EMPLOYED!

Lucas officially has a job with BJ Services. We will be moving to Bossier City Louisiana by the end of January! I guess that makes us the Ark-La-Tex Tilsens!

Halloween 2007

Mei

I wanted to take a moment to point out my sisters blog at www.bringingmeihome.blogspot.com. Her adoption is FINALLY starting to get moving and we are merely weeks away from holding our newest addition to the family. Little Mei is 18 months old and beautiful! Our parents will be traveling with Liz, Andrew and their two boys to China very very soon!!! Please pray that all will go well as we await China's final word and their official travel appointment!

Three Months

Balin turned three months old officially this week. He is starting to get very alert and interested. He tries to focus so hard sometimes his eyes cross! Ayden is doing better in school. I think he is finally settling in a little bit. I hope we can find a way to keep him in this class until this year is over. I think it will be an easier adjustment if we change schools after the school year is over. He is starting to figure out phonetics which is so much fun. He can tell you what letter almost any word starts with now based on its sound. (As long as its a simple sound). Lucas is waiting on the police department to finish his background check. He still has to meet with a psychologist, get a full physical and pass a polygraph test. There is a rumor he would start the academy December 10th if all goes well. I never knew it was so difficult to become an officer. It looks like we will be all be doing quite a bit of traveling in the next few weeks.

Just to fill in some blanks.... We decided to go ahead and enroll Ayden in Public school pre-kindergarten. After the first two months of being home all the time we realized that the change from having a classroom full of friends ALL day every day to having just mommy and baby wasn't working very well for Ayden. So we enrolled him in public school, which has some of its own very big downfalls. His class is huge! Plus his teacher is pregnant due in a couple of weeks, so there will not really be consistency there. As soon as Lucas starts the academy I will find a job and apartment closer to Houston. When we make those decision then we will be moving again.... Hopefully we will find a community we can grow into. We are all really ready to start growing some deeper roots. We found a church we really like and that has lots of ministry opportunities for us in the Woodlands. The decision we will have to make is if the Woodlands is to far north if Lucas is working downtown. That choice will come later.....

my boys

The Boys

Ayden

Balin

Rolling rolling rolling

Welcome to October! Lucas is now in the middle of the application process to become a Houston Police Officer. We are awaiting some official transcripts to arrive and then he can make an appointment to go to the next step which involves a polygraph machine. coool. Ayden is enjoying his first year of big kid school. We are working through a few kinks, but trying very hard to figure out a solid behavior system that works for this little ball of fire. Overall he is doing well. Balin is growing like a weed and is a miracle baby. He sleeps through he night?!? AMAZING. Ayden did not do this until he was 18 months old. He sleeps at least 8 hours, last night TEN and a half! Then this moning he rolled over twice from his tummy to his back. I'm impressed:-). I had forgotten how thrilling it is to watch a baby learn these tiny little amazing miracles. Pictures to come soon!

Team blogging

We are attempting to learn how to team blog. here we go.

Moving

We will be moving next tuesday or wednesday, just as soon as we get the apartment cleaned out and ready to go! We are very excited to be getting out of Denton, grateful for my parents hospitality but a little hesitant about Houston itself. Though planing a very intense Houston area job search we are also going to keep our eyes open for a more desireable location. Anyone with any science lab contacts in Colorado spring let us know!!! We would love to go back to where we met, to a state with four seasons! For now we are looking forward to getting our feet planted in Houston. This monday we went down and started getting our stuff settled. My parents very graciously cleared out their office for Aydens room. They had it painted a pretty blue color and Ayden's superman stuff matches perfectly. I am going to teach Ayden this fall so he can keep up with what he would be learning if we were to stay at Springbok. I most likely would have been teaching his age group this fall at Springbok so I'm excited to use the ideas I had then for him now. We have set up a little classroom space in his room and I have been pulling curriculum and lesson plans together. I am very excited and just hope Ayden will be excited about doing school with mommy as well! He is in colorado this week going camping for the first time. He called me today and told me he was making a present for Balin. What a sweet big brother. Next post we will be back in Houston! Here's to hopeing the Uhaul doesnt break down!

The wait is over!

Balin has arrived! He was born July 10th, 2007 at 1:44 pm. He weighed 7 lbs. 13.6 oz and was about 20 inches long. We are having so much fun with him! The delivery went went very well and other than some jaundice he was very healthy! The poor guy has been through a lot this week though because he was circumcised on Wednesday and late Thursday night we discovered that he has an ear infection! Poor baby. Everything is going really well though except for a lack of internet! We will be posting much more whent hat happens!

Waiting

Last night we went to the Denton Fireworks show put on by the local Kiwanis group. It's actually very well done and allways lots of fun. They do it at the UNT football stadium so we sit on about the 50 yard line (astro turf) and enjoy. I had forgotten that all along we've been telling Ayden that the baby was going to be here "after the fireworks" so of course he couldn't understnd why there was no baby when we got up this morning. oops. Soon, at least we can all hope. We did have maternity pictures taken last week at a park. They were lots of fun to get done and the photographer is very nice. We are looking forward to getting back the pictures any day now! My belly measured 40 cms at my appointment this week. Thats big for those of you unfamiliar with preggo bellies. Very big. And I'm not done. eeek. we are now hopefully less than one week away from meeting Balin Conrad and though we are all very excited we are also getting tired of waiting. The anticipation starts to wear you down after a while. We are in major need of holding this baby.

Forgive the lame blogger!

I officially appologize to those of you who actually have been checking this for updates on our crazy journey called life! The past six months have been filled with waiting, so often there just has not been anything for me to mention. Lucas gave the board exams another valiant shot back in March. He took a $4000 review course and lived in a hotel in downtown Dallas for two months studying non stop all day long. It helped his score. 2 percent. Although we have another shot at the exam before his school puts him up for "review," Lucas has decided to take some time and look into other careers that would make use of the education he has recieved. He has over 120 post gradute hours in the life sciences, surely that counts for something. At the moment he is applying for lots of lab positions. He likes he idea of working behind the scenes on medications or in disease research. In August we will be moving back to Houston. Well, Ill be going Back.. this will be Lucas's first foray into the jungle. Don't tell him about the bugs... I don't think he has quite gotten over the island yet!
The big wait has been for this pregnancy to be over!! I am not a fan of being pregnant as many of you know. Yes I love this little being inside me and am amazed at how God created life within my body. We spend hours watching the baby wiggle and make my tummy contort... but the puking and not sleeping and heart burn and sciatica and itchy itchy belly are needing to be done now:-). Babies are much more fun to cuddle than a giant belly. Luckily we only have two weeks to go! My CNM (Certified Nurse Midwife) wants to induce me because Ayden was such a big baby. The thought is that if we induce a week or so early then maybe the baby won't be quite as big or at least not any bigger and we can avoid having to use any surgical means to help him out... like the vacuum they used on Ayden. We are completely in support of this. Assuming that my body is ready, which there is no guarantee that it will be I wan to avaoid the very big risks associated with trying to get a baby that is just plain bigger than his mamas pelvis out. Second babies tend to be bigger and I will not have a vacuum delivery again. We've decided the risks to the baby are higher that way and would prefer to go straight to a cecarean if the need be. Hopefully Inducing me will prevent any of that. I have been cleaning like a crazy lady the past week and have been having lots of BH contractions. This evening we are supposed to have maternity pictures taken.
Ayden is very excited to be a big brother, although I'm not sure he's quite understanding everything. He found an old baby doll of his from a long time ago that he stole from Destiny. This past week he has been carrying it around and putting diapers on it, feeding it putting "his baby to sleep" and telling me what a good daddy he is. He also announced that he is going to marry Mikyla, a little girl in his class at school and that when they grow up she is going to be pregnant and he will drive the car. I overheard them at school talking about it and defending themselves to a friend. Mikyla piped up that her parents said it was okay.... I guess I'm goin to have a four year old daughter in law :-). (I should mention that Mikyla's mom is due with their baby on Friday. ) So yeah... the waiting continues, but we have a BIG light ahead!