28 weeks

Yesterday was 28 weeks, which means that I'm officially into the third trimester now. How did that happen? And how can I be only two weeks away from 30 weeks already?!

There's nothing too much to report at this update. I made the rounds of the maternity/thrift stores in the area once more since my last post and found a good amount of maternity clothes to supplement the three pieces I found last time. All tops this time, but that's fine as I have a good number of lounge pants that are still comfy to wear around the house.

Baby G is kicking much stronger and I'm feeling it much more often. It always makes me smile! :) I'm already so in love with this kid. Haha, of course I am, though. I fall in love with kids pretty easily.

On that note, last Thursday was my last day of work at my nanny job. I worked for this family for more than a year and I can't believe how much "my boys" have grown and changed in that time. It was so hard to hug them goodbye and leave at the end of the day, but I'll definitely stay in touch with them and their family.

One thing I've been thinking about throughout this pregnancy so far is how I'm going to feel having my own child. I've taken care of and loved so many other children during my teens and twenties, calling many of them "my babies/kids," and loving a very special few so much that, had my situation been different at those times, I would have very seriously considered adopting them. I've had so many people tell me (both before getting pregnant and since) that I just won't be able to believe how much I will love this baby (and subsequent ones, of course), but I have a hard time understanding how it could be all that much more than other kids that I've loved, especially the ones that I've loved enough to consider adopting. Maybe it's just a different kind of love. I don't know, but it will be interesting to see how I feel once this baby is placed in my arms.

It's official

I've been waiting a bit to make this public because I wanted to make sure it really was official, but it basically is by now: I have a job!

On March 23 I flew out to Vancouver, BC to interview for a job with Intel. The job was actually to be in Folsom, CA but the team head works in Vancouver. To make a long story short, I eventually received and accepted an offer, and one week from today we will be leaving on yet another cross-country road trip to travel out there and get settled in before I start work on the 18th of May.

I will be designing PCBs (printed circuit boards) for solid state drives in Intel's NSD division, for those of you who are wondering.

Thank you all for your prayers and support through this phase of our lives! We're excited to take this next step and see what God has in store for us!

 - Jonathan

Fall outings in Maine

We spent the fall of 2012 in Brunswick, Maine. On weekends Jonathan showed me around the area where he grew up. This post contains pictures of several different outings we took to nearby places. Enjoy!

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Reid State Park - September 1, 2012

Jonathan's aunt, uncle, and some of their children from New Hampshire come to visit in Maine every Labor Day weekend. They usually enjoy spending Sabbath afternoons after church at the ocean. This time they wanted to visit Reid State Park, one of the two sandy beaches within a reasonable distance from Brunswick (about 40 minutes drive). Although the day was clear, sunny, and warm, the water was already too cold for swimming, but we enjoyed walking on the beach and wading into the ocean.

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Wolfe's Neck Woods State Park - September 8, 2012

The next week after church, Jonathan and I headed to Wolfe's Neck Woods State Park. I had never been there before, and we both enjoyed hiking on the various trails, some along the ocean and others further inland amongst the granite hills.

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Bradbury Mountain State Park - September 22 & October 6, 2012

As summer moved into autumn, I started getting excited to see the famous New England autumn colours. Although Jonathan and I been in Maine the previous autumn, that year the colours weren't too great and so I was still feeling like I hadn't really experienced the phenomenon. In mid-September we went to Bradbury Mountain State Park, about a 15 minute drive from Jonathan's parents' house, and hiked up the mountain. The hike didn't take long and at the top we were rewarded with clear views all the way to the ocean, although that early in the season we only saw the very, very beginning of the colour change. Two weeks later we headed back up the mountain, this time taking a different trail - this one not as steep, but longer. From the top we saw a bit more colour, and enjoyed the misty views of the woods below.

Two weeks later...

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Freeport Town Wharf - October 6, 2012

After our hike up Bradbury Mountain (above), we still had daylight and Jonathan took me driving around the nearby Freeport area. We ended up at the Freeport Town Wharf and relaxed there for a little while watching the moored boats bobbing up and down in the harbor and enjoying the scenery.

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We have one more post in this fall outings segment, but since there were so many photos on that day, we decided it deserved its own post.

Next up: Popham Beach State Park

Metallak 2012

August 21-26, 2012

A couple days after we completed our Trans-Canada road trip, we headed out on another adventure. Each year, a group of people from Jonathan's home church go to an island in a lake in northwestern Maine for a week at the end of August. One of the reasons we had chosen to leave BC and drive to Maine when we did was so that we would be able to be at Metallak Island for at least part of the week. We finished our road trip late on Sunday night. On Monday we slept in a little bit, recovering from our many days of waking up early on our drive. Then we unpacked our things from the truck, returned the empty U-Haul trailer, and got our camping gear and food ready to go. The next morning, Tuesday, we got on our way in the morning and drove about two hours from Brunswick to Metallak Island on Richardson Lake. We enjoyed the rest of the week on the island with Jonathan's friends and fellow church members, and were glad we had been able to be there for at least part of the annual event.

- Ali

(Click to enlarge images)

Woodpecker

Birch

Greenery

David on the Cat

John on a Laser

Flare

Shoot the Moon

Milky Way

Big Dipper

Frothy morning

Mist on the lake

Morning Loons

Flame

Toasty

Twilight

Morning Glow

Solitude

Waiting for the Sun

Misty Mountains

Sunrise

Trans-Canada road trip: Ottawa to Brunswick

Trans-Canada road trip: Day 6

August 19, 2012

Click for larger image (Link to map)

Sunday morning we woke up early and were on the road around 6 a.m. My sister sent us with some leftovers and snacks, so we ate those for our breakfast.

We knew we would have a very long day of driving. To drive from Ottawa to Brunswick, Maine should only really take about seven hours, but we had special circumstances that would make our trip much longer. Since I wasn't officially a resident of the US yet, I wouldn't be able to bring my belongings across the border until I'd had my immigration interview and gotten my US visa and green card, which we had already submitted paperwork for, but didn't have an interview date yet. Because of this, we had arranged ahead of time with my mother's cousin and his wife, who live in New Brunswick, to store my things at their house. They had graciously allowed us to do so until I had my immigration interview and would legally be able to bring my possessions into the US. While this was very, very kind of them, it did mean that we would have to drive through Quebec and New Brunswick all the way around the north and east of Maine to unpack our trailer before going through the border, which more than doubled our driving time for the day.

We managed to time our trip just right to arrive in Montreal right around morning rush hour time, and the fact that there was construction on the road as well didn't help matters much. In all the hubbub, we accidentally got onto the wrong highway and crossed over the river on a large and traffic-filled bridge. We realized our mistake as we were driving over the bridge and as soon as we got across we found the first place to turn around and headed back to the Trans-Can. Luckily the traffic heading back on the bridge was moving smoothly, so our return trip didn't take us too long. After finally getting through Montreal, we continued through the province of Quebec, following along the St. Lawrence River. Eventually we left the river and headed south into New Brunswick.

Sunrise from outside Becky's house in Ottawa

Interesting clouds

Quebec mountains from the road

Start of the watch for wildlife signs in Quebec, New Brunswick & Maine

Dirty-looking St. Lawrence River beside the Trans-Canada Hwy

Entering our last province of the road trip

Another wildlife sign in NB (the only official bilingual Canadian province)

Fun to see this along the road as we drove by

In the early afternoon, we arrived at my mum's cousin's house. They were actually on a trip that weekend, so their across-the-street neighbours had been asked to let us into the house. They were such a sweet couple and even helped us unload some of the larger items. We unpacked the U-Haul trailer in about an hour, stacking everything in piles as neat as we could manage, then locked the garage back up, returned the house key to the neighbours, and continued on our journey.

We arrived at the US border near Houlton, Maine about an hour later and got in line. We didn't have too long to wait to get to the front of the line and talk to the border guard. With me trying to get into the country, but not having US resident status yet, our situation was a little different and after explaining everything to him, he asked us to come inside to talk with a different border guard so the outside line could keep on moving. We figured this would happen, so we went in with all my paperwork that I had so far. We had to explain everything again to the border guard inside, and then he had to go talk to his superior so we sat on the benches and waited. Finally he returned and talked to us again. We were wondering why this process was taking so long until he made a comment about my possessions. We then realized that he had been thinking this whole time that we had been trying to take a full U-Haul trailer across (we were bringing the trailer with us the rest of the way to Brunswick since that was cheaper than dropping it off in New Brunswick). We quickly assured him that we had left my belongings in Canada and were just taking the empty trailer with us into the US (and wondered why the outside border guard hadn't informed him of that fact). As soon as we had told him that, he seemed quite a bit more at ease, and after he checked in with his superior again, he came back, gave us all our papers back, and sent us on our way. All in all, we probably spent about 45 minutes at the border, but we were glad it had all worked out that I would actually be able to come across and stay with Jonathan until my immigration interview.

Sun starting to set nearing the US border

Entering our new home state for the next two+ years

It was getting close to sundown as we started driving southeast on I-95 from Houlton, so I spent most of the rest of the trip carefully scanning the edges of the interstate to watch for wildlife. Fortunately we didn't see any and the three-hour drive to Brunswick passed without any difficulty. We were so happy to finally pull up to Jonathan's parents' house around midnight that night, and see the lights from the windows that they had left on for us. We just brought in the essentials for getting ready for bed, and quickly got settled and fell asleep after our 18-hour day. Although we had a great road trip and had been able to see some great places, we were very glad to have reached our destination, and very thankful for our safe travels!

- Ali

Daily driving total: 1,320 km (820 mi)


For fun and to wrap up this series, here is a map of our whole road trip across the majority of southern Canada. It was quite a trip to make in five days of driving!

Click for larger image (link to map)

Total trip distance: 5,975 km (3,712 mi)