Ashley's belly

Baby Blanchard

Last night I felt the baby move inside Ashley for the first time.  It felt like the baby was trying to kick it's way out.  I've never felt anything like it.  Today we found out if the baby that is growing inside of Ashley is a boy or girl.  It was cool to see the ultrasound and actually see the baby. (I'll try and get some of the pics from the ultrasound posted)  From the very beginning I thought it was a boy.  I don't know why and I really didn't care.  If it is a boy, great.  If it is a girl, great.  Just as long as it is healthy and would grow to know and love Jesus.  So, our ultrasound confirmed what I thought.  There's a BOY growing inside of Ashley.  We taped the ultrasound on a VHS tape so we can watch it and share it with family, especially the little dude when he arrives.

Will we be "saved"?

Mark Driscoll posted a short blog about the election season on The Resurgence website.  I would encourage you to go check it out.  We definitely need to focus solely on Jesus as our only Savior.

http://www.theresurgence.com/in_god_we_do_not_trust

"Be Fruitful and Multiply"

In Genesis 1, after God created man in his image he told them to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.  Then Adam and Eve sinned against God and were kicked out of the garden.  After that Eve gave birth to Cain and Abel.  They were the first children that were born on Earth.  Abraham and Sarah wait a hundred years for Isaac.  Zechariah and Elizabeth give birth to John at an old age.  Mary gives birth to Jesus as a virgin.  Throughout the Bible the Lord blesses people with the gift of children.  He continues to give people the gift of children today too.  According to Psalm 139, Jesus knits us together in our mother's womb.  We are very excited to share that Jesus is knitting a child inside of Ashley!  The due date is in mid-April.  Ashley is about 13 weeks along.  We'll try to keep the blog updated on how things are going.

Death by Love

I recently purchased the book, Death by Love by Mark Driscoll.  I would highly recommend checking this book out.  You can read a chapter of the book if you go to http://relit.org/deathbylove/

Kitchen and Life Update

It has been quite a while since Erik or I has posted anything on here, so I thought that I would give you an update on what has been going on in our lives as well as some pictures of our kitchen remodel (no, we're still not done yet! :)  First, I'll update you on our lives.  Summer ended quite quickly for both of us.  For me, I started back to school August 18th for meetings and August 20th with kids, so almost a month ago.  I was not ready to go back, but is anyone ever ready? :)  I'm teaching the same classes again this year so that is nice, I can use everything I made for last year and keep adding to it.  My kids have been pretty good so far, which has been great, I hope they stay this well-behaved for the whole year.  To end the summer, Erik and I spent Labor Day weekend up in Minnesota at my parent's cabin.  Our friend Kim went with us, and we helped my parents take in the dock and boat, clean out the shed, and get the place ready for winter.  We didn't work all weekend though, we hung out, floated in the lake, and went to retrieved a free paddle boat from across the lake (more on that story in a later post).  The summer has ended for Erik too, Big House, Great Adventure, the Preschool, and all of the other school-year ministry events are in full swing now, so that is keeping him busy at the church. Our kitchen is coming along. As you will see from the pictures below, our dishwasher is up and running!!  We also have new countertops, sink, and flooring.  We are still working on the floor, we didn't quite get both doorways done, and we are still stripping wood, but it is a lot more functional now than it was the last time I posted on here, so we keep plugging away.  Hopefully soon I can make a post saying "finished kitchen" instead of "update"! :)  We also had to purchase a new truck.  The other one was having low oil pressure problems as well as some other things, plus it had reached the 229,000 mile mark and was showing it.  Below is a picture of our new truck that will hopefully last us for quite a while. Well that's about all for right now, I will try to do a better job of keeping this updated more often!

  

Our new dishwasher installed and running!!
Erik stripping the woodwork, yes, we are still doing that, but the bottom cupboards are our motivation because they look really nice when they are done.
We laid a ceramic tile floor and this was when we grouted...it gets messy and takes a lot of time to clean it all off, but looks great when it's done.
Our new sink and countertop are in!  Things look so different, when we get everything done, I will definitely post before and after pictures.
Our new truck!  Our other one was reaching the end of its life (and I was refusing to drive it), the man at the dealership told us it was getting unsafe to drive (I think he was right, but I also think he wanted us to buy a new one too!)

We got "chalked"!

Literally! On Tuesday morning Erik woke up and looked out our front window.  "Ummm...have you looked outside at the driveway?" he asked me.  "Ummm, no I haven't," I replied, thinking that there was some car that wasn't ours parked at the end or another "major" problem.  Instead, I looked out and saw that our driveway and sidewalk was covered in chalk!  I laughed and then went outside to look at it (still dressed in my pjs).  Below are pictures of what was (and still is!) written on our driveway.  It was a nice surprise to wake up to!  (By the way, the people responsible for this is my sister-in-law, Leah and her friend David).

Trip to Minnesota and 4th of July

Erik and I spent the past week up at my parent's cabin in Northern Minnesota.  It was nice to get out of town, relax, and have some fun on the lake.  My mom and dad were also up there so they gave us a few "projects" to do throughout the week.  While we were there we assembled a screen tent, wired the fishing boat with lights, started a brick patio, stained the outside of part of the cabin, and helped cook dinner.  My mom's moto was "a task a day and then you can play" hahaha.... :).  We also did lots of fun things while we were there; we waterskied several times, had breakfast "at the pot" on the 4th of July, watched fireworks, laid out on the beach, and several other things.  It is always hard to leave the lake because it's so nice and relaxing, but we returned today only to leave on Caravan tomorrow!  Below are a few pictures from the past week, enjoy!

 

Erik and I on the boat in the "boat parade" on the 4th of July.

Me (Ashley) waterskiing.

Erik and Max watching TV. (Actually I think Max was looking at some animal out the window, but it looks like they are both watching TV! :)

One of the many BEAUTIFUL sunsets!

My parent's cabin...they've done a lot of work!

Me working on the patio.

Cooking breakfast at the pot.

Erik and I hanging out in the lake.

Two Years

Two years ago today Ashley and I got married.  The day went by very fast and I don't remember everything that happened.  One thing I do remember is beating Brett to win the World Cup in Fifa Soccer moments before we had to walk down the aisle.  Since that day Ashley and I both have different jobs, we moved out of Ashley's parent's house and bought our own home, traveled to Minnesota and New York, purchased my parent's minivan, and have spent countless hours working on our home.  We have had a blast being married and are excited for more memories in the future.  Here are a few pics from the last 2 years.

The day we closed on our first house, December 2006.

Ashley's graduation, December 2006.

Erik painting our kitchen ceiling...the first time.

One of our famous trips to the Iowa State Fair, August 2007.

Out on a boat ride at Lake Kabekona, June 2008.

Our wedding day, arriving at the reception, July 1, 2006.

Kitchen Update

The window before we stripped it and the floor gone...

Erik working on stripping woodwork...

The cabinet Erik and my uncle built!

We have been making slow but steady progress on our kitchen.  We have the floor completely torn out now and all of the baseboards off.  We are in the process now of stripping all the woodwork.  I have watched my mom strip woodwork before but never done it myself.  Let me tell you....it's a lot of work; however, as I see the wood underneath , I think the end product will be very rewarding.  We also moved the refrigerator this past weekend so we could remove the floor underneath it.  We will tile our floor before moving it back.  Also, my wonderful uncle finished our cabinet that Erik started!  Erik did a great job starting the cabinet and it looks great finished too!  I am so thankful that my uncle is so talented in that area, it has helped us out so much!  I will add some recent photos of what our kitchen currently looks like.  It's a mess to live in but I am hoping we will be finishing it soon! 

Kitchen

Since we are done with the entry way floor at our house.  We decided to start on our kitchen.  We are refinishing the cabinets, installing a new sink and faucet, putting in tile floor, and installing a dishwasher.  Currently we are in the demolition stage of taking out cabinets to fit the dishwasher and stripping the paint off of the cabinets we are keeping.  I also need to build a cabinet to fit between our new dishwasher and the wall.  It's a fairly involved project.  Here is a picture of our progress.  Well, I better get at it.

3 Weeks in...

I've been at my new job for 3 weeks now.  It's been a blast so far.  I really enjoy working with everyone at Orchard Hill.  This week will be a little test.  Dave Hansen, the guy who is training me and who's position I'm taking over is on vacation this week.  I'm on my own this week.  He'll be back for 4 days and then I'm taking over for good.  My favorite parts of the job are interacting with the staff, people from the community that use the facility for events, and setting the chairs for Big House and Sunday services.  Today I got to venture to the roof.  The last couple of weeks there have been some leaks from all the rain that we received and the wind blew some of the shingles off.  The next non-rainy day I'll be going back up there to make some repairs.  

I have a new job

I don't know who all reads this but I figured I would let those that do read what we write know that I have a new job.  I've been working at Community National Bank for almost 2 years now.  It's been fun, I've learned a lot.  Starting March 31 I'll be working at Orchard Hill Church as the Operations Director.  I'm excited to start and it should be a great place to work.

St. Patrick's Day

Tomorrow marks the 3rd anniversary of the greatest proposal of all time.  There is only one other proposal that might come close.  That one happened during the Fiesta Bowl a year ago.  The amount of planning that went into this proposal and to have it work flawlessly makes it the best.  Three years ago, Ashley was in New York City when I showed up on top of the Empire State Building the same time she did.  It was a day I will never forget, spending a day in the city walking around and waiting at the top of the Empire State Building for 3 hours for her to get there.  The perfect surprise for a great gal.

Our latest house project...

We have almost lived in our house for 1 year!  Over the past year we have done lots of projects and updates.  Our latest project took place this past weekend.  We had ripped out the floor in our front entry down to the subfloor.  (It was an ugly linoleum material that was originally brown and had been painted baby blue.  When we moved in I painted it white just to make it look decent until we replaced it!)  We had been looking at the subfloor for several weeks until last weekend when we finally tackled the project of laying down hardwood.  I shouldn't really say "we" as Erik did most of the work, but I helped supervise and added my opinion on how the boards should be laid. :)  We are so excited to have this done!  It is not quite finished as you can see from the above pictures; we still need to re-apply the trim but we are going to re-finish it first.  Even though it's not all the way finished, it sure is nice to have a floor down!  

  

Snow Days

I have been bugging Erik to post something new on here besides the Marshill Church website and he hasn't done it yet, so I thought I would take a crack at the whole blogging thing!  I have had a lot of time to play with this because since last Monday, I have only had school for a total of one and a half days!  (Most were snow days, one half-day inservice, and a pre-planned no school day).  We now have a total of 9 snow days that we get to make up at the end of the year. I teach high school math and Erik is working at the bank; those two things occupy a lot of our time.  On the weekends we like to do various projects around our house, the latest one was putting up a new kitchen light.  We are also working on putting a new floor down in our front entry way.  Well that is all for now, but if this weather keeps up, you might be hearing from me daily!