A Family Picnic Date & Rest of Weekend!

It has been so nice to have Tom back home from his trip to Wilsall, MT with the high school youth group.  Which by the way, they had a very good trip there and God did some great things through them.  The students led VBS there all week at the Wilsall Community Church, teaching the story of Daniel with storyboard form.  I think the all time high attendance for the kids was around 30, quit a difference from ours here but Wilsall is a much smaller town.  In the evenings they did different community service things and they even got to go work on a ranch there and their entertainment at the ranch after the work was all done was shooting gophers!  How about that for a missions trip adventure?!  Love it!

But I survived 5 nights without my love and so did Titus, although we missed him very much and at one point when Tom called, he was good and called everyday, Titus I think cried most of the phone call cuz I would have it on speaker so that he too could "talk" to daddy.  We are glad he is back indeed!  This weekend we just relaxed and went to our annual church picnic on Saturday and I took a hot out of the oven Strawberry/Rhubarb pie with even a homemade crust!  I am loving making those lately, it is so easy and quick to do.  Then yesterday we went on a picnic up on Mt. Jumbo, Tom made us some turkey, bacon & avocado sandwiches to enjoy and we packed some snacks for Titus too and even some toys for him to enjoy.  I think he loved it, he has really loved the backpack experience so far!  I think we will be trying it at the Saturday markets with him, he loves his jogging stroller but not there for some reason, I think there is too many people around or something and he wants to see them all and not be down in a stroller?

Our little picnic area on the Mt. Jumbo saddle.

Also yesterday, Titus and I got to go meet one of my old MVC co-workers new baby!  She is so sweet and tiny and beautiful, what a treat!  Titus was having a hoot with her 3 cats and really busy trying to get into everything!  He also got jealous while mommy was holding the baby and threw his first fit on the floor when mommy had passed baby Jaylin to her mommy and then I picked him up before I realized that I wanted a picture of her and her baby.  Well I set him down and the next thing I know he is laying on the floor crying!  Wow!  So it begins, teaching him the right reaction and behavior, God give us wisdom on this!

Jaylin Joan Watson 7lbs. 14oz., 20 in. long, June 21st @ 9:39 pm.

She is so cute and precious and tiny and 5 days old here!  Makes me want a second one!

This was the kitty Titus wanted to chase around, it has it's summer do on!  Got shaved most likely for the hot summer so his tail looked like a fluffy cotton tail at the end of it!

This poor kitty had to flee for it's life, Titus seriously cracked up when he found it here, it was so funny!

Beautiful new momma Janiece and baby Jaylin!  Her name is combo of Janiece and her mom, grandma Linda, isn't that precious!  Her onsie says "Mommy adores me", um who wouldn't? 

20 Weeks & Counting....

Tom with the pack and Titus back at the car after the hike.

Titus sleeping on trail on the way back down.

Our little guy is now almost 5 months old! That is crazy. I have found him 3 times now awake in his crib on his belly this last week! One of those times just being this morning. He isn't too happy about it yet but for some reason he does it.

This last weekend the students were off of school Thursday and Friday and what our youth group does every year with that 4 day weekend is plan a 3 day/2 night "Missoula missions trip." Giving 32 of our high school students the opportunity to experience missions right here in their home town by staying at the church and serving our community in different ways for the past 9 years! They usually always get to go to the Poverello Center, a local homeless shelter, where they organize their clothes closet for the homeless people, many times wipe down the mattresses that the homeless people sleep on and serve the homeless lunch and usually get to eat lunch and visit with the homeless people themselves. They also usually go to Missoula 3:16 Rescue Mission, a local Rescue Mission that also serves the homeless by providing lunch for them and opportunities for them to overcome addictions that many of them face and they provide a place for them to study the Bible. The students normally get to organize their food pantry, rake leaves and serve lunch and get to eat lunch with the homeless there also. The students always get to go to Burlington Square Apartments too, an apartment place for the elderly in our community. Here they get to clean apartments for those who have said yes to the opportunity for the students to help them in that way. They also were able to play Wii bowling with these elderly residents who beat the students badly I might add and have dinner with them and visit. The last day of the missions trip the students load up and go to each one of the high schools that is represented in our youth group, Missoula has about 3 public High Schools and 2 private High Schools, and they split up into groups and prayer walk around the schools. Those 4 events are usually things they do every year, there are other things throughout the weekend that they do that may change every year like Random Acts of Kindness or they did spend an afternoon this year helping with the City Parks and Recs Department, working on a local park in town. So many of the students are blessed by helping their community and realizing that there are people right here that they can help and I think it hugely helps them realize how blessed they are.

Well Tom and I usually have always helped as volunteer staff, Tom has all 9 years and this year I really felt like I couldn't with Titus. So Tom helped as much as he could and he was planning to help all 3 days but I was having a difficult time with Titus on Friday, he would not nap all afternoon and was very crabby and it was making me really crabby to say the least. Tom had helped all day on Thursday and came home for a couple hours in the evening and then went back and stayed at the church and helped all day Friday and didn't get home until 11 pm and then he stayed home with us and never went back on Saturday morning as he had planned. I felt very selfish when he came home and said he was done and wasn't going back on Saturday but it was good I think. Brian, the youth pastor, did have someone there to help on Saturday, but Tom has always helped all 3 days, he takes off work every year to do this and here I was not able to handle our 4 month old by myself for 3 days! Anyway, it was ok, Tom had said the Lord had showed him that He didn't need him for that last day and he was ok with that, so I needed to be ok with that.

Saturday we decided to go for a hike with Titus and we went down the Bitterroot and went hiking almost all the way to Bear Creek Overlook but Titus was just not going to make it that long. It was about 2 1/2 to 3 miles each way and we made it almost to the top but he was crying about half of the way up and it got a little late and we didn't want to be hiking back down in the dark so we ate our little lunch and turned around. A friend of Tom's at work has given us a Kelty K.I.D.S. pack for Titus. Something for us to use while we attempt hiking with him. I think what we found is he is still a little small to enjoy it, he lasted a little while on our way up and then we needed to take him out and carry him the rest of the way.

Sunday after church we decided to take some pictures of Titus in our church's Pumpkin Patch. This is the 4th year our church has sold pumpkins in our Great Pumpkin Patch they set up on the hill just below the church. All the money goes to missions each year and this year it is going towards the Great Commission Fund of the Alliance Missionaries. Members of the church have grown and harvested pumpkins this year for the patch and your family can go pick out pumpkins to purchase and they also sell many donated baked goods too. We happen to get a delicious pumpkin pie there yesterday. This year we had a "pumpkin slasher" come through the patch one late night and the story was in the newspaper and a gentleman, who doesn't even go to our church, decided to come get all the damaged pumpkins and make pies with all of them which was about 20 hrs. worth of work and he brought the pies back to the patch for them to be sold! God is amazing! They started selling pumpkins on the 10th and will sell thru the 31st and already the report on the 17th was that they had sold $8,000! So anyway we wanted some cute pics of our punkin with the pumpkins.

Last week at BSF I helped in the children's program and I loved it. What a blessing, they have a little story time and the babies and those under 2 learned that 'God always keeps His promises' based on the prophecy in Isaiah "The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call Him Immanuel" Isaiah 7:14. They sang a little song and had a snack and then those ladies just stay busy keeping those little ones happy. But I think I will wait to put Titus in there until he can crawl, there was this little boy in there who I think might be 1 but is just starting to walk and he can be rough on the little ones around him if you are not watching him every second. I want Titus to be able to flee if Mason comes after him. Ha!

Catch Up

So our retreat went well a couple weekends ago, there were times (mostly at night) when I thought to myself "What have I done to myself?!" Our speaker that the youth pastor brought in was from Denver, CO, and was very good. I thought that God used him to speak very well into the students lives right where their hearts are at for the Lord. He shared about how people are in one of three places in their lives, either "in the ditch" where you don't know who God is personally, or you are "in the middle of the road" where you know God but you haven't fully decided to give everything over to Him and with some things in your life you live the way the world does but you follow God in other areas of your life or you are "on the narrow path" where you are completely sold out for the Lord and you want Him to have everything in your life. He challenged the students in each session with them to be on the narrow path and he even had brought each of them a gift from CO, an "invisible" tent (Exodus 33) to help encourage them in pursueing that narrow path. But at night for me was the difficult thing, my mattress was okay, better than I think the bunk mattress would have been but I had 5 girls in my cabin and a couple of them would keep me up til about 1 am each night! Since I had to do potty breaks in the night, I kept our wood stove stoked and we were warm and toasty!!!!
This last weekend we were pretty busy, I had to work Saturday, we went up after work to Rainy Lake, past Seeley Lake, to visit some friends who were camping up there and Tom and our friend Tim went fishing while Pam and I played cribbage and caught up with each other. Their limit on the cutthroat trout was 3 each and they caught about 25 in their 2 hour outing. Mmmmm more fish for our freezer. I love it and so does lil muffin. Then yesterday we were babysitting my good friends kiddos for her after church til about 7pm. So I was very tired needless to say and had a meltdown last night just crying because I was so tired and thought that would make me feel better. But it is nice to catch up with friends and to be able to bless others even if it stretches you to the max at times. And I discovered yet again how great Tom is, when I am the weak one of the two of us, he steps up and does great even with 4 little munchkins.
Well I should go, I need to work on some stuff for tomorrow, it is a very special day tomorrow, my husband will be 39 years young!

32 Weeks Today

I had a check up yesterday again and all is good. Dr. Burke said my belly is measuring for 33 weeks but he thinks I look an average size. Lil muffins heartbeat sounded good. My good friend Daisy tried to come with me, she recommended Dr. Burke to me because he had delivered all her babies and yesterday was the first time that she had off work and Tom was not coming with. But we waited in the waiting room for 40 minutes together and she needed to go rescue the babysitter and then I got called into the appointment about 5 minutes after she left. They put me in the room with the ultrasound too and I bet if Daisy would have been with, Dr. Burke would have asked us if we wanted to see what the baby was up to. He did one time when my cousin Lauren came with me and never charged for it because he didn't print any picture or anything. Anyway I think lil muffin really likes the sound of daddy's voice, when Tom talks to the baby lately, he/she will start kicking and moving around. I love it, it is so amazing.
We are packing tonight to go on Spring Retreat this weekend with the high school kids. We are very excited, this is my favorite event with the students that we do all year. We always go up to this Experimental Forest that the University owns where there are old train car cabins to stay in with bunk beds and pot belly wood stoves in each cabin. You get cold by morning if you don't keep that fire going! Of course I am taking our queen size double blow up mattress to sleep on and praying for some sleep on that. I am sure the six girls in my cabin will be very attentive to lil muffin and I, they all love lil muffin. I will be sure to report early next week with the report of the event. We are praying for a refreshing, relaxing time for the students and for God to continue working in their hearts and this is the first event of the year where upcoming freshman get to come along to begin their transition into the high school age youth group. Pray with us.

30 Weeks and Counting

Today we are 30 weeks along in our pregnancy! We are pretty excited for our little muffin to arrive in about 10 weeks! This has been an exciting journey that the Lord has taken us on in our almost 9 months of marriage. God's planning is perfect though, the timing of the year to be pregnant with the different stages of pregnancy. And He has been good in just the blessing of the experience as a first time mom, I have had really no complaints thus far. Now I am just getting huge, I feel, and can't believe I have 10 weeks to go. With that comes discomfort in sleeping, getting in and out of the car & tying your shoes. But if that is my only complaint is my size, I will be able to tell my baby what a great baby he/she was before they were even born. I have been feeling increased movement this week, it is really quit amazing to experience the life inside you growing & becoming active.

Last Wednesday, the 31st, it was Spring Break for the students we volunteer with at our church high school youth group and some of the students were hiking the M in place of yg and Tom & I joined them! My unspoken goal was to to it without stopping but we got a little distracted by the fox & mule deer we saw up there. There are 13 switchbacks on this trail and your elevation gain is 620ft., I was pretty proud of myself since I have not been exercising very much during my pregnancy.