snippets

Boring things I'm thinking about right now...


1. Getting some bangs. I think it's time. I also want new glasses. Erm.

2. Watching the Grammys for maybe the second time in my life. Interesting. It's my impression that there's a lot more "curvier" girls on the music scene than there used to be...

3. The need to buy new clothes. I have one pair of pants that fit. Not good.

4. How amazing Courageous was compared to what it could've been. They've come along way!

5. How awkward it is going up for your birthday at church and no one else comes up. I thought I'd be safe; but the twins didn't come up.So thus I was up there all by myself. Argh. Oh well.

6. I didn't know Adele was British. Oops. And I like her dress. But not her hair.

7. Looking forward to playing the piano regularly again. The functional neurologist said it would be a good idea to start playing. Nice to have an excuse! Yay.

8. A good Sunday. Good sermon, some catching up with friends, having the Murrays, Poindexters & Erlands over for dinner. And some amazing apple cake with cream cheese frosting. mmmm.

Single. And why I'm not.

I have no clue why I'm ruminating on being "single" tonight. I'm the sort of person that thinks the more you think about being single, the more likely you are to be discontent about being single. So most of the time I ignore it. Which probably disqualifies me from giving any advice. So this isn't advice.

Here are some things that I tell myself...

1. Be thankful. Of course, that's so easy to say but not easy to do. Thus the second step.

2. Pray proactively. Don't wait for the moments of despair to wash over you to reach out for God. Pray before you are tempted. Pray when life seems like it's humming along and you don't feel like you need to pray. When you don't feel like you need to pray, that should be huge flashing lights going off in your head. PRAY.  Pray for faith, joy, peace, patience, etc. Take responsibility to ask God to help you keep your cup running over.

3. Don't identify yourself by singleness. It's so easy to start feeling sorry for yourself when the world becomes single vs. married. Find your identity in Christ surrounded by believers. If someone told me to list out words to describe myself, I'm not sure that it would ever occur to me to say "single". Because, I'm not. I have a family, and you should too. I'm not saying that you have to live with your family, but you should have someone there as backup and counsel. If you don't have family, then find some. Do like my friend Rebekah did and adopt a wise couple at church to be your family.

4. Don't feel badly about not feeling fulfilled in life. Women were meant to be completed by husbands and bearing babies. It's okay that your job does not completely fulfill you. And it's a lie that it should.

5. Continue to work on being selfless. Because no one wants to marry selfishness. Find areas to serve others and try not to live by yourself. It's easy to fall into the trap that you're perfect if you have no one else to disagree. This may mean living with your family and you know what, you won't die. At least I haven't yet. Or it could mean living with friends. Just make sure you choose wise friends. :)

6. Appreciate things that are easy to do when single. Shopping and traveling are two that spring into my mind. It's much easier to go shopping without having to unstrap and strap three carseats at every stop. And traveling is much easier and cheaper! So think of things that you enjoy and go out and do them. Because one day you probably won't be able too. Or it will involve a potty stop every 20 minutes.

7. Enjoy not having to change dirty diapers. Especially at 2 am.

8. Interact with kids. If you didn't grow up around kids, then find ways to interact with them now. Take advantage of this time when you can interact with kiddos without having to be responsible for them! Especially babies. ;) Plus, if your husband has nieces and nephews, you'll be a better Auntie for it.

9. Be prepared that every time a friend or sibling starts dating, and you're not, you might feel sad. This hasn't happened every time for me but it has happened sometimes. It is okay to cry for a moment, but only for a moment. No pity parties. God has you exactly where he wants you. Just remember you don't want to marry that guy anyways. Or if you do, I guess there might be bigger issues to work through....

10. Remember that God is never early and He's never late. This was driven home to me during a family camp on marriage. God will not move you into marriage until you can do more good serving his kingdom married. And His kingdom is all that really matters.

A painted house and other farm ramblings

So the house is done! *Little happy dance* To be honest, I think we are all pretty surprised that we actually got it done before the rains set in... there just nearly wasn't enough drama in getting it done to make it feel normal! So here's a mostly done shot of the house. It looks even better now that we got things cleaned up and put back but it's dark outside, so I don't think taking a picture this minute would fully capture the glamour. ;)






Here's a candid shot of some of the sheep at evening time. Overall, they're looking really good. In fact, we should have babies sometime soon. Like, I should figure this out... soon!  It helped that we had such a wet spring. We haven't had to feed them hay this summer.





And our back door. This gets the most improved award of our yard for this year. Especially now that the roses are blooming. The sunflowers have added a lot... I'm hoping next year to do sunflowers along the other side too!

Brain Seminar

So not much writing this week! Mostly just busyness... You know, when you are busy and there's stuff worth writing about, that's when you are tired in the evening and too busy to write. :) Mostly this week consisted of gardening, admiring the view from OHSU, finishing up a bunch of little items that have been on the to do list for forever, sewing, caulking, painting.... It's been a good week, and to top it off, today the parentals and I went to a conference on neurological development and it was fascinating! Mostly about the stages children's brains go through and how it affects them later. And most importantly, what you can do about it if normal development doesn't happen. In short summary, here's what I learned.

1. God made our brains to be amazing.
2. Our brains can be retrained even after major damage has been done.
3. It can take a lot of work to retrain a brain. :)
4. The importance of cross training when young and doing it in the right order! ... ie, creeping, crawling, walking, running.
5. Cross training can be used at any age to retrain the brain
6.  Bumbos, child swings & walkers, and wraps should be used with caution.... Babies need to be able to move around freely in order to develop normally. That means lots and lots of creeping and crawling. 7. Also, using bumbos and walkers before the baby is able to do it normally puts undo stress on their bones. Carrying on the hips and creeping/crawling is the natural way for a babies hip joints to form.
8. The three most important stages of brain development should happen by the time the baby is 8 months old.

Well, that's all for now! I know there's more to report, and probably these points could be explained better, but it's bed time. My cousins have been having amazing results with this program so I'm excited to see how it will help our family. I'm planning on doing some more reading and I anticipate doing some active cross training soon as it should help with my remaining concussion issues. So I'm excited.

Packing up

I'm in California right now. Visiting friends in preparation for a wedding...

Yesterday in a fit of why don't we have any of our flowers inside, I went a picked some bouquets (neverminding the fact that they'll die while I'm gone) and then I picked a HUGE sunflower to put in my room. I am sure it helped with my packing. (If I could've found my phone, I would be posting a picture of it. But I have no clue where my phone went which is very odd. I know it's in the house and I'm starting to wonder if it got scooped up into the garbage. Argh.)

I have a love/hate relationship with packing. I love the challenge of it (And yes, I pronounce that in my head as Inspector Clouseau does with a mangled french accent, "SHALLANGE!)"  yet sometimes my brain feels like it might explode with all of the options that I overthink.

I consider the perfect packing job to consist of an outfit for every situation that I'm likely to come across and for each item to have been worn once (depends on the item, that is). In my mind, the perfect packing job can be achieved. But it does take practice and it involves learning over time what works best for you.

Over the years, I've learned that the one item I can't live without is the denim skirt. No matter what. One time I forgot that rule and spent the whole trip wishing I'd bought it. I also always pack a swim suit, cause you never know when you might end up in a hotel and it would be a crime to miss out on a perfectly good swimming pool.

So yup, back to California. It's warm here and there are fresh tomatoes and peaches. I love visiting, but I definitely enjoy coming back to Oregon! And now I'm watching Cheers (season one) which so far is pretty funny...

Why I like airports (imaginitive title, hunh?)

I like airports. For the most part that is. It probably helps that so far (Lord be praised) I really haven't had a bad experience in one. Maybe if I had to spend a week in a strange land in a strange airport in strange weather I wouldn't like them, but so far that hasn't happened, and I'm praying it never does.

But back to the main subject. I like airports and I've been thinking about why.

I think first off, I love the feeling of anticipation and excitement you get at an airport. If I'm going to go and pick someone up then I'm excited to see them.If they are here for a visit than I am full of anticipation for a wonderful time. If I'm going somewhere, than the excitement is self-explanatory and there's a quiet nervousness/anticipation of setting off into the unknown. And if I'm dropping someone off, well, that can be a little disappointing, but even then I am either a) excited for them b) have fond memories of our visits, or at the very least a little part of me thinks "If I really wanted too, I could just pick a flight and be off!" It provides options and I like options. And day dreaming.

Airports are also fantastic for people watching. And I like to people watch. One time Scott and I stood along the main througoughfare and counted how many people crossed in front of us at the Chicago O'Hare airport. I don't remember, but I think it was around 100 people in a couple of minutes. It was amazing.

It's also fanastic for people watching when you are waiting inside for someone to arrive. Slowly you see who's waiting for whom, see the excitement when they meet and then off they go happy and content.

Airports are also wonderful for running into completely random people that you know from somewhere else. It hasn't happened often, but it's still cool to think about how God must have orchestrated it. My friend Rebekah is visiting this weekend and ended up flying with a friend. Neither one realized that the other was heading to Portland this weekend.

Airports (on layovers) also give you a teeny sample of whatever state you are passing through. I've always wished that airports had an observation tower so you could climb up and see what the city/country looks like...especially if the weather's cloudy when you fly in,  but I'm guessing that will never happen. You also get to see different restaurants (well, sometimes) and different peoples.

One time when Mom and I were flying out of San Jose, the sewer truck backed up and bumped the airplane. Everyone had to unload while we waited for an engineer from Oakland to inspect the airplane and make sure that it was okay. We played card games the whole time. I'm thinking it was during rush hour so of course it took forever for the engineer to arrive.

I also love the Portland airport. I haven't done tons of traveling, but so far it's still my favorite airport. It's international, but not too big. It's modern, but it doesn't try to hard. Also, there always improving it, trying new things. There's also an amazing view of the runways, Mount Hood and the river from the top of the parking structure. We almost always park up there and spend a few minutes watching planes take off and land. 

We also once got a tour of the outside of the airport. That was pretty cool. Mom had flown in from California and she called me and told me to park the car. I did, and then brought in whatever boys I had with me. We then found out that the airport was having a special public relations day and they were offering free tours of the grounds. We all got in a bus with just one other person and the tour guide (who turned out to be an exec) and got driven all round. It was Awesome. That was the first time they had offered something like that, and as far as I know, the last time. So it was pretty special. I hope they do it again sometime and that we actually hear about it.

So the original picture is from picking up Rebekah on Thursday. She's visiting from Spokane this weekend and it's been loads of fun. We were supposed to have some girl time this evening, but as soon as we sat down, a certain someone called and it's now been an hour and she's still talking. Imagine that. I think I'm going to have to go kick her off!  I want to go to bed. Ha!

Leaving and eating

As I've written earlier, a friend is moving to Hawaii. And while I am rather peeved about her leaving me behind, I guess I'll let Laura go. Katie (the sister that's not moving) used her journalistic talents today and live blogged a few minutes from the day. I didn't know she was live blogging but I walked in at the right time in order to get a mention on her blog. (And no my dress wasn't that sexy, but I appreciate the awesomeness of the compliment) If she had kept live blogging it would say that we sat outside on the patio in the summer (finally!) weather and talked just as girls do. And instead of getting all sentimental (we just don't do that) we instead talked about stuff I cannot name here. I think we could've talked all day, but unfortunately I had a (argh) vision therapy appointment.

So that's it for right now. I'm trying so hard to get to bed earlier and I just have loads more to write because my life is so, erm, um, fascinating. But I will end by saying that eating homemade peach ice cream and beating your brothers at Ticket to Ride is a pretty good way to end the day.

Weekend Write Up

Last weekend was a pretty darn good one. On Saturday, it was a) not raining and b) not supposed to rain for 24 hours, so therefore I was able to work on re-staining our hot tub and outdoor table. They hadn't been stained in forever and were beginning to look horrendous; they certainly look better now! I finished them this afternoon and yes, it was nice to actually finish a project! So many times in life it seems like I have the absolute best intention of finishing something right away and then the last 10% drags on forever....

Later that day I went to a farewell party for a dear friend, Laura. She has the audacity to be moving to Hawaii next week and I"m going to miss her. Lots. Hopefully though, just maybe, a visit might happen. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Well, not really, just praying about it. :) I did get to spend the night and visit with her and her sister so that was some consolation. Every time we get together like this we always lament that it will never be the same next time, and then well, it is. Somehow we just don't seem to change. Or maybe we're just boring.

 Sunday we had glorious weather once again. After church, we headed over to a friends house for a barbecue. This place happens to be a sentimental gathering place from my childhood, well, teenage hood, and whenever we gathered there for civil war reenactments it was always, without fail, roasting. And yes, there's nothing "funner" than donning accurate 19th century clothing in 90 degree heat. But we were young then and it was all an adventure! This time, there were no hoopskirts to be seen and it wasn't as warm as it could've been then, but it was very pleasant. And I learned how to play Farkle. Also, my dear friend had her baby, so the whole day was good!

Parties and figs

So I just got back from a fantastic party and now I'm not feeling sleepy one bit. I've only just really started drinking alcohol regularly {edited to add: like, um, at the most, maybe one drink once a week} (and very moderately for anyone concerned reading this!) and I'm not sure if it winds me up or makes me sleepy. Right now, I'm casually browsing Mr. Boston while I brush my teeth to get an idea of what drinks I might like to try and just to try and wrap my head around what is in the commonest drinks.

I'm also in the middle of revamping my blog design. Sometimes there's a moment when you just realize "This has to change. Now."

After the party I came home and made some cranberry jelly (random, I know) and was glancing though the recipe descriptions in Joy of Cooking and I discovered that the deliciousness of  Northern Africa figs was Cato's clinching argument for invasion. Who knew that the cookbook could also be full of history lessons?

I also read tonight about spiders legs and how they avoid sticking to their own web.

I'm also still finding it fascinating that the amazing Jen of Conversion Diary started following me on Pinterest. I've been lurking on her blog for years so it makes the web seem all of a sudden a little smaller. And I'm feeling guilty that I've never commented on her blog before. I've just never figured out much of a groove for commenting on people's blogs unless I know them. Or maybe I'll stew on the post for a couple of days on a post and then come up with a comment but by then it feels too late...

The weather's just been freezing here. Our garden looks beautiful because the grass is still all green and our flowers are late, but man, would it just stop raining?! I know we are averaging about 10 degrees cooler than normal and I was talking to a friend in Sacramento and it sounds like they are about 15 degrees cooler. Crazy. Yesterday, I even spotted on lone rhododendron flower. They were supposed to be done flowering 6 weeks ago.

I realized today that I'm over 1/5 of the way done listening to War & Peace. I have a hard time listening to the average book on tape as it seems so inefficient, but War & Peace is so big to begin with, and I'm listening to it while I'm doing vision therapy, so it's all okay. I know I would be butchering the names in my head if I read it normally.

Mowing, strawberries and singleness

I mowed with a walk behind lawn mower for the first time. I know, big deal, eh? We've had a riding lawn mower since I was nine, so I'm sure at one point I "helped" someone mow when I was younger, or I may have helped mow a grandparent's yard at some point, but I don't remember, so it doesn't count. :) Our riding lawn mower died a month ago and after much family conferencing, we decided to try and get away without one for a while. It mows better but it definitely takes more time. And yes, the phrase that kept running through my head as I mowed was "I am a woman, hear me MOW..." Cheesy, I know.

What's humorous to me about this whole situation is that up 'til now, mowing has been regarded as a male only sport in our family. My allergies were always too bad to do it or I had more important things to do. ; ) But now that I can't weed for very long, the roles are getting reversed. The boys can weed and I can mow. And I had never realized just how fun it could be. I"m definitely indebted to the boys for all the weeding they're doing! Also, when I'm mowing the orchard (way harder than lawn), it makes for an awesome workout.

I love rice krispies with strawberries before bed :)

It's strawberry season and they're pretty amazing this year.

So far, we've just been eating them plain, but I think jam is in the near future.

This morning I did vision therapy outside because it was so nice. I've decided that doing vision therapy outside is about 200% nicer than doing it inside. This is also a pretty easy week, hence the blogging. ;) I've been listening to War and Peace which also makes it go faster.

And tonight I came across two good articles on singleness from both perspectives on the amazing and ever insightful blog Practical Theology for Women. The guys perspective was especially fascinating to me, as it wasn't a perspective I'd heard before.

Disposable Young Men

It isn't good to be alone

Buckeroo and other miscellany

At the buckeroo

I almost got this posted on Saturday...

So I'm still in the throes of buying a computer. I love the laptop I got from Dell except for the not-so -lovely pixel-y lines running up and down the screen. Makes it looked textured, which is nice for paper but not on your screen!

In other news, we went to the Buckeroo last night which is always fun. I love events where you get to peak into other "worlds" out there. Especially worlds that could've been fun to have grown up in.

Also this week we got asked to host a rock/hip hop music festival. We turned them down as it wasn't exactly family friendly music and they wanted to play music until 5am. We didn't want our neighbors to hate us! It made us think it would be fun to do some sort of festival someday. A couple of weeks ago I had read all about the Bonarroo concert in Kentucky and decided it would be fun to do something like that one day. It never occurred to me that it could be something we could do on our farm (smaller scale of course!) ;)

Eight not-so-little ramblings

So, most days I don't feel like writing much, thanks to point four of this post but today was one of those special days (I don't have to do it on Sunday) so here's a couple of weeks worth of thoughts* in one post.

1) Most importantly, I'm going to be a bridesmaid this August. Yay! Little happy dance for Jason and Ellen. :) This will be the third time I've been in a wedding in August and once again, I'll have to pay attention to tan lines. Nothing worse then a farmers tan with a bridesmaids dress. I think it would be so much easier for them to get married in June at Family Camp. :) And this will be, drumroll please, be my sixth time being a bridesmaid. I watched 27 Dresses recently, and yeah, I could actually relate somewhat. :-P When I get married, I'm just going to avoid the whole issue and elope.

27 dresses

2) And talking about chickflicks, I finally finished My Girlfriend's Boyfriend yesterday and with watching that and the royal wedding hubbub of last week, I had the perfect chick flick dream last night. You know, the kind where at the last minute you realize the guy who wants to marry you is actually, ooooh, a Prince! It was a little weird. I don't think I've ever had a dream like that.

Inspired by Pinterest, a felt flower.

3) I love Pinterest. If you, like me, have millions of bookmarks/favorites, you should seriously check it out. It's basically a visual bookmarking service. So instead of your link being a line of text that you may or may not remember what website it goes too, Pinterest allows you to "pin" a photo from the website onto a catagorized board. It's awesome for saving recipe, book, crafty, house, photo and really anything besides just plain text website links. There's also a main page (which is currently my home page) which feeds everyone's "pinnings" onto one giant board. It will be interesting to see how it grows. Based on the giant board, you can definitely tell that the majority of "pinners" are female, you know, with lots of decor, recipe, and clothing pictures.

One of my torture eye therapy charts. :)

4) Vision therapy. I go in for an evaluation next week. I'm very interested to hear what he's going to say. My neurologist told me that the eyes are the last to heal, and it might take up to a year. Bummer. And my concussion isn't healed until the eyes are healed. So no sports for me this summer. Unless a miracle occurs, which I'm all in favor of! Oh, well, I guess it's not all about me. The one advantage, and I'm not sure how much of an advantage it is, is that I loose my appetite thanks to it. I get full with half to a third of what I used to need, and I could probably eat vegetarian if I wanted too. It's nice not to be hypoglycemic anymore!

5) Posture exercises. I get to start doing them for my neck. My x-ray results came back and I have some degeneration in disk C5/6 and my neck doesn't want to arc forward correctly. I've always admired people who have perfect posture, and now I'm on my way! Of course right now I'm totally slouching, but you can't tell...

6) Ceiling fans. They are the bane of my Sundays... I'm seriously contemplating my sitting options at church.

7) It's spring. Well kind of. I have a million plants sitting on the porch waiting for me to plant. Or more accurately, direct my ever lovin' brothers to help me plant.

8) Music. I'm trying to listen to music more to give my eyes a break during the day. I have a list of about 25 bands, and a couple of times a week, I type one into Grooveshark and listen to some selection. I think I find the music world overwhelming. Plus, how many girl/guy songs can one listen too? There's just not much more to be sang that hasn't been sung. Feel free to leave me suggestions. :)

*And these are just the thoughts I can actually remember. My memory still ain't what it used to be. Good thing I can't remember everything, else this post would be a mile long.

Waiting, Weed and Water

So today I had my first MRI ever. I thought it was rather ironic that while I was filling out the standard "Why-are-you-here?" questionnaire, the refrain of the song that was playing included the phrase "conked on the head". Yes, God does have a sense of humor.

The waiting room was amazing. Let's just say that it looked like the Pottery Barn or Rejuvenations model for waiting rooms. My, it was fancy! I was actually sitting on a couch when I took the picture.

I was quite curious to see what the MRI would be like, and thankfully, it wasn't horrible. When they put the mask over my face and started to slide me in I had the feeling that you get when you are about to take off on a roller coaster. Which wasn't the feeling I was expecting but it was much better than feeling claustrophobic! The only thing I found annoying about it was how loud the banging could be, but I was quite entertained by the variety of banging and I mean to look up the different types. Sometimes the banging would be the same beat as a hymn and then I would have that hymn playing over and over and over for three minutes in my head. Entertaining for the first three rounds only.




Here is a picture of some local "street art" in Portland. When I first saw it, I'd just finished watching Banksy's documentary, so I actually noticed it. If you can't tell from the picture, it spells M_ddle Class with a hangman on the side. So far I had come up with two meanings for the missing "I", but as mom pointed out today, maybe it's supposed to say "Muddle Class"



Also, I thought you would all like a picture of the store that's recently moved in across from our chiropractors office. You can't really tell from here, but it's a weed store. Portland is weird.



And finally a shot from yesterday. Mom and I had to drop by Champoeg State Park while running errands and we took twenty minutes to walk down to the river. It was beautiful and felt so full of spring for 10 minutes and then, of course, it started raining.

Randomness

I baked a apple, cranberry and raisin pie today.

Amy from A Little Busy tagged me...

Apparently I'm supposed to come up with seven random facts about me. Hmmm.

I'm not sure how this is going to work but I'll try...

Oh, I know, I'm going to mimic Amy's themes for each one. Phew, that sounds easier.

A week later, here it is!

1. I am ticklish. Okay, no big surprise there.

2. I have brown hair with red highlights. My hair lightens in the summer and then grows out darker in the winter. My mom claims it looks like I have "roots". During the summer, if I'm lucky I get a little splotchy freckles if I'm in the sun a lot. I start looking for them in July because I love freckles! I do tan easily and I still have some tan lines and it's April. Of course I'm pretty pale to begin with so the darkest I get is about as light as my mom is naturally. I'm sure the reason that I tan well is that I could care less...

3. I've never made easy money like Amy. But I think one of my coolest possessions is a 1867 Springfield Rifle with a bayonet. I don't know why I'm not married yet. I mean, doesn't every guy want one of those?

4. I don't care for green shag carpeting either... in fact I was horribly allergic to the original shag carpeting in my current bedroom. It took me a couple of months to figure out why I didn't like hanging out in my bedroom. I'm a little slow at times.

5. I love sports. It doesn't matter how bad I am at them. And of course, now that our church is renting a gym every Sunday afternoon, I get a concussion and can't play anything. Argh.

6. I love traveling... If I had to pick one place to go it would be Egypt or England...

7. Since I got this concussion, I've discovered why people eat chocolate.

Voodoo. Shopping. And Donuts.

Today I got a chance to meet up with my good friend Laura. Our first stop was Voodoo Donuts. I hadn't been to one before and wanted to know what the excitement was about. When we got there, there was about 20 people standing outside in the rain in line. So glad I grabbed the umbrella last minute! Once it was finally our turn, I ordered a selection to share with the fam (and one for me to eat right then and now, of course!) Laura and I then had fun wandering around downtown Portland. Browsed a rich shop, a toy shop, a craft shop, a book shop, thrift shop, admired the library's architecture, and got some culture looking at this exhibition at the library. It was a fabulous afternoon.

Here are the Voodoo donuts in all their glory. The one on the left with the green squiggles is the voodoo doll donut. The donut with cereal on top is the Captain My Captain donut with Captain Crunch topping. It was actually a lot better then I thought it was going to be! I think my favorite tuned out to be the Portland Cream (Chocolate frosting with Bavarian filling). Mmm.

California and Christmas

So finally back to blogging. December was an adventure of different-ness this year. I got the glorious stomach flu right along with most of the family before we planned to leave for California. Which meant not much happened in the way of decorating or shopping. I think we were just lucky to get a tree!

Our trip to California was a success. Well, kind of. Despite our best attempts to not get sick in California, the people who hadn't go the stomach flu still got sick. And I won't bother you with all the gory details, cause I'm just that nice. During part of our trip we house sat a residence that had been decorated in the 1950's and never updated. I have a special post dedicated to it forming in my mind. We did have fun visiting with family and with the Walkers! Unforntunately I hardly got any photos of hanging out with family as the camera seemed to keep disappearing, but we did get a couple of pretty nice group shots.

On the left we are having our week early Christmas dinner with my grandparents and on the right we are pictured with the Walkers.

Christmas was a success, if you define it by good gifts, good food and good family and friends. I told some of my brothers to NOT wake me up in the morning, but at 6:15 one of my lovely brother's alarm went off (accidentally, I like to think). I was not pleased. *Picture Grumpy Sara Face here.* But there was no way I could go back to sleep right away so I got up with the brothers who were up and watched them open their stockings. We also opened presents (One of my favorites was a fondue pot from my brothers!) and had a delicious breakfast. Later in the day (after some much needed naps) we headed to a friend's house to eat food and play games.

On Monday we visited the Grotto. I had never been there and now I definitely want to go back when it's Spring-y or Summer-y. Our church choir sang in the Chapel as part of the Grotto's Festival of Lights and it was a lovely way to end the Christmas season!

Cookies and Cooking

Today Anna and I baked cookies in honor of St. Nicholas day. Jacob didn't get to help make them (he was folding laundry and doing chores) but he and Anna both got to cut them out. It was going to be one batch of cookies, but after making the first batch I realized that I had made the wrong recipe for rolled cookies. So, we started over again. What a shame. ;) More cookie dough to eat!

Sonya peaked in for a very candid shot. Not sure what Jacob was thinking in this shot. Hopefully Sonya will forgive me for including a picture of her...

I also made Pioneer Woman's recipe for Acorn Squash.

My friend, Agata, had posted about it on Facebook about a month ago and I finally made it. It was delish. I forgot until after I had made it that Agata suggested using only half the sugar. I did the full amount, and yes, it tasted like desert!

Stay at home days

Today was one of those lovely stay at home days. It was much appreciated after partying for a week and half with the Walkers.

In contrast to what I posted a couple of weeks ago, here's what I did today.

7:30-8 Get ready for the day. Went to bed to late since Ellen was leaving the next day.

8 - 9 Exercise and change into real clothes.

9-10 Jacob reads to me the Lord's Prayer from our little story book. We also review the fourth commandment. He's working his way memorizing the Deuteronomy 5 commandments. Say good bye to the Walkers. Clean room.

10 -11 Personal Bible time. Read through and study Jeremiah 2-3:5 in Youngs Literal Translation. Facebook and email. Although, I might have done those first. In theory, I tell myself to do Bible first then FB, but often I get, ahem, distracted. Realize that we haven't done family devotions yet, cause I got distracted doing mine. Call Andrew, Daniel and Jacob down (Mom's already there) and we sit down to work on memorizing the books of the bible by singing along to the Jamie Soles song. Dad conveniently walks by right when its time to pray so we all get to pray together. Then it's a Christmas song singing (Jacob needs to memorize some for Newell House) and we read about a saint from Reformation Night. It just happens to be the Pilgrims which ties in nicely with Thanksgiving last week.

11-12 Sewing, listen to Anna telling me about Thanksgiving. She's Sonya's 4 years old daughter. Sonya's our wonderful housekeeper. We couldn't do it without her. Jacob reads to Mom and then he/I work on his math. Mums leaves to go out to lunch with a friend. (She's driving all by herself!)

12-1:30 Cleaning out fridge of leftovers, lunch.

1:30-5:30 Sewing on Marie's dress. Most days I would probably be working on some misc project inside or outside. Alternate listening to Christmas music to Andrew practicing violin, Daniel practicing piano and Jacob tinkering on the piano. Lots of minute interruptions that would make this more boring then it already is.

5:30 -6:15 Work on dinner. Got off super easy. Mums brings home pizza. Made salad and cooked carrots. Supervise Andrew making cake.

6:15-7 Dinner, Couple of Dads arrive to coordinate HOOPS stuff with Dad

7 -8 Cleaning up, talking, finish hand sewing.

8-9 Quiet time. Knitting and watch the Office. Rare. Usually it seems like I'm working until 9.

9 -10 Cake time, internet. Say goodnight and prayers with Jacob. Start episode of Psych with family. Blog time. Laugh. Blog. Laugh. Blog.

The end. Well, kind of. I haven't gotten to bed yet. Who knows what might happen.

Realize that I haven't done my violin practice yet. Sigh.

Barefoot, Boys, Bands, and Books

A bunch of random notes from today -

Tyler and I went barefoot running again. This morning we ran in the "lowlands" and if we run a certain route we run right by the local fruit stand where Tyler works. This morning, we needed some lettuce so I bought some in the middle of the run. We then took turns carrying it back to the car while we were running, which was pretty darn nice of Tyler. He could have rightfully made me carry it the whole way. Good thing we run on deserted country roads, cause it honestly looked like we were "stealing" a bag of lettuce.

A couple extra boys arrived to spend the weekend with us while their parents are collecting grapes in Eastern Washington. I think by tomorrow night we will have four extra boys, er, young men, spending the night. Which gives us a boy:girl ratio of 5:1 or ten males to two poor, innocent, helpless (hardly!) females.

I then left to go run errands and visited 9 different stores between 11 and 2:30. Whew.

Made it home for a late lunch and then headed out to take Andrew and Luke D to their gymnastic teachers house. He lives about 20 minutes away and from his family's house there's an amazing view of downtown Portland. What's funny though, is that the houses on the property were all built before the land was cleared and none of the them take advantage of the view.

After that went and hung out with a friend for dinner.

Went with said friend to a benefit concert being put on at our church. I enjoyed the lyrics of the first singer and also enjoyed the band because it was so, um, different than what I normally listen too.

Also picked up a book from the library, A Natural History of the Senses. Laura apparently had to read it for her class, so thus it must be good. I liked the introduction... apparently Helen Keller could place her hand on the radio and tell the difference between the cornets and the strings. Who knew.. I wonder if ear buds work that way for deaf people?

Day Ramblings

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Went to watch the musical of Les Miserables with some girl friends this afternoon. Last year we attempted to read Les Mis all at the same time. It kinda worked. One friend cheated and read a lengthy (but abridged!) version, and the other friend and I read the same version. We may have started within weeks but I think we all finished months apart.

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Came home to find that Tyler had cooked an amazing dinner of Cajun Chicken Sausage & Corn Stew.

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Lately we've been using hand motions to help memorize Bible verses during school devotions.

Tonight, after dinner, we sang "The Son of God" for family devotions. Someone started using hand motions to match the words and as we came to the word "train" (as in "procession"), you could see half the family's thoughts turn to what clever hand motion they should use for the word "train". Three people did a chug-a-chug (think punching motions) and someone went Woo-Woo! with a hand pumping motion.

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After dinner, Scott entertained us with the account of a empty nursery flat bed truck that took about 20 tries to get up the hill on our road. The hill isn't steep at all which made it all the more amusing of hearing Scott imitate the whiiiiiinnnnnee of the truck going up the hill and then it zooming backward to wind up for another attempt. Scott happened to be working on the tractor in the field near the road at the time and asked them if they wanted help. They turned him down, but later he saw them using a Ford Escape to drag the truck up the hill.