Moving House

Edit: This was meant to be posted on Friday since that is the day we start moving. However, the ever-organized phone/internet company has managed to shut off our phone and internet one week early. If you need to get in touch with us, please contact us via email or facebook as we will be checking periodically. Also, if you would like our new address, please let us know!

Today! Today we are moving! Yay!

Our new house is bigger, better, and we’re allowed to paint it! Let’s face it, if I’m allowed to paint, it can’t actually get any better than that. I’ll take before and after pictures and post them.. someday..

Someday, because there’s a harsh reality to this move. We have to transfer our phone and internet to this wonderful new house. If you recall the saga when we first moved here, you will realize that we are not holding our breath for this to be a smooth process. Hopefully it won’t take them three months, but they have assured us it may take them three weeks. Seriously.

But really, we can’t ask more of them than that, it’s not like it’s their job.

:)

Don’t worry, I’m not that embittered. At least not yet..

And, I do feel the need to praise the Lord for the flat we’ve lived in the past two years. It has been perfect for us and was a wonderful welcome to the many different things we needed to learn about living in Scotland. We are feeling the crunch with our added baby items and are praising the Lord for providing us with more space. His provision never ceases to astound and humble me.

Belly Shot - 35+ Weeks - and a Little Extra!

There you go! Me and my babeh! He and I duke it out now over who gets to be in what position :) We are thrilled to report we’ve gotten nothing but healthy reports and baby is right on track. We are eager to meet him, but also eager to get quite a few things done in the next few weeks before we see his little fingers and toes and nose.. If you could pray with us that our transition goes smoothly we would really appreciate it. We are moving house in less than two weeks and have a lot to figure out in that time!

In further news, a lot of other things have been happening! After we celebrated Ian’s birthday in June, his sister came for a visit – which is just what he asked for :). We had a great time with Katy and I will do a post with lots of pictures of our trip to London next.

We bid Katy adieu in early July, anticipating a visit from Wes, Hope & Ben just a few days later, as well as my birthday. Unfortunately there was an unexpected twist.. Hope’s back spasmed mere hours before their flight and she was rendered completely immobile, thus changing everyone’s plans. But what can you do other than go with the flow.. Fortunately, we are now anticipating another attempt at a visit from them in the next month or two, but that certainly threw us all for a loop!

We had a delayed celebration of my birthday, and Ian made me an awesome cake – all by himself! It was his first attempt and he did a wonderful job :)


He attempted to mix the icing color without consulting his color-mixing-expert wife and ended up with a lovely grey rather than the dark green he had so hoped for. He then proceeded to dub this cake ‘Rock with Moss’. Very postmodern I think.

I decided the main thing I wanted for my birthday was a recipe box. I have a slew of papers with recipes scribbled on them and cutouts from magazines and such that were just starting to drive me a little crazy. And, since I can’t really nest because we're moving, I can sure organize! Turns out it’s really hard to find a recipe box around here. So in true form, we bought a plain notecard box and I decorated it! :)

I really like the way it turned out, and my favorite thing about it is that I can change it any old time I want to!

Those roses are significant as well… We celebrated our 4th year of marriage this month! (Ian brought home a dozen roses from the store and said – here’s to the next 12 months! He’s so cute :) It’s hard to believe and at the same time very believable that we have been married for four years. We feel incredibly blessed in our marriage as we genuinely love being together. It is our prayer that the Lord will continue to give us such grace, even as so much changes in the next few months! We got ourselves some vouchers and ate a free meal out to celebrate.. And we even got dessert this time because baby had a hankering for chocolate and he just wouldn't let it go! We took a photo or two to commemorate :)

Oh, and I do feel the need to mention the haircut.. yes it is kind of drastic, no it is not what I wanted, yes I am ok with it now.. most of the time :)

At Your Request: The Church Baby Gift List!

It has come to my attention that there are some dear ones in the United States that are inquiring about buying us gifts for Baby Church. This is a very humbling thing to discover as we often feel so distant from all of you and are so encouraged by your thoughtfulness! Unfortunately, there is not an easy way to relieve this desire since we won’t be visiting the States until winter, thus taking away the possibility of a shower. BUT, what we have done is we’ve made a baby registry at amazon.co.uk, which anyone can browse through and buy from regardless of location. It will then ship directly to our address here in Scotland.

If you are intimidated by such things (i.e. using amazon, shopping on the internet, etc), let me give you a few options:

Option 1:

Go to amazon.co.uk

Roll your mouse over the little arrow to the right of the ‘Gifts & Wish Lists’ option towards the top of the page.

Type my name (Corrie Church) into the box to find the list, click the ‘go’ button, and viola!

The beauty of Amazon is that you don’t have to buy at the price listed. You will almost always see a ‘used and new’ or just ‘new’ option with an equal or lower price you can opt for.

You can use American credit cards/addresses, as well as UK cards, so (hopefully) there will be no problem with our international situation! :)


Option 2:

Alternatively, you can just click this link…

Church Baby Wish List


Option 3:

Or use the button in the sidebar over to the right to get yourself to the list. It looks like this..

Happy Birthday to You!

So Ian’s birthday was actually on June 9th. Don’t be fooled by the date of this post.. He has officially spent his last days as a 25 year old and moved on to the world of the 26ers. He feels old. Mostly I just try to tease him about it while I can.. I know my time is coming :) In all seriousness though, we truly felt like we were celebrating with so much gratitude for all the Lord has taken Ian through in the last year. It has been amazing to watch how many doors the Lord has opened for Ian to be a strong, intelligent, gentle witness for Christ in the Philosophy Dept. here. From what I can tell, they don’t encounter a lot of people that take their faith quite so seriously in the way it affects their philosophy. He has met quite a bit of resistance and struggled to gain the respect of his peers and professors, but the Lord has seen him through and I believe Ian’s being here really is making a way for future Christian philosophers. It is very exciting and humbling, even to be watching from the sidelines :)

Ok, seriousness aside.. He got very special things on his birthday.. like surprise fudge donuts with grapes for breakfast in bed and his favorite dinner (chicken enchiladas). AND he got a very nice bottle of wine from his wifey (because her other plans didn’t work, so rather than a fixed watch and a semi-nice bottle of wine, he got a still broken watch and a very nice bottle of wine :) that he is saving for a special occasion sometime next year or something. I’m not sure. He knows about these things and says it’s better to let that kind sit for a while. I just go with it.

We planned a little get-together with a group of friends on the weekend and it was a really nice time to hang out with people. We had a small spread of food that most definitely included… Cookie Monster!

He was especially loco this year :) I had several people tell me I should market myself as a specialty cake maker.. the only thing they didn’t consider was that cookie monster is all I have ever made. Oh, and the whole working from home thing I already do. Oh, and that whole baby thing that’s about to happen. But maybe someday! Because I would love to make cakes for people :) And make them bouquets of flowers. And plan their weddings. Wouldn’t that be fun??

Anyway, here is the birthday boy gleaming with his cake in the background..

And, a birthday wouldn’t be complete without a picture of us together!

Yay! We love being together! Oh, and you probably wouldn’t notice this, but see how I’m down to just a wedding band?? Yeah, I can’t keep the purdy one with a diamond in it on my finger before it gets stuck there for good.. Things are a little puffy around here. I sure do miss it though! I mean, it is my best friend and all.. Just kidding hubby! :)

And finally, I will leave you with a picture of this lovely flower. I got the itch to get some flowers for our window box again this year, so we picked out these!

They are called Fuschia and have been absolutely lovely! It’s really fun to watch the buds get big and heavy and then eventually just kind of fall open into these beautiful little alien flowers :) I love summertime!