moving. or: an exercise in not freaking out.

So, we're moving to California soon (just thought I'd throw that out there in case someone somehow missed it, as unlikely as that seems), and I am trying hard to trust that God is going to help us get everything together smoothly. I have some moments of lovely, peaceful trust. But other moments, my brain does this:

Figure out how to ship Buster.

Make reservation to ship cars.

Get a new job. 

Work out child care. (Hey, any California Lobsters want to be severely underpaid to watch an adorable Eiley full time? Part time? Hello?) 

Find a place to live that is somehow central to where I work, where Eiley is cared for, and where Jeff works - wherever any of that may be.

Sell any unnecessary stuff here in Virginia.

Determine which moving company to use, making sure they provide storage as well.

Repaint walls of apartment while trying to remember how much we enjoyed having not white walls the whole time we lived here.

Move.

Remain calm.

It's funny that I am capable of freaking out so much. It's ridiculous even. God has proven himself faithful over and over to me and Jeff, so why do I think things will be any different this time? Silly human me, stop worrying! I wish, instead, that my mind would Pollyanna up and do this:

We're going to California, where most of my family is, where we have a lot of great friends, where we love our church, and where the weather is beautiful a vast majority of the time. How exciting that I'll get to learn a new job, whatever it might be, and I wonder what great opportunities Jeff will encounter now that he has his degree and is somehow an even better actor than he used to be. Life is sunshine and happiness and unicorns and jelly beans and Lisa Frank stickers!

Okay, maybe some of that was overkill. And maybe you people should pray for me. 

Being Known

As I briefly mentioned in a previous post, many of my co-workers in Virginia referred to me as "the quiet girl" when I first arrived in Virginia. I wanted to expand on that, mostly to explain why that was a negative thing to me.


I love quiet people. My sister can be partially described as a quiet person, and she is one of my favorite people in the world. She listens more than she speaks, which is a beautiful quality. The reason I didn't like being called "the quiet girl" was because it reaffirmed my belief that my co-workers didn't know me. It took months and months for me to become comfortable in that office, and I'm fairly certain that's because it's full of cubicles and hushed phone calls. That doesn't lend itself to getting to know one another. It just took time and thus patience. I've never been great at patience.


Part of the issue was the comparison of my old job with my new one. I had been at Vanguard University in an office of three people for the past three years. I happened to love those people and worked well with them. And man, did they know me. My boss there knew my favorite soda, my favorite TV shows, favorite movies, my strengths, my competitive streak, my love of all things creative...he even knew that I had a weird habit of smacking my lips together whenever I was thinking about what I wanted to eat (knew that and mocked that, and I'm glad the nickname "P-dawg" - in honor of Pavlov's dog - did not stick). I think I had grown so accustomed to coming to work with people who were almost like family to me that it was a shock to my system to go to a new place.

That's Drake, my old boss, and most of his family.

The happy ending to this (and the one that will also not get me in trouble if Regent HR reads this) is that over time, I've become known in my current office. Most mornings, I pop open my Diet Pepsi and someone shouts "Hello, Emily!" They laugh at my lame jokes instead of staring at me, wondering if I'm serious or not. They know I have a dog and a new baby and a husband who acts. Most are aware that I am leaving in five months to go back to California. All are painfully aware that I think California is superior to Virginia. 


I'm just saying...it's nice to be known.

Traditioooooon! TRADITION. (Christmas edition.)

I told you about my immediate family's Thanksgiving tradition. Now for Christmas!

This tradition started about five years ago, and I freaking love it: Every Christmas Eve, we go to a church service.

Oh, you want more than that? Okay. Then we eat at Denny's. Yes, Denny's. We like to keep things classy and well-greased.

Next we go to Balboa Island to look at all the crazily decorated houses. My favorite is, of course, the one that looks like a Christmas hoarder decorated - a motorized Santa on a unicycle travels from the roof to their dock, another Santa and a few reindeer travel in circles on the TV antenna, there are blow up things and stuffed things and lights, lights, lights. One year they even had real snowman out front. Out of control.

Finally, we go home to open presents. Unlike the other Christmas gatherings that we attend (there are usually three others), this is a one-person-opens-one-gift-at-a-time event. Last year, Jeff and I gave my parents photo albums with Eiley's sonogram in them, telling them they would be grandparents for the first time.

I think part of the reason I love this tradition is that it ends up being very late at night, and there's something magical about being up late with a few of the people you love most in the world. Add the magic of Christmas, and it ends up being straight up awesome. This year will be my first year away from my family on Christmas Eve. I'm certain that I'll have an amazing time in Idaho with Jeff's side of the family, but a part of me will simultaneously be missing my parents, my sister and BIL, Denny, and Balboa Island. 



I will try not to do too much of that face this Christmas.



not to be cliche, but...

In no particular order, this year I am thankful for:

• Friends and family, near and far (BAM, I just covered all of you people). 
• A brand new brother in law who is loving my sister beautifully. (Don't interpret that ickily.)
• A functioning washer and dryer, even though we're paying way too much to rent it.
• Flexible, super understanding bosses.
• A ridiculously nice stroller that is tall enough and inspires me to walk more.
• The oodles of people who blessed us with almost everything we needed (and more!) to care for our new baby girl.
• A church that feels like a home.
• Texas toast from Raisin' Canes. 
• The beauty of the Botanical Gardens and all its stroller-friendly paths.
• These three people (shut up, Buster is too a person), who bless me every. single. day.:

• Fellow crazy dog people, like Arabella and a few of my co-workers and my parents.
• Not one but TWO functioning cars.
• Handmade baby blankets, Clarence the pink bird, the Remo lemon shaker, Adele's Rollin' in the Deep, Sophie the Giraffe, and the light up rubber ducky family. (Happy baby tricks.)
• Toms, the most comfortable shoes of my life that just happen to also be in style.
• Epidurals (well, just the one).
• A heavenly Father who loves me all the time.
• Naps.
• California, Disneyland (I haven't seen it in a couple years, but I'm still thankful for it), In-n-Out, Rubio's, and airplanes.
• You Lobstery people who read this and thus make me want to keep writing, which is something I happen to love to do.
• And, as always, Diet Pepsi. 

Your turn.

Goodbye California

Goodbye California!

Today we fly to Maine with a one way ticket. 

Goodbye land of golden hills and glistening blue waves. Goodbye land of season-less perfect temperatures. 

Goodbye first home outside of the state of my birth. Goodbye to the state where I fell in love with my husband. Goodbye to the state where I gave birth to my first child. 

Is it possible that we will live more than five miles away from the Pacific Ocean? Is it possible that we will wake up to snow falling outside our window? Is it possible to live in a land that does not have In-N-Out?

You've given us so much. Road trips through your hills. Moonlit bonfires on your beaches. Both countless calories and the beautiful weather in which to burn them off. You've given us the saints Barbara, Francisco, and Diego to show us hospitality and new ways of looking at community, church, and communion. You've given our family four degrees and maybe even more education in out-of-school contexts. You've given us a few years to be in driving distance of Manny's family and "Auntie Nina"/my sister Lauren. 

And you've given us so many friends we are sad to have to say goodbye to. 

Farewell ocean, farewell hills, farewell apartments. 

It's been a glorious decade! 

Guest Post: Why pop is superior to soda

In case there is some way you could have missed the news, our own Emily just had her very first baby, Eiley Grace Fazakerley. Yay! You are personally invited to join in on the celebration. To give her a little maternity leave from blogging, and to give you readers a little break from all things baby, please enjoy this wonderfully masculine guest post from our long distance friend, Michael Strongman, who I will forgive for dogging on us Southerners for calling all soft drinks "Coke," because I enjoyed this post so much. 

Why pop is superior to soda: 

Confessions of a Californian living in Michigan.

Last fall I was able to host my brother for a visit for the first time since I moved to East Lansing, MI five years ago.  I had tickets to the football game that Saturday (Wisconsin at MSU). Enjoying the Michigan fall and attending my Dutch reformed church (so Dutch, the pastor's name is DeYoung) were also on the agenda.  However, the first stop after he arrived was to get some grub at Jimmy John's, a sandwich chain built on the premise that a good sandwich starts with good bread.  It's a typical American chain, which would be perfectly at home on State Street-Santa Barbara as much as Grand River Ave-East Lansing.  But after Kevin ordered his sandwich, the cashier asked if he wanted a pop.  “Pops?” queried Kevin, and I had translate that he was being asked if he wanted a soda.  “Yes, please.”  After we got our sandwiches, we had a conversation about how Michiganders (among other northerners like Minnesotans and Wisconsinites) calling fizzy drinks pop (not pops!), and the people of the deep south centered around Atlanta call them Coke (even Sprite is Coke), and everywhere else it's soda (like our home in Northern California).  And then Kevin asked the question that prompted this entire blog post, “Do you call it pop?”

I moved to Michigan five years ago in order to attend grad school in nuclear physics.  I was three months removed from graduating from Westmont and part of my coping mechanism from my first extended period out of the Golden State was to be fiercely Californian in outlook. I defended the Governator to critics (however laughable that view may be now; forgive me), extolled the virtues of Californian products and the vastly superior weather, and still rooted for my beloved 49ers. I didn't watch basketball and am sorry to say I never went to a Westmont b-ball game.  And I called soda soda.

One crazy thing about Michigan is if you ask anyone where they are from, they quickly pull out an open palm face up and point to it, “I'm from there!”  

If they are from Detroit, they'll be putting the finger on the soft pad between the thumb and wrist. Saginaw, they point to the webbing between the thumb and forefinger. Traverse City, and they'll point between the tips of the pinky and ring finger. And of course, if they are from the Lansing area, they point point right in the middle of the palm, the center of the state and location of the capital. That's where I managed to end up, going to the “little brother” of the flagship University of Michigan (Wolverines are the lowest scUM of the earth), and attending a Reformed church where the motto is, “If you ain't Dutch, you ain't much.” (Not really, that would be a sad church indeed.) However, these Dutch, academic, wolverine-hating, Spartan loving, cheese and meat eating brothers and sisters in Christ, welcomed me into their families  and quickly indoctrinated me in the ways of Spartan football and basketball and ice hockey.  It helps that the basketball team has been to two Final Fours back to back, though.

Now five years later, I am a die-hard Michigan State Spartans fan in both football and basketball.  I even had accidental sightings of the coach (In Izzo We Trust) in the local supermarket and have gotton giddy in excitement.  I've had paczkis (pronounced poonch-keys) for Fat Tuesday, which are gynmormous Polish jelly-filled or cream-filled packets of dough and sugar, better than a jelly-filled donut (And should only be consumed one-day a year – they are that fattening). Hummus is consumed on a weekly basis, brats are the goto BBQ fare, and Bell's Oberon is the beer of choice on hot summer evenings as the lighting bugs flash in their little behinds everywhere.  And most intriguingly, I call pop pop. Why?  It saves time; one syllable verses two. It actually sounds like what it's describing, unlike soda, with it's flat consonants, and let's not forget that Coke can only be Coke. Sprite isn't Coke, neither is Dr. Pepper, Sunkist, Fanta, or any other fizzy drink that southerners call coke.

Pop will always be my little reminder that I lived (for a little while) among the Dutch of West Michigan. I still hold onto things that define me as a Californian, like the secrets to tri-tip BBQ, love of the mountains (Michiganders have to ski literally on hills of garbage. GARBAGE!), and the knowledge that a true coast experience requires the sun setting over the water and smell of the sea.  I am a Californian, and a Michigander,  and sometime soon I going to be Floridian?  Crazy!

Okay, lobsters, what regional peculiarities have you picked up on your journey through life?  Any
delicacies you crave that you can't get at home?  Any loyalties of fandom that you can't claim you grew up with?  Any traditions that you wonder how you lived without them growing up?