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!!!

I HATE INCOME TAXES!!! :)

well - i must say that pride does go before a fall. i was so proud of myself this year cause i didn't wait until the last minute to file our taxes. the last couple of years i have waited until right before to get them in the mail. but this year - i did them in february. and i was so proud of myself. sunday i was even chuckling about how my sister in law was still doing hers. then yesterday i was talking with some of my fellow teachers and realized that i had not done delaware state taxes. ugh!!! so yesterday was panic. i also had no time to do them because we had the first time home buyers class from 7-9. so i raced to target after school to get a tax program and them raced around finally after the class i was able to get started at around 10:45. then it wouldn't let me finish cause it had to update. stupid program. so this morning we got up at the crack of dawn to come to school to use the internet. then i had all kinds of problems thinking that we owed 1200 dollars. but it all worked out and hopefully i did it right. and they should be in the mail today. lucky! anyway - so this morning i'm all a mess of nerves and yet still have to teach my class. thank goodness its over.
well- we had a fabulous spring break. it was so relaxing and warm. i'll have to post the few pics that we have. but that might take awhile. anyway - i hope that all of you are doing well.
have a great day!

WE GOT THE HOUSE!!!!!!

thank you so much for your prayers. this is just the cherry on top. we knew before that God wanted us to move, but this house pulling through really helps to solidify the decision. we are so excited about what God has for us in this new place. so here are some pics of our new house. this is the front of it. it is located on a very quiet cul de sac
this is the living room with my very favorite hard wood floors.
this is the master bedroom (yeah the people were still living there so you have to use your imaginations). nice and big with a walk in closet!!!
this is the kitchen. i would rather that the cupboards didn't have this weird pink tinge to it, but oh well - it will be fun things to change
this is the backyard - it goes a bit the other way to and the deeper way.

so anyway - thank you again for praying!!! it is so cool when God answers prayer!!! :)

Florida or Bust - AGAIN!!! :)

well - some of you have heard the news, but for those of you that haven't - we're moving to florida once again. but this time not to a thriving metropolis - this time its a small town in northern florida about an hour from orlando and tampa. we weren't looking to move, but our former administrator called us and offered us both positions. so we went down to look and loved it. its a perfect small town to raise a family in and settle down. we're really hoping that this is our niche. :) the school is inverness christian academy (that's the town its in) and the church is fort cooper baptist church. the school is small but growing and so is the church. the other benefit is that we could buy a house and afford it. the houses that we were looking at up here were 200,000 and the ones down there we were looking at were 140,000 to give you some perspective. anyway we're really excited about it. and it looks like we're moving right after school is out at the beginning of june. (yes - before my birthday which i'm not too happy about.) we have to get down there so that we can start working for the summer. so i thought that i would post some pics of the school and church and our favorite house that we looked at.

this is inverness christian academy - the facilities are really nice!!!
this is the entrance to the church - fort cooper baptist church
and this is our favorite house - its on a cul de sac with no other houses around it. its got hard wood floors and 3 bedrooms and 2 baths. and its only 141,000. so if you think of it you could be praying for us as we go about telling the people here at concord and as we make plans to move down there this summer. also be praying that the Lord works out our housing situation so that we have a place to move into when we get down there!

so that's our exciting news - florida or bust! once again (and this time with an overactive hyperenergetic dog. if you have suggestions please feel free to share :) )

Long Time No Write!!!

Well - here i am...its been awhile and i wanted to post some new pics, but i just keep forgetting.

so here is our christmas pic with our ridiculous small tree in the background.

well some interesting news is that mark and i have been offered a new job in florida - our administrator from our old school moved to a different school and is offering us a position there. mark and i had decided that if God brought something to us we would be open to it and look into it. so that's what we're doing. tomorrow we fly down to orlando, florida - to take a look at the church and school. we would definitely appreciate your prayers as we look into this new place of employment.

i hope that all of you are having a fabulous day. today in pennsylvania it is going to be a whopping 72 degrees and i am going to enjoy it to the fullest!!! :) i hope that you get to enjoy your day as much as i am going to enjoy mine. (what also helps is that my troublemaker student is on vacation and i'm taking the dog to my parents tonight which means - FREEDOM!!!) :)

open house :(

well - these are most of my angels. the one all the way in the front is isaiah. this was taken on his last day of school. which i thought would make my life a whole lot easier, but i got walter. he's all the way on the right with the bunny ears. walter doesn't know his times tables, can't divide, spell, or read really. so i'm slightly confused as to why he's in my class. anyway - i have been tutoring but it is definitely like pulling teeth. if you think of it pray for walter. the other kids in the class don't really like him so they make fun of him. its sad - we're working on it.


well the reason that i'm posting so late is we have an open house at school - so i'm sitting here doing nothing. pretty much no one cares about 6th grade. :) so i'm bored!!! so i thought that i would update!! pretty much that's all that's new. no houses recently. hopefully some will come up soon!

thanks so much for your comments - i do appreciate them!! have a fabulous night!