Christmas 2010: Ryan and Me Edition

Ryan, Baby Lee and I had our Christmas on Monday evening December 20. We went out to dinner at one of our favorite places-Olive Garden. To cut back on the total bill we always share a meal, which we are starting to realize seems strange to many people. But we believe this is a great way to be a good steward of the resources God has given us. To us, it just makes sense.

Then we came home to read the Christmas Story from God's Word and open gifts. I love that in our little family tradition we read the true meaning of Christmas before ever getting to gifts. As we continue making family traditions unique to us, we will not forget our Savior Jesus whose birth is the most important part of Christmas! Being pregnant this year put a new light on Christmas that I hadn't ever thought about before. I found myself relating with Mary, the mother of our Savior, thinking specifically what it would have been like to get up on a donkey at the end of pregnancy, travel a long distance, then actually give birth in a barn. It is truly incredible that she obeyed God and trusted Him, not just by accepting His will to be a virgin mother at the beginning of her pregnancy but to go all through it and endure even the last hours and minutes til our Savior was born. I admire her more than I ever have before. I want my faith to look like hers!

Some of my favorite gifts from Ryan include: Just Like You-a book we found in Family Christian Stores when we first found out we were pregnant, I was so touched that Ryan remembered how much I had loved this book. Homemade Clock-Ryan printed one of our maternity pictures that Angela Kleinsasser took (check out my Facebook page if you haven't seen them), pasted it to a foam board, bought the hands of a clock and put it all together. I absolutely love it! Choosing to See-an amazing, must read book by Mary Beth Chapman. I am not a fast reader but I read it in a week. I simply could NOT put it down! I highly recommend it to everyone-you will be changed!

Showers of Blessings Part 2

Have I written yet how good God is? Have I shared in any of my blogs how God has provided for this precious baby? I sure hope that by now you all know how good and amazing my God is! He has blessed us so much through this pregnancy and my entire being is praising Him! Allow me to share another way He has provided.....

On Sunday December 19, our Chinese Church (Denver Chinese Evangelical Free Church, where we have been serving for a year now) threw us a baby shower. It was so much fun! I will tell you, there was a lot going on at our church that particular Sunday. We celebrated the faithful service of our interim Pastor Li (he has finished his term at our church and returned to Washington DC), we had our Christmas potluck and then had the baby shower. With so many of our church leaders going different directions that day, we were so blessed that they wanted to throw a party celebrating our precious baby.

How I wish you could have been a fly on the wall at this shower! It was much different than the others we've had, which is perfect since a completely different culture planned it! They had Ryan and I (yes Ryan was also an honored guest) play a game. Let me see if I can set the stage. Ryan was blindfolded, cotton balls were placed on the floor and Ryan was given a kitchen serving spoon and a plastic bowl. The object of the game was for him to get as many cotton balls into the bowl as possible. My role: directing him to where they were so he could scoop them up (yes still blindfolded). So picture this, Ryan is on his hands and knees and listening as intently as he can to my instructions so he could win the game. It was hilarious! Especially after the game was over and all the wives and moms in the room said "Wow, Ryan did awesome (he got all of the cotton balls), most of the other men don't listen to us as good as Ryan listens to you." Needless to say I was so proud of my MAN.

Other reasons why this shower was unique: we didn't sit down the entire time, I cut and served all the cake, guests just brought their gifts to us to open, there was TONS of noise the whole time and Ryan was the photographer. Please understand that I am not complaining, I loved every minute of it! I am just trying to help you picture this baby shower in the midst of another culture. We had so much fun and we were blessed once again with an abundance of gifts. Enjoy some of our favorite pictures!!

The Nursery: Decorating

Instead of painting we decided to decorate with wall decals and other fun stuff. We got a really awesome tree at Babies R Us, the wall decals that match our bedding set, 3 lanterns and then a display board that my sister-in-law Amanda gave me.
Once again, Ryan did most of the work! He is so good! I helped with some of the tree but as you know, he is much taller than me so he could place the leaves where I couldn't reach. We didn't have fishing wire so we used speaker wire. We are going to replace that wire when we get some fishing wire. The tree and our lanterns, the first part we worked on. Putting together the mobile. So soft, simple, musical and just adorable! I find such joy in the small things in life!Animal Parade wall decals up and cute! I just love the tree and how the animals fit perfectly together with it. I have been so excited to put up the display board and put our sonogram pics on it with some other mementos. We are almost finished! Stay tuned for pictures of the complete nursery for our Baby Lee!

The Nursery: Bedding

One of my favorite parts of this pregnancy has been dreaming of our baby's nursery. With a two-bedroom apartment, we had to do some rearranging of the previous office/guest bedroom into the nursery. We moved my office into our room so we had room for the crib, changing table and rocker. We still have our futon in the nursery to accommodate guests (or us when guests are staying in our room) so to be honest it's a bit tight. But we are grateful for this apartment that God has given to us, plus we know we won't live here forever.

One of my worries with not finding out the sex of our baby was how we were going to decorate the nursery. Babies R Us has either pink and purple for girls or blue and sports for boys. So we started with our options being sparse. As always, God provides! The first time Ryan and I went to Babies R Us (it was very early in our pregnancy) we agreed to only browse the store but save registering for a bit later. But as we walked through the bedding selection, we fell in love with Carter's Animal Parade. It was my incredible husband who saw it first. In my previous shopping of bedding ideas (mostly online) he hadn't been a fan of the ones I had shown him. So when he actually spoke out about the Animal Parade collection, I immediately stopped walking to take a closer look. After looking at every item in the collection, touching it for quality and softness and some extensive talking about it, we decided that was the one we wanted for our nursery.

Here comes the beauty of the situation.....we continued browsing and then discovered that the Animal Parade collection, yes THE Animal Parade collection that we wanted for our nursery was on CLEARANCE!!! I turned to Ryan and said this, "Oh my gosh, we can't register for it. It's on clearance which means it won't be available closer to when we will need it. We HAVE to buy it NOW!!" Then I flashed him my sweetest, biggest smile!

We walked out of Babies R Us that day with our 4-piece bedding set, an extra crib sheet and a window valence. That was all this particular store had left of the collection. While in the store, we had an employee call other stores in the metro area to see what they had left in the collection. You better believe that over that week, we visited at least 2 other Babies R Us to pick up the remaining items in the collection; diaper stacker, changing pad cover, wall decals, lamp, wall hanging, receiving blankets, very soft fleece blanket and mobile. Every piece was on clearance and we paid as little as $5-$10 for most of it!

The more I see it, the more I love it. Here's why: I love the colors, I love the animals, I love that the animals have a carpet over their backs, I love how soft it is and I love that the print has a Moroccan feel to it. Now I have never been to Morocco but that is what came to my mind when I first saw it. And I will be honest, the giraffe is my favorite! Stay tuned for more pictures of the wall decorations and finished nursery!!!

The Nursery: Furniture

As Ryan and I were shopping for furniture we decided that we would go with a crib and changing table. We found options at Wal-mart, Target and Babies R Us and ended up registering for a set that was at both Target and Babies R Us. A few months ago, Target sent me an email saying they were having a baby sale! I don't remember looking that closely to the ad, I just forwarded the email to my Mom and Sister. :) I traveled to KS that same week for my job and Mom mentioned the ad. She asked what was on sale and because I hadn't really looked at it, we opened up her email to see what the bargains were. To our amazement the ad was buy a crib, get a changing table free. I immediately thought, could this apply to our crib and changing table?

God has such a way of surprising us and providing for our needs at much cheaper prices than we often think! There are many things I love about God, one of them is that I absolutely believe He too is a bargain shopper! To our wonder, this BOGO (buy one, get one) offer did apply to the exact crib and changing table that we had picked out for our precious baby!

My amazing, generous Mom offered to take Target up on their offer and purchase our crib and changing table. She doesn't have much experience in online shopping so with my help we made the order and had them shipped to Denver. Ryan, Baby Lee and I are extremely blessed that my Mom bought us this set! Thank you Mom for making such sacrifices so you can spoil us! We so appreciate your generosity! We will always remember that this crib and changing table were a special gift from you!

Ryan has been the most anxious to get this furniture out of their boxes and set up. Don't get me wrong, I am excited too but I thought the end of October was a bit too soon since our baby isn't due until early February. :) So we agreed we would set it up around Christmas time. Well.....we almost made it. I love Ryan so much, I know he was wanting to do his "daddy duty" and get the furniture together so I gave in the week before Thanksgiving. (there really wasn't much arm twisting) He did the changing table first at the beginning of that week and then put the crib together at the end of the week. Of course I have pictures to capture his awesome work! Below are some of our favorites.
Changing Table:

just getting started....and smiling!!!

i love that MY man reads directions!!!

still smiling and a bonus ad for Graco!

almost done and making sure it is secure

DONE! and so full that right now we can't change our baby in it lol

Crib:

getting started

look at those guns-yeah my husband is HOT!!

please take note of the directions :)

almost done...

DONE! and my favorite picture!

Dear Daddy: on behalf of Mom and me, thank you for allowing us to do nothing but sit, relax and take pictures while you did all the work! You did a fantastic job and we are proud of you! We will always be your biggest fans! We love you so much!

Showers of Blessings Part 1

In this season of speaking out about all the blessings God has given it is not hard for me to write this post and share with you what I am thankful for! My mom, sister and a dear friend Diane DeWeese threw me a baby shower on Saturday November 13 in Emporia, KS. It was one of the greatest days of my life as family and friends gathered together to celebrate the precious miracle God has given to Ryan and me! We played games, ate delicious cake and punch, laughed, talked and celebrated God's goodness! Oh yes and opened gifts. WOW! As you can see by the pictures our family and friends completely went above and beyond in showering us with gifts for our sweet baby! As Ryan and I were going through the gifts, I was again amazed at how much people had blessed us! It is actually quite humbling that our family and friends love us, including Baby Lee, so much that they would give so generously! In my opinion, this is such an example of God's love showering down on us! From the bottom of our overflowing grateful hearts, thank you family and friends for blessing us with many gifts and love!

My sister made this adorable diaper cake for me! I loved it! Thank you Angela!

Cathy Jones, our treasured friend of many years and also my wedding cake baker, made this cake too! I love her dearly and especially love her cakes! This one was perfect for the shower!
Some of my Tabor friends were able to come too! Thank you, Heidi, Elisa and Kristina for coming to celebrate with us! That meant so much to me!
A hilarious game, guessing how big my belly was! As you can see, my friend Kay Rowland thought I was MUCH bigger than I actually was.
Do you see what I am talking about with being extremely blessed by an overflow of gifts?

Many family and friends made us blankets, which is very special to me and some of my favorite gifts! Above is the blanket that my dear friend Cherilyn made! She is so good at cross-stitching and stared making this blanket for Baby Lee right after she found out we were expecting him/her! I absolutely LOVE it! Cherilyn drove up from Oklahoma to spend time with me and I give her all the credit for these pictures! What a blessings she is to me!
These are my sister's closest friends, who also love and support me! I so enjoyed having them there and celebrating with us this new addition to our family!
Thank you Mom and Angela for giving me such a special baby shower! I had so much fun and thank God for both of you! I can't wait for you to meet Baby Lee-you have already spoiled him/her WAY too much! I love you both so much!
And this is my favorite picture of the day! My brother wasn't there for the actual shower but he did come after for cake and punch! I just love that he is touching my belly and giving love to Baby Lee and me! He is going to be an awesome uncle and I thank God that Joseph is in my life!

Pumpkin Carving

Ryan and I love to spend time with our mentors Dick and Gretchen Roberts. Have I ever mentioned that they have a Chinese girl living with them? Her name is Ruthie and we just love her too! She came to the US almost one year ago. She had just graduated from high school and came here to go to college. Right now she is going to the Community College of Aurora and doing VERY well! She is from Naning a very southern city in China. Much farther south than where we lived in Nanchang. Dick, Gretchen and Ruthie have such a cool past. When Ruthie was just a girl and Dick and Gretchen were living in Michigan, Ruthie's Dad came to Michigan State University as a visiting scholar. He met Dick and Gretchen at that time and have had a strong friendship ever since. They have even visited his family (and Ruthie) twice in China!

Because this was Ruthie's first Fall season in the US we wanted to make it extra special by doing some things Americans do during this time. We carved pumpkins, drank apple cider, ate pumpkin bread and caramel apples. We had such a fun time together and as always I love seeing our culture through the eyes of a foreigner.

Getting Started: Choosing a design, sticking it on the pumpkin and cutting!
In Process: Carving and Cleaning
Finished Product: Pre-Lighting

The Coolest Part: Lighting
I gotta tell ya, I've done a few pumpkin carvings before but Ruthie won the price for coolest design! She did a great job! And Ryan wins the prize for being the fastest and to be completely honest, he actually did most of mine. For some reason, I tuckered out with all the cleaning. :)