just another day

• 13 people in our home for seven hours on Friday.
• Chickpea’s birthday party with 11 children at - of all places - McDonald’s on Saturday.
• 20 people coming to fellowship in our home on Sunday.

I need a nap.

edited to add:  I just found out that while we were fellowshipping this morning, we had an earthquake - and apparently I missed the whole thing.  I was in our guest room nursing Garbanzo when it happened, and everyone else was in our living room.  It wasn’t until lunch when I found out about it - we were chit-chatting with friends around the table and they brought it up.  Apparently they all felt our building shake, at least enough for them to stop what they were doing and comment on it.  I, on the other hand, was oblivious.  You’d think I’d have felt it, too, since I was about 10 feet away from everyone else, but I guess not.  Weird.

I bet you thought I had fallen off the face of the earth. Nope, just had a baby and hosted family in town for a month. We just returned home from dropping off my dad and grandad at the airport, and earlier today we dropped off my mom (they had different flights). So far, after just a couple hours, it feels weird to be just the four of us now.

It was SUCH a blessing to have family here, especially to have my mom with us for an entire month. She was such a help that, quite frankly, I’m a smidge nervous to handle my new gig as a mom of both a preschooler and a newborn, while living in another culture and language learning. Yikes.

I’m a bit too emotional and physicallly wiped to do a long post, but I sincerely hope to catch up with posting in the next few weeks. My brain is spinning with blog fodder - there’s no problem coming up with topics to write. The main issue is my INSANE to-do list, which I’m afraid has taken a life of its own, so quickly is it growing. To give you a sample, here’s just a bit of what’s on my plate for the next week or two:

• try to catch up on some much-needed sleep.
• put our home back in working order.
• upload a bajillion photos on Flickr from the past few weeks.
• upload video footage online, thanks to our new video camera (that was a very generous Christmas gift)!
• menu plan, now that I’m back to cooking for the family once more.
• updating the family finances and budget.
• writing thank you notes for Christmas gifts, baby gifts, end-of-the-year ministry gifts, meals brought to us by other workers, and I’m sure other things I’m forgetting at the moment. Message to you: if you haven’t heard from me and have expected to, you’re most likely on my docket.
• tackle Mt. Laundry.
• finish Garbanzo’s baby announcements.
• take our son to his one-month well-baby check (is it time for that already?).
• go to my one-month follow up, hopefully getting the go-ahead to begin working out.
• solve the mystery as to why my daughter has been randomly puking at night for the past six weeks.
• help decide on Kabob’s language learning method for February.
• decide on my language learning method, starting in March.
• review language notes and study from home.
• finish some paperwork about our 2008 goals for our company.
• pray and think over said 2008 goals.
• return Skype calls.
• visit with neighbors.
• pray for more support and funding for a car (now even more evident with a newborn added to the mix).
• thank those who have already pledged more support.
• go on a date (what’s that?) with Kabob.
• and oh yeah, enjoy my newly expanded family.

So in addition to blogging, I’ve got just a wee bit to do. Thanks in advance to the many of you who have wished us congratulations, be it through this blog, on the phone, via e-mail, or in person. We are blessed to know you all. And even though this post is basically a pathetic attempt to explain away my slackishness in writing, I really do have high hopes to write more frequently starting the next few days.

On our Flickr site.  Just thought you’d like to know.  Enjoy your Saturday.  We are.

The Nesting, I mean.  The past few days, I’ve been dying to organize everything in the house - the books, the arts & craft supplies, our wardrobe, not to mention actually setting up the baby/guest room.  It makes sense, seeing as I’m almost thirty! nine! weeks! pregnant!  How did this show up so fast?

We’ve done a little round of Musical Beds over here - friends of ours bought our full-size guest bed, we traded for their crib, then we bought another family’s twin-trundle bed that pops out into a king.  Then Kabob has been painting a new-to-us wardrobe for Chickpea, moving her old one out to the balcony for storage, which necessitates rearranging all the other furniture in the house - you get the idea.  In short, I’m aching to have a peaceful, organized home, because my goodness, our son would panic if he realized he was born into a family whose front entry cabinet was in disarray.  He might just turn around and go back inside.  And we do not want that.

Today we’re off to IKEA with some friends because we hear it’s festivious.  They actually have Christmas decor going full-force, and there’s even rumors of an ice-skating rink in the shopping plaza.  I won’t be doing that, of course, although Kabob pointed out that if I did fall, we could save a bundle on labor and delivery costs at the hospital.

It seems to be the “in” thing to be taking a bloggy break until the new year - almost every blog I regularly read has hung up a “be back next year” sign.  I will be, too, more or less, except for the occassional bout of boredom waiting for our impending birth.  My next doctor’s appointment is this Monday (Christmas Eve), and we’ll get our c-section date then.  I’ll keep you all posted!