Catching Up

It's been a long time since I've posted anything.

A really long time.

Part of it's because of how crazy FULL life has been in the past few months, and the other part is that even in the slower moments, the thought of writing a catch up post was so daunting to me that I put it off some more.

Let me start with the most beautiful part.

The day we took this picture, we had no idea that we were no longer a family of three...

But my goodness, life has changed so much since then!  Our sweet little "Brubaby #2" will be joining our family in mid December, and we can't be more excited.

Meet Kayleigh's little brother, Logan Mark!

I have so much to share about my pregnancy, but I'm going to save it for another post :)  There is SO much to catch you up on!

So, just a few days before I found out that I was pregnant, I also found out that I was losing my job.  The online ESL program I was teaching through lost its funding, and just like that, my position was gone.  It was heartbreaking.  I truly loved teaching those classes and connecting with students from all over the world.  That job was such a blessing during my first [nearly] two years as a stay at home mom.  I miss it terribly, but I'm so thankful that God provided it in the first place.  It was a wonderful growing time for me, and I was definitely stretched.  As untimely as it was to lose nearly half of our monthly income the same month that we found out we were adding another little one to our family, Jesse and I truly see God's hand in it all.  My pregnancy with little Logan has been far more difficult than Kayleigh's, and I was so sick that I would have had to resign anyway.  (But I would have killed myself trying to do it all first.)  It's definitely been tight financially ever since, but we've been leaning on God fully, and He hasn't let us down :)

In mid-July, Jesse let me know that he felt that we really needed to move closer to our church.  It had been an idea that we had talked about throughout the year since he started working there, but I hadn't expected it to suddenly become so pressing--especially since mid-July was just about when I was starting to get back on my feet and join civilization again (pregnancy-wise).  But just like that, we were searching for a new place to live that was closer to church.  This was no small feat, since our church is in a very wealthy area (which is exactly why we had been commuting for the past year!) and moving closer to church also meant moving away from some of our dearest friends.  For the past two years, we have been so blessed to have our friends Tyler and Stacey (and Bine!) living just a few doors down.  They were the Mertzes to our Ricardos, or the other way around, however we wanted to look at it :)  Giving that up was one of the hardest things ever.

Just a few short months ago, this whole gang lived within walking distance of each other.  What a blessed two years it was to be just steps away from the Stovers and the Pratts!  I'll always look back on those years as some of the happiest of my life.  I loved, loved, loved being neighbors with some of our best friends.  (The Pratts moved to Northern California about 2 months before we moved, so don't think that I don't love them, too--they were just already gone!)

Living in our new town is quite an adventure.  Like I said, we can't afford to live in the actual city where our church is, so our new surroundings are quite different from where we just came from!  In our old town, we lived on a main street and were within walking distance of a Target, CVS, Starbucks, our bank, the library, tons of parks, recreational areas, the Post Office, and a ton of other things.  From the window of our new home, I can just see cows.  Cows, cows, cows...and dirt.  There is nothing within walking distance, and we haven't even found a good grocery store yet.  It's taken some adjustment, but I know that God will bless us by this move.  

One of the biggest differences, however, is that Jesse can come home between teaching classes and leading youth group and attending meetings.  The schedule of a youth pastor is a crazy one, and living so far from church often meant that I didn't see him from before 7am until after 10pm.  There were at least two days a week that Kayleigh would go the whole day without seeing her daddy.  Now that we only live 10 minutes from our church, Jesse can come home for dinner or swing by to change his clothes.  It's so wonderful!

This is such a big update already, and I feel like I haven't even caught you up on everything!  I'll have more to share in the days ahead.  I've missed all of you!  It feels like this is the very first time things have slowed down since my aquarium post back in April.  So many things have changed since then!  Lots of trials, but God has turned them all into good things.  Praise His name!!!