Birthday Weekend!!

This past Sunday was my 27th birthday. This one was really special because my mom and dad were able to come spend the weekend with us. It was the first time in 10 years I've spent my birthday with them!!

We watched movies, went to a Drive game (local minor league baseball team), walked around downtown, went to church, looked at some model homes, ate dinner downtown, ate hot & ready Krispy Kreme doughnuts (my birthday cake), and just had a really good time!

My parents have been to Greenville before, but have never visited Greenville. I think they were pretty impressed with the city :)

Here's a picture of my mom, me, Jack, and Luke's mom Sunday night after my birthday dinner downtown:

Tonight Luke and I went out on a birthday date...just the two of us!! He took me to PF Chang's, which was AMAZING! He also told me that in a couple of weekends, some of my girlfriends from Lynchburg are coming down for a girls weekend and he's taking Jack with him somewhere else (TBD) as part of my birthday present! I couldn't be more excited!!!!

Pure and Faultless Religion

A couple of Sunday's ago, we visited a church where the pastor shared James 1:27:

"Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world."

When the pastor spoke about this verse, he focused on the part about looking after orphans. I was thinking about that sermon this afternoon and the part about looking after widows hit me like a ton of bricks. I realized that we have a sweet 86 year old widowed lady, Mrs. Jean, living in the condo right next to ours and although I speak with her every few days, I have not done a good job of "looking after her." Mrs. Jean loves our son Jack to pieces. She only has one daughter living in town that visits her once a week at the most. I thought about how lonely she must be and it made me want to cry. I felt so convicted that to look after widows is what God loves and wants from us, and I have failed to do so with the person I share a front porch with. Never once have I invited Mrs. Jean inside my home. Never once have I invited her over for dinner. I guess there's always some excuse like, "my house is messy" or "I haven't prepared anything great to eat," but I honestly don't think she would care one bit. I think she would enjoy our company more than anything in the world.

So, we hope to have Mrs. Jean over for dinner later this week and hopefully spend more time with her and do a better job of looking out for her in the future.

My challenge to you (and myself): God's Word clearly says that the religion He loves is when we look after orphans and widows (not going to church, not singing in the choir, not soaking up knowledge, etc., etc. - although all good things). What are you doing to look after orphans and widows in your life?

Potty Training???

A couple of weeks ago, Jack started telling me when he pooped. Not every time, but most of the time. So, I decided that even though Jack is still really young (20 months), we'd give potty training a shot. I haven't pushed it very much or even been really consistent with it because we've been out and about most mornings. I though he didn't really seem to interested in it or know how to control his bladder, so I was gonna call it quits. I figured he's too young for it anyhow. After his nap today, I decided to put him in big boy underwear one last time. He peed all over the den floor. But when I went to change him, he wanted to wear his underwear again instead of a diaper. A little while later, we noticed he was wet again, so I put him in a diaper. Later I went into the bathroom and saw that he had peed on the bathroom floor.....right next to his potty!! Maybe it was coincidence. But maybe I'll give potty training a little more time before calling it quits :)

Baby #2

I feel like our second pregnancy is so different from our first. When I was pregnant with Jack, we took pictures of my belly all the time and I would NEVER forget how many weeks pregnant I was. I guess we're just so busy keeping up with Jack that I forget to post much about Baby #2 on our blog! So, here's a brief update of what's been going on in my belly recently. I'm now 18.5 weeks pregnant. I've been feeling the baby move for a long time now and Luke's been able to feel the movements for a couple of weeks. The past couple of days, the baby must be doing some crazy somersaults or something because we've both been able to SEE my belly move when the baby does!! I haven't had another doctor's appointment yet. We're waiting to get our group and policy numbers with our new insurance. I have my first appointment down here scheduled for a couple of weeks. We should be getting another ultrasound soon, so more pictures to come (yay!)!!

Potty Time!!

I won't go into too much detail or post the picture that I texted to Jack's daddy and grandmas (and his Aunt Liz who didn't appreciate it ;) ). All I'll say is Jack pooped in the potty for the first time Friday and this is one proud mama!! Hopefully we can continue down the potty training road with some success :)

Life in Greenville

Well, we've been pretty busy since our move! We almost completely settled into our apartment now. Luke had his first day at work yesterday (which went GREAT!). Yesterday we also celebrated Luke's 27th birthday and went out to eat with a bunch of family here in town. Jack and Laura visited downtown for about an hour today. It's so fun down there, but SOOO HOT!! All in all, everything's going great so far!! I (Laura) don't have much access to the internet right now, so I'll go ahead and apologize in advace for the lack of posts. Thanks everyone for all your prayers and all of your continued support of our family!!

Our BIG move!!

I think that most people have heard by now, but our family is moving to Greenville, SC!! We are so excited about this opportunity that God has provided us with! It's something we've prayed about for over a year. Luke accepted a job at the University of South Carolina Upstate as their Director of IT Client Services. We move down next week and he starts July 26 (His Birthday)!!

If that's all the info. you want, you can stop reading now. If you want to hear more details about how we've seen God's hand in the midst of this whole process, keep reading :)

WHY GREENVILLE?
Luke's parents, 3 of his brothers and a whole slew of aunts, uncles and cousins live in Greenville. Also, Laura's family lives in Georgia, about 3.5 hrs. away from Greenville. We're currently 8 hrs. away from Laura's family. We've wanted to be closer to family for a long time now and have been specifically praying about moving to Greenville for more than a year.

THE JOB
Luke first applied for another position at USC Upstate. He received an email from the vice-chancellor of IT (Jeanne) saying he was not qualified for that position, but that they would be posting another position soon that he was qualified for and to apply for it once he saw it on their website. Several weeks later, Luke saw the position posted on a Monday night. He submitted his application and sent his resume to the vice chancellor and got a call Tuesday morning before 10 am about an interview! We ended up driving down to Greenville after Luke got off work Wednesday, he interviewed on Thursday, and was back at work at LU on Friday. Talk about a quick trip!! We later found out that the Jeanne did not even have his application (only his resume) when she interviewed him! That in itself is a God-thing.

We got the job offer call a couple of weeks after Luke's interview and accepted the next day. When Luke called back to accept the job, he asked if they would pay any moving expenses. Jeanne told him she had never heard of them doing that before, but that she would ask. Turns out they're going to reimburse us up to $1,500 of moving costs! Thank you, Lord!

THE HOUSE
Prior to anything with this job, we had dinner with our neighbors and mentioned that once we have another baby, we'd probably start looking for another house. Now, this is before we were pregnant again. After we found out we were going to have another baby (which was a surprise to us!) and told our neighbors, they remembered what we previously said about our house. I guess you should know that our neighbors only live next to us part of the year; they also have a home in Vermont. Before they left for Vermont, they told us to let them know if we were planning to sell our house, that they were interested in buying. This is all before we knew about the job! Since accepting this new job, we have talked with them several times and they are going to buy our house!! What a blessing!! We will never have to even put it on the market! The even bigger blessing is that once everything is said and done we won't have to pay anything else on the house. This is really great considering today's economy and the fact that we bought our house at the peak of the market. What a God-thing that we won't be loosing any money! We do have a few things to fix up on the house before our neighbors take possession, but most of them are minor things. The biggest thing is that we need to replace is the linoleum in the kitchen and back door, but it's definitely something that needs to be done. We really feel that we would not have gotten a better deal if we had listed with a realtor.

THE NEW PLACE
We left Lynchburg Sunday after church and headed for Greenville to look for apartments. Our plan was to spend the day looking at apartments on Monday, and Tuesday if needed. Well, Sunday night Luke's uncle came over to his parents house to drop some stuff off and metioned that maybe we could rent Allison's (his daughter's) condo. We went Monday morning and looked at one apartment, then we went to check out Allison's condo. We knew going into it that renting from Allison would be the best deal for us. Since we only want to do a 3 month lease while we look for a house, all the apartment complexes charge an extra $100 a month for short term leases. Plus there are application fees, pet fees, deposits, etc., etc., etc. We had lunch with Allison and discussed the details if we rented her place. We would have none of those fees. Over lunch, Allison also shared with us that she was planning on moving back in on July 4, but just didn't because she was too busy. So, it's a God-thing that her condo is even available for us to stay in!

After lunch with Allison, we were going to visit 2 more apartments just to check them out. We got to the first one. No one was in the office and the door was locked. And they looked a little too ghetto for me, so we decided to head on to the next one. We got to the next one and they looked nice, but there was a sign up saying they wouldn't be back until 2:30. It was only 2:00. We didn't really feel like waiting around for a half hour, so we took it as a sign from the Lord that he was providing us another place to live. So, we left and went home (well, to Luke's parent's hosue that is).

THE PLAN NOW
We're packing up our house right now and we're planning on moving everything down Tuesday of next week! We'll have to put a lot of stuff in storage for a few months. Hopefully we'll get to know the area quickly (schools and such) and will be able to find a house we like and buy it! Our goal is to be in a house and settled before Baby #2 comes in January. We're shooting for October to purchase a home in Greenville and Luke is shooting for baby # 2 to come this year :-).