when in rome, sit in the bluebells

Our time here in San Antonio is almost over, and to celebrate we decided to act local. The bluebells are just starting to bloom, a moment Texans wait for all year. Atleast that is what they tell the military tourists. It was also a great excuse to take fun pictures with our sweet babies :). Well, most of us. My poor little guy came down with an awful cold last night, so he watched our quick little shoot from his stroller. I had to run back and wipe his nose every few shots. Poor baby. Pitiful beyond words, but such a trooper! I'd love your helpful critiques on my favorites :).

top 11 of 2011

1. Sunning on the porch on his dad's lap the very first day we brought him home.

                 2. One month old snuggled up in his bassinet in the early morning light of our bedroom.

3. Waking up with dad on his paternity leave. 6 am mamarazzi strikes again.

4. Gorgeous sunset on the northern California coast on the balcony of our b&b for the night. So happy to be free from his carseat on our 30 day roadtrip from Washington to Texas.

5. Same sunset, this time with mama and some pretty bokeh. Thanks for taking some pictures for me, Mike! 2 1/2 months old.

6. Playing with dad on a Saturday morning in our Texas apartment. See how happy he is to move out of our minivan? 3 1/2 months old and cheeky as ever.

7. Same day, wrestling with his daddy.

8. Showing off his brand new rolling skills. 4 months and loving life.

9. Tried on his new H&M winter hat and just couldn't resist a picture. Thank you Grandma!

10. Learns a new game every week. Squealing with delight at 4 months.

11. Now he can roll and push up! Showing off his new skills at 4 1/2 months.

What an awesome year! Baby Liam was born July 28th and nothing has been the same ever since :). More prayer, less sleep, and most importantly an amazing addition to our family. Our lives are just bursting with joy as he smiles and laughs his way through each day (and night!).

I am so thankful for each memory behind this favorite images we took as I started shooting on manual this year. I know they aren't perfect, but I am enjoying getting better all the time and I am so crazy about the subjects I don't even care :). I love taking more pictures now to capture our precious family time in a beautiful way!

Also feeling lucky this morning and entered into a lens giveaway at http://cravemyphotography.com/blog/. I would LOVE to win this 85mm and learn even more this year!

Liam weeks 1 & 2

one month snapshots

Week 30

7.5 months this week! So exciting :). The baby growing like a weed! The doctor was concerned that my bump was too small, but after an ultrasound we found out the baby is really a week ahead of the 'norm'. What an answer to prayer. Still no name, but we love him dearly anyway.

His nursery is coming together and I'm so happy to look forward to his daddy's return soon. I've had so many wonderful friends and family help me at the house it's been incredible. We are so blessed to have such supportive and encouraging friends to help me with the house during this deployment.

The lilies are a part of my very first Mother's Day gift! I felt so special receiving that beautiful bouquet to help celebrate this new adventure.

So thankful!

Week 27

Do I look pregnant or what? Strangers are still a little tentative, but pretty sure they can ask, 'When are you due?' I still can't believe there is a tiny little man growing inside of me. It's really just too wild to even imagine.

I just got back from 2 weeks visiting friends and family in Colorado Springs and had a wonderful time! I am so blessed with special friends and a great family to support me. A big group of friends and mentors got together and prayed for me and the baby, and it was a huge blessing. I hope I can learn to be an encouragement to them, too!

While I was in the Springs my parents and my brother Mason all got to feel the baby going crazy. It is so fun to be able to share that with them! He is getting stronger every day, and now I can just start to see him moving my belly around when I look down sometimes.

I am still having a great time going to 'normal person' yoga a few times a week, but I get worse and worse every class as the baby gets bigger. This is a little annoying for the over-achiever in me. At least I'm trying to stay in shape! :)

Week 26

From Collages

What a fun milestone! :) The little guy's newest trick is that if I balance a book on my tummy while lying down, he can make it bounce up and down. Almost like there's some popcorn popping in there. I went shopping for clothes this weekend for the first time and found it really depressing until I stumbled upon a bunch of great empire waste sundresses like this one after nearly 6 hours of searching. Pregnant shopping is rough! Being an optimistic dresser, I wear things like this and just hope that the weather man is wrong. Spokane is still stuck in the low 50's for now, but I think spring will show up soon because we are getting some beautiful sunshine most days :). Thanks to all the friends and family motivating me to keep pulling out this camera to learn more!

6 Months

So excited to make the 6 month marker! The baby is getting bigger and stronger every day, and can even move my whole belly when he wants to. :) I have now cleared out the guest room to become the nursery, but it is completely empty save a few darling gifts from friends. Good thing I have some time to get this together!

Seattle!

This weekend we squeezed in a quick trip to Seattle in between tdys and deployments! Trust me, this was a feat. He was supposed to fly into Spokane at midnight, but at the last minute he had me borrow a friend's huge truck (thank you Marc & Katie!) and pick him up at SeaTac. Their 2011 Tundra is so huge I felt like a monster-truck-mama hauling west on I 90.  It was so wonderful to see Mike and be together!

I wanted to try out some of my new 'selfie' tricks from http://www.selfiemagic.com/ and came up with a few shots of our trip that I love! I just had my Canon PowerShot on auto timer, turned off the flash, and looked for great natural light.

We stayed in a beautiful room right downtown and just relished being tourists for the weekend.

I know I'll treasure these images for a long time. My bump is getting bigger by the minute. I am just shy of 6 months now, and next time my husband sees me I'll be at 8 months!

This last shot is at the top of the Space Needle. To keep up my inspiration and challenge myself to learn I'm following a good friend's photography blog, and I highly reccomend it! Check out the button below to see her work...

First attempt

I am so excited to say I have finally started playing around with my camera & tripod to capture my first pregnancy. I feel great today and with a little inspiration I came up with this image as my favorite. My goal is to have one image a week that I really like. I want to do a little journaling each week, too, so I can make a simple album to remember the experience and share in the future.

I chose the bedroom today because it is my favorite back drop in our home so far, and I think the sitting poses are a little less tricky.

Any ideas for picking a good full body back drop in your home?

Click it Up a Notch

Keep praying for the baby Christians :)

This weekend was a big men's retreat and I asked you all to really pray for God to move in these guy's lives--- he did!

We got to greet the boys at a big church-worship-service-welcome-back event Sunday night. There were hundreds of people there to greet the boys and celebrate what God did that weekend. We heard great testimonies and saw about 100 men of God emerge from the experience.

I asked for special prayer for the boys we sent: Kevin, Axel, and Sarco (plus 2 cousins). Unfortunately Sarco did not attend because his girlfriend had their baby last weekend. I was bummed that he wasn't there to hear God's truth, but I know he is becoming more open to faith and I know God is not giving up on him.

Kevin, the 14 year old that ran away from our home 2 weeks ago, showed up with his heart open to God and gave us big hugs and smiles at the church reception. The pastor said he had really changed. I continue to pray that he receives serious healing from his nightmare of a childhood that only God can give him. Many of you have asked about Kevin and where he is living: he has chosen to live in the slum barrio where he grew up with a Christian cousin, just a stone's throw away from where he was abused as a child. He is making it really hard on himself, but I know God isn't finished with what he has started in Kevin's life.

Axel & the cousins all accepted Christ for the first time and want to completely turn their lives over to him. They cried with joy when we greeted them and I am praying for them to persevere in their new faith and find a good support system to cheer them on and teach them more. Axel says he wants to leave his old life in the dust and embrace the freedom and truth God offers. Praise God!!

On a much lighter note, I treated Michelle to a special spa day as a thank you for working so hard during our move and being such a darling friend. I have gotten to mentor her during my time here and it has meant so much to me! She is so sweet and open to what God wants to do in her life. Exciting stuff. She has also helped me tremendously with my Spanish because we just sit and talk for hours together about our lives and what God is doing around us :). What a blessing! You can see we did a 'serious' before pic and an adorable 'after' pic at a cute girly crepe cafe.

As I prepare to finish my last week here, my prayer is 1 Cor 16:13: Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be a woman of courage; be strong. Do everything in love. I want to finish strong and take advantage of every little divine appointment God has for me here :)! Love you all!

Girl Bonding! What a wonderful day :)

What an amazing blessing to visit our Compassion child today in her home! There are 44,000 children sponsored here in Honduras, and only about 100 children a year actually get to meet their sponsors, so everyone was SO excited! I was the first visitor in 8 years to visit this project, and I am so grateful for this special connection with Rubia!

She is a beautiful, kind, Christian girl. I loved every minute we spent together! :) First we showed up at the local church, where Rubia and her mom met me with tears in their eyes.

I saw the local afterschool project where the children recieve their care from Compassion, and then we went to her home where I met the rest of her family. She lives with her mother, brother, 2 sisters, aunt, uncle, cousins, and grandparents in a tiny plot with 3 one bedroom homes.

Her mother was widowed 10 years ago by a drunk driver. Life here is very very hard for a single mom, but she is a strong believer and the faith of each person in the family was gorgeous to see.

Lizzie stole the show: she is 4 years old and just full of little songs, dances, and stories to tell that made us all laugh the whole time. What an adorable girl!

After we made friends she pulled me into her room and said, will you take a picture of me all by myself? :) Then she and her sisters wanted to sing me a song. It was so cute!

All three girls share a queen size bed in the only bedroom in the house. We went into their room to enjoy the girly presents I brought for them: 3 pairs of butterfly earrings, a pink rhinestone cross necklace, and 5 tiny lip glosses. My favorite moment was taking turns choosing our favorite flavor and then pretending to be make-up artists together. Even the mom joined us :).

Then we took a walk with the whole family around the pretty little town to see her middle school, the town square, and share an icecream together. We kept meeting more family, friends, and neighbors along the way and they were excited to see me, too. They were like, we have Compassion sponsors, too, but we thought they were all old ladies!

They also told me how they pray for their sponsors and that they wouldn't be able to attend school without Compassion. I am so grateful that God worked out this special day to encourage Rubia, build our friendship, and to just have fun! It is so easy to just send the money each month, but I can tell you I am going to work so much harder at those letters, pictures, stickers, and cards because I got to see for myself today what a difference that connection makes.

Prayer request: There are just 6 children without sponsors in Rubia's project, and I want to pray for their sponsorship, too. Also praise God for the special time together, and that God would continue to provide for this sweet widow and her 4 children.

Prayers are working!!

Thank you so much for the prayers you lifted up for our ladies retreat this weekend! God moved in big, life changing ways in the lives of the girls we brought, and it was a huge blessing!! I asked for special prayers for Michelle & Clarissa because they come from very rough backrounds and are faced with a ton of life challenges. Their response to hearing truth this weekend was amazing!

Clari (in the black & white floral top) has been very very tough, closed off, and withdrawn in the last year due to the excrutiating pain of her homelife. Over coffee I asked her what she thought about the whole God thing, and she said for the first time she wants God to make huge changes in her life. After one worship session I walked over and gave her a hug and felt this little nudge inside to tell her I loved her. I waited for a split second because I didn't know what to say, and she said, Rachel, te quiero! (Rachel, I love you!) How special to stand by and see God's love breaking down barriers and setting the captives free!

Michelle's faith (far right) was completely renewed, refreshed, and engergized. Here's a small picture of her life: her mother had 8 children, all with different fathers that were never in the picture for long. Her mother did drugs, prostituted herself, and died of cancer when Michelle was 12. They did not do hugs, kisses, or kindness in her home. Her brothers were abused physically and sexually by family members. Her story seems to be the norm here, and she met God's grace in a powerful way this weekend!

The retreat focused on God's grace, healing, forgiveness, and love even in the face of the most awful sin and the most awful pain. It was the perfect message for these women. The culutral differences amazed me. For example, in a session on Self Esteem, I assumed we would focus on body image the way we would at a conference in the US. Body image was never mentioned once.

Causes of Low Self Esteem for Women in Honduras

1. Family/husband calling you names and saying you are worthless, and abandoning you

2. People at work calling you names and saying you are worthless

3. Finances. Being poor causes you to feel unworthy/worthless

It was an amazing look into the spiritual climate and challenges these women struggle with. People were just profoundly affected as they heard truth and had authentic encounters with the God who loves them like crazy.

Prayer Requests:

Praise God for the work he is doing in the lives of Michelle & Clari. Please pray this week as they fast on behalf of their guy friends they want to go to the men's retreat going on in 2 weeks. They want all of their friends to experience God, too! Also pray that they would spend time in the word as the daily grind/the enemy wants to destroy all of the truth, peace, and hope newly planted in their hearts.