POW - Attendant Gifts

With five each of bridesmaids, groomsmen, flower girls and junior groomsmen, we had a rather large wedding party.  I wanted it large--I almost wished I could have asked more friends to be bridesmaids and more little girls to be flower girls, since there are so many people I love dearly!  But John thought it was best if we kept it at five each, and he is wise.  The front of the church is only so large.  :-)

One thing I didn't realize was that a large wedding party would add to the expense of the wedding to an extent.  We needed a lot of bouquets and boutonnieres!  We also needed to have gifts for all our attendants, and I wanted to have something thoughtful and nice to give to each one without spending an exorbitant amount. 

It seemed like a practical thing to give my bridesmaids jewelry for the wedding.  One day I complimented one of my students on her necklace and she told me that she'd made it!  I learned that our art teacher held weekly jewelry club meetings after school, and after speaking with her personally, I got myself invited.  :-)  She was excited to help me come up with gifts for my friends, and after chatting and looking at some pictures online, she went home and made a prototype necklace.  The next time we met, we adjusted the design a bit, and she taught me how to make them myself.

Using Swarovski crystals, silk cord and mostly sterling silver elements, I was able to make jewelry from nice materials for less than they would have cost to buy.  I made them matching earrings as well, Mom stitched up some jewelry bags out of leftover dotted swiss, and I felt happy about the personal touch involved.

There were a few afternoons after school when John helped me with my jewelry-making.  Once we got on a roll, I decided to make our mothers little bracelets to match their dresses, and to go along with the pashmina wraps we also purchased them.

I was really excited about our gifts for the little girls, and owe everything to my Mom.  She made them all doll dresses to match their dresses!  We found pretty little suitcase-boxes at the Christmas Tree Shop on sale and the dresses looked darling inside.

Little boys were harder for me (I think boys are always harder to buy presents for!).  Theknot.com had some good ideas in their online shop, but I think it's hard to judge quality online.  John and I visited G. Williker's in Saratoga with our junior groomsmen in mind and found some wooden pop-guns that we liked.  There were only one or two in the store, though, so John went home and ordered five online.  You can imagine our distress last October when we found the carton of pop guns in a closet in John's parents' house!  Somehow they got overlooked on the day of the rehearsal and got handed out three months late!

With our wedding date fast-approaching, I started to be a bit concerned that John still had nothing for his groomsmen or our dads.  I shouldn't have worried.  We went to the mall together, and within an hour, our shopping was done!  John's a good shopper.  And God blessed our efforts!  We bought father/son and father/daughter Willow Tree figurines for our dads, and John found exactly five small digital picture frames for his friends.  He took them home and loaded them up with pictures of him with each of them.  A nice blend of the techie with the homemade, eh?

POW - The Band

We're now past our anniversary, but there are just a few more wedding planning posts that I want to share.  :-)  Today's is the story of our band, because it's kind of a neat story.

Sometime early in 2009, we started discussing music for the reception.  Mom offered, "Wouldn't it be neat if Mr. Kirby's band played for you?"  The Kirbys have been family friends for years, after Pamela Kirby and I hit it off in high school.  Mr. Kirby plays the mandolin, banjo, and probably other instruments, and was in some sort of group, I think, at the time. 

We investigated.  :-)  Mrs. Kirby invited us to their house, casually, one afternoon in March when they were hosting a jam session.  John was in town, which worked out great, and we brought some bread for their buffet and sat and enjoyed the music.  But when Mom called back later to formally request them, we were disappointed.  Apparently there was a big bluegrass festival on July 25 which they were all planning to attend.  Back to the drawing board.

Next, I took a leap and e-mailed the Lindsey Family, after hearing that they were to be touring in NY and thereabouts in June and July.  Having been charmed by their sweet performance of Christian, bluegrass music in South Glens Falls in June 2007, Mom and I both knew that if they played for our wedding, it would be very special.  Mom thought it was a long shot, but I e-mailed them with our request and details about our wedding, and Mrs. Lindsey sent me a very kind reply!  Unfortunately, they would be returning home before our wedding, but if the timing had been different, I do think they would have come. 

It was back to square 1, again.  I remember discussing our music situation with some of the teachers in the break room at lunch, and one suggested the jazz ensemble a fellow teacher played in.  I looked them up online and learned that said ensemble would be playing in town in Saratoga very soon, so I called up my bridesmaid, Dawn to go with me to check them out.  

That was an, ah, interesting evening.  :-)  Apparently, there is a night life in Saratoga which I never knew existed, and as we parked and walked to hear our group on that spring night, we passed lots of restaurants and bars with their own live music.  Our destination proved, indeed, to be a bar, so we ordered a couple of ginger-ales, found some seats, and tried not to be too conspicuous.  At one point, Dawn started chatting with the guy next to her, and must have said something about us checking out the group for a wedding, because he then beckoned toward both of us and asked, "You guys' wedding?"  awkward! 

The music itself was good, but I realized that I'm just not into jazz enough to listen to it for several hours on my wedding day.  Thankfully, John seemed fine with all this.  Yet, once again, we had made no progress.  From the outset, I wasn't interested in a DJ myself; if you know me well, you know that I'm not a big fan of popular music.  But now someone else suggested that we could make up some mix CD's, borrow equipment, and have ask a friend to be in charge of playing them.  We were both OK with this idea, and it certainly seemed like the best one going at the time!  I wasn't stuck on bluegrass, despite our first two band attempts, and started making a list of orchestral hymns and some of my favorite songs performed by Andrea Bocelli.  John picked out the song we planned to dance to--Steve Green's "Holding Hands."  I still can hardly listen to that song without crying. 

We got back from our brother and sister-in-law's wedding at the end of June to exciting news.  Apparently, Mr. Kirby was jamming with a few other musical friends and realized that they sounded really good.  The Kirbys gave Mom a call, asking if we still needed somebody!  They set up another jam session and once again invited us over.  And we loved them!  They let us choose some of our favorites, like "You are my sunshine" and some of the old gospel hymns, and even invited us to prepare a song or two to sing with them.  Then, the fiddle player asked us if we wanted some square dancing, because she could call! 

 Singing "Are you washed in the blood?"  and "I'll fly away" with the band

And so, at the last minute, we ended up with an awesome band for our reception.  In fact, it turned out far better than I had imagined.  On the one hand, we didn't get to dance to "Holding Hands," because of a miscommunication and our inability to hook up John's ipod to their sound system.  Instead, they spontaneously played a lovely waltz, and, since John's such a good dancer, it didn't matter that it was entirely new music to us.  :-)  I couldn't have predicted how wonderfully the children would take to the music, or how the group would spontaneously play "She'll be coming round the mountain," with a cluster of little girls singing the refrain in the microphone.  And even though I knew that they planned a few square dances, when I looked down from the second-story window where we were changing into our going away clothes, I was overwhelmed.  Here was a blend of relatives and friends--most had never met each other--all come together because of us, and all evidently enjoying themselves very much.  My bridesmaids sailed down the row of dancers, empire dresses flowing, and I felt that it had all been worth it, thanks to our planning or in spite of our planning, with God's blessing.

Our Paper Anniversary

anniversary present from John!!  Ha.  :-)

It's hard to believe that a whole year has gone by. 

One Year Ago

This day one year ago (Friday, July 24),

was a day of preparing,

 and practicing, 

moments,

and matching, 

friendship, 

and feasting.

And it was the last night of our lives when saying "goodnight" meant saying "goodbye." :-)

21 Weeks

21 weeks

We're now more than half-way toward our little girl's due date!  Thankfully, I've been feeling much better than I felt in the first 14 or so weeks.   I don't feel as big as this picture makes me look, either. 

In the past couple of weeks, I started for sure feeling her move, too!  She likes to be active when I lie down or sit still.  It's even gotten to the point where John can put his hand on my belly and feel her moving from the outside.  Sometimes I can see a little foot or arm making a mound, too, but not always.  :-)

It's been quiet around here because we just had a wonderful visit from my mom and dad.  These are surely days to treasure. 

POW - The Cake

Mom found a neat series of shorts from Martha Stewart's TV show, all on weddings, at our local library.  They were lots of fun to watch!  Our favorite sections were the sections devoted to flowers and cakes. 

The cake episode opened with the camera panning the cake in the above picture, with soft music playing in the background and Martha's voice saying something like, "Why must a bride have only one towering wedding cake?  Why not a whole tree?"  Well, I was sold.  I wasn't set on having a cake tree, but I thought it was pretty neat.

It helped when we found a picture of the same cake in one of Martha's wedding books (whence the above picture comes!).  Mom and I started looking for plant stands like the one in the picture everywhere we could think of--from garden centers to Pier 1.  Nothing seemed even remotely similar. 

Then, Mom brought the videos over to my Uncle Bill, who agreed to make one for us!  And it really came out exactly like.  I was thrilled, and painted it with two coats of a similar pale green sometime in April.  Now for the cakes.  And the flowers.

My mom actually has made several beautiful wedding cakes, but a wedding cake is such a long and intense project (at least for us) that we realized it would be better if we commissioned someone else to do it.  So, we met up with Robin, a lady from my grandmother's church, who has made cakes for years and can do just about anything.  We showed her with a picture and settled on 10 10" rounds, all in different designs of her choosing.  She let us taste some delightful Swiss meringue icing which she said would hold up well in the heat.  It's made with loads of butter (no shortening).  She also makes all her cakes from scratch.  I asked for some chocolate cakes, with almond-flavored icing in the middle, and some white cakes with lemon curd.  John wasn't around, but he loves both chocolate and lemon, so I figured we couldn't go wrong.  :-)

Only the flowers remained, and we had some difficulty in figuring out how to arrange the flowers so that each bed was sufficiently stable to hold up a 10" cake.  We asked around a lot, and finally found a friendly florist in Price Chopper who was willing to sell us the little plastic oasis trays they use there.  Oasis was pretty hard to find, too, but we ended up buying a big block of it from a garden shop in downtown Saratoga. 

On the day before the wedding, two of my aunts helped Mom with arranging the flowers themselves.  Aunt Andrea brought hydrangeas from her garden, and they picked wild sweet peas from our property.  They filled in with some kind of fern and draped the whole tree with vines.  The result was perhaps a bit wilder than Martha Stewart's cake tree, but it was cool.

 And that one bite of lemon-filled cake which John and I each got on our wedding day was delightful.  :-)

On Reading Jane Austen as an Adult

Senior Year of College

Anyone who knows me well probably knows what a Jane Austen fan I am.  :-)  It all started in eighth grade when Pride and Prejudice was one of my reading books.  While I thoroughly enjoyed it, it wasn't until a year or two later when I saw the 1996 BBC movie version (the really long one!) that I started becoming obsessed.   Mom wasn't into Austen herself; she'd chosen the book from a recommended list or something, so I thought I was basically alone in my reveries.  

Then I got to college, where Mr. Darcy was the most popular man on the hall during intervisitation.  It was thrilling to meet so many girls who shared my excitement, and through the discovery of the Republic of Pemberley website, I found hours of distraction from homework awaiting me.  At some point, I found a lot of Pride and Prejudice graphics, etc. on the internet and completely Austen-ized my laptop with P&P wallpapers, screensavers, icons, pointers, and sounds.  (I set "Other way Mr. Collins!" as my error beep, and it eventually drove me nutty when I was struggling with a Mathematica assignment!)  I read more of her novels over the summers and borrowed DVD adaptations from our campus library for Friday nights.  I tried to trim my straw hat to make it like a Regency-era bonnet, and started sewing a dress and apron in Regency style.  And, of course, I longed more than ever to be married to a dashing young man.

Through all of this, Mom helped me with my sewing projects and bought me some of the movies for Christmas.  But she also included some wise warnings.  "Life isn't really like that, you know."  While most of me bucked back, I know, I know!  Otherwise, I wouldn't be in college right now.  I'd be married!  And my future husband doesn't have to own a huge estate in England; he just has to be godly!, part of me saw deeper into what she was saying.  I looked back on my freshman year and realized that some of my "Darcy-mania" had been sinful idolatry.  Even at the time, I realized that I spent way too much time thinking about Jane Austen every day. 

As life changed, my fervor subsided.  Now, I believe, I understand Mom's concerns more than I did before.  How realistic is it for a young woman to get even one unanticipated marriage proposal?  Yet for Jane Austen's characters, it is something of a regular occurrence.  Of course, every single book is a romance which ends with a wedding, and in real life, the wedding is just the beginning!  Real young women today can't (and shouldn't!) spend all their time drawing, playing the piano, walking across the countryside and and going on journeys.  They have a lot to prepare for in their lives ahead!  

Mom was also one of the few people I know who openly didn't like Elizabeth Bennett.  She thought that Elizabeth was pert where she should have been respectful.  It's interesting to note how many of Austen's heroines have very weak, silly parents, where they have parents in the picture at all.  Elizabeth, Emma, Elinor Dashwood, and Anne Elliot, at least, are all portrayed as much more sensible than the parents they have and much more aware of what is good for themselves. 

Granted, none of the novels are truly bad.  In very general terms, every book's rogue comes to personal misery in time and marriage is exalted.  The heroines themselves often learn character-lessons by their own mistakes.  Compared with the popular literature being written today, Jane Austen is probably quite harmless.  Still, for an obsessed reader like me, there was the very real danger of being influenced by my heroine friends.  In a girls' group discussion about books at our church's recent youth retreat, the mom who was leading warned her listeners not to let themselves lie on their pillows at night and fantasize about heroes from any book, Austen included. 

And so, I remain a fan, but mostly a fan who still prefers the Regency style of dress and decorating above most others.  I have much bigger things to occupy my mind now.  :-) I know from experience that real romance is better than what one reads about.  And, in a way, it's a relief to be on the post-wedding side of the story--the side that Jane Austen herself never saw.

POW - The Bride's Accessories

That title sounds rather awkward, but nothing better was coming to me a moment ago, so there it stands.  I wanted to share how we procured my veil, jewelry, etc. 

Jewelry was simple!  I've known since I was five years old that I would wear the strand of five pearls given to me by Aunt Melanie.  It came out of Mom and Dad's lock box once for my high school yearbook pictures and once for my wedding day . . . and, to be honest, Mom opened the lock box a few extra times during my growing up years to peek at it.  :-)  I wore simple pearl earrings which I already had.  John had taken one of them to the jeweler to be fixed, along with our wedding bands to be engraved and my engagement ring to be cleaned sometime during the week before the wedding.  I got my engagement ring back at the wedding rehearsal, but didn't manage to get the earring until the day of the wedding . . . at the church . . . after this picture was taken!  (Thank you, Marissa, for saving the day on that one!)  What a hectic morning it was. 

I was thoroughly shocked by how expensive veils were at the boutiques where we tried on gowns.  Even a very simple one was over $100!  There was a consignment shop near the church (now closed) where I tried on a short, ivory veil for much less (maybe $15-$30; it's been a long time since then!), but I'd always envisioned wearing a long veil, longer, even than the dress itself!  When the sales-lady understood why I was vacillating, she exclaimed, "Don't any of you sew?"  Of course! 

Mom and I each brought 40% off coupons to Joann's fabric and purchased a pattern, comb, ivory-colored tulle, and some narrow ribbon for the edge.  The neat part of the story is that I used money which my Grandma Smith had given me as a graduation gift to buy these things, so, in a way, Grandma really gave me my veil.  :-)  My sweet, humble mother proclaimed how honored she felt to make it herself, and she did a beautiful job.  She even sewed a ribbon covering over the comb by hand.  When all was finished, I had the very long, ribbon-edged, ivory veil with a built-in second tier which I'd dreamed of.  I'm a traditionalist and definitely wanted to walk down the aisle with it over my face.

Besides the veil, I wished to wear fresh roses in my hair, so our florist wired the stems of several ivory spray roses and actually delivered them to the hairdresser on the morning of the wedding.

Shoes.  I was planning on wearing satin ballet flats, hands down.  They would be comfortable, practical, and in keeping with the time period of my dress.  I bought a pair of butter-colored flats at Marshalls in January or February.  I wasn't thrilled about the little bow on them and they were a bit tight, but they were a good deal! 

Then, in about April, we discovered Treasures, a consignment shop which had just opened in Saratoga.  At the time, they had a whole stock of brand new formal shoes.  Apparently, a shoe shop which had gone out of business had donated its inventory.  And I found these:

Quite possibly the prettiest shoes I had ever seen!  The box said the original price was something like $90, but by the time I found them, they had been marked all the way down to the lowest consignment level and were under $15, for sure.  As a bonus, the heel made me just tall enough not to need my dress hemmed.  Another money saver there.  And, thanks to being attached to John's arm just about all day, I didn't even trip.  :-D  Yet another little detail gifted from God.

19 Weeks

19 weeks

And counting!  It's going by so fast now!

 

 16 weeks

POW - Dressing the Men

I was pretty sure I didn't want the groomsmen and young boys in our wedding party to wear the same purple as the bridesmaids.  I was thinking of something more neutral, but wasn't sure what . . .

Then, one day sometime after Easter when Mom and I were in J.C.Penney, we found quite a stock of gold-colored ties for young boys.  They were heavily discounted; maybe $2 a piece?  I was really excited that there were enough to go around in a color that could work!  We would have liked to have bought all zip-ties, since they're so easy to use.  There were only three left, however, so we bought three zips, one regular tie for our older young groomsman, and one clip-on.  I knew from Sunday School class that our little ring bearer could handle a clip-on.  :-) 

We asked the little boys all to wear dark suits and white shirts.  They did even better than that and all wore black suits and looked stunning.  :-)  When John and I went to pick out tuxes for him and his men, we brought one of the little boys' ties and were excited to find a perfect color match!  Hence, gold became our wedding's other color.  It ended up working really well, because the dress my mom had fallen in love with was gold, and John's Mom was planning to wear the same plum as the bridesmaids. 

Memories

by a lion at Bryan on Saturday

A wedding of friends on Saturday took us back to Dayton, TN, and since we had left freakishly early (3 a.m.), we got in with plenty of time to eat a leisurely breakfast at Cracker Barrel and stroll the campus of Bryan College, for old time's sake.  

The Southeastern Family Conference, hosted by our church down here and held at Bryan College in TN was the highlight of our summer, maybe even year, for years while I was growing up.  There were just a few families from our church in NY who usually traveled all the way to TN each year; mine was one of them and John's was one of them.  At the time, he and I meant nothing to each other (at least as far as John's knew ;-) ), but now we have many common memories to share and love. 

I remember my Dad remarking on how he'd never spent so much money on a vacation before.  Many average-looking dads similarly stood in line at registration every year and wrote out checks for several hundred dollars, to stay in college dorms and share common bathrooms and listen to three preaching sessions a day for an entire week.  In a sleepy little town in Tennessee in the middle of the hot summer.  Someone who'd never been could easily have called us crazy.

But, for a dad who spent every long week day among non-Christians, worshiping among 600 like-minded Christians every day for a whole week was like a little taste of heaven.  It was true for me, also, as a home-schooled girl without very many friends and later as a public school student.  Our church in NY is small by most people's standards, and even just singing with that many people was an experience.  

Then, one year, we had to miss the conference because it conflicted with my sister's final exams.  After that, money was a bit tighter since Mom and Dad were helping me to pay for college.  It turns out that many other families must have had stories like ours, because in the next couple of years, the attendance dwindled, and eventually the conferences were stopped, as you may already know.

The family conference always used to be during the first week in July, so it was especially neat that the wedding brought us back right during what used to be conference time.  Neater still, it was at the conference thirteen years ago (July 2, 1997) when I was finally humbled to the point of desperation.  After years of asking God for salvation, I didn't know if I was already saved or not--all I knew was that I needed to trust Christ now.  I remember going to sleep that night with a sigh of peace, and He has always been faithful to me since.  

Thirteen years ago.  That means that I've now been a Christian for half my life.  It's a sobering thought; my knee-jerk reaction is to ask what do I have to show for myself?  I know that it's not me, but hopefully the Spirit working within me, but can I trace His on-going sanctifying work, or am I stuck in a rut?  Am I as mature as a spiritual 13 year old?

POW - Food

From the start, we had decided to have a hot, catered dinner served at our wedding reception.  We decided to save a little money, however, by not having the hors d'oeuvre catered.  In fact, instead of a cocktail hour, we really had a cookies-and-punch hour.  During my college years, I'd heard that it was a tradition in Western Pennsylvania to serve cookies before the main food at a wedding, and I thought that following this tradition would be a sweet way of acknowledging the influence those four years had on my life.  The "mounds of cookies" I envisioned were brought to life by many women of our church who graciously baked for us.

We interviewed two different caterers for the rest of the meal.  Both were reported to have excellent food and relatively lower prices.  After comparing estimates and interviews, we chose Marcella's without hesitation!  We liked the very detailed estimate sheet they gave us, with tips and tax included, and we liked that they charged per tray of food instead of per person.  The other caterer quoted us a price per person, and it seemed like a made-up number.  Plus, we loved working with Patrie, the (owner?  manager?) of Marcella's.  She seemed to know exactly what we had in mind, had lots of helpful ideas, and wasn't pushy.

A few months later, however, Marcella's contacted us to let us know that two of their staff had left and they wouldn't be able to provide servers for our wedding.  Thankfully, the second caterers were willing to serve for us even though they weren't cooking.

We still had to figure out beverages.  The second caterers' estimate had included a few dollars extra per person for beverages and we thought we could get a far better deal just rounding up beverages ourselves.  We decided to keep things simple and just offer water or sprite with dinner, plus have a coffee station for those interested.  Mom went to BJ's and picked up a big bag of coffee and plenty of half and half and sugar.  In the few days before the wedding, I was still visiting all the local grocery stores and buying out their store-brand lemon-lime soda!  I have to admit that I was a bit frustrated when we arrived at the reception and all the glasses were filled with water.  I'd wanted the servers to circulate and offer people a choice, and there were many bottles of store-brand lemon-lime soda left over for our own enjoyment.  The time I could have saved . . .

Anyway.  We also wanted to offer a toast, and my parents pointed out the wisdom of having a non-alcoholic toast.  It was a few weeks before the wedding when Mom was calling the local stores to inquire about sparkling grape juice and cider.  Most had a very limited number in stock and seemed to charge a minimum of $3 a bottle for store-brand, and more for national brands.  One afternoon I checked out Ocean State Job Lot and almost fell on my knees in the store with gratitude.  They had a couple of cases of Welch's sparkling white grape juice for $1.50 a bottle!  A nice brand, enough for everyone to have the same, and even a pretty champagne color at the best price ever!  I praise God for helping us even in the little details.

For those interested, I did eat at my own wedding.  :-)  I knew I'd be hungry later and really wanted to try all the scrumptious dishes we'd picked out--chicken marsala, tortellini with broccoli and garlic, roast beef, roasted potatoes, and Marcella's awesome eggplant parmesan.  MMM.  :-D

Trying to Be Neighborly

So, after being discouraged yesterday, I rested in the afternoon and headed out around five to do our grocery shopping for the week.  I had two pieces of chicken marinating in the fridge for dinner.  I pulled into the carport at a few minutes before seven, and who do I find walking up to our house, but our neighbor (the second one)!  And she was carrying these gorgeous flowers and a wine bag! 

It wasn't so much drop-in-company as Gretchen-dropped-the-ball-company, because when I spoke to her last Saturday, I had originally asked if she could come on Thursday at seven.  I thought that she was waiting to hear back from me about whether the first neighbor lady could come.  I should have called her back to check in, but just assumed we were off . . . and she assumed we were on. 

"Sweety, Alice is here!"  Thankfully, my husband is very good at taking things in stride and rose to the occasion, sipping wine and chatting with her while I quickly put together dinner and prayed a lot.  I was so thankful that I'd skipped my last stop and just come home, right on time!  I was so thankful that I had just bought a huge piece of salmon on a whim, and more red potatoes than I'd planned on, and stocked up on broccoli.  That's what we had.  And I was incredibly thankful when the salmon came out perfectly, even though it was my first time cooking it on the grill. 

Partly, the flowers and wine made me feel a bit intimidated.  While it might have been the humble thing to do to admit my fault in forgetting about her, I didn't want to ruin any rapport we were starting to build by admitting to so great a fault!  And even though Christians can get together and have macaroni and cheese and apple slices and be perfectly happy, I felt that she had a right to expect a really nice dinner, especially since she brought us really nice gifts. 

It went well, in that the food tasted good, she stayed a good while, and went back home before the conversation started dying.  But spiritually, I don't know.  I wasn't prepared and wasn't praying enough about it before-hand.  We talked a little about the churches we grew up in, but I still feel at a loss to say the right thing at the right moment to get her thinking.  She is powerless against our prayers . . .

She's a GIRL!!

I told John that I could hardly sleep last night, because I felt like I was waiting for Christmas morning!  Then, this morning, it felt like family conference days again - when you're really too tired to get up, but there's so much to look forward to during the day.  We had our "big" ultrasound today and we're very thankful that everything looked good!

Our sonogram tech was wonderful.  It's hard to believe that it's real!

In other news, our attempts to have our neighbors over have been discouraging so far.  Each of the occupied houses nearest us are homes to single ladies, and we've chatted with both on occasion.  The goal was to invite them over together, so we called them both on Saturday night.  We left a message for the first, but the second sounded enthusiastic and said to let her know when the first lady could come for sure.  We met with neighbor #1 on Monday when we were putting out our garbage, and she thanked us but made excuses ("so busy with work" etc.).  I think she just really doesn't want to come over.  So we haven't called the other lady back yet.  Last night at prayer meeting, the man leading the devotional read a quote about how people may reject us and our message, but they are powerless against our prayers.  I need to pray more, definitely . . . and maybe try the second lady again.

p.s. We haven't decided on names yet, but have decided to keep our little girl's name a surprise until birth!