Belated...

I am, admittedly, not very good at blogging, but for those few who follow ours, here's a much overdue update on our (growing!) family :)

Over the last year (yes it has been that long since my last post!), Greg and I have kept busy traveling to Argentina with Mom and Dad Schnee, selling our house and moving into the North Valley, working on the grad school thesis and PHD, working/serving at the church and teaching, and, of course, finding out we are expecting our first baby!

We found out on New Years Eve, right after I had accepted the lead role in a production of the musical, "The Fantasticks." We were undoubtedly excited, but a little surprised at God's timing. Still, He was faithful to sustain me through a pretty rough first trimester.

Many nights I would come home from rehearsal, and eventually performances (during which I was singing, dancing, being lifted and twirled, and spinning on a box while sustaining high notes and trying not to fall off...not normally a big deal, but a little tough to do while being pregnant!), and poor Greg would have to get me at my "worst" (often holding back my hair for me ;)

There were moments when I didn't think I could do it, but the Lord truly sustained me and Greg was a ROCK for me...such a servant and a patient-hearted husband. As soon as I entered that second trimester and the show ended, my symptoms subsided tremendously and I've had a smooth pregnancy since. I'm now 22 weeks and about half way there! We are now preparing our hearts and home for this sweet, little GIRL!

Greg is still in the throws of his PHD and working at the church, and he leads our community (home) group at our house once a week. Our first spring in the new house seems to have come with many indoor and outdoor projects, and Greg has turned into quite the handy man! Every spare afternoon home, he can be found tending to our yard or working on some project. Other than the rampant weeds that seem to pop up every 1/2 hour, I think he finds joy in "working the land" :)

Here are a few snapshots from some of our recent adventures:



Greg and Dad Schnee enjoying an Argentine Cafe con Leche



Our little adobe casita in the North Valley



Getting my "drama" on in "The Music Man" last Fall



Hangin' out at the Ranch. Greg showing me how to shoot a gun.



As Luisa is "The Fantasticks." I was about 10 weeks pregnant here :)



Week 21 ultrasound. Baby girl!



Last summer at my residency for my masters in poetry, I wrote the following poem. It carries a whole new meaning for me now that I'm expecting a daughter.

Daughter

“Female fetuses already contain all the eggs that the newborn child will ever have. What that means, practically speaking, is that when your mother was just a fetus inside her mother, she already had developed one of the eggs that eventually became you.”
-Toni Weschler, MPH

Little almond, fracture of me still
in wait, you are set apart

In that space between my hips,
shallow womb,
where you are not, yet
you are.

My body prepares a place for you in its cycle of
hope and disappointment.

Hundreds fall from me like pearls,
but you are chosen.

Life within life,
the shaping of you held fast
for the shaping of me. You sleep
our lives joined,
hemmed to one another's
as part of a great thread held taut through
our mother’s bodies.

I carry your tiny beginnings
the way my grandmother carried me,
the way my grandmother’s mother carried my mother,

the way I will carry your daughter