Happy New Year from the Brubakers!

As Jesse and I watched the clock slowly creep toward midnight last night, we reflected on the past year.

What a year!

2013 was not what I expected.  At all.

A year ago last night, Jesse and I were toasting to the financial freedom we were looking forward to in 2013.  With two stable jobs, we thought we'd be set.  I was envisioning the amount of growth my blog would experience in 2013, looking forward to the new connections I would make and the friendships that would deepen through it.  Our daughter's second year of life was certainly one to look forward to, and Jesse and I were excited to see how much she would grow in the coming year.

And then the year settled in, and with it, a lot of surprises!  The week that I found out my ESL teaching position had been cut from the school budget was the week I found out we were expecting a new baby.  I was beyond sick for pretty much all but two months of my pregnancy.  We moved to be closer to Jesse's job, but the additional monthly expense of that move has added a great amount of stress.  I wrote 11 posts for my blog in 2013.  Eleven!  I've missed this so much, but at the same time, there was just no room in life for blogging this past year.

It's been a challenging year, for sure, but oh, such happy things have come from it!

Jesse and I celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary this year.  Even though I was too sick to take a big trip, we stayed at a lovely hotel 20 minutes from our house and enjoyed two nights away where we could enjoy each other and reflect on God's goodness to us in the past 5 years.  I'm so, so thankful for this wonderful man God provided for me.  The way he loves me, serves me, leads me, and cares for his family is so humbling and exhilarating.  I am beyond blessed to be his wife!

Our sweet Kayleigh Grace turned two in September.  She has grown so much this year, and is such a wonderful big sister to "Bebe Logan."  She loves him so much.  Jesse and I are constantly smiling and shaking our heads in amazement over what a smart little girl she has grown into-- and with such a beautiful heart!  She is entering the stage now where she makes up her own songs, astonishes us with her observations, and memorizes and "reads" back to you all of her favorite books.  We are loving this stage with our sweet girl!

Little Logan Mark joined our family on December 6th.  He is such a blessing from God, and I can't wait to share his miraculous birth story with you.  Having a second child has definitely thrown Jesse and me into the world of being truly grown up.  All it takes is saying "the kids," and you instantly feel older!  In his nearly one month of existence, Logan has stolen our hearts.  He is a very easy baby, loves to be held, and makes the cutest sleepy grunts and sighs you've ever heard.  I'm seriously going to have to get it on video so that I never forget this sweet stage in his life.

 Many other wonderful blessings have come our way this past year, and I can't wait to tell you about them.  As life settles in for this new little family of four, I dearly hope that I'll have time to return to this beloved space and share in life with you again.  Thinking forward to 2014, I'm excited.  2013 taught me that God continues to bless you above and beyond even when nothing turns out the way you had expected it to.  I'm thankful for that, and I'm looking forward to seeing His plans for us in the coming year!

Pregnancy

Jesse and I have each loved the name Logan since before we met each other.  It's been on our "boy list" for a long, long time.  We decided to give our son's middle name after my dad, Mark.  Our little Logan will be blessed to grow up with the two most wonderful men I know--his daddy and his papa.  I'm so thankful for this!

Exactly a week after we found out that I was pregnant, I was hit with Hyperemesis Gravidarum again.  If you've been following my blog since my days of pregnancy with Kayleigh, you might remember how completely incapacitated I was during  my first trimester.  I had hoped that it was just a complication with that pregnancy, and was really hoping that it wouldn't happen again.  However, apparently that's just how I do pregnancy.  Fun stuff.  This time, though, instead of being sick from weeks 8-14 like I was with Kayleigh, I was sick from weeks 6-20.  And I had a toddler.  Like I said, fun stuff :)

When I was 14 weeks along, I experienced bleeding and ended up in the ER.  It was the scariest day of my life.  Thankfully the baby was ok, but the doctors put me on strict bed rest until week 20.  I couldn't do anything more exerting than walking, and wasn't allowed to lift my little girl.  It broke my heart!  God was so good, though, and saw us through it.  We were blessed by family members, church family, and friends coming out of the woodwork to help us.  People brought us meals, came to clean our house, and gave me entire days to rest while they entertained Kayleigh for me.  We were humbled and exhilarated  by the love that we received during that very difficult time.

I'm 30 weeks along now, and finally feel like I'm rocking this pregnancy thing.  I can't believe we only have about 10 more weeks until we meet our little guy!  Jesse and I preregistered at our hospital yesterday.  We are so thankful that Logan will be delivered at the same hospital where Kayleigh was born.  We love the people there.

Jesse and I don't feel like it's really sunk in yet that we're having another baby.  Pregnancy is one thing, but bringing home another little person is such a crazy idea right now.  We're over the moon excited, but at the same time, it's hard to wrap our minds around.  A baby.  We've done that before.  But we've never added one when we already have another.  Sometimes we feel like we've just figured out how to do this whole parenting thing with one.  Other days, we still feel like we don't know what we're doing.  And yet here we are, adding another one to the mix?!?

All it takes though, is snuggling someone else's newborn, or looking at pictures on Facebook of friends with their fresh little squishes.  It takes me back to the days of milky tongues and feathery hair that smells so, so good.  I can't wait to bring our little Logan home, to cuddle in bed with both of our children in the mornings, to teach Kayleigh how to help take care of her little brother.  Watching her lovingly pat my tummy and give "Baby Logan" kisses is enough to make my heart burst.  

Before Kayleigh was born, I remember crying to Jesse that I didn't know how there would be enough room in my heart to love another as much as I love him.  Kayleigh's arrival showed me that hearts aren't confined to a certain amount of love--they keep growing and growing.  10 more weeks, and I know this heart will triple in size.

Catching Up

It's been a long time since I've posted anything.

A really long time.

Part of it's because of how crazy FULL life has been in the past few months, and the other part is that even in the slower moments, the thought of writing a catch up post was so daunting to me that I put it off some more.

Let me start with the most beautiful part.

The day we took this picture, we had no idea that we were no longer a family of three...

But my goodness, life has changed so much since then!  Our sweet little "Brubaby #2" will be joining our family in mid December, and we can't be more excited.

Meet Kayleigh's little brother, Logan Mark!

I have so much to share about my pregnancy, but I'm going to save it for another post :)  There is SO much to catch you up on!

So, just a few days before I found out that I was pregnant, I also found out that I was losing my job.  The online ESL program I was teaching through lost its funding, and just like that, my position was gone.  It was heartbreaking.  I truly loved teaching those classes and connecting with students from all over the world.  That job was such a blessing during my first [nearly] two years as a stay at home mom.  I miss it terribly, but I'm so thankful that God provided it in the first place.  It was a wonderful growing time for me, and I was definitely stretched.  As untimely as it was to lose nearly half of our monthly income the same month that we found out we were adding another little one to our family, Jesse and I truly see God's hand in it all.  My pregnancy with little Logan has been far more difficult than Kayleigh's, and I was so sick that I would have had to resign anyway.  (But I would have killed myself trying to do it all first.)  It's definitely been tight financially ever since, but we've been leaning on God fully, and He hasn't let us down :)

In mid-July, Jesse let me know that he felt that we really needed to move closer to our church.  It had been an idea that we had talked about throughout the year since he started working there, but I hadn't expected it to suddenly become so pressing--especially since mid-July was just about when I was starting to get back on my feet and join civilization again (pregnancy-wise).  But just like that, we were searching for a new place to live that was closer to church.  This was no small feat, since our church is in a very wealthy area (which is exactly why we had been commuting for the past year!) and moving closer to church also meant moving away from some of our dearest friends.  For the past two years, we have been so blessed to have our friends Tyler and Stacey (and Bine!) living just a few doors down.  They were the Mertzes to our Ricardos, or the other way around, however we wanted to look at it :)  Giving that up was one of the hardest things ever.

Just a few short months ago, this whole gang lived within walking distance of each other.  What a blessed two years it was to be just steps away from the Stovers and the Pratts!  I'll always look back on those years as some of the happiest of my life.  I loved, loved, loved being neighbors with some of our best friends.  (The Pratts moved to Northern California about 2 months before we moved, so don't think that I don't love them, too--they were just already gone!)

Living in our new town is quite an adventure.  Like I said, we can't afford to live in the actual city where our church is, so our new surroundings are quite different from where we just came from!  In our old town, we lived on a main street and were within walking distance of a Target, CVS, Starbucks, our bank, the library, tons of parks, recreational areas, the Post Office, and a ton of other things.  From the window of our new home, I can just see cows.  Cows, cows, cows...and dirt.  There is nothing within walking distance, and we haven't even found a good grocery store yet.  It's taken some adjustment, but I know that God will bless us by this move.  

One of the biggest differences, however, is that Jesse can come home between teaching classes and leading youth group and attending meetings.  The schedule of a youth pastor is a crazy one, and living so far from church often meant that I didn't see him from before 7am until after 10pm.  There were at least two days a week that Kayleigh would go the whole day without seeing her daddy.  Now that we only live 10 minutes from our church, Jesse can come home for dinner or swing by to change his clothes.  It's so wonderful!

This is such a big update already, and I feel like I haven't even caught you up on everything!  I'll have more to share in the days ahead.  I've missed all of you!  It feels like this is the very first time things have slowed down since my aquarium post back in April.  So many things have changed since then!  Lots of trials, but God has turned them all into good things.  Praise His name!!!

Lavender Lemonade

If you've been around my blog for long, you know how much I love lavender.
And if you've ever spent time with me in person, you know how I can't resist lemons.
And now my little girl does, too.  It makes me happy :)

So, in my world, there are few things more perfect than the blend of lavender and lemon.

To make the perfect lavender lemonade, you will need:

♥ 1 & 1/2  cups of fresh squeezed lemon juice
♥ 1 & 3/4 cups white sugar
♥ 1 tablespoon culinary lavender
♥ 8 cups of water

To prevent the sugar from settling at the bottom of the pitcher, create a simple syrup.  Slowly stir the sugar and 2 cups of water in a saucepan over low heat.  Add the culinary lavender to the pot, and stir until the sugar is completely dissolved.

Once the simple syrup is cool, strain it to catch the lavender buds, and combine it with the lemon juice and water.

Add some ice and a few slices of lemon, and you have a lovely, refreshing summer drink!

A Trip to the Aquarium

God has blessed us with some wonderful friends who live within walking distance of our home.  Last Saturday, all three couples packed up our little beauties and took them to the aquarium.  We had a blast!

{Kayse, Jon, & Emily} {Tyler, Stacey, & Sabine} {Kayleigh, Jesse, & me}

It's hard to get three wiggly BFFs to sit still for a picture :)

The dads, on the other hand, had no problem with that ;-)

These two mommas are some of my greatest blessings!  So thankful for them!

And so, so thankful for my little family.

18 Month Check-Up

Yesterday was Kayleigh's 18 month check up.  She's still top of her class in height (wonder where she got that from?) ;-) 24 lbs and 34 inches. 

 We wanted to treat her to an ice cream after getting 4 shots, but when we got to McDonald's, she was sound asleep!

So, we treated ourselves in her honor :-)

Next time, Kayleigh, you'll get a cone of your own.

We love our healthy, growing girl!

Happy Easter! Love, Kayleigh Grace

There's something so sweet about seeing your child sit in the wicker rocking chair that was yours when you were her size.  Thank you, Lord, for our precious girl.