God's good provision

Some of you know that this has been kind of an uncertain time for Jamie and me. We have always agreed that when the time came for having kids, we wanted me to be able to stay home to care for them. But we've also always known that that would be difficult financially in this area. On two salaries, we are able to live pretty comfortably, but one salary really seems almost impossible. It was a step of faith for us when it was the right time to start having kids because we still had no idea how we would make it. We really had to come to terms with the fact that we might have to move to a place with more affordable housing - but that would mean a new job for Jamie, new roots to put down, etc. And really Jamie's job is pretty ideal for him at this time.

We were continuing to explore different options, praying for God's provision and guidance, praying for openness to whatever God had for us, cutting costs and looking at ways to cut costs even more once I wouldn't be working.

Its been a good (and humbling) process for us, but some of the options we had were starting to fall through and a couple Sundays ago we really prayed, "Lord, make the way clear. It doesn't look like you're going to provide the way we thought, so please just show us what you DO want." (Its not like that was the first time we prayed that prayer, but it was another time of surrender.)

Then, Monday, July 6th, Jamie got an email from John Yates. (We were both home from work because it was the day our jobs chose to give off for July 4th.) The email included a forward from a family in the church who had a home available that they were willing to rent for an extremely reasonable rent. (Actually, its pretty UNreasonable for them. Definitely below what they could get.) In fact, as Jamie and I had discussed it in the past, this was the sum he had named several times as the sum we would probably be able to afford monthly in order for us to survive on his salary alone. So, we wrote back and went to go see the house that Tuesday evening.

Its beautiful. 4 bedroom, 2.5 bath, lots of living space, etc. It would cut at least 20 minutes of Jamie's commute and allow us to be closer to the community of The Falls Church. The upstairs is all newly redone hardwood floors, everything is brand new paint, and the bathrooms, kitchen, and appliances, while very old fashioned, are scrubbed immaculately clean. The neighborhood is quiet and well-established. We met the across-the-street neighbor the other day - she's a Christian and has 2 small children - and just the short conversation we had with her showed me how friendly and neighbor-ly the neighborhood is.

Of course, that Wednesday night I had a lovely pregnant breakdown thinking about all the work involved in moving and how overwhelmed I felt in going from an amazing but small 2 bedroom apartment to a large house that will need to be somewhat furnished, made to seem home-y, etc. Ha ha. Jamie wisely assured me that he will do all the work and my pregnant self will just have to tell him where and what to clean. And then he put me to bed early. And since then I've felt incredibly peaceful and relieved. And also very surreal and blessed. And maybe a little guilty that God has provided such abundance for us.

But I'm also aware that God blesses us so that we can be a blessing to others. And, hey, this house will definitely give us space to have even more house-guests. (If they want to stay when we have a baby up at all hours of the night!) And the living space is huge enough that we will definitely no longer have to announce that we have a maximum capacity of 7 when we invite people over!

We've been scouring craigslist for furniture to help furnish this amazing home. Already, we found a dining room table for a great price that will seat up to 12 (maybe could squish more) if we put both leaves in it. I'm so excited for hosting family dinners and having the neighbors over and even having worship team dinners at OUR place! ...Now to find chairs to go with that table!

:)

We definitely see the hand of God everywhere in this. We're so thankful for His truly undeserved kindness in gracing us with such an amazing home - and with the beginnings of furniture to fill it. Our prayer now is that we will be faithful in generosity with the gifts He has given us and that He will be served in our home.

And some lovely pictures from our phones.

Front. Makes Jamie think of the Wonder Years every time he sees it!

Living room. I love how sunny the living spaces are!

Our official move-in date is October 1st, but the family we're renting it from is very kind and is allowing us to start moving some things in starting today (or, actually yesterday). Hopefully this way, the actual moving in (2 days before my brother's wedding and 13 days before Baby Girl Brown is due to show herself) will not be too traumatic! Ha.

God is good!!!

Its July Already?

How does a whole other month go by with no update? Sorry to anyone who keeps checking this thing. I'm thinking that's probably no one by now! And its not like there's nothing going on in our lives to update about.

First, Baby Girl Brown. She's doing well. I'm 26 weeks (just over 6 months) along and really feeling pretty good. A little back ache when I sit or stand or lay on one side too long. But not too bad. Oh, and heart burn. But that's about it. Definitely maternity clothes only from this point on. No more squeezing into my biggest pre-pregnancy clothes with just a belly-band to help me out. Ha ha. I'm loving the same black pants for work every day. It sure makes things easy. :)

This past Monday I had my glucose test. That's kind of the big one for our pregnancy, I think, because gestation diabetes is the one complication I'm at highest risk for because of family history, etc. But I'm excited to be at this place where we can find out if we need to do anything about it and act on it if we do. So far, no word, but I think that means everything is ok, since they told me they would get a hold of me by the end of the week if there was a problem.

As far as I can tell, our girl is very healthy. She has been super active. Yesterday I really don't think she went more than half an hour the entire time I was awake without kicking and squirming and somersaulting. Today she was a bit more subdued. But I think its because I didn't snack between breakfast and lunch and she was HUNGRY!

Other things that I think are fun? She loves to kick my seatbelt and the computer. She can actually make the computer move! And, I'm not sure if its just been a coincidence, but there have been several times when she's been pretty quiet but when Jamie started talking to my belly, she started squirming and kicking again. I hope its because she recognizes his voice already! He loves her so much.

Work is still good...although a little more difficult. I think one of the main things I've noticed in pregnancy is that I am more easily annoyed. It used to take a lot to even make me feel annoyance. Now, I feel it all the time at work! I'm really working on not giving in to it, but trying to maintain a "not easily angered" loving attitude toward everyone. After all, if things don't annoy you, its no virtue not to react, right? There have been a couple times when I've really been convicted to act with patience and pray for peace. (Jamie's encouragement over g-chat helps a lot with this!)

It does seem like we've been pretty busy recently. I think we've had guests sleeping in our guest room almost every other weekend for a couple months now. And the weekends we (or more like I) have off, we spend recovering! But it is a blessing to have this place where we have room for people to stay. We were just discussing yesterday how it really makes a place feel like home when you can have people you love come stay with you. We want to be hospitable.

Speaking of busyness, I need to go clean....busy weekends mean that the house has not been thoroughly cleaned in several weeks. I think it might be time to clean that scuff of something off the kitchen floor. :)

Email to my Mom

Well, we haven't updated this in forever, but you gotta start (over) somewhere, right, so here's an email I wrote to my mom just now about some fun recipes I've used in the last couple days.

Hi Mom,

I just finished dinner and thought I'd email you with the recipe for what I just made, since it was absolutely delicious!

Last night I was looking at all the fresh chicken you bought that I had thawed and realizing that I REALLY needed to use it before it went bad. So I made two separate chicken recipes that I'd never made before. (I know...its like the first time in my pregnancy that I've actually felt adventurous in cooking!!!)

Both recipes were breaded, so here's a simple way to make yummy bread crumbs. Just take a couple slices of whole wheat bread, toast them thoroughly (mine were browner than I would normally eat and even a teensy bit burned in places), put them in the food processer and blend. (I couldn't find my chopping attachment, so I used the shredding attachment and fed half slices down the chute thing that i normally put the cheese down.) - Sheesh baby girl is kicking the computer. - Then I mixed them with a seasoning that Jamie's mom always buys and that I really like on buttered pasta or in some italian dishes or whatever. Its called Mixed Up Salt. You should be able to find it in the weird salt section. I probably used maybe 3 tablespoons of the mixed up salt to 4 slices of bread. But not sure, since I just sprinkled it in.

First recipe (for what we ate last night). 

Ingredients: thawed chicken breasts, block of cream cheese, chives or green onions, parmesan cheese, breadcrumb mixture, melted butter. 

Directions: Take a chicken breast, and butterfly it. (You could pound it to make it thinner but I didn't have a pounder thingy, so I didn't.) Then put a slice of cream cheese (I used half a block of cream cheese divided between 4 small breasts) and some chopped chives or green onions on the chicken and roll it up, securing it with a toothpick or two. The cream cheese doesn't need to be totally covered by the chicken. Roll the rolled up chicken in the bread crumbs, then put it in a greased casserole dish or something to bake it in. Do that with all the chicken. Sprinkle the tops of the chicken things with parmesan cheese. Drizzle it all in melted butter. Bake at 375 for 40-50 minutes. And be sure to eat the goop. This is the first meat that isn't cut up very small that I've had any desire to eat in a very long time. But I had seconds of this last night!

Second recipe (for chicken nuggets).

Ingredients: chicken, butter, breadcrumb mixture.

Directions: Cut up the chicken into maybe 2 inch cubes. Eh, the size is approximate. Dip the chicken in melted butter (or just dump a handful in the melted butter like me). Coat each nugget with bread crumbs. Put in a single layer on a foil-covered cookie sheet. Bake at 400 for 10 minutes. When they're baked you can also freeze them and rebake them at 350 for 10 minutes when you want to use them. That's what I did for dinner tonight. Yum!

Well, just thought you might like some (relatively) low carb recipes to add to your repertoire. I especially love the chicken nuggets cuz they're super easy, all ingredients that I normally have around, and they're freezable!

Hope you're having a great time at Dad's party! And that Dad is very surprised! :)

Love, Catherine

Autumn's "Best" Weekend

We spent the weekend in Canaan Valley, WV for TFC's fall retreat. It was gorgeous weather, beautiful surroundings, and crazy busy with set up and take down in two different venues. Not quite such a retreat, but still nice to be there for their peak color day...and to drive back home and realize that we're nowhere near our peak color day so hopefully we'll get to experience it twice this year! :)

West Virginia is definitely a different culture from northern Virginia.

Anyway, here are some representative pictures from our weekend.

Wow. Once you get off 66 there is barely anything. This was the gas station where we stopped. There were people eating breakfast in the gas station. :) Yum.

I don't know if you can see it, but the restroom key was a picture of a man with "women" written under it. Further investigation revealed that the woman's skirt was colored in.

   It was a really pretty drive.

  

The surroundings were really pretty!

This is Jenny. She and I are in small group together. And yes, this is AFTER the summer. Kind of scary to think about how pale I'll be AFTER winter.

Ah yih. Its amazing how exciting it can be to drive a golf cart. Ha ha.

Finding out that the guitarist for the Saturday service back at home forgot to show up.

I watched the 3K race with Brian and Doug. :-)

Jamie passed the young girl just in time to win 3rd place in his division. I was proud! :)

And there's Florence, Doug's daughter and our friend!

One of zillions of pictures of them setting up or tearing down or something with all the equipment.

My husband the rockstar. After the evening's entertainment, the guys in the band stuck around to jam. It was super fun.

M Bizzle.

Steven Law. John Yates called him Liberace on steroids. Ha ha.

    

Dancing. :)

    Bill on electric, Jim on bass

 

This is such a classic Bill look, I think. :)

Jamie and Mike sharing keyboard space.

  Later, some relaxation in the lobby.

On Sunday morning we had probably 10 minutes practice time, total. So, we sat down to talk through who would sing what.

   FLORENCE! :)

      And then began tear down. This doesn't look so bad, right?

Not too bad.

OK. This is why I spend my time coiling mic cables.

This is Sophia. She belongs to our friend Aaron and Amy.

This is Olivia, her older sister. It was such a nice diversion to hang out with their family for a few minutes before we all left.

This is Joshua, the youngest of Amy and Aaron's gorgeous children. Isn't he snuggly?

    

This is Aaron and Amy. They have one other boy - Caleb, who comes between Olivia and Sophia. He's the dancing boy if you scroll up a bit.

Don't you love the protective big sister-ly arm around the younger sister?

Can you say gorgeous? Then I asked her to smile...

Ha ha.

I asked Olivia which Disney Princess she wanted to be. She said Jasmine. I can actually kind of see a likeness here...just pretend Jasmine got super pretty blond hair. :)

  

so, then we drove home. We stopped at this restaurant...which was VERY, um, rustic. But they hadn't even taken anyone's order (the restaurant was full) after about 20 mins, so we left because we were HUNGRY and figured we could be driving while we waited and then eat at approximately the same time, just further down the road.

So, we stopped at a Pizza Hut and ate. And then we drove home. Yay!

The end.