Our Cat

Our friend Josh made this video, and I thought it was really funny. Anyone who has visited our house in our absence to care for Potok can probably relate to Josh's relationship with our cat. Here's a little insight.

http://www.joshleo.com/vlog/2008/04/29/josh-and-potok/

Josh is very good at making videos. Feel free to peruse his other work. :)

God is So Good

Adam was offered a job on Friday!! Job offers are always good news, but in our case, there are a number of reasons why this offer is extra wonderful...

1) Adam has been looking for a permanent full time job for too long. In fact, after graduating from Seminary in 2006, he has been looking. Granted, we've been blessed with some opportunities for him within these two years - he has worked part time for a church, done ongoing freelance writing, installed some windows, earned a free Wii (see adamnavis.blogspot.com) - but always his goal was of course to gain permanent, full time employment to provide for our family. There have been a lot of ups and downs in this time. There have been times when trusting God has not been so easy. Read on.

2) Adam has very much wanted to find a way to engage two aspects of his passion - writing and ministry. The job offer that he got is from Words of Hope, where he'll have unique opportunity to combine these two passions, and it feels like a very good fit for Adam. 

To be more specific, Adam will be working on the Spotlight Program. This is a radio program in Specialized English. It's kinda like the Back to God Hour, for all you CRCers out there. Adam will be writing, voicing and producing these programs. If you want to find out more go to www.spotlightradio.net. 

3. Let me also say that this job comes at amazing timing. At the beginning of last week, we found out that my "maternity leave" at Bethany started on Monday (4/21.) Yes, 14 weeks before my actual due date. This was of course, not the news we were hoping for, and it would have been well within our right to panic, freak out, sound the alarms. However, we said to one another, "We're going to choose faith and hope. Not fear." And in fact, God is so faithful, that at the end of this same week, Adam had the job offer that we had been praying for. God's timing is indeed perfect. 

All in all, we are thrilled, and Adam will start this job on May 5. Thanks to all of you who have been our prayer partners throughout this journey. We couldn't have done it without your love and support.

Our Pregnancy

Since this is the first entry on this new website, I thought I'd start by taking just a quick look back at our pregnancy.

Starting with our first photo of our two babies...When we saw that picture, we called it "Potential First Photo." We lovingly referred to our little embryos as "Snowman" and "Pancakes." Luckily for the kiddo's, those nicknames have not really stuck.


On December 3 we found out that we were pregnant and were ecstatic! We had several ultrasounds in the very early stages, not all of which have we downloaded onto the computer - mostly because you can barely see anything (anyone) in them. Of course at the time, it was amazing and we were thrilled! Our first ultrasound, on December 14, we found out that indeed there were TWO babies in there, and again just felt so blessed and excited.

Things progressed nicely. With twins (and maybe with any pregnancy), you hear all kinds of stories - horror stories really - about how hard the pregnancy will be, how sick you will be, etc. And I didn't feel great for my first trimester, but nothing like I was preparing for, given all the stories I was told. I had nausea and was very tired. I had heartburn and nothing really sounded good to eat. But again, these pregnancy symptoms all seemed pretty mild to me.

This next pictures are from an ultrasound that we had at about 12 weeks. This ultrasound was so much fun, it was the first time we saw our babies move around. (It's a split screen, as you might be able to tell. So don't try to figure out how the babies are positioned in relation to each other based on this picture.)



On March 11 (at 18 weeks) we had yet another u/s, at which we found out that we are having a boy and a girl! This was obviously a very exciting u/s for us, and we couldn't wait to spread the news about Baby Boy and Baby Girl. I will not post the pictures of their boy and girl parts - for hopefully understandable reasons. (The first is Baby Boy, the second is Baby Girl.)

As for my pregnancy belly, here are a few shots of the progression...at 12 weeks, 17 weeks, then Adam with my belly at 22 weeks (not a traditional "belly shot," but the best I can do since I haven't taken a belly shot in awhile.)

 

So, that brings us right about until now - I'm now 24 weeks pregnant. I did spend the weekend in Spectrum for some bleeding - I won't go into all of the medical stuff here. But I have been ordered to stay on bed rest until I am at least 28 weeks. Hopefully, in that time, besides doing a lot of resting and some other projects, I can learn all about keeping up our family blog.