2 years and counting!!!

Happy Anniversary to Dan and me!!!!!! While 2 years is barely a drop in the bucket for some, it's still cause for celebration for us!!! This last year has been much less eventful then our first year, and for that we are grateful. We spent most of the year enjoying our family and watching Maddison grow. We celebrated holidays, went on vacation, and just enjoyed life! March was a bit rough with the miscarriage and everything associated with that, but we have since recovered mostly and are back to "regular scheduled life" so to speak.

Dan is actually on call this week, so we won't be doing anything special for our anniversary until after, but then we are, courtesy of my parents Christmas present to us, headed to Jasper for a weekend just the two of us!!!! We are hopefully going to take the bike (the first big bike trip for me) and just have us time without kiddo. It's wonderful to have parents around to babysit!!!!

And that's about it for now. Next post.... will either be on natural disasters or Maddison, but it will probably be soon.

The World We Live In

I live in a small town. I was born in this small town. In all reality, I will probably spend most, if not all, of my life in this small town. I have however had wonderful opportunities to travel to many different places in the world and I have enjoyed these ventures greatly. However, nothing ever gets the small town mentality out of a person.

In addition to growing up in a small town, I am a born-again Christian and believe the Bible word for word, which means that in most controversial topics, I lean to the right - which in today's world seems to be the upopular opinion.

Where is this going you ask?

Well I browse on a public forum website about pregnancy and parenting. I don't contribute to many conversations on there but I browse and in all honesty, it has opened my eyes to the spiritual/moral condition of others out there. Living in the small, northern town that I do kind of shelters me from the "true" condition of the world. This public forum allows me to see the real world (at least the North American part of it) and it saddens me to see how far from the Biblical worldview we have come. Life is no longer sacred. A baby is no longer considered a baby unless it is physically breathing on it's own outside of it's mother. A marriage can be thrown away for nothing. Affairs are common-place. Family doesn't necessarily come first. The Bible is a story and contains no factual information. It doesn't matter what you do, as long as it's right for you that's ok.

Where is the hope in that? Where is the santicity of human life? Where is the value of family? And most importantly, what is the point in doing the things you do if you don't have an eternal future?

This past weekend was Easter. I love Easter, but it doesn't usually bring the same excitement for me as Christmas. This year was different however. I think it's because of the miscarriage I had in March, but for some reason I just couldn't wait for Easter sunday to get here. The hope that Christ rising from the dead gives me (and everybody else who chooses to accept Him) is that I know for a fact that I will see my baby in Heaven. He/she may have only been 8 1/2 weeks "old" and wasn't bigger then a raspberry, but most major bodily organs and systems were already mostly formed. My babies heart was beating at one point. That "fetus" was my baby. Could that baby survive outside of me? No. That doesn't make it any less human. But because of my Saviors sacrifice for me, I have hope that not only will I one day see my baby, but that I can live my life with peace because I know my eternal future. This world may throw some pretty weird stuff at me and my viewpoint may be unpopular at times, but above all else, I know where I am going to end up.

Praise God! I serve a risen Savior, He's in the world today!

When God Speaks....

He knows what to say.

"Through the Lords' mercies we are not consumed,
because His compassions fail not.
They are new every morning;
Great is Your faithfulness.
'The Lord is my portion,' says my soul,
'Therefore I hope in Him!'
The Lord is good to those who wait for Him,
to the soul who seeks Him."

Lamentations 3: 22-25

"For You formed my inward parts;
You covered me in my mother's womb.
I will praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made,
Marvelous are Your works,
And that my soul knows very well.
My frame was not hidden from You,
When I was made in secret,
And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the eart.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance, being yet unformed.
And in You book they all were written,
The days fashioned for me,
When as yet there were none of them"

Psalm 139:13-16

Honestly, these last couple of days have been hard. I am physically recovered and doing very well and emotionally I am getting there, but some points of the day are harder then others. If I don't hear anything from the doctor today I am in the clear, so maybe after today my healing will be even better. I never thought that you could miss someone you never met. I was wrong, but God is still faithful. He has brought Dan and me closer because of this and my love for Maddison has grown to even stronger levels that I didn't know existed. My heart still hurts yes, but I have hope and I have no idea where I would be without it.

Praise God for His faithfulness and love. He is the giver of all things and He has the strength that we do not.

Recent Events

Well, this was supposed to be a happy announcement, however this past week has changed that. On February 8 Dan & I found out that I was pregnant with baby #2. All was going well and the expected due date was October 16. Last week Saturday (March 5) I started experiencing some spotting, which led to a trip to the ER and two doctors appointments last week. In short, March 11 I lost the baby at about 8 1/2 weeks.

The past week has been rough as we had no answers to our questions until Friday, when we discovered for sure that I was experiencing a miscarriage. It's not an easy thing to go through, but it is what happens on occasion and we have had lots of support from friends and family. The picture to the right is of the flowers that my parents bought Dan & me yesterday after everything happened. I think my mom knows me well!!!

Well, well, well....

How life goes by quickly! My baby has turned one. Her first birthday was on February 12 and we had a grand time! Dan's parents and sister came up, so for the weekend we had 4 kids under the age of 3 in the house. Talk about busy!!! We didn't do much for a party, as she is only one and won't remember any of this anyway. We had family over for cake after supper and then opened gifts. By the end of the gift opening Maddison was ready for bed! I made my first birthday cake ever (well, for a kid anyway...) and it turned out great. Because Maddison LOVES puppies and anything that goes "woof" I decided to make a dog cake. So to the internet I went and found instructions and whatnot for a dog cake. Then I used Emily as inspiration for the frosting and went from there. It actually turned out really well and I was quite pleased with it!

Seeing as this is the first post of 2011, I have to say that we have enjoyed our year so far! After the huge snowfall in the middle of January I decided to buy Dan a snowblower, so we now have a snowblower! We also bought me a new computer because my old one was rapidly wearing out. It's nice to be able to turn on my computer now and know it will turn on! We've gone skating a couple of times and discovered that Maddison loves it! She just grins and laughs as we skate around pulling her on the sled. It's very cool! Her newest accomplishment (as of today) is taking a few steps between me and Dan! It's very cute to watch!!

We've had quite a busy year already with the church, but it seems to have slowed down in the past couple of weeks, so that's nice. God has already used this year to stretch us and teach us many things, so it is looking to be quite the year!!

So Happy New Year, Happy Valentines day, and Happy family day!!!!

Some thoughts....

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm%2010&version=NKJV

This has been on my heart for quite some time, but I have never sat down to write about it. Over the past year I have struggled somewhat in keeping up my daily walk with the Lord. To be brutally honest, I basically didn't have any daily time with the Lord. I prayed and trusted in what He was doing, but devotions and taking time to grow were not in the picture. There is an online parenting forum that I like to browse (it's not a Christian site) and it never ceases to amaze me what people believe about Christianity. Every so often on the site there is a "discussion" about religion and when reading responses, it hurts me to see the hurt in our world. So a couple months ago I kind of hit rock bottom. I knew I had to get back to daily time with the Lord (as much as possible considering I do have a 10 month old who sometimes makes it quite impossible) so I started reading the Psalms. I got to Psalm 10 and was struck by the truth of that Psalm and our current world. I don't have the time to type it out now, but I have linked Psalm 10 from an online Bible if you want to read it. The truth is, no matter how hurt this world gets, no matter how tough it seems, God will prevail and in that we can rejoice.

To add one more piece to this, I have a friend who is living in southern BC serving at a church with her husband. In her blog she wrote today about the blessing of buying groceries for one particular man (http://moresweetthansour.blogspot.com/2010/12/grocery-list.html). It struck me that this is what Psalm 10 is also about. God is using my friend and this ministry to be a "helper to the fatherless" so to speak. It's compassion. It's understanding that God sees the bigger picture. It's knowing that when we do our part, God uses that for His glory no matter how small that part may be.

It's Winter!!!

We have now entered my favorite time of the year. It's winter and Christmas is coming. My house is wonderfully decorated with Christmas lights, greenery, the nativity scene and, of course, the tree!!!! We continued our Christmas tradition of heading out into the woods to get the tree and this time Maddison was with us. She did great and didn't complain about the cold at all. It was a great day and we had fun finding and decorating the tree. That said, once we had it up, it fell down the next day! So we had to re-decorate, but it was still fun.

Life has been truckin' along just nicely. We have probably 6 inches or so of snow on the ground and more falling as I type, so that's been good finally. We are doing some re-training for our dog Emily as she is not reacting to Maddison all that well at all, but we have seen some progress so that is good. Maddison is keeping us busy doing her baby things. She pulls herself up onto every piece of furniture and LOVES to play the piano. If the lid is open, she's there! It's quite cute actually and I've gotten quite a few pictures of her there. She's also crawling everywhere and basically discovering that the world is much bigger then the living room! She enjoys going out on the sled for walks, which Emily also enjoys, and will just sit there and look at everything as we move along.

Dan and me have been busy but not, if that makes any sense. We've had some sound stuff that we've done, the Ladies Tea and a couple of Sundays to fill, but for the most part it's been a little bit slower then usual in between his weeks of call. He goes on call again next week, so that will make for an interesting week I'm sure, and then the week after that is Christmas, so it's getting close! We are completely done our shopping for the year, so now it's just getting the stuff wrapped and under the tree, which won't happen until the 23rd or so.

Anyway, just thought I would pop in and update a little bit for you. Merry Christmas!!!!