Ontology

Thursday, November 29, 2012

PinUps and Pinspirations (Vol. 5)

PinUps: My Top 5 Pins ~~of the Week~~ Since I Last Did This!

1. DF/GF whipped cream. Comes out beautifully!

Source: kblog.lunchboxbunch.com via Hanna on Pinterest

2. Our girls did a shoebox this year. They combined all their allowances, came up with an amazing amount of money, and had a grand time shopping for a little girl.

Source: faithfulprovisions.com via Hanna on Pinterest

3. Love these hair styles. Have had great fun playing with Butterfly's hair and am slowly able to do some of them on Blueberry's hair (Butterfly has amazingly thick and long hair for a two year old).

Source: shedoeshair.blogspot.com via Hanna on Pinterest

4. For laughs

Source: contentdrivestraffic.com via Hanna on Pinterest

5. And this one could actually be my Pinspiration post as well; it really does work beautifully! (and I am fully admitting my microwave looked that way recently...)

Source: practicallyfunctional.net via Hanna on Pinterest

Pinspiration: (i.e. a Pin I've actually used in some way recently)

This was the original Pin.

Source: madeinmelskitchen.com via Hanna on Pinterest

This was my version for Turtle's birthday. Very pleased with the results!

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Thanksgiving, Zoos, and Other Randomness

Two of our girls were home all day today and yesterday with sickness: one with the flu and the other with pneumonia of all things. I swear we've gone through more boxes of tissues and bottles of cough medicine in the last few weeks than I would have thought possible. Amazingly enough (say a prayer, knock on wood), other than a slight stuffiness and a few tired days, I've been the one person in the house to not wind up with a cough, major cold, strep, or anything else nasty that's been making its way through the cottage the last few weeks.

In that vein, Thanksgiving week wound up being a bit unexpected for us. We were planning to have three or four of our girls here with us (the rest were with family and/or visits with host families), but they wound up closing our cottage down for a few days and putting our girls in another cottage (less holiday pay the company has to worry about...). As it was, we wound up with Butterfly staying with us in the evenings (for stability purposes for her) but no girls otherwise! We did have two of the girls who were left over to play games on Thanksgiving day itself, but otherwise it was just the 3.5 of us.

It was nice as it actually gave us some extra days off to recover (and decorate for Christmas!). Our Thanksgiving meal we actually shared with a bunch of other people on campus who were here (other houseparents, residents, some relatives, etc), which gave us a sort of family feel. With the new director and some new staff on campus, I'm finding more and more the feeling of family being established here on campus--something I'm very grateful for.

Saturday we took Mama Bear with us to Little Rock and went to the zoo. That was a blast. We hadn't been in quite awhile, and Blueberry has grown up so much since the last time we went. She had a grand time with all the animals and has talked about it daily since then (the scary, loud monkeys; the tiger go "rawr"; "I saw cheetah/lizard/snake/turtle/fishie"; and of course "Giraffe poopies.").

Scary Crazy Monkey

My Russian Princess

The notorious Giraffe

Her first "train" ride. Also went on a carousel for the first time!

She also enjoyed decorating for Christmas that night (busy day for her!) and took great pleasure in showing Butterfly all the decorations (and showing her how too look with her eyes and not with her hands...those two crack me up).

In other Blueberry news, she informed me last night that she wanted to sleep on the futon that is in her room and until now has been working as a temporary training bed for her. While she slept in "beds" on the floor in England and quite enjoyed it, when we got back here, she was clear about wanting to mostly still sleep in her crib. Since we have the futon (and have stuck a swimming noodle down the open side of it to prevent her from rolling out--great idea, thank you Pinterest!), we would offer her the choice of crib or bed, but she generally stuck with her crib as her choice. Last night was the first time she wanted the futon at night. She slept all night on it and then at nap time today she asked for it again. I think my baby just transitioned herself to a "big girl bed!"

We are now debating the merits of selling the futon and buying a toddler bed for the room. At some point we're going to need the crib again as a crib (it can actually be converted into a toddler bed), but the question is do we go ahead and do it now and keep the crib as a crib or do we wait a few months and deal with it as time requires. Ah the questions that come with having a baby!

Baby Q continues to do well and is very lively. Freaked some of the girls out the other night as we were watching a movie and all of the sudden one of them realized she could actually see my stomach moving on its own. Highly entertaining.

Slowly all the pieces come together in preparation for his arrival. The biggest question for awhile was where were we even going to have him! I've been planning for a home birth from the beginning with him, but as we live on company property, we figured we needed to run it by the director for his okay. Well, he's okay with it conceptually, but the lawyer is not okay with it in terms of insurance companies and other craziness. So the long and short of it was that I suddenly found myself planning for a home birth but not being able to give birth at home! In an overly dramatic, pregnant, hormonal moment I told Chris that I'd just go across the street to the gas station and give birth there....

Well my midwife actually came to the rescue... She works with two other midwives (there's always at least two of them at each birth) and the longest-practicing of the three happens to be the owner of two fully-furnished houses (she got married just a few years ago to a man who owned his own house--they're both in their early 60s, and I guess they just kind of switch between houses every week). So she is going to let us "borrow" one of her houses to give birth in...and it only happens to be about a 5-10 minute drive down the road. And being a midwife she's really excited about the prospect as she's never actually had a baby born in her own house before! Phew.

Friday, November 23, 2012

Journal: England Trip 2012 - Part V

The day dawned misty but not soppy wet, which was fortunate as this was the day we were to go on the one hike I knew I was (or should be!) capable of doing. There is a little mountain overlooking Keswick that is called Latrigg.

This particular mountain holds a lot of associations for me. It was the first mountain I ever climbed at about the age of three. My grandparents, both now deceased, frequently climbed this mountain if they just wanted a short evening walk. And the ashes of both grandparents are here on this mountain.

There are two paths up Latrigg. One is from the base, in Keswick. The other, which is the one we opted for given the short climbing legs of Blueberry and the limitations placed on myself by Baby Q, is to start about halfway up the fell, leaving the car at a convenient little parking spot. It makes for about a mile and a half hike up and then back again. Really known as one of the easiest fells to climb up in the Lake District, it still holds beautiful views overlooking Keswick, Derwentwater, and various other mountains including another favorite--Skiddaw.

Despite the low-hanging clouds, we really didn't get rained on, and the clouds obligingly lifted as we climbed, allowing us to enjoy the views, embellished with ever shifting clouds. Overnight, seemingly, some of the trees had started to turn, so we got glimpses of fall color here and there throughout the day as well.

How a person can claim to be an artist of any sort and not respond to the beauty of the Lake District is beyond me. The natural beauty oozes creativity, and even the man-made towns and hamlets and villages and boats call out to be used--to explore mystery and humanity and God. Perhaps it is just that I'm a Romantic at heart, but I fail to see how even the stubbornest post-modern could be unmoved by the sights of the Lake District.

Blueberry did really well climbing up the whole way by herself and only needing to be carried for about the last 5 minutes on the way down. She enjoyed getting to know more sheep and discovered strange, round pellets littering the way that once we were informed her what they were, she pointed out constantly for the rest of the hike as "sheep poopies." We also introduced her to a couple of slugs we happened to find as we climbed.