Today I am 35 weeks along, which means I have 5 weeks and 3 days left until my due date. That means 38 days from now I am supposed to have a baby. Of course, God may have other ideas on the timing, but according to the doctors that is when Noah Gabriel will enter this world and our lives will be changed forever. Last week Cody took some pictures of my belly, so I am including those in this blog.
Not much is going on. We are still waiting here in Bahrain for our visas. We got an email yesterday informing us that by the end of the week (tomorrow, the 17th) a letter of request for visas will be in the hands of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and that they will take up to 10 days to issue our 3 year visas. Which is excellent news. Thank you God for that amazing answer to prayer. The only thing we need to decide is whether to stay or go. The airline will only let me fly up to 36 weeks, so I think that we may exceed that time limit and end up staying here to deliver. We are still waiting until the last minute it seems. I trust God in his timing, and am willing to do whatever he thinks is best. It is just hard to know what that is sometimes!We are all doing well with the waiting though. The new year has come and gone and now we are in the middle of January. Where does the time go? There doesn't seem to be much to do during the day, so it sometimes gets boring around here. Cody stays rather busy with work, and Taylor with school, so I am left to read or watch tv sometimes. I have read 3 of the books I received for Christmas and am on the fourth. I read the birthing books I have and that makes me anxious for Noah's arrival, or it makes me nervous about actually giving birth, so I read in moderation.

Our friend Kate is in the hospital with pneumonia and has been since the 10th. She had to have two operations to drain fluid from her lungs. The antibiotics don't seem to be working much, but after yesterday's operation she is somewhat better. It is taking a toll on Dave, her husband, though so they both can use some prayers.

It is starting to cool off again here, and even raining today. It warmed up last week, which is nice since we don't have a heater, but the rumor is that it is supposed to be really cold this week. We'll see. In Tehran they just got some more snow yesterday, so I won't complain about the cold front coming here. I am usually just fine when Cody and Taylor are in multiple layers and still cold.