You are loved

Do you ever wonder if God really truly loves you? I don't know why I doubt it but I do at times. I struggle with how can he really love me when he sees my heart and knows how evil it can be and when he sees my thoughts and knows what I am thinking, and when I make a resolve to never make that mistake again and I do- hours later. Surely, he can't love me and accept me as I am.

Today I was praying about that in my quiet time and asking God to just reaffirm his love for me. I needed my heart to feel what my brain knows. I have evidence all around of his love for me, my husband, my kids, my family, my relationships, my pregnancy ect.... Sometimes I just don't feel it though. After telling God all this I shut my prayer journal and opened my book Crazy Love by Francis Chan and began to read chapter 3. The whole chapter was about how much God loves me (and you). He used countless Bible verses and illustrations to show it.

I finished the chapter and just sat there in awe. That is the kind of God I serve. He is amazing! He is always there to calm my doubts. I asked for affirmation and immediatly got it. It isn't always that way. He doesn't always respond so quickly but when it came to me doubting his love for me he came through right away.

I just wanted you to know that God loves you too and he is waiting for ways to affirm it to you, just as he did for me. He wants us to love him and want to spend time with him. Just like as a parent loves their child, he loves us more. I know how much I love Abby and Emily. I love them so much it hurts! And yet, God, the God who made the heavens and the Earth, made every animal and plant and everything we see, loves us more than we could ever love our own. That is mind shattering, and so is He! I dare you to get to know him better and see what all he has planned. I can't wait to see what he has in store for me.

You can click on this to see it larger

25 weeks and growing quickly!

I am now 25 weeks so I thought I better show a recent shot. As you can see I am growing a lot. I am carrying this little guy quite high which causes lots of heartburn (yummy), and shortness of breath. I feel him move all the time. Especially at night. I have been having dreams about him lately and I am so anxious to meet him. 3 1/2 more months and I will have my precious bundle in my arms. I just can't wait!

a few weekend photos

My little brother Jonah came down this weekend to celebrate his 18th birthday with us and while he was here Joel got him a great deal on this Lexus. I have never seen someone so excited about buying a car. I personally, always feel a little sick. :-) Here are the girls at an apple orchard nearby

I just thought the meant the girls when they wrote this sign! :-)

Auntie Danie with the girls. We had such a blast with her. She is so great to us all and we are so happy she is now a part of our family!

Me and Emily at the zoo

some pictures

The girls loving some kitties that a lady from my work had

Emily was just estatic. She couldn't quit saying how much she loved them and how cute they were.

The girls in their matching p.j.'s

Emily with her carebear balloon the hospital gave her.
Abby and Emily cuddling

The girls flying a kite on a windy day

Emily learned how to ride her trike and she had to get it out to show me her new skills. She was so cute and cautious riding it.

Abby and Emily at a river





I suprised Joel and took him to twilight golf last week. I knew it was something he would love to do with all of us as whenever he goes he asks me to come along. It was about time that I went.

Joel and Emily golfing







Emily loved the golf cart

Abby helping daddy

The girls playing in their pool on one of our many 80 degree Sept days.

a wedding to remember

Here is a lot of us cousins all together at my cousin Jackee's wedding.

Here is all of us "Pearson girls" (some by birth and others by marriage!)
Our family

My sister and I and the girls

Emily

After calling the Dr. yesterday and her tests not in yet, I called again today. They still weren't in when I called but a nurse called me back around 4 and told me that everything looked great. Her hemoglobin was up to 12.2 so she is no longer anemic. That helps as we can now look at things that are happening separately and not a joint cause. She still will be having this heart murmur checked out but I am sure everything will be fine. We don't know what to make of the episodes of crying at night about her joints but I can rest assured that the major causes were checked out. Thank you all for your prayers. This little peanut is just so precious!

disturbing!

PRAYER: FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS
Urgent Call to Prayer: Signs of the Times
It is critical that the church in America understands the times and what needs to be done now. The natural things speak of the invisible. Natural happenings on the earth are revealing something that is going on in the spiritual realm. There is a great spiritual conflict with a rising tide of Islamic boldness being manifested. Our President has recently honored the Muslim holy days of prayer and fasting called Ramadan. Interestingly at the same time a major Christian leader of the Emergent Church called for forty days of fasting and prayer in the same Ramadan period with the goal that the church will better understand our Muslim friends. We advocate for understanding, but we must have spiritual discernment as to the spiritual dark powers that are being invoked into our nation. At the same time, on the 25th of September, Muslims are calling for a Muslim Day of Prayer in Washington DC (http://www.islamoncapitolhill.com/). They are calling for 50,000 Muslims to gather and pray on the DC Mall. This is the exact word of one of the Sheikhs who is leading this historic gathering, "Muslims should march on the White House. We are going to the White House so that Islam will be victorious, Allah willing, and the White House will become into a Muslim house." These are not empty words. They speak of a dark spiritual intent and a coming day of great trouble to America. Therefore we are calling Christians all over America to join Lou Engle, the NDP Task Force, Tony Perkins, and many other major leaders in America to a national conference call to pray for America.
Please join us on Thursday, September 24th from 7:30PM to 9:00PM Eastern Time for possibly one of the greatest moments in American history. Call: 712-338-8100Alternate Dial in Numbers: 218-486-1400, 507-726-3200Participant Passcode: 637# (NDP#)
Time Zones: 7:30 - 9 pm
EASTERN6:30 - 8 pm
CENTRAL5:30 - 7 pm
MOUNTAIN4:30 - 6 pm
PACIFICCan't make the call live?
Audio Feed will be made available after the call at www.nationaldayofprayer.orgFor America, Lou Engle, NDP Task Force, Tony Perkins

I urge you....

I urge you all to do your research about his new H1N1 vaccine. I have been asked to interview with star tribune because they are writing an article about pregnant women who are concerned about taking the H1N1 vaccine. I want to sound educated and not just say I don't like it. I am reading into it way further and what I find is really bad.
One website that you can look at is wwwvactruth.com
Before you would give this to your kids or yourself I urge you to read all you can about it.

My sweet, sweet Em

We had Emily's dr. appt. today. Abby was supposed to come and get her 2nd round of Dtap but since she got a fever yesterday she stayed home with dad. She is still running a fever and a has a little cough but nothing else seems to be wrong so hopefully it isn't the flu.

Poor Emmy on the other hand; she was all excited this morning to be going to the dr. and did great the whole time we were there, up until the blood draw that is. They layed her back on the table and put the rubber band around her arm and she layed there so bravely and then came the poke and she started trying to pull the shot out. She kept saying, "this hurts mom, this hurts", while big tears are rolling down her cheeks. I would so rather be the one taking the shot. I can endure it all but I don't want to see my kids have to go through it. They couldn't get any blood to come out so we had to go to the hospital and have them do it there. They poked her other arm there and had to move it around a bit but they did get blood so tomorrow we should hear back what the results are. He wants to rule out leukemia and rheumatoid arthritis so I am praying the results come back negative. She still has a heart murmur and we have an echocardiogram scheduled for Nov 2nd. The dr. too said that the pains don't sound like growing pains and he wants to get to the bottom of it also. I just am praying it is an easy fix.

I had my 24 week appt. today and am measuring 26 weeks. Go figure! We always have big babies. :-)

Emily

I have made an appt. for tomorrow morning to have Emily checked out. She was up crying again lastnight about her knees and feet hurting. I just don't know what is going on. I went on-line today and looked up joint pain and anemia and the websites I looked at all said to take joint pain with anemia seriously as it could be an underlying conditon.
I have a few different tests that I want the dr. to run to rule out possible things and hopefully we will get to the bottom of this. My poor little Emily, this is just not like her!

Order

I am going to be placing a Wildtree Order hopefully by tom. night. If anyone would like to try anything all their products are 100% customer satisfaction. If you don't like something you can get something of equal or lesser value shipped right to your house. Their products are good! You can look on-line at www.wildtree.com. The only thing I don't like about the website is that it doesn't tell you how many times you can use that specific item. Most things you can use lots of times and they feed at least 4. If there was something you were interested in I could tell you how many servings you will get out of it.

You can contact me on here or by e-mail jhkopkie@hotmail.com

Vaccines

http://www.naturalnews.com/026717_swine_flu_flu_vaccine_swine_flu_vaccine.html

Above is a link about the swine flu vaccine. I know there is so much hype about this going on around now and I am certainly not exempt. The way they are talking about expectant mom's and this flu is very scary. I guess since I am pregnant if I were to get this I would be 6X more likely to die. I have done a lot of research and still won't get the H1N1 vaccine for myself or my children. It is gross and scary the ingredients that are in it and the lack of study that has been done for it.
For us we are just cutting down our amounts we go out and being careful about hanging out in large groups but as of now I still have to go to work and I want Abby to be in Awana and I am just praying for God's protection. We will also be doing lots and lots of handwashing.

I just thought some of you other mom's might be interested in researching it before you would just give this to your kids.

Emily

I don't know what is going on with my precious little 2 year old but 2 months ago we brough her to the dr. for her first rounds of DTaP and he tested her iron and we found out she was anemic. He also found a heart murmur. She has never had a heart murmur. She has been really difficult to get to eat things in the last several months so I guess the anemia doesn't suprise me but the heart murmur does. She has one more very disturbing thing that she has been doing for about 4 months now. She wakes up at night screaming that her knee hurts, or her ankle, or her foot, or her elbow. Always joints. Normally she screams uncontrollably for a little bit and then is just over it. Well, lastnight she was up from 1 until 4 crying about her knees hurting. Joel said she was up twice before 1 crying about it too. ( I didn't get home from work until 1). She also complains about her stomach hurting a lot. Sometimes she will take 1 bite of food and then say her bummy (tummy) hurts and she won't eat anything more. What is wrong with her. The dr. of course doesn't do anything but I am getting worried and want to have her thoroughly checked out. Does anyone have suggestions?
I want to help this sweet child! I want her to be herself! She is just soo precious to me!

Orchard and Sofia

Abby's good friend Sofia came to visit yesterday. They had such a blast. We went to a neighboring orchard and showed Sofia all the animals. Here Abby is gathering eggs. Sofia, Abby and Emily being the 3 little pigs

The baby goats still had their umbilical cords

The kids love playing in these corn bins. Jill had to ruin it for me telling me about the rats that probably live in them too! :-)

They got to feed the goats too

What a fun day!






Abby and her two baby dollies

My Family

My sister has left us again for Sweden. This time was much harder as we really may not see her again until next Sept. Our baby boy will be 9 months old before he gets to meet his auntie. That really stinks. The girls really had a hard time this time. They wanted to go with her and don't quite understand it all. They just love their auntie Leah like crazy.


Me and Leah and the girls right before we brought her to the airport.

Leah and the girls

My dad leading little Emmy around on a horse. She loved it!

Abby is my little cowgirl. She went on a 3 hour horse ride with my dad over labor day weekend. Poor little girl even has brusises from rubbing against the saddle but she doesn't care. She loves being out on the horse with Grandpa.

Grandpa taking Emily out in the corrals to see the baby cows. The whole way I could hear her saying, "Hi cows, cows say mooo." It was cute.

Emily riding horse

Itasca State Park

Our family at Itasca State Park

Emily wanted to be a naked baby to go swimming in the headwaters
Joel and Abby crossing the rocks

The girls walking down to the headwaters

The girls on the walk to the Mississippi headwaters

Here she is happier
Walking down into the water

Olivia (Abby's 2nd cousin), Abby and Emily. They became best friends.

Right on