Friday, August 8, 2008

Em's Birthday, etc.


This past Monday we went to Emily's parents' house to celebrate her birthday. Krista made super yummy brownies. Mom tried to put some candles in the whole pan, but the brownies were still warm so the candles started to melt. So I had an individual brownie with a candle in it. (I'm having the last one tonight for dessert).

On the same evening, we took our first "family portrait". I'm officially 33 weeks pregnant now. Baby Naomi's latest tricks involve putting pressure on my ribs and lungs. Her movements are more like pressure being increased and released than real "kicks". Tonight was the first night I could clearly identify a foot - that was fun!

This Wednesday we started childbirthing classes - we had mixed feelings about that. I have not been sleeping as well since then - my brain is turning different tasks and pieces of knowledge over and over in my head. For example: Oh yeah, my kid needs a pediatrician before she's even born! Oh shoot, how do I find a pediatrician? And they gave us more reading material - because all I need is more pages to feel guilty about not reading.

Matthew also finished training at work this week, and he's looking forward to really being on the job starting Monday. He's struggling to figure out how to balance working full time with a long commute, working hard to find a "real" job, contribute to ministry, and participate in all the family events we're surrounded by. It's a challenge! We're feeling blessed by God to have to provision we do, and that we have so much family around us. One of the main reasons we decided to move to Roseville instead of waiting it out in Portland was to have the proximity to family that we have here - we're soaking it up!
All of our nieces and nephews (except the 1-week-old) know who we are and like hanging out with us now that we've been here a month. That's been special to us.

After this weekend we're going to post some pictures of the giant Hallsten reunion. We're in the Central Valley, with friends (Nick and Jody) right now... tomorrow the whole clan gets together to celebrate being Swedish and a descendant of my great-grandpa Richard (who I never met). My grandpa and his four siblings, and all their kids, spouses, etc, meet in Kingsburg, the Swedish center of California every year. We haven't gone for four years, so I'm a little nervous about knowing everyone's names... It will be nice to see my grandparents and some of my cousins and aunts and uncles who I haven't seen for a long time!

Good night! Enjoy the Olympics. :-)

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