Article for thought

Here's an interested article for all of you parents with older children. This is easy to think about with Josiah only being 10 days old, but it was great to read Noel Piper's thoughts on children during the worship service. As we all know, different children have a great range of different needs... but maybe some of what they experience by seeing mom and dad during a worship service is enough to outweigh the difficulties that getting them through the service might create.

http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/Articles/ByTopic/104/1560_The_Family_Together_in_Gods_Presence/

Baby Joey

A few pictures.....

Life is settling nicely. Right now we are having a visit from my (Laurie's) parents. My mom has been here since we came home from the hospital Sunday night and she and my dad will be visiting until Monday. Sunday night Matt's mom is coming for the next week. We are so excited to have all this help and company and we've had a great time!

Watchkitty.
Tie-dying diapers, onesies, burp cloths. Really....anything white we found in the house after a while ;-)

Josiah Thomas Beardsley

Happy Birthday, Josiah Thomas Beardsley
Born September 15, 2007, 4:49 p.m.
8lbs even, 20" long

Mom and Baby are in great health and home happy.
Thank you all for your many prayers and generous support!
God be praised.

Nursery

We are excited that we have finally finished the baby's room!! We got the furniture that we ordered last Saturday... so 4 days before the due date we were able to put away his clothes and set up the crib. Enjoy the pictures!!

Matt's new Baby!!

Don't get too excited.....Matt is excited enough for everyone!! About a week and half ago Matt got a new baby, a professional camera!! It was a great deal for us and is already proving useful for his classwork. It came with some supplies that he needed for class so finding out that there was stuff we would have had to buy that now we don't is good news!! Here are some pictures of the new little joy!!
This is why we have so many pictures of the cat! When he's just sitting there, he makes the perfect target!!
This is the camera with some of the other equipment that Matt got included. He got 3 nice lenses and a flash, and then some odds and ends.....good sized memory cards and cords and cables. We are very excited about this camera, as it is definitely a step in the right career direction for Matt. We're hoping that some jobs will quickly follow!!

Happy Due Date!!

Well today is the "official" due date for Baby Boy Beardsley!! While it's been a healthy pregnancy and not too hard, I won't be too sad when he's out and I'm not pregnant anymore! All in all though, we're prepared for another few days, a week maybe more. We're just relaxing and taking it easy.....except I worry a little about random things, like, what if the doctor was wrong and it's a girl...should we have a girl name picked out??? And of course....will he be healthy?? Will the labor be easy or hard, long or short???

But the great thing about it all, more waiting, no waiting, no matter what happens, the Lord is in charge of us, and of this little life and He is always working for our good. How wonderful!!

"Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth!
Serve the Lord with gladness!
Come into his presence with singing!
Know that the Lord, he is God!
It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people; and the sheep of his pasture.
Enter his gates with thanksgiving,
and his courts with praise!
Give thanks to him; bless his name!
For the Lord is good;
his steadfast love endures forever,
and his faithfulness to all generations." Psalm 100

So we will be excited each day that the Lord continues making our son, and be excited to meet him on the day the He chooses. In the meantime.....tonight we plan on having a fun pizza dinner out with some of our friends. We are going to sample the "Prego Pizza" at our local pizza place, Skipolini's. It has a great atmosphere and is famous for the pizza which has been sending women into labor for years! Read about it on their website: http://www.skipolinispizza.com/prego/prego-pizza-frameset.htm

Thanks for all your prayers and well-wishes!! I'm feeling great and very blessed!!

Mocha in Action

Just a few pictures of the youngest member of our family (for a little while yet) and some of his adventures. Mocha has been with us from the international move to the beach, to the cross country move and for a lot of baby stuff assembly..........??
Getting ready for the big international move.
Mocha in the shower. Speaking of which.... I think it's about time again...
Seeing the Great Salt Lake with Jessie.
Poor Mocha misses his aunt Jessie. Sometimes we think about shipping him off to her but...
All this home improvement and setting up house can be exhausting!!
Exhausting!

Time to try out some of this baby stuff!
Pack 'n Play.....check. O.k. for baby.
Bouncer....check. Also good for sleeping.
Changing table passes inspection also.

Well I hope you all enjoyed those pictures of our cat with TONS of personality and curiosity. He has been on nearly every surface of this house, but his favorite place is, by far, the changer of the pack n' play where he sleeps and monitors all the goings-on of the house.

More catching up.....

We've been living in California now for a little over a month. It's very different from the East Coast but I'm sure in time we'll grow to love it. In the first few weeks here we had some exciting times that we haven't had a chance to share yet. Matt's sister Jessie was here for the first few days after our move, so the three of us went into the city to explore. Matt and I also went into the city to go on a tour of his school which was really neat, and then we celebrated our first anniversary together where Matt surprised me with a night out at Lake Tahoe. It was a very special night for me because I spent a summer there with Campus Crusade for Christ and it was the greatest summer of my life (aside from the one where I got married!!). We visited the cabins that I lived in, and the resort that I worked at and enjoyed the beautiful mountains, blue lake, and weather.

So below are some pictures of these things. I'm hoping I eventually can catch up to where we are expecting the baby. :-) Everytime I look at that little ticker thing at the bottom of the blog I am SHOCKED. 45 days, 30 days, 16 days......1 day???!! whew. Good thing no one tells the babies about the "due dates". ;-)



A shot of some cool San Francisco row houses.






Jessie and I eating some good Thai food!












A view of Haight St. where we spent our afternoon walking around before saying goodbye to Jessie the next morning :-(
Matt works on installing us a ceiling fan. It took a really long time and since there was no current fixture in the ceiling, it involved Matt crawling through insulation in the attic to make sure the spot was properly reinforced. Matt got to use our new tools that we got as wedding presents!! It is sooooo nice having a fan now!! Especially when you feel like a whale and are hot all the time.

Pregnancy shot! It's time....do you think he's ready to come out??








































Hey Jess... cool huh?? And it's got Matt's school logo in the background. These flags are hung all over the city designating the University buildings. They joke about whether the Academy of Art can take over San Francisco before Starbucks does.
It was really great for us to see Matt's school though. We met with the head of the photography graduate program and were able to see all the buildings and some of the classrooms that Matt would be in. We saw darkrooms and printing areas and computer labs that look like Mac advertisements. It looks like the equipment will be great and Matt has been very excited!

These last few shots are from our 2 days in Tahoe. It was a great, relaxing time. So nice to be back in a place I love so much!

Moving into our new House...

Here are some pictures of the few days we were moving into our new house and some pictures of the carpet getting replaced (another 2 weeks later). I'll try to post some pictures soon of what the house actually looks like now (very different).



Eating area (kitchen is off to the right), with a few chairs and LOTS of packed up wedding presents that we got to unpack for the first time!!! It's been like Christmas for the last month!!







Our kitchen, notice the dark insets in the cabinets....this is our pleather. mmmm pleather. Definitely the first thing we saw when we saw the kitchen of this house. It was cut out by the owners and superglued, yes, superglued to the cabinets. This was the FIRST thing that we said we would change when we moved in. The property manager said she was amazed the previous tenants lived with it, and that they had planned on changing it right away too.

One month later... We're thinking we like pleather. See you get used to it. Even though it is peeling off. But then, you look underneath and see all that superglue, and think about new school, new job, new baby and wonder just how much work you are going to put into a house that you are renting.
Old Family room, before new couches and new carpet and the big chair moving upstairs.
Lots and lots of boxes in the dining room. All of this is unpacked now and there is nothing in the dining room except the baby's pack and play. These curtains (all over the bottom floor of the house) are the second thing that Matt and I have given up on. We were sure that we were going to find an alternative as soon as we moved in, because they are OLD and DIRTY and UGLY, but now the Lord has opened our eyes and we can see that they are FUCTIONAL, and FREE. :-) my new favorite words!
New carpet time!!
Here Matt is, relaxing on our family room furniture in the kitchen! We moved everything into the kitchen for most of the day and slowly drove ourselves insane trying to figure out things to do while we were sitting and waiting.
An idea of what the carpet looked like before it was replaced. The stairs were, by far, the worst, but the rest of the house wasn't great either. It was pretty ratty and dirty and gross. I'm glad our little one won't be learning to crawl and walk on this gross stuff!