Ok... It's been a while, and I'm still exhausted so this will be brief.

Thanksgiving was great. Good food, kind of co-op prepared. The boys were well occupied with the Wii and didn't destroy Papa Bill's house.

Thanksgiving (take 2) was on Sunday at Papa and Grammy Dahls, add GG, and Surfaces. The boys like the wii there and Cousin Tessa... and re-arranging the Christmas tree ornaments. Jockey insists that the lamb is called Sheep. And later that our new toothpaste is green "like than green stuff on the sheep".

We had 2 snow days right before Thanksgiving. I thought it was great. The boys were playing the backyard or playing Wii... no middle ground. Although, Jockey at one point asked "do I have school?"... no. "Do I have Bible study (ie childcare)?"...no. To that he said "When is someone going to teach me something! I'm bored."


Lastly, officially annoucing the life altering news.... we are PREGNANT and expecting a little bundle in June 2011. Due date is 6/24, but we will be c-sectioned about a week earlier. As of November 17 when we visited the doctor... it is just one baby with a very healthy heart rate of 182 bpm. And on that day we were 8weeks 5 days.... which puts us not on December 6th to be 11 weeks 3 days. This is a long story and huge blessing, not that we knew God wanted this definitively, but we had been praying "Is this what you want for us?" since April/May. So I guess we have our answer and God has been in control and blessing us from the beginning... Just some examples: I went to the doctor in July to get Clomid (fertility med used to conceive the first two boys) and was given birth CONTROL; turns out July and August I laid hardwood floor to include smelly glue, painted walls & cabinets after TSP-ing, cut/installed molding and chair rail, NONE of which I could do if I was pregnant and sick, sensitive to chemicals or exhausted already. I went off the birth control after being sick and prayed that it was all in the Lord's hands. We NATURALLY (no clomid) conceived what seems so far to be a sucessful pregnancy... any other naturals we've lost. Per the ultrasound, if we had been "trying" and aiming for ovulation specific days... we would have missed it by a week! All the more proof that it wasn't in our timing/control but God's because usually a late conception is a "weak" and therefore unsuccessful conception. THEN, during the snow days before Christmas, I got a call (by the way, one week after getting the cost estimates on what this whole ball of wax is going to cost us) and it is from DSHS, turns out the boys now qualify for free medical (less than before) and now I qualify for Pregnancy Medical (since on the off chance I wrote in the margin of the income review form that we were expecting!) I just had to put my application in, and I just got off the phone to find out it was officially approved last FRIDAY! So between the private insurance (which I can drop for the next 8 months and save even more) and the DSHS... I shouldn't have any out of pocket expenses! A gigantic huge blessing to pay for the other blessing that God sent! THEN, the timing of the delivery will be in the last days of the boys' school, which gives me the whole summer to recover from surgery, get off pain meds, and get use to a demanding schedule before I have to get up every morning and get 4 people ready for school/dressed/fed etc; if it had been in "MY" timing I would be hitting the ground drugged and running kids to school with a new baby in MARCH/APRIL. So too many good things to be a coincidence, and it's all God.

We are hoping for a boy. It hadn't occurred to us that it would be a girl until everyone else brought it up. The boys are very excited and are already anxious to see their new brother, and I'm sure the excitement will grow and *I* do. We have a boy name picked out. We didn't even talk about girl names... in fact, we didn't talk about any other boy names other than the ONE we picked out and decided on. It means "gift of God", which fits perfectly all of what God has had us traverse in the past months. But we find out 2/8/2011 what gender for sure, assuming that he holds still and lets them take pictures!

So that's the news. We'll keep you posted.