Three skeletons, a doctor and a peacock.

Where have I been? Oh you know, making kindergarten lunches, helping with classroom parties, working, making a small human being from scratch, reading "Mama Rex and T" over and over and over to a toddler, negotiating toy disputes, going to work, running a photography business... the usual.

This year Gabriella decided to dress as a doctor for Halloween. I tried to suggest she dress as a doctor last year (knowing that she would get hours and hours of play time out of the doctor costume as she loves to play doctor.) However, if I remember correctly, I was shot down and told something along the lines of, "Thats not my cutest." This year I threw out several cutesy girly suggestions and Gabriella bounced around several of those ideas, but when we came across some cheap scrubs at Target she finally decided that it would indeed be very fun to go as "Doctor Gabriella." Add a white lab coat from the dress up box (a second hand find Aunt Amy made last year) and a photoshopped doctor ID badge and she made a pretty convincing MD. I have to admit, I was a little annoyed that we heard several, "Oh what a cute nurse!" comments while we were out and about. Nurses don't wear lab coats and I'm pretty sure that if she was a little boy in the same costume not one person would've assumed she was a nurse.

This face cracks me up. Clearly she is still not into having her picture taken... yet I have to admit that it is a very "Gabriella" expression.

At least she is smiling on her badge.

Juliana had a bit less say in her costume. Fortunately, her only real desire was to dress up as something... anything really and that made her pretty easy to please. She doesn't remember Gabriella's stint as a peacock two years ago and she was delighted with her costume. A good thing, because I really love the peacock costume. Do you think I can get away with putting their little brother in it? (Just kidding!)

I could just eat those blonde spiral pony tails for breakfast. Deliciously cute.

My costume was truly pulled together at the last minute. I needed something appropriate to wear for the kids at work on Friday so I googled for maternity costume ideas. Thursday night I took a black shirt and some cheap felt I had on hand and pulled together a darn cute "Pregnant Skeleton" in about an hour and a half. I used fabric glue to secure the tiny pieces of the baby skeleton to a piece of black felt and then very loosely basted the adult skeleton parts and the black felt square containing the baby skeleton to the black maternity tee shirt. Unfortunately, I ran out of felt and didn't get a chance to make arm bones and the adult rib cage was done very hastily (and the very loose basting started to fail me before long). Nonetheless, it was a really fun "costume" to wear.

(Yep, thats my belly in the vanity mirror of the van. You should always be sure to properly restrain your children in the car.)

And now... a whole ton more pictures...

16 weeks

Really its more like 16.5 weeks... but who is counting? (Other than me. I am totally counting.)

I finally drug Jonathan outside this evening to take a couple baby bump pictures. They are the first we've taken for this baby and I was starting to feel guilty that this poor third child was already suffering from a lack of pictures/ general documentation. Jonathan hates to be forced to take pictures and to be honest, I'm MUCH more comfortable on the other side of that lens. We both managed to make it through a few frames and I'm at least willing to post these two on the internet....

After Jonathan was finished with his official documentation he turned around and snapped this picture of the girls. They had followed us out of the house. Gabriella was brandishing a stick, and Juliana was clothed in a shirt, undies and a play silk. I love this picture. It is such a "partners in crime" picture. I'm so jealous that when Daddy is holding the camera they are evidently willing to ham it up. I guess I'll have to hand it over more often.

Summer Visits

My dad and Barb came and visited us two weeks ago. We hadn't seen them since we were last in Iowa. Miss. Juliana was just taking her first step then... the girls have changed so much. It was a good visit and the girls basked in all of the grandparental attention. Gabriella ate her body weight in spaghetti and Juliana gave away lots of free hugs. Also, Gabriella got a wedding dress, but that thing deserves its own post.


This is my favorite picture of my Dad with Juliana.

Farmers Market

Juliana: I'm off to work!

Me: "Where do you work?

Juliana: The Farmers Market

Me: Oh. What do you grow on your farm to sell at the market?

Juliana: Peaches, rice and chicken.

Me: I would like to buy some of your peaches. How much do they cost?

Juliana: All of your cents.

S'mores

Now that is my kind of summer grilling.

Let's back up a bit, shall we?

So... back to May... which seems to be where we left off.

Jonathan graduated from seminary.

(Excuse the snapshot)

I can hardly leave that entirely unblogged. We moved to Oregon for seminary. It was a four year full time endeavor. Jonathan translated countless pages of ancient greek, wrote papers, poured over counseling case studies, read approximately 5,6785,093 books and delivered sermons. Yet all of that doesn't really even begin to define the seminary experience for either of us. There were trials, some "Aha!" moments, some heavy duty reliance on God and hopefully some spiritual maturing and deepening on both of our parts. I'm really proud of Jonathan, not just for the work he did, but for the man I've watched him grow into. I won't be able to wrap everything up in a neat and tidy package so maybe I should just leave it to...

Jonathan graduated from seminary.

The inevitable question is... what next? The short answer is still... we don't really know. Our hope is that Jonathan will find a full time ministry position that is a good fit for his skills and gifts and for our family as a whole. We have some preferences (like staying in the Portland area), but really we're resting on God's assurance that he will provide for us. It might not look exactly like we hope it will/think it should and we're OK with that. I'm at a much better place of resting in God's promises than I was four years ago.

Also... we totally found out that we were expecting our third baby the exact weekend that Jonathan graduated from seminary. Good thing I had four years to learn about trusting God, eh?

New life in a poor dead blog

Two months without a single blog post. You know, there are very few good excuses for such a long blogging hiatus. I hope you'll agree that this is one of them...

This tiny babe will be joining us in January. This was our 12 week ultrasound. I'm 14 weeks now. In fact, with an estimated due date of January 20th this babe threatens to steal my very own birthday out from under me (January 23rd.)

As to the blogging hiatus... I've mostly been in survival mode. Fortunately the miracle drug zofran has spared me the horrible level of sickness that I experienced with the girls (especially Juliana... the little scamp.) However, I've been going to bed when the girls do, getting up early to make it work at 7am and working more hours in general that I do during the school year. That said, I may be able to keep most of my food down, but I'm wiped out! With going to bed at the same time as the girls and arriving home from work after nap/quiet time is over, most of my "me" time for things such as blogging has vanished. I'm officially finished with that less than fun first trimester and I'll cautiously admit that I just might be feeling a bit better, but with the girls the full on sickness lasted until 16-18 weeks (respectively) so I'll probably have a few more weeks before I'm fully functional. And then, you know... only a few weeks after that until I'm huge and don't feel like doing anything again.

Other things you may be dying to know (or not.)....

What do the girls think about it?

Gabriella is sooooo beyond excited. She has been asking/praying for a baby sibling ( a brother to be specific) for the longest time. Even though we told her that she just might not be getting any more siblings... I guess she knew better. That has been one of the funnest parts of this pregnancy so far. Gabriella is so excited to see pictures of fetal development and learn about the whole process. She will be one fabulous second time big sister.

While I'm sure that Juliana has no real clue what a new baby will actually mean for her life, the wheels have been turning in her head and she is developing her concepts of the tiny baby in Mommy's tummy. She paid super close attention during the ultrasound and afterwards she was able to point out body parts on the pictures we were given. Her preference... a little sister.

What was the heart rate?

I'll admit, I don't buy the heart rate gender guessing, but I did check out this baby's heart rate vs the girls at this stage. Baby is 160s, Gabriella was 170s and Juliana was 150s... so firmly in between the two girls.

Were you trying for a boy?

Ummmm no. We have always wanted girls (Jonathan even more so than me) and we are beyond thrilled to have two of them. We'd love to have another girl to share in all of the girly fun, but we would certainly welcome a little boy (also Gabriella would be over the roof with excitement.) However, if we do have a little boy we're going to need some name input. We can't ever seem to agree on boys names. Girls names are no problem, but boys names are tough! We might have to go with Gabriella's suggestion... Spiderman.

Are you really showing already?!?

Yeaaaah. I won't even tell you how long I've been in maternity pants AND I've already had a stranger ask when I was due (wearing a loose fitting tee shirt, not a maternity shirt.)

So there you have it. The Whislers are going from 4 to 5. (Anyone have a good minivan recommendation?)