Pre-birthday Party Pics

Lil' E taking it all in. She won't have a birthday party for awhile.

Big boy A surveying the goods. Btw, how cute are his new dazzle cloth shorts from Grandma?

Hi birthday boy! We sure do love you.

Back from The Empire State of the South & A Photoshoot

So Lil' A and I made it back from Georgia - which Wikipedia told me is also known as The Empire State of the South (so if you were wondering when we went to New York, we didn't). Long story short - we had a great time! Here's a few superlatives to hopefully condense what could have been a ridiculously long post.

Bram's Favorite Airport Distraction: My Dasani water bottle (the 10 or so books jammed into my backpack for him went untouched).

Best Meal: Pizza from Mellow Mushroom in Augusta. Mmmm.

Latest Development: Bram started saying "doggy" and started pulling up on things while we were there...including the raised crib he was staying in - uh oh!

Cutest newbie: Miss Eliza was as cute as can be. She is a pretty content baby when she is not hungry and currently is sleeping 4.5 hour stretches at night! She needs to teach Bram a lesson in melatonin release.

Most fun, expected event: Mini early birthday party for big boy Bram. My mom and sister's had warned me ahead of time, but Abram got to "open" a bunch of new toys (okay, so I opened them and he ate paper and continued looking for off limits toys like remotes, phones, and cords)! He pretty much got his late summer/fall wardrobe as well. We are so thankful!

Most Life-saving: Praise baby dvds on my phone, on the computer, and on the TV. It was our go-to babysitter when Abram needed containing while I cooked or cleaned or helped with baby E. And it worked wonders. It also worked amazingly during downtime at the airport and on the airplane.

Most Life-Changing: My newest nephew was born, James "Daniel"!

Abe's Favorite Pastimes at Aunt Julie's: cruising around furniture like a pro, clearing off any surface within reach, finding any and all cords including the ones we tried to hide, terrorizing the Morkie, Watson, by grabbing his beard/paws/fur, finding all bits of trash on the floor and treating them as his afternoon snack, talking/grunting loudly whenever baby Eliza made a peep (as if he was talking to her, or frustrated at the crying).

Best Airport helper: The Ergo carrier. This thing saved my back, my shoulders, and my sanity. It was a way to keep my kid contained and safe as we traversed through the airport on foot. It was a way to get him to nap on the airplane. It even got us out of the TSA body screening because I was carrying him in it. Okay, maybe we got out of it just because he was an infant. Whatever the case, having my hands free but also having Abram with me was so nice. I have used it in the airport before, but it made such a difference this time as I was without my hubby. I could go on, but I won't.

Best Welcome Home Present: My hubby went grocery shopping and made us dinner for us to chow on upon our arrival, specifically the Heavenly Homemaker's Cheesy Beef and Rice. And, he fed the baby and cleaned up dinner. It was the best way to come home after a long day of travel!

Most Frustrating Happenings: Mealtimes were stressful as Abram was so incredibly distracted by the baby crying, the dog barking, the other 3 adults there, or just his new high chair for the week. He would arch his back, fling food off his tray, have meltdowns, bat at the spoon causing food to spray all over the dining area, and clench his teeth. I think the kid ate a diet of mostly fruit this past week because it was all I could get in his mouth. Oh well.

Most Surprising Event: Abram was an angel on our last flight of the trip, a late afternoon flight from Atlanta to Baltimore. Seriously. I know he had to have been so wiped out from the terrible nights of sleep we had (he woke up SO MUCH), the early mornings of the week (he woke up 1-2 hours earlier than "normal"), the long day of travel (we had left my sister's place at 8:30am and already had spent 2 hours on a plane and 4 or so in airports), the lack of naps, and the lack of food (he refused the food pouches I had bought him that he loved on the trip down...figures). So here's what he did: I had him content with Praise Baby dvd on my phone until we had to turn off electronic devices before take off. Then I put him facing me in the Ergo Carrier and gave him a paci. Then, he laid his head down on my chest, fully awake. This kid does not do that. He is never still in the Ergo even when he's tired. When he falls asleep in the Ergo, it's after a lot of crying and bouncing and forcing his head down and lulling to sleep. So he laid there fully awake for 20 minutes or so and then fell asleep like that for the duration of the flight. He did not stir until the extra loud announcement to turn off all electronics for landing. And when he did wake up, he was so happy, content to stare at the women behind me and to my left. Smiling, talking, waving, bouncing, standing on my lap. What was so funny to me is that everyone on the flight thought he was so perfectly behaved. If they only knew. We love our kid, but he usually gives us a run for our money every minute of every day. My husband said that it was evidence that there is a God, and that He indeed gives grace. It's true! I am indeed thankful to God though for His grace during our travel days. I was pretty stressed about facing the traveling/flying process alone with my 11 month old, but we came through it better than I could have imagined.

Cutest Moment(s): Walking down by the Savannah River one evening after eating at Mellow Mushroom. Uncle P carried Abram (Baby A's only "guy time" all week) and I got some cute pics of that, while Julie pushed Ellie in the stroller for one of their first outings. Such a picture perfect evening walk. Well, except for the mugginess factor. The walk only lasted about 20 minutes because by that point, we were all drenched in our own sweat.

And, upon my return home, I got some new photos in the mail from a family shoot we did in June. I'm attaching a few of those and I'll post some Georgia-themed photos later.

Island Baby

I had to write a quick post to a announce the birth of my sister Sarah's adorable baby boy, Daniel! Mr. James Daniel was born this past Friday in Honolulu. My sister gets a Mommy Award for being in labor 40+ hours.

Sweet Peach

Lil' A and I made it to Georgia. Traveling was an ordeal as expected, but hanging out with this little cutie makes it all worth it.

Georgia Bound

You all remember I announced my precious niece was born July 30th, the same day my hubby and I were wandering around DC looking for somewhere to stay with power after the storms? Well, I get to meet Little Miss Eliza in person tomorrow at her home in Georgia, where Lil' A and I will be staying with my sister and her husband for one week. Now, I'm not too keen on travel, especially air travel. Pretty much being in any kind of moving vehicle makes me feel queasy. Add an 11 month old to the equation and subtract a husband, and you've got one hyperventilating slightly stressed mama. Breathe. I'll be sure to take pictures and update when I can!

Abode Aberrations

It just comes with the territory that moving in to a house that's been around for over 6 decades will have some eccentricities. Over the past 2 weeks, we've discovered quite a few quirks around here. Sometime I'll have to show you the normal parts of our home (it isn't all weird), but here's a glimpse of some things that have kept us scratching our heads around here.

In two of the three bedrooms we have windows that span a corner...however, the window is not centered on the corner. Also there are 2 separate curtain rods, one for each wall. Hence the unmatching curtains for the moment.

Turning to your right from the weird windows, we have this thing. We have absolutely no idea what this is. When you pull the chain, nothing happens. If you have any insight, please share it. We sleep next to this thing every night and we'd like to know if it's useful.

Closer shot. It's so nice that it is painted to match the rest of the room. Just lovely.

Let's make our way into the kitchen. There's my hubby doing dishes. Awww, how sweet. Notice the wonderfully unique tiled window welcoming you into the kitchen. You can't see through it, so you'll just guess at what's for dinner. That is, until you walk through the door way immediately to your right. I guess it's purpose is for looks only?

But before we actually enter the kitchen, notice the lovely view from dining room to cul-de-sac. The curtains are definitely dated, but that's not what this is about. See below.

Here's a close-up of the lace trim on that window. Now, who doesn't love a repeating cat motif on lace? Now, back to the kitchen.

Why yes, he's still doing dishes. I have caught myself a good man. Oh, but what's that in the middle of the kitchen? It's the laundry room, of course!

Here we are smack dab in the middle of the kitchen. You know what they say: location, location, location. It's weird, but it's handy!

Here's our lovely, old stove. Can you see what's piqued my curiosity here? Look closely.

It's an outlet! And yes, it's in working order. Strange, yes, but it's been a handy place to charge my cell phone. I'm certain that wasn't its original job description, but it works for me! As long as I'm not using the burners.

Just in case I can't charge my phone on top of the oven, I've got a whole bar of outlets behind the sink! I tell you, there are at least 5 outlets there, though only 3 made it into the picture.

Okay, well, let's go ahead and make our way down from the kitchen to the basement. Do you see anything funny?

Why yes, that is a pencil sharpener you see! Finally. All those times I've been walking to the basement and just needing somewhere to sharpen my pencil. Well, those days are over! But seriously, I haven't seen one of these puppies since 5th grade.

For our exercising pleasure, the owner has included a work out area in the basement. How kind.

Glass jars and lids nailed to the ceiling boards in the basement. What, your house doesn't have these in the basement?

And if you look in the upper part of this picture, you see 3 clothes lines that actually span the entire length of the basement. They can be used after you carry your load of laundry down from the kitchen, that is.

Well, we've come to the end of our tour. But don't bother locking the door behind you. You can't. No, really. The lock doesn't reach. But before you hatch any plans to come toilet paper the inside of our house in the dead of night - be warned - we've got a deadbolt.

Yogurt Dough

This post definitely fits in the musings side of this blog. I just love this versatile dough so I thought I'd share it with you. It can be found in Sally Fallon's Nourishing Traditions and on The Heavenly Homemaker's blog.

The Best Part:

• only 4 ingredients
• it's easy to make
• you make it the night before, so it's ready to go the next day with no prep
• you can use whole wheat flour
• soaking the dough breaks down the phytates in the flour making it more digestible
• no yeast...can't mess up this dough!

Ingredients:

• 3 1/2 cups flour (I use white wheat flour...I like King Arthur brand)
• 1 tsp sea salt
• 1 cup butter, melted and cooled
• 1 cup yogurt

Directions:
Cream butter and yogurt. Mix all other ingredient in until a nice dough has formed. Cover bowl and leave in a warm place for 12-24 hours.

I've used this for pizza, quiche, and empanadas although I know I've just tapped the surface of possibilities for this dough. My sister-in-law has stuffed the dough with fruit to make a breakfast or dessert. And I love the flavor of the dough. It has a 'bite' to it, I think because of the yogurt. So healthy and easy!

First Impressions

Two weeks in and here are our first impressions of the Maryland/DC metro area:

• Culturally diverse: It's fun to look at the congregation at church and see so many different nationalities represented. Also interesting to overhear conversations in the grocery store. I've heard Spanish, French, Chinese, different dialects of English, South African, etc.
• Traffic jams
• Fast-paced: So much so I get stressed out almost every time I go to the grocery store...if I pause to consider an item, I feel like I just inconvenienced 5 other shoppers.
• Slow traffic signals: I mean we're talking at least a 3 minute wait sometimes...to turn right! My friend Whitney who lives down the highway in Alexandria, VA put it this way "I can check my email at a red light and respond to it...and the light is still red."
• Pedestrians everywhere
• Jay-walkers...even with pedestrian crosswalks everywhere
• Touchy drivers: I may have already been honked at several times. I'm sure my Oklahoma tags help the situation.
• Confusing street signs: Streets seem to change name here quite frequently at intersections and streets tend to have 2 or 3 different names. Very confusing.
• Everything is green and there are trees everywhere. 
• Socioeconomic changes:  it seems in Maryland you can round the block and go from a run-down, poor area with strip malls and pedestrians everywhere to a very old, rich area with fine houses and manicured lawns.

All that said, we have really enjoyed our time here so far! We definitely still feel green to the area. I definitely feel like a fish out of water in public, and probably look like one, which begs the question: I wonder what these metropolitan folks think of us native Oklahomies? I think I'm fine with not knowing for the moment.

Neighborhood Tour

I went on a brief tour of our neighborhood last night and captured a few pics of some of the aftermath of the Friday night storm before all the debris gets cleared away. See my last post for details on our experience last weekend. The very old and very large trees here combined with the 90mph (up from 75mph early reports!) meant a lot of tree damage. Just take a look for yourself below. It's hard to believe I took all these pics during a 5 minute drive through our neighborhood's main streets.

A house 2 doors down from us had this lovely pile of debris

Notice the white/green fire hydrant for scaling

This felled tree was about twice the length in total that you see here. I'm so grateful it didn't fall on top of that house.

Debris along a green belt in our neighborhood. Look closely and see the two broken trees. Also, the greenery along the curb is not a bunch of shrubs...it's all fallen debris from the damaged trees above it!

This tree in the green belt was completely uprooted. For scale, the root system you see there is higher than a compact car if one were parked beside it.

A Whirlwind of Events

This post may fall more in the mishaps category than in the musings, but there are definitely some of both. Last week was a blur of trying to set up the house, hunting down grocery stores and markets, and attempting to keep an emotionally edgy infant happy and well fed and rested.

Friday afternoon, our house still looked something like this:

Box City

And Abram was happy for awhile doing this:

Praise Baby dvd = 30 minutes uninterrupted time unpacking

We closed up shop Friday evening around 10pm, settled into bed, and were excited about the morning's plan to go get pancakes in downtown DC and maybe hit up a farmer's market for fresh produce. Here's where the real whirlwind happened:


Just as we drifted off to sleep, the DC/Maryland/Virginia area (known as the "DMV") was blasted with a massive storm system complete with hurricane force winds (clocked at least at 75mph), hail, lightning, and rain. We heard lots and lots of banging and hung tight for about 30 minutes until the storm died down. Almost immediately we lost power. We slept the night in our muggy house and then got up and investigated. Huge uprooted trees sprawled across neighborhood streets. Our storm door was stuck open having been broken by the winds, a massive broken limb loomed threateningly over our car. We made a plan to go to DC and get breakfast as planned. We needed to get to some AC and we needed food (now unable to cook with no power). It also happens that the DMV was/is having record breaking high temperatures of around 100 degrees, heat index higher than that. Our stale air house was no place for a baby. Reports were that 3 million people on the East Coast lost their power. The power companies were loaded down with just damage assessment alone, having to retrieve live power lines wrapped around trees, cars, and telephone poles before even attempting to restore power to customers.

Well, it seemed that everyone else had the same idea. Our whole town was seemingly without power and everyone was on the road, taking shelter from the heat in their cars. Jon said we were "first world refugees", wandering aimlessly in our cars on streets and in neighborhoods just trying to go somewhere, anywhere, following and being followed by hundreds of other cars. We made it to DC to get breakfast several hours later. Here's Jon and Abram in line at Market Lunch restaurant in DC's Eastern Market:

Jon was unable to use his trimmer or clippers after the power loss so was sporting the Mountain Man look here

The pancakes made with blueberries and buckwheat ("BlueBucks") were definitely a highlight of my day. We gobbled down this breakfast/lunch and headed to grab some caffeinated beverages at a nearby coffee joint. We were also all about time-wasting - the roads and highways were jam packed and we were pretty sure our power was still out.

Here's Bram at the coffee shop. He's amusing himself with his foot in his right hand and his water cup in his left. He was a little worn out by this point in the day.

We headed home after leaving the coffee shop to check on our house to see if by some miracle our power had been restored. Sadly, it had not. We packed up everything we would need for the night and threw all our refrigerated goods into a cooler and headed back out. Feeling very unsettled and vagabondish, we started making calls to our only friends in DC to see if we could take shelter for the night at their houses. Jon's colleagues reported they were also out of power. Our main contact at church was already housing several other people that night. We felt out of options.

I texted my friend Whitney who I knew lived in Virginia to see if she had power before I remembered she had left for a Florida vacation the day before. She was not even aware there had been a storm at the time. Jon called our friend Rob (the one with the full house) to ask for phone numbers of church members we could call and beg for help. I texted my friend Kelsey just a plea for prayer that God would provide a place for us. Having only been in the DC area 6 nights, we felt pretty alone in this swarm of people with nowhere to go. Texts were flying from my phone to other family members and friends from home in OK for another reason as well:

Very far away from the hubbub of the DMV, one very special girl was born Saturday afternoon in Georgia. Meet my niece Eliza "Ellie" Grace! My sister Julie had gone into labor about the same time we lost power Friday night and gave birth to this adorably sweet girl.

Ellie definitely brightened our little family's day that day. Ellie is evidence that the world is bigger than just me or my problems. She served as a reminder that God is good and He is working in people's lives all over the world. He took care of Ellie and He would take care of us. I needed to trust Him that day.

I'll spare you from every little detail, but just a few hours later we had not just one, but 6 or 7 places to stay that night! Whitney's church small group had 3 families that offered up houses in VA; Kelsey's sister-in-law opened her home in MD. Two families from our new church offered places to stay after Rob sent out an email. My sister Sarah's friend from highschool opened up his home in downtown DC. 

Exhausted and tired, we battled traffic to get to downtown DC to stay at our temporary home. My sister's friend Matthew was out of town, but his wife graciously welcomed us in to their guest bedroom. We were able to park our car at their underground private parking space, grab food at a nearby diner, let Abram play with their cute puppy, do laundry, take showers, and I was happy to get on the internet to see more pictures of my precious niece. We got decent sleep and were able to make it to church the next morning. Our church also happens to be in downtown DC as well, so our temporary home was even conveniently located. 

Sunday afternoon we headed home to check for power again. It was still off, so we sat down to eat lunch in our kitchen and make plans. As we were eating, the AC kicked on...our power was back! It also happened to be my husband's birthday. He declared, "What a great birthday present!". I'm thankful to be married to such a grateful guy. Speaking of gratitude, this weekend was really a test of my heart attitude. I battled to be thankful to God for the circumstances we found ourselves in. Thankful for what He had already given, thankful for the lessons in flexibility and helplessness He was teaching me over the weekend, thankful for the mercies He graciously gave me to get through each day/night, thankful for the biggest blessings that are not contingent on life circumstances, like salvation in Christ and peace with God.

Even though I'm honestly relieved to have the last 2 weeks of my life over with (moving cross-country, moving in/getting acclimated, power outages), I hope to honestly be able to thank God for the hardships this weekend. I'm asking for grace to believe a truth I read in the book Choosing Gratitude by Nancy Leigh DeMoss this morning:

"I have learned along the way that, regardless of how I may feel, anything that makes me need God is (ultimately, in the truest sense) a blessing. Be it disappointment. Be it physical suffering. Be it mental or relational anguish."

The reason hardships are a blessing is the fact that they make me remember that I need God everyday. This weekend was another time in my life among several lately that I couldn't fix the problem on my own. I couldn't make our power come back on. I couldn't call a nearby friend and go to their house, because we don't have any nearby friends (yet!). I couldn't come up with any good solution to the predicament we found ourselves in. All I could do was pray and ask for help. It was a reminder that I need God everyday, not only on days with power outages. I need Him today to give me grace to persevere in the faith, to keep a spiritual mindset, to choose faithfulness over faithlessness.

And because I can't help it, here's a hot-off-the-press picture of Ellie snoozing peacefully at home. Could she be any cuter?