Some pictures of the Great Pumkin Chase

One of the teams. The winning team. Only 3 on this team.

The clue watchers were told to have each team do soming silly or embarassing in order to get their next clue. In this case the teams had to run in one entrance of Home Depot and out the other.
One of the clue locations.
Noah handing out clues to the leaders and giving instruction to the clue watchers and drivers.
Here are some of the girls hanging out in the parking lot before the chase.

The Great Pumpkin Chase

So last night Noah and I did an outreach event with our youth group that Noah did when he was in high school. It's called the Great Pumpkin Chase. (I believe NACC is doing a version of it tonight, so I'm told.) For those who don't know what this is, it is a scavenger hunt through the city, (in our case, two cities since Longview and Kelso run together.)looking for the Great Pumpkin. Noah and I came up with 12 locations for the clue locations, and Pastor Kevin was the great pumpkin. (We were going to get a pumpkin suit for him, but were running out of time so Barb, our secretary got him a bright orange pumpkin shirt.) After the hunt we had one of our youth lead us in some worship songs and Noah gave a gospel presentation.
Currently our youth group runs from about 20-25 students, Noah gave the kids a challenge to get 50 kids to the pumkin chase and then keep those kids coming to our youth group for the next 3 Sunday night youth groups. If the kids met this challenge, Noah would grow out his beard and shave his head like Mr. T. (the black guy from the A-team.)
Well, we only got 38 students, so Noah doesn't have to shave his head, but we had 17 students there that do not attend a church or have never set foot in a church until last night. That is very exciting!! It appeared that they all enjoyed themselves. Some of them came back this morning, hopefully we see some tonight too!!
This was Noah's first big event and he had been stressing out about it because he thought is was going to blow up in his face. It took 35 adult volunteers to pull this off. We needed two clue people at each location and drivers for ten teams that had vans or vehicles that could seat at least five people besides the driver. People were very willing to volunteer. We had parents of youth, young people in the church and elderly people as well. At the last minute, (an hour before the event) we had a driver call and tell us they couldn't make it) for those of you who know Noah and how stressed out he gets when preparing for something big, you can imagine his reaction. I went to get us dinner and drop Faith off at the sitters. I called in a couple of times to check on the progress of finding another driver, (he couldn't get a hold of anyone) he told me he wasn't sure what a heart attack felt like, but he was sure he was having one.
In the end everything worked out fine. We had a few of our kids who couldn't make it last minute, which opened up seatsbelts and we had some parents volunteer to drive when they dropped their kids off. We ended up not needing an extra driver and everything went well. Noah was quite pleased with the end results. We plan on making this our annual outreach event.

Poo-poo on the floor :l

Faith tried to go poo-poo in the potty chair for the first time yesterday, but missed. She was tooting quite a bit so I had her sit on the potty chair. She didn't go. A couple minutes later I was smelling something aweful. I looked at Faith and there was a tiny little terd falling to the ground. I picked her up and rushed her to the chair and much to my surprise, a large terd on the floor a couple feet away from her chair. I sat her on the chair and made her sit there for about ten minutes just in case there was anymore. She got out another little one, but that was about it. We were in a hurry to leave for our small group so we quickly got her cleaned up, (and cleaned the rest of the mess) and were on our way to the sitters. I told Mrs. Rita that she had already gone poopy so she was probably out of the clear. However, when we picked Faith up Mrs. Rita informed me she wasn't quite done. Oh, well it was a good try. Faith has gotten pretty good at going potty on the potty chair as long as she doesn't have a diaper on. She doesn't try to hold as long anymore. She is even trying to clean the potty chair when she's done:( That didn't turn out so well. (I didn't know she was doing it, I didn't even know she had gone potty until I saw her trying to clean it out.)
Well, I've made it past the point of when I lost the last baby. I have one more week until I'm most likely out of the clear for a miscarriage. WHEW!!!! I can feel my uterus pretty darn good now and I've felt the baby moving a couple times. All good signs.
Well I better feed my daughter before we go to church.

Second Trimester!

Today I start my second trimester!! I'm beginning to feel less tired, but still having a little morning sickness (and in the morning too). No puking though! This is the first pregnancy where I haven't actually puked. However, most of the time with the other two pregnancies, I puked when I was getting ready for work, which means I had to get up before the crack of dawn. I wonder if having to get up early might have had anything to do with it? Hmmm. Anyways, I can feel my uterus now and I 'm obviously pregnant. Still nervous though since I'm not as far along as I was when I lost the last baby. I still have 2 more weeks to be out of the most dangerous time.
I've found that doctors have different ideas of when the most vulnerable time for a miscarriage is. When I lost baby David I was told by the emergency room doctor and my midwife that most miscarriages are lost either before the woman knows she's pregnant or 12-14 weeks. Then I've heard some doctors say, you're in the clear once you've made it to 10-12 weeks. I also was given some literature to read about miscarriages and you can actually miscarriage up to 20 weeks (that's half way done!) So I guess you're never really in the clear. So much other stuff can happen during the pregnancy to cause a loss. I thought about it alot with Faith, not so much last time, but now I think about it alot. I know God is in control and what ever happens is for the best. But that doesn't stop me from praying for the health and safety of this baby, and it doesn't stop me from being excited either.
Anyways, enough jibber jabber for now.

Pictures of Faith!

Here are some pictures from last weekend when our moms and my sister were visiting.

Pictures

For those of you still waiting for pictures, we are working on finding a cable. We should have one soon.

Small Group!

Our church is going through 40 days of Community by Rick Warren. Instead of "what am I here for?" like Purpose Driven Life, it is "What are we here for?" So our church has started small groups for the next 40 days to go through the curriculum. Noah and I were hoping that whatever small group we got involved with would decide to continue meeting after the six weeks were done. We have been having a great time with our small group so far, (We've only met twice now.) and the leader and some of the others want to keep meeting even when the 40 days of community is done. Yeah!!! Last night we met and it was such a good time. We've been talking about how we can reach those in our community as well as those who are in need or hurting in our own church. We came up with a long list of things and everyone is excited. I'm so glad we have this opportunity. We will now also have a chance to build meaningful relationships with others in our church family. Our small group in Albany was a great place for us. We built friendships that we wouldn't of had otherwise and I'm very greatful to all of you down there for being a supportive family at all times.
I'm just so excited!!!!

Doctors Appointment

I had my first doctors appt. with the doctor. Everything looks good at this point. I'm 10wks and 5 days. We got to hear the heart beat for a few seconds, but it took the doc. a few minutes to find the heartbeat (which was making me nervous, since we weren't able to hear the last baby's.) The heartbeat was very fast, but the baby moved before it would register how fast on the doppler. (The little stinker!) The Doc. said it was nice and fast (their heartbeats are faster earlier on in the pregnancy) and it's a good sign that the baby is moving all over the place. (The last baby (we saw it's heartbeat on the ultrasound) didn't move very much during the ultrasound, which was a slight concern to the doctor.)
I go back in 5 wks for my next check up and we will have an ultrasound then.

So....maybe not a tomboy after all?

This weekend both Noah's and my mom came up to visit for the day. (My sister, Courtney, came up for the weekend too.) When our moms arrived, Faith was down for a nap, but was excited that both her Grandmas were here. She knows she will be spoiled:) My mom had brought some clothes up for Faith. Faith noticed the bag of clothes and grabed one of the outfits and said, "Oh, cuuute!" She's never said anything was cute before and now she's saying her clothes are cute. A couple days ago she was telling Noah that something on her jacket was pretty. This morning she wanted me to put her "pretty dress" on her. This could be a bad thing when she becomes a teenager, but right now I'm just glad that she's showing signs of being a little girly-girl.