Exciting News from Grand Rapids!!!

As many of you know, we visited Jess and Andy in Virginia back in February.  The idea was to be able to celebrate our birthdays together, since Keith's, Jessica's, and my birthdays are all within four weeks of each other.  It had been years since we had been together, so we made a trip out to Virginia.

We arrived on Thursday evening, which allowed us to settle ino our guest apartment on the opposite side of the building as Jess and Andy's apartment but on the same floor.  Very nice to be able to just walk to their place and vice versa.   As you can see, it is a very comfortable place, much larger than a hotel room, stocked with linens as well as dishes and cookware, etc.

Thursday, I was not feeling well, so Keith and Jess went to see the Haulocaust museum.  It was a planned thing for us all to do, but I told them to go ahead and go.  That evening, we went to their place and Andy's brother's family, Ben, Candice and two children joined us.  They brought over a birthday cookie to share.  At this time, Jess states that she's going to give us our birthday presents, which were unexpected, as we had already discussed birthday gifts.  Since we opened our gifts, we have had to wait until now to share our news with you all.  This is a picture of our birthday gifts:

Of course, we were so very excited to share our news, but we couldn't share, as Jess hand' been to her doctor appointment yet.  They wanted to wait until the 12-week appointment and hear the heartbeat.  So we pretty much kept it under wraps until now!  Yes, we are very excited to become grandparents.  It is definitely a new era to our life journey.  God is so good!  We are praying for an uneventful pregnancy and safe delivery for our little expected bundle of joy!

On a side note:  This is the weekend in which I had caught some sort of Norovirus and ended up with Andy driving us to the ER to get some fluids on Saturday, as I had quickly become dehydrated.  So, the first people we ended up telling about our grand baby were the people in the ER!  This also meant that I wasn't able to even see Jess and Andy or be near them for the rest of the weekend.  I was so grateful that I was feeling so much better by the time we had to fly home on Monday.  For awhile, I was beginning to wonder how I would ever make the trip home.  It all worked out.  It's certainly a trip that I wouldn't want to repeat!