Launch of our new blog, Three French Hens

I’m so excited to announce the launch of our new blog, Three French Hens at frenchhen.wordpress.com.

This is somewhat of a family endeavor.  Although we haven’t really figured out where the ‘family’ part fits in.  But, hey, we haven’t really started yet.  It’s a blog dedicated to our ‘locavarian lifestyle’…that is, eating locally (as in, the backyard), and connecting with this deserty smogness we’ve landed ourselves in.

In case you were wondering, it’s named Three French Hens because eventually we are going to have three chickens and we are going to bequeath them with preposterously French names like Antoinette.

Anyhow, head on over, if you’re so inclined.  I’ve been working on this for weeks (I know you won’t be able to tell yet, but it’s true) and tonight is The Night it launches into the big wide world.  Enjoy!

BTW, Spinning in my Teacup will remain as is, a haphazard journal of our crazy daily life.  So no need to worry.

Mommy Brain

Another manifestation of Mommy Brain (which is basically “scatterbrained for a reason (baby)”) ::

Today I took Levi out to the garage in his carseat.  I buckled in the girls.  I had unbuckled, lifted out, and carried Levi halfway around the car before I realized what I had done.  Um, well, I hope my neighbors weren’t looking.

Today, also, I took out my contacts, poured in the solution, and then turned over the holder (not the cap) and poured peroxide solution all over the floor.

Where, may I ask, is my brain?  It seems to have gone missing.

Catch-Up

My 29th birthday has passed.  I wrote something about it, but it’s in the other room and if I get up from my chair, Levi will notice and stop playing happily, and that will be the end of my time on the computer.  So.  Later?

One of our family resolutions this year was to watch sporting finals together.  Like the Super Bowl.  Lovely resolution, don’t you think?    I napped through the first half, watched the exciting after half-time sideways kick, and that was it.  The girls were playing PBS kids, Levi was sleeping, Devo eventually left to watch the end at our neighbor’s house.  Wouldn’t want the internet streaming to flicker during those important, tension filled moments. (Anybody remember from the movie Amelie where she gets revenge on her neighbor by disconnecting the cable at crucial moments of the game?)

Well, we’ll try again next time.  Olympics?  (We also missed the tennis Australian final…Devo was the only one devoted enough to watch from 1-4am).

Today was the church Valentine’s social at the Spaghetti Factory.  The day of my public humiliation.  Remind me never to say yes to public humiliation.  We were one of three couples in the Not-so-Newlywed game.  And if I had known that it was basically like Apples to Apples, which I ALWAYS LOSE, then I would have known we had no chance of winning.  So we lost.  Rather spectacularly.  I think I’ll put this on our married life profile — loses couples games in spectacular and endearing fashion.

<big cheesy grin>

We had our offer on the house with the chicken coop accepted.  But we declined, chicken coop notwithstanding.  It was kind of wild having to actually make a decision beyond, yeah, I like that one.  You know, decisions like, can we pay for it? and do we really want to risk our children’s lives with a pool? We definitely made the right choice and both feel relieved. So, on to the next exciting episode.

GREAT NEWS, Levi is finally learning to SLEEP.  He slept 11 hours twice last week and decent intervals the other nights.  It’s so exciting to have evenings to myself, I’m not going to bed until late.  But that is stopping this week.  I’m going back to the straight and narrow.

Devo and I watched Julie and Julia last week.  Cute movie, until we googled the author and saw how her second book was a tell-all about the affair she had post-book.  Rather dispiriting.  But I was so inspired to cook.  And read Julia Child’s cookbook, something that has never interested me before.  French food, what is that?  So we had delicious bruschetta with tomatoes, just like in the movie, Friday night.  Oh. My. Yum.  (Ironically, that was the first meal all week that turned out tasting good.  Everything else I cooked was unusually yuck.)

I’ve also been practicing making omelettes like Julia Child.  Although I’m starting to feel really guilty about the butter.  But my technique is getting better.

Piano Lesson Therapy

Lia had her first group piano class today.

I swear, all the years I spent taking lessons and teaching piano and it’s like I’m but a babe in a large, scary world.  A world where it’s my child taking lessons, and I’m now the one who has to be responsible for being a parent my child’s piano teacher will like.  Read: a parent that makes sure their child practices and learns their stuff.

Lia and I are starting to warm up to practicing.  So far she’s been more interested in being a free piano spirit rather than buckling down and learning assigned stuff.  Not that she’s refusing to or giving me problems, but once we’ve finished our practicing, she doesn’t do it on her own later. So far I’m encouraging a methodical practice, because so much of music learning must be methodical at it’s core.  But she’s not enthusiastically methodical by nature.  So maybe this is a good character strengthener.  Or something.

I’m thanking my lucky stars that there is a group class.  I think this will help increase her desire to learn new things.  Because she spent the first half of group class (the half before she got sleepy) looking at the kids more than at the musical activity.  She’s such a social creature.

But now I’m the nervous parent (pretending to be nonchalant) sitting in the back, listening for my child’s turn to play her piece.  Cringing when something goes wrong.  Beaming when something goes right.  Nonchalantly.  I’m going for the Understated Mother.  Which is what my small chickie seems to be ready for.  Mom, I don’t need any help.

It’s the first real excitement she’s had for the whole process since it began.

I’m just wondering, here at the outset, how much of her progress is going to be determined by her and how much of it will be determined by me.

I feel like I need piano lesson therapy.  Which is totally weird.  Get a grip, Leilani.

WALL-E

Lia :: Is WALL-E an astronaut?

Amelie :: No, he’s a washing machine.

Sabbatical Round Up, now that it’s over

Written Sunday, January 24, 2010.  Held in abeyance while waiting to see if I experienced further inspiration or eloquence.  No such luck.

Devo goes back to work this week.  And while the sabbatical experience is still fresh and not clouded with schedules and meetings,  I want to solidify the experience.

I’ve written this post a number of times from the comfort of my bed at inconvenient times of the night.  But now I can’t remember any of the well-turned phrases I so brilliantly composed.  How about a list.  Lists are always good.

Some of the Things I Want to Remember from our sabbatical

• swimming at Blue Lagoon on weekday mornings.  Just our little family, playing in the sand, swimming in the warm, clear ocean.  Peaceful, contented, joyful.  And no sunburns, thanks to the trees on shore that allowed us to swim until noon without sunscreen.
• night time walks with Devo.  Half hours, hours to talk and talk and talk without saying, “Mommy’s turn to talk now”.  Confessions and future plans, setting and shaping our experience of the world.  Together.
• Snuggling in my mom’s bed, playing with Levi
• swimming at the Hyatt.  No matter how frustrating or catiwampus the day had been, it all seeped away into happiness at the pool.
• How my mom loves my kids and how much they love her.
• Levi has spent a whole third of his life in Guam now.  While we were there he learned to sit up, go from tummy to sitting, pull himself up, crawl, walk around holding on to furniture, babble, he sprouted two teeth, say Mama, bye-bye, ta-ta, night-night, Nana (Liana), point, clap.
• Lia changed from being a small girl into a big girl while we were there.
• Lia sitting all snuggled on Grandma Ruby’s lap.  I loved looking over to see Lia feeling Grandma’s wattle, or the soft skin on her arms.  They must have read “The Eleventh Hour” 20 times, per Lia’s request.
• Everyone needs a Grandma Ruby in their lives : someone who loves you and supports you and listens to you and believes you’re the best.  All the time.  I enjoyed watching her extend that open, judge-less love to all her family.
• I loved how Levi loved Grandpa Bob and Grandpa loved Levi.  Levi would reel Grandpa Bob in.  Grandpa would be headed from one place to another and Levi would catch his eye and a half hour later, they’d still be there playing and laughing together.  “He’s quite a boy”, Grandpa says.
• watching Heidi in Afrikaans with Grandma Ruby
• Going with Liana to get our hair cut together and then taking all those pictures.
• going across the street to Grandma and Grandpa’s house
• camping on the beach during the full moon
• reacquainting myself with my “natal land”.
• Spending our anniversary where we spent our honeymoon.  And enjoying ourselves so much that we decided to do it again as a joint birthday gift.
• The absence of church crap
• Devo being around all the time.  And doing the laundry and cleaning.
• How Grandpa Jesse loves my kids and how they love him back
• our one family hike
• skipping church and going out together, alone, instead
• I hate to put this in a list, because it doesn’t do it justice, but the amount of love, work, time, and money my mom and sister poured out on us.  I just love them and it stinks that we live so far apart.

A long time ago, someone asked me if the sabbatical was turning out to be what I thought (or hoped) it would be.

Well, frankly, for myself I wasn’t hoping for a big change from my normal life.  I anticipated that my “job” would continue as usual.  Directing the family day, being responsible for food, laundry, milk, toys, etc.  I would just be doing it in a different place, with the added benefit of more hands.  I anticipated that, like always, more hands might mean I don’t have to be the one to pick up the crying baby while stirring the family dinner, but the task of organizing all these people’s plans and needs to fit together would replace any of the let-up the extra hands might provide.  In other words, that it would be crazy.

But I wasn’t quite right.  Oh, it was crazy.  Especially those weeks before Levi learned to crawl and Liana had many extra curricular activities and my grandparent’s car was in the shop for days on end.  But even though I was busy, the pressure of it all laying on my shoulders was gone.  Mom did the grocery shopping (something for which I don’t know if I can adequately express my gratitude…shopping there is a 3 hour tour, at minimum).  Devo did the laundry, the cleaning, the daily pick up, the driving.  Liana did a lion’s share of the child-entertaining.  I have no idea what I was doing, but I was keeping busy too, I assure you.  By the last few days, I was just floating from thing to thing, enjoying the last little bit where other people were around to pick up any slack, gathering strength to jump back in and be The One Upon Whom It Rests.  So I experienced renewing I hadn’t anticipated.

I thought it would be nice for Devo to not be at work.  That he would be released from the strain of his job.  I wasn’t sure how the absence of that strain would manifest itself. A brightened countenance?  An added spring to his step? Maybe a lessening of  technological use?  (We left the iphone at home).

I knew for sure that the absence of the iphone was great.  And I knew that we had more time to really communicate.  And I knew that we had regained a lot of our lovey-dovey interaction that had fallen by the wayside.

But I wasn’t able to tell really how much it had changed him until we got back.  And saw all of his colleagues, our friends.  And saw how very tired and stressed and pressured they are.  And how that’s just normal.  Status quo.

And frankly it freaked me out.  There has GOT to be a way to do this job without life just seeping out of us. Or being sucked out, as the case might be.  (Probably a bit of both).

I don’t know if we are going to be able to resist the allure of doing things like we did them before.  Can we make changes in how we perceive things, how we handle daily pressures, so that life is joyous and filled with movement and satisfying work?  If the sabbatical gave us one thing in this area, it is that we are now both much more aware of the negativity and positivity of our situation.  A little bit of clarity goes a long way to making changes.

I had thought that maybe, during the three months, we would find a new calling.  Maybe some brilliant idea for a fairly lucrative (meaning, pay the bills) non-profit that could be run from our home in some beautiful place.  Something that would help people who needed help.

But it didn’t appear quite as hoped.  We did come away with some new and exciting ideas for something to do here, in this job, in this community.  Devo has a meeting with Pastor Chris (senior pastor) tomorrow to talk about some visioning and revisioning.  I’m excited about this (sorry, I think I’ll wait to tell you precisely what it is until he’s had a chance to talk it over with his colleagues) because it’s something that I personally feel very passionate about.  And am already somewhat involved in.  And, if I must admit, because it was my brain child.  It’s quite a compliment that my husband could take my vision and make it into his.

This, of course, only scratches the surface of what such an extraordinary three months encompassed.  But I’m glad that I’ve at least jotted down this much.  It will be interesting to see in future times what we remember of the experience and how we look back on it as a whole.

And We’re Back…to work

Remember that scene in The Sound of Music where Maria comes out from behind the puppet theater and goes, “Whew!” and then leans against the wall.  (The director thought she had over exaggerated, but they ended up keeping the cut.)

That’s me.  Just more…limp.  And with messier hair.  And without all that sexy self-awareness in the presence of The Captain.

What a day.  I feel like I spent my whole day saying, “Wait!”.  Even with mad scrambling and relative efficiency, Amelie especially had a knack of always trying to get me to be one step ahead.  But I harbor no angst, especially after sweet bedtime kisses, followed by her singing her new favorite song —  I like to move it, move it.

Ridiculously cute.

Made baked potatoes and baked beans today.  Hopefully that means I don’t need to cook tomorrow…got a lot to do tomorrow, children’s choir is starting and I don’t have everything ready yet.  Mostly ready.  And, indeed, I could work on it tonight, but I’ve decided to relax and go to sleep before 9.  I think the extra sleep will do me better than spending an hour looking bleary-eyed at the computer screen trying to decide if I covered everything.

Levi has been banished to the living room.  Or, the dining room, to be precise.  Now that we are back home, the time had come for him to learn to sleep through the night.  I just couldn’t face the future without sleep.  Lots of crying the first night, and less with each consecutive night.

Ironically, the more sleep I get, the tireder I am.  Which is to be expected.  Whoever said there isn’t such a thing as a sleep deficit or catching up on sleep was wrong.  But, oh, it’s glorious to wake up and realize I’ve been asleep for three or four hours and have the luxury of just turning over and going back to sleep.

Unfortunately, his relocation to the dining room means that as soon as we put him to bed, we do a mad scramble to gather up anything we might need from the kitchen or living room.  Minus my computer.  Tonight I’m here with my four nightly tangerines, one mint milano (I feel that I deserve it tonight), my water, vitamins, laptop and cord.  I am congratulating myself on thinking ahead and uploading the pictures for the blog from my desktop computer before putting people to bed.  <pat, pat, pat>

• ‘planted’ carrot tops.  Not sure I did it right, but hey, Lia’s hypothesis was that the denuded carrots were nonliving and wouldn’t grow.  So if they don’t grow, someone will be happy.
• recorded our carrot top experiment in our new Nature/Science Scrapbook.  Lia wrote the title “carrot tops” and both girls drew pictures of what they look like today.  Lia also took a picture, to be printed and pasted on our page.
• spent a long time working in the kindergarten workbook.  Various skills and subjects, including reading.
• Reading time alone and with me reading : a book on the civil war, Benjamin Franklin, Yankee Doodle (again)
• Rode bikes in the garage
• washed, dried, and put away their own breakfast dishes, made their own bed

I’m totally inspired to read an adult level biography of Benjamin Franklin after reading the book with the girls today.  What a fascinating guy.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY::

If I was a classroom teacher, I’d have all the materials for any project prepared beforehand.  But I never have any prep time to get things ready unnoticed (especially now that I’m shut into my bedroom after everyone goes to bed).  It’s spazzes me to say, “Let’s grow carrot tops!” or “let’s make bread!” and then have everyone hanging around, wandering off, jumping the gun, while I’m getting everything ready.  Be proactive, Leilani.  I’m going to try to prep for imminent projects when the girls are playing and only announce it when everything is ready.  Sounds simple enough.  But is it?

Transition Day

Today was our Transition from Sabbatical to Real Life.  Technically Monday is part of our “weekend”, but we both are easing in (or getting a jump start, depending on your perspective).

Yesterday I wrote a Sabbatical Round Up, and it’s still sitting in my drafts folder because it is so inadequate.  But it might just have to do.  We’ll see if I feel inspired to revisit it later this week.  Otherwise, it’ll just be published with all of it’s inadequacies.

Tomorrow it all begins.  This evening I had great plans for my two hours after yoga (YOGA HOW I LOVE YOU), whilst Devo was playing tennis (DEVO HOW I LOVE YOU).  I was going to (a) start going through sabbatical pictures to purge, edit, and select for an album – but only while eating my requisite nightly four mandarins from Shelley and Sam’s tree.  Then I was going to (b) prepare calendars, contracts, info sheets for Children’s Choir, which starts on Wednesday, so that I wouldn’t have to try and type and concentrate while being the sole watcher of my children tomorrow.  And then I was going to (c) do a little googling to find some inspiration for things to do this week that will be adventuresome and learning-oriented.  And I was going to go to bed early, because I’m tired.

Instead, I worked on pictures, didn’t finish my last mandarin, and accidently deleted the folder where I had separated all the best sabbatical pictures.

So now it’s late, I have no idea what we are going to do tomorrow (other than work on the computer while my children run around like hooligans), while I prop my tired eyes open and blink often to moisten my contacts.

No, surely it won’t be that bad, that’s just the tiredness induced panic speaking.  I’ve already got the beans on to soak, so at least we’ll have food.  I’m trying baked beans for the first time.  Purchased molasses today, something that has never before been seen in my pantry.

Today, and this is important, today Lia sounded out, spelled, and wrote words all by herself for the very first time.  I had absolutely nothing to do with it…nothing even to do with the impulse.

She wrote ::

TOO LIA

LIA LUS MME

Which means:  To Lia.  Lia loves Mommy.

I see in my California curriculum standards for writing that she now can “use letter and phonetically spelled words to write” and “write by moving from left to right and from top to bottom.”

Guess we’ll have to wait for the ability to “write consonant-vowel-consonant words” to develop.  Haha.

I put my little love note in a photo frame on the fridge.  I’m so proud, I can hardly stand it.

In other learning news today (because Debbie wondered what happened to the lists…what happened is that I was recording it in my notebook, whenever I happened to remember to do it), the girls did a variety of things ::

• rode bikes/trikes.  Lia is learning this week to ride her bike with training wheels, not the trike.
• read books on Martin Luther King, Jr., runaway slaves, (so I’m a week late, so what.) US important places, and Yankee Doodle.
• reading on their own
• Lia practiced the piano.  She has recently figured out how to play songs by ear.  Her song today was from All Creatures of our God and King, the alleluia, alleluia part.
• Walked half a mile to church.
• Dried and put away dishes after each meal.

And other things that I can’t remember.  Luckily they still learn even when I don’t write down what they learned.

So tomorrow…grow carrot tops?

Il Segno di Dio

We went house hunting with Ivette today.  Saw a really great house almost literally around the corner.  Huge yard.  A little kidney bean of a pool.  Spacious.  Nice set up.  Only asking $25K more than we have.

And get this.  It has a chicken coop.

A little barn-like structure with a picket fence around it.

For my future Three French Hens.  Antoinette, Bernadette, and Gabrielle?

I call it a sign from God.  (Remember Under the Tuscan Sun and il segno di Dio?).  Maybe.

<fingers crossed, wood rapped, prayers said, rosary fingered, buddha belly rubbed>

Benefits of Jet Lag

Triumphant

And we’re back.

Thanks to an enterprising Horizon Air check-in lady, we’re back 7 hours earlier than the (changed by the airline, we never would have agreed to it) itinerary.  And thanks to another enterprising checker-inner (what are these people called?), instead of languishing for hours in Japan, we went back to my mom’s house for another couple hours of sleep and caught the next plane.

No thanks to the hostile Delta stewardess, excuse me, flight attendant.  I swear, if she had come and been rude to us one more time, I would have given her an earful.  A strongly worded earful.  Because two people traveling on an 8.5 hour flight in the midst of a 26-32 hour journey with a very very fussy baby really don’t need someone telling them they’re doing something wrong.  Four separate times.  (Luckily it had nothing to do with the fussy baby, or my patience wouldn’t have lasted so long).

Levi is sleeping in the straight-jacket bassinet, my 1 hour old untouched dinner shown at bottom

So we did survive the first three miserable hours on the Narita-Portland flight.  Unfortunately, those three miserable hours have elected this trip as our family’s Worst Family Airplane Trip Ever.  But, in hind sight, it wasn’t too bad.

After all, I didn’t cry.  Could definitely have been worse.

I got off that plane here and strode down the concourse like, like, those people in Armageddon.  Triumphant.  (Took me a long time to come up with that word – victorious, happy, satisfied weren’t cutting it.  Woke up this morning and thought, triumphant.  Yes.)

We got home to a pantry and refrigerator full of food (I think we have Chrystal to thank for that) and homemade rosemary bread with homemade tomato soup awaiting us (the bread was definitely Pastor Chris, the tomato soup’s origins are still a mystery).  And a jar full of gift certificates for restaurants from the pastoral staff.

They love us, they really do.

Amelie fell asleep in her food, so everyone was tucked into bed before 7:30 last night.  Parents followed shortly.  And we slept until 10 this morning.  Glory be, it was a miracle.

Although, I’d like to think that I helped out the miracle by taking Levi into bed with me at 2:30 and opening the milk bar.  Thus I managed to keep him mostly asleep until 10am.

But it was still a miracle.

Now we’re happily settling in.  The girls have finally, after 24 hours, mostly satisfied the inner urging to get out every possible toy and reacquaint themselves before casting it aside and searching out a new toy.  Levi is learning the lay of the land.  And Devo and I have unpacked.  Completely.

Triumphant about sums it up.

This, of course, leaves out a number of interesting details such as -

Coming back on the earlier flight meant that we were arriving with no carseats.  Pastor Dave scrounged up his grandchildren’s carseats and gave them to Steve, our neighbor, who picked us up.  (Thanks, Janeen – to whom belongeth the grandchildren!)

Steve finding that our car had expired while languishing in the garage.  He towed it, got it fixed, picked us up, picked up our car, and then took Devo back to the airport in the evening to pick up our luggage (which had come later on the originally scheduled flight).  We shared our homemade bread with him – was it a sacrifice equal to his?  Perhaps.  (That’s a joke.  Kind of.)

Or a listing of the movies we saw — with commentary.  Why oh why did they ever let Sandra Bullock’s hair be anything but brown?

Or how startlingly white our kitchen decks are.  I remember how long it took me to get used to them when I moved in.  I thought that I had just adjusted…but I guess they had just acquired a muted shade.  <snort>  Turns out it was just evidence of Chrystal’s stay here – everywhere I look there is another cupboard neatly organized or another sweet surprise of some sort.

Sabbatical lasts until next week begins.  Time to sort ourselves out, get over jetlag, organize the trip pictures, etc, etc, etc.

Save Some For Me!

Amelie, shoving grapes in her mouth as fast as she can, her arms positioned possessively around the bowl of grapes.  Liana comes over to grab a few.  Amelie admonishes, “Save some for me!”

Transitioning

You’re probably ready to shoot me about now.  I apologize for the frequent and long silences.  I’m in transition.

You know how it is, that time coming up before a big trip where you’re neither here nor there.  Where you lay in one bed on one side of the world, thinking about the other bed on the other side of the world, and musing over the fact that soon you’ll be over there thinking about over here.

It’s complicated.

In lieu of something truly profound to say, I’m just going to jot down seven random things.

1) Went to my niece’s baptism/christening today – a beautiful, meaningful ceremony.  Came away resentful at the religious arrogance espoused by my particular faith tradition towards others and eager to pass openness on to our children.

2) Finished three books by Terri Fivash in quick succession.    Ruth & Boaz and the first two in the Dahveed series.  Really enjoyed them.  (Thanks, Grandma!) Wonder if the author should have pursued a wider Christian market, rather than publishing through Review and Herald.  The books are good and she deserves a large readership.

3) Got Lia signed up for piano lessons when we get back home.  It feels like a big commitment in our formerly fancy-free life.  We are all looking forward to it.

4) Been daydreaming about starting a blog about our adventures in backyard gardening.  Maybe name it after our future three hens, whom we plan to endow with old lady names.  Mildred, Muriel, & Myrtle?  Haha.

5) I can’t decide what to do with my hair.  I feel the mid-life crisis urge to do something drastic – but I don’t really want earrings, a tattoo, or to cut my hair short.  Maybe I’ll paint my nails instead.  (Ooh, Leilani, real drastic there).

6) We solved the future car problem.  We’ve been debating for months – SUV vs. minivan.  Once we have another baby (not yet), we won’t have enough seatbelts.  Devo found a company that makes a third seat for our explorer.  Bingo.

7)  Bought the girls recorders for Christmas.  Then found a recorder method book published by the Trapp Family Singers (as in, the hills are alive).  I borrowed a recorder and have been systematically working my way through the book.  I’m getting close to the part where I get to play Bach.  I’m so excited.  I hope it hasn’t been too annoying to my fellow housemates.

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year, a few days ago

Merry Christmas from my family to yours!

(Here is where I should insert a family picture with all of us dressed in holiday colors, carefully posed in front of a Christmas tree.  Or at least a family picture.  But I’m not.  So sorry.)

Christmas Eve hosted a tropical rain storm.  Puzzles and movies, perfect rainy day activities.  I had a sudden, inexplicable longing for a Christmas Eve service (which is funny because when I have to go, I’m often ambivalent).  So we sang carols and read/acted the Christmas stories from the four gospels.  That way Mary (Lia) and “Jofus” (Amelie) get their time in the spotlight.  (Luke’s version is about Mary, Matthew’s about Joseph).

Christmas was brunch of waffles and strawberries, dinner of sandwiches.  We believe in enjoyable Christmases.  This year we bought a goat from Heifer International as our “birthday gift for Jesus”. Cool.

It was awfully nice not to be the only ones without a place to go this Christmas.

And now it’s the New Year.

Happy New Year from my family to yours!

Three days past, and Jesse’s (my step dad) 50th Birthday today.  We tried to make some New Year’s Resolutions, just as a conversation starter, if nothing else.  Didn’t really come up with much.

Return to Normal Life seems to sum it up.  Which will commence on January 18 (okay, give a few days for jet lag), when we return (and arrive) back in California.

Devo described the sabbatical experience as a labyrinth.  First the inward journey, letting go.  Then the center.  Then the outward journey of reengaging.  Somehow I missed the center transition between inward and outward and spent a bewildered week thinking, Wait, wait, go back, go back!

But now we’ve had some time to backtrack and do some good thinking and have some productive conversations about our future life, and I’m officially and peacefully launched on the outward journey.  Started making some lists, sketching out a schedule.

Somehow I had thought that this big gap would change the normal schedule, but I was mistaken.  Still looks the same.  But we have a great deal more clarity with which to choose or reject schedule fillers.

Even the girls are experiencing their own outward journeys.  Without much prompting they have begun talking alot about home.

Did I ever mention that Levi is crawling and pulling himself up?  Wherever you look, you can see him perched somewhere holding on with one hand, seeing where the next adventure will be.  Yesterday he finally grew enough to be able to play the piano keys.  Which he’s so glad to not depend on the person holding him to recognize his “I want to play the piano” cues (throwing his body towards the piano and shrieking in dismay when the holding adult moves in the opposite direction).  He sprouted two teeth, the first appeared on Christmas Day, and the other on the next day.  So Liana played the Chipmunks “All I Want For Christmas is my Two Front Teeth”.

Amelie has finally FINALLY decided that she can go down the waterslide all by herself.  (She was doing it during our last visit when she was 16 months, but not this trip).

And we’ve decided to look into hula for this year’s dance lessons.

The End.

Drop the Cakes

Mom made some cakes to take to Liana’s school for a Christmas party today.  After telling the girls the Christmas story over pancakes (Grandma’s storytelling is better than TV!), she was telling the girls the morning’s plan.

Mom ::  I’m going to do the dishes, shower, cook the potatoes and boil the eggs for lunch, drop the cakes…

Amelie ::  Oh NO!  Don’t drop the cakes!