Life Lately...

Life lately has been full of adventures...

It's been really good to be a part of a healthy, growing church community. Missio has officially launched this last Sunday to mornings! We meet at 10:30am at Mary Rieke Elementary School. It's been really exciting to watch God move through this community of people to help us love Him more daily and live out his mission in this broken world. Joel has thoroughly enjoyed his new role as a community pastor on staff at Missio. We are still raising support and hoping to move towards more hours and more responsibilities. I am so proud of Joel...he's been more cautious of his health and well being lately... getting workouts in and making healthier eating choices.

I (Lisa) have been growing exponentially... this little baby girl is VERY active! I LOVE IT! (Except maybe at 3am, where I would rather be sleeping... hhaha) She is 27 weeks along and is already well loved. We are praying through a name for this little girl. Right now we are between Addysen or Emery. But we are still throwing other names into the mix.

Addysen means kind, joyful, created by God.
Emery means powerful and brave.

I really need to take some belly pics... I have my glucose test next week... I felt so sick taking that test with Kaden. And then we have another ultra sounds a few weeks after that to check on baby's kidney's.  She had what Kaden had with his kidney's... hopefully it will correct itself before she's born, like Kaden's did.

Other than growing a baby inside me... I've been enjoying my time at the Portland Art Museum. I love being able to build relationships with my co-workers and be able to shine Jesus' love to them. I know God is moving there. I am in constant awe.

Kaden is becoming such a big boy... he is very funny, creative and smart. The last few weeks he has become more bold in his writing skills. He can completely write his name by himself and can write almost all his letters and some numbers. He does get bored or a little ADHD and start going off into drawing race tracks instead of letters...hahah! It's been fun to watch him grow physically (had to buy new pants for him since he's growing out of all his hand-me-down clothes) and also grow spiritually... he was so concerned that some of his friends weren't at church a few weeks ago and asked to pray for them to feel better. It's so easy to forget to direct Kaden's heart towards Jesus daily...

We are all trying to get some sort of rhythm and routine in our lives... but most of of we are trying to abide in Jesus daily. It's been an amazing journey... well... I am going to sign off on this beautiful monsoon rainy portland day...

The year of the museum

Working at the Portland Art Museum we recently got a card called REAP passes that allow us two free tickets to a whole list of museums and attractions in Portland. We can go to the zoo, the children's museum, the aviation museum, OMSI is our science museum and a bunch of other places all for free.

On Tuesday I had a mommy fail and thought Kaden had school but it was teacher in service day. He was excited to go back and I thought it was his turn for "show and tell". We pulled up to an empty parking lot and looked up the school website. So, what did we do instead? We cashed in on my new benefits and headed to the children's museum. It was so weird going there when it wasn't super packed. We've only gone on free days or weekends. We spent a few hours taking our time through the different exhibits. The new one is the Lego exhibit. It was a fun morning. It totally threw off my morning to do list (including a meeting I totally spaced and blogging about all our Christmas activities). Can't wait to take advantage of the card and see some stuff in Portland that I would necessarily pay money for but would like to see. This year has been renamed the year of the museum.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas!

It's a GIRL!

We had our ultra sound yesterday and we are having a little baby GIRL! Kaden predicted this early on. He was calling the baby her and she for awhile. We had many talks about it could be a boy. And he was like "ok" but the look in his eyes was more like "yea right.". Hahaa! I guess siblings have crazy intuitions. Kaden had the biggest smile on his face when the tech told us it is a girl. She wasn't shy to show us she was a girl. She was moving around a lot so it they were able to get a good look at her. Everything looks good except she has one tube out of her kidney that is a little dilated. kaden showed the same thing in his ultra sounds. Pray that it heals so we don't have to have any surgeries when the baby is born. We are not worried. Now to figure out a girl name for this little one in my belly! I'm not a huge pink person but we had to go out and buy a "little sister" shirt to match kaden's "big brother" shirt. We are so blessed to have wonderful friends and family sooooo excited for baby Girl To! Thanks for your love and support.

Half Way!!!

The baby will be 20 weeks on Monday! Can't believe we are half way there! We find out if it's a baby boy or baby girl on December 9th. We have a lot more girl votes than boy votes... we will see! :) The baby is super active and kicking a ton. Kaden got to feel some of the big kicks last night and he's super excited! I feel great! Sleeping on my side has been a little challenging... but that's a minor complaint! Here's a picture of  me and the baby belly...and Joel's baby bump too... silly guy! :)

Oh Christmas Tree

You would think we had enough holiday festivities with Thanksgiving... but we wanted to bring in the Advent season! Sunday morning it was a fairly good weather...so, we packed up the warm clothes and mud boots and went Christmas Tree hunting... we found the perfect tree rather quickly. The Labrum's joined in the tree hunt along with Lori, Kyle and Kris. Kaden wore his beaver hat to chomp down his tree. haha! The minute we got the trees loaded up on the car the rain came pouring down! 

We took our time decorating the tree to have intermissions to race cars. Kaden is at such a fun age of participating and getting really excited about every ornament that came out of the box. I got to tell him about all the ornaments he's gotten in the past three years and the memories that are attached to them. 

We also had some time to play with some Christmas crafts... a felt Christmas tree to practice hanging ornaments...and decorating a gingerbread house. 

We hope to continue to point Kaden towards Jesus during this time of year and why He came to this earth, that it's not just about the lights, the sounds, smells, and activities... but it's about the birth of a Savior... 

"For to us a child is born,to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace." (Isaiah 9:6)

Merry Christmas!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving this year was super low key... we had 11 of us crashing in the To house the entire weekend... two more added to the mix the night after thanksgiving. Throw in a handful of friends that came by for dinner another night...and you have a party weekend! We decorated cupcakes, cooked an entire thanksgiving feast and several other meals thrown into the mix. The kitchen was grooving with dishes and yumminess! The kitchen aid mixer decided to die but was quickly resuscitated by the amazing husband. Food was consumed, laughs were had, shopping was abundant, cars and toys were everywhere, games were played and memories were made. We had a lot to be thankful for this  year... health, jobs, kids, family, friends, community and above all Jesus.