We’re happy to announce that we’re expecting a baby boy on June 4^th! We reached the halfway mark (20 weeks) this past week, and so far everything is progressing nicely. Becca has been rooting for a baby sister; she wanted a little girl so she could name her Goldilocks or Snow White. She even told me that Corduroy wanted a baby sister. (Sorry Becca, I don’t think those names are going to make it to our list.) Right now we’re calling him Brother.

We had our 20 week sonogram yesterday morning and so far everything looks good. [As you can see above – and as you may recall from when we had Becca’s sono – Amy’s OB has really great ultrasound equipment. By the way, there’s a T on the front of that hat – you just can’t see it because of Brother’s angle in this photo. -JMJ] We won’t know if there are any complications like Becca’s until later on in the pregnancy. Becca had a perfect pregnancy until the weekend before I entered the hospital due to lessened movement. This little boy is a mover – I felt him really early on, so hopefully that will help in noticing decreased movement, if that becomes an issue again. My doctor expects everything to go fine.

A lot of people are asking me how I’m feeling (in relation to Becca’s pregnancy). I feel fine. . . . Actually, now that I’m in the middle of 2^nd trimester I have to say compared to 1st trimester, I’m feeling good. Now that I’m feeling myself again, I realize how crummy I felt 1^st trimester. Everything seems better and not as bad as it did a few months ago – teaching piano lessons, church, making dinner, etc. One night at dinner I looked at Josh and said, “You’re way better looking than you were 1^st trimester.” I was too busy at dinner feeling yucky and being tired to notice how good looking my husband is. Of course, I did have the added stress of the miscarriage last year. First trimmest was a time of practicing faith in God’s best for our loves. There was one weekend of this pregnancy when I was pretty sure we’d lost the baby (wasn’t hungry – had extra energy). Glad to be out of that period. God is good and we look forward to what He is going to do in the next 20 weeks for our little boy.

Saturday we got together with Lap’s family (one of Josh’s Jarai consultants). They were in the area for the weekend. As you can see, Josh and Lap even did a few minutes of work (with prepositions – in this case, “on top of”) while they were visiting.

This past weekend we had our 4^th annual MLK Day getaway (Sunday-Monday). We used up our credit card points and stayed at an Embassy Suites in Dallas. Becca loved swimming in the (cold) indoor pool, feeding the swans, and riding the elevators. On Monday we went to the Dallas Zoo (“Penguin Days” for Jan/Feb are $5 per person). The weather was perfect and we spent a few hours looking around.

 Becca’s favorite part of the zoo visit was the bronze statues. Her other favorite animal this time was the tiger. He was pacing and roaring quite a bit at his door (maybe waiting for lunch). Becca wanted to go back and see the tiger again and again to, “show Mama something.” Becca does a pretty good imitation of the tiger roar. We ended with a ride on the carousel. It was a great getaway. It’s one of the few holidays that we get Josh for the whole day without also entertaining others . . . a sweet treat for all of us.