Baby Shower

This past weekend my friends hosted a wonderful baby shower for me. It was so fun celebrating with friends, eating, and opening gifts with lots of PINK :) I quickly realized how different it will be being a Mom to a girl-having to have matching clothes, socks/tights, bloomers, bows, shoes, etc. Oh I can't wait!! The ladies also had a time of prayer for Jordan and me which was so special. What a blessing to be encouraged and lifted up by fellow believers. Now that we are all set to go, Jordan is welcome to come anytime now :)

(I didn't take any pictures at the shower, but thankfully my friend did and shared them with me!)

36 weeks.

Love them.

My wonderful hostesses!

Some of the other ladies.

No Fear

Our good friend and coworker, Katie, coaches for the Gymnastics Federation here in Jordan. Since Micah is obsessed with trampolines, she invited Micah to come play at her work and to jump on their trampoline. Micah had a blast! We knew he would enjoy jumping on the trampoline, but he also discovered a newfound love...running down a runway and jumping off a 2-3 ft ledge into a pit full of foam. We thought he would run up to the ledge and be too scared to jump off, but we completely underestimated our boy. He had no fear at all and jumped right in. This continued for at least a half and hour-he must have jumped in the pit over 50 times. He would have gone even longer if Paul and I hadn't intervened. Some of the little Arab gymnasts followed him around and jumped with him over and over and over. When we left, they told Katie, "That little boy has so much energy. He doesn't stop!" Yes, that is Micah for ya :) And we wouldn't trade his fun personality for anything.

We love Katie!
Here is a quick video of him jumping. This was probably the 20th time he had done it.

Floor Problems

One day this past winter I was walking in our living room and completely tripped. For those of you that know me, that probably doesn't surprise you. :) However, I looked down and noticed that our floor tiles were coming up like a mountain. This eventually led to cracking, and then complete breakage from one wall to another. We showed our landlord the problem and he said they would fix it once it got warmer. So, we lived like this for months and poor Micah cut his foot pretty badly on the loose tiles...so we finally moved a carpet over it.

A few weeks ago, they finally came to fix our floors. Unfortunately, they couldn't find the same exact tiles, so they ended up having to completely redo our entire living room and dining room areas. Not so fun as it was a complete mess and disaster in our house for 4 days. Plus, we had about 6 Arab men in our home all day long smoking. YUCK! I felt really uncomfortable at times as this is such a men's culture, but thankfully Paul was around. It did give me some good practice serving the "Arab" way...which is always on a tray and in glass-not plastic. I definitely lost some points though because I don't know the least thing about making Arab coffee or tea. Ha!

Our house was dusty, and I mean dusty, for days. We (well, I really should say Paul) must have swept and mopped about 5 times and there was still dust on the new floors. They look great now and we are thankful to have this finished before a newborn is in the house!

They stacked all our furniture on one side of the room while they worked on the other side. We also had to "live" on this side while they were working on the other side-rather difficult with a 2 year old explorer.

Almost done!

Sweet Visitor

Recently we had a friend, Susan, come to Jordan for vacation. She is one of the few people that have seen both of our overseas "homes" as she was in Kenya last May and spent some time with us there too. We were so excited to see her in our "new" home and had so much fun while she was here. What was supposed to be a 10 day trip turned into 3 weeks due to some medical issues. Thankfully, it was nothing too serious and the extra days here just meant we got to hang out more than expected :) For the past 2 years she has lived in a really difficult area of the world, and I admire her so much! I know she needed the extra R&R time. We look forward to reconnecting again in the States! Yay. Micah can't wait!!

PS. Susan, I hope that I didn't post too many pictures for you to upload :) I tried my best! Ha.

Growing Up

Last year for Micah's 1st bday I posted a picture for every month of Micah's life. I wasn't planning on doing that again this year, but I couldn't resist. Mostly just because I enjoyed looking back and seeing how much he has grown up and reminiscing on where the Lord has taken us. It has been an adventure for sure that I wouldn't change for anything. I highly doubt that this month-by-month picture tradition will continue though seeing as our sweet little girl is due in less than 4 weeks...which means our lives are about to get crazy (a good crazy for sure!). Anyway, enjoy the pics our crazy little man.

12 mos

13 mos

14 mos

15 mos

16 mos

17 mos

18 mos

19 mos

20 mos

21 mos

22 mos

23 mos

24 mos

Birthday Boy

First of all, is our baby boy really TWO!?! I feel like Micah has grown up so fast lately. He continues to amaze us with his incredible memory, sweet spirit, and crazy self. He just talks and talks and talks. He is such a joy and we cannot imagine our life without him. We are so blessed!

We have celebrated a lot of birthdays lately, so Micah was actually sort of grasping the whole birthday idea. I told him happy birthday right when he woke up and the first thing he asked me was, "Where is my balloons? Where is hat?" Oops. It was absolutely precious...BUT I definitely was not prepared for that one as I had NEITHER at the time. I think he has read too many books and seen too many birthday parties :)

We didn't throw a party for Micah this year as most of his friends are either a lot older...or a lot younger and we just didn't know what to do. So on his birthday, Paul and I decided to take him out to a kids play place and just let him do whatever he wanted. He loved it! We came home and did cake and gifts together. Micah really wasn't interested in his cake this year-he was more excited about singing "happy birthday" and blowing out his candles than eating the actual cake.

We let him have a Happy Meal from Burger King for lunch that day and not only did he get a cool toy, he also got a "birthday" hat (at least that is what we told him. ha). He wore that hat quite proudly. He sure is our little prince.

Daddy had the privilege of riding all the rides with Micah as they wouldn't let me because I'm pregnant.

He LOVED the trampoline. We spent most of our time here :)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MICAH! WE LOVE YOU AND ARE SO THANKFUL FOR YOU.

1st Birthday

Recently we were invited over to our friend's house to celebrate their son's 1st birthday. Micah was excited to go see his friends, Ben and James, and to also get to eat some cake. :) We had a great afternoon celebrating along with some of their Arab friends too. The Arab tradition is to not open presents until everyone leaves, so we waited until they left for Ben to start opening his gifts. I think we made a good decision on waiting to open the gifts, because it allowed all of us "westerners" to get a good laugh at some of the gifts he received from the Arabs (example: two bunnies sitting on a heart shaped pillow!?!). There were plenty more too...trust me. It was a fun party and even a cultural experience in some ways.

My handsome boys :)

Ben, the adorable birthday boy

The Hawkin's...

King's...

...and Akin's :)

Mommies with our sweet boys.

More friends (and yes, that is my son with his arm launched back ready to kill someone)

12 months/pictures of Ben