A lil update for my blogging friends :)

Hi friends!

My last post was a bit of a downer blog, I know, but I'm determined to stay authentic and honest during this transition to a new home in a new country. Thank you for your grace and encouraging words, I appreciate them immensely!

I am really super happy to share with you that Josh and I are officially 100% funded, which means that we have full clearance to head overseas!  We sent in our visa paperwork on Monday and are waiting for the "go ahead" to buy our plane tickets!  Hooray!  Hoorah!  It's finally here!  At this point, we are looking at May 14 or 15 as our potential departure date.  We decided to wait until then for several reasons:

1. We have friends getting married on the 11th and 12th and we thought that would be very much worth staying for.

2. I will finally be out of my first trimester that week!

3. Waiting four weeks will give us proper time to decompress from fundraising as well as sufficient time to say 'goodbye' to our friends and family here.

Overall, we are feeling super confident that this is the best plan for us.  All along in this process I have simply trusted that God would work things out for us to leave exactly when we are supposed to, and that is precisely what's happening!  In fact, I just remarked to Josh the other day about how our original plan of starting to try for a baby once we arrived in our new home was completely flawed.  Now that I am experiencing what a first trimester is actually like, I am SO thankful that I didn't have to go through it at the same time as adjusting to a new life/culture/home/language/diet.  That would have been too much for my delicate heart and exhausted body to handle, and I am just thankful that God knew me better than I knew myself, and timed everything so that we will be leaving at the start of my second trimester.  Grace, I tell you,  grace!

As far as pregnancy symptoms go, I am under the impression that I am experiencing a bit of an easier trimester than most, which only makes me feel worse when I handle it poorly!  I truly didn't know that this was the level of exhaustion I would be functioning in, or that my sense of taste and smell would change so much, or that I would have a nearly constant bad taste in my mouth (imagine sucking on a penny after every meal and that's about what it's like), or that I would just feel downright lousy on most days.  Still, I am so incredibly thankful to share that today I am officially 9 weeks pregnant.  Every day I get to be Momma to this little baby is a great day, and I am so thankful for the ease of pregnancy I have had so far.

and I suppose the last bit of news to share is something that I've known for a while but have been putting off writing about because it makes me sad.  When we move, I'm going to have to stop most forms of social media, most disappointingly, I'm going to have to stop blogging.  I've known this for a while and I suppose it's been responsible for my lack of regular posting the last couple of months.  I don't know if I will be able to pick it up again at any point during our 3 years overseas.  I do know, however, that writing in this space has been excellent outlet for my creativity and has been an intregal part of my emotional and mental health/sanity the last few years.  There is something about writing about life that helps me to make sense of what I'm feeling, or to see the meaning and reason behind life's best and worst experiences.  That being said, I'm still trying to figure out what I want to do to continue writing.  I'm thinking about just creating a private email list that will essentially still be blog posts, they will just be directly sent to friends/family/anonymous readers (I know you're there...)  Once I figure out exactly what I want and will be able to do, I will let you all know!  

If you've made it all the way to the end of this post, then you deserve at least one picture.  How about this one, of my sweet husband delivering flowers, a card, and tiny baby socks the day after we found out we're expecting?  Ohhhh it just melts my heart every time I look at it!