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Since Caleb is neglecting his blog, I’ve decided to update you all.  Now that all the framing is finally finished, (Caleb finished it about a week ago! yay!) we’ve moved on to plumbing.  Our contractor friend, has graciously recruited one of his employees to come over and guide Caleb through all the specifics of plumbing.  So, bright and early this morning, Caleb, Joe, Spencer and David were eagerly waiting for el jefe to arrive and start the task at hand.  I thought I would be able to go over and use the toilet by the end of the day….. even though that wasn’t possible, they still got A LOT done today!  I LOVE PRODUCTIVE DAYS!!!!  Our friend will be back Saturday to most likely finish the job, and even mud in our showers!  Also happening on Saturday: ELECTRICITY!!!  Our electrician friend, Terry, is supposed to be coming out and bringing “his guys” and claims that they can finish it all in ONE DAY.  That sounds like a plan to me!  Caleb says I shouldn’t talk about things that are “supposed” to happen, and to just stick to the things that “have” happened just in case those things don’t play out… but I get excited when I hear plans!  Will we have electricity this weekend? We shall see….

Now, on to things I do know about..My growing abdomen.  Our little Ephraim is due to arrive on September 19th, roughly 4 and half weeks from now.  From the time I was about 5, I have dreamt about having babies.  Who would the daddy be?  Would I have a boy or a girl?  How would I handle pregnancy?  Where would we live?  What would my house be like?  What would the nursery look like?  Well…. now I can answer these questions.  I know the daddy; I’m having a boy; I handle pregnancy fairly well; We live in Texas; My house……. is…… unfinished; And the nursery…. well, the nursery is still non existent.  Even though thinking about this makes me a little sad, I stay in good spirits only because my trust is in my God- not in Caleb, not in contractors, not in laborers, or even myself.  I finally understand that I am not in control of my own life, and God knew when He created this life inside of me where we would be in regards to the progress on our house when the baby came.  Caleb and I finally became honest with ourselves and decided that instead of holding out for the house to be finished, we need to prepare for the arrival of our son.  We need to be ready when the time comes.  So, we rearranged our little room we’ve been staying in (Caleb’s sister’s room inside his parents’ house) and have given Ephraim his own corner of the room.

Ephraim's corner

It’s not ideal or even close to what I’ve imagined for my first baby’s arrival into the world, but it’s life.  I’ve chosen to accept it, and accept it with a good attitude.  We’re having a baby!!!!!

Yesterday we were all sitting around on the porch and Ephraim (just so we are all clear, we pronounce it: *Efrum) was majorly rejoicing in his mommy’s belly.  We have seen him already moving around plenty in there but yesterday he was dancing like crazy.  Ej pulled her shirt up and we could all see him perfectly, so i was thinking, why do we say he is coming and not that he’s already here?  Obviously there is more to come,  i will soon be able to hold him and kiss him, but in reality, he is already here with us!  Reminds me of a similar reality with someone else i know…

So think about this, if Ephraim were to be “born” premature, on July 1st say, that would be his birthday and then next July 1st he would be one year old.  But if he comes on his due date, September 19th, then that is his birthday and he wouldn’t be considered a year old until next September 19th.  But in both cases he has actually existed for the same amount of time!  Don’t you think that is weird?  It sounds like we are counting wrong, like we are hinging something objective on something completely subjective or variable (we do that a lot).  Ephraim is already here and a part of our family!  You may say “well yea but”—and i would say, “get your but out of here!”  If we looked at reality objectively—and we can because Truth objectively exists, He is Messiah—i believe we would see this creation and our creator more properly, or more fully.  Have you ever just stopped to think about how inconsistently we think and reason?  Truth isn’t inconsistent, so why are we?

This step (framing) has been a slow train coming but we are beginning to pick up momentum, with much thanks to Manny and his crew.  It is amazing how fast things can get accomplished when two guys who actually know this trade start working.  As you can tell from our last post we did build a wall (upstairs) ourselves but we had to take it back down because we missed some stuff, well turns out we missed a lot of stuff… So like i said, i feel like we are hitting our stride—the slow train is picking up speed, now we are just going to hang on.  Enjoy the pics…

The first two here are from a week ago (Monday, May 17th)…

done with this wall!

at least one side...

This is what started happening today, but if you noticed in the last pics that we already had the stringers marked and cut.

They were laughing at how crooked our cuts were...

These walls aren't coming down...again...

We forgot the OSB on the back of the corners as you can see but we decided that we were going to just stiffen these two walls up a different way.

Looks way cooler than before...

So one of the reasons that we didn’t get too much work done this last week is because our friend Ashley came down from St. Louis and we took her to San Antonio and just had a fun week with her here.  But yesterday her and Ej got a little bored i guess and wanted to work on the house at 6pm, so we found something for them to do—that they couldn’t easily mess up.  We let them seal the windows and floor plates with expanding foam.  How did that go you ask?  Well, the picture below is of Ej’s first and last window, YoYo took over after that one and finished the windows and to Ej’s credit she did the floor and they actually did a great job.  Thanks for that Yo and for being our only St. Louis friend that makes consistent trips down here to see us, you’re the best and we can’t wait till we actually have a guest room for you to be comfortable in!

We like to say that the window threw up.

Moving on to the other building project we have going on, this Sunday marked 23, yes 23 weeks and i have pics of that house too—Ej and child.  Just so you know the pic is actually them at 22 weeks.

This is Ej right at 5 months or 22 weeks...

Today was fun, there was lots of progress, Erin came home late and just sat looking at “it” because she said it finally is looking like her home.

2nd story half way done.

And to the right is a brand new kitchen window!

This will be the apartment.

What you see below is what i believe to be God communicating to us that our baby is going to be a B.A., now obviously we already had our suspicions but now there is no doubt in our mind, we are already getting ready with the rod to whip that B.A. into shape.  For all of you who aren’t sure what i am talking about, just say to yourself, “aw, they covered up half of “BABY”.

Technically you can never take the "BA" out of baby, because you would just be left, "by".

Today we got to see and hear the little one for the first time, it was pretty amazing to hear and watch the heart beating.  Thank you God for your good gifts.  Just in case you want to hear it too, you can click here.

A house built without hands

It also snowed today so there was no new progress on the house…

Snow day!

Snowy yard!