Hello there, due date!

It's a bit after 7am on January 25 as I start to write this post -- we made it to our due date!! So I'm sorry, Anna and Rachel, but it looks like your guesses in our baby pool that Eggi would arrive early ended up not being correct... And I was so hoping you'd be right!

But in some ways, it's a good thing that I haven't gone into labor yet. We got to do a lot of things this past weekend that we would have been sad to miss...

On Saturday, we got to spend time with Jason and Damara! It's been ages since we hung out with the two of them... Jason, of course, was one of David's college roommates, and was best man at our wedding (and the one responsible for the public airing of our "Keddiebear" nickname). And his girlfriend Damara was also a part of that close-knit group of college friends. They used to both be in the New Brunswick area, which is a short drive away, so we'd hang out with them to watch "Lost" and just spend time together. But now, Damara's doing med school rotations down in Philly, and Jason's up in NYC pursuing his dream of being a starving artist, so it's harder for us all to get together. So when they offered to come out here for an afternoon, we jumped at the chance to see them! It was such a fun afternoon/evening of just shooting the breeze with old friends, making dinner together, and finishing off the evening with an impromptu ice cream sundae bar. :) Thanks for coming out to visit us, guys!

Then yesterday morning, we attended the baptism of the daughter of some dear friends of ours. Jukka and Laura are in our Tuesday night small group, and they had their second baby on December 18 -- and she's such a cute little thing! According to Finnish tradition, the parents won't reveal the name of the baby until her baptism -- so we'd been waiting over a month to know what her name was! We would have gone to her baptism anyways, but finding out the name was a nice additional incentive for us. :) Aliina Liliana's baptism was a sweet time of dedicating this little one to the Lord, and standing by her family as they committed to placing His Word in her hands and her heart.

After the baptism and a quick lunch, David and I headed over to the PEF office to finish working on the booklet for the PEF/Manna winter retreat this week. This is a project that always takes longer than we think it will... I stayed behind in the office to figure out formatting issues and printer settings while David went off to the first Perspectives class for the rest of the afternoon. (Perspectives is a 15-week course on missions, which is being co-sponsored by PEF and spearheaded by our friends Erik and Andréa; from what I've heard, the first class was excellent!) Printing out and stapling 125 copies of the retreat booklet ended up taking almost 6 hours all told... At least I had L. M. Montgomery to keep me company! (That's right -- at least once a year, I turn back to my childhood "comfort food" books and reread the "Anne of Green Gables" series...)

And now, David's off getting together the pre-retreat breakfast -- it's something like 9 dozen bagels, 3 dozen donuts, 6 gallons of juice, 50 bananas, 3 boxes of clementines, 32 oz. cream cheese, and 1 pound of butter. Gotta love buying in bulk for these events... I'll be heading out in a few minutes to pick him up and see off the students and staff. It's the first winter retreat David isn't going on since 2002 -- we're definitely disappointed to be missing out on it. (And I'll feel a little guilty if Eggi is late and doesn't come until after everyone gets back...)

But we're looking forward to this week of being home together! I'm still working, so as to save up my maternity leave for after the baby's birth, but I'm working from home from here on out -- so I've met my goal of not having my water break in the office! And it'll be nice to put the finishing touches on our nesting and really hunker down to prepare as much as we can for little Eggi, and the many changes he'll be ushering into our lives...

Hopefully he'll be here soon! We'll keep you all posted!