get elfed

So, our family went up to Washington D.C. and Pennsylvania to visit my uncle mike and aunt melissa, my grandparents, and melissa's family for Thanksgiving. We had a great time together, although we did determine that Eliana is officially very allergic to cats, and she pretty much lived on benadryl for the weekend;{ Nevertheless, we really enjoyed our time there, went to the National Smithsonian Zoo and various museums, and Uncle Mike took some great photos of all the events. He also elfed our children with some of the photos, and honestly I'm still laughing after having watched the video a few times, mostly because it fits our kids so well. Those of you who know Nathan, know that he absolutely would dress up in an elf suit and dance around just like this, which makes it even funnier. And Asher and Ellie could absolutely be coersed by Nathan to participate in such an activity, which makes their facial expressions all the more perfect.
The semester is coming to a close, so jon's a little busier than usual, but honestly this has been the most laid back semester so far. I honestly thought this was going to be a tougher semester, but it's been great. We are excited to travel to Minnesota and Wisconsin to visit Jon's parents and the Wahlens (friends from seminary who left us this past summer:( over christmas, Jon will take one winter course, and hopefully get in 4 weeks of full time work before the spring semester begins. Encouragingly, he will have 51 of the 90 credit hours completed on Dec. 14th!:) It's amazing how fast our time here is going.
Well, I'm going to make myself stop rambling, and go to bed.

Halloween, sick kids, lots of candy

So, I've wanted to update this blog for a while, and I just wrote a long post all about our Halloween experiences, but it deleted before I could post it, and I don't really have the time and energy to rewrite it. So, here are a couple pictures...Jon and Nathan (Jack Sparrow and his Navy Seal sidekick) went trunk or treating, while mom, ellie, and asher stayed home (sick with a cold) to hand out candy all two times the doorbell rang. We also played sequence, and ate a lot of candy from the very full candy bowl, so we had fun:)
In other news, my dad recently came to help us work on some wiring stuff for the house for the weekend. Well, after they had surveyed all the stuff they wanted to do, they made the lowe's list and were ready to go, when I aksed if my dad could just take a quick look at the window trim/wall in our room. We had been told there was some old damage when we moved in (not sure if it was water damage or termite damage), and the wall was pretty thin under the window. Well, Dad took a look, and agreed the wall was pretty thin, but thought it best to try and just replace the trim, as the wall would be a big project. So, he takes the trim off, and the wall pretty much disintegrates from the window down to the floor. Yeah. You got it. Just the brick to the outside of the house now, which could be nice and rustic, but a bit too drafty for my taste. Righto. New project of the day...rebuilding the wall in Jon and Kerin's room. Amazingly, they got the whole wall rebuilt and the first coat of mud applied to the dry wall, as well as much of the wiring done that day! Jon and I finished up the mudding/sanding over the next few days, and then I painted the wall. We still have to repaint the trim around the window and baseboards, and cut a new baseboard piece, but I'm pretty happy to have a stable wall there now:)

friendship plant

so i've always been told that if you insert half of a partially peeled avocado seed in a cup of water, with the big side down, held up by three toothpicks at the top of the glass, it will sprout, you'll watch the roots grow, and eventually leaves will grow straight out the top. what happens after this, i'm not sure, because most everyone i've ever talked to says they're avocado plants usually die shortly after planting in the ground. the internets, of course, has a wealth of information on this, but i start to feel a little overwhelmed when i'm supposed to be measuring the pH of the soil and such (probably why most of my plants end up dying.) Anyway, being a mother of young kiddos, I thought that I should probably at least attempt to grow an indoor avocado plant, so they might benefit from the observation of such a process. Well, I tried, and tried, and tried. I changed my water frequently (in order, they say, to keep it well oxygenated), I kept it in a sunny spot, I talked to it, babied it, everything. Nothing worked. It never even sprouted. Our good friends the Wahlens would come over, and each time note, very politely, of course, that nothing had happened...still. Well, it then became a little competition, in which they started their own plant. And what do you know, their plant sprouted quite rapidly, grew at what seemed a rather astonishing rate, and quickly proved that Mr. Wahlen certainly had something on us that we didn't know. We finally gave up on our little avocado seed, but the story doesn't end there. When the wahlens left to move back to Wisconsin (sad. we are very sad), they couldn't very easily transport their baby plant, so it was given to us, as a friendship plant, to love and care for, just like our friendship. how sweet, right? right. no pressure or anything! just for the record, i am yet to be successful at keeping ANY plant alive longer than 3 months. They all die. I will say that there are probably some very obvious things I could have done in some of these cases (like water them), but in some instances I have worked very hard, lovingly and painstakingly attempting to keep the things alive, yet to no avail. Well, I am happy to say, that we received the responsibility of caring for this beautiful plant on May 21st, and the sucker is alive and kicking! Here's a picture:) (try to ignore the broken leaf...not sure how that happened). So, wahlens, you can rest assured that our love for you is alive and kicking as well;)

birthday fun

Well, Eliana turned three on sunday, which is hard for me to believe. Everyone always tell me that parenting goes so fast, and they grow up too quickly; I'm actually starting to believe it! At first, it was hard to believe I'd make it through the night when they're waking up frequently, and I would forget that life actually would exist where I could get sleep and function as a normal human being. But it actually was much shorter than I imagined it to be in my mind (even Asher seems short in my mind, and he was still getting up at 4:30am at 12 months). Yet now Nathan is almost 5 and will start school next year, can help with the chores around the house, helps me keep an eye on the baby, and is really fun to hang out with and talk to on dates:) I can only imagine how quickly the next 13 years are going to go, if the last 5 have gone so quickly.

So, here are some pictures of Ellie's celebration. The first one is ellie sporting her artistic job putting on her new chapstick from the grandparents;} Jon's parents came into town to surprise her, and she was SHOCKED. Her jaw dropped open, and she just stared at them in amazement and disbelief. We had been asking her if there was anybody she wanted to come over and eat cake with us for her birthday, and she kept saying, "nana and papaw!" I don't think she ever believed they would actually come. I wish I had a picture of her face when she saw them. Anyway, we all had a great weekend together.



Jon starts school today. He's really looking forward to his classes this semester (preaching, greek 3, hebrew 1, and psalms). Should be a much quieter semester than last spring, which we're looking forward to.

Well, I better go get breakfast ready, so I'll leave with a quote from Edith Schaeffer's book, The hidden art of homemaking:

"There is no occasion when meals should become totally unimportant. Meals can be very small indeed, very inexpensive, short times taken in the midst of a big push of work, but they should be always more than just food. Relaxation, communication and a measure of beauty and pleasure should be part of even the shortest of meal breaks. Of course you celebrate special occasions - successes of various members of the family, birthdays, good news, answered prayer, happy moments - with special attention to meal preparation and serving. But we should be just as careful to make the meal interesting and appealing when the day is grey, and the news is disappointing."

What do you think? Do you agree with this idea?

new technology

so i've never been big on listening to music all day, which meant the ipod fad never appealed to me all that much. however, we had some friends come visit us last week from albuquerque, and he had a new and much improved (in my humble opinion) device over the ipod, called the sansa express MP3 player. I've been wanting an easy way to record the kids once in a while, just to have a record of little things they talk about, and what they sound like when they talk, but haven't had an easy/portable solution, until now. The sansa is really cool. It has a built in mic, so you can record, and it actually sounds good and can pick up everyones individual voice in a full minivan from the front seat;) It has FM radio recording abilities, too. Plus, it's very small (slightly bigger than a cigarette lighter), has a great display and backlight, and a necklace to hang it on (i think lanyard would be the correct term), and the USB port is part of the device, so you just plug it in wherever you want to get your tunes/download your recordings. I couple down sides...1. the lanyard is part of the cap for the USB port (instead of the player, which would be lost easily if it came apart from the cap). 2. you can't delete on the device. you can only delete through a PC. I found this a little frustrating after recording the kids talking, but decided not to keep it. 3. if you have a really old computer (like i do-got it in 1999), it might crash it when you plug it in, because it's not a high-speed USB port. all that aside, i love my new toy, and might even listen to music a little more often now;)

mass communication

Well, I have succombed to the blogsphere, and realize (and agree) it is a fabulous way to keep people up on what we're doing, albeit not as personal as a phone call or letter in the mail. Unfortunately, I keep saying I will call this person, and write that person, and days/weeks/months have gone by and it hasn't happened, so not only do you feel personally offended that I haven't called or written, but you still don't know what is keeping me so busy as to not communicate. Hopefully the blog will at least help with one of those.

I'm actually rather excited about the prospect of a blog, although I'm not sure how often I'll post. I'm hopeful the process will be edifying for myself, at least, as I take time to write out things that are happening, and possibly even encouraging to you, the reader, to read my own trials, challenges, adventures, and hopefully successes, during our time as a family of 5 here at divinity school.

So, to that end, here are some of my thoughts from the day...

1. glue and babies don't mix well.
2. if your 1 year old is splashing too much in the bath (i.e. the wall across the bathroom is dripping) after repeated warnings to cease, a large cup of water poured over their head each time they do it can be a strong deterrent. i'm really thinking pavlov was onto something...
3. make the vegetables early in the dinner prep when possible. this way when the kids come in begging for a snack because they "just can't make it to dinner," then you can let them snack on the vegetables, and don't have to worry about it at the table;)

and finally, on a more serious note...

4. spend lots of time patiently loving your kids, and be sure to apologize when you're wrong.