It's Been a While...

It's been quite some time since I've had time to write up a blog post. As my sister-in-law, Anna, so aptly puts it: "The activity of a blog is never proportional to the activity in the lives of those who write it; if anything, it is inversely proportional. A quiet blog is quite as likely the symptom of a life too full for writing as of a life with nothing to say."
That sums it up perfectly for us! These last several months have been filled with joy and sorrow, but always with an ever present reminder of God's grace and goodness towards us. Below are some updates from May-June.

The end of May John's paternal grandmother passed away suddenly and unexpectedly. In God's providence, us, the other Pedersens, and the Wades (John's sister and family) were all at the other Pedersen's house that Sunday when we got the phone call from John's aunt about his grandma. We made plans that evening and the next day about what to do for specific family members' travel.
John's parent's flew up to Ft. Collins, CO the next morning to begin funeral preparations with Karen (John's Aunt). The rest of us left Houston that Thursday to make it to Colorado by Friday late afternoon/early evening. We had John's four siblings along with us for the trip up.

We made it to Clayton, NM the first day. The next day we left about 8am to continue our journey. After about an hour, our van's transmission went out on us. We waited for about an hour for a tow truck to take us to the nearest town (Raton, NM), so we could get a rental car to finish our trek to Ft. Collins. Thankfully the tow truck driver let us keep our van in his shop yard while we were gone. This was our second vehicle in one week to have a transmission out. John's truck's transmission went out that Tuesday.

 

Waiting...

 

James playing with some rocks while we wait for the tow truck.

 

We acquired a rental car, but the largest one they had sat 5 people, and we had 7 - including a car seat for James. Needless to say it was a very cramped trip. We met the Wades north of Colorado Springs to give them two passengers so that the drive was less crowded. Now with both cars maxed out, we were on the road yet again to make it to Ft. Collins.

 

The people in the front

 

The sardines in the back

 

We arrived at John's Grandma's house about 7pm. We ate dinner, brought luggage in, and mingled with old and new faces for the evening.

The graveside and memorial services were the next day (Saturday).  The graveside service was not without tears as we mourned our loss of Grandma Pedersen.  For myself, that's when it hit me that she was really gone.   After the graveside service, we made our way to the church for the memorial service.

 

Grandma Pedersen's grave site

With return travel arrangements made, we three left Sunday morning. We rented a moving truck with a trailer to tow our van back home. In Pueblo, we dropped off the rental car, and made it to Raton, NM to pick up our van. We pushed to make it to Dumas, TX for the night. We made it home late the next night. Praise the Lord we didn't have anything go wrong on the way home! It was so nice to be home, but we wouldn't have missed going to Colorado.

Shortly after we arrived home, we had both our vehichles towed to have both transmissions fixed. It was a very sad event to see BOTH our cars on a tow truck and being driven away! We were so grateful when we had them back a week later!

 

A sad sight to see...

 

On June 4, John and I celebrated our second wedding anniversary! To celebrate, on our actual date, I made a nice dinner - Lasagna Rolls, salad, and rosemary bread. Lasagna rolls is the meal I first made for John after we were married, and each year I make it. :)  That weekend, we stayed in a nice hotel down town, went to a nice restaurant for dinner, and walked around the city. It was an enjoyable and relaxing weekend! Below are some pictures.

 

The front of The Lancaster Hotel

 

Our room

Sitting area

 

James looking down at Buffalo Bayou from a bridge.

In mid-June, we had our 18 week ultrasound to check on baby #2, and to find out if it's a boy or a girl - It's a BOY! We eagerly look forward to meeting Ezra Michael Pedersen come November!
One interesting tidbit: When Ezra is born, John's parents will have 5 grandsons 4 and under! Still no girls yet. :-)

The end of June, we traveled to San Antonio to go to a builders show. This one was much smaller than the one we went to in January, but the learning sessions John went to were really good, and James and I walked around the show floor and played while John was attending the classes. The one night we spent in town, we spent at family's house who is a part of the A Candle in The Window Hospitality Network. They were such a sweet family, served us dinner, and we had a great time just visiting with them. Sadly, we forgot to take a picture of them before we left.
While we were in San Antonio, we stopped at the Tower of the Americas. The view at the top was amazing! And VERY windy!

James was quite amused by the windiness. :)

We have been making progress on our bathroom! I hope to get a separate post up about the updates some time after this one.

 

A Traveling We Will Go - Part 1

In mid-January, we took a trip along part of the West Coast.  We were gone from January 15th-29th.

Our trip went well.  James did very well despite being in his car seat for so long. John did all the driving, and I was back and forth from front to back either navigating for John, or keeping James amused. We had a small box of toys that he would go through throughout the day, and eventually I would just end up giving him the whole box loaded with the toys for "something new"! Keeping the box in the car even when we were in other places kept the toys fairly 'new' and exciting for the day(s) of driving.

James being cute :)


On our first day we stopped in San Antonio about 1pm to tour the Alamo.

 

In front of the Alamo.

 

 

This was a shrine on the property of the Alamo. We weren't able to tour the inside due to floor renovations. The architecture is pretty intricate!

 

 

The sprawling live oaks were around the property. They are huge!!

We left about 3:30pm to our reservation at South Llano State Park in Junction, TX (The LAST town of civilization before El Paso!) and arrived at our site at 5:30pm. We tried to quickly get camp (Tent, and camp stove to make dinner) set up despite it being really cold.  John had a realization of how cold it was when after I had washed dishes from dinner, he went to pick up our soup pot off of the park bench to put it away, and it was frozen to the bench! This was in a span of no more than 10 minutes.

 

James and I warming up and getting the tent ready so we can go to bed.

 

 

The next morning the camp ranger said the temperature dipped down to 14 degrees! John's contacts were even frozen in the solution in their case! Thankfully we had a heater and plenty of warm blankets, so we survived the cold. We have that out of our system, so we won't be camping in weather that cold anymore! We forgot to look at the weather before we left home...Next time we will remember to check!

 

 

Our camp. You would never know that it was 19*F when this was taken!

 

 

Our hose froze...After letting the water run, it finally spit all the ice chunks out. :) The piece on the bottom left was at the opening of the hose.

 Despite the freezing temperatures, the night sky was like nothing I have ever seen before! Such a clear slate blue night sky - And so many stars!! With no lights around us, we could see nearly every constellation in the sky! God's creation is so beautiful! Living in the suburbs, there are too many lights around us to see very many stars.

The next evening we arrived in Alamogordo, NM, to stay with a family from the A Candle in the Window Hospitality Network. (To learn more about the Candle in the Window Network, visit their website.) They were a very sweet family of eight. We actually stayed with a different family than we originally planned to stay with due to the first family coming down with a virus, so we stayed with some friends of theirs.

 

The sweet family (minus the husband who had to leave early for work) that we stayed with for an evening.

We arrived in Chandler, AZ. at 5:30pm on Thursday to stay with my Pepere (Grandpa) for a couple days. The first morning we stopped at the house I (Megan) used to live in. It was fun to reminisce and for John to be able to see some of my past!

 

My old bedroom is the front right window.

 

 

James enjoyed playing with Pepere's dog, Old Cyrus.

Later in the morning we went to a place called "Hole in the Rock" (Quite a fitting name for the place). It's a large rock formation with a large hole in it. At the top, we were able to see the whole city of Phoenix. It was quite a view!

 

Hole in the Rock before going up.

 

The city.

 

At the hole in the rock.

 

John, James, and my Pepere!

 

All of us.

 

John and James looking out from the top of the rock over the city of Phoenix.

 

Me and my Pepere!

 

My Uncle Nathan was able to visit with us the few days we were there.

This was taken the morning we left.

We left Saturday morning at 8am to drive to California to visit my friend Ali in San Clemente (south of LA) in the early afternoon, and then to San Diego in time for dinner with John's Grandpa.

 

Us with my friend Ali. We met at a beautiful park in San Clemente.

Camping - Fun, Fun, Fun!

The weekend of October 12th we went on a camping trip to Pedernales Falls State Park just West of Austin. It was an enjoyable weekend marveling at God's creation and fellowshipping with friends and family.
The days were warm, and we did have some heavy rain in the middle of the night Saturday,  but we stayed dry. Hooray for big plastic tarps!

James did great on the trip! He loved being outdoors, and he really liked the camp fires! Just like his Father! :-)

Packed and ready to load the van!

On the road! James passing the time. :-)

We brought his Johnny Jump-up (which he LOVES) ans it was a good thing we did! It served as an extra place to put him aside from being held.

At the overlook to the falls. It was really low this year so it was more of a cascade than a fall.

James really liked the backpack! 

Checking out the water.

The scenery was beautiful! Here is a cave with a large boulder stuck in it!

A stick holding up the rocks. ;-)

Enjoying the views!

James ended taking his morning nap. He gradually was getting hunched down in the carrier as we walked and climbed. He's just starting to wake up in this picture taken between the carrier and John's back.

A big boulder to climb!

James checking out a puddle.

I climbed through a small cave and climbed out the other end.

On our drive home, we saw a rainbow!

Look closely - It's there just above the cloud!