33 Week pictures!

There are a few questions that I get asked a LOT lately.  So in case you are wondering these same things I will answer them for you!

Q:  Do you know the gender of the baby?

A:  Nope!  We are saving that for a surprise!  As far as people guessing the gender, votes are heavily in favor of it being a boy.  Some people judge by how I'm carrying, which is quite low.  Some people judge by heart rate  which is a perfect 140bpm!  So, though I find myself often referring to baby as 'he', we really have no idea.

Q:  Is your baby room ready?

A:  Nope!  Jared's parents have been doing a LOT of work in our basement for us and it's looking AWESOME!  No, we're not planning to have baby's room downstairs!  But what will be baby's room, upstairs, has been used a a toy room and napping room while I've been doing daycare.  So everything that's in baby's room now, needs a place to be before we can move baby's stuff in.  We're also planning a small renovation for the room, and will be touching up and repainting it.  It's not a big deal though, if baby's room isn't ready when baby gets here as a good friend of ours, CK, is lending us a bassinet so we can have baby in our room for the first little while!

Q:  Are you ready for baby?  Do you need anything?

A:  People have been SO helpful and SO giving.  We have been given SO much stuff and it has all been a huge blessing!  I am so excited to use it all!  My moms, sister, and Grandma F. have given me a good supply of gender neutral (and baby boy) sleepers which is AWESOME!  Once baby comes it'd be nice to get more gender specific outfits, but I do have a good supply of sleepers!  We have the big items like crib and car seat and stroller so I'd say we're ready.  All the cloth diapers are washed and ready.  I would like to get one of those cushion/mattress looking things for the change table...?  What are they called?  Can you get them at Walmart?  Anyone have tips on bottle types or brands?  I am planning to nurse, and I have been given a few bottles already.  But I'd love for Jared to be able to feed the baby too.

So those are the top questions I get asked!  And now for my 33 week photos kindly taken by my wonderful husband!

Growing, growing, growing!

Yeah, I know I'm a little late for a Christmas post, but things were busy!  I have also not been keeping up with my pregnancy pictures.  I'll have to take one today after church.  I'm WAY bigger than in these pictures, and I have a new due date!  I am now due April 4th rather than 9th!  Yeah, a week's not going to make much of a difference, but it's nice to think that baby could come earlier!

Since Christmas, I've jumped back into school twice a week, which has been good.  Less homework gives me a little more time for baby prep!  Oo!  Speaking of baby, here's a cool story:

So we decided that we would like to do cloth diapers with baby and started our diaper supply using money we got for Christmas.  We only had 4 shells (plastic pants equivalent, cloth diapers are much different now!)  and a bunch of liners (the absorbent cloth you fold up and put in the shell).  For sure not enough!  So I started looking online for second hand cloth diapers in good condition.  I found an add selling an entire collection of hardly used cloth diapers and accessories for a fraction of the price!  I emailed the advertiser daily for a week with no response.  I was getting discouraged.  So I prayed: 'God, if we are supposed to get these diapers I trust you to work it out somehow.'  I did not email again.  Saturday I got an email stating that someone else beat me to it and was coming to pick them up.  Boo.  Sunday evening I got another email saying the lady had never shown up and if I still wanted them, and could pick them up today, they were mine!  So I recruited a driver and we made the 1/2hr trip to the city and got the diapers!  AMEN!  

Yup, our God cares about diapers too!  Lol!

This week marked the end of daycare for me, which is really sad.  I think it'll hit me more next week when 'my boys' don't come.  They were SO good!  We had a really good last day together, a few hiccups along the way that actually helped in reassuring me that I have a lot of helpful 'parenting' experience from  watching kids for the last 4 years.

Baby comes in 7ish weeks!  Woo!  We are so excited!  Jared's parents have been here all week working on the basement, and it looks awesome!  With no more daycare, I can clean out the toy room and overhaul it into a baby room!  We've also received a TONE of baby stuff from some wonderful friends and family.  I was not expecting all that!  I have bins and bins of stuff, including a few things I just hadn't thought of!  Big thank you to SW, AS, TD, EB, JB, EF, CK and everyone else who's already been so helpful!

But speaking of helpful, I should be a helpful wife and see how much cleaning I can get done before Jared comes back from his fire call!

Have an awesome week!  I'll get new pictures up soon!

Funny Fire Banquet!

As promised, here is my 21 week picture which I got Jared to take after attending his Fire Department Banquet!

Speaking of the banquet, something funny happened while we were there; at least I thought it was funny!  The hosting fireman was just getting everyone quieted down to start the evening when there was this super loud 'BEEEEEP!'  Then: "911 to Steinbach Fire....something something... structure fire...something... Please respond!"  All their pagers were going off in unison!   So they all left, leaving us wives, girlfriends, and 1 husband (his wife is the only female fire fighter on the crew) sitting alone at our tables!  I was sitting with 2 wives and we were saying how we really hoped it would be a false alarm or we could be sitting here a while!  Well lucky for us it was!  They came back within, maybe 30 min or so and we had a somewhat cooled down supper!

I have a whole new respect for fire fighters and all that they do.  They have to get up and go at any moment, fight a fire, or remove someone from a severely damaged vehicle, or save a life, then just go back to whatever they were doing before like nothing happened!  Like this last night, or more this morning around 1 Jared got a call, responded, came back to bed, then got up a few hours later and went to work!  Or earlier this week there was a car accident where extraction was required to remove people from their vehicles, one of whom was deceased.  How do you just resume 'normal activity' after seeing and dealing with something like that?  Jared was not on call for that accident, but he is on call for car accidents this week.

Oh!  We were blessed yet farther in the purchase of the Pathfinder!  When we received the Pathfinder and Jared was sorting out the final details and giving him a certified cheque, the man selling us the Pathfinder, gave us extra money to shampoo it as he hadn't had time to get it done himself.  That was really nice of him!  Then he added that him and his wife threw in a little extra for the baby!  Super nice!  We thanked him without counting the cash he laid down and they continued their dealings with changing the plates and such.  I counted it later and they had given us a HUGE gift in a 3 digit dollar amount! For some reason I feel hesitant to write the actual dollar amount on here, but WOW!

In other news, Jared wanted me to clarify that we bought the Pathfinder for more than just his work, as he actually will use it very seldom for that.  He will only use the Pathfinder for work when it's the only means of him getting there.  We also bought the Pathfinder, for the convenience of the car seat, and so I have options when he goes on fire calls.  We have to have strategies in place whenever we go somewhere or I'll just be left stranded!  The Pathfinder will also be a lot more convenient for camping  and trips, or just carrying around all of Baby's stuff!

Anyway!  I should go!  I have homework, devotions, and house cleaning to do!

Seeing Baby, Jared’s job, and Prayer to Pathfinder!

 I have so much to share!  3 very exciting things happened in our lives over the past few weeks!

1.        Seeing Baby:

Today I am 21 weeks (5 months 1 week) and my tummy is getting round! (I will get Jared to take a picture ASAP!)  I've been feeling the baby move over the last 2 weeks or so and Jared got to feel a kick just last week!  I was saying to baby: “Kick, baby; kick Daddy!”  Then Jared looked at me and said: “What are you teaching our baby?!”  Valid point.  But at this point, I don’t think baby can understand our speech.

Anyway, on Friday we had our first regular ultrasound! (We had one at just over 7 weeks, but baby looked more like a peanut than a baby at that point!)  It was really neat seeing the baby on the screen, moving, yawning, and sucking its thumb.  Most people ask us at this point: “Did you find out the gender?”  We did not.  The technician wanted to tell us, but I asked him not to.  So baby’s gender will be a surprise!

Baby Blatz profile, sucking his/her thumb!

2.        Jared’s job:

So there’s really 2 parts to Jared’s job as he technically has 2 jobs! 

1)       First, Jared was very excited to receive his pager for attending fire calls!  He still has more training to do and will only receive his level 1 Firefighter testing next November!  But there are still a number of things he is allowed to do on a call.  He was also given an emergency light for our car for when he gets a call!

It was very exciting this week receiving a call just as we were about to get into the car.  So I got to go along!  They call it ‘going in red’ when they have their light on, honking and going through red lights and all that.  It was pretty exciting!  Then, once at the hall, it was cool to watch them all gear up and pull out with for sure 5 trucks!  It ended up being a false alarm, but it was still fun to watch them gear up and head out!

2)       Second, Jared was offered a manager position at a finishing site!  In case you don’t know, Jared works for a hog company.  So he’s been there now for 3 weeks I think and is doing great!  He is in charge of 5 barns and 1 employee.  On one of his first days, his worker, who has worked at this site for some time already, pointed to our civic and said to Jared: “Is that all you've got?”  Then he explained to Jared how the road to the barn drifts up pretty good and our little civic would never make it through.  And that brings us to the next point!

3.        Prayer to Pathfinder:

So Jared and I have been thinking, praying, and talking about a second vehicle for a little while now, partially for easier car seat placement and partially for drifted snow days where our little civic might not get through.  So Jared did some number crunching and we figured out how much we could afford to spend on a vehicle and what sort of vehicle we could afford long term, specifically insurance costs.  There wasn't much in our price range.  We took a Mazda for a test drive and were disappointed.  We knew our budget was small, but we needed something we could rely on.  I stopped scouring kijiji for a few days and got some homework done.  Then Sunday morning I was up early and just thought I’d see if anything new had popped up.  There had!  I didn’t get my hopes up too much as most of the better vehicles were a good distance away and we don’t have terribly much time to be trekking out all over in the evenings.  When I clicked on the Nissan Pathfinder and looked at the map I realized that not only was this vehicle in our price range, insurance included, it was right close by!  Just up the street!  Big answer to prayer right there!  But it got better!

We were able to go look at it that very evening!  The man was so honest and upfront.  The first thing he did was show us anything about the vehicle that wasn't quite perfect.  He told us about work he’d done on it and all kinds of other things about this type of vehicle itself, he was a mechanic!  Then as we talked we also discovered that we go to the same church!  And he’d been in a cell group with Jared’s sister previously!

We took the pathfinder for a test drive and were quite impressed!  We came back to discuss price and they invited us in!  He gave us a great price and even offered a few extras like the hitch package, shampooing the interior and something with the rotors!  Then they invited us to stay for hot chocolate and games!  I saw their daughter and realized I’d met her before at church!  We played a game, wrote out a bill of sale, and before we left they prayed for us!

Now have ANY of you had an experience like that when buying a vehicle?

GOD IS SO GOOD!  SO AWESOME!

School if Ministers '12-'13

This is my class!  I should really be doing homework right now but I wanted to put this up here for anyone curious what my class looks like.  This is the silly picture, for the normal picture you can click :http://www.mysouthland.com/index.php/ministries/school-of-ministers/school-of-ministers-12-13

They set it up so when you scroll over the picture it switches to the silly picture.  Anyway.  I will get back to my reading now!

Update!

Another 5 weeks gone!  Wow that went by fast!  I almost forgot to take a picture!  But here it is:  Jaymi and baby at 15 weeks!  Unfortunately, the snow we had, melted before 'picture day' but the snow will be back long before baby is born!  This picture was taken on our deck and it actually wasn't THAT cold out.  Still a little too cold for short sleeves but I love this shirt (thanks Mom R!) so we made it quick!  This angle actually makes it look like I'm a little bigger than I actually am, just to clarify!

The pregnancy is going very well, I'm in my second trimester and I have mostly said good-bye to morning sickness and discovered heartburn!  At our first prenatal visit we got to hear the baby's heart beat through a Doppler device.  We discovered that our baby is quite active, even though I cannot feel it!  With the Doppler, we could hear a lot of kicking!  I told Jared that this baby must take after him!  Very energetic!  I really look forward to actually being able to feel the baby's movements!  What a miracle!

School of ministers is also going really good!  I'm doing a lot of reading which in the past I haven't found much time for.  But I have been learning a lot in my reading!  We're reading a book on spiritual disciplines which is really good.  The author has a great way of explaining things, like prayer, fasting and study...  obviously I'm not fasting from food right now!  No worries there!  I've also really been enjoying our  Bible reading.  It's a bit tough some weeks to get all the reading and reviews done on time, but what I'm getting out of it is really worth the effort!

Hmmm.  What else has gone on the last 5 weeks.  We're back into doing our children's ministry at church, which has been awesome!  We're doing pre-natal classes (a little early I know) which are also at church which is cool!  The lady has given us a lot of scripture and prayers to pray over our babies, which is really cool!  I'm still doing daycare for 2 awesome little boys.  Jared's still at the farm and goes to the fire hall on Tuesdays.

Actually just a week or so ago, Jared got to go on his first fire call!  It was actually a bit ironic!  The first week of October is 'Fire Awareness' week (or is it even the month?  not sure).  Anyway, the fire hall had planned an open house.  But when Jared got to the hall, he discovered that there would be no open house for him to help at, as all the trucks and firemen available were out!  There were SO many fires in our area that they were even calling in the rookies (Jared included) to come help out!  So Jared was sent to a bush and grass fire in Giroux area.  It was a really long day for him, but it gave us a taste of what's to come when Jared has his full Firefighter Level 1 and will attend more calls.  Here's a few pictures from the fires in our area just on that 1 day!  Unfortunately there were no photographers on scene in Giroux where Jared was.

Blumenort bale and sawdust fire

Richer brush fire

Roseau River fireworks turned brush fire

Kleefeld field fire

Vita brush fire, turned house fire, turned town fire!  5 homes were lost in this fire which is actually outside of the Steinbach Fire Department's range but as other smaller departments went to help in Vita, Steinbach stepped in to cover for those other smaller departments.

So that's a quick snap shot of the last few weeks!

10 Weeks and Fire Trucks!

So I am 10 nearing 11 weeks along (2 1/2 months) and feeling pukey!  But that is ok with me!  Jared was nice enough to take my first maternity picture so we have a 'starting point' to look back on.

I started School of Ministers on September 4th which runs weekly on Wednesday and Fridays. It has been SO AMAZING!  It's a long day and lots to take in but I am really enjoying it!  Our first few classes have been on things like, God's love for us, prepping your testimony, Intro to Old Testament Scriptures, Purpose of the Scriptures and Retaining the word.  It's been SUPER interesting!

I am really excited about this weekend and I'm not totally sure why I'm SO excited.  Yesterday Jared started  a driving course with the Steinbach Fire Department which continues through the weekend.  Today I scurried down the road to watch them for a while!  They were actually in the parking lot of our church.  It appears that they were practicing backing up the trucks and how to properly guide each other in backing up.  They had pylons all over the place, doing all kinds of turns and such.  I only watched for an hour but I took a ton of pictures!  I realized that all firemen look the same when they have their gear on!  Luckily they were not wearing helmets, so eventually I did figure out which one was Jared.

Engine 411

Jared driving Engine 411

Engine 412

Jared with some of the fire crew.  These men did not know I was taking their picture so I blurred out their faces just in case they didn't want their face posted on the internet.

This weekend is also my birthday!  Yay!  Not that I'm having a party or anything, but I'm looking forward to making cupcakes with this weeks' daycare kidos and bringing them to SOM to share with my small group.  Oh, I will also be visiting my Grandma, Auntie, and cousins this weekend which should be fun!  The long drive will give me a chance to work on my SOM reading!

But right now I should really get the floors washed and a load of towels done.  I hope you all are having a fabulous week!