First Sunday of Advent

Advent is my favorite time-- preparing for Christmas, for me it was always this magical time. Growing up we had little construction paper wreaths, my twin sister and I made in 1st grade. The purple-ditto transferred readings were rubbed off, and it was fading (pre-xerox copiers, my friends). But it was put out every year. Most Sunday nights we would gather around for the advent reading, and put some straw in the manger. Sang around the lit Christmas tree. We had a little wooden manger, we would prepare it for baby Jesus. Who always came Christmas morning, nestled in front of all the presents.

I want my kids to have clear memories of Christmas, like that. The things we did every year— I love my mom, but I don’t pack up 90% of my house and replace it with Christmas (thankfully, she doesn’t do this anymore). It took a bit of time to put up our tree last weekend, Izzo requested it for decorations for her birthday. Even though it broke my rule— no Christmas stuff up before Thanksgiving. But I can’t say no to seasonal birthday decorations. Actually, I really enjoy taking the first Sunday night of advent to decorate. And this year, that’s what we did.

Truman loved putting up the ornaments. He’d say, “I need otherone, Mimi!” before the previous ornament left his hand. And of course we had to redistribute a bit as all the ornaments were... um... two feet up from the floor and hanging in one spot. Isabel wanted to put up mostly snow men, and any Disney ornaments we had. “Oh, is this another Cinderella one?” (No.) It took all of about 30 minutes, finished off with hot chocolate and reading the Luke account of the Shepard's and angels— since we had put up our nativity I was able to relate to the kids better the pieces of the story.

For now I’m going to pretend we didn’t trade in vintage Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer DVD and watch Barney instead. But we did--the kids insisted. But it was the family time and the snuggling that was so worth it, Barney or no Barney.

What are your plans for advent?

A Little Rest....

It is so good to be back, settling into Sunday night routines. And readying the home, our bags, clothes.... for the week ahead. I think I’m winning the war on laundry, but you can never tell for sure. It was so amazing tonight to put the kids to bed, and sit in a clean, decorated house with a book for five chapters.

How was your Thanksgiving? Our holiday was wonderful, totally not what we expected, but exactly what we needed. We were unable to make it to Thanksgiving dinner with friends— the kids were sick. Suspected Strep, but Friday morning we found out that it was just long-lasting effects of the dreaded flu. Exhaustion, body aches and sore throats. The two little people, and their little bodies needed some rest and healing. 

Thursday we made breakfast Monkey bread and smoothies, while watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. The kids really interacted with the balloons. Truman said "Hello Abby Cadabby, this is Trubey, here my house!" 

 

At lunch time our friends brought over Thanksgiving dinner for us, so delicious. And it fed us several meals— I love holiday leftovers.

Other than that, we spent the whole weekend cuddling, napping, drinking soothing drinks, playing games, trains and tinkers. We took the opportunity to get back on schedule, to rest well, to get healthy. Good food filling our bellies, lots of sleep at night, sunshine on our walks and nothing sets forth healing like hot chocolate. Right? 

Friday after nap time, Isabel woke up a new woman. She look refreshed and had rosy cheeks. O that made my mama-heart soar. We were able to venture out a bit later in the weekend, but stayed close to home. 

 

Truman had perked up too— a little faster than his sister. He spent the weekend coloring and building trains.
We needed this weekend. I think it was in God’s grace that we were unable to travel, we were given this opportunity to retreat into our own little cocoon. Hopefully better health is on it’s way.

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Check out the new playlist below... Christmas Tunes. Any other ones I should add? Send me your favorites!

Thankfulness

Holiday season has begun, I'm hoping for a quiet one, not too much busy going on.  We really do treasure this Thanksgiving week in our life. It always seems to be life changing—our first date, the day we got engaged, our wedding day, the day we had our first baby and the week we found out we were having our second. Good thing these were not all in the same year! We have so many significant events that point back to this week in time. It seems like a ordained week for the our little family.

This week was no different-- but no big news to report. I felt that same awe and wonder of the other events on this our 10th anniversary of our first date, five years of marriage and the four years of our daughter’s life. I awe at the faces of our children, I awe at the stability and love in our relationship with each other and with them. I look back to the kids we were in high school, I feel worlds away from there.

Our babies, ushered in so much changing and growing in us, as parents. We loved each other but loving them opened up all kinds of worlds we didn’t know existed. Who knew that my big dreams would be replaced with tangible happenings. I never expected to love motherhood as I do— I feel like I’m made for it. Slowly, my floundering college student what-am-I-here-for mentality was replaced with a purposeful and driven loving of my husband and caring for my children.

Anyway. I think this week more than any other gives me time to step back and be thankful. 

What are you thankful for?  

Birthday Festivities

Thank you so much for your wonderful words and emails about our birthday girl. We've just been enjoying each other, making excuses for one more birthday treat, excursion or memory made.

This year, Isabel asked for a doll and a butterfly costume. I was going to use a pair of fairy wings from my past... let's just say in high school my nickname was 'MaryFairy'.  I couldn't find my wings, so I used a curtain sheer, some floral wire and hot glue gun. Plus these wings are perfect Isabel size. "Mom, I can wear them under my coat and no one will know!"

For the skirt, I repurposed my friend's halloween costume (she was a loofa!!) and made Isabel a tutu and a headband.

We made kitty cupcakes too!

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Because the kids are real young, we're still feeling out what our birthday traditions will be. We know these will be in the running for next year.
Pajama party with best friends:

Fancy family dinner with the ones we love:

Fresh berries and something chocolate:

Birthday Gratefulness

This sweet little baby is now this sweet 4 year old girl! Her labor was days long but her birth was just a few frantic minutes. I am grateful for carrying her, mothering her, teaching her but learning more than I ever knew I could.

Happy Birthday, Isabel.

Birthday Birthday

make a wish, originally uploaded by tamelyn.

On Monday, Isabel will be 4.

I am not quite sure how this happened. It feels like yesterday she was wrapped up in a pink little blanket, and placed in my arms.

We will be celebrating in little ways all weekend. And preparing for the big day.

We are still carving out birthday traditions, there will be the retelling of the day she was born. A letter written by Eric, and this year, Hello Kitty on her cupcakes.

I found this cake on flickr, and I’m excited to make a creation too. It looks like it's sitting on my kitchen table in the candle light... Cake creating actually one of my favorite parts of birthday celebrating (and eating them to... I don't lie)! Here is her Maisy Cake from last year. Eric will be making cupcakes for her to take to school. Such a lucky little lady.

And a beautiful four year old!

Goodness for the Growing...

This is my last post on the weekend. But it’s chocked full of thinking/cooking goodness.

Are your friends like mine? Do you enjoy eating/talking/being with them. Is it soul-filling for you? I have a few groups of soul nourishing friends, and this group knew me from the infancy of my soul. The stretching and growing from a college freshman into an artist, friend, wife, mother and beyond. We are all in a stretching and growing season again, but now with more grace, it seems. This is one time in our life where we feel centered in our personhood as we make changes and choices about the world around us. But we feel very centered, knowing ourselves and being know by others.

A few things we’ve been throwing around at each other. Goodness for the growing--if you will. I’ll make a short list for you here. These books and music were thrown around quite heavily this weekend.

Books:
Wisdom Distilled From The Daily
Let You Life Speak
The Quotidian Mysteries
A Long Obedience in the Same Direction
The Will of God as a Way of Life
Music:
Sufjan Stevens Christmas Album

It was really good to have time to spend in our friendships, enjoying and celebrating the years we’ve been together and the years we’ve been apart.

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I promised my beautiful Kim that I’d post the potatoes recipe so here goes.

On Saturday night we had our annual ornament exchange and holiday party. We made a big meal together roast chicken, holiday potatoes, Kim’s sweet corn frozen at it’s peak in the summertime, and fresh bread. Eric made one of his delicious cheesecakes too. There was of course coffee.  

Holiday Potatoes
5 lb bag of red russet potatoes
1 pint of heavy cream (divided in half)
4 tablespoons of butter cubed
3 tablespoons of olive oil
Salt
Pepper
Paprika
8oz sharp cheddar cheese grated (divided in half)

Wash, peel and cut potatoes just into large chunks, half moons. Place in a 13 x 9 baking dish. Season generously with salt, pepper and paprika. Mix. Add half pint of heavy cream, portion cubed butter evenly over potatoes, drizzle olive oil over pan. Cover with foil. Bake at 350 for one hour.

Add the 2nd half of the heavy cream, half the cheese. Stir well to incorporate. Top with the rest of the cheese. Bake for 45 minutes more covered in foil.

Remove foil and bake for remaining 15 minutes. This recipe reheats very well.

Regional Coffee and Pumpkin Pancakes.

When kids woke up on Saturday morning, all they could think about was their NaNa (my twin sister). Missy lived with us when Isabel was learning to talk. She was just as excited to see them! And we were all up early together. I made a big pot of coffee and started in on the pumpkin pancakes while Missy and the kids watched UP! Have you seen that movie? Geez I bawled in the first few minutes.

About 9:00 finally sat at the table to share a meal together and coffee. I don’t think it’s possible to get together with these women and really enjoy each other without coffee. Even Isabel got into the coffee spirit. She came waltzed into the kitchen with a vintage peacock blue coffee mug (from the playroom) containing her sippy of warm milk. She sat at the table with us, laughing, conversing and drinking her milk. Later she came back with paints and paper. She really wanted to be a big girl, and enjoy the other girls!

We planned to bring a limited edition or regional coffee to drink together, but all so to portion out for a momento. 

Our chosen blends:
CO-OP Nicaraguan
Burgie’s Seasonal Snowball and Decaf Snowball (If you are ever in Ames, Iowa you MUST visit Burgie’s).
Starbucks From Africa to Africa 
Starbucks Thanksgiving 2009 

We still have 15 pie pumpkins in the basement, so this rather large batch of pumpkin pancakes is the perfect solution. But you can use canned pumpkin too. These pancakes tasted like pumpkin pie for breakfast. O my.

Pumpkin Pancakes
3 cup unbleached flour
1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
1 tsp ground cinnamon
3 tsp baking powder
3 cup pumpkin puree
3 eggs
3 tbsp Honey (or Brown Sugar)
3 cup Milk
Mix all ingredients in a mixer with the wisk attachment for about a minute or two. Until its well mixed, with not many lumps.
    Spoon with a 1/4 cup measure. Into a non-stick skillet over medium heat coated with cooking spray. Cook about 2 minutes per side (less if needed). These are gooier than other pancakes, and will turn browner then usual pancakes, but that’s not a bad thing. And they will bubble like pancakes just not as much.
    Serve with butter and maple syrup. Or with brown sugar and sour cream as a topping. Makes about 4 dozen.  

This Weekend...

This prayer found it’s way into my inbox today from Sojourners and very much sums up the weekend.

“May this weekend be one of rest and recentering, refreshment and rejuvenation, and most importantly, refocusing on you. Give me eyes to see where you are leading, ears to hear what you are saying, and a heart that follows wherever you may go. Amen.”

This weekend, was as planned (and hoped for) a refreshing time with friends. These women that circle around me (and I around them)--even though some live thousands of miles away. We are so connected spiritually, holistically, mentally. I dare not share as much as I'd like, as not to not overstate or over talk the weekend.

It felt perfectly placed and divinely ordained. Armed with massive amounts of regional coffee, some reading materials and a deep desire to know each other better, we set out for the weekend. It felt as though we met daily to discuss our lives-- not just yearly.

Most of the time we spent around tables or in cozy living rooms. Some of the male counterparts asked what we did during our time together. They play basketball, take a run or play video games in their downtime as friends. What did we do? We talked, we laughed, we cried, we reminisced, we spurred each other's life goals on and commended their place in life now. It was so refocusing.

It was a holiday weekend— the conversation around the table was as nourishing as the food we cooked and ate together, o my. And the food was delicious.

For the first part of this week, I'll give you a little glimpse into our beautiful weekend.

Show and Share

Once in a while I just feel the absolute need to tell you about all the things I’ve been reading/thinking about lately. These little bits are from around the web in the last week or so.

How rhythm works in your house via Kyrie and Bluebirdbaby.

Emily’s because she left her umbrella on the train. Eric and I had a long talk about this one... 

Totally obsessed with this.

Thinking about baking these ooh and making these too .

Have you seen these blankets? Yes please.

Skirts!

Viva la Orca!

I have an exciting weekend ahead of me. One filled with coffee and conversation.

My beloved friends from college, are coming for our Orca Summit '09 (aka a reunion).

I’ve been listening to the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, and I’m in the second book. Something about those young women with strong sense of self remind me of these beautiful women. We do not have traveling pants that bind us together, but we do have one night, one song and one dance that will forever live in infamy. I think that the abandon, embarrassment and the subsequent name (Orca's) is binding enough.

We’ve been through a lot together, though scattered all over the country. Every year we try to get together, whatever pieces can, for some discussion, laughter and reconnection. This year the Orca Summit is in Orange City and surrounding areas. Ahhh I can’t wait. And I can’t wait to show you the little pieces of these women that I love.

Pray that I have enough energy to host! But even if I don’t no matter, I’m with the ones who love me (:

*This picture is from years ago, now. But we are so lucky to have Emily Sweet doing a mini-session with us this weekend. Amazing!

Alphanumeric Flu

Hello friends, I've just reentered society. After a five day brutal battle with the dreaded alphanumeric flu.

Izzo, Truman and I have been locked in the house since last Friday. And I wish I could spin it so there was snuggling, getting better, flowers and such. But, um... This flu sucked. It took the air and energy out of all in it’s path.

We spent hours watching PBS. Thank the Lord that with the digital channels, we have PBS kids cartoons nearly round the clock. There were many four hour stretches, between juice cup filling and medicine getting that we stared at the TV. Three immovable soldiers on a red, cushy floating barge. They knew I was sick if they were allowed to watch cartoon after cartoon.

Finally on Monday, we were feeling a little bit better—but with cabin fever. And a blessed package came in the mail. It made for a break in the monotony, and it contained all of the perfect ingredients intended for a impromptu pajama party, which indeed, we were days into. Unknowing of our impending plight, my beautiful sister packed a box with new jammies, a new dinosaur pop-up book, two of the Miss Spider books, a new DVD short and cake mix complete with frosting, sprinkles and cute cupcake cups.

This would have made for a fun evening, sure, but it was like GOLD in the midst of our gray existence up to this point.

Since we were watching ungodly amounts of TV, but had learned all about dinosaurs from our favorite cartoon of the moment, Dinosaur Train! We devoured the Dinosaur pop-up book. The kid scoured the book, and there were no pterodactyls. Wow, really? A 20 minute conversation insued between a two and three year old on the omission of their favorite dinosaur?? Gasp. “Mom, how could this be?” Dramatic, but true. A little web surving concludes they are not dinosaurs. I did not break the news yet.

Plus, this is no 1980’s novelty popup book. This is serious, Robert Sabuda. Have you seen the rest of his books? We’re blessed with Alice in Wonderland and another one I can't remember off the top of my head. We have 600 Black Spots (not by Robert Sabuda but of the same caliber). Treasures, at our house.

We set out first to make the cupcakes, sent but we only had two eggs not three like the box called for. I explained this to Isabel and her flat response was, “find a 2 egg recipe.”

Muffling a giggle, I looked all over the box hoping for another recipe, and there it was a two-egg-boxed-cake-into-cookies-recipe. Perfect. I baked up a few gave each of the kids one to ‘decorate’ [read cough and sneeze all over]. The rest of the 3 dozen were frosted by my clean hands, and boxed away for later medicine-taking bribing.

New jammies are a novelty at any point in life, right? But for the kids, it made the days of waiting a little more exciting. I should remember this. Keep a stash of new jammies on hand for the next infectious disease outbreak.

Hope you all have a healthy week!


Photo from sxc.hu

It Takes A Village... of Women

Oblige me for a few more minutes of family picture love, will you?

I have gotten a couple emails asking some questions about the photo shoot and preparation so I thought I'd write up the process.

First off, I totally ripped off the color scheme from the amazing, Design Mom's PhotoShoot. I picked out two to three outfits for each of us. Then I had my wonderfully fashon saavy friend Kim help me edit and she picked a lot of what we have on. And she let me borrow the headband-- which I think made Izzo's outfit. Don't you?

Emily Sweet and I had a couple places picked out to go. I wanted some farmland-autumn looking and  some structural. I think Emily captured both so well!

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I did get an email asking where the kids clothes were from.

God honest truth, another friend, Wendy thrifted about 80% of Izzo's outfit. The dress and shoes are thrifted, her tights are from We Love Colors. The headband is borrowed, but you can find similar ones (and great bows) made by Andrea at the Pinkadink. See told you, I surround myself with creative women!

Truman's shirt and jeans are American Living for JCPenny. Bought over a year ago. Shoes are rubber gardening shoes, also thrifted by Wendy. I did not want him to wear these, but I lost the battle. (:
And they turned out just fine!

Can I just say that I'm so happy we've been married for almost five years, and we're still happy as can be?

If you want to see more, click here.
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PS. I'm on Tumblr now, are you?

Emily Sweet Photography

Do you have a creative muse in your life? A friend you can go to and the energy and creativity just flow? I am so lucky to have a creative community-- a few women and men that really inspire.

Emily Sweet is one of those women, when riding in the car with our husbands, we start talking design lingo as they've labeled it and leave them in the dust. It is so wonderful to bouce photoshoppy ideas off of her!

We've known each other since Art History in college we've seen each other grow artistically through the years. I was ecstatic when she started taking pictures of not just weddings but of families too! So I’ll leave you with just a few images. People, these images have not been edited. These are straight off her camera. O my.

If you want to see more you can look here on flickr. This is only a sampling of the pictorial goodness (I haven't gotten through a quarter of the images). Be sure you’ll be seeing more over the next few days. 

 

If you live in the Orange City-Sheldon-Sanborn-Hartley area and want Emily Sweet to photograph your family visit her on her blog.

*Emily has moved. You can follow her adventure on her blog.thisisveryimportant.blogspot.com

Happy Halloween!

I'm just bursting to tell you about our weekend!


On Saturday, we spent a few hours at the Milwaukee Roundhouse in Sioux City. This is their second annual Halloween event and we went last year too!

Isabel went as a Kitty, our sweet friend, Livy was a witch and Truman went as Barney. They were all so excited that they would not stand still long enought for a photo...

Truman was worn out, until he saw 'Sir Topham Hat' from Thomas. He was so in awe.

After trick-or-treating (two houses was plenty!), we went home moved a couch into the playroom to 'make it into a movie theater.' We watched It's The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown and ate popcorn.

 

Lots of excitement and lots of relaxing. We had a really good Halloween. Did you?