What I Learned-February

I had so much fun writing last months “What I learned” that I thought I would jump on board again this time!  February really felt like a short month and yet I definitely feel like there were a lot of big learning curves as well as fun things to learn too!

1. The Olympics are my favorite, but I learned that I do have a limit of watching…I eventually hit the: “We need to do something else!” stage!  But all in all, I loved being able to see the athletes and the competition.  Plus, my husband likes them too! Even Boaz loved all the times he got to either “watch” or sleep on us.

Boaz is so high maintenance.

2. There are SO many baby options for everything. I’ve started bookmarking a few things and my Pinterest page is growing!

3. This baby loves to move and I am in love with baby feet.  One of my favorite ultrasound pictures definitely was the one with cute little feet.  Not too surprising because I have always taken feet pictures wherever I travel.

Speaking of, I’m ready to be back in Africa… 🙂

4. I definitely have a bump and people have noticed. Maternity clothes are around the corner.  Not yet, but definitely soon!

Oh and how cute is this picture with my husband.

5. My limit of handling winter is getting shorter.  I am longing for walks and runs outside.

6. It’s okay to spend money to take care of me (even when I’d rather spend the money elsewhere!) and to do things afraid. I definitely had to be open to making this decision and to God’s promptings.

7. Downton Abbey turned into a perfect thing to watch while on the treadmill with Boaz! And I will say that I was thankful for a “happier” ending than last season.

8. Communication is ever a learning process, but worth the hard work.

9. Even though February is a “short” month, we totally used all of our grocery budget to make good food early in the month.  Next month, I might need to spread things out a bit!

10. This salad dressing is delicious. 

11. The book of Numbers hasn’t been nearly as hard to read as I thought it would be this time around and I am loving reading Romans this month.  (I’ve been using this plan since I think July last year and have been more or less reading a day or two or three at a time.  I love getting to read out of 4 different books each day.)

12. Baby names are hard to pick!  But I am loving all the potential names and options…I may or may not be a name hoarder.

What did you learn this month?

Celebrate

This past weekend was full of fun {mostly}.   Valentine’s day got pushed back a few days to feeling icky and sleeping most of Friday, but when we did celebrate, we certainly had a blast.  Yep, I love my husband and I love that he loves good food just as much as I do.  Not to mention that he’s all about trying new things.

We had these the day after because we were too full…but they were delicious! Blackberry Izze with vanilla bean ice cream…perfect kind of ice cream float!

Our fruit for the fondue! Bananas, strawberries, and blackberries!  The husband didn’t think he’d ever really eaten a blackberry without it being in something…so we definitely added those! Plus, they were on sale and just ripe!

Focaccia bread!!! We went the easy route and bought this instead of making it from scratch since our Sundays are usually a little full with church. 

Oh and who doesn’t love the idea of dipping cheese & garlic tortellini in fondue?! Next time, we want to try toasted tortellini! 

There’s the tasty pesto fondue! We loosely followed this recipe.

Hello white chocolate fondue…my favorite! We didn’t do anything crazy to make this.  We had thought about trying bananas fosters fondue, but didn’t quite have all the ingredients.  This was more than satisfying still. Oh and check out this adorable little fondue pot.  We got it for Christmas from sweet friends and it’s so cute!  It even worked well too!

Oh and who can resist sprinkles! 

and last but not least..a little bump picture.  This is from right after taking some time to walk/run on the treadmill!  There’s no denying there’s a bump.  On the upside we are OVER halfway to meeting this little baby. Ultrasound got pushed back because of a silly blizzard that snowed in our driveway…so that’s coming soon!
In other news…I hear that the weather *might* warm up.  I’m hoping so!

Oh Boaz :)

 

In case you happen to not be big on Instagram or Facebook, you might have missed out on this little picture that got posted this weekend.  And let me tell you.  I’ve been laughing about this picture since we took it.  Not to mention that I was laughing while we were trying to get the “perfect” picture.  This was probably like picture #73 or something crazy (granted, I used some fast action hold the button down to take a bunch at once, but still).  In the end, I was so happy that he did mostly cooperate and that we got a fun picture!

Either way.  This was our second pose/position and Boaz decided all on his own to hold the “baby” by the foot.  I’m a fan.  The foot action adds to the hilariousness of the photo.

Since you all are here, you get in on some of the hilarious pictures that didn’t make the cut.

Ha! One of the first “interactions.” Baby CPR?

Yep…my wait command is not working as Boaz shakes his head…

This was a option #1 before we saw the greatness of the picture we picked. And the husband is the expert at getting him to obey.  He walked away after this and walked to where the dog was looking the right away and hello sweet, hilarious picture!

So, yes. I’m thrilled, we’re thrilled, and we’re in for a crazy journey come summer when we get to add Baby Z to the mix!   Boaz is in for quite the surprise….!  I’ve been praying often that Baby Z and Boaz will become fast friends.

Money Money Money

My husband the other day was talking about how he had read a devotional about the four money languages.  I had heard about these before, but couldn’t remember them so I promptly looked them up on google and found this fun video.  We both could identify our money languages and could see traces of our secondary languages as well.

Here’s the line that I identified with most:

“We can take that trip. We can buy pizza!”

Amiable it is!  Pretty sure I’ve been known to say, “Hey! We have unallocated funds [funds not put in the budget yet]….let’s go buy something fun!” Not to mention that the last time we had unallocated cash on hand, I ended up going and buying all sorts of food for people.  Hello, money means love =) Plus, gifts is one of my top love languages.

Ryan on the other hand…well, he’s an analytic and…”Money means security.”  He’s been known to have thousands and thousands of dollars just sitting in the bank. Handy, though, when it comes time that he wants to do something with it like buy a wedding ring or go to Sri Lanka or head to Norway for a few months.

Thankfully, I have some analytic in me too and he’s willing to spend on experiences, which helps us be on the same page money wise and we’re Dave Ramsey fans.

How about you? Are you a driver, amiable, analytic, or expressive?

What’s Up Wednesday

hearing Boaz crunch on an apple that I deemed too old for me to eat

seeing the book of Luke and my DSM book

thinking that I’m ready for spring and to be able to go outside!

doing bible reading, breaking free, and a final exam

looking forward to seeing sigur ros, going to virginia, and planning another vacay

feeling content and happy to have Boaz home

touching the wooden chairs my grandmother made

missing africa and friends

thankful for being able to sleep in, cereal, pretty wedding pictures, marriage, friends, sunlight, mountains

excited about going to the mountains again

coming up easter, spring, and ally & levi coming home!

something old the shorts i’m wearing that i love

something new a super soft liberty sweatshirt that i got for free

something blue Boaz’s chew toy

3 months and counting

3 super happy months of being married! woot! in celebration, I went through our wedding pictures and honeymoon pictures to finally post them on facebook.  if we’re friends, you can look at them here. made me totally want to do the whole day over again and to run off to the mountains and the beach like now. but instead, i’ll make a list of all the fun things i love about life right where i’m at! in no particular order here are 12 things for the 12th.

1. being married

2. my awesome husband

3. my adorable dog Boaz who loves me

4. my church family.

5. a wonderful place to live that is warm even though it’s still cold outside

6. traveling to look forward to in the future

7. friends’ super cute babies

8. being able to e-mail and text best friends

9. being able to cook all sorts of deliciousness

10.  pinterest boards of lovely things

11. books to read and time to read them

12. mornings spent with god reading the bible and doing the breaking free bible study

What are you loving about your life right now?

The Journal

I told you about our questions. Now, I’m going to tell you about our journal.  This might be one of my absolute favorite things.  I love love words in all forms and so getting love letters from my husband makes my day.  I stumbled across the list of questions and the journal all in one spot even!  After I got back from Greece, I had a journal stashed away that was plain and kind of boring compared to my normal bright, crazy, happy style.  I hadn’t used it and so I figured even though we are just dating it would be fun to start now.  I penned a few words, added the date, and stuck it in Ryan’s refrigerator   I waited and waited until then I happened to find that he’d returned the favor by hiding it for me.  This led to months of writing and hiding.  Tucked away in his lunch box, in a drawer, in the microwave, in the shower, hidden in the DVDs, in a backpack, in a cereal box, and all sorts of places.  Sometimes we’ll write serious and sometimes we’ll be silly.  This has been such a fun way to have something to look forward to and to communicate as well as encourage each other in a different way.  We put our first journal in our wedding box so we’re on our second already.  I can’t wait to see how many we go through over the years.  Oh and if you’re over at our house and happen to see a journal in a weird spot….I wouldn’t suggest opening it!

Have you ever tried this with your spouse or your kids or roommates? I think it would be so fun to have a family journal too someday!

 

Weekly Questions

Yesterday, marked being married for 2 months already! I even got a surprise bag of white chocolate pretzels. I do love gifts and my husband too!  Marriage has quite a few perks!  One of the fun things that we’ve done both when we were dating and have continued to do now that we’re all old and married off has been ask weekly questions.  They can be one of my favorite times because right up next to gifts is words of affirmation for me.  These have evolved over the months and some became more relevant after getting married.  We’re still working out the bugs and figuring out what questions to modify or add in for us.  They’re a fun way to recap, get on the same page, and check-in before the start of a new week.

The original five came from this fun little blog.  We’ve debated about the order of the questions but here’s the original order:

1. How did you feel loved this past week?
2. What does your upcoming week look like?
3. How would you feel most loved & encouraged in the days ahead?
4. How would you best feel pursued in sex / intimacy this week? (this is the one we modified when we were dating and mostly left it off or talked about oh hey how are we doing in waiting to have sex until we’re married and how can I help you in that?)
5. How can I pray for you this week?

Beyond these questions, we recently wanted to add a few more…these are the ones we are trying out:

6. How are we doing spiritually? (i.e. how are you doing with reading your bible, are we praying together, are we reading the bible together, etc.)

7. What are you working on this week? (what area do you want to see changed this week or do you want to work on…i.e. get up earlier, go to bed early, plan ahead, etc.)

Then when searching for the blog above, I found a few other potential questions to ask:

8. Is there anything we would like to do differently this week than we did last week?

9. How can I better serve you this week?

10. What were your struggles this past week?

Here’s also some questions to ask periodically: 

1. How have the first X months of marriage compared with what you dreamed about or envisioned?
2. What are some of the things we need to acknowledge our thankfulness for in our first months of marriage?
3. What do you want to get better at as a wife or husband?
4. What do we want to get better at as a couple?
5. What are some of the dreams that you have as an individual? How can I help you reach them?
6. What are some of our dreams as a couple? How can we seek after them and surround ourselves with the right people?
7. What are some of our greatest blind spots as a couple?
8. In what ways do you feel like you’ve grown since we’ve gotten married?

There you go! How about you? Do you ask any other questions that I missed or have any other fun things that you love to do as a couple?