per your request...

Dear Nathan,

Since you requested an update and it's your birthday, I shall comply. Commence update:

• It's your BIRTHDAY! Oh, I already covered that. Happy birthday!
• I am so excited about Christmas. I can't wait to see my sister and brother-in-law, I can't wait to give presents, I can't wait to open presents. Also, Jesus' birth! Also, turkey! 
• Your house got burgled recently. Setting aside the fact that burgled is a hilarious word, that really upset me. For a few days there, I was telling everyone I saw about it. Lots of people were thinking about/praying for you guys.
• I have recently become one of those moms who, on the occasion, is convinced that her child is the most adorable ever to walk the earth. I realize this might not be true, but sometimes she looks up at me with her cartoonishly large brown eyes and does something unmitigatedly cute - a "kiss" (an open-mouthed grin coming at my face), covering her mouth and gasping in shock, dancing with the most subtle moves, surprising us with things she somehow knows (like our friends' dog's name, Luna, which she pronounces "NooNa"), pacing the room while she babbles on the phone with her Great-Granny Smith or Nana - and it makes it hard to consider anything cuter.
• My parents, Jeff, Eiley, and I got to go to Disneyland on Monday. I think I walked about ten miles. I also think it was a wonderful day. We saw Billy Hill and the Hillbillies in their new outdoor venue (I prefer the Golden Horseshoe, thankyouverymuch), went on many rides, took in most of the Christmas parade, and saw World of Color. Man, I love that place. Eiley still had the same reaction she had when we went with you and Annie though - silent, open-mouthed wonderment. 

• I am making pumpkin chocolate chip muffins tonight to take to a cookie exchange tomorrow. Muffins are not cookies. I'm a rebel.
• My sister is having a boy! I get a new nephew! And my brother-in-law has agreed to a robot-themed nursery! I have painting to do.

Okay, that's all I've got. I wish I updated this thing more often, but I've been so tired. Probably something to do with working + a toddler. Or maybe we're just getting old. I know you are. (OH, SNAP.) HAPPY BIRTHDAY, PAL!

Lahve!

emily grace

goodbye, grandbob

My Grandbob passed away a week ago yesterday. Let me explain what a Grandbob is, for those of (all of) you who don't have one:

A Grandbob is a gentle, loving, generous man whose first name is Bob and who marries your grandmother. Mine was around my whole life since we went to the same church, but he really burst onto the scene about 15 years ago, when he started dating and quickly proposed to my grandma. Hey, a Grandbob knows a good catch when he sees one.

Speaking of a good catch, a Grandbob likes fishing. He also enjoys golfing, playing Free Cell on the computer, watching sports on TV, and putting together jigsaw puzzles. It's relaxing and delightful to work on those jigsaw puzzles with him for an afternoon as he happens to be pleasant company.

A Grandbob can tenderize meat and chop a salad like nobody's business.

A Grandbob spoils one's grandmother, making sure she feels like a queen.

A Grandbob uses quick wit, like spouting one of his catchphrases - "It's getting deep in here" - when one's grandmother starts acting like the queen.

A Grandbob works hard his whole life only to give most of what he earns away to those he loves.

A Grandbob is willing to be very silly to get a laugh out of little ones.

A Grandbob will always be missed when he is gone, but those around him are okay with him leaving because a Grandbob loves Jesus above all. 

Here's to my Grandbob. I loved you very much, and I'm glad you're with Jesus. Say hi to Mudder for me, and don't get too sassy with each other up there.

random update

• I like our new townhome because: 
• It's spacious.
• It's two stories so I'm forced to exercise a wee bit each day on the stairs.
• It's located less than two miles from
• In-n-Out
• Westminster Mall
• Target
• Free babysitting My aunt's house
• An awesome park that will be extra awesome next summer because it also has a splash park
• There's a gated grassy area right outside our door so Buster can frolic at will.
• We have a washer and dryer so I can just do laundry all the time. WOOOO!
• While showering this morning, I used a new pomegranate body wash. It looked and smelled like a delicious daiquiri. I resisted taking a sip.
• My dad discovered a children's poem called Colonel Fazackerley Butterworth-Toast. I love it.
• Our Halloween was kind of a bust. A local church advertised this huge totally free event with In-n-Out, Chick-Fila, free games, free candy, free children's rides, and more. We headed on out there and discovered that Eiley is still just a little too small for all that (it would have been an awesome event for us otherwise!). So after 20 minutes of driving and 20 minutes of parking, we stayed for about 20 minutes (just in time to get some hot dogs because the other food lines looked hours long). It was, however, a great excuse to dress Eiley up as an old lady, and we stopped by my aunt's house on the way home, which was also fun. 

• Pumpkin chocolate chip muffins are amazing.
• My grandmother gave me a plant last week. It is already withering. I truly have a black thumb.

That's all for now! 

guest post! anything once: dressing up like a gorilla to run through the streets of denver

Today's guest post comes from Miss Kim, one of my sister's BFFs, and now a friend of mine! We share a similar sense of humor, love of bad reality TV The Bachelor, and she let me borrow her sister's dress for my sister's wedding (clearly that equals lifelong friendship). She was mostly inspired by this very random activity, but in part she wanted to help me achieve my goals. So she's a friend and an enabler. Miss Kim, you're the BEST. Take it away!

See if you can follow this story.

I have this friend Hannah…

Who is married to a handsome man named Nick…

One of Nick’s cousins passed away a year and a half ago…

Nick’s cousin loved gorillas…

For the second year, Nick’s family has run this race in Denver called The Gorilla Run in memory of his cousin…

Nick is currently living in Washington DC for an internship…

Nick had planned on coming home for said race but did not…

Hannah needed someone to take Nick’s place…

Enter me.

When my friend Hannah asked me if I wanted to participate, I wasn’t too sure.  I had heard about the Gorilla Run before, and I knew you had to run the entire race wearing a gorilla suit.  I mean, I like to run, but I wasn’t sure about the whole gorilla thing.  Turns out, it was way fun.  Who knew dressing up in a gorilla suit with 1,300 other people could be so entertaining?  (Also, in all honesty, we didn’t run. We walked. And despite the fact that it was cold that morning, it got hot in those gorilla suits! I admire the folks who did run.)

Here's me pre-race, channeling my inner gorilla. It's hard to tell, but I'm wearing the suit sans head.

Here we are in full on gorilla suits.  You can’t even tell we’re people can you? Can you?

We didn’t want to get too intense, so we took some human photos, too.

Here’s all the gorillas ready to run the race. You may be asking yourself what they’re chasing.

Oh that’s right, there are others dressed as bananas (dogs, small children, adults on bicycles… the possibilities were endless).  

Oh yeah, and no one just dresses like gorillas.  They wear costumes over their costumes.  

It was so sweet to take part in an event that was so special to Hannah and Nick’s family.  I did my best to channel my inner Nick, but I could never replace him.

And in case you’re wondering, the Gorilla Run is a fundraiser for The Mountain Gorilla Conservation Fund.  You can read more about it here. 

All in all, this is a first I’d be willing to repeat.

Long time coming

After my sister was about two years old and I got over her cute-ness factor, we fought constantly. Throughout my childhood, my grandmother told me to treat her with more kindness. She told me that when I left home, I'd miss her and I'd regret all our fighting. I left home. We kept fighting. I got married. We kept fighting. 

Even though we fought, and even though everyone around us told us we hated each other, we kept trying to be sisters. When we both lived in California, we visited each other fairly frequently for weekends at a time. But Sunday morning would come, and inevitably, no matter how smoothly the rest of the weekend had gone, within 3 hours of the departure, a huge fight would ensue. It would feel like whatever good we'd worked toward in the weekend would have been ruined. 

The one reprieve I remember from our bickering growing up was when I would be driving her around together, older siblings get that great honor of being the personal chauffer. While driving, we would roll the windows down and crank up some worship music and sing at the top of our lungs. Maybe there were other people in the car. Maybe they would look at us like we were crazy people. Maybe they would join in. But it was our thing. 

Now my sister lives on the other side of the country. 3000 miles away. And for a few years now, by the grace of God, we've finally started getting along. I DO miss her. Finally. I do regret our fighting, the missed years when we could have been enjoying life together. 

She's a great sister. She does her best to keep me more up to date on fashion, culture, music. She loves my daughter like crazy. She thinks of me and misses me. She loves me. 

And this weekend, as if it were "on the way," she made a jaunt up to Maine after a weekend in New York. She spent extra money, expended extra energy [she came on 2 hours of sleep], and she shared extra joy with us for less than 24 hours that she was able to stay. 

This morning, I drove her to the airport. She sat in the back seat with Sofia, keeping her entertained on the 40 minute drive. Within minutes of getting on the road, Sofia was asking to sing songs. Auntie Nina, as we call her now, went through as many nursery rhymes as young hip single woman might be expected to be able to recall before she looked up to me a bit baffled. I filled in a few more while Nina searched for ways to meet her nieces demands. As I concluded a round of "One little two little three little polar bears," my sister had some worship songs playing from her phone that she could sing along to. I hooked it up to the car speakers and turned the volume up high. We both both sang our hearts out. I could see the hands raised in the back. I raised my free hand up front. I heard her teaching Sofia how to raise her hands, I heard her cheering as Sofia supposedly did raise her hands along to the music. She initiated my daughter into our little tradition of praise. 

There were no fights this trip. And at the end, when we might have had our traditional parting hostilities, we were singing praises instead. Because, you know, that's our thing. 

It's been a long time coming, but I am so grateful that we've finally figured out how to love each other. And I'm so overwhelmed with joy that Sofia gets to be part of our fun and part of our love. God's grace is sweet.

eight days to my goal deadline

Let's take a look again at the five goals I made nearly three months ago:

Make FIVE phone or skype calls to keep in touch with long distance pals.

Well, I'm failing here. I have skyped with Shep and Tab twice and we called them another time. I also keep in touch with Chadley via work chat. I skyped into my brother in-law's 30th birthday party, but I don't really count family. If I did count family, I've skyped with my sister oodles of times. Also, I saw Nathan and Annie, who are totally long distance friends, for church and lunch a few weeks ago. But really, I'm failing at this one. Bum.

Have FOUR new anything once experiences.

One, two, two and a half, three. That's 75%. A solid C, which is technically passing.

Write THREE posts per week.

I've posted 17 times since the original goal post (ha - goal post), some of which shouldn't count. It has been 12 weeks. Therefore, I'm running an average of about 1.4 per week. That's 47%. A solid D, which is technically passing in some schools. I hang my head in shame.

Complete TWO works - hopefully finish the play I've started and write a children's book or even just a poem.

Let's see. I've completed zero works. That is an epic fail. I did come up with a great idea for a novel though, and I wrote the first two pages of that. So, yeah.

Move into ONE apartment, for goodness sake.

YES. I did this one! We are now living in a townhome in Westminster, and this has been my excuse reason for most of the aforementioned failure. Before we moved, I was spending all of my energy in locating an apartment. Then we moved, and I was spending all of my energy in moving. And now that we're starting to get settled, I'm writing this post. Blam. Back in the swing of things. 

Anyway, I do still have eight days, so I might be able to squeeze a few more things in here and there. We shall see. 

Children's Books Take Five: A Hush Baby Comparison

When I first had Sofia, I had so much trouble thinking of anything to sing her. I was far enough away from my childhood or my baby-sitting days for any lullaby's to be front of mind. So when someone gifted us with a board book of Hush Little Baby I breathed a big sigh of relief and then said, "duh!"

And then I read the book a time or two, and realized how it models this parenting approach of materialism. The Papa spends the whole song trying to buy lots of presents to keep a baby from crying. Fresh out of my baby-registry craziness, I was feeling like that philosophy had already been sufficiently thrown in my face by all the baby stores of the world. And none of these supposedly fool proof sleep-toys did a thing to soothe my own baby. I kept thinking, "someone should really re-write the words to this song!"

Turns out, someone did! Nearly a decade before I had the thought. Way to go Sylvia Long! I saw this new version of Hush Little Baby in my mother-in-law's children's book collection [she's been preparing for grand-babies with great excitement for a while!]. These new lyrics portray such a sweet, patient, nature-inspired relationship between a mother and child. The illustrations are also beautiful, just as Sylvia's other books. I was so thrilled by this book that I stole it from my mother-in-law (with permission) and brought it home with us.

 

And yet, as much as I prefer the message of the above Hush Baby, the illustrations of the original board book we had seem to be far and away Sofia's preference. The illustrations do feel clever, I must admit. And in fact, I appreciate that in these illustrations, it is not just one mama comforting the child. The baby looks to be much more of a terror than the "blue hush baby," as Sofia calls it. This baby is really screaming his head off. But his WHOLE family, big sister included, is there working to the brink of utter exhaustion to help calm and comfort him. The story told through those pictures, of all that family does for that baby, make the last line "you'll still be the sweetest baby in town" so much more sweet. They communicate, "no matter how crazy you make me, I will still love you." The pictures almost overwhelm the materialistic message of the song. Good work, Marla Frazee!

So, torn between good aspects of each, we hardly ever read one without also reading the other. 

P.S. The other Sylvia Long book we own and enjoy is Ten Little Rabbits, a sweet counting rhyme with beautiful Native American style.