Spring Break

Jimmy had a great spring break trip! He took 11 or so students down to Port Arthur, TX to serve that community after the hurricane hit last year. They went down with a few other Oklahoma groups and worked with a missions project called Nehemiah's Vision. The first day they spent most of the afternoon pulling up weeds on a sidewalk and earned lots of blisters from that. However, the rest of the week was spent helping to renovate a family's home that was badly damaged b/c of the hurricane. He said the students were awesome - everyone got along, had some good laughs. Overall, it was a really great trip - quite different from his spain 75 mile walk last year though! It's so great to work in a church that serves Jesus through so many different avenues. We feel so fortunate! Here's a short write up Jimmy did that was posted on the church's website last week that describes in more detail the trip. And some pictures too!

Over spring break, we took a group of college students to Port Arthur, TX to help with the hurricane devastation from Hurricane Ike in 2008. Our students worked hard despite blisters, being eaten by fire ants and even stepping on nails! We spent most of our time helping a young family restore parts of their home that was damaged by the hurricane. When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, this family fled to Port Arthur, not realizing they would experience another devastating hurricane a few years later. On the family's home, we managed to redo the roof, paint the exterior of the house, plywood and sheetrock a weathered room, fix some other odd jobs and most importantly, minister to this young family by sharing with them God's unconditional love. The best part of the trip was seeing the friendship that was developed between our students and this family and knowing we made an eternal impact on them. The father considers us his family and will be vacationing in Oklahoma soon! Please keep this family of six in your prayers.

"deweeding" the sidewalk

youngest boy wanting to help

re-painting siding of house

Go girls! freezing boys boxers

the group with John's family of 6

a weekend of firsts!

Jimmy and I had a pretty fun weekend! First off, the college girls were super sweet and threw me and Jadeyn a baby shower. We played a number of different games, opened gifts, ate lots of yummy chocolate and had cake. Jimmy and I both feel so fortunate to be able to work with the group of kids we do. They are tons of fun, love Jesus with everything that is in them and have a huge passion to see the lost come to the Lord. Here's some pics of the shower last Friday. Some of the games consisted of smelling a "poopy" diaper that had different types of melted chocolate bars in them, smelling 4 different baby food jars and finally, tearing off toilet paper and trying to get it the length of my belly size. It was a lot of fun. Enjoy!

Our next "first" of the weekend was our childbirth class! We opted for the marathon, so we knocked out a 3 week class in one long Saturday. It's nice to have it over and done with, and although it was fairly boring...it was good information to have. Now I feel even stronger about getting an epidural because that video we saw of the birth did not look fun! We watched the delivery right before lunch - not sure if I would have rather seen it before or after lunch. Either way was not good. We learned a lot of the "hee, hee, hoo" breathing techniques and Jimmy got in lots of practice on giving good back massages. He can't complain too much - our teacher loved him and actually gave ONLY HIM a back massage to demonstrate! hmmm. It made for a long day, but then we celebrated by going to lobsterfest at Red Lobster which was a treat.

Be praying for Jimmy. He leaves next week to lead a trip to Galveston to do hurricane relief from last summer/fall.

Some new pictures

Here's a few new pictures to see!

As soon as I can get a TRUE picture of Jimmy's belly, this will be the first place it goes! But for now, here he is "standing normal" as he puts it : ) Just kidding! He looks pretty great!

Just for fun! Who's bigger???

And lastly...me at 31 weeks with Jimmy looking on. 2 more months to go!

ATTN: Edmond Mommy's

It's time for us to start choosing a pediatrician. Any mom's out there that just love their kids doctor and would recommend them? I don't even know where to begin!

And to update from my last post about iron deficiency/craving ice, my blood work came back very normal with no signs of anemia or diabetes, so I guess I'll keep enjoying those ice cubes! Everything else looks good too, from what we can tell at 30 weeks. I'm about normal for how much weight I've gained and little Jadeyn is around the 3lb marker. We'll be able to know more in the next 3-4 weeks!

craving...ICE?

For over a week now, I cannot go anywhere without the wonderfully, oh so cold tasting ice cube in my mouth. I seriously have a cup sitting on my desk filled with ice and am constantly sucking on this new-found delicious treat. This is strange to me, since I have always ordered my drinks with "no ice please" or "easy on the ice (at sonic). Now I've already sent Jimmy twice to Sonic asking for just a cup of ice. I feel like I am always in the breakroom at work filling up more ice trays because I go through them every 2 hours or so.

I told my mom about it yesterday and she said one of her early memories of her mom was how much she craved ice. She said my grandma would always ask her children to give her their ice cubes when she was pregnant! Could this really be just an inherited thing?

I googled it today to see if others were in my same boat. Suprisingly, many are! However, the reason could be just a bit scary, so I'm looking into it further. Apparently, there's this disorder called Pica. It basically is an eating disorder that causes you to crave non-food items. Super weird things like dirt, soap, hair, cigarette ashes and ICE! Now rest assured, I am not wandering over to the playground and picking up dirt to eat or munching on my hair for an afternoon break. My cravings stop at the ice cubes. And the main suggested reason for craving ice is an iron deficiency. I go for my 30 week doctors appointment on Wednesday, so I'll run this crazy ice fettish by my doctor and see what she thinks.

At least craving ice is about as cheap and safe you can get...until my dentist sees what I've been doing to my poor teeth!

*some people have asked for some more recent belly pictures. my camera has decided to quit working as of late, so as soon as I can revive it or borrow one, i'll post some more...stay tuned!

the name game

after many, many, many weeks of thinking, discussing and debating names for our baby girl, we are pleased to announce we made a decision saturday night with the help of 4 very important people : ) i know there are more important things to be doing than picking out a name but there is HUGE relief that has taken place now that we have a name set!

Our daughter-to-be name is officially: Jadeyn Rose Quinn

We chose this for a number of small reasons and 1 big reason.

1. Main reason: we just really like it.

2. Her initals are now the same as her daddy's.

3. Jadeyn (in hebrew) means Jehovah has heard.

4. Rose is named after my grandma (dad's mom).

5. We like having the option of nicknaming her Jade.

6. It's different.

7. If she ever has a brother, his name will be Josiah, so we liked having both names start with a "J".

I mentioned we had help picking out the name. For memory sake, here's the story: Jimmy and I were down to 2 names - Jadeyn and Kaedyn. We liked both names equally. We decided we would let each of our parents give us their preference and the majority wins. We had 3 votes for Jadeyn and 1 for Kaedyn - although the odd man out said both were great names and didn't really mind either way! So the official name was founded on my birthday, February 7, 2009 right about 7pm. And Jimmy came up with the spelling.

Happy 29th mom and dad!!

I'm a few days late in posting this, but Happy Anniversary to my parents!! They celebrated 29 years on Monday!

Our family is big steak lovers. A couple years ago, my parents wanted to try out the new Mahagony's steakhouse. Little did they know how expensive this little restaurant down on Memorial really was. But they claim they ate the best steaks ever made. They have raved about this place constantly since that first encounter.

So for this year's anniversary, we all got treated to some fine steaks, delicious sides, the most tasty lobster cargot appetizer and not so good tea. The whole evening was divine!! I've included some pictures of the perfect night out!

A good steak is worth every penny! Happy 29 years mom and dad! We love YOU!