I’m Baaaaaack!

**cough, cough** Whoa, the dust around here is something else!

Let's see...can I even remember how to do this?  What? There’s a new format on Blogger?

Apparently it’s been a while since I last blogged!

Somewhere back during the summer I fell a little behind on my blog posts and couldn't seem to get caught up.  Then I began babysitting our friends baby a few days a week, and that combined with the drop-off and pick-up schedule of our younger son's afternoon Kindergarten class hasn't left me with a whole lot of free time to keep up here (or anywhere else, truth be told).  Some days it’s all I can do to keep the laundry caught up and dinner on the table.

However, I am still in the bloggy neighborhood and have so much to share...please don't hold my temporary blog negligence against me? 

One of the things I so enjoy about blogging is that folks can just pick right up where they left off before, and that’s just what I intend to do.

So that I don't completely overwhelm myself right off the bat, this one will simply be a braggy bloggy post about some more recent happenings.

To start with, I've been doing a whole lot of this these days while waiting in school parking lots and to relax late at night.

Among our former youth group kids from recent years, there's been something of a baby boom, and I have found the need to have something to take to all the showers.

This was one of my favorite color schemes to work up in the ripple pattern. The reddish looking stripe is actually a very beautiful magenta yarn by Vanna (the Vanna, from Wheel of Fortune). It’s been ages since I’ve watched her show, but I know this…that lady knows how to select colors and texture when it comes to yarn!

Here was a fun little acorn cap I made for Baby Jack using the blackberry salad stitch:

I'm not sure why, but I’ve found that of my more relaxing past-times these days is watching a good DVD series put out by BBC while crocheting in the evenings.  Somebody pass me some Geritol...I think I'm gettin' old!

I’ll admit, it’s kind of a strange feeling when the youth group teens that you worked with way back are suddenly getting married and having kids left and right.

We comfort ourselves with the fact we've not yet had a second generation come through our class at church. I hear that's when it's all over, haha.

* * * *

A few days ago, I cleaned out Judah's 'folder' from school (which is the Kindergarten version of the pony-express) through which we receive any important notifications from his teacher.

Among the 'graded' papers we pulled out were these gems:

Around Halloween he began drawing these like crazy.

Bats adorned EVERYTHING. 

As we moved into winter, a blank house was sent home and the children were supposed to use found objects at home to transform their papers into gingerbread houses.

In an entry I’ve entitled, “Unclear on the concept” this was what he came up with:

He insisted he was supposed to have cotton balls for snow, but the rest he wanted to do with his little watercolor paint set.  I offered grains, beans, cereal and even red hots candies, but nope, he was going to do the rest in watercolors.  (I could hardly argue, as I can still remember the thrill of using one of those cheapo watercolor sets as a child.  All the little ovals set into the white tray and filled in with bright cakes of color and the brush lying down the center ready to pour your imagination onto paper.)

So the cotton balls could resemble snow, and I give him kudos on the snowflakes which he painstakingly made with his newly acquired skill for writing the letter Y, with a brush that wasn’t exactly fine tipped. 

The rest, however, was completely freestyle.  Orange birds (because, as we all know, there are just so many of those out at Christmas time), a self portrait of him standing beneath the window along with what I first thought was a cat, but he informs me was his puppy.  And for reasons completely unknown to me, there is also an octopus.  It’s brown.  All in all, quite ‘gingerbread house-ish’, don’t you think?

I took a photograph of his amazing Nativity Scene around Christmas, but being that it’s not with the rest of my photo files, I have a sinking feeling that it was on my old cell phone which is no longer in service.  The bat-capes on Joseph and some of the wise men were awesome.

By far, however, our favorite one was this:

I like teacher!

She even gave him a sticker for his creativity.

I’m thinking that in her haste to correct two classes worth of work, she probably didn’t look at it very closely.

Which is probably a good thing.

* * * *

This past week, Judah received notification that the story he entered in his Young Authors competition at school was selected as one of the winners to be published!

"Here's your camera bag, mom...can you take a pitcher of me with my award by this wall?"

Not sure that smile can stretch much further across his face, but he was soooo proud.  “It’s gonna be in a book?  A REAL book?”

My kindergartener got published before me.  **sigh**

* * * *

Jericho recently wrote a paper on why Creation should be taught as a viable explanation for the Origin of Life.  It was for an Honors English project, and included a visual presentation along with his speech. 

He ended up getting 198/200 points possible (which was great), but what I was most proud of was that he stood up for what he believes, and the class even applauded him at the end of his speech!

So proud of those boys!

I also have to tell a good one on Jeff.

Back when we first moved to this desert (14+ years ago now), Jeff worked at a trucking company as a supervisor.  At that time, it was located just down the highway from a ‘gentlemans club’ (of the type that true gentleman would not set foot in).  There were several times where some of the guys at work would invite him out after their shift to drink and frequent that seedy establishment, but always, he politely declined.

This brought about a lot of good-natured teasing on the docks at work, and earned him the nickname Ned Flanders.

When he eventually got back into teaching, his reputation preceded him.  In fact, over the years I would venture to say that his integrity and ethics have only gotten stronger.  He’s a keeper, that one.

In fact, there have been numerous times in which his boss at work has caught him in the act of doing good deeds, and not because he was trying to make it known, but because she just happened to take his same route to school where that morning he was helping a student’s mom change her tire in the rain on the way to work, or happened to walk by his classroom another morning before school and saw him praying for a fellow teacher whose wife was going in for surgery.

More recently, while walking through the student commons area where his students were eating lunch, he stopped to chat with a proctor who seemed like she was having a really rough day.  Turns out she was having some problems at home and felt like her whole world was falling apart.  Jeff, caring guy that he is, stopped right there and prayed for she and her husband.

A few days later, he saw her again and asked how things were going.She brightened, “They’re going great!  We’ve had some really good communication lately, and things are on the upswing.  In fact, I’ve even given up smoking!”

A couple weeks later, Jeff bumped into her yet again in one of the outdoor hallways during passing time and stopped to ask how she was faring.  “Marriage wise, things are great, but my horse (which she’d apparently had for years) died unexpectedly, and it was so hard on me…well, I took up smoking again.”

Now Jeff had been filling me in on these little updates from time to time.

But the latest and best one happened this past week.  I’d asked Jeff to swing by the bank on his way home, and as he was coming out the door, he glanced up and saw that same coworker step out of her car, flick a cigarette to the ground and grind it into the pavement. 

She stepped up over a curb onto the sidewalk and spotted Jeff standing there.  Rolling her eyes she joked, “Man, it’s like Jesus just caught me smoking!”

Bwahahaha!

While we do try to live our daily lives in a humble and Christ-like manner, and are pleased when anyone recognizes in us glimpses of the God we serve, we’d be the first to tell you that we are not perfect.  We stumble.  We fail.  Being human, we consistently fall far short of the mark.

We’re just average folks, trying to let our lights shine in a dark world.

And hey, if that makes us a little strange…so be it.

Of course, there is the very real possibility that we truly are just…strange.

It’s just how we roll.

An Awe-mazing Birth Experience

Disclaimer: you may wish to skip this post if you are eating. It's not graphic, but, well...it's a birth story.

Over the summer we tried to go on vacation a couple of different times, but our attempts were thwarted at every turn.

We finally managed to go out-of-town on a little weekend getaway with our niece S.

The following are a series of photos I took in the water in response to a special request by Judah.

You see, before he was born, I had decorated our bathroom with pictures taken of Jericho and daddy in various pools while we were on vacations over the years. The pictures had long since come down, but when Judah spotted them in a box in my craft room, he said, “That’s not fair! You don’t have any pictures of ME and daddy in the water” and actually started to cry. (Actually I have a ton, but they're all digital and not yet in albums or picture books, and so he never sees the evidence.)

Knowing we had nearly 10 years of family life together before he came along is a hard pill for our Judah to swallow, and it seems he wants to make sure everything is even-steven.

At the end of a hot but very fun day, we were hanging out in a yogurt shop when we received a series of three text messages.

The first was that our nephew J, a grown man and father of 3, had been in a motorcycle accident that crushed his foot. The second was that another neice K had been in a Sea Doo accident with her dad, and she was en route to the hospital with what they suspected could be broken ribs. The final text was from her older brother to inform us that his third child was due to be born soon. His wife was in labor.

The mother-to-be, our nephew’s wife, had already had a couple of false alarms, so we were a bit hesitant about cutting things short until we knew for sure what we were dealing with. We were two hours away at the time.

Things were progressing rather slowly with her labor pains, so we opted to go ahead and stay another night and head home early the next morning. This turned out to be a good idea, because labor came to a screeching halt at some point in the night.

The prego mama’s father and stepmom live 18 hours away, and the daddys family were all vacationing 4 hours from home. They, too, were a bit hesitant about cutting their vacation short unless they were 100% sure it was not another false alarm, as my sister-in-law had already been to the hospital 3 times only to be sent home within a couple of hours.

In fact, with their daughter K having been in the Sea Doo accident on the lake they couldn't have left right then even if they'd wanted to, as she hadn't even been seen at the hospital yet.

Meanwhile, in two other hospitals hours away, yet another of my sister-in-law’s (and her husband!) were both in separate hospitals for two very serious conditions, he had been in long-term care but had just taken a turn for the worst, and she having just had surgery to remove a cancerous portion of her lung with recovery being rather dicey. We honestly thought we might lose them both that weekend, but by God’s grace did not.

There we were on vacation, supposed to be relaxing and 'getting away from it all'…but life doesn’t stop just because our family goes on vacation. Babies being born don’t wait for ‘convenient’ (to us) times. Life happens!

We went to bed rather heavy-hearted that evening, after praying for all these extended family members who were all in various hospitals all at the same time and then the baby on the way.

Early the next morning, we rose early and got ready and headed for home. On the road we got the call, “Things are moving along again and starting to pick up speed. We don’t have anyone to stay with the kids, and I’m going to end up being alone at the hospital…I'm scared.” and the mama-to-be was crying.

Less than a year earlier, she’d lost her own mother in a tragic car accident. It was a difficult time for this little gal, and my heart went out to her.

After informing her we were already halfway there, it was decided that her husband would meet Jeff and the boys at the hospital so that Jeff could take their kids back to our house until the baby was born and her husband (our nephew) would join his wife and I in the delivery room as soon as the car seats were all switched over.

Here were a couple of the photos Jeff messaged to us at the hospital. Jericho and Judah did a great job of entertaining their cousin’s kids. They had a blast, and didn’t seem to have a clue as to what was going on at the hospital.

Little B, holding the soccer ball, was a bit confused as to what having a baby sister was all about. When they would ask where the baby was, he would pull up HIS shirt, haha. He would soon fall immediately in love with his squalling baby sister.

I brought my camera into the hospital, ready to document the entire thing for them and to be there to talk the little mama through it.

I’d also brought along my crochet bag, not knowing how long things were going to take, but ended up just visiting, our nephew reminiscing about hilarious childhood memories to try and distract his wife from her labor pains.

I had to chuckle at the little mama, posting minute-by-minute updates to Facebook.

We tease her mercilessly about her phone habit, as she even carried her phone with her to the altar at their wedding (even though everyone they loved and cared about were there in the room with them) because she couldn’t wait to change her Facebook status to Mrs. S.

Kids of this generation, haha!

All I know is that the very last thing I would have thought about during my own child birth experiences would have been giving real-time, blow-by-blow accounts of the experience to anyone not in that room with me!

Meanwhile, the baby’s father was kicked back in his easy chair in the corner trying to keep warm while his wife did hard labor. “It’s a bit chilly in here” he complained once or twice.

None of the women in that room bothered to acknowledge his complaints knowing what all the mama was going through.

After the flurry of medical personnel had come through, indicating that things were getting much closer, I invoked my auntly privilege (having babysat that daddy for years when he was a kid) and told him it was time he got his carcass up out of that chair and ‘helped’ talk his wife through the remaining stages of delivery.

Upon viewing things up-close and personal, this was his reaction:

I actually got worried at one point that he might faint.

You hear about that happening sometimes.

Actually, he did pretty well.

Childbirth…it’s not a pretty business. But oh…the reward waiting on the other side!

A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world. ~John 16:21

Awww…so precious. Little Baby B!

So very miraculous and amazing.

Truly, every time a baby is born, I marvel anew at the absolute miracle that babies are!

How amazing it is that our Creator designed for them to live in a safe, cozy enclosed womb where they were nourished by the placenta through the umbilical cord one moment…to suddenly breathing with their lungs and being in the big, bright, noisy world for the first time. Incredible!

And did I mention precious?

Little B was born a tiny 5 lbs. 3 oz. She is a petite, dainty little thing, but when you’re born to a mom who weighs about 95 pounds soaking wet, that’s probably a good thing.

In the end, between Facebook updates and text messages, Nana and Tata did cut their vacation short. Their daughter had sprained her ribs in the Sea Doo accident, and though she was in pain as bad as if they’d been broken would otherwise be fine with some rest. They did their level best to get to the hospital in time.

They made it literally moments after little B was born, and here they got to see their first little granddaughter for the first time.

“Wow…that was hard work!” the dad was heard to say as he guzzled down a bottle of juice in his chair.

And once again, all the women in the room ignored his comments.

We well knew who had done all the real work in that place, haha.

:: :: :: ::

In the days that followed, there were lots of visits in which we all got to take turns holding our little Baby B.

Mama D and Baby B.

Awww…so sweet!

This is one of my faves. Big Brother B was holding his baby sister when she suddenly started crying. Brother B and our Judah were like, “What happened? What is it doing? What is going on?” They weren't quite sure what to make of the squalling little thing.

Then, a couple of days later at a family gathering we all took turns getting to hold little Baby B.

Here Nana T and Great-Aunt K are cooing over the baby.

Sweepy witto booboo.

GG finally got her turn. She’d been in and out of other hospitals a dozen times in the previous week, what with her daughter’s surgery and her son-in-law’s turn for the worse. To relax and hold her precious little great-granddaughter was like balm to the soul.

Awww, those cutesy little baby toes and fingers in Great-Grandma’s hands

Great Uncle Jeff got his turn

And finally, Great Aunt Becky got hers…

…taking Anne Geddes style photos in the same flower pot that we took pics of Baby B’s older brothers when they were newborns.

What a delightful bundle of joy and blessing little Baby B is!

Lovely Bits of Randomness

So, one of the many projects finally completed this summer was decorating my entryway wall. It’s about time, especially considering that we moved into our current home in October of ‘08.

I was excited to finally do something with that box of mismatched frames that were taking up space in my craft room, and had just pulled out the camera to take a photo of the completed project for this here blog when I discovered that this would be next to impossible.

My guys think they’re hilarious photo-bombing my pictures.

This was the best shot I could get of the finished product.

When looking at it on my camera viewer, something about it struck me as oddly familiar. I got a strange sense of deja vu, like I’d seen something similar once before.

E.T. Phoning home? Nooo…something else.

Some cliffhanger movie I watched as a kid? Nooo…

Oh, yes…I think this might be it!

Michaelangelo’s Creation of Adam.

Recreated via photo-bombing in my very own living room.

:: :: :: ::

I went antiquing with my sister-in-law K this past summer, in search of some specific milk glass pieces to add to my collection.

Our niece K had told us about a large antique mall not far from where she lives. The owner had apparently bought out several smaller antique stores and combined everything very nicely into one location.

So, after a wonderful lunch with K and her kiddos at a little Italian Bistro, we went over to check this place out.

And we were not disappointed! They had some beautiful pieces there. Some were estate collections of specific styles of furniture that included several matching pieces, from hutches, to highboys to sofas, and everything was in beautiful shape. Never had I seen so many marble topped collections in my life. If I’d had a few extra hundred lying around, I totally would have redecorated my living room that day with a tufted sofa and chair collection.

However, I did not.

Which was probably a good thing, as the furniture was a bit overpriced in general.

Their dishes and other knick-knack type collectibles were another story…very reasonably priced.

The store was organized beautifully, keeping all like items grouped together in one area.

At one point while browsing, my sister in law was talking to me, and then noticed I wasn’t beside her anymore, having homed-in on this heavenly sight from clear across the room:

Milk glass heaven.

I may have squealed in glee. Perhaps even did a happy dance. I’m pretty sure I even heard strains of the Hallelujah Chorus playing over the sound system.

I tell you, looking through that collection was like hitting the motherlode!

I’m not gonna lie...I went a bit crazy. I totally blame it on the heat in that building…the A/C unit was down and it was easily 110 degrees in there. We were working up a sweat just lifting items off the shelf to the nearby table.

A few beautiful pieces were added to my collection that day. Specifically the plates stacked on the table.

Alas, though I have spent many weeks worth of days perusing numerous antique stores all over the great American Southwest, I have still not found the holy grail of my Milk Glass quest, the cake pedestal second from the top on the left:

I believe this photo is of Martha’s own personal collection which she probably keeps in her prop department for photo shoots and doesn’t actually use in any of her homes.

Which is a real shame if you ask me.

Here is a close-up of the puffy teardrop beauty, once featured in an ‘08 online auction. Which I learned about approximately 2.5 years too late.

But one day…one lovely day, I will finally find one of these.

And I will make an elegant and delicious cake to serve upon it in celebration.

And will take lovely photos for my blog.

Our (Belated) Anniversary & A Snake Story

In Mid-June, Jeff and I celebrated our 18th Wedding Anniversary in what has come to be our annual tradition, dinner out at King’s Fish House. Yummo.

We had just come back from our trip to June Lake, the day before, and were happy to get away without the kids for the first time in a long while.

Around 10 that evening, we had just returned home from a long, leisurely evening spent perusing our favorite bookstore (did I mention kid free?) when we got a frantic call from Jeff’s niece.

“Can you come over? Please? We’ve got a huge snake in our house!”

A snake?? At their house? Wait, did she say IN their house?? Oh, merciful heavens!

She and her mother live a few miles away from us in a more rural part of our desert (rattlesnake country), and folks out there are known to get snakes in their yards from time to time.

Knowing we were celebrating our anniversary, she had first tried animal control and the local police…but in that area, there isn’t anybody that could help. Their dogs were going ballistic and her mother (my sister-in-law) was still recovering from lung surgery. They were desperate.

On a side note, we got a good chuckle when our niece mentioned that her mother (my sister-in-law) and her dog were locked in her bedroom during all of this, as though in grave danger of the snake trying to break down the door to get at her.

Now Jeff has had plenty of snake-handling experience over the years (and just to be clear, I mean the the "Crickey, ain't she a beaut" type of snake-handler, not the type you hear about in Appalachian Mountain churches). As a teenager, he and his buddy Eric caught and sold dozens of gopher and king snakes at a local flea market, and taking this as a challenge, rushed over to assist them.

Earlier, while their back door had been open for a cross breeze, the snake had furtively slithered in under their security screen, and they were alerted to it’s presence when their dogs cornered it somewhere behind or under the sofa and hadn’t stopped sounding the alarm since.

An hour or so later, alive and blessedly snake-bite free, Jeff returned from their house victorious …with the snake(!) Lord, have mercy!

And the kids, whom he’d picked up on his way home so they could see said snake.

Judah was beyond thrilled. “It’s my new pet snake, mama!” he said excitedly as they walked in the door.

“Um, no…it’s not” I replied firmly. Horrified. Completely freaked out.

We have had one too many close calls with Judah and all manner of venomous creatures to know that I wouldn’t get a lick of sleep for as long as that thing was sharing the same square footage we were.

Jeff was not sure what kind of snake it was, as he’d never seen one like it before, but the ‘huge’ snake ended up being only 14 inches long, and no thicker than a thumb at most, and the width of Judah’s pinky at each end. It didn’t have rattles or diamonds, so Jeff said he doubted it was in the rattlesnake family.

Still, it had fangs and was potentially deadly. Always a concern for this mama.

Knowing I would not have a moments rest until I knew for sure whether or not it was venomous, I immediately Googled snakes native to our area, and we were reasonably sure that what we were dealing with was a Western Long Nosed Slider. These are not common commonly found in our area, but not entirely unheard of.

The best news was that it was not venomous. Well, according to the internet sources, anyway, and we all know how sketchy some of those sources can be at times.

Anyway, as I’m prone to do, I was still second-guessing our amateurish identification of it, even though the cream, pink and black markings and descriptions and photos online were all spot-on, distinctive to that type of slider and actually quite a rare coloring pattern for a snake. I guess I was hoping for a lengthy clip of close-up video footage perhaps posted online by some University snake expert or something before I'd feel 100% at ease about my precious babies getting anywhere near it.

Late that night, after making sure the snake was secured inside an enclosed habitat, nestled deep inside a box out in our garage, with a pile of heavy stuff in front of the door leading out to the garage (so that we would hear Judah if he tried to move it to get out there to see it after we were asleep), we all wearily trudged off to bed.

“We’ve got to find another home for this thing,” I stated emphatically, just before falling into one of those fitful sleeps where you’re awakened by the slightest sounds all night long.

The following morning, Jeff and Judah rose early and headed off to the pet store in search of feeder mice.

Yes, we would be finding a home for it, but Jeff didn’t want it to die of starvation in the meantime. There was no visible bump from it's last meal on it's midsection anywhere.

They returned with this...

...which as you can see Judah played with the entire way home.

**shudders**

The man at the pet store said that from Jeff's description it sounded like a Western Long nose, alright, as they were a very distinctively colored snake, known for their cream, pink and black markings and the long narrow head. If it was, he said, it was not venomous.

There it was again, that oh-so-uncertain sounding little word...'if'.

We also learned that it was unlikely that the snake would eat the mouse, as they were very picky eaters and mainly feed on small lizards in the wild. They are apparently a very reclusive snake and prefer that their food did not have human scent all over it.

Too late for that, I thought looking over at Judah.

“Isn’t it so cute, mama?” he asked in that same sing-song voice he uses when crooning to his puppy.

“Yes, it is cute" I replied, heartlessly adding, "but I want that thing fed to the snake right away, so that neither one of them ends up loose in this house!”

But alas, it appeared Mr. Long Nose was leery of the squeaky little rodent, and shortly thereafter crawled into the nearby fake coral to hide.

Later, the poor little mouse had to be dispatched because it was suffering from hunger having not been with it’s mama for hours. Thankfully Judah took our word for it that it had died and did not ask how.

I am happy to report, however, that we did find a home for the snake.

Another niece with a young snake-enthusiast son, said that they would be happy to take it off our hands for us, and it was arranged that her mom would pick it up while she was in town for a visit.

In the meantime, reasonably confident that it was not venomous, Jeff and the boys decided to show the snake off to everyone who dropped by.

**feeling faint at the sight, and a little weak in the knees**

“Okay, now go wash the salmonella germs off your hands,” I warned as soon as everyone had touched the vile thing, and made sure the habitat was taped shut and it was once again deep in it's box out in the garage.

The snake did make it to his new home just a couple of days later where he happily feasted on wild lizards which his new owner so carefully caught for him in a net so that human scent would not affect his food intake.

His owner, our nephew L, has also informed me since then that he was bitten a couple of times, but nothing happened.

**feeling a tad woozy at the thought**

Unfortunately, while the family was camping a couple of weeks later, their cat inadvertently freed Mr. Snake from his habitat and he has not been seen since.

Because the snake was with them for such a short time, the only picture they have of him is the one they got with L's Flat Stanley.

They’re pretty sure it found it’s way outdoors, and is currently feasting on lizards in the wild.

Pretty sure? **feeling suddenly faint**

Not sure how niece K does it, but she's a much braver woman than I! Especially considering that this is not the first reptilian escapee in her house.

All part and parcel of rearing that boy of hers, I guess.

Which is probably why in about 10 years, nephew L will probably have his own show on Animal Planet or the Discovery Channel...

...with some name adventuresome title like "Reptile Wrangler."