Week One

It's hard for me to believe that I already have one week of my maternity leave gone!  I must say that I enjoyed it immensely.  It was a great week!  I had hoped to have a few more things done by now, but I've let myself off the hook and tried to really rest whenever I can.  The big things are done, everything else is part of my type-A plan!  God has been so, so gracious to both of us this week and really let us catch up on some much needed sleep.  The last few nights I have fallen asleep so hard and stayed asleep.  What a blessing!  I don't know if it's the mental relief of knowing I don't have to be up and out the door the next day or what, but I have gotten a great amount of sleep every night.  I know this is a gift and definitely a temporary respite for what is to come :) But, after the last month of terrible sleep, I'll take it!!  

Now my greatest struggle is that I am getting impatient about Ava coming.  I feel very ready, like things are under control at home, and now I'm just dying to finally see her!!  Every day I wake up and wonder if this will be the day....and then I go to bed and pray that something will happen during the night!  All those weeks of memorizing chapter one of James are coming in handy.  My perseverance is being developed far greater than I ever anticipated!!  I don't know if I could say that I'm "mature and complete, not lacking in anything" but I am trying hard to "consider it pure joy when you face trials of many kinds!"   The final weeks of pregnancy are a trial of a whole new kind :)  All of my control issues are coming to the surface now and I'm walking through a daily, minute by minute exercise of trusting the Lord and letting go of my 

"plans."  

I do have a specific thing I've asked the Lord for and I'm trying hard to hold it with a very loose hand.  One week from today, my sister and brother-in-law will be flying in from North Carolina for 10 days and my parents and my other sister will be driving up too.  They'll all be here for Easter weekend and again the following weekend.  I would LOVE it if Ava would be here for them :) In my perfect world, I'd love to have her anytime between now and then!  I know the Lord has the timing already worked out and I'm doing my best to rest in that, no matter how it shakes out.  If these 9 months have taught me anything, it's that I have no control over any of this, He does!  And He's very trustworthy, so I'm leaving the details in His capable hands.  But don't think I haven't laid all out all the reasons for why it would be "best in my eyes" by next Thursday :) Help me Lord, I'm a work in progress...

I did want to thank you for the birthday wishes for Travis yesterday!  We had a fun day together and he was very blessed with many phones calls, texts, emails, etc.  Facebook is the best thing ever for making you feel special on your birthday :) He heard from all kinds of old friends and that was fun for him.  Here's what we did together....

We drove to the Minnesota Zoo, so we could see a movie here, at the I-Max.

And this is what we saw :) Definitely his choice, but I will say it was good, very funny.

I had contractions throughout the entire thing, I kept wondering if we were going to have to leave.  Either the cartoon was exciting for Ava or she was just plain uncomfortable with the way I had to sit in a stadium seat.  I'm going with the second option, because I was uncomfortable, so I know she must have been!

Here is the birthday boy, thrilled with the whole experience :) 

And here we both are, in our very stylish glasses!  Don't let mine fool you though, I had to take them off after the first 15 minutes because I was so nauseous and I had a raging headache!  I watched 80% of the movie in fuzzy 2-D and I managed to still enjoy it.  I did put the glasses back on for the final 30 seconds, because it really is incredible to see the clarity and detail in 3-D, but I clearly could only handle a few frames of it before my head started hurting again!  

After the movie, we went to Mall of America for awhile and walked around, then we had dinner at one of favorite restaurants there, Twin City Grill.  It's so good!  We ran into my cousin Amy and her family at Nickelodeon Universe riding some rides, and then we went home and watched the epic end to ER.  It was a fun, low-key day and today we have more of the same kind of stuff planned.  Lots of walking and errands :)   Whatever it takes at this point to get this show on the road!  

Hope you have a great Friday!  It's a beautiful, sunny day here...not quite as beautiful as our experience last year at this time, but still nice :) Seems like a great day for a baby to be born!! I'm just saying it would be nice to have sunshine in the delivery room...Enjoy!!