The Hits Keep Comin'... Plus New BB Pic (17 Weeks)

If I was hoping after my last post that out car troubles were over for a while, then I was sadly mistaken.  About a week after getting our new van, my truck started jerking and spewing white smoke out of the tailpipe just as I got home from work one day.  I had our usual mechanic check it out and he says that there is water in the oil, which means either a cracked head or a cracked block.  Either way, the engine is shot.  We just had the engine replaced a little over two years ago, which is good because that means it's still under warranty, but it's still extremely annoying.  At the moment I'm still trying to gather my receipts for repairs and maintenance since the engine was replaced to prove that it has been correctly maintained so I can call next week and have them pick it up.  Here's hoping I can get it fixed for little to no cost.

Jamie had his first band concert last week.  They sounded pretty good for a bunch of kids that have only been playing their instruments for four months.  Each instrument meets as its own class, so in between "Jingle Bells" and "Beethoven's Ninth" they each had a short demonstration in which they played a part of a song they had chosen as a class - the clarinets played "Jolly Old St. Nicholas."  While I have to say that the clarinet is probably my least favorite instrument to listen to solo, they still sounded pretty good as a section.  Just, clarinet-y.

The inevitable plod toward the end of the holidays continues.  Winter Break officially started this Friday, so the kids will have two-and-a-half weeks to drive each other and their mother crazy; I'm taking a few days off after Christmas so I can mediate a little and hopefully avoid any bloodshed.  We got the very last of our Christmas shopping for the kids done earlier this week and are just waiting for things to ship from Amazon.  The estimated delivery date for everything is "December 20th-24th", so it should all be here before Christmas eve.  I think we've decided to do our family Christmas morning on the day before since Christmas is on Sunday this year; the idea of Christmas being on Sunday is nice in a way, but the reality of trying to get everybody up, presents opened, and get to church by 10:00 paints a less the Rockwell-esque picture.  Jamie and I are going to help with Celebrate Jesus at the church tonight.  I believe he's a crowd member in one of the scenes, and I'm helping direct traffic since one of our friends has been trying to get me to help with that for the last few years.  Jamie wanted to sign up for tonight because it is the last night and the workers do a walk though behind the last car.  Apparently, it's quite a hoot.

We had a prenatal check up this week.  The doctor had a hard time finding the heartbeat with the doppler again - it took her a few minutes the last time - so she opted to check the heartbeat with the ultrasound machine instead.  This also gave us a chance to tentatively find out the sex earlier than the twenty-week ultrasound.  The doctor didn't see any external organs, and saw three white spots that apparently indicate the folds of skin between the......um, girly bits.  So, unofficially, we are having another girl; the doctor said she was "pretty sure, but don't paint the nursery pink yet."  I had prayed before Denine was pregnant with Asher that, if we were going to have a fourth child, the third would be a boy and the fourth a girl so that she'd have an older brother close to her age.  Otherwise, if we were only going to have three, I wanted #3 to be a girl.  When baby #3 turned up male, I was confident that we were supposed to have a fourth, and that it would be a girl.  So given that, plus the fact that a friend of ours who has an uncanny knack for being right about these things said she thought it was a girl, too, I am not really surprised.  Happy that things are panning out the way I prayed they would, but not surprised.

 

We've entered that "my baby looks like an alien" phase. 

 

She's made comments about thinking she looks more pregnant earlier on this time around, but I'm pretty sure she's keeping pace.  Check out 15 weeks and 18 Weeks for comparison.

A Juxtaposition of Conflicting Emotion... Plus 1st BB Pic #2 (14 Weeks)

Okay, last night was insane!  When I originally started writing this post yesterday it was chocked full of moaning and complaining about the situation with our van, the short version being that, after five trips to the mechanic and about $2500 it was deemed not worth/safe to repair due to a combo of cracked head gasket and worn piston bearing.  However, the simultaneous occurrence of two very unrelated circumstances have completely changed my tone.

First, the happy news:  My parents, in their infinite love and generosity, saw fit to bless us with a new(er), and most importantly working, mini-van!  On the way out of church last night, halfway across the parking lot, my dad stops, holds out a key, and points at a van parked a few spaces from our Venture.  I was dumbstruck, to say the least; anyone reading this knows I am not often speechless, but all I could manage at the moment was "thank you."  Our vehicle situation has been a point of concern for me for quite some time, increasingly so over the last several weeks.  When I got the news that there was essentially nothing that could be done to fix the Venture and I had to resign myself to letting my pregnant wife drive around with an infant under the imminent threat of total engine failure, I was completely at a loss for what to do.  This was particularly frustrating given the fact that, had we not poured substantial money into keeping the Venture running, we might have had enough to buy a replacement, but the situation being what it is, we don't.  Our whole family went through Financial Peace University together and have committed not to no longer incur debt, so buying a car on payments was out of the question.  In the end, that's essentially why Mom said they decided to buy us a new van, because they've watched us work hard to get out of debt (including already cash flowing one baby and working to cash flow another) and didn't want to see us set back.  Thank you, Mom and Dad, for your love and support!

 

Taa-Daa!

And now the sad news:  Before we left church last night, my sis-in-law received a call from her mother saying that her uncle Jeff (who also happens, for those unaware, to be my aunt's brother) had been found at home unconscious and was being rushed to the hospital.  There was no further information at time, and we all headed out to the parking lot to head to our respective homes (see above).  While my parents, Denine, and I were checking out the van, Dad received a phone call from my sis-in-law that Jeff had been called home to the Lord.  We all felt like we had been punch in the stomach; as far as anyone knows Jeff was in perfectly good health and this has come as a complete surprise, as I understand it the doctors still are not sure exactly what happened.  Being a loss on two side of my family, since he is both my sis-in-law's and my cousins' uncle, combined with how influential he was in the church were I grew up, the weight of his loss is being heavily felt.  It's a testament to how great a man he was, a truly gifted teacher and scholar, and a outstanding example of what a Christian man should be.  While our world is a little darker for the loss of such a brightly shining light, we rejoice that he is resting with our Lord.

Okay, if anyone can still read after that - I got to cheat and take a break after writing it - general housekeeping issues:

Despite the overlying pall of crappy vehicular conditions the past few weeks, we have had a series of enjoyable family weekends.  First was our youngest nephew's third birthday party, which are always fun, particularly since he's old enough now to really grasp the concept of getting presents now.  Then we had our family outing to the Renaissance Festival.  Our kids had been saving up their money for several weeks in anticipation; Ren came away with a floral wreath headdress (that she wore maybe twenty minutes total) and a bendy rubber dragon like her cousins have, and Jamie came away with a katana and two daggers, which now adorn the wall in their bedroom.  Lastly, of course, was Thanksgiving, which was just my family, parents, and grandmother, as this was my brother's family's year to spend Thanksgiving with his in-laws.  The day was filled with not but food and television, and Mom sorting through Christmas lists, as Thanksgiving should be.

We have our first baby bump pic for this pregnancy.  We kept procrastinating, and so ended up missing the opportunity for a 13-week pic, which is where I started the last time.  I'm going to try and get at least some on comparable dates to the last pregnancy for comparison.  We're still at the "every four weeks" stage for prenatal check ups, so there's no news on that front, and there really hasn't been as much going on in relation to the pregnancy this time around; there's not really a lot of shopping and preparation to do when the last time around was only fourteen months ago...

 

Eh, I got nothin'...

Needless to say, my emotions are all over the place right now.  Hopefully things will calm down a little from here out.  Or at least only be as crazy as is normal during the holidays.  We should have a couple of quiet weekends before Celebrate Jesus at our church, and then Christmas the following weekend.

P.S.  Sorry if there are any typos or nonsense sentences in here, but I'm way too drained to proofread right now.  Maybe I'll edit later.