Taking deep breaths

Have you ever experienced those moments where you can't help but take a deep breath... not because you're stressed, not because you're worried, but because you want to remember. Want to remember the place you are and the feelings that surround you...forever.

I've been blessed to have countless deep breath moments this past year, this past month, this past week. God has richly blessed me, and I feel like there's nothing I can do but praise him.

I praise God for my loving, supportive, encouraging husband.

I praise him for a healthy, strong baby boy growing at a steady rate inside of me.

I praise the Lord for our new home in a place where I have daily reminders of his beautiful creation.

I bless the Lord for providing for us every day that we've been married and on our own. I marvel at his care for our every need.

I thank him for loving friends and family.

I praise him for blessing both my husband and I with wonderful jobs, jobs that we both enjoy.

There is so many things that could go wrong, every day. If you're not careful it is easy for worry and anxiety and despair to overrun your life. I have been focusing this year on taking deep breaths, savoring my life, and learning to push worry aside, continuing to learn to daily cast my fears on God's shoulders because only he is big enough to hold them all.

Praise the Lord!

Our Demon Cat

Our little kitty has been angry lately, very angry, and the biggest bummer about the situation is that his wrath is keeping us from sleep. We are almost all the way settled into our new abode and things are going quite well, that is except our poor kitty Fabio. For some reason every evening when we turn off the lights and slip into bed Fabio wants to come to. We push him outside and before long we hear the all familiar scratch and bang and meow at our door. The first 4 nights we didn't have a lock on our door and ingenious Fabio was able to slide our door open with his noisy, hardworking claws. He would leap into bed with us. For those with well-behaved dogs who sleep at the bottom of their beds this might not seem like a big deal, but for us this is not a positive situation. Fabio's favorite place is lying on our faces or chests or scratching our ears or arms. In other words he is a constant bundle of movement and energy, and it is almost impossible to sleep with him around. So we through him out, and he proceeds to try again. Not long ago, we purchased a lock for the door. We naively thought our problems were solved. Not so fast. Instead of being able to finish his cycle of scratching and leaping, the cycle is simply cut short. He sits at our door and proceeds to cause a gigantic ruckus until we let him in. I even gave him my cozy robe which he likes to lay in as a kitty bed, but to no avail, that kitty wanted to be with us. Needless to say, we are excited for the weekend, hoping we can get some sleep. I feel like I'm getting a teeny tiny peep about what life might be like in the middle of the night with our baby. ;-)

Moving Day

Good Afternoon... ;-)
It is currently 2:57, and I am already exhausted. Not trying to think of the gigantic day looming before us. At 1 PM today Joe picked up our U-haul and began loading it with all the things from our condo we had packed from the night before. I am hoping that everything will fit in our new place, but it doesn't look very promising. ;-) We will load up the truck and bring it down to our new cabin where we will begin unloading. Because I'm pregnant I don't have to do any lifting ;-) so depending on how fast the loading goes I may just be a cheerleader for awhile. ;-)
I turned 16 weeks yesterday and the pregnancy email said the baby will double in size in the next few weeks...woo hoo. I wonder how many more clothes I can grow out of by that time. ;-) If any one has some cute clothes that would fit a rounder Hayley pass them my way. I can't stand shopping. ;-(

Our moving adventure

I don't know why writing in my blog has bec0me so difficult. Maybe it's because a steady routine exists in my days now. I spend 7 hours working hard with lovely children, get home, get the mail, answer email, make dinner, eat dinner, and then spend the evening with my lovely husband and/or other friends and family.
I know that ample time allows for artistic expression, and I feel that since my time is more divided now and when it's not I'm too tired to type a word, it's harder to write.

The good news is that lately I've discovered a time to write! I have 5-10 minutes every day after my day at work where I don't want to leave school because of the horrendous traffic and for the most part I have finished everything I had to do during the day.
The perfect writing opportunity...

Anyway, things have been happening very quickly this week for my husband and I. We have had our condo up for rent for the last 3 months, and we finally got a bite!! We found out Sunday evening that someone wanted to rent out our condo and wanted to move in that Saturday so we are rapidly trying to complete all the arrangements necessary to find a home and transport our lives there. So far, we have continued to work full time during the day and continued to sleep. Hopefully, that will continue. ;-)
We will be moving out to the Cleveland National Forest, renting a one bedroom cabin with a large porch. There are trees on every side, a creek behind the cabin, and an extensive network of hiking trails. I hope it will be the perfect spot to raise our precious baby, at least for the first few months of his/her life. The only bummer is that we desired a two bedroom since it was almost the same price, but because of the short notice, we weren't so lucky. We are the first on the waiting list however so cross your fingers that we will be able to move into a bigger place before the baby comes. ;-)
Well my lovely time of writing has come to an end. I need to jet home and pack up everything we own into little brown boxes to be loaded on a moving truck tomorrow afternoon. Wish us luck. ;-)