T minus one month

It's been quite a while since I posted last - I discovered that preparing for a new person's arrival into the world is a lot of work! And probably not nearly as much work as afterwards! As of yesterday I am 8 months pregnant and still feeling good for the most part. (Unfortunately, I don't have any good pictures to post that include my belly.) I'm trying to make sure I think of the "due date" as more like a "due month" so that I'm not too surprised when the birth happens early or, more likely, late. So really, it's quite likely that a new little one will make his or her appearance into the world about 2-6 weeks from now. :-) I am very ready to be finished with work, at least for the time being, but I still have two more weeks to go. Sometime in the past week or so the fact that I am soon going to be a mom has started to seem weird to me, and very exciting and incomprehensible, all at the same time.

My father-in-law wrote a book about a year ago and it is now published ("The Shack")! It was never in his plan to get the book published - he wrote the story as a gift to his six children - but it seems that God has other (better!) plans. :-) It's been amazing to hear how profoundly the book has affected so many people. You can read more about it (and read the first chapter, I think) on the website. It's a fictional story interlaced with simple truth about the reality of God's love for us.

There's not too much else in other news. A friend, who is getting married at the end of August to another friend, moved into our basement last weekend, which is very fun for us. I am hoping she doesn't mind crying babies too much!