A day in Micah's life

Here is a typical day from Micah's perspective as a two-week old infant:

My day usually starts out with breakfast... Dad offered me this breakfast burrito, but Mom turned down that idea.

While my parents eat, I lay on a quilt and exercise my legs and arms.

When Mom needs two hands, she puts me in my bouncer.  I like being in my bouncer a lot and I like falling asleep here, unlike my cradle. 

 After naps, I like to eat and then fall asleep again...

Sometimes, I get bundled up and taken on a walk.

If I'm lucky, I get to have a friend over to visit.

 When Dad gets home from work, we spend some time together.  Laying on Dad is my favorite position, and I like to fall asleep here too.

 Other times, Dad and I have intellectual discussions.

 At night, my parents swaddle me to keep me warm and content.  Dad calls this particular wrap a mermaid swaddle.  Sometimes I like this...

And sometimes I don't...

 And here is where I sleep at night, in a wooden cradle handmade by Opa.

Goodnight!

Retreat

This week, Caleb and I got away for a few nights at a place nearby called Living Springs Ranch.  The couple that runs it has a really neat ministry where they keep up a couple of cottages on their property for pastors and missionaries to get away for times of renewal and refreshment.  Caleb's parents also stayed there in a different cottage.  During the daytime, the four of us met together to pray for our church and ministry there, and also to discuss and plan.  

Such a cute little cottage!

Hot chocolate with whipped cream!

At 35.5 weeks

Photos of Everyday Life

Recently I was inspired by my friend's post here to take more everyday photos instead of just "staged" photos.  So often, I only take my camera out for big events or trips, not everyday life.  Since one of the main purposes of my blog is to help family and friends stay connected with us despite distance, I decided I should give this everyday photo thing a try.  I'm not literally going to try to take a "photo-a-day", but we'll see where this leads.  For starters, here are a few pictures from our recent everyday life.  My apologies if they are boring to you!

Our front yard has a large flower bed that used to all look like this picture,
filled with rocks, invasive ground covers, tall grass, and  crowded irises.

Over the past year, we've worked on digging up the ground cover while trying to preserve the irises.  Recently, we finally made some noticeable progress by trimming back the irises and transplanting them in spaced out rows, as you can see here.  It doesn't look like much, but believe me, this has been a long work in progress!

A (two-week old) baby bump picture, taken at 31 weeks.
There, hopefully, I've (temporarily) satisfied those who keep asking for more "bump" pictures.

I spent Friday sorting baby clothes and paraphernalia on the living room floor. 

While I organized, Caleb decided to be really adventurous and try out a quite complicated,
gourmet upside-down cake recipe to utilize the red pears he found on sale.  Doesn't it look beautiful??  

The chef  with his baked cake - did I mention he made homemade caramel to use in the recipe?  

Summer Recap

We had a great summer including a lot of growing between our somewhat prosperous garden and developing baby Gunther!

Here is a recap of some of our summer adventures:

In June, we helped with the "Amazing Wonders Aviation" Vacation Bible School at our church.  There was a great turn-out of kids this year that increased each day.  Caleb led the music and I taught the 1st/2nd grade class.

For July 4th, we hosted Caleb's family at our house for a picnic gathering and then played in our church's "As American as Apple Pie" concert.  Caleb sang a solo as Johnny Appleseed.

In late July, Caleb drove some of the youth group members over to Rathdrum, Idaho each day for a week while they helped teach the same aviation VBS at a church there. 

My brothers Sam and Tim came over for a visit for about 10 days at the end of July/beginning of August.  We went camping up near Canada, toured Boundary Dam and Gardner Cave, attempted to bushwack our way to a waterfall, swam alot at the city pool, picked raspberries and made jam, and weeded the garden.

In August, Caleb and I performed in the first ever classical orchestra concert in the city of Deer Park (if I am remembering the correct description), which was a fundraiser concert for a church-sponsored community back-to-school fair which we helped put on at the end of the month.   

Also in August, we spent a week as program staffers at Odyssey Kids' Camp, an overnight camp at Waitt's Lake sponsored by our association of churches.  Caleb played on the worship team, co-led the silly songs, and taught the 5th/6th grade boy's Bible study, among other things.  I operated the sound/video systems and taught the 5th grade girls Bible study.  We both led a track time for 6th graders where we taught them basic camping skills such as how to build fires and set up tents.  

We got away on some quick one-night camping trips ourselves close to home several times throughout the summer.  Most of them were car camping, but we did go on one canoe camping trip to Horseshoe Lake.  When we camp, we like to do two main things: explore the area and read books at the (hopefully) quiet and scenic camp site.  It's our way of getting away from reality for a little while to relax.  On our camping trip to No Name Lake in the Colville National Forest, we had a rather hair-raising experience during the middle of the night when we heard what we thought was a bear growl, much too close for comfort.  We never saw a bear, but needless to say it took us a while to go back to sleep!  This was in an area with both black and grizzly bear sightings - one of us contemplated staying a second night, but the other was grateful to go home without an opportunity to repeat the experience! 

And now it is officially fall, the season of our baby's expected arrival!