We got a Maltese puppy about two weeks ago. He was about 2.2 pounds in these pictures, now he’s upwards of 2.4! We named him Spurgeon, after the great theologian Charles Haddock Spurgeon. Mocha was a little shocked when we brought home this little white fluffy ball of fur, but now they’re best friends and play all day (unless they’re sleeping). Mocha is very gentle with him which is very encouraging to us. They snuggle together at night and sometimes when they take naps too. We’re working hard at house training him. Some days are definitely more of a success than others!

~ Anna

Oh how I long to be this selfless in my marriage! Ian and Larissa’s story was a blessing to me this morning and I pray it is to you as well. I’ll even give you some fair warning: you might want to grab the tissue box!

~ Anna

- Anna

Our bedroom.

Our bedroom.

Spare bedroom, our work in progress.

The nursery! (More pictures of this to come!)

The front.

The kitchen and dining room. The family room is off to the left.

The family room.

The kitchen.

The deck out back.

Our happy doggy. She’s absolutely loved having a yard. Mocha plays for hours out there and then crashes on the couch when she’s inside. It’s adorable.

~ Anna

All photo credit goes to Lauren LaPlante and Therese Miller.

Now for some pictures! I’ll share the empty house pictures first and then give you the pictures that I took today in part 2 so you can see what it looks like with everything in it’s proper place!

The living room.

The kitchen, with all the painting and cleaning stuff!

The bathroom. The shower is behind the door.

The back bedroom. This will be used as an office/studio for now. Eventually it will be a child’s bedroom.

Our bedroom.

The front door.

It looks like I missed the nursery, but it was probably because the guys were prepping it for paint. So sorry!

The back yard, which Mocha absolutely loves. She spends a lot of the day out there.

Keep an eye out for part 2 with the second set of pictures!

~ Anna

A little update on our situation: We closed on our house yesterday! It was very exciting to walk into that house last night and know it was ours. There was certainly a lot of paperwork to sign, but the whole process didn’t even take an hour! We went straight over to the house and got to work. Aaron’s dad had graciously agreed to help us paint that night and Aaron’s mom offered to bring us all dinner so we wouldn’t have to get something in the drive-thru. I’m sure we couldn’t have gotten the painting done without Aaron’s dad’s help, and the delicious dinner helped us to keep going until 10:15! For Pixie’s room, we had picked a pale pink so they painted that whole room a light fluffy pink. In our bedroom, I wanted to do something dramatic, like a deep red but the room is pretty small and the window is high and wide so I was worried it might be too dark if we painted everything red. So we picked “Antique ruby” and painted an accent wall to solve the dilemma! While they were painting away, I was vacuuming floors, scrubbing toilets and bathtubs and mopping floors. It felt good to have the house feel clean and also smell clean with the mixed smells of bleach and vinegar. By the time we were finished with both tasks, we were exhausted, but it was a very happy exhaustion!

As for the car, the insurance company ended up totaling it. So we’re still driving around the red Camaro. Aaron went by the collision place on Tuesday and picked up all of our belongings from our trusty ol’ Acura TL. We’ve had it for about a year and except for a few times here and there when it wouldn’t start for some unexplained reason, it’s been a great car for us. I’m sure it would have lasted us a lot longer had we not been in an accident. After shedding a quiet tear of goodbye, we have begun looking at cars online. It’s been nice to have a rental car, but only Aaron can drive it, so I’m stuck at home all day. I can’t teach violin lessons out, run errands, or just run to the new house to get some more cleaning done or run some things over. Thankfully, our friend Marie is coming down tomorrow and she’s going to help me cart some of the smaller things over to the house. Saturday is the big moving day. We have had so many offers for help from friends to help us move whenever we need it, so we have about 15 people or so coming over to help us move. The apartment is full of boxes everywhere, stacked three high! The cupboards and closets are empty. Our dishes are wrapped in paper. Even our pantry is nearly empty! I think Mocha is pretty confused because she has followed me around much more attentively than usual these past few days. She senses that something very unusual is about to happen and she doesn’t want to miss anything! I think she’ll be happy to find out she has a yard to run and play in, but we have no way to tell her that, she just has to wait and see.

One last thing: I did take pictures of the house last night, but I realized that the camera is in the car still. So when Aaron gets home, I’ll upload pictures so you can see what our empty house looks like!

Love

Anna

Regarding the baby: We had another doctor’s appointment last week. It was a quick in-and-out dealio, but we heard precious Pixie’s heartbeat and the doctor measured my uterus and we’re right where we should be! My back has been hurting a bunch for the past week and half. Both sitting and standing cause it to hurt. I’ve been working on standing and sitting very straight, but it still hurts! If anyone has any tips, I would definitely appreciate them. I have been using this exercise DVD for pregnant women and boy does it help! It’s low impact but I can still feel that I’m working out. There is a section of just stretching at the end that really helps my back as well. I told Aaron that I didn’t know I could bend into some of those shapes with a non-pregnant body, and here I am doing them with a large belly! Pixie kicks me all the time and I love each and every time, even when it wakes me up. Oh that’s another thing! Sleep has become a pretty much hit or miss event lately. Some nights I can sleep like a rock. Other nights sleep eludes me. But my mom has been my inspiration in this area. My mom struggles with insomnia all the time, she has all of my life. But instead of getting frustrated that she wasn’t sleeping (like I do would), she would turn the lamp on beside her bed and read the Bible or some other book that would point her to Christ. When she felt sleepy, she would lay down and try again. But she would never get angry, complain or be frustrated. So I’ve been striving to react in that way as well. When I can’t sleep, I reach over for my Android phone and read the Bible on there. It has resulted in some sweet times with my Saviour! Time that otherwise would have been spent in angry, frustrated tossing and turning.

Regarding the new house: We thought we would be closing a couple weeks ago, but alas we were told we needed two other lines of credit for the loan. Anything would work, we were told, even a Netflix account. We have plenty of credit lines that we could give them! We never miss payments so anything we had would work. One catch: they have to be at least a year old. Aaron and I have not been married or lived on our own for a year yet! The only thing we had was our cell phone bill. We didn’t know what we would do! Thankfully, Aaron remembered he had and Audible account. It wasn’t quite a year, but it would hit a year last Friday, so Aaron sent them that information and told them to wait for a few days until that account hit a year. We found out yesterday that the Audible account worked and we are going to close the end of this week! We are very excited. It was definitely a lesson in patience for me because I wanted the house now! I wanted to begin making it ours. I mean, it was just sitting there, empty! Why couldn’t we start moving in and painting etc? I was tired of the boxes and baby stuff piled up in odd corners all around our apartment. But God’s timing is the very best of course! Hopefully we’ll have pictures up of the new house soon. We haven’t been over there in quite awhile which is why you haven’t see any!

Regarding the title (the car accident): Last night, Aaron and I were driving to our Wednesday night church service. We didn’t see the car in front of us braking in time and so slammed into their rear bumper. No one was hurt because we were only going about 15 miles per hour because we had just turned, but our car didn’t fare so well. The front is all crumpled like an accordion. The other car has not a scratch because we hit the tire they were carrying on the back. In human terms, this is not at all a convenient time for us to be in a car accident. We are spending a lot of our savings on our new house, baby things, doctor’s appointments and new brake pads. We only have one car. But the blessings far outweigh the curses. The damage looks like it’s only body damage not internal. Our insurance is paying for us to have a rental car even though both Aaron and I are under 25. The woman who owns the car we hit was very gracious and a Christian. She was more concerned about me and the baby than she was about herself or her car. I could go on and on. God has been very good to us. This was something He put into His plan for us. He wanted us to be in an accident last night, right before we close on our new house, right when we don’t have a lot of extra money. God is good and gracious to us and knows what we need, right when we need it.

I’m off to pack some more boxes! Have a great day and don’t forget that God is in control so we can trust Him implicitly.

~ Anna

Today I’m featured over at Scribbles n\’Things with our love story. Be sure to check it out!

~Anna

This first blog/site was probably the first one that piqued my interest in cloth diapers. (As my sister Lissie can tell you, I was vehemently against cloth diapers before I got married. I told her many times that I only wanted to deal with poop once. Ha! Now look at me! It was only because I didn’t understand cloth diapers though.) Lindsay had several posts that I read many times before I even brought up cloth diapering with Aaron. Since then I branched out to get other opinions, but I have kept these posts for reference. The following six links are to Passionate Homemaking

• Cloth Diapering: Is It Worth It?
• Basic Cloth Diapering Supplies
• One Size Pocket Diaper Reviews
• Newborn Cloth Diaper Reviews
• Guest Post: Cloth Diapering 101 Part 1
• Guest Post: Cloth Diapering 101 Part 2

Amelia from Musings of a Homemaker did a series on cloth diapering, beginning with a very helpful cost breakdown of the different kinds and styles of cloth diapers as compared to disposable. I definitely bookmarked her first post for reference.

• Cloth Diapers: Why Would You Even Bother?
• Cloth Diapers: Not Your Grandmother\’s Cloth Diapers
• Cloth Diapers: Diaper Care and Common Myths
• Cloth Diapers: A Few Close Ups of My Stash

And on another blog I enjoy reading, Through Clouded Glass, Callie put together some posts about cloth diapering.

• Cloth Diapering: First Impressions
• Cloth Diapering Resources
• Cloth Diapering Tips 1
• Cloth Diapering Tips 2

Some other posts I found helpful:

• Cloth Diapering 101 – Leanna at Thoughts and Whatnots
• Cloth Diapers – Bridget from Just a little part of me… (Both this one and the last one were helpful to me in terms of laundering the diapers.)
• Cloth Diaper Update – Rachel from Rachel and John
• Diaper Debate – Lauren at Meet the Chapmans

I hope that is informative to any of you who are thinking, “What? Are you crazy??” or “That sounds interesting! What is cloth diapering like?” I’ll share with you all what our experience with cloth diapering is when our Pixie arrives too so you can have our perspective on brands/styles/laundering/life with cloth diapers etc.

~ Anna

Our house has been filling up with lots of pink things like the onesie above. My sister Lissie sent that to me. We don’t have a lot of room in our small apartment to just store these things so the next picture shows where our pink stash has been stockpiling.

In the corner of our bedroom! Aaron and I have been so blessed by the generosity of friends and family in making sure our little Pixie-girl has everything she needs to look the part of a girly girl. Some friends of mine gave me the items in one of the large gift bags. While I was unwrapping it, the nine-year-old girl was just as excited as I was – she was bouncing up and down the entire time I was looking through all the precious things.

Literally two minutes from the apartment where Aaron and I live now is a Once Upon a Child and I cannot stay out of that place! They sell gently used baby clothes and items. We found our pack and play there for much less than we would have had to get it new. It’s even Pooh Bear like I wanted too! The day after we found out Pixie was a girl, I went and picked out a bunch of cute pink things that I liked. It was so exciting to be picking out pink things for my own little precious daughter!! I can’t tell you how thrilling it is to say daughter and realize that I have one!

Today I purchased the bedding we’re using. I had a great coupon for Buy Buy Baby and I thought it would be good to take advantage of it! Aaron and I have been prioritizing things we still need to get for our pink girlie. Sometimes it’s hard to put something on the “nice to have” list when you really want it on the “must have” list! I think sometimes stores charge an arm and a leg for baby items because they know first time parents (or maybe not just first time?) are big suckers for the cute stuff and will shell out any amount  for their new little one.

I didn’t get a picture of this, but we were able to purchase Pixie’s carseat! I have been rolling around all the different options in my head with all the pros and cons between infant only, convertible and others. It’s quite a relief to have that decision made and the large box sitting in our living room!

We had snow for the third (I think?) time this season. Around 11 AM the big fluffy flakes started coming down and it didn’t stop until about 5:00. The temperature is hovering right around freezing so not much of it stayed on the ground but it certainly makes everything just a little more magical around here. A few weeks ago, we had a big ice storm overnight. The next morning was a Saturday and Aaron and I needed to go somewhere. Our car sits outside in a parking lot and it was covered in about 3/4 of an inch of ice. Boy, it was tough to get inside, let alone get enough off so we could drive! The roads were pretty clear, but inside the apartment complex it was an ice skating rink so we had to be insanely careful. That was definitely interesting!

Last year when Aaron and I were trying to get pregnant, we were walking through some store and this onesie caught my eye. We purchased it, in hopes that we would get pregnant and that we’d have at least one daughter. Whenever I see this little onesie, it reminds me every time of God’s faithfulness and goodness to His children.

And here’s our puppy. Somehow she gets cuter every day. She is very intelligent and pretty obedient. We are wondering how she’ll do welcoming a pink bundle called a baby into her world. She loves kids but Pixie won’t be a “kid” for several years. Thankfully Mocha is gentle around kids and will tolerate pretty much anything when it comes to rambunctiousness so we’re not worried on that account!

A baby bump picture! I’m completely into maternity clothes now and boy are they comfortable. I feel like a grow rounder every single day. It will be interesting to see how big I am around Pixie’s due date.

And last but not least, an ultrasound picture of our precious girl’s foot, which she likes to use to remind me that she’s awake and alive in there. I love when she kicks me. Feeling her move is always amazing, realizing this living being is inside me, growing more and more every day. It always makes me praise and glorify God for His mysterious workings.

~ Anna