It's Deja Vu All Over Again

Most of you may recall my prior experience with pre-term labor. With Elias, I went into early labor, was in the hospital for a few days, endured bedrest until it was safe to give birth, and then, little bugger didn't come until four days after his due date. But, my, what a beautiful and healthy baby he was!

On Saturday, I went into the hospital with some concerns (which I will refrain from posting on the internet). I was just released today. It turns out that instead of the 32 wks of early dialation that I had with Elias, my body started dialating at 26 wks. So I am confined to bedrest for quite some time now.

It's not easy to be confined to bed no matter how much a mother may wish for it. Especially when you have a toddler with needs. We are so thankful for our family and church community for being so willing and quick to help with Eli, meals, and cleaning. These next few months will be difficult, no doubt. But with the strong support and love from those around us, I know we will be fine and well taken care of.

Thank you all for your prayers and concern.

Anniversary Get-Away

Dan and I have been wanting to get away for a few nights for a while now, but haven't been able to. Next month, August 14th, is our 3 year anniversary and with a toddler and another baby on the way, we plan to enjoy it to the best of our ability. Elias is heading off to Nonie's while Dan and I pack up the car and head northwest. We're going to a friend's cabin in Potter County, PA - out in the middle of nowhere. That's exactly what we want and need: A cheap place to visit where we won't feel the temptation to spend a lot of money and where we can sleep in and go to bed early and read and talk uninterrupted. It just sounds so divine. We can barely wait.

Here are some pictures of the little place:

Daddy and Eli

Weeding the canteloupe plants.

Pookie

Pookie is a "stray" cat that finds her home on the farm. She is the absolute nicest cat ever considering she's a stray. She loves people and kids and will just come and hang out when we're outside on our patio. Of course, she's looking for food, but she's also looking for company. She loves people. We're still working on teaching Eli how to be gentle and calm around her. But most of the time, they just co-exist. She'll rub up against him and he'll continue with whatever he's playing with. In these pictures, Eli's taking a special interest in her.

Eli and Jaron

Eli Eating Spaghetti

Beach Pictures

Big Boy on a Bike

Ali Feeding Her Face

I love this picture.

Eli Feeding Mama

Eli kissing Jaron

Fun Shots

Dan in New Orleans

Every year on July 4th, a local church (with help from various other Christian groups and churches) holds a semi-fair-like event. They give out free hot food and bags of groceries. They have tents and tables up for eating and socializing. They have a prayer tent and hold live Christian music. This has been going on for about 20 years. We were privileged enough to have been there over July 4th, so we were able to help out with setting up, bagging and handing out groceries, praying and sharing the gospel with people.

Here is Dan aiding in the bagging of groceries. We bagged over 5,000 bags in an hour and 18 minutes! We broke the record in the intense heat and humidity of southern Louisiana.
More pictures of Dan hard at work...

Confectioners' Fight

While chilling out at one of New Orleans best, the Cafe Du Monde, Dan and I decided (quite a spur-of-the-moment idea, I assure you) to commemorate our wedding day by blowing powdered sugar all over one another. If you were at our wedding, you might remember the wedding cake incident. I must speak up for myself and say that Dan started it both times. But what was I to do? Just let it go?! I don't think so!!

Funny Video

Washing the Car

Before the Move

Alicia and Jessica

Pictures

It's time for a picture update of the past couple months.

And We're Back!

OK, folks. The long-awaited blog update is finally here. I realize, as many of you have oh-so-kindly reminded me, that I have not updated our blog since APRIL! Here it is mid-July, and I'm finally getting around to sitting down and posting some pictures and letting the Blogger world in on what's been going on in the lives of the Simraks these past few months.

After a very stressful move, we're finally in and mostly settled into our new home. We were here for two weeks before Dan and I left our little one-year-old and headed down South with our youth group to New Orleans for a week of cleanup and ministry to those still in need since Hurricane Katrina. It was a wonderful week. The Lord really exceeded all of my expectations and I walked away so blessed by the group and our time spent in The Big Easy. It truly is an eclectic and beautiful city for the most part. Our hope is that through the relief and rebuilding of the city, all the work of church groups throughout the country that have gone to witness and be a light to those who are lost will result in the city being known as "The City that Turns to God." Those that went to N.O. last year and went back this year, saw a marked difference in the amount of people that they talked to that had recently come to know Jesus personally. They spoke to many more Christians this year than they did last year. Our goal is to help build the local churches and get people involved in them as they grow in the word.

I'll post this one picture as it just tore my heart when I saw this written on the front of a house:

We have a video of our time that I really want to post, but it's 11 minutes long so we can't upload it to YouTube. (Their limit is 10 minutes.) So as soon as we shorten it, we'll post it so that you guys can view it. It captures well the time we had.

The Kitchen

We didn't take pictures of the kitchen yet because the owners still have much of their belongings stored there. We didn't want to post pictures of their stuff. So when we get some better pictures, I will post them.

The Upstairs Hallway

This hallway leads to the bathroom (behind the yellow door, front - which will be removed) and the third bedroom, first door to the left. The hallway, itself, will be divided by a wall and a closet about where the light fixture is located. The rest of the rooms on this floor are extra guest rooms for our landlords who live on the other side of the house. They've added on quite an impressive appartment and are dividing part of the house.

The Master Bedroom

This picture doesn't show it very well, but the far left-hand closet has a door in it that leads to the next bedroom. It will make a very nice setup for a nursery.

The small doors next to the main door to the room are little cubbies stacked along the length of the wall. Perfect for shoes or picture boxes, etc. The door next to them is a very shallow small closet, but extra space, nonetheless.

Our Living Room Wall

Our Main Entrance - The Kitchen Door

Our Front Porch

The Farmhouse

Official Moving Day; Official Due Date

So it's definite that we're moving into that old farmhouse I mentioned two posts back. We're very excited. Our moving day is June 16th. This summer is going to be busy. As if not all summers are busy. We're trying to plan a trip down to VA in early June - trying to coordinate it with Tilissa's visit. Then we're moving in the middle of June. On the 30th of June (two weeks after we move), we're heading to New Orleans for a missions trip with our youth group. We'll be gone for a week. I don't yet know what July looks like. I'm really hoping it'll be somewhat mellow. I'd love to just enjoy our days settling into our new home and enjoy the outdoors before Baby Guido shows up.

Speaking of which, my official due date is November 10th. We're supposed to take vacation (Outer Banks, NC) the first week of September, so I'm really hoping that my pregnancy goes well and I can enjoy our vacation. I look forward to having a holiday baby, though. It'll make the holidays that much more exciting...hopefully.

This weather has been so nice, I'm afraid to get accustomed to it. I believe the forecast predicts that the temps are going to drop again before the end of the week. So I guess I'd better enjoy the days while they last.

Missions and Bath Time

Today was a looooonng day. An excellent day. A spiritually refreshing and rejeuvenating day. But definitely a long one. Our church hosted a Missions Conference. Our first one since the beginning of the church eight years ago. Without a doubt, it's the beginning of an annual event. Talk about a great turnout. We had over 300 people attend it. They had flown in five well-known speakers/pastors/missionaries/authors to lead sessions. Everyone was so good, it was a difficult decision having to chose which ones we wanted to sit in on.

I was singing on the worship team, so we got there at 7:30am and we didn't leave until about 9:00pm. Eli spent the night at Nonie's since we had to be there so early. When we picked him up this evening, this picture was waiting for us on the dining room table. Apparently, he enjoyed his bath in the kitchen sink.

Gotta go to bed now. Very tired.

Doylestown Farmhouse

Okay. Did I say we were excited about the place we were going to look at today? I meant ecstatic. This place is amazing. What's even better is that the owners attend our church and are sweet sweet people.

Imagine this: a country drive through back roads (or a three-minute jog off the bypass) and you pull onto a paved driveway with woods on your left and a pond on your right. You cross over a small creek as you approach the old stone farmhouse. There are two other small houses on the property that are being rented out by family and friends. Two or three barns (I heard one being referred to as a "milkhouse" although it certainly isn't being used as that today) accompany the small community of buildings on the drive. Behind, beside and in front of the buildings stretch 40 acres of land.

The house has been converted into a duplex in preparation for their son and family to move here from Texas. That never happened, so the main part of the house has been all but vacant for a year. There are still a couple of walls to be put up to make the separation complete and of course stuff collected over the years is still being stored in that part of the house, but all in due time, these things will be moved out and completed.

From the driveway is a walkway that leads to a flagstone patio which leads to a covered flagstone porch. Off the porch is a door. Enter to a huge old country kitchen with more cabinet space than I have things to put in them. One wall is covered with original built-in cabinets. Off the kitchen is a huge living room with exposed stone on the exterior walls and barn panels on the other walls. Thick, wide hardwood floors complete the country look to this living room.

On the other end of the kitchen is a sunroom/breakfast nook (a very nice size for a "nook") that will be converted into a laundry room/bathroom. The third doorway off the kitchen leads to the stairs and past that is the dining room which also wraps around to the living room.

The basement is also off the kitchen. It's not liveable space, but we would finally have a place to put our stand-up freezer and free up some storage space for Mom and Dad Simrak.

On the second floor, to the left and to the right are bedrooms that adjoin through a closet - a perfect set-up for a nursery off the Master Bedroom (which we won't have any trouble fitting our bedroom suit - it's a huge room - getting the furniture up the stairs may be a different issue). Down the hall is the full bathroom with exposed stone on the exterior wall. Further down is the third bedroom with exposed stone as well. It's the smallest room but will work quite nicely as a study/guest room.

There is a full insulated attic off the second bedroom which, I believe, they were talking about perhaps converting it into a study for Dan. It's certainly liveable room since it's fully insulated. It could even be used as a guest room except for lack of a bathroom and the fact that you have to enter and exit through another room.

We can't believe how God has worked this out. We're still in prayer about it, but we told them that we'd love to live there. I would need to make sure I can live in an old house with my allergies. We're sad that we're a little bit farther from our families, but it's not by much and we'll be in an area that we absolutely love. Some friends from church will actually be moving into one of the houses on the property this summer to live for a year before moving down south. They have two little girls for Eli to play with.

Amazingly enough, the cost to live in this place will equal what we're paying now as far as rent goes. Utilities will probably cost a little more because we're paying to heat a lot more room, but compared to anywhere else we'd be, we're paying a lot less for a lot more.

It's so amazing to watch how God works. Of course, something could all go wrong, and we could end up on square one. But far be it from me to be cynical and give a disclaimer to how God is leading in our lives. We now have time to plan for buying a home. And maybe, just maybe, we'll even be able to save some money in the interim. Praise God!

Home Searching

I'm sure most of you saw it coming. We thought for awhile that we could live here with two little ones. Many people do it all over the globe. They fit as many people as possible in a little confined space and they live quite happily that way. Some families share a bed or a bedroom. I, for one, don't understand that in the least unless it's something they can't avoid. But given a choice, I'll go with parents sleeping in one room, children sleeping in another. And being Americans, naturally, we have all the amenities that go with owning an infant and toddler. I just can't imagine setting up a swing in the living room on top of toddler toys. The smaller the individual, the bigger the amenities. We just don't have play room, barely enough living space.

So, here we are, married two and a half years and we're looking to move for the third time. As Dan pointed out, "we're not even a military family."

Although we'd talked about it, we hadn't actually started looking until Friday when Mom Simrak called about a place here in Chalfont for rent. I immediately called and went to look at it. It was a great deal: 2-story 3 BR, 1 B, laundry room (my absolute fave) complete with W/D, D/W, fridge, full attic and basement, plenty of storage space, a small fenced in back yard, $1250/mo utilities included. What a deal. We went back together to look at it on Saturday. Dan, of course, loved it too. The drawback: it was located directly on a busy road and it was owned by a storage facility. The house was shared by the office - a quiet business, but the idea of our back windows overlooking storage units and who-knows-who coming through the gates at all hours of the night wasn't our idea of safety or of a home. So we decided against that.

Then we talked to a friend who is a realtor. We decided to consider buying. There was a house right on Rt 152 that was a fixer upper, but we decided against that, as well. It seemed like a shady deal. The guy didn't know squat about the place: when the roof was put in, the well, the septic, nada. As first time home buyers, we didn't want to get in over our heads on a shady deal.

We looked at a house for rent last evening and loved it. Again, it's another great deal - a full house with fenced-in back and side yards, a stone fireplace that's, unfortunately, been blocked off for insurance purposes, a dining room complete with a table and chairs and a hutch if we want them, a kitchen with a breakfast bar and stools, a huge living room, two huge bedrooms and one decent-sized room, an office, plenty of storage space, a full kitchen, 1.5 baths, and a laundry room (we'd be responsible for finding machines). And the owner is involved in church, to beat. I don't know what church, but the guy told us that he sometimes hosts missionaries in a neighboring house, which means he's probably missional-minded.

We're going to look at a place today that's owned by some people in our church. We're very excited about this one. It sounds like a fantastic deal in a quiet secluded place. Of course, it's north of here which means farther away from our family, but it's surrounded by trees and fields. We'll be closer to several friends from church and we'll be paying a lot less than anywhere we'd find around here. It's only about 10 minutes farther from our families in Abington and about 15 minutes from church.

We're still praying for the Lord's clear leading as to whether we should continue looking for a house to purchase or if we should continue renting for a while. We know He won't let us down. We're in a lot of prayer over these things.

Keeping Busy

Daddy and Eli lounging while watching "The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh" - a favorite in our house.

Hey, guys. Sorry for the delay in the upkeep of the Family blog. I haven't been feeling so well. This pregnancy has been worse by way of nausea than my first. Luckily, I get to take naps when Eli takes his which is more than I could say for my first. Taking a "nap" while sitting at one's desk doesn't work so well.

I'm about 10 weeks along now. "Baby Guido" (as Dan so affectionately refers to our expectant child) is due in early-to-mid November. An exact date is unknown. So I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

We've been keeping ourselves busy with the youth group in preparing for our missions trip in July. We're going to New Orleans with AIM.

We've been blessed to spend time with family these past couple weeks. We spent the few days before Easter in New York with my parents and sisters. Then we returned home as we had responsibilities in church for Easter Sunday. Upon on return, I caught a bug of sorts that exhausted me to the endth degree, so much so that I couldn't even hold Eli. Thankfully, my mother in law came up to help me one day. The next day, Dan took me and Eli to her house while he worked. Then we all just stayed there that night. The next day, Tim and Melissa flew in from Chicago, Mom and Dad and Tiffany all came down and joined Maremy, Angela and us for a nice visit due to Jaron's birth. (Thank you, Jaron!)

By the way, Jaron is one month old. It's hard to believe that it was only a month ago that he came into this world. On the other hand, it's hard to believe that he's already a month old! Time is weird like that. I'll have to get some good pictures of him to post.

Life and Death

These past few weeks have been pretty nuts in the Simrak schedule. Two new babies born into the family brings a not unpleasant disruption to schedules. Just busyness. Although I haven't announced it yet on my blog, we, too, are expecting our second child. We are very excited. With that comes many decisions to make and many exhausting days where I feel all I can do is stay in bed and munch on crackers even though the thought of food typically brings a sickening feeling to my stomach and mouth. I walk around with a twist in my stomach and a nasty taste in my mouth trying to divert my thoughts away from anything that would make those sensations worse, desperately trying to ignore it lest I end up with my head in the toilet. The first trimester and the end of the third is always the worst. I have no idea how far along I am so I don't even know when I will be relieved of these symptoms. My first appt is tomorrow provided I can find a sitter for Elias. Hopefully, I'll find out soon when I'm due.

Last week, two teenagers from local churches died. We just found out yesterday that another CB East student was killed in a car accident while we were attending the funeral of Laura Lauterbach, the daughter of a local pastor who attended our youth group from time to time and went to Belize with us two years ago. Laura was in my small group so I got to know her a little bit. She was such a happy joyful person. The sweetest, most beautiful girl. Her parents told us that the Belize missions trip changed her life. They read a narrative she'd written about the trip at the funeral yesterday. My heart broke for a girl who attends our church - she was Laura's best friend. Please keep her in your prayers. She's dealing with this very hard.

The funeral was awesome. The gospel was shared. About fifteen people raised their hands when asked if they wanted to get saved. Who knows how many knew what they were doing. Only God knows, as always. But it's a testimony of Laura's life and the message that went out at her funeral. Everyone knew that's what Laura would have wanted. Her parents were the epitomy of strength and worshipped the Lord inspite of their grief. They knew without a shadow of doubt that their daughter was in heaven with the Lord Jesus Christ. How do they have that assurance? Because Laura accepted Jesus as her Lord and Savior. She didn't have it all together. Her own father admitted that she had her struggles. "Who doesn't?" he asked. We all do. But the assurance of Laura's eternity lies in her testimony that she accepted Christ as her Lord and Savior. It is the only way to living eternally in heaven with God. And now, she is pain free. She is in the glory of the Father. She is living in her mansion of gold. She has no more worries. No more heartaches. No more struggles. No more tears. She is perfect and living in perfection. Oh how I wish I could join her! But now is not my time. I look forward to it though. I look forward to my death on this earth and being in the glory of the Creator of all things.

Until then, I look forward to the birth of our unborn child. I enjoy every day with my husband and my son. Eli's growing so fast. He's like a little toddler walking around, learning new things, immitating mama and daddy. He's such a good little kid.

Jessica Kerynn Simrak