The closer they get.

Well, we are a month into our bed rest period and things are still moving along. The doctor seems to think we still have a few more weeks, at least, before our boys get here. That's good because we are currently only 33 weeks along, which is a little early to welcome them into this big scary world.
Speaking of big and scary, the closer these two little boys get to entering the world the more unprepared I feel to be their father. I know that I have the love to give, but raising two kids in this world is a crazy endeavor.
So, I have to rely on a strength beyond my own, and I am praying a Sun Stand Still prayer that God will prepare me to raise two God-fearing, beautiful boys.
On another note, God is truly blessing us to be prepared for these two boys. We recently sold our current home, which was our first home (tear). We should close in a few weeks, and have been approved on our construction loan to begin our new home. For those of you who are good at math, you might be thinking a few weeks is not nearly long enough to build a house. You're right. In the meantime, we are moving in with Kendra's parents, who are crazy enough to let us live with them with newborn twins for about 7 or 8 months.
While I feel unprepared, I know that God is faithful and he is prepared. In my weakness, he is stronger.

It's shower time

I can honestly say that I have dreamed a lot of dreams in my brief life. In all those dreams, I can never once remember dreaming of having a baby shower, much less a twin baby shower. Well, welcome to reality because we are having twin baby showers. I'm pretty sure we are having 4 or 5 showers (Kendra is having some with work colleagues and her daycares).

The first shower was this past weekend with our amazing church family at Tuttle Christian Church. It is absolutely the biggest blessing in our lives to get to go church with our immediate families and for that family to be expanded by the grace of God and love of others.

We received so many wonderful gifts this weekend. We received clothes from preemie size all the way up to 18 months. We received butt paste, baby soap, and baby lotion. We received stuff to take care of our babies when they are sick and stuff to entertain them when they want to play. We received all of this as gifts from our amazing church family.

We also received our baby quilts from Kendra's grandma Betty. She makes each of her grandchildren (now great-grandchildren) a quilt when they are born and when they get married. A few weeks ago Kendra, her mother, her sister, and Grandma Betty spent at least 3 hours picking out fabrics to blend together into some beautiful quilts. Below are the baby quilts for Ian and Nolan.

Here is Nolan's quilt. Kendra did an awesome job picking fabric, and Grandma Betty made some beautiful quilts.

This is Ian's quilt. Slightly different, but still a beautiful quilt.

"We got this."

"We got this." It's three simple words. Easy to say, hard to believe. It's also our motto in the Pagel house for 2011 (and probably 2012, 2013, etc.). If you know what's going on in our lives you understand the title of this blog and the need for this motto. But if you're not sure if you fully understand, I'll fill in the details for you.

This blog was created by two expectant people. We are expecting twins, due sometime in April or May. (We don't feel it's important to have a "due date" because only 5% of babies are born on their due dates. Plus with twins it gets even wackier. So no "due date" just late April or early May). Anyways, that explains much of the "Blessings Multiplied" title. However, we are also people of faith. Which means we believe in receiving blessings from God. All of our lives it seems that blessings have been poured out on our lives and multiplied. Maybe it's youthful optimism, good luck, or delusions. I prefer to believe it's "Blessings Multiplied".

Now back to the motto, "We got this". This motto was selected from many good options (okay no other options, but it works). It came into our lives halfway through our first "baby" class, you know the classes where they overwhelm you with all things baby (and in our case babies). So, halfway through "Preparing for Multiples", I decided I needed a pep talk. Therefore, I just repeated in my head, "We got this.", "We got this", "We got this.". Then I got the courage to pep Kendra up. I turned to her as we walked down the conference room hallway and said "We got this". Perplexed by my random statement, she retorted with what should have been an expected question, "We got what". So, I explained to her that I believed in us and think we can handle this twin thing (not that we have a choice at this point). She wasn't as convinced as I was, but she's coming around. (Note: It didn't help my newfound confidence that as I pepped Kendra up with the motto, she missed the water bottle to mouth connection and dribbled water down her shirt. "We got this" was looking like sheer overconfidence at that point. But we rebounded and the motto stays.)

So as blogs go up and the stories of successes and failures in this crazy thing called life hit the blog, just remember the motto "We got this".