Happy 4th Birthday, Tyler!

4 years old...I can't believe its been 4 years. 4 years since my heart was taken away by this scrawny 6lb baby.  4 years since I believed for the first time that there was such thing as love at first sight. 4 years since I became a Mommy.  4 years since I met our firstborn son, Tyler Wayne Schramm. I can't believe how much I love this boy and how blessed I am to call him my own. Happy 4th Birthday, Tyler!  We love you more than you'll ever know!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What will baby #4 look like??

Its amazing to me how much our kids look alike now, especially Tyler and Megan.  But man did they all look different when they were born! Here is an example of Tyler, Megan, and Morgan's first pictures for comparison.  At almost 2 pounds heavier, you can clearly see the different in Tyler and Megan's faces.  It will be funny to see if this baby boy is chubby which would be completely opposite of what Tyler ever was! :)

Tyler

Megan

 Morgan 

Will he be chubby?  Will he have hair like Morgan? Will he have the same perfect button nose that all of them have? Will he be tall?  I can't WAIT to find out!!!! :)

15 more weeks! Its gonna fly by!

It's a...

Yeah...I almost cried

We can't WAIT to meet our second son! Words can't express how completely overjoyed we were to find out that it was a boy.  Both of us thought it was but were scared to get our hopes up.  We didn't want to feel any disappointment if it was a girl because ultimately, we just wanted healthy and knew that God had the perfect plan for our family, boy or girl.  But seeing those blue balloons and confetti filled our hearts with joy and even more so pointed us toward the feeling that our family may be complete with this baby #4. Two sweet girls and two rowdy boys...perfection. :)  And, Tyler and Megan are 14 months apart and Morgan and this baby (who remains nameless at this point) are also going to be 14 months apart. I just love it.  God has blessed us immensely and we are so thankful.

Special thanks to our friend and super talented Sarah from Living Joy Photography who captured these precious moments for us. 

Over halfway!

Now that I am hours away from being 23 weeks, I figured I should post the ultrasound pictures we had done 3 weeks ago, the halfway mark! Overall, I would say I am feeling pretty good.  I've had good days and some REALLY bad days in regards to my back pain.  The bad days can certainly be challenging with all these little ones at home and has me in tears a lot.  I've been seeing a doctor about the issues and she is trying to teach baby to stay away from my right side and flip over so that I am more comfortable.  I am learning different things that trigger the pain though and for that I am thankful.  I still get nauseated in the mornings which is mostly just annoying.  Completely manageable for sure! I already look at least 7 months pregnant and have decided that I have zero abdominal muscles to hold this baby in. We can not WAIT to meet our new little one! August will be here before we know it and we will be able to see our sweet baby face to face.  Until then, this is the next best thing!

  

 sweet little feet!!!

 

 Baby would NOT flip over and give us a very good profile shot and preferred to have its little face pressed up against my back instead.

This was the best profile shot we got

love seeing the little arm and fingers up there!

Initially, we had decided that we were going to find out the gender of baby #4 but then keep it a secret, just like we did with Morgan.  However, in the days leading up to the ultrasound, Tim and I had changed our minds and instead decided that we were going to share the news.  We figured that people's initial reaction would be the same and last the same amount of time regardless of whether it was before baby was born or after so we decided to just tell before to make it easier for us. Plus, this may be our last baby and we wanted to have fun with it regardless of what others thought and keeping it a secret just wasn't fun for me.  To make it even more fun, we had a friend of ours take pictures of us actually finding out instead of finding out in the dark ultrasound room.  I LOVED the experience and would recommend it to everyone.  It really was a special moment and special time for us.  Those pics, and the gender will be revealed in the next post though most already know. :)

From the heart of Tim

This has been on my heart for a while now, I finally took some time to sit down and catalog some of my thinking about this. 

   It's 2013 now, I am one of 7 billion people and counting. I live within 30 minutes of over 500,000 people. I attend a church of a 100 plus people. I have a wife, 4 kids and a cat.

   Yet for all the people around me and all my personal interactions, I lack REALationships. I have numerous relationships; I relate with my co-workers at my job. I share the pain of long hours, under-appreciation for what we do, the cost of living ever increasing without our pay increasing as well...I relate to my church as an Elder, a Sunday School participant, a regular pew-sitter and faithful potluck attendee. I can relate to their pursuit of God, their struggle of trying to live a life pleasing to God. I relate to fathers, sharing in the struggle of how to be a parent, provider, protector and guardian. I relate to all this, but can you tell if I am being REAL?

   I am 'connected'. I can hop online and in seconds I be showing the world what I am eating for dinner and rant about how great it is. I can vent my political catch-phrases. I can blast out my 'likes' and 'dis-likes' about practically anything. I can support causes and ideas so all my 'friends' can see what I am doing. But what I click is not who I am. What I post is not all I do. My rants do not explain my position.

   Think of this. I drive along and stop at a house. I see a window shade that opens for a few seconds, then closes again, then opens for a few more seconds. As I am looking the window opens and there is an old man sitting at a table writing something with a smile on his face. Then the window closes. Soon it opens again and now I am seeing a small child smiling at something I cannot see. The window closes. When it opens again, I see a woman holding a present and a man and child watching, waiting for her to open it. The window closes again and I drive away. As I drive I say to myself, 'it sure is nice to have friends that share their lives with me...' Then I think; do I really know them??? Is my relationship with them REAL? I say "no", but we are being conditioned to accept that experience as 'real' friendship.

   Funny, it used to be you had to talk with people. It used to be you would spend more time with fewer people. They called it community and people watched out for each other. You had to spend time with people. TIME.  Time that broke down barriers. Time that revealed secrets, not for the sake of gossip, but to help people overcome them. Time showed care. Time cost money. Time was an investment people made into each other, and it made REAL-ationships. It turned colleagues into best buddies. It brought people face-to-face with their insecurities and didn't let them log off. People saw past the image and saw people for who they really were. 

   We are losing touch with the real. We see people 'living' and we think that is what we should be doing, or not doing. If no one 'likes' a post we put up, we assume negative things. We protect ourselves by trying to be so generic we don't show who we really are. That way people 'like' everything about us...that's not REAL.

   We desire to be known, to know others, and yet we fear people knowing us. I believe this is a two-fold fear. We fear rejection by others. We believe people will not like us once we bare our soul to them. We also fear being exposed. We fear that our hurts, pains, and struggles will be thrown onto the information superhighway for the ravaging consumption of 'friends' we never speak to.

   The digital age has compounded both of these issues. This may not be a struggle for the extrovert, for them, social media is God's gift to them. They can tell everyone who cares (and who does not) every meaningless event they live through. Extroverts are not necessarily looking for connections, they simply want the social inundation  The Introvert is looking for security. They don't want to have their life on the billboard for everyone to see. But they don't want to be left out either. So we try to join the conversation. We share, but not our heart. That's not real.

   I see the church facing the same challenge in a different way. We lack a REALationship with our Savior. We fail to invest the time, and so we lack the genuine. we browse through 'god-things' and 'like' snippets of what He says. We ask for prayers, but not usually about ourselves. It is usually a sensational prayer request, not personal, and certainly not what is close to our hearts. We fail to be real with God, a bleed over from not being real with the people around us.

 

   We fail to be real with our fellow believers. In the age of youtube and epic fail video compilations, reality tv shows and american idol we try our best to 'have it all together'. We think we have to perform adequately or we will be the next viral video, laughing stock of the community and voted off the island. That's not real.

 

   When we live behind a mask, we ultimately find ourselves alone. Rightfully so I believe. People don't know us for who we are....who we REALLY are. Sometimes people like us for who we are not, and when they see that we are not, they leave and we are left looking for someone else to try to live for. 

 

   Truth is: God knows us for real. He loves us for real, and as we really are. In His economy we are ALL sinners (Romans 3:23). We are all unrighteous, and our best efforts of being 'good' are like dirty rags before God (Isaiah 64:6). It doesn't matter how hard we try to be good, we won't be able to keep to the standard of perfection and holiness. He came and died for us anyway. He loves us so deeply and fully that even while we were His enemies, He came and died in our place, for our sin (Romans 5) He brought us something new, a new life...the very life of Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17,21 Galatians 2:20) We can embrace this new life and let Him live it out through us. When we do though, we can expect that the world will reject us...just as they rejected Him. We will be singled out for our beliefs. They won't like God's stance on Marriage, legalizing pot, euthanasia  abortion, morality and a long list of other things. But if we want to be REAL Christians, we will stand. Not on our opinions, but on the Word of God. As one stands it can inspire another to stand. The hardest part is to let down our defenses and be REAL. 

 

   There is a Latin phrase I have heard, "Esse quam videri". My understanding is it means 'to BE, rather than to appear'. I want to BE a Christian, a father, a husband, a friend...not appear like one. My digital profile is not who I am, neither are you, go be real.

 

                                                    ~Esse Quam Videri~

Our Easter Best

 Its tradition right?  Everyone gets a new outfit for Easter Sunday.  Not really sure where the tradition started but I like to think of it as a new outfit to represent the new life we are given because of what Christ accomplished on the cross! So here we are, celebrating Resurrection Sunday.  He is alive!!!

 

 It was during these pictures that we first learned that Morgan has a grass phobia and can NOT stand the feeling on her legs or feet.  She is pretty clear what she thinks about it by the expression on her face. :)

Megan's Speech

A year ago, we hadn't heard Megan talk hardly at all.  We were definitely concerned and thought maybe she had some sort of speech delay.  It was at her 2 year check up last July that for the first time since Megan was 6 months old, her ears were actually not infected and there was no fluid behind them threatening to infect them. It was also at that appointment that the doctor had his nurse clean out one of her ears (which was completely disgusting and quite humiliating...I clean the kids ears!!!) to which removed a HUGE amount of impacted cerumen. (Better than saying ear wax...)  It was in the weeks immediately following that appointment that Megan's speech literally exploded and she hasn't stopped talking since. :)  Poor kid couldn't hear to learn to speak!

I just love Megan's voice and hearing her talk is just so cute.  This was a video trying to capture some of the ways she says certain words, like "sishoo" for tissue and "Icoot" for ice cube"  I also love the way she says "hang on a second." There are countless others but this was all I could capture.  This is actually an old video, taken back in February, but figured posting it late rather than never was better. :) Especially because she is already fixing some of these words and saying them correctly!

Enjoy!

Also, did you notice how well Tyler sings right on key?  Maybe I'm just a bias mom but I think he is doing pretty good for 3!

Easter Fun

The day before Easter, one of my favorite holidays, was spent doing some fun Easter activities!  The morning started out with our church's annual Resurrection Egg Hunt.  I really love how our church does the egg hunt and really makes it completely centered and focused on the Lord and what was accomplished on Easter Sunday. 

First, the kids got to watch a fun skit using Peeps and then Pastor Jeff got up and showed them REAL little chicks.  Tyler and Megan were so mesmerized. :)

Then it was off to the egg hunt.  Trying to keep tabs on both kids and keep Morgan from fussing plus taking pictures was not an easy feat!   But we made it work and the kids had a blast.

 Inside some of the eggs was the traditional candy or small toy but inside a lot of them was a coupon for the bookstore which was my personal favorite prize that the kids found.  At the book store are things like Christian books, DVD's, Bibles, etc.  I LOVE being able to get that type of stuff in my kids hands over all the candy and toys!

 

 

 Megan walked away with a HAUL!  She was quite the little egg gatherer.

Tyler, not so much.

 After just about every egg he picked up, he wanted to take a look at what was inside.  This resulted in Megan walking away with twice as many eggs.  Not that it mattered though...they each had so many eggs that we didn't redeem even half of the prizes!  The attendance was down this year...maybe because of spring break or maybe the little bit more chilly weather?  Not really sure, but it resulted in a ton of prizes for every kid there which is great I think!

 

 After all the eggs were emptied and put in this box, Morgan had her fun...and eventually tipped the whole thing over. :) 

 The best part of the day though was toward the end of the Resurrection Egg Hunt, my dad, who was coming in for just the day, showed up and the kids got to see their Grandpa for a bit!  Because of my grandmother's need for constant care, my mom wasn't able to come but being able to see my dad for a bit was just refreshing.  I certainly miss my family and even being able to see one of them makes my heart glad. :)  The kids especially liked that Grandpa brought them Easter baskets!

 Megan couldn't get hers opens...the following few pictures show Megan, our drama queen in full force. :)

 

 

 Of all the candy, toys, books, and clothes in Tyler's basket, his most favorite thing??

 Toothpaste...

 His dentist should be proud. :)

 Megan reacted similarly to Tyler's toothpaste to her new socks :)

 

 But Megan is also our little book worm and really loved her new coloring book and "10 Little Kisses" Book too.

 

 After an attempt at nap time, which failed, Tim, who had made it home from work, my dad, the kids and I all headed out to celebrate Tim's 30th birthday, which was that day.  We were supposedly headed to his restaurant of choice but had to stop by the church to get my dad's car that we just happened to leave at church earlier that day. (All part of the plan of course. :) ) I also had "forgotten" the diaper bag inside the activity center which I sent him in to receive.  Inside the building were some of our friends who had ganged up with me to surprise Tim for his birthday.  I think it worked!  Tim says "I wasn't surprised but was not expecting it." Which in Tim lingo means, he was surprised. :)  He just didn't jump up and down or get all dramatic about the issue which is what he calls being surprised. :)  The evening was fun!  We had yummy pulled pork and super yummy cupcakes and then Tim and most of the others, even Hope who was almost 9 months pregnant, played volleyball for awhile.  Tim LOVED that and I think really made his birthday fun.  He misses doing stuff like that and so I think it was a really refreshing evening for him.  I didn't take a single picture but these are the ones my friend Sarah got of him walking in the door. :)

 

 And a cute one of Morgan because she is just that...cute! :)

Oh, and, on the way to the church, our car hit a bittersweet milestone...100,000 miles.  No longer under warranty. :P

Please don't break now van!!