worrying - DON'T!! God is in control and he has a perfect plan for your life.

also we have the baby's room almost finished. and our guest room too. everyone who has been staying with us has had to sleep on air mattresses well no more! we have a real bed with a real mattress and even some decorations. so i will post pictures of our finishing touches later hopefully!

we hope that everyone is doing well! have a fantastic tuesday!

pictures finally

well we finally have pics and its at the end of my class' computer class so i have to hurry. we hope that you all are doing well. we are looking forward to the end of basketball. only a few more games to go. march 15 here we come. :) otherwise everything is the same :)



this is a picture of our baby annika ruth. sorry that its been awhile. right now i'm 26 weeks. :)
mark came with us to our animal kingdom field trip. and we went to a bug's life the 3d show and these are our glasses. we thought they were funny. so we took a pic. plus i couldn't go on any of the other rides 'cause i was pregnant so we had to have some fun. :)
and here is a picture of our beast at christmas. i took so many pics to try to get a good one and actually had one that came out. he's actually behaving. :) he's been doing much better since we moved, but he still is his excitable self. in fact he probably jumped at the camera as soon as it took :)

more news!!!

well - on friday we had our ultrasound. yeah i know its a little late. we were waiting on medicaid (which amazingly we make too much for - ugh!) we found out that so far our baby is healthy and normal. the doctor also said that she is 95% sure that its a girl. so we're excited. we'll probably name her annika (after mark's grandma anna - it also has a cool meaning - a woman graced by God's favor) ruth (after mark's mom). so i have to scan the picture for the relatives so as soon as i do that i will post it on the internet. hopefully soon! hope that everyone is doing well!

an exciting announcement!!!

well - we wanted to let everyone know some exciting news that we have. we are having a baby. we just had our second appointment. i'm 15 weeks along with a due date of june 4. we are very excited. we don't know what it is yet, but we were able to listen to the heartbeat on wednesday which definitely made it real. :) anyway - we just wanted to let the bloggers know our special news. sorry no pics again. i really need to get my act together. :)

merry christmas!!!

long time no write!!!!

i know its been forever. i'm sorry - i'm sure no one checks this anymore, but just in case i'll post a few words. we've been having trouble with our computer so i have to get all our pics off and bring them to school to upload. i'll get around to it sometime.

so...what's new? well - this weekend is our last weekend of volleyball - praise the Lord!!! i have never felt so horribly about a sport in my life. this season was just way too long. our conference is set up really weird (mark is trying to change it). our sports overlap - they were still having volleyball games and we had to start bball practice our first game is on monday!!! ahhh!!! mark is coaching the boys and guess what i am coaching the girls. :) yes - i know everyone is shocked. so far its going well - although i do have some funny stories about girls that i am sure have never even see a basketball before let alone shoot or dribble one. yeah its slightly frustrating. anyway - that just gets me worked up so lets move on.

we fixed up the outside of our house although the one side is still all sand. yuck! we painted the outside and landscaped - a little - i'll be sure to post some pics later.

besides sports nothing else is happening really - we are really looking forward to thanksgiving break - not only are we going to get to see our family but we also get some vacation time. something that we really need. although i'm sure we will still be tired afterwards that just seems to be the way that it works. :)

well - i should go - my class computer time is almost up. have a fantastic day!

pictures finally!!!

well i know that some of you have been eagerly waiting to see what our house looks like now. i had taken some pics when it was clean but lost them so i had to take some more spur of the moment. :) so pardon the messyness. this is the living room - well part of it. the front door is behind the striped couch. and i was a little worried about the brown, but i love it. the floors look like wood but they are actually kindof like linolium. makes it perfect for the dog. i was a little worried about wood floors and him ;)
here is the kitchen. this room we haven't done much to because of finances, but we are planning on changing the ugly green countertops and painting the cabinets as well as putting hardware on them. but the one thing that i love about this is the amount of storage space. its fantastic.
here is a picture of the living room - all of it. we will probably be putting in a coffee table. but we still need to work on refinishing it.
this is our bedroom - inspired by pottery barn. we really liked the dark blue with the dark wood and the white accents so we made it our own.
here is our dining room - we might actually be getting a new table and chairs from my gma levis and the "buffet" i found at a flea market and we'll be putting floating shelves to display our china, but that hasn't been done yet either so now its a place for my purse and dead plant (i should get rid of that) ;) we do have two other bedrooms - one is going to be the office. we finally finished painting the desk, but we still have to paint the room - red. yes we do like our colors. and the guest room doesn't have any furniture - we're still waiting on that. and no painting in that room - we'll wait to really decorate it. most of our money now will be going into putting a fence around our backyard mainly for the dog, but also to give us a little privacy since we do have any elderly neighbor that likes to be in the know about what's going on. this way he might not be able to tell just by looking out his back door. yeah he's a little creepy. :)

so those are the pics. update on betsy - she went to the oncologist and the lump was gone and the doctor gave her a clean bill of health!!! praise the lord!!!

and mark and i just got back from celebrating our 3rd wedding anniversary. i can't believe how time flies. its so much fun. we went to madeira beach its just south of clearwater florida. we had a lot of fun and came away with sunburn. and yes we did put on sunscreen but obviously not powerful enough. or we had just been out of the sun for a little too long. :)

so we hope that everyone is doing well - enjoy the rest of your summer!!!!

Sorry about the wait!!

i have been putting off blogging cause i wanted to post some pics. but i forgot that we don't have access to the internet yet so i'll post anyway and offset the confusion. yes - we did get the house everything went perfectly fine. it didn't even take that long to sign the papers. so yes we are living in the house and we unpacked and painted and moved most things in. we're still working on some minor details and spending lots of money :). but its fun. and i promise to post some pics as soon as i get internet which should be this week sometime.

while i post let me write a prayer request. my sister betsy went to the doctors for a routine physical and they found a lump in her breast. she is only 20 years old. so they went to get an ultrasound done and the doctor's found nothing. but they are still concerned cause if they felt something they should have seen something. so they want her to go to the oncologist. the only appointment for her to go is while my parents are in alaska visiting steph and jonathan. so if you could be praying for her and my family that would be great. she is very nervous as would be expected.

thanks so much for your prayers and your birthday wishes.

the move!!

we left pennsylvania on wednesday and took two days to drive down to florida - stopping in greenville, sc to see some friends on the way. tomorrow is the big day - we close on our house. so if you think about us be praying for us that it goes smoothly without any problems. we will let you know more details soon!!!

More Wedding Pics

well some of you asked for more pics of the wedding party. so here they are. mark tried to take more but they didn't come out quite right. if you would like more you can check out www.stylishimages.com and look under hamilton wedding. enjoy!!!

Steph's Wedding!!!

so the wedding is over and steph and jonathan have been married for a whole week. its definitely a little weird, but i guess that i'll get used to it. :) so i wanted to post some pics of the wedding. it was really pretty and went very well.
so my mom made the dresses again just like she did for my wedding.
here's the fam with gma...
so this is steph and me at the rehearsal. it was a pretty emotional night. steph gave us started scrapbooks. and of course i started to cry. its hard thinking that she'll be living in alaska from here until God moves them. but we're okay. we'll keep in touch. :) so it was a good time and i'm looking forward to seeing them when they get back (from the cayman islands) :).

the busy month of may!!!

well - may has been pretty busy for us. it started off with steph graduating from clearwater christian college. we were all able to make it. it was really neat to see how God worked out all the details. we had a lot of fun celebrating this milestone in her life. and as many of you know steph is getting married on saturday (may 19) to jonathon hamilton, and they are moving to alaska after they get married. so we enjoyed this one last family event before steph "falls off the face of the world" (or alaska in other words).

part of our being able to go to steph's graduation was that we became the chaperones for the senior trip. we flew down to clearwater and met up with them and headed off to the wild's christian camp. they didn't seem to excited about it, but i think that if you asked them now they would say that it was so much more fun than they expected. they really did have a blast. and of course so did we. it was really neat to see God work in the kids lives as well as ours. :) i did really enjoy being a chaperone. while the kids suffer without there cell phones - we were still able to use ours!!! :)
if you've ever been to the wilds you know that they are famous for their giant swing. now i've been on it twice and didn't feel like being on it again. but mark decided that he would go on it with one of the boys. this is "THE DROP". it was so funny!!! we really did have a good time. so much laughing!!!:)
well - these are the kids - that's right only 4 (actually there are 6 but 2 of them weren't allowed to come). and this is the van...our faithful companion. with all of our stuff crammed in it it seems that they still enjoyed themselves. :)
here they are again. so that's may so far and its far from over... i'm sure that i will have plenty to write about after the upcoming nuptuals(sp?). i hope that all of my faithful readers are doing well!!! ;)

PICTURES!!!!

this is mark and me at the junior/senior. that is the delaware river in the background.

much better than those self taken pics. :)

this is the delaware at sunset...definitely not that bad! :)
this was over spring break - we were in ft lauderdale visiting some friends from our previous school - the three kids on the left are students of mark's. (christina, chris, and kirstie and then matt and jodi)
we took a pit stop in greenville. we went to this park and saw these waterfalls - it was really beautiful. although we had to look at them from this suspension bridge which i didn't enjoy too much!
and this is us on that horrible bridge. once again - a little bit better than those self taken pics.

have a great tuesday...2 days down - 3 to go!!! (until friday of course!)

a long weekend.

well i was going to post some pictures of our junior/senior, but i forgot the camera hook up at home. we went to this nice place just over the bridge into new jersey. it was right off the delaware river (i know if you've seen the delaware its not that much to be impressed with) but it was really pretty at sunset - we got some pretty nice pictures - well i guess anything is better than a close up taken by us - you know the hold out the camera type. so we did that friday.

i was so excited to get to sleep in on saturday that i almost killed the dog when he decided to start barking incessently at 6:30 in the morning. so i got up and fed him and walked a mile and a half then put him back to bed. and guess what he decided to keep it up. i was going to shoot him. i told mark that if it continues we would take him to the spca - i don't love him enough to endure the barking. so mark and i did shifts of playing and sleeping. needless to say it was horrible. he was out of his crate a very good part of the day and he seemed pretty worn out. i think that total he probably walked 6 or 7 miles. :) so we put him to bed thinking that he was just mad that we were out late on friday night, but then at 6:30 sunday morning the dog goes off again like an alarm clock. so i did the same thing as before and of course it didn't work. so after church we went to petsmart to look at those zapper dog collars - like on fun with dick and jane. they are ridiculously expensive.

so my question for the few viewers that i have is this: how do you keep your dogs from waking you up at the crack of dawn? how do you keep them quiet? we are open to all techniques - humane or not. :)

well - i hope that your weekend was much better than mine. and of course the work week has arrived all too soon!

ps - i must say that mark is fabulous. i was so tired on sunday that he played with the dog for 2 hours while i took a much needed nap. and then before church he put my desks back in the correct arrangement in my classroom!!! he's is definitely without question my most favorite person! thanks babe!

HAVE A GREAT MONDAY!!!