Marriage Conference

Stephan and I attended a marriage conference that we learned about in our church bulletin. It was held at a local church and led by Paul Tripp (he wrote Age of Opportunity and several other books). I can hardly beleive that the 2 sessions Friday night and the 3 seessions this morning (5 hours max) taught me so much. He is a wonderful storyteller, a biblical teacher, and a wise man of God. I thought I would encourage any of you to check if he leads a conference in your area, it would be well worth attending or you can order the DVD "What Were You Expecting?" His website is paultrippministries.org. Here are a few wise words from my notes:
--The Love of God is the hope of our marriage, not the love of a husband or wife.
--Romance is never the cause of a good marriage, it is the fruit of a good marriage (Luke 6:43-45)
--Treasure principles: everyone lives for some kind of treasure, the thing you treasure will control your heart, what controls your heart, controls your behavior (no one can serve two masters, Matthew 6:19-34)
--Only people who love God above all else can truly love their neighbor or their spouse
--The problems/conflicts in marriage are rooted in sin and selfishness, we need to look at our own hearts and not blame the other for our anger, frustration, etc.
--Couples in marriage were brought together for two purposes: His glory, our good

I realize my snipets do not do justice to everything he talked about, but hopefully it gives you some sense of his teachings and encouragement in your marriage to seek Him first. What a blessing to learn more about what a gift the grace of God is in our daily lives, what God calls us to in marriage, and so much more . . .

36 weeks and counting

I thought I'd post another pregnancy picture, hopefully the last! I'm starting to get lots of looks and even some not so encouraging comments about the size of my stomach and the looming due date. Normally, I really like to see people comment on my blog, but I'll request you resist comments on this picture :)

Birthdays and birth dates

Yesterday my sisters and their families were over for our monthly Sunday dinner. My neice Alison turns 10 on Saturday and two days later I get much older, too. So Abbie made us this delicious strawberry cake :) mmmmm . . .

In other news we were woken up by a call at midnight that Stephan's brother Brian and his wife were blessed with a healthy baby boy last night! Congrats to them!! We can't wait to meet Caleb Dale Postma.

This reminds me that altough I have about 5 weeks to my due date, we are anxiously awaiting baby Postma. Please pray that the baby comes on time or early and that we can avoid a Csection! My sister is getting married on April 9 and travelling to IA will be much more enjoyable without recovering from a major surgery.

More Signs/Faces of Briella

"More"

This is her "mad face" from a precious book called I Love you Through and Through. It goes something like this-- "I love your top side, your bottom side, your inside, your outside. I love your happy side, your sad side, your silly side, your mad side."(and lots more) So this is her mad side to go with the book. She can only hold the face for 1.3 seconds and then starts laughing --funny :)

I'm not sure you can see that she is holding my cell phone. If I set it down in the wrong place (anything below 4 feet is the wrong place) she will open it and push buttons and now walk around and 'talk' on it. She jabbers while holding the phone, but while we were on speaker phone with my mom all she would do is point and wave.

Copy Cat

Today, Briella decided to play with an empty milk jug. (The best toys are the free ones.) It was so cute to see her 'pour' from the jug into her snack container and then set it down and then put the the lid on and start teh whole thing over again.

Yes, I noticed she is wearing the same shirt as the last time . . . she does have more clothes, just a coincidence . . .

Recent Fun

Our dear little babbler hasn't picked up too many real words yet, but she is picking up sign language quite well. We started with "please", then added "eat" (see picture), she also knows "Thank You" and "more." These seemed like the most useful words to teach her. It is cute to see her in the morning show me "eat" and then we get breakfast. She loves to ask for snacks in the afternoon and will "eat" "eat" "eat" all afternoon. Her cousin Tessa came to play Friday night. They both have these cute pink Dordt nalgenes. They were both taking a drink at the same time, but I missed it. I tried several times to get them to do it together again, but then it got to be this goofy game and they started trading bottles to share germs, I think.

I was putting dishes away one afternoon and looked outside to see 3 deer in our driveway. They spent about 20 minutes crossing the street, checking out the neighbors bushes, then investigating the fence before heading back into the woods behind our house. It was quite interesting!!

Christmas Presents from Grandpa and Grandma Buys

Since we weren't able to be in Iowa for Christmas, Briella got to open her gift from my parents at our house. She can do the pop up toy, but the fish puzzle is a little beyond her. She loves taking the pieces out or dumping them all on the floor. Thanks mom and dad!!