Yay for Baby Showers! The ladies from our Sunday School class threw a great shower. You can see all the delicious food. I even got to take the flowers home, which are still beautifully blooming in my living room. Other women from the church attended, even women I hadn't met before, but they were all lovely. I got some cute outfits (lots of gender neutral duckies!), toys, diapers, wipes and a few storage bins for Baby's room. The girls from my Sunday School class pitched in and got me a swing!! Tom took one look at it when he brought it in, and said excitedly "I get to put that together, right?" It is sitting in our living room, all ready for baby!
We went through more of Baby's room, but we have just a few things left to do, which I think I'll work on this weekend.

It's almost time!!

So there was a slight change of plans. Instead of getting a 1991 Lincoln Continental with 98,000 miles on it, we got a 1990 Lincoln Town Car with 73,000 miles on it.
It has less mileage than the 2004 Hyundai!! I am so glad that God thwarted my misguided plans to control the situation.

I am typing on Tom's "special" computer. The computer's (and here I am blanking on the right name) memory? motherboard? something is completely shot and Dad put Linux on an 8GB flash drive and the computer runs off the flash drive. However, this computer is currently the best one in the house. My computer, a desktop I got six and a half years ago decided that it was tired of running that pesky fan all the time.
I'm sure it's not an entirely difficult thing to fix, but alas, it is not on my list of top priorities.

However, as the title suggests, this pales in comparison to the glee I have been feeling for the last day. Tom and I just found out that a couple from our church has a car they rarely use, a 1991 Lincoln Continental, that they are going to give us. For free. Words simply do not express the gratitude I have for this couple, although I will certainly try to tell them.

These last two months have easily been the most stressful of my life. With the car, the problems with baby, and money issues acting as weights dragging my spirit down to the ground. I have been anxious; I knew that God would provide, that He would make it all work out, but I'll be honest, I didn't know how long that would take, and that scared me. I am so thankful to God that His hand played a wonderful role in getting me here today. I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that if I had tried to control this and do it myself, it would not have turned out nearly this well.

And for that, I am in the relaxed, thrilled, glorious, bliss of gratitude.

The other day, we had bunches of errands to run. I had to get home from childbirth class, go to court to get my ticket waived, a visit with the midwife, a visit with the perinatalogist, laundry, groceries and a visit to the natural foods store for homeopathic anti-anxiety remedies. The day began out stressful but every time I walked out to our rental car, I had to smile:

Enterprise wanted to charge us about $60, Thrifty (if you can call it that) wanted $80 for only ONE full day. UHAUL, as you can clearly see, is $19.95 + mileage.

Yay UHAUL!!

I love this shot of baby waving to us. What I can't figure out is if we are looking at a left hand or right (although it does make us think baby will have Tom's wide hands, instead of my narrower ones).

I think this picture of baby's profile is my favorite so far!

Hi baby!! You look a little alien-esque right now, but I am so happy to see you!

So I've been meaning to post pictures for some time now.

This one, I called "Smooshed." It still makes me a little sad, especially since finding a replacement has been so difficult. I'm sure I'll feel much better once I actually have a car. If you look in the bottom left corner you can see the hole that the Jeep's muffler left in my bumper. It's still hard to believe that 6 inches is the difference between a fender bender and a totaled car. *Sigh.*

This next set is all about getting ready for baby. Here you can see Erin and Betty painting the baby's room. And then you can see the semi-finished product. If you are curious, that is the "theme" of our nursery - bright colors, specifically those found in the mobile in the fifth picture.

Now, I also had some more baby pics, but the computer is being most disagreeable. When I can get them to download properly, I'll set them up here for you to see.