New Year's Letter 2014

Again, we didn't get to send this to very many people, but we did manage a few dozen! When you have families as big as ours, that doesn't go very far! So here it is for the rest of you awesome-sauce peeps!

We kept our word. 2013 our word was “faith,” and we spent the year busily “sowing” in faith, planting seeds wherever we could without worrying about the harvest. Here we are a year later, surprised and pleased at the growth! And since I hardly blogged in 2013, here is our year, month by month:

JANUARY : Eric and Marcee each started teaching a class at the local junior college. Emiline sings more than talks with Aunt Holli’s influence. A two-year-old singing Wonderwall? Adorable! 

FEBRUARY: Marcee started an online B-school course in preparation to start a business. Adam starts sleeping through the night. Sort of. Sometimes. Occasionally.

MARCH: Jane starts disappearing during the day and staying up late to read books. Marcee was diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder and Anxiety and started an effective medication. 

APRIL : Adam starts crawling. The girls are struck by Mermaid Fever, and can’t get enough time pretending to swim across the carpet. Marcee was introduced to a new love—herbalism—via a hands-on class making tinctures and salves.

MAY: Eric is accepted to a Tax LLM/Masters in Accounting grad program! Emiline turns three (going on 13) and lives up to her nickname, “Genius Monster.” 

JUNE : Eric moves to Denver for the summer for school and networking. Marcee and the girls experiment with home schooling, since Jane insists she’s NOT going to kindergarten. Ever. 

JULY : Adam starts walking! And we all really, really, miss Eric. Jane discovers Magic Treehouse. 

AUGUST : Eric finishes his first class with a bang and comes home! Girls start spending hours coloring and drawing. Jane turns 5. Adam turns 1 and loves Grandma and anything to do with animals. We enjoy lots of family gatherings and end of summer fun all together! 

SEPTEMBER : Moved to Kansas City!! (What-the-What??!?!) Marcee and her sister launch a graphic design business, Jabberdashery. (check us out at www.jabberdashery.com) Jane chooses a career and begins drawing “fashions” on everything. 

OCTOBER: Our heads are spinning, our hearts are aching, our hands are busy, busy, busy! Eric grapples with being gluten sensitive/intolerant and Marcee learns all kinds of new skills in the kitchen: fermenting, sprouting, culturing, and making almost everything from scratch. The benefits are nothing less than miraculous, healing Eric’s gut and Marcee’s thoughts. 

NOVEMBER: Eric is busier than ever, continuing with job searching and his Tax program online, substitute teaching during the day, and delivering pizzas at night. Jabberdashery starts making money. We celebrate our first holiday of our married life with no other family around. 

DECEMBER : We have a sweet Christmas season in Kansas with new and old traditions. Eric and Marcee celebrate 7 fantastic and magical years of marriage.

It is with full hearts and sharp eyes that we approach 2014 with eagerness and enthusiasm. The lessons and love of 2013 have been more than we could have ever guessed. We feel our blessings deeply and fully. Our theme for 2014 is “See and Seek the Eternal.” Life is all about perspective. And the hard-won lessons of the last few years of employment and financial challenges have taught us that we have all the riches of eternity right in front of us. We resolve to never forget it, to let it continue to change our hearts, goals, dreams, and lives, every moment, the ones now and forever after.

If 3 Year Olds Wrote Holiday Letters...

This is what mine wrote when I turned to her for help in writing our annual letter:

Our year has been great. We love you so much. It’s a great service for everyone else I know but it’s so difficult of all. Walrus. I love you. So much about flowers. From Jane and Emiline and Mom. Monkeys. It’s so pretty. I love to play stinky feet.

Bring on the Rain, 2014

I say that with hope and fear and a rather large butterfly in my stomach that it might come to pass.

Let me explain.

2013 was a doozy (and 2012. and 2011....). It was a torrent of hard things raining down. It had felt so hard, so dark, that when the end of the year came, and the time for introspection and analysis came, I was scared to look. I was fearful and anxious to write the annual family letter, or even to just begin the process. I mentally put it off. But again, my commitment to introspection carried me through and I signed up for this webinar by Lisa Bryne. It was just the bit of motivation and guidance I needed. One of the things she talks about is changing your focus to see the good things in your life, and that if we don't, then we are leaving those good things behind instead of taking them forward with us.

Early this year I was diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder and Anxiety. I was really lucky in that the meds worked well and fast. And even more that I was able to transition off of them into very specific diet and herbal supplement program recently (thank you Spontaneous Happiness and my cultured food pets). But it was this big dark cloud over my life, over everything else I wanted to do and be. I was "cray-cray," and surely that was controlling so much of my life and choices, right?

Well, depression is a Liar. While you are sucked down into the middle of it and while you are pulling out of it's abyss, it's a big, fat, ridiculous Liar. For me, the surest litmus test of actually being in Depression's Jaws, is that I think I'm not. It's breathing its fat, stinky lies on me and I think I'm sitting on the porch in a refreshing, evening breeze, internalizing all those lies. And it was still telling me lies, telling me that my year was a bust.

I am blogging this today to publicly proclaim that this year is probably the year of my most personal growth to date. A quote from Dr. Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog says it best, or at least profoundly to me late last night during our New Year's Eve celebrations:
"everyday of rain brings water flowing to things growing in the ground.
And every drop of rain will keep you growing seeds you're sowing in the ground."

It has rained relentlessly the last few years, a near constant drizzle. But now, I can see that rain for it's function- growth. I am exploding with growth, like one of my beans in the sprouting jar on the counter. And even though I feel ready for spring, to be planted, to grow up strong and bear fruit, I am going to trust in the season instead. Because I've been saying I'm ready for spring for years now, and I'm sooooo grateful for the rain I've had instead. As hard as it has been, as dark and miserable some moments have been, I wouldn't trade it. It was more than worth it. Thank you for your gifts, 2013.

So Bring On the Rain, 2014!

Also, "Keep you're head up, Billy Buddy" ;-)

And if you haven't watched Dr. Horrible, treat yourself today. It's on Netflix, too.

And Happy New Year!

Announcing....

Yeesh! I can practically hear blogger dashboard creaking and the smell of virtual dust is making me virtually sneeze. Five months later, and my big announcement is finally here and off the ground:

I've started a business!! Yes, me and my sis are partners in a grand new (ad)venture called Jabberdashery. It's where I post for sale the things I make digitally all the time anyway. Interestingly, the hardest thing has been to be OK with calling myself a graphic designer without feeling like a pretender. But I am and I love it and I'm pretty darn good and getting better all the time.

This blog will remain our family and my personal blog. But I'll also be blogging over at Jabberdashery.com about every week, too. And it won't be a lot of marketing hype. See, the artwork I'm doing is very personal and very inspirational. To be honest, I kind of hate that word "inspirational." It's something a cliche, isn't it? And "motivating" isn't much better. But the idea is for me to share some kind of story or message that helps move people up and through their day. What's a better word for that? One that means "onward and upward!!!" with the force of several exclamation points??

I have to make this blog short and to get back to my regularly scheduled Jabberdashery work time. I plan to chronicle how all this came about, the seed that was planted, the things that nourished it. But I need to go finish writing up the schedule and do a few things for a new design/product we are hopefully going to launch next month. here you can read that tells part of the story. If you've missed me, you should subscribe to it because I'll be there regularly every Wednesday from here on out! And as we get settled (did I mention we moved to Kansas??) and get into more of a routine (did I mention we are trying out homeschooling??) I hope to be back here more often. Cuz I've got some new lines to share!! Life has been....life. Hard, crazy, amazing, and awesome.
In the meantime, there is a pretty good blog post

Guess Who's Nine Months Old??

How did this happen??? Time is out of control over here!I love this picture of my little prince, and not just because it hides his massive forehead ;-) This was taken over conference weekend, he doesn't even fit into these clothes anymore...

 Sweet little sleeper. He's had his tongue like this for what seems like forever now, but it's probably just as long as he's been teething, which has been just shy of forever...

 This kid loves people, new experiences, and being the center of attention. He's in the perfect spot of the family for that!

He's growth curve is a lot like Jane's, although he's only in 12M clothing right now. I'm betting he'll grow out of his current stuff in about a month. He's got a bit more hair than Jane did at this age. He's got the big, smart head, sparkling blue eyes, and adoring smile. He's been crawling for about a month, but he's been serious about it the last few weeks. Before that, he pulled himself across the floor on his belly and rolled to get where he wanted to go. He loves to pull himself up on things, clap his feet together, and he is not deterred by obstacles. He LOVES to eat and is noisy the entire time, whether food is in his mouth or not, he's got something to say about it. He's been signing just a little bit, and mostly with Eric, on and off for about a month. He's most consistent about asking for water and milk. Screaming works better for more! He loves bananas, strawberries, pears, and yogurt best. Recently he's also enjoyed toast with lots of butter. And he's happiest when he eats whatever grown up food we are having for dinner- he really like Zucchini Lasagna the other day and anything with more complex and kicky flavors he can't get enough of.

He's got a good sense of humor and loves to play games with us. He still hates getting dressed, undressed, and diaper changes. He gets so indignant! It's both funny and exasperating. He loves to be held way too much, but then, there are too many adults around to indulge him. He's had a bit of separation anxiety lately, but only here and there the last few weeks.

He's a great night sleeper, and sometimes a good napper, sometimes a little turd. He's taking two naps these days. His morning nap is about 2-3 hours after he gets up, and his afternoon nap another 3-4 after that. Usually one of his naps is a good solid few hours. He never goes down happily and always cries for at least a minute or two before going to sleep. He still loves to nurse, but is super distractable if he hears any noise. We had a brief day or two of biting, but that's settled down (thankfully). He's got a really sensitive heart and is pretty perceptive. He cries when his sisters are sad, when Grandpa is gruff, or when I lose my patience (which NEVER happens!!!)

He is the apple of my eye! My Adam Apple! (nerrr.) I can't imagine not having him in our family right now. Man, God is smart!!

Happy Mother's Day

So my dream of  having quaint little sing-a-longs as a family is starting to come true. While tuning my ukulele, Eric made up this song. The girls thought it was a-maz-ing, and so we decided to sing it for Grammy. This one is for you!

Awesome Post Forthcoming! But first...

I need your help. I'm taking a course, which you will find more about in the Forthcoming Awesome Post, and there is a piece of homework you can help me with. It feels a bit silly and possibly embarrassing, but basically I need you to tell me what makes me Awesome, or what are my three best qualities. No joke. This isn't just me needing some validation (all though it will help), it's honestly homework for this course. If you'd like to leave a comment below, please do, you can also go here if you'd like to be anonymous.

THANKS, dear peeps! It means a lot you taking the time to help me out.

The Blizzards and Zombies of Life

There are many things I love about Minnesota. And with regards to the snow, I love how it doesn't stop anyone. It doesn't even really slow anyone down, at least not much. We'd get a whole foot dumped on us over the night and come morning, the schools would just delay things, like an hour or two. At the most. Our first winter there it was purely befuddling. For example, the 10 year old girls I taught at church would show up at my apartment in shorts and mere sweatshirts on in November when there was already feet of snow on the ground.  There is definitely something to be said about acclimatization. And expectations. And preparation.

Tonight my awesome Lil Sis took me out on a date. The Huz left town yesterday to go to a funeral in Wichita. His best friend's mom, really a second mother, passed away suddenly and unexpectedly at a young age from a pneumonia that went septic (at least, that's what I've pieced together from FB reports and stuff). The Huz, really, really, really wanted to be there in person and we looked at flights with bulging eyes and watched the driving conditions with breaths held and finally I just pulled the trigger and bought a "cheap" Southwest flight into Kansas City, an easy drive to Wichita, and he has two sisters living there. It seemed perfect, the cost, the timing, everything. The winter storm here wasn't as bad as predicted, he made it safely to SLC and his flight and everything went A-OK. And then the storm that was supposed to hit southeastern Kansas ate one of those magic mushrooms and grew to cover the state and a few next door. So during the night, the roads became impassable. And yet, pass my husband would try anyway. He got up super early and conditions didn't look to bad, so off he went. He got 10 minutes away from his sister's house and couldn't go any further. He ended up spending four hours or so in a gas station waiting for the plows to do their work.

In the meantime, I'm sending massive prayers to heaven and good thoughts his way, and so is my mother and the girls, that he'll be able to make the funeral, that something will work out or at least he'll just be safe. He made it back to the house, had a late lunch, and got to spend a little time with family. And then the storm seemed like it was clearing up, and the plows had caught up, and according to his friend the roads got really good 80 miles outside of Wichita, so off he went again. I made him keep me updated every hour so, as my Worry was in high gear. And it seemed like he might actually make it to Wichita. Sure, he'd missed the funeral, but he could still make it in time to be with all that had gathered. So, patiently and carefully, he kept on going down I-35 at no more than 20 miles an hour. It was all going to be OK.

And then he went off the road. He didn't slide far, and it looks like the car is fine, but he was high-centered and couldn't get back on the road. Some Good Kansan drove him into town and helped him find a way to try and pull it out. Although, it's another convoluted tale. And here's were the story gets sparse as I haven't talked much on the phone with him, just some texting about this part. They couldn't pull it out, he's been waiting at yet another gas station for a few hours for a tow truck and it looks like he won't be making it to Wichita after all. At all.

While this last bit of fun has been going on for the my Huz, I was sitting in the movie theater with Lil Sis watching Warm Bodies. It's a comedic take on Romeo and Juliet, only Romeo is a Zombie. While hilarious, the movie got me invested. The dialogue and story are good and it has some great, relatable characters (yep, I'm relating to a Zombie). So there I am in the dark theater checking my phone and getting text updates about my poor Husband's, terrible, awful, no good, very bad blizzard. And I think his anxiety and frustration and everything instantly traveled all those hundreds of miles and I found myself feeling very vulnerable in the theater. I needed this story to have a happy ending. I needed the Zombie Romeo not to get blown apart by Juliet's father. For a little while there, I was a little concerned about my ability to keep it together if the Undead became More Dead.

And it was all I could do to refrain from thinking about how this whole day for Eric is like what our whole almost two years of limbo has been. And to not, yet again, be angry at God like a three year old who didn't get her way.

The night before I bought the ticket, I prayed that I might please be directed on what we should do, if he should go or not. If we should spend practically nonexistent resources on this or not. When I found the ticket, it felt right. So I did it. And when, at 10:00 a.m., my mom texted me saying she was recruiting a massive prayer force "because we believe in miracles" I was hopeful he'd make it to the funeral. It did look like things could work out. And they didn't. But I'm still hopeful there was a purpose or a reason to all this. Like I said before, effort is never wasted in the eternal scheme of things.

And I guess that's what blizzards and zombies have taught me tonight.  Like snow in Minnesota, it takes a lot of preparation, and just plain hard work,  to not allow external circumstances to stop you and only sometimes slow you down. The shear number of plows in Minnesota, the amount of resources devoted to snow removal, the action plan in place, as well as the attitude of those that live there makes a blizzard no big deal. In the  case of faith, it's spiritual prep and the tenacity of just pushing through it so I can see things with a perspective broader than tonight or this year.

Eric never did make it to Wichita. Neither did one of the daughters of the deceased because of the same storm. But faith isn't faith if it's dependent on getting my own way. Or said another way, faith operates outside of results, reasons, and outcomes. It's a blessing of the heart.

And for Zombies? What did they teach me? Faith is a game changer. It's an Undead changer. And sure, being alive means you might bleed and hurt sometimes, but it's much better than the alternative:

nnnnnaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuhhhhhhhh. (Zombie Grunt)

P.S. Warm Bodies is definitely worth seeing. I enjoyed the humor and the message.

Princess Stories and Reading

Emiline asked me to tell her a princess story tonight, "one with a prince!" I unimaginatively obliged by telling her a princessified version of how my parents met. She liked hearing about Princess Julie and Prince Lloyd and their first ball.

But then, Emiline told me a princess story. This one was about Princess Marcee and Prince Daddy-Eric and how they didn't know how to get to Grandma's house (where the ball was) and then they disappeared. Into the grass. Under the tramp. And then Princess Grandma-Queen and Prince Lloyd didn't know what to think and then they were scared because of the bad guys. And then Jane and Emiline got the guns to shoot the bad guys. Here I interjected with "where did you learn about guns?" and she said "at the store! I learned them at the store."  So Jane and Emiline shot the evil queen and saved them all. Oh, and then they went to the ball.

She sat there, sprawled out on my lap, and I got to stroke her hair and face and just soak her up. She's such a character! My sister pegged it the other day just what is so cute about the way Emiline talks. She has the typical problem saying Rs that most 2 year olds have, she talks non-stop with an advanced vocabulary and pretty clearly for 2, but the thing that makes her so endearing is that when she says a word, her whole face makes the effort to pronounce it, and often her whole body. She doesn't just radiate energy, she creates it, especially when she tells me stories. I have no idea where this bad guy stuff came from.

Tonight I'm supposed to be grading essays. I have a big activity for the youth in our church tomorrow that I'm in charge of, I spent the afternoon running around for that and in the doc's office and getting prescriptions because now Adam has bronchitis, we were there just a few days ago for Emiline's bronchitis and just opening my computer tonight after putting the kids down made me totally overwhelmed. But before that, Jane, Emiline and me had cuddle time on my bed and we read stories, and they tried to hide in their blankets and I tickled them.

All while we were in town today Jane was reading signs like crazy "Mom, that says 'drop off,' 'pick up,' 'Speed Queen,' 'Smiths,' 'Headstart,' and more I can't remember. It's like she can't help herself reading words, and I remember what that feels like. I remember looking at cereal boxes and labels and being surprised that I could read them without trying and that my tongue just had to say them, like scratching an itch.

While we were at Walmart, we stopped to look at a jewelry display and there was a friendship necklace and Jane reads:"'Be Fri" all confused then "Mom, why is that heart broken?" I explained to her that it is a friendship necklace with a message on each side of the heart. It says "best friends" because a best friend is someone that makes your heart feel a little broken when you are not with them. Immediately she says: "that's like me and Emiline! We should get it for her for Valentine's day!" How could I say no to that?

I guess I just wanted to take a minute tonight to dwell on the sweetness of the day. Sure, I'm putting off things that will make me crazier tomorrow. But I'm in a "big picture" kind of mood. I read this today and it just sort of resonated with me, helped me tone down the demands and disappointments in my life right now that would otherwise take too much of my attention. And you know what? I'm the teacher, I get to say when things are due, right? I mean, seriously! So maybe I won't grade papers after all...

But to all you "Be Fri"s out there, here is one "St Ends" saying, I'm glad our hearts make us both more complete, even if that does mean a little heartache when we are apart.

Family Pictures

Another good coupon, another bunch of cute pics of my kiddos.