As I sit here writing and my body goes through contractions on and off, I am incredibly humbled by this process of waiting for our son to arrive. It has been a long 9 months of waiting, but honestly, I have loved being pregnant! It has been such a joy to carry this boy in my belly. Of course there were days in my first trimester when I hugged our toilet for hours that I didn't love, days during our move when I was 10 weeks pregnant that I wasn't sure I'd be able to unpack another box, and even days over the last few weeks that my body felt like it couldn't handle anymore and I just laid in our bed and cried. With all that said, God has continued to remind me what a blessing it is to be able to carry our son and we have chosen to pray for him as he grows and develops in my womb. Trevor and I have loved reading "Praying through your pregnancy" by Jennifer Polimino. The book took us through each week of pregnancy and guided us in how to pray for Landon...his brain, his skin, his vision, every inch of his being, and just as importantly his spirit; that he would know the Lord from a young age! I would highly recommend this book to any expecting couple, whether it's your first baby or your 10th! <3 

"For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made."  

-Psalm 139:13-14

Before I got pregnant and even at the beginning of my pregnancy, people would ask me about what kind of birth I desired to have. Umm, I don't know?? My response was usually something to the effect that I'd like to avoid a c-section if at all possible, but that I know I'm not superwoman, so I'm sure I'll have an epidural or whatever I need for the pain. To be honest, I hadn't really thought much about it and I figured I would do the "norm". As Trevor and I started talking more seriously about the birth we desired for our son, I was very quickly convicted that my heart desired for the most natural birth experience possible. We both felt strongly that the Lord designed my body to birth babies and there are women who have been and are still today birthing their babies with little or no medical intervention. I promise they exist! Even though this is the direction we were drawn to, I was still incredibly nervous to say that was our "birth plan". Why is that? If I knew that was what God was putting on our hearts, why would I be fearful of "owning" that plan? I know exactly why...approval of man. Ouch! I was fearful that if I said I wanted a natural unmedicated birth and ended up taking medication during my delivery, that people would see that as a failed experience, that I couldn't "handle it" or I "gave up". But that's just it, I was more concerned with approval of man than I was with claiming the plan that we felt was best for our family. Thankfully we have a couple of good friends who have recently had a natural birth who were able to point us towards some great resources and we decided to go with the "Bradley Method". The best way I can explain this method is that it seems to be the most basic form of an unmedicated birth. It doesn't go into "set breathing", try to distract you, or hypnotize you, it simply teaches you techniques to help with relaxation during labor and focuses on husband coached childbirth. I happen to have a fabulous husband, so I knew he would be a great labor coach <3 We also have a fabulous doula who God perfectly placed in our path through mutual friends & she has been such a blessing, we are so thankful she will be there when our son is born since our family is so far away! 

As I've been preparing for labor this week, I've really tried to focus on preparing spiritually. We have spent months and months reading about the Bradley Method of birth, positions, comfort measures, etc. but I know that what I am really going to need is strength from the Lord during this labor and delivery. These are a few verses that have encouraged me and I am trying to commit to memory before our little bundle of joy decides to come out! 

"My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me."

 -2 Corinthians 12:9

"Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God."

-Philippians 4:6

"You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast 

because they trust in you."

-Isaiah 26:3

"Cast all your anxiety on Him, for He cares for you!" 

-1 Peter 5:7

I was hesitant to share about our birth plan today not only because a part of my human self still struggles with "what if I can't do this naturally", but also because I never want to make our "plan" look any more superior or preferred than another persons desire or birth experience. For us, the key was to have God the center of our decisions about birth as well as our overall birth experience, that's it! I truly believe you can have ANY type of delivery experience and it be completely glorifying to the Lord, as long as you seek Him in making the decisions. I am thankful that I can rest assured in knowing that we did seek God in making this decision and whether we have a 100% unmedicated natural birth, I end up having an epidural and delivering vaginally, or I need a c-section, I know that we will have a redeemed childbirth experience and we will get to hold that baby boy very soon! Healthy baby & healthy mama are the goal! I am absolutely NOT superwoman and all of my closest friends know that I do not have a high pain tolerance (I'm kind of a wimp!), but I also know that God can sustain me through ANY amount of pain, suffering, worry, or fear because He created my body to do this. So in ending this post, that is our birth "plan"...to make sure we have a redeemed childbirth experience with our Redeemer as the focus! <3 We would love your prayers as we await the arrival of our Landon Scott! 

"Jesus is our deliverer in birth. He brings forth life. He chooses WHEN that baby will be born; we know no the hour, only He does. He is the one we can choose to transfer our pain to, to let Him take it and carry us. He alone rescues and delivers one from captivity. He wants His daughters to experience Him deeply in this way, consciously aware that He is in control and is the Deliverer. But we have a responsibility as well. We have to deliver or surrender our pain, our fears, our expectations, our childbirths, and ultimately our lives into the Lord. We have the ask Him to deliver us." 

- Redeeming Childbirth 

First attempt: 14 meals in 1 hour and 22 minutes :)

I have been talking about doing bulk freezer meals for months and I finally made myself start when I realized two things...how tired I am & how much our schedule is going to change when Landon gets here! Both motivated me to go for it. I have been following several freezer meal blogs for a while and I have made 3-4 at a time here and there but I had never tried to do it in bulk! So here it goes...

I decided to go with a few crockpot recipes that are favorites in our house already and just convert them to freezer meals & I also added several recipes I have not personally tried, so I can't comment on how good those are quite yet. I'll update this after we get through trying them all though :) 

So I picked my recipes and made my list. I tried to go with just a couple different meats for the sake of cost, I stuck mostly with chicken and pork. I also chose recipes for things we already have in bulk (ex: creamed soups, etc) 

This is all the ingredients I used for the 14 meals: 

Here's my meal list and I made 2 freezer bags of each meal totaling 14 meals: 

Taco chicken bowls

Ranch chicken 

Meatball subs

Creamy ranch pork chops

BBQ chicken sandwiches

Mushroom pork chops 

Chicken spaghetti 

Taco Chicken Bowls

1.5lb Chicken breasts 

1 (16 oz) jar salsa

1 (15 oz) can black beans, drained (I used pinto bc hubby doesn't like black beans!)

8 oz frozen corn

1 Tbsp chili powder

1/2 Tbsp Cumin

1/2 Tbsp Minced garlic

1/2 tsp dried oregano

1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

1/4 tsp salt

Pepper (to taste) 

2 cups rice 

8 oz shredded cheese 

1/2 bunch cilantro 

Add everything to the bag except the rice, cheese, and cilantro. Label and freeze flat. Put in fridge the night before to thaw. Dump ingredients in the crockpot with 1/4 cup of water and cook on low for 8 hours. Near the end of cook time, stir the chicken to shred and cook the 2 cups of rice. Assemble with rice on bottom, chicken mixture, shredded cheese, and cilantro.

Recipe from: 

http://budgetbytes.blogspot.com

Ranch Chicken

4 Chicken breasts

1 Packet Ranch Dressing Mix (the dry kind)

Mix the chicken with the ranch mix. Label and freeze flat. Put it in the fridge the night before to thaw. Dump ingredients in the crockpot with 1 cup water or broth. Cook on low 3-4 hours or high 4-5 hours. Serve with veggies!

Recipe from: 

http://lookslikehomemade.com

Meatball Subs

1 package of frozen turkey meatballs (or if you're ambitious you could make your own!)

1 jar of pasta sauce 

Mix the meatballs and frozen meatballs. Label and freeze flat. Put it in the fridge the night before to thaw. Dump ingredients in the crockpot and cook in low for 2 hours, stir frequently. Serve on wheat sub buns! 

*My personal recipe

Creamy Ranch Pork Chops

4 pork chops
6 medium potatoes, chopped into large pieces
2 cans cream of chicken soup
2 packages dry ranch dressing mix
1 cup milk

Mix all ingredients together in gallon ziplock bag. Label and freeze. Put in the fridge to thaw the night before. Dump ingredients in the crockpot and cook on low for 6-7 hours or high for 4 hours. 

Recipe from: 

http://www.sixsistersstuff.com

BBQ Chicken Sandwiches 

3-4 chicken breasts 

1 bottle of your favorite BBQ sauce

1/2 cup brown sugar

2 Tbsp worcestershire

Mix all ingredients together in gallon ziplock bag. Label and freeze. Put in the fridge to thaw the night before. Dump all ingredients in the crockpot and cook on low 8 hours. Stir the chicken to shred as the cook time nears the end. Serve on wheat buns! 

*My personal recipe 

Mushroom Pork Chops

4 pork chops

2 cans cream of mushroom soup

1/4 cup soy sauce

2 Tbsp worcestershire 

1/2 package of mushrooms (fresh or canned) 

Mix all ingredients together in gallon ziplock bag. Label and freeze. Put in the fridge to thaw the night before. Dump all ingredients in the crockpot and cook on low for 6 hours. Serve with salad! 

*My personal recipe 

Chicken Spaghetti 

2lbs chicken breast, cubed

1 bell pepper, chopped

1 onion, chopped

2lbs 2% Velveeta, cubed (this was WAY too much cheese for me so I did 1/2)

1 1/2 cups sour cream

1 can cream of chicken

1 can cream of celery

1 (7oz) can diced green chiles

1/2 cup milk

2 cloves garlic

Salt and pepper to taste 

Noodles to serve over 

Mix all ingredients in gallon ziplock bag. Label and freeze. Put in fridge to the thaw the night before. Dump all ingredients in crockpot and cook on low 6-8 hours. Cook noodles and combine with chicken mixture. If it comes out too runny, add a creamed soup to thicken. 

Recipe from: 

www.crockingirls.com

So here they are! 14 meals prepped, bagged, and ready to go! I am so excited about how much time/stress this is going to save us over the next couple of months of pregnancy as I get more and more exhausted and have less desire to cook :) My goal is to do about 14 meals one day at the beginning of each month. That way between meals that we grill (steak, fish, etc) and eat out about once per week and we should be set for the month! I also think it will save us a lot on our grocery budget because we aren't letting food go bad. As soon as I go grocery shopping everything gets prepped and frozen! I hope some of these recipes make life a bit easier on your family too <3 

I have to start by saying that I have been the world's worst blogger lately. Seriously. My last post was in November announcing our pregnancy.... I feel like our life has changed so much since then! First of all, today (well when I actually started this post LAST week :/) is Trevor's 8 year anniversary in the Air Force and I could not be a more proud wife :) I happen to think my husband is really really awesome and I get excited to celebrate things like this with him (hence the brownies I made last night with horrible chicken scratch icing as I tried to write on them to celebrate lol!) I will spare you from a pic of them, our lovely community group got to witness my lovely brownie writing handwriting ;) Anyway, so today Trevor has been serving in the USAF for 8 years and it feels like time flies by faster each day! I actually created this blog a couple years ago to share about what God is doing in our lives and what He is teaching us in this crazy life we've been called to (aka "Called To The Crazy!)

So we've been here in Biloxi, MS for over 5 months now! Sometimes it feels like we just got here and sometimes it feels like we've been here forever because of how much this really does feel like "home" now. They say "Home is where the Air Force sends you", but unfortunately most military families know that that doesn't exactly come automatically...we have to make each place our new home. So that's what we've been doing the last few months here! When we first got here we found Mosaic, our new church and we were absolutely thrilled about it, we fell in love with it immediately. We knew once we got settled, we wanted to plug in and get involved in the church and join a community group as quickly as possible because our small group in TX was truly our family while at Fort Hood and we were missing them deeply. We tried connecting with a couple groups and logistically it just didn't work for our schedule and family and we were so bummed. After a few weeks of searching for a group to join, we started to feel discouraged and weren't sure what to do, so we started praying. Praying that God would reveal to community that we were supposed to be a part of. Well, he did, but that community didn't exist yet. We very quickly realized that there was a huge need of community in our base house neighborhood, West Falcon. At first we were resistant, I won't lie. We had just moved and are expecting our first baby, and honestly, we could have given you a laundry list of why we didn't feel like it was good timing for us to start a community group in our neighborhood. But that's just it, what we felt like doing wasn't relevant because we knew that God was calling us to do this and we needed to trust Him and jump on board! So we met with another couple, Mike & Jessi Farmer who had also been wanting to start a group in West Falcon, met with our community pastor, and in a few weeks, we were ready to tackle this task. Fast forward about 2 months, Trevor is now co-leading our group with Mike and we have about 8-10 couples who attend on a regular basis who all live in base housing. It is really a beautiful thing! We are big believers that God calls us to live among others, but we had never had the chance to experience living that out with our neighbors. It's amazing when you can literally walk from house to house to go see each other because we all live so close. Not only do we all live near one another, but we all have the common bond of being military families, which is huge. The last 2 months have been such a blessing and when I look back and think about the fact that we didn't FEEL like doing this, I think about all of the relationships and blessings we would have missed out on. I am a firm believer that God equips us for anything he puts on our heart and calls us to do, that's what leading is, to trust that God will direct you in every situation. I love how our church describes community groups and leading them, they always say that they are not looking for "qualified" people to lead groups, because that' doesn't exist. We are certainly not "qualified" to be doing this. Instead, it's people who are willing to step out and trust that God is going to build that community in their area, and that's what have done. We got to the point where even though starting a new group wasn't the "comfortable" or "easiest" thing to do at the time, it was what God was calling us to do, and He has blessed it greatly!

Last week for Easter our group put on a free Easter Egg hunt in our neighborhood for families. It was a great turnout and over 150 people came out, got to know their neighbors, and were invited to Mosaic's Easter Services. I never would have imagined that we would have that kind of turnout, the power of prayer is amazing!

Baby update time! I know a few of you were wondering when I'd give an update on our little man :) Landon Scott will be here soooo soon! I'm 32 weeks this week, which means we get to meet him in the next 8 weeks or so (hopefully he won't be too late, but if he is, it's okay!). We are so so excited to meet him! We were able to do a 3D/4D ultrasound last weekend and it melted my heart to see Landon, he is absolutely PRECIOUS and it made us even more excited to meet him! I'm so thankful God has given me such a healthy pregnancy with very little complications to this point, babies really are such miracles!

We have also been blessed with two baby showers for our little guy, one here in MS with my bible study girls and one in Texas with friends/family. What a blessing they were to us! It's such an incredible feeling to know that we have people who love and support us growing our family.

Beautiful bible study girls in our neighborhood <3

My trip to Texas with Kim was absolutely amazing! It was wayyy too short but it was so good for my heart to see everyone again, we miss our Texas family dearly. The shower was also incredible! Those girls know me sooo well and they made every little detail to fit Landon's antique world traveler nursery theme, it was breathtaking! I can't wait to post pics of everything in it's new home in his nursery, that will be my next blog post ;)

Antique map with pins of where we've lived & traveled as a USAF family :) 

These two girls were the minds behind the shower & it was everything I imagined and MORE! <3 you both so much!

Some of our Fort Hood girls, it was so so good to spend time
with them again. This was our FAMILY when we were at Fort Hood! <3