8 months and feeling great

A pregnancy update for all of you out there who are curious...

I had a check-up yesterday afternoon, and everything is going well (my blood pressure is on the low end of the healthy range, Uncle Pat). : ) My doctor prodded around my stomach to see if she could tell what position the baby is in - she's head down (that's a good thing!), feet in the rib cage. Seriously, I had no idea that this little one would be able to literally kick me in the ribs, but there are times when I just want to stand up and push her back down. I guess I do have it easier, though, since I am so tall - she's got lots of room to stretch out.

Kristy told me that some anonymous family members have been wondering how much weight I've gained, and although I hate to admit it, I guess for pregnancy it's not a bad thing: 22 pounds. So I'm right in the healthy range.

I asked my doctor again if it's O.K. that I'm still working at 32 weeks, and she said it's fine. So, again, I guess I'll keep doing it as long as I'm feeling good. I'm actually 33 1/2 weeks according to my doctor, but they measure by the date of my last period - I'm gaging it by the conception date. Only 6 weeks left to go! Keep us in your prayers. And no, we still don't have names. Sorry.

On another note, Tom's 14-year old sister Madeline left on Wednesday for the summer retreat program in Rhode Island sponsored by the Regnum Christi high school for girls, Immaculate Conception Academy. This summer program is a time for the girls to come experience the life of the school for a summer - and they have a great time doing it! Then, at the end of the summer, each girl can decide if she'd like to stay for the upcoming school year. It's a huge step in faith for Maddy, so I ask you to keep her in your prayers as well.

God bless you!

Ron Paul

Maybe you've been wondering why Republican candidates like Ron Paul never get more than three seconds on the alphabet channels.

Here's why.

One year down, 60 to go!

Well, today, the 22nd of July marks our one-year anniversary! We were at our Holy Hour this morning and were reflecting on what a year of blessings it has been for our little family. God is so incredibly faithful, and we look forward to a lifetime of discovering His goodness in our lives as we learn to love Him and each other more every single day.

Here is a slide show (thanks for the idea, Erin!) of a few pictures of our big day...one year ago becoming husband and wife. Thanks to our wonderful friend and photographer, Jewels Harrell. Be sure to visit her blog on our "friends' blogs" menu to see some more of her amazing photography!

We love you all, and are so grateful for the gift of all our family and friends.

Keep us in your prayers, especially as our family expands... only about 1 1/2 months left to go until we have a 3rd member of the Herring family!

Oh, and I wanted to let you all know that Tom got home safely from Japan on Friday afternoon! It is so nice to have him home again. He's having a hard time making his body clock get back on the right day, but at least he's HERE! Thanks for all your prayers for safe travels.

Living for a phone call

So, it's been 5 days without Tom here. This has been the longest 5 days of my life, I think. And I have to wait 2 more until I can see him again! I have a profound respect for all you military wives out there, saying goodbye to your husbands for months on end. I can't imagine...a week is driving me nuts!

But, as I was going about my "to do" list this afternoon, the phone rang from an "unavailable number." I'm always a little unsure about answering those calls - but this one had my husband's voice on the other end! I about cried. It completely made my day hearing from him, knowing that he's doing well over there. Since Japan is a day ahead of us here in WA, he got to say, "I'm leaving tomorrow to come home!" Even though it's still 2 days away for us, I'm liking the whole "tomorrow" thing. Who cares that it will take 14 hours of traveling for him to get home? Tomorrow sounds good.

So, I'm heading down to Olympia to hang out with my mom and sisters (Shannon is flying in for the weekend!) since it's a lot more appealing than staying at home in Port Orchard by myself. Then I'll get to pick Tom up on Friday!

My grandma's 80th birthday party is on Friday night, so I hope Tom isn't too jet-lagged to be conscious for it. I'm glad he'll be home to spend our anniversary with me. :) Have a good weekend everyone!

Safe and Sound in Japan

Just in case any of you have been watching the news the past couple days and have seen warnings for a typhoon to hit Tokyo, I wanted to let you know that Tom is safely in Japan at the Naval Shipyard in Yokosuka.

He called me tonight (after getting off work about 3:30 p.m. on Monday afternoon) and I got to talk to him for about 20 minutes until his phone card ran out. I asked if he was safe and if the typhoon was affecting him where he was at, and he said no; they had prepared a lot for it and evacuated certain areas around Tokyo, but it blew by them and they barely experienced heavy rain and a tiny little bit of wind. He also admitted that he knew about the typhoon predictions before he left, but didn't want to tell me so that I wouldn't worry. How well he knows me...

***New:*** You also might have heard of an earthquake that hit Japan. I want you all to know that it happened Monday morning Japan time, even though we are just now hearing about it. And Tom called me last night (Sunday) at 3:30/4 -ish on Monday Japan time...so the earthquake had already happened, as well as this nuclear spill in to the water. But it was on the opposite side of the island from where he's at, and he's safe. I just don't want any family and friends to be hearing the news and worrying about him over there.

Anyway, he says he likes it over there -- everything is very small, not a lot of cars, and even the public places are pretty quiet. He says it seems like everyone pretty much keeps to themselves and doesn't want to interfere with each other by having a loud conversation or listening to loud music, etc. He said that was kind of a nice difference between our two cultures; ours is so bombarded by noise all the time.

Well, that's about it for now. Please keep Tom and Ron in your prayers on Friday for a safe trip home!

Tom in Japan!

I just wanted to give everyone an update: Tom is leaving for Japan tomorrow morning for about a week, so we'd appreciate your prayers for safe travels for him and his coworker Ron.

Other than that, not much going on at the Herring household. My dad came over the other day and sprayed everything in the back yard so that we can start all over and try to make it look nice - like maybe have some grass back there! It seriously was a jungle. Not a shred of grass, just dandelions mostly - oh, and blackberries. We think that the people who lived here before us just used the back yard as a dumping grounds for all the yard waste generated by his *get this* landscaping business. But it has potential, and I'm excited to get going on it to make it habitable. I never thought I'd be so happy to see every living plant in my yard turning brown and dying!

I decided about a week ago that I was tired of carrying trays at work, so my managers were super nice and switched me from serving to doing some to-go shifts and hosting shifts. It's been a nice break so far, even though I do miss the pace of serving. Everyone keeps asking how long I'm going to work, and I'm just not sure. I'll keep doing it until I either don't feel like it or it's not good for me to do so. My doctor says that working is really keeping me healthy because it's such an active job. So I guess I'll stick with it for a little while longer. : )

Daily Gospel Meditations

After doing my morning meditation today, it dawned on me that I should share with you all an incredible tool in the spiritual life. We always hear that if "you want to grow in holiness, you need to spend time every day meditating on Scripture." Easier said than done for most of us. Regnum Christi has developed a great tool to help with the daily Gospel meditation by composing certain points to meditate on in order to facilitate your prayer and conversation with Christ. Here's the link in case any of you want to take advantage of it! Enjoy, and God bless you.

This will take you to an index of the daily meditations (I hope). If you want, you can go back one page and subscribe to the meditations so that they are sent directly to your email address either daily or weekly.

Christ's Presence in the Blessed Sacrament

The other day, Tom and I were hanging out at his parents' house and were talking with his dad about God's greatness and how unfathomable it is that He, the God of the universe, has a personal interest in the most minute of details in the workings of the world and our lives. Really, if we take a step back, we are nothing more than a tiny speck in God's creation - but somehow God loves that speck.

Skip ahead to our Holy Hour on Sunday morning. I was reflecting on what we had talked about and it seems silly now, because it's something we say all the time...but it struck me afresh that I was in the Presence of this Great God. All of a sudden I became aware of my smallness and my iniquity and so thankful that Christ chose to humble Himself to the appearance of bread and wine. If He was there in the Tabernacle, robed in all His glory, how could I dare to approach Him? Instead, He choses in every moment of every day to divest Himself of His glory in order to make Himself approachable to poor sinners who seek His Presence. What a humbling thought...God is so good!

One of Tom's phases

Last October, Tom somehow got really interested in the remote control airplane hobby. I think a guy he works with is really in to it, and I guess it rubbed off. So, for his birthday we got online and he picked out a remote control airplane that he wanted to try his hand at. He and his brother Joe took it out for its maiden flight -- and Tom claims that it spent about 12 seconds in the air before it crashed in to the ground in to a million tiny pieces. So, that was the end of that plane; but not his interest. He figured he'd better practice on something that wasn't so expensive, so he got an RC Airplane Flight Simulator for our computer and has been working with that for the past few months. He's gotten really good at it!

So, skip ahead to Father's Day. Tom's feeling more comfortable with how the controls work on his flight simulator and is thinking he's ready to try it out on another real plane - so again, we get online and he picks out his Father's Day gift. This time, it's a fairly big plane, it's got about a 4-foot wingspan. Anyway, we waited and waited for it to come, got the thing put together, and took it out for its first flight. Fortunately, this one turned out MUCH better than the first! He flew it around for a while, but it was a little windy and when the wind blew it around the other side of a huge building (the gym of the school where we were flying it in the field), he decided it was probably time to land it and go home while he was still ahead. First attempt was SUCCESSFUL! He had to wait another week or so to fly it again because we were in Sacramento for Matt & Jenny's wedding, so he was anxious to try it again.

Here are some pictures of this second flight of Tom's plane.





Well, there are the pictures. The 2 videos I took for some reason aren't working right now...I'll figure it out. But in any case, we had a couple successful flights, with only minor breakage upon landing - we were able to glue it back together. But then he took it up for one last flight, it did a loop (which was pretty cool), then he lost it in the sun and it came crashing down in to the side of a hill...the body is now in 2 pieces, the landing gear came off, the propeller is no longer, and I think Tom is going to keep practicing on his flight simulator.

Pregnant Pictures of Carrie

Well, here we go. You'll all have to bear with me as I figure out how this whole blog thing goes. So many of you family and friends who are far away have been asking for a long time to see pictures of me pregnant, and I thought that this was probably the easiest way to go about doing that. Sorry for the delay on this -- our camera broke and we've been trying to work on getting it fixed, and finally ended up borrowing my sister Kristy's camera for a little bit. Thanks, Kristy, for obliging!

Anyway, just a quick update before we get to the pictures. I'm 29 weeks along -- for all of you out there who don't like measuring things in weeks, that means I'm a couple weeks in to my 7th month of pregnancy. Still feeling great, but reality is really starting to set in that we are going to have A BABY in 9 weeks! I still can't believe it. I had an ultrasound at 20 weeks (5 months) and the Doctor said it looks like we're having a baby girl...but that we shouldn't paint the room pink yet, just in case we get a surprise. So, we're calling the baby "her," and will just have to apologize to our son for calling him a girl for so many months if it turns out that we have a boy. Another very common question is: "So...what about names?" And I can honestly tell you that we haven't decided on anything. We have been kicking around a few ideas, but really haven't settled on anything at all.

I think that's about it for now. I plan on putting up some pictures of the house sometime in the near future so you can all see our humble abode.

A brief explanation

For our first post, we thought it best to explain the name of our blog. It was borrowed from the founder of a lay movement called Regnum Christi, of which we are members. In addition to founding Regnum Christi, Father Maciel (below) also founded an order of priests in 1941, the Legionaries of Christ. There are currently about 700 ordained Legionaries spread throughout the world, and more than 2,500 seminarians. As of this date, there are roughly 70,000 lay Catholics who have incorporated into the Regnum Christi movement world-wide.

You can learn more about Regnum Christi here.

A brief time-line for a history of the Legion of Christ can be found here.