Lifting Me Up

Just wanted to share some encouraging words from the Lord that have lifted me up this morning. Yesterday was gruelsome...is that how you spell it? We decorated the church for the girl's retreat for almost 5 hours...my body was truly aching all over. This whole baby in the belly sure makes things a little more challenging. :) I came home last night not really even being able to sit comfortably and relax. Dustin worked on me with his OMT for a little bit which seemed to help. And of course last night I couldn't sleep at all...it felt like I just laid there all night tossing and turning. This morning my body is sore and tired and my heart was a little overwelmed with all the little tasks I had to finish up for the retreat today, but as I made time for the Lord and just seeking Him this morning in His word.....He truly lifted me up with this little commentary in my study bible. I pray that it brings you encouragement in your life today as well..
"Jesus' desire is that each women yield herself to Him in utter dependence, recognizing that "without Me you can do nothing." John 15:5. and relying on His Holy Spirit fo fulfill the special ministry that He selects for her. God challenges each one of us as He did Queen Ester, "Yet who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" Each women is hand-picked by God, situated by Christ's body as He desires, and it indispinsable in reaching her particular sphere of influence for Christ. If a woman feels inadequate for the ministry task the Lord reveals to her; she need only to remember Jesus' words "My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness."........Praise the Lord!

Exciting Day!

Today is a very exciting day.....our brand new website is up and running! Praise the Lord! This has been a three month process and I am so thankful that it is complete and beautiful! Let me know what you think!
www.modestmommycover.com

Baby Abigail this week

What is going on in Abigail's world this week....her brain can now control her breathing and body temperature. She can also cough, and her sucking abilities have been perfected. Her skin is looking less wrinkled as she packs on the pounds. She's now beefing up on the energizing and insulating white fat she'll be born with (unfortunately, white fat is not energizing and insulating for adults!). She is full of energy these days. She is a little over 15 inches long—about the length of a loaf of bread—and weighs about 3 pounds, as much as a Macbook Air laptop. Wow, huh! I find myself thinking more and more about her and can't wait to cuddle with her...she will be here soon in the meantime I am getting bigger and bigger as she grows, of course! :) Funny story--the other day Andrew was sitting with Dustin and pointed to his belly and asked, "Is Abigail in there?" He! We all laughed...Daddy's belly isn't nearly as big as Mommy's. Funny Andrew.

Knee Deep with Girl's Retreat

Girls Retreat.....today I am knee deep in final details for the 1st Annual Girl's Retreat at our church. It is so exciting and sooo much work! We have officially 30 girls signed up and I am expecting another 15-20 friends and last minute deciders to join us on Friday! A freind that was a couple of years older than me that I played basketball with in Highschool, Courtney Smith Bullard, will be coming and leading it with her IDMinistries team. I am so excited about what the Lord has in store for this weekend! It has been so neat to see how He has grown the girls ministry that we started just this last September and I soo look forward to seeing who He connects with us through this awesome Retreat opportunity! Our Theme is grecian spa and we have decided to use greek like wedding columns, ivy, greenery, and bundles of candles. I can't hardley wait to see it all come together! We actually had a member of the church that owned a wedding rentals company and she is letting us use some huge 8' Columns and also some smaller ones and tablecloths for decoration---such a blessing! I can't wait to see the girls reactions to the decoration. Details....thier are so many details to complete and finsish up today. I have decided that I am a planner....I really enjoy the planning and the organization, maybe that is why I don't really enjoy sometimes not knowing what God is planning. :) But He is teaching us ever so patiently to just trust in Him. Also this week our renters are moving out so we are scheduling all the repair work, carpet cleaning....to get it ready to list on the Market on Monday. Please pray for a quick sale. I really am not anxoius about this but it would sure be a blessing to sell it quickly so that we don't have to make double mortgage payments for another month. What I am learning in the midst of all these planning details this week is that God is a God of details....He loves planning and creating just as much as I do and He does a much better job connecting all the dots in His perfect timing....I soo look forward to seeing how it all comes together for His glory! Praising Him! -A

A Time of Transition...

The Cupp Crew is officially in a time of transition. It seems thier are so many things right now that are "up in the air" so to speak. Item 1: The Market business this past week was down 75%...we do not know what the Lord has in store for the business. Please pray for my sewing ladies, we will have to stop production for now and wait on the Lord. Please pray that the Lord would provide them with alternative work to supply thier needs. They are both such wonderful christian believers and have been faithfully praying for the business during the past few weeks...pray specifically for Thursday when I will meet with them and share with them. Item 2: Our Rental Home will be vacant and listed on the market February 2nd. Not exactly the best time to sell a home. Item 3: Where will He send us? Dustin has a meeting wednesday with the CEO in Drumright, OK to discuss job opportunities. We also got a call this morning from another doctor in Cushing that is very interested in Dustin possibly joining Him....and Integris Bass in Enid is still wanting to meet with us. Item 4: Abigail Ruth is only about 12 weeks away from joining our crew... or less! Wow! Transition....lots of not knowing, but the awesome part about it is that God has given us both such a wonderful peace. We know that He will supply all our needs and that He will so masterfully take care of all the little details and plans during this transitioning period. It seems like every day He is confirming to me to not worry...that He is faithful! This we have totally experienced many times over and can testify that He is so faithful with His goodness and graciousness to His children. Here is the verse He gave me today.

"So do not worry, saying what shall we eat? What shall we drink? Or what shall we wear? For the pagans run after these things, and your heavenly father knows that you need them. But seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well." Matthew 6:31-33

Trusting Him! Praising Him! ....Amanda

Market Preperation Day in Dallas

I arrived in Dallas at the Market Center about 4pm today and was excited to see all of the activity in preperation for the show. Many exibitors were unloading and getting all of thier things "spruced up" and ready for the show. I made it to our showroom after standing in line to get my new key card for only an hour and a half...yuck. Not a good time to decide to update the key card system during one of the largest shows of the year. Finally, I was on the 8th floor and made it in to the showroom to check things out and I was shocked to see all of the empty spaces. We are in a shared showroom where people can lease 10 x 10 or 10 x 20 spots per year to display and market thier products. Thier are probobly 50 shared showroom spaces in the Kids World Studio. I counted 10 that were vacant...this is alarming because of the economy and the pace that even our sales have done since July. It really made me sad to see all the empty spots and the evidence that a business had most likely gone under during this hard economic time. I talked with a few other owners and asked what thier expectations were for this show and I was... I guess shocked would be the word...to find out that they were not expecting much because of the lead certification law that is being inforced and knowing that the boutique owners, our clients, were going to be very cautious as to whom they purchased products from not only because of thier lack of sales this fourth quarter but also the lead law that is being passed. I knew nothing about it until then....basically what the law says is that any product that is made for a child under the age of 12 to use has to be lead certified by February 10, 2009. What does that mean? Certification means that we would have to send one of every nursing cover fabric that we offer to be certified by a lab and tested for lead. The cost for this is thousands of dollars. I wondered where the line was...we technically are not an item for a baby, but for a mother to use while nursing. One of the other owners told me that a sling manufacturer company had decided to go ahead and get the certification and instead of offering 10 different fabrics because of the cost of certification they would now be offering 3.....Please pray....I have no idea what this means for our company. We need a really great market financially and cannot afford to sink in thousands of more dollars into this company merely for lead certification.....I do not know what the Lord has in store with this but I will continue to trust in Him and His plans for this business...Please pray.

"But I trust in your unfailing love, my heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord, for He has been good to me." Psalm 13:6

Off to Market...

Off to Market....today I will be leaving to Dallas to work Market in our Showroom. Please pray for our business and what the Lord would have in store. We are needing quite a few new accounts and reorders from current accounts. With the economy as it is now business at the Market all around has slowed down and we are praying that this will be a very profitable show for our business. Please also pray specifically for the plans that God would have in store...whatever that means...we have so many options here and just want to be doing His will in regards to this. Pray for my dear mother-in-law, Beth, who is so self-sacrificing and coming to stay with my monkeys Tueday through Friday. Please pray that God will give me enough strength and endurance to get through the days victoriously on my feet over 8 hours each day. Please pray for divine appointments that He would set up for this week...pray that we may be given opportinities to share Him with others during Market. Bless you dear friends for praying. Love you all. Looking foward to seeing what He has in store for this week at Market....

Adventure Day

Adventure Day: Friday, January 9th

Dustin has been off all week as we were expecting to be visiting with Integris Bass Hospital in Enid that never really fell through. We met with Stan, the recruiter for Integris Rural Hospitals, in November and told him that we would be planning on visiting during this week, but had yet to recieve any further contact from him. Thus...we had been patiently waiting on what the Lord might have in store for this week that Dustin was off instead. One big thing was Carson and Andrew's Cousin Peyton was born on Thursday---the boys love thier new cousin! (pics on blog below) On Tuesday Dustin recieved an interesting email from a physician recruiter telling him of an opportunity that was 40 minutes from Tulsa, 30 minutes from Stillwater and 60 minutes from OKC...the name of the town was not mentioned. We thought it might be Cushing. The recruiter responded to Dustin's reply email the next day and informed us that the town that he was recruiting for was actually Drumright, which is 7 miles east of Cushing. He was so prompt and talked to the CEO in Drumright that next day hoping to maybe set it up for us to visit with him later that week. After talking to the CEO the recruiter found out that the CEO had laringitis and probobly wouldn't be able to meet with us.
In late July I worked a Children's Conference at First Baptist Moore and met a young lady and her husband, Angela & Dustin Hobson. It has been so very interesting to see how God has so intricatley crossed our paths and networked us together. I spent two 8 hour days with them and was so blessed by thier new friendship. I found out that they were also from Tulsa, in fact they were trying to persuade me to come to First Baptist Jenks (which of course we had visited quite a bit) and that she was actually a former teacher from the school that Carson would be attending in August....I pumped her with so many questions! She was such a blessing and another confirmation from the Lord that we were doing what He had planned for Carson in regards to attending public schools. It was a super neat weekend....before the weekend I wondered many times "Lord, why am I doing this show?" It was not a highly profitable show but His plan was for sure for me to meet this couple and connect with these precious brother and sister in Christ. Angela works for a company now called "Simply Fun"--they have the most wonderful games for families. Anyways....so life continued...I called her in August to tell her that God has blessed us with a wonderful Christian teacher that went to our very own church that we just didn't know since we teach in the youth and are with them so much. She was super excited and said that I had called at just the right moment because she was contemplating something that was weighing so heavy on her heart. She went on to explain that they loved Tulsa and thier church family but she felt like the Lord was leading them to move to Cushing....she had quite a bit of family there and it was such a wonderful town. So I began to pray for them and thier family and what the Lord might have in store for them in the coming months. She asked specifically that I would pray for her husband to get a job close to Cushing if it was God's will for them to move. In October I talked to her and she was living with her Grandfather and her son was going to Cushing schools while her Dustin was still looking for a job. Thier house had been sold on contingency and they were waiting on that to close.....this is the last I talked to her until this past week. I was so excited thinking Angela and Dustin are there how fun would that be to live in Cushing....so I called her on Wednesday and she laughed and told me that God had indeed provided a new job for Dustin but it was only 3 mi from thier home in Tulsa and they had decided not to finish with the contigency sale of thier home and over Christmas she had moved back home.....WOW! So they have been going through so much the past six months....she just laughed and laughed when I told her saying "Well maybe it was you after all that was moving to Cushing, not us..He!" (Sorry this is a really long story)....so here we are this week on vacation and we had nothing planned for Friday so we decided to have an adventure day....We drove from Tulsa to Drumright to look around and then on to Cushing. To make it fun and exciting for the boys we had a list of things that we were looking for: a plane, a tractor, a choo choo, games, and a motorcycle. They did a great job looking for these items! Drumright has a really cute and quaint downtown, main street area, but as we drove off the main street you could tell that it was a poor community. Thier were many government subsidized areas of homes and apartments. It has a nice little 15 bed hopital that is fairly new. The town itself has only about 3000 people. We then drove on into Cushing which is about 5 minutes away. Cushing is a larger town on about 9,000 people. It is such a cute town! They have many stores: Super Wal-Mart, Atwoods, Pizza Hut, Mazzios, Braums, Sonic, Subway to name a few. We drove by the school and were excited to see that they are the Cushing Tigers and thier colors are orange and black. :) As we were driving around the hospital (the hospital was really nice- three stories and newly renovated it looked like) I decided to call and talk to my friend Angela and see where we should go visit while we were there. She answered and told us that we needed to go to the library and pick up a map. She told me that her uncle owned the Baker's Pharmacy that we had passed by the hospital and insited that we go by and say Hi to him...in fact she was calling him as soon as we got off the phone to tell him we would be stopping by...no pressure :) The library was a blast...the boys got to read books, play puzzles and building blocks. We got our map and were then off the the pharmacy. All I can say is this new little friend of mine was such a blessing to our family by calling her uncle. We arrived at the Pharmacy and the boys were immeadiately greeted with a warm smile and a bucket of candy to choose from. Doug Baker, Angela's uncle, was there and was so very friendly and wonderfully informative. He made a call a few moments after we arrived and told Dustin to walk accross the street and talk with one of his friends, Dr. Grellner, while he entertained the boys and I for a few moments. We found out that 2 docs from Cushing had just left and that they were actually looking for 4 family practice doctors to fill spots--this is very interesting because the Physician Practice Opportunities handbook that we recieved in October stated that they were not looking for family practice at this time. Dustin had a wonderful visit with the doctor--what an opportunity! We left the Pharmacy that afternoon feeling so blessed that God would connect us with Angela Hobson who would connect us with Doug Baker who would then connect us with Dr. Grellner...truly what an awesome God we serve that he cares about the little details of our lives and so perfectly sets up such divine appoinments for us! We look forward to see what God has in store for us. We continued on towards Perkins, OK which is only 15 miles up the road. Dustin and I spent a little bit of time here when we lived out off of Mehan Rd in the country in Stillwater. Alot has changed in six years...they now have a Piggly Wiggly...kind of funny. We continued into Stillwater (it is only 25 minutes from Cushing...huge plus) and played at the park for a good hour....it was 71 degrees! What a beautiful day for an adventure! The boys also enjoyed watching the skateboarding at the skate park. We visited For Pete's Sake and Chris' while in Stillwater and the boys picked our thier prize there....a Pistol Pete tooth brush! Hooray. Carson was so dissapointed that no game was being played...football...basketball...no games scheduled that night. So we headed back to Perkins and ate at El Mexicano, a mexican restraunt that we ate at quite frequently while living in Stillwater. After dinner we headed back through Cushing and Drumright to go home wondering "Lord, what do you have in store?" We were both filled with so much excitement knowing that His plans for our lives are so much greater than we can even imagine! The boys were sad that the adventure day was over but they had so much fun!! This morning Dustin checked his email and funny enough got an email from the recruiter at Bass Integris in Enid saying he heard that we were coming to Enid soon and would like to set up a time to meet with us---strange, huh, Dustin's vacation is over and we have waited since November to have this set up for this past week and not a word from them until today.....things that make you go hmmm....trusting in Him today and wondering what He has in store.....

Happy Birthday Baby Peyton

Andrew is not happy about having to share Peyton. :)

Peyton Donovan Montgomery was born this morning, January 8, 2009. He weighed 6 lbs 5 oz and has lots of hair. Dustin, the boys and I went to the hospital this morning to welcome baby Peyton into the world. He is super cute and so tiny! Andrew was a baby hog....he did not want to share or let anyone else hold baby Peyton...watch out baby Abigial your big brother Andrew may hog you... alot! Peyton was born on a very special day...today is also Dustin's Mom's Birthday (AKA Mimi), My dad's birthday (AKA Grandad) and also Elvis Presley's Birthday...crazy huh! Happy Birthday baby Peyton!

Just a little cold...

Well it has been a while since I posted. Things seems to be a little busy here. Dustin is off this week on vacation....which is nice! We were hoping to be able to visit a couple of prospective towns to live/work in but are unsure if this will happen this week so we are going to just enjoy the time together...we are still just waiting on the Lord and wondering what He might have up his sleeve. I have been super busy trying to get ready for our first big show of the year at Market in Dallas Jan 13-20. We are really needing a great show. We have 5 new fabrics and are hoping to launch the new website by the end of this week. Oh yes, and both Dustin and I now have a full blown cold. It is the annoying kind where your nose is dripping, head is pounding, ears are ringing a little and yet still life continues. We were hoping to take the boys to the movie after Carson got out of school today but we both weren't really feeling up to it. We did get an interesting lead on a town in Oklahoma today, Drumright. It is 40 minutes from Tulsa, 25 minutes to Stillwater (huge plus, he!), and 60 minutes from OKC. It is a smaller community with about 3000 people but it is really close to alot of larger towns, it is actually only 10 miles or less from Cushing (this is important bc/ Cushing has a walmart, pizza hut, & braum's)...anyways we will just have to wait and see what may come of that....interesting though.....Please pray for my dear friend Christina and her little baby Jane, born Dec 31st...they have so been on my heart....they think that Jane had a stroke, maybe even in utero and are awaiting more MRI results and do not really know what the outcome developmentally will be for this precious little one. I hope and pray that you all are well and are not battleing with this silly cold as well....

15 Weeks Left....Mas o Menos!

Well, we have only about 15 weeks left until Abigail Ruth Cupp makes her debut, plus or minus, of course...if you are interested here is what is going on with her this week in utero :) Get ready for pat-a-cake! Baby's hands are now fully developed and she spends most of his awake time groping around in the darkness of your uterus. Brain and nerve endings are developed enough now so that your baby can feel the sensation of touch. That doesn't mean she can feel it when her father pokes your stomach, however, so tell him to knock it off. Other highlights include:Your baby's arms and legs have grown to almost the proportions they will be at birth, which is still sort of short. So don't be alarmed when your newborn's arms barely clear his waist. Baby's nostrils, which have been plugged up until now, clear out (like he's taken a super-dose of Sudafed) and she can practice breathing through the nose. The structures of your baby's spine are now made up of 150 joints, 33 rings and some 1,000 ligaments. Can you believe you're growing something that complicated inside of you?The capillaries, the teeniest blood vessels, are now forming in your baby's body, giving his formerly translucent skin a pink glow. The blood vessels in the lungs also develop this week. You'll see how well that worked out when your baby gives those lungs a workout while you're on line at the bank in a few months. Your baby weighs about a pound and a half and is about 13½ inches long—roughly the length of one of those recorders you played in elementary school music class.