some extra things to pray for

Nic Rassi is scheduled to have his kidney transplant today, with his brother donating one of his kidneys.

I know the family would appreciate your prayers!

To find out more, head to their blog: http://normalrassis.blogspot.com/

Also, please take a moment to pray for Jordan and Katelyn Schroeder, Jaycee and Arawen. It appears his cancer has returned in two places near his spine, and they plan to fly down to Mexico this Monday.

You can check out his Caring Bridge site at: http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/jordanschroeder

3 years ago today...

Happy Anniversary to my wonderful husband!
I am so thankful to have you in my life!
I love your Godly attributes and your passion for growing in Christ;
I love (most of the time) how you like to accomplish things and don't like to be lazy;
I'm so thankful that you're willing to help around the house when I ask, and that you eat pretty much whatever I put in front of you. :)
I love that you remain calm when I get all worked up;
I love that you fully support my many endeavors and ideas, and continue encouraging me in them when I want to give them up.

I love you so much! It's been an awesome three years!

Sugar & Spice & Everything Nice

Bridget Ann is healthy, active, and in the 59th percentile for her weight at 20 weeks.
So we're looking at about an 8 pound baby, a little big for my taste, but as long as she's healthy.
She weighs 12 oz, almost 3/4 of a pound, and apparently LOVES her thumb, since it's in her mouth 3 out of the 6 pictures.
We're so thankful to God for blessing us with this healthy baby girl!

My favorite

I'd like to dedicate this post to one of my favorite websites ever.

Now from the most likely sad amount of time I spend on it, you may think it would Facebook, but you'd be wrong

Tasteofhome.com

Seriously, I find it SO incredibly helpful when looking for recipes.

Got some random ingredients in your freezer you want to use up? Type them into the search box and hundreds of recipes containing that ingredient will pop up.

About 2 years ago we got half of a cow from our nephew. Most of that meat is gone, except for a few remaining pieces that I have no idea what to do with. Take round steak, for example. I had 2 packages in the freezer, so I entered "beef round steak" into search, and got hundreds of recipes for everything from grilling, to Swiss steak, beef stronganoff, round steak with dumplings, and crock pot recipes. Tonight we going to try BBQ round steak.

You get an additional plus from the website if you get any of their magazines (Quick Cooking, Taste of Home, Country Women, etc). You can enter a code on the back of one of your magazines and instantly have access to all the recipes from ALL of the magazines for like the past 10 years. Totally worth the subscription cost of the magazine, in my mind.

lazy rainy days

While all the plants outside are growing, Baby Knapp has been making itself known by growing as well. For your comparing pleasure, I'm 16 weeks above, and 18 weeks below.
Right at about 18 weeks (and the day before Mother's Day) I had the wonderful pleasure of feeling baby move for the first time. It's still kind of sporadic, and I have to be paying some attention, but I've been feeling it move every day since.
Only 10 more days till Baby Knapp gets assigned a gender!! Yay!!

I babysat one of my favorite little boys, and during his whole 2 hour nap, he was holding onto the side of the car seat. I thought it was just so cute.

Luke (my brother) turned 13 this past Monday. So weird...he just still seems like the little Lukey we were always hauling around and doting on just a few years ago.

And last but certainly not least, I'd like to show off the desserts I make for Knapp Mother's Day. They turned out pretty good if I do say so myself. From left to right are: chocolate fudge trifle, strawberry lemon trifle, and raspberry cheesecake trifle.

the dance

So maybe some of you out there have heard of pregnant people becoming less than graceful when they get pregnant.

Something about a change in their center of gravity...or something like that.

It's the #1 reason why bike riding during pregnancy is discouraged.

(insert sarcastic voice here) Now I've always been proud of my graceful movements. I'm an amazing dancer, and I never fall up the stairs (yes, up is the correct term). And last night, at Bible study, my dear husband affirmed my gracefulness.

As I sat on the couch with a plate full of food balancing on my lap, my glass of tea in one hand, and my napkin and chocolate chip cookie in the other, I noticed him eying me carefully.

"Careful with all that," he commented. To which I sort of annoyedly responded "I will."

"Well, you haven't been the most graceful lately.

Ok, so maybe I drop things on a regular basis, and maybe I spend a good portion of the day picking up things that I knocked over. And maybe I can hardly get out of the shower without killing myself.

But the other day, when the shade fell down, I did not try to re-roll it 4 times because I kept dropping it and finally gave up.

I think I'd better stay off of bikes.

The story (and a picture)

Just to make this a little easier (for myself) I'll just copy the note I wrote on facebook when announced we were pregnant.


As some of you know, I've been treated for infertility for the past year. We've received several diagnoses, gone to 3 different doctors, and tried lots of medications, supplements, and diet changes-all with no success. Right after Christmas, my doctor did lots and lots of tests, and basically told us that we would never conceive naturally. Her recommendation was to move forward with doing In-vitro fertilization, and we decided that we would go ahead with it. (I won't go into a lot of details about ivf- if you want to know more, google it). We put down our deposit to begin the process the end of March, and I was instructed to call when I started my period the next month so I could start on the MANY medications I'd have take. During the next couple weeks, I prayed off and on that if it was God's will, I'd sure love it if we didn't have to go through with IVF, although I admit I didn't expect that God would answer my prayer. I was pretty sure He wanted us to go through with IVF. Why else would He have brought us to this point? 6 weeks later, I still hadn't started. While this isn't always abnormal for me, it's getting to be longer than usual. So while at Walmart, I picked up a cheap brand of pregnancy test, not the kind I usually buy, and I only got one, instead of the package with 5 of them. :) 6 weeks to the day, I took the pregnancy test, and then went out to the kitchen and started making myself some breakfast. About 5 min later I realized I should go check on it. When I saw a positive sign on that test, I seriously about fell over. Luke wasn't home, so I scrambled for my cell phone to call him, and during that time, I pretty much emotionally lost it. When he answered the phone my first (heavily sobbed) words were "it's positive!" To which he responded "no way!" I sobbed for a while longer, called my mom and sobbed some more, called the doctor's office (and barely made it through talking to the nurse), and continued this throughout the day. :)

We are just praising God for His sovereignty! The month after we were told we'd never conceive naturally, it happens! It really just goes to show how it's all in God's timing and His control!

As a side note, we found out we were pregnant exactly one week after I got fired. Talk about even more amazing timing by God!

Oh, and the picture above is from last week, at 14 weeks.