"fearfully and wonderfully made..."

Psalm 139:14 (New International Version)
"I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well."

At no other time in my life has that rang so very true. I have been reading all kinds of material about pregnancy and childbirth. I am just so amazed at what my body is made to do.

Shane and I have made a baby. I am carrying and growing that baby in me. He (for the sake of brevity, not that we know the gender) is a little person, moving about, growing, listening, surviving, living inside of me. He responds to my voice, my movement, my poking at my belly... a little life. Everything I do affects him. If I eat, drink, rest... stress,... anything I do can affect him in a good or bad way . I am already the responsible adult in his confined little life, caring for him as he matures and readies for his entry to the world as we know it. The other day at our childbirth prep class I looked around at all the pregnant ladies and their husbands. It's funny that I didn't just see "pregnant ladies and their husbands" I saw ladies with their husbands and a bunch of babies just waiting to be born! As if the ladies were planes and the babies were skydivers. The skydivers are just waiting for the right moment to take the plunge.

Even though thinking about the pain can be scary there is a reassurance that comes from knowing that we are made to go through this. To endure it. I mean, our bodies are made to make a baby and then move it out. It's got all the mechanisms for making and getting it out. Modern medicine is a gift in case there are any complications but altogether we are made to go through this process naturally. There is a lot to explain in respect to this process and how modern medicine has changed the way we see childbirth; I will not get into it now. I will have to write about that after I actually give birth. For now, I plan to be amazed and look forward to seeing how my body, my mind, my spirit will respond to giving birth.

Video of recent snow fun in Blacksburg

Me with Chispita



Chispita on her own. Doesn't she look thrilled?!

Chispita eye view of the world

Caught on film... finally!

We made it back

We had a great time in CA. The weather was really nice. It was funny to see people bundled up for 60 degree weather. We wore t-shirts and long sleeve shirts. We felt fine.

Now that we are home we've really had to bundle up. Just today it warmed up to 40 degrees. The last couple of days were in the low 20's, and even down to 12. That was the temperature and one night the forecast said that, with the wind chill, it felt like 6 degrees below zero. Crazy! On the first day of 2008, it snowed. It got scary while we were on the road home from a dinner at a friends house. It had just snowed and the roads were icy--we ended up skidding a little bit. Thankfully there weren't many other cars out. At least none near us. Shane valiantly got us home safely.

Anyway, being in CA was good for me. I saw friends and family that I'd been missing. It felt like we'd never left. I ate way too much! We ate at Tommy's, CPKs, In-N-Out, Mimi's Cafe, Old Spaghetti Factory, Claim Jumper, Canters, and my favorite.... Pizzamania! Oh man, I felt like I must've gained about 10 pounds!

By the way, we learned from the owner of Pizzamania that their style of pizza is hand-tossed, thick crust pizza, so maybe we can find some of that out here.

Aside from visiting friends and family, we also got to see some sites around L.A. county.
- Venice Beach
- Venice Beach Canals
- Melrose
- Naples in Long Beach
- Old Town Pasadena
- Brea Mall
- Uptown Whittier
- Universal City Walk
- and of course, endless hours stuck on the freeways

We also visited family up in Oakhurst (just south of Yosemite National Park). It was freezing there! It snowed on the day we left. It was great to visit with Shane's grandma, aunt/uncle and cousins. We got to celebrate his uncle's birthday and see some little kids put on an impromptu show.

All in all, I am glad we went out there. I will note that, I don't like flying. Turbulence has got to be one of my greatest fears. I have to fight becoming afraid of flying altogether. That would be huge problem for us, since we like to travel to far and distant lands. If anyone has any advice about how to get over it, please do let me know. And you can't just tell me that turbulence is an airflow regime characterized by chaotic, stochastic property changes, `cause that doesn't make me feel any better.