i love.....

you know what i love about maternity pants.. you can just pull them on and off. no zippers, no buttons. its genious.

merry christmas and other things

well the tree is almost put away (its dead) and the presents are unwrapped. it was a good christmas. given my condition leading up to it i didn't get into the season as much as usual so things were low key. we had 14 people over for a lovely fondue on christmas eve (which is a loewen family tradition) it was great we had 6 different nationalities represented, lots of fruit and loads of chocolate (linds you would have loved it).
These pictures were from Christmas Eve.







Christmas Day was nice. Dave & I made a delicious breakfast of Eggs Benedict and we just hung out. Opened some gifts and spend the morning in our pj's. We went over to the Pallisters for Christmas Dinner. The food was amazing. Wade spent a few days preparing a churducken which is a Chicken stuffed into a Duck which is then stuffed inside a Turkey. With each layer surrounded by yummy, yummy stuffing. Need I say more?
This is Audrey and me ready to eat!!
DTS ended the thursday before the holidays and with that comes some nice downtime for Dave before he leaves for Russia in only a few short days :( We took a staff picture which turned out funny. And also ode to red. The other picture is Dave's outreach team which will be gracing Russia soon! I love the red track suits. It is what they will wear when they are coaching hockey (teaching skills and stuff). I love it!! I think that is all the update I have for now. Just want to give a birthday shout out to Lindsey. Today is her special day and she has much to celebrate as she also celebrates getting into the midwivery school she applied for. Yeah! I am proud of you Lindsey and love how you are following your dreams. You are special! Pregnancy Update: I have felt like a normal human being for the last four days and am so thankful. It helped to enjoy the holidays! The baby is moving up higher and my stomach feels like a little hard stone. Beautiful thing.

13 weeks!!

well here you go. 13 weeks! not to much there just enough to fit my nectarine size baby. me and some friends decided we like how they compare your baby to food at least until a certain point until they run out of ideas. i've been feeling a bit better which has been nice. dave and i did some christmas shopping this weekend which was good. audrey, pam, rita and i watched a great movie this weekend called "there eyes were watching god" its a oprah movie and although a tad slow it was great.
i also saw Narnia last week which was so good. they did a real good job at following the book. it was inspiring. you should all go see it. i gotta get some work done. i will post more later. have a great day!

MIRACLES!

life is a beautiful thing. today dave & I went to see our midwives and we got to hear our babies heartbeat (not plural baby)! what an amazing thing. the midwife showed me where the baby is and i felt the little ridge where he/she lives. the midwife smiled when the heartbeat came on the monitor and said "sounds like a girl!" heehee. i guess girls have faster heartbeats. we shall see. anyways it was all so exciting i wanted to share it with you! i'm gonna post some pics of my belly soon for those of you far away. just perfectly fits my lemon size baby!

my pants are tight

its so wierd to encounter a time when its neat that your pants don't fit right. i mean come on theres a baby growing in there. i have some generous friends/family that have lent me some nice maternity clothes - which is nice to save me from the moomoo that i was terrified of having to wear. other than my belly and my boobs nothing else has changed yet so thats nice.
its been a pretty good week. sunday was horrible! i was sick all day and i didn't keep anyting down all day until 8:30 when a smoothie managed to stay. ugg. i am excited to enter this next trimester and i realize that this time will fly by. having Dave gone for the month of January is going to be so hard and I am hoping to get home (plane tickets are expensive). i figure my lonliness will be a bit less if i go home then having to stay in our house and sleep in our bed. ahh lonely. anyways we were talking last night and wondering how much my belly will change in those 4 weeks he is gone.
so the quest to find a midwife is on. i have been pestering the midwives in the winkler area and am on a wait list which is so frusterating. but at the same time inspiring because it means that people are catching on to the miracle of midwifery. anyways called a lay midwive as well who is not paid by the Regionaly Health Authority (if you are reading this and are from BC - the system in MB is horrible compared to here and count yourself a lucky duck if you deliver here) anyways but she is unsure if she is taking on clients in June but she said to contact her again in March to see. I'd have to pay her but the cost is quite worth it to me. So crossing fingers for all these options. Not sure of any others that I have. I love my midwives here and wish they could fly to Manitoba to deliver the baby. Anyways enough baby talk. Not much else going on.
I apologize for the lack of posting. Enjoy your day!

graceful

its been a good week. it seems i am only super sick on sundays, mondays and tuesdays. wierd.
yesterday we celebrated american thanksgiving which was so good. its nice being married to a half american. i love americans - yesterday we went around the table and the non americans shared what the loved about americans. to me they carry a sense of boldness and a lack of fear. they aren't afraid to shake things up. my american friends are all fierce and funny. so to all of you. cheers.
i have been trying to journal to the baby you know things that i am experiencing as the baby grows and most of it comes down to what i can and cannot eat. yesterday i found out something wacky. i love yams i mean love yams.. mashed, sushi style, boiled, drenched in brown suger and butter. but the baby no the baby does not like yams even as i gazed upon them last night it did not take me long to know the baby would not like them. and peanut butter come on, the baby also likes things cold. not a big fan of hot food. i know it sounds crazy. but vegtables need to be raw unless its corn and i'd rather do yogurt than anything hot. and pineapple i can't get enough - fresh pinapple. ooh and another gross one: cheezy breathe - after dave eats goldfish (the cracker). yuck.
anyways i think thats all..
so i want to bring up the question of the day.
when does pregnancy begin to be graceful?

CD(DONA)

So after all my hard work its official I am now a certified DONA doula. Now I have credentials.
Heather DiFrancesco Certified Birth Doula (DONA)

silence

seems i have a lack of things to say although its been a pretty good week! i'm beginning to realize that i am an avoider. i distract myself to avoid doing anything. not that all distraction is bad because sometimes it helps you to not get wrapped up in just doing, doing doing.. but sometimes instead i fill my day with things i must do (which becomes the distraction) when really all i want to do is be free to just sit and journal, or read something other than birth books...wow i am just now reading how true that all sounds. like this quote i read today
"Tonight I danced with God under the quiet stars the moonlight sticking to the bottoms of our feet."
Purely Lovely.

who knew...

well needless to say the honeymoon period is over. these past few days have been HARD. i don't really feel like a normal person. my stomach aches all day. there are a million sights and smells that can send me straight to the toilet and the headaches are coming every day!! my outlook is good. i know that this is the normalcy of this little life forming inside but i'm afraid to leave the house in case i need the safety of my bathroom. like my friend audrey said "when are you going to be fun again" yeah when will i be fun again????
but on the positive and clearly amazing side of things. Pinto is a busy little bean...(the reference to a He is purely the website i got the info off of.) Now almost half an inch long — roughly the size of a raspberry — He has elbow joints and distinct, slightly webbed fingers and toes. In his oversized head, both hemispheres of his brain are developing. His teeth and the inside of his mouth are forming, and his ears continue to develop. Eyelid folds partially cover his tiny peepers, which already have some color, and the tip of that nose you'll be tweaking someday is emerging. His skin is paper-thin and his veins are clearly visible. Your little one also has an appendix and a pancreas, which will eventually produce the hormone insulin to aid in digestion. His liver is busy producing red blood cells, and a loop of your baby's growing intestines is bulging into his umbilical cord, which now has distinct blood vessels to carry oxygen and nutrients to and from his tiny body. You can't feel his gyrations yet, but your baby is like a little jumping bean, moving in fits and starts around his watery home.
Now to me that all seems worth it!

what a week

this has been a great week.. i've been sitting in on lectures with the DTS and Karen Padgett has been here teaching on relationships. its been so refreshing. so much about living life from your spirit and recognizing who you are and what you have to offer the relationships you experience. its been amazing. the students are loving it. they are really into the kind of teaching that centres around more interaction and couldn't be bothered listening to someone lecture. they are such a real bunch. really motivated by the things of God and the relational aspect of life. i've been so inspired by the DTS this fall they are all so amazing. i love just being around them. anyways.. i'm doing well. i have been really blessed and feeling great. every so often i'll get waves of nauseausness but it comes and goes and doesn't amount to too much. its wierd to be pregnant and to imagine all the creating going on in your body. next week pinto will be whole and will just need to grow. its a miracle. life is a miracle. i want to experience it to its fullest. don't you?

frugal

do you know how expensive maternity clothes are??? i mean seriously then comes the baby and you are shelling out thousands of dollars. come on. they say that the average person spends over $1000 per year on diapers. anyways its outragous. i think i will have to wear a moomoo that i'm sure can be found at value village for a couple of dollars. uggg!

peanut butter and confessions..

figured it was time to write again. not sure i have much of eternal value to say. its been a good week. i've felt for the most part good other than one morning when i realized pinto does not like peanut butter. but now we know. wednesday night i had a fun night going out with jamie, jessi and andrea. we went to this sketchy club downtown to hear andreas friends play. what a night. refer to jessi's blog for a more detailed story.
ok ok i have a confession to make now please don't go judging me.. i am an avid reader and fan of the celebrity baby blog. now i have been going there daily for months now and feel it is time to uncover my underground religous reading of this site. i have decided that i want you all to know about this if only for the sole purpose that you would continue to love me even if i want to know who gets the first picture of Sean Preston Federline and even if i love reading about Brooke Shield's second preganancy or my curiosity of when the next picture of Reese, Ave and Deacon will come out and we were all the first to hear of Matilda Rose Ledger's birth. Oh and the precious glimpses of Bennifer's bump. ahh the relief of being able to tell ones secrets.
have a lovely day.

SuPrIsE

yep in case you havn't heard - We're having a baby!
well today i have entered the sixth week of my pregnancy and our baby is just about the size of a small lentil bean. or pinto as audrey likes to call it. its really an amazing thing. just the whole feeling - super overwhelming. i'm in awe of how we are created. this little bitty bean has a heart beat, eyes and developing ears, the arms and legs appear as protruding buds. the hands and feet look like mini paddles. the tongue and vocal cords are beginning to form. how can anyone question whether or not God exists. what a miracle. i'll keep you posted.

first aid certified!

another accomplishment. i needed to get my CPR Course done for the Doula work i am doing. it feels good to have that done.
i have been quiet this week. maybe a bit lonely. dave and everyone else is in the Okanagan at the Go Conference. it sounds like it is going really well and people are enjoying it. it sure has been quiet around here with all the staff and students gone. i think i miss them. yeah when i ate lunch alone today i sure did. ok so i miss you. only when the phone rings do i remember what my voice sounds like.
other than that things are good. i have had lots of time alone which in a way has been good as well. i finally got everything sent away for my DONA certification which is a huge relief. i just needed to write one final essay on the benefits and purpose of labour support. it feels good to be done. anyways just wanted to let you all know i am still here. thanks for all your encouragment the last couple weeks its been tough but something tells me its time for a new season!

walking on water

so i feel like i have gained some perspective on my current state of feeling misunderstood. My walk with God is laced with some hard falls yet i find that some of the most intimate times i have with God are times i allow him to break then mend my heart. my old journals are filled with scratchy writing outlining relationships falling apart, people i know who are dying and the times i have felt left out. i can still see where tears have stained pages of mission trip journeys and the time i heard someone i knew well had cancer and moving to new places with not knowing people.
Jesus asks us to take up our cross and follow him - cheezy cliché - maybe! But that means getting our own motives out of the way and focusing on Him. but when i do that it seems i set myself up for hurt. waiting on God has to be one fo the hardest things i have ever had to do - especially since i love to know what will happen next. i've often shuddered at the words to the song that says ' brokenness, brokenness is what i long for." because that involves a little more than i am sometimes willing to give. brokeness doesn't only hurt at first but it can continue to hurt for some time. but jesus wants hearts like clay that he can form. He wants reckless abandonment. he wants us to trust Him to provide for us in new places. he wants us to walk way from relationships that are not glorifying him. He yearns for our transparency - a clear pic of our hearts. Jesus isn't so concerned with recognition i receive or how full my calendar is. He is concerned that my heart is transforming into his own. Jesus longs for brokenness because when we are broken we realize only He can make us whole.
We often hear the phrase " get our of your comfort zone" Our comfort zone refers to whatever is keeping us from a closer relationship with God. Like when Peter left the boat and jumped without a life preserver into the the water to meet jesus. and as his feet hit the surface without sinking, his heart must have pounded. The bible tells us that as Peter removed his eyes from Jesus and starts to worry about the storm around him he starts to sink. when he does he finds Jesus helping him up again. i admire Peters courage to even get out of the boat. i might have just been like ' ahh how about you come get me?"
God longs to teach us important lessons He want so show us a love better and more real than any we can even imagine. we want it but getting it requires a willingness to come to Him even when it means letting Him break our hearts.
We just need to understand that God wants us to lean on Him and to have His peace. The beauty of brokenness is this: allowing Jesus to heal us brings us ever closer to His loving embrace. So if I can challenge you and me - let's fix our eyes on Him right now and follow Him thru the muck storming around us. when He says just look at me you won't fall; i'll catch you. may it be the sweetest encouragement, the truest promise and the greatest hope we will ever need.

i feel extremely misunderstood.

mis·un·der·stood, (-std) mis·un·der·stand·ing, mis·un·der·stands

To understand incorrectly; misinterpret.

i miss lindsey part 2

i miss you. hope you are not freezing.

either its writers block or i am clearly unmotivated

its been hard to sit down and write lately. i have so many things to write and have no idea what order to do them in so since i can write here and have no consequences i guess i will choose this one first. i am trying to write some birth essays to send in with my certification; i have no idea why this is seemingly so hard. dave and i need to write a newsletter as well which we have been putting off for far to long. (sorry to all those supporters reading this). writing would also mean catching up on emails which i have been HORRIBLE at (sorry my dear friend lindsey). so see lots to write. not enough time nor the will to think of clever things to say. ahh mercy mercy forget my lack of will i am just trying to get by.
i had a good day today. volunteered at the pregnancy centre which is always a highlight. i will be starting to work nights this coming weekend for an agency called mother me which i am pretty excited about. it will be challanging as it is long night shifts about twice a week till the middle of november. i will be working with a family with new twins. its been amazing to me all the experience i have gained in the last few months. seems like only yesterday i was doubting this was God's dream for me. we have a speaker in this week who said. hope in God and the plan He has for you... cause it's GOOD!
anyways lots of other things to write and somehow i feel a bit more inspired. have a lovely night.

i miss lindsey

this was on our ride to sask - we hit a snowstorm in the mountains. it was beautiful.
i wanted to call lindsey today and it was so sad when it hit me that i can't. lindsey moved back to winnipeg this weekend. and although intellectully i know that spring is not far away and i will see her soon it is hard when you are used to just being able to call each other and hang out.

things aren't the same without you linds. i love you!

priorities...

seems like there is always discussion around what the priorities are in ones life... that leads me to much reflection. i feel i have so many priorities and making them all work are sometimes a bit of a stresser for me. defining priorities? what does that look like?
-my marriage is a priority - spending time with Dave
-my clients are a priority - making sure i give them the care they need and with the increasing amounts of postpartum clients that means more scheduling
-marketing myself is a priority so i continue to get clients
-my ministry here at work is a priority - doing the best i can with the responsibility
-my friends and family are a priority - the ones far away seem to get the most neglected.
-supporters which fall into the above category - the angst over not writing a newsletter in so long unnerves me daily.

where does that leave me? i read something today that only hit me now but seems perfect for this..
wisdom is a tree of life to those who embrace her, happy are those who hold her tightly.