kim through
   the looking glass

My friend Tammy is hosting a Mom 2 Mom Carnival on encouraging our kids’ relationship with Jesus.

If I’m going to be brutally honest, I’m not entirely sure how we’re going to go about helping our kids build a relationship with God!

One thing we currently do is pray before dinner each night. We try to pray for specific things and for specific people instead of saying a generic prayer. One thing I remember about growing up is that we generally only saud prayers by rote (ie. “Now I lay me down to sleep …”) so I was very uncomfortable actually praying out loud around other people since I’d had so little practice. I want to give Gwen the opportunity to pray out loud her own prayers in our home so that she becomes used to using her own words to express herself to God.

Another thing we hope to do is family Bible reading. I don’t yet know how best to do this and not make it a chore and boring, though, as that was most of Brad’s experience regarding family devotions as a kid!

I hope, also, to expose our kids to other Christian adults. Living in an intentional community in which we have deep relationships and intentional get-togethers (ie. weekly potlucks and weekly morning prayer) is a wonderful way to show our children the love of God through others. I think having positive adult role models who talk about their faith, their relationship with God and their walk with God is an awesome thing for kids to have!

All in all, I think the number one thing to do to encourage kids to have a relationship with God is walk with God yourself. Kids learn the most from what they see, and if all they ever see is a ‘Sunday Christian’, how can we ever expect them to move beyond that? That means that both Brad and I have a lot of work to do in how we live our lives and ‘walk the walk’. I hope, and pray, that we can rise to the occasion.

I feel like I’ve totally dropped off the blog world. I realize that it’s not technically true, but it has been a while since I’ve crafted a somewhat thought-provoking post. I figured I’d give everyone an update on what’s going on Chez Schellingerhoudts that has made my blogging a bit slow!

• I’ve been really tired. Although I didn’t think I was this tired with Gwen, I was poking around at some old posts and found this one that proved me wrong. I still think I’m more tired this time around! I’ve actually been napping during Gwen’s naps, which means that I haven’t had much time on the computer.
• We’ve been trying to organize a trip to Gores Landing (near Cobourg/Port Hope) to pick up an antique dining room table and chairs from my mom’s cousin … this is taking up a lot more time than we’d hoped it would!
• We’ve had my mom draw up a plan for a potential kitchen reno and we’ve been contacting some contractors so set up quotes and such. I’m so excited at the possibility of our kitchen/dining room reno getting done before Love Bug arrives that it’s not even funny.
• Gwen’s consistently down to one nap a day (ya know, except for today!) which means that my free time has been cut from 3+ hours a day down to only 1.5 - 2 hours.
• Brad’s been off work for the last week, but went back yesterday … and when he’s home, I rather enjoy spending as much time with him as possible. We also did a bunch of house work and running around.

I think that about sums up the last week or two. It’s been busy. Good, but busy. I promise I’ll write a decent post soon

Time keeps on slippin’ …

Jolly Jumping!

into the future …

Playing with daddy and 'The Ozlo'

Read the rest of this entry »

“I feel bad spending so much money eating out,” I said to Brad the other day.

What did he reply?

“Well, I feel bad starving.”

** Warning: Photo heavy post **

Well, my dad came up today to finish up the sanding on June Bug’s room, so other than priming that wall (which should take no time at all and I might do tomorrow), it’s done!! Here’s our photo journey of the past week of renovations. Read the rest of this entry »

Breathe. Three weeks till full term. Breathe.

June Bug weighs around 5 lbs (!!!) and is almost 20 inches long from head to toe. He/she is tumbling around in my belly (to mine and Brad’s great delight) and is packing on the pounds. Apparently the hair that covered his/her body is decreasing and the vernix (think cottage cheese) is increasing in anticipation of delivery. To see how big June Bug is, click HERE. Read the rest of this entry »

So I had my 28 week appointment today. Or so I thought … *insert scary music* dun dun dun!!!!!

My secondary midwife said that she was reading through my chart and looking at my ultrasounds and bloodwork and such and talked with my primary midwife after our visit three weeks ago. She said that she was concerned that we were operating with the wrong date in mind - she says that my growth has been more according to my “original” date of June 14 … so she and Anne agreed that it would be best to operate under the assumption that my “original” date is correct.

So. I’m 29 weeks pregnant now instead of 28. That’s actually quite a big difference - at least it is in my mind! Not much is different for June Bug - he/she is still packing on the fat and apparently depositing a RIDICULOUS amount of calcium in his/her bones every day. Note to self: more calcium!

So, 11 weeks is left, not 12. Eleven. Holy Cow. 12 weeks was three months … 11 weeks, not so much! I feel like we still have so much to do!

Today Brad and I went to pick out the rest of the furniture for our bedroom set. We have it ordered and it should get delivered in 2 - 3 weeks, which is wonderful! I’m looking forward to having our room take shape and not look so thrown-together. We purchased a ‘door chest’ (randomly, Sears sells our set, and you can see this piece of furniture HERE), a six-drawered dresser, and two nightstands. Oh cool! You can actually see our bed HERE. Sorry. That was random! Regardless, I’m thrilled that we’ve bit (bitten?) the bullet and bought the set!

I’m over half-way there!

This week, our baby’s getting bigger! June Bug weighs 3/4 of a pound and is 10.5 inches long head-to-toe - picture the size of a large banana … except with a head and arms and legs and such. His/her eyelids and eyebrows are fully formed and he/she is developing his/her sense of touch by doing FLIPS in my uterus!!!

I think the best thing about this past week of pregnancy is that Brad got to feel June Bug move for the first time! The baby was doing some heavy-duty moving one night as we went to bed, so I told him to put his hand on my belly and he’d feel something. He did, and sure enough, June Bug didn’t move. =) But then June Bug did move and Brad felt a couple of good kicks! They weren’t very strong to him, but they were pretty strong to me! Read the rest of this entry »

Maybe about something non-baby related?

So, we’ve been in our new house for about a week and a half. The move went VERY well - we had so much help we could hardly believe it!! We are truly blessed to have all the friends we did come and help us out. Read the rest of this entry »

Voila! Our new home! We got the keys yesterday at about 4:30 pm and had to wait for Brad to finish work and Crystle to get home before we could go over. We got there around 5:30, which is not the most wonderful time to take pictures - especially when one cannot find the lights in the house - or, at some points, the light switches were found, but there were no bulbs in the lights. That makes for one dark house!

Read the rest of this entry »