I'm Packin'...

It's true - I'm packin'. Those wouldn't be my top choice of words for letting people know the exciting news that our first baby is on the way, but hey - my husband is much more eloquent than I, and to him those were the perfect words for sharing our excitement about this baby! I had to laugh last Wednesday night as I made my way down to the youth room where the youth band was practicing. Tony had me come over and asked me in a whisper if I thought we should share our big news. "Sure" I told him, so he got the students' attention and announced "Cari's packin'." They all looked at him completely bewildered, so he continued on, "we're having a baby!"

It was a hilarious and exciting moment as they screamed, shouted, and ran down to touch my belly. Many of our close friends and family already knew, but this was the first time we had made any sort of "announcement" to a group. Tony and I are still cracking up at the words that made their way out of his mouth to share this blessing.

For those more interested in the details...I am 15 weeks pregnant and due Sept. 20th. We are absolutely thrilled and amazed at this miracle of God! Tony and I have a lot to learn about pregnancy and parenting and infants and functioning on no sleep...but one thing we are confident of is this - God is an awesome God! We're amazed as we consider the truth that God is knitting this precious child together and already has a plan for his/her life. Wow! I'm so thankful for my husband and cannot begin to imagine what this journey would look like without him by my side. We may have very different vocabularies, but I'm crazy about him nonetheless and so excited for us to become Mom & Dad.

MIA

It's true...I've been MIA. This blog has taken a back burner the past several weeks to some of the other craziness in our lives. All good craziness, just lots of it!

I really do love my job as wife to a YP. Well, I wouldn't love being married to just any YP, I just love being married to Tony. It's time for a quick recap of some of our days off...and the other funny things that have happened in between.

1. Babysitting Jimmy. Jimmy is our one and only nephster. He's 18 months and we ABSOLUTELY ADORE him - So much so that we made a trek all the way up to his home in MN to visit him on our day off (and a couple days after too). We got to spend about 3 days with this incredible little baby boy. He's AWESOME! Tony even had his first experience changing a diaper - ALONE! I was so tempted to go in and see how things were going, but I didn't...and everyone survived. Jimmy loves saying Tony. When he sees either of us, he shouts Tone-eeeee!

2. Outlet Mall shopping. The beginning of February is a great time to snag sweet deals. We headed to Williamsburg one Thursday to hunt for bargains. That mall is laid out perfectly for us. Our first parking spot lands us right in between Banana Republic and Reebok. Our second spot lands us right between Gap and Nike. There's a SWEET GIVEAWAY** for the first person who guesses right - which stores does Cari go to and which stores does Tony go to?

3. Last Thursday was beautiful! 68 degrees and sunny, so we made the most of it. We started our morning (late morning), with a walk downtown to the coffee shop for some yummy treats. We walked back home, cleaned and washed the cars, went grocery shopping, played catch, opened the windows, and GRILLED OUT! It felt like a summer day. Glorious! While I was inside cleaning house for a bit, I looked out the window to find my husband with his nail gun, nailing a Honey Nut Cheerios box to a tree. I stopped to see what he was up to and realized it was his new target for shooting his air-soft gun. I can handle that...I don't like being the target. JK - he never, well rarely, shoots me with those things.

4. Valentine’s Day. I failed to make it out of this town (where shopping is limited to Wal-Mart) to do my Valentine’s Day shopping this year, and I certainly wasn’t thinking ahead enough to shop online. So, Tony’s presents included a few of his “favorite things”: diet mountain dew, nutter bars, apple cinnamon cheerios, cashews, lime tortilla chips, and funnyuns. Thank goodness we have a grocery store to provide these delicious and nutritious treats for my valentine. I’m still a little embarrassed by those gifts (I gave him one each day for a week with really nice notes about why he’s my favorite, but still – groceries?) I’ll make it up to him soon. He, on the other hand, completely spoiled me! We enjoyed a really yummy dinner and dessert at Outback.

5. Junior High Retreat. J-highers are stinkin’ funny. We spent last weekend with 6^th-8^th graders at Pine Lake Camp. It was a whole lot of fun. The snow had all melted so we played in the mud instead. I even had a camper get stuck in the mud – hilarious! I learned a great deal about Justin Bieber (no, I didn’t catch the fever). Tony spent most of his time playing detective and solving mysteries for distraught junior high boys who had somehow misplaced their dollar bills, hats, gloves, coats, etc.

Okay, I realize this is a very poor excuse for a recap of the last month of our lives. I will fill in the blanks soon.

**Just kidding about the sweet giveaway. Just felt like I needed to be like all the cool bloggers, so I totally faked it.

Cure for Flu: Wal-Mart Laps

After being down and out with the stomach flu for two and a half days, I was really ready for a breath of fresh air last night. Tony has made it his personal goal to show me extra gentleness while I’ve been sick, so he’s tried really hard to be compassionate through my misery. Last night, as I was starting to feel better, we both decided that fresh air and exercise were just what I needed to bounce back to health. It was FREEZING cold and very windy, so I quickly ruled out the idea of a walk outside. We bundled up, hopped in the car and headed to the Wal-Mart Super Center.

I always used to laugh at the little old ladies who would do their power walking in the mall during the winter, but now I completely understand. Tony and I did some serious power walking through the Wal-Mart aisles last night. We may have had a few strange stares, but the Washington Wal-Mart is usually pretty quiet once it’s dark, so there weren’t many onlookers. We made a plan as we walked in…two full laps before we stopped to pick up the stuff on our list. It felt so good to move! I think one of the worst things about the flu is laying/sitting around for extended periods of time. I’d recommend Wal-Mart laps to anyone with the flu…I’m finally feeling better today!

Sporty

While many husbands may say that high heels and mini skirts are their favorite clothing items to see on their wife, my husband thinks quite the opposite. He constantly reminds me that nothing looks better on me than a pair of sweats, a t-shirt, and tennis shoes...he's totally into comfort. Don't misunderstand - that's definitely intended to be a compliment. :) My wardrobe was made up of very few of these items before marrying Tony. Since marrying Tony, I unwrap presents and presents of athletic gear every holiday. This Christmas my presents from Tony included a new pair of running shoes, sweatpants, and a couple of sweatshirts (to name a few). I LOVE them all. In fact, we opened our presents to each other less than a week ago and I think I've already worn the sweatpants and tennis shoes 3 days.

Every year I can't help but laugh at Tony's sigh of relief as I open presents from my parents...sweaters, jewelry, boots, lotions. He looks at my Mom every year and says "I'm so thankful you buy Cari stuff like this. You know she loves it and I never buy her any of it." We always have to laugh. Of course I love everything from Tony and from my parents. In fact, I ‘m overwhelmed at the generosity of my parents, in-laws, and husband; and I love every single gift tremendously because each time I use it I’m reminded of the gift-giver.

I have blogged an awful lot about Christmas presents, and hope that does not come across as a skewed understanding of our Christmas celebrations. We love giving gifts, but our constant hope and prayer is that our Christmas celebrations are focused on the best gift of all – Jesus Christ. We rejoice in our salvation from Jesus and the perfect gifts of salvation, love, joy, and peace that He continues to pour into our lives each day. We recognize that the only reason we can have the joy of giving is because we’ve received the gift of Jesus. He is our JOY!

$25 Target Challenge

The $25 Target Challenge is by far our favorite Christmas tradition. Tony dreampt this one up the first year we were married and we just finished our 4th challenge! It seems to get more fun every year. It's a perfect activity for a "day off."

We didn't really take a day off last week, but we felt refreshed after moving our offices from the church to a fireside table at Caribou in Coralville all last Thursday. Every once in awhile it seems to benefit our creativity levels to pack up our laptops and do our dreaming and planning from a new location that offers lots of caffeine and sugary pastries. It was a fun day of bouncing ideas off of each other and pounding out some planning and writing.

When we began feeling as if we'd worn out our welcome at Caribou, we headed over to Target for the $25 Challenge. The challenge is simple: We each get $25 and 25 minutes at Target to buy Christmas gifts for each other. The $50 we spend comes from Tony's "sock drawer money," so it doesn't really factor in to what we'll be spending on each other for Christmas...it's just for fun! When we got married, Tony had saved up a stack of cash he calls "sock drawer money." Whenever we head out for coffee together or sometimes when we go out for a nice dinner, Tony funds the trip with sock drawer money. He started saving in college because he wanted to make sure we always had money to date. How cool is that?!? Of course we realize these dollars won't miraculously replenish themselves, but it's been so fun to treat ourselves once in awhile without thought to the cost. Plus, the sock drawer money funds the Target Challenge which makes our Christmas extra fun.

I had a new strategy for the challenge this year. I had Tony walk around the store with me first to look at some things we needed to get for other people, and then I tried to be super sly and point out things I liked. Then, when I had things for him in my cart, I would cover them up with stuff for our house that I like, so in case he saw me he would either 1.) Be afraid I'm buying him boring house stuff for him or 2.) Think to himself "I bet she picked that up to show me and see what I think, I should go buy it for her." Sneaky, eh?

We crack ourselves up as we creep around the store trying to be super stealth so we don't accidentally see what we'll be getting. I can't tell you what I picked out for Tony until after Christmas, but I'll give you this clue - I always head straight to the Toys and Sports aisles. I didn't peak at what he got me (yet...just kiddin!), but I'm fairly confident my gift will include at least one pair of $1 ankle socks and 1 pair of mittens....those are staples for the challenge.

If you're interested in doing a $25 challenge, let me give you a few pointers.
1.) Target is a really good store for the challenge. We experimented with a $10 Wal-Mart challenge last year - not worth it. (Tony, if you're reading this, I'm sure I loved whatever you got me there. I'm just trying to help people out).
2.) Setting a time limit is critical. It adds to the thrill of the game and keeps you from waiting an hour for your indecisive wife.
3.) Make sure the store you choose has shopping bags or dark colored plastic bags. This, of course, prevents your spouse from being a dirty, rotten cheater and peaking through the bag. Target has those extra large red ones that work perfectly!

We'd love to hear about your goofy traditions too! Merry Christmas!

Christmas Presents

Creating Christmas traditions with Tony is so much fun! Bringing together two sets of family traditions and memories of Christmas can make for an interesting challenge, but we really enjoy putting pieces of each of our childhood memories together as we create new ones.

Tony loves buying Christmas gifts. He also loves wrapping them. Is that just plain strange, or am I strange for thinking that wrapping gifts is a tedious task that should be put off until the last possible moment? It's a good thing we have two Christmas trees because both of them are already nearly full of presents and it's December 12th. Growing up, there was never a present under our tree until Christmas Eve, so this whole tree full of presents in the middle of December thing sort of throws me off...and makes me feel really behind...until I remember I still have 13 whole days to wrap gifts. Ask me how I'm doing on that in 12 days.

Anyways, I love Tony's love for presents. He spoils me every holiday with incredible gifts! I will say, while he definitely values the quality of gifts, he may value the quantity of gifts even more. I can't fault him for that. There is something lovely about an enormous pile of presents stacked under the tree. Tony makes sure that whoever he's buying for receives lots of gifts, not just one big gift - that would only be one thing to wrap...BORING!

Lots and lots of presents and wrapping means we need lots and lots of boxes to wrap things in. If you were to open my pantry during the month of December, you'd find that it has been raided for any possible box. Cereal bags have been removed from their boxes, granola bars are in a pile, crackers are now in rubbermaid containers, frozen foods have been transferred to freezer bags. Tony is very resourceful when it comes to wrapping gifts. I never would have thought to use food boxes to wrap gifts, thank goodness I married a genius. By the way....are less and less stores giving boxes for wrapping nowadays? Sure seems like it, what a bummer!

Christmas is a beautiful time of year. We are blessed to be able to give gifts to those we love and to those around us who need to know the love of Jesus this Christmas. I'm teaching on the virtue of Joy this month for the children in our church. It's been such a blessing to me. While presents and traditions are fun and bring momentary happiness, the reason Tony and I can rejoice this Christmas is because we have surrendered our lives to a God who loves us, sent His Son to come to Earth, die on the cross for our sins and bring us forgiveness and salvation. Through Him we have an inexplicable hope and inexpressible joy. The last year has been tremendously heart-breaking for us in many ways. Christmas causes us to reflect on our recent heartache, but also allows us to rejoice in a God who holds our lives in the palm of His hand, who will never leave us, and who will allow us to be safe in His arms for all of eternity!

Part Time Game Tester

Part Time Game Tester. That's one of my job titles. It goes along with being married to a YP I guess. At least once a week Tony will come into my office with an assortment of strange objects and make me test a game idea with him. He's constantly thinking of new ideas for games or on the hunt for great ideas other people have come up with. (Thank goodness for Minute to Win It!) He tries to test every game before he attempts it at Youth Group...it gives him a little better idea of whether or not it will be a flop. There are the few times that games have been complete failures even after we’ve tested them and thought they were sweet, but we think we’re pretty good at predicting the likability of a game.

Just this week I was at my computer working on an agenda for a meeting when Tony comes in, places a glass right in front of my keyboard, and starts throwing pencils at my desk to try and get them to bounce off the eraser and into the cup. Thank goodness I have cat-like reflexes, or I might be down to one eye. I put an end to that game pretty quickly. No pencils were landing in the cup.

If you were at the church late last night, you would have found Tony and I standing on the youth room stage, at the edge of a ping pong table top. We were bouncing ping pong balls off the table top and onto a table full of whip cream containers set up like tic tac toe. I was the first to get three in a row! That game’s a keeper!

Another day we were standing side by side by a microphone stand set up with two rolls of toilet paper on it, racing to see who could unroll their TP the fastest. That turned into the TP 500 – a new youth group favorite.

I must admit, Part Time Game Tester is a title I just don’t mind keeping. Send game ideas my way if you’ve got any worth trying!