Dear Wintery Mix, I hate you.

Ok. So hate is a strong word. I probably should say something like, "Dear Snow, I have strong feelings of vehemence and wrath towards you right now." But quite frankly, at this time of night, after an afternoon/evening like this, I feel hate fits my current state of mind.

A predicted inch was supposed to sprinkle down this morning, with an additional 2-3 inches coming after 4:00 in the afternoon. I woke up to an inch of slushy ice that stuck to everything and then started melting in the rain. Then another half inch of ice managed to accumulate somehow, and Ryan called to say the office was closing 2 hours early. "YAY!" I think I said, imagining him getting home early and having a nice snowy evening by the fire. Instead of getting to leave at 2:30 as he was supposed to, Ryan was kept till 3:30 and didn't get on the bus till 4:00, right as sleet started showering from the sky. Then, after 2 inches had fallen in 15 minutes (no joke) its started snowing. At about 6 I called to check with him to see how soon he would be home, and he sarcastically told me that he hoped to be home by 9 at the rate traffic was flowing. Then 8 hit, and he told me jokingly that he would see me tomorrow. Traffic was moving as fast as a parking lot, detours had to be made and there were no alternative methods of transportation that could bring him home faster.

It is now midnight. He has hours to go. He has already been on the bus for 8 hours with no food. Snow, I hate have very strong feelings of vehemence and anger towards you right now. He is trapped on the road with thousands of other commuters, wishing that they had never gotten out of bed this morning. I feel just as trapped, wishing there was anything I could do do get him home. I feel anxious, upset and exhausted... which has caused me to ponder. Despite this terrible feeling situation, we are so blessed and I, for one, am taking all of the things surrounding this day for granted.

I am so thankful that my husband is safe and warm and that he did not have to drive in this. I am thankful that he is healthy. I am thankful that he has a job that he went to this morning. I am thankful that there is a bus driver that is doing their level best to finish their route. I am thankful that I have a husband to miss. I am thankful that he has a home to come home to. I am thankful that he will have food to eat. I am thankful that there are a lot of people praying for him. I am thankful for the friends that offered to hike 4 miles to where his bus was, to try and bring him back to their home for the night. I am thankful that we live in a state where weather like this is rare. I am thankful that my baby finally fell asleep at 11:45. I am thankful that I have a couch to sit on while I wait for him. I am thankful for my dad who texted me from Tennessee to say that he was praying and that he is not going to sleep until Ryan gets home and I do. I am thankful, thankful, thankful to have a husband, and that God is keeping him safe!

I am back in the "I am not a fan of winter. At. All." camp, and I can not wait till spring. But while I listen to snow laden branches break outside in the slush and cold, I will be thankful for my blessings.

Colossians 4:6

Let your speech always be gracious, 

SEASONED WITH SALT, 

so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.

"But, I am afraid of everything involved!"

"For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and discipline." 2 Timothy 1:7

 

 And with that, things got really, really big.

Stay tuned! 

The Weekend and MLK Day

 She looked adorable for church on Saturday. I actually had her in a dress (a comfy corduroy one) and tights (bleh) that she promptly got a hole in. By naptime she had managed to destroy the tights and the dress was off, and Mommy, thinking ahead, forgot to bring her a change of clothes. So she spent the rest of the day in her shirt and diaper. She likes running around in her underwear a little too much I think.

 She had no tights/pants to wear home that night from Grammie's house, and it was freezing out. So we found a pair of pajama pants, tightened up the waist band, and made genie pants for her out of them. She thought it was totally hysterical.

 See? Genie pants. Hey, they kept her warm.

 Ryan was off for MLK Day, so we went down to DC to check out the Natural History Museum. We decided to take Aunt Abi, or "Abelina" as she is called. Fun/cranky times ensued as naptime failed.

 We love eachother. And big stone people. And I LOVE my Baby Ergo carrier.

 THAT is a Walrus. I had zero clue that they were that humongous. That does not look spelled right, but Firefox is not saying it is wrong... so there it stays. It was humongous.

 And this giraffe was awkward. And I found the whole dead animal thing depressing.

 This is why we came. "The Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef." Hyperbolic and crochet in the same sentence cracked me up. But it was pretty amazing. Lots, and lots of work. This is also why we took Abi, since she is a knitter/crocheter person.

 And Ryan snapped this while we were changing a diaper in the public (shudder) restroom. I have no idea what it was in referance to, but yeah. I am famous.

After seeing emeralds of enormous sizes on display (And the Hope Diamond which was anticlimactic) I decided I really didn't actually like their color. Then I saw these. I decided I really liked their color and that they were what an emerald should look like.


And that was our long weekend. I have a whole rant to do on how awful I found the overwhelming p.c. and evolution element to be, but I will save that for tomorrow, and Leilani is in bed early and it is high time I was in bed early too.

Leilani Lesson 13

This afternoon, Leilani was happy to play with her aunts and grocery shop, but whenever she was alone with just me or in the car, she cried and was most unhappy. After much investigation, I discovered that she was simply really, really hungry. Spiritually, we can be starving but not know it because of all the deceptive distractions we have filled our lives with. Am I filling my spiritual hunger and need for God with distractions that don't satisfy?

Making the Bed

Leilani, you have changed my life.

Everyday things, like making the bed, have become a totally new adventure.

The whoosh of the blankets holds new delight for me, now that I find you under them.

Thank you for helping to make the mundane in the everyday, to be quite the reverse.

I love you, my little girl.

Pictures of all the stuff I just talked about.

They have been downloaded. They have been sorted through. They have been selected and now they have been uploaded. Hurrah. Hurrah. Here are the pictures from New Years Eve, and first days of 2011.

I can't get over how crazy awesome these fish are. I think this might be my favorite tank at the National Aquarium.

She is finally old enough to be more interested in the fish than in her reflection on the glass.



This thing is so cool. The Jelly exhibit is all about how they are killing our oceans, but they look awfully cute to me.



After the Aquarium, it was fire, yummy dinner, and blocks time.



Toasting the New Year!



Happy New Year!

January 2, 2011 with Thatha and Grandma

Gosh. Stop looking so old. I think I should never let you wear jeans again. Footie pajamas forever.

Wearing stockings at Grammy and Grandpa's! No matter how hard you try, you can't pull those babies off your feet. Mwahaha.

Discovering tofu. Yum.

Snowday! 1/12/11

(This awesome puffy pink floral number has been passed down all the way from her Aunt Abi.)

Discovering what all that white stuff is for the first time.

And, The End.

Slushing Through A Winter Iceland

Most of my life I have been a winter fan. Well, to the extent that we get it here in Maryland. Cold noses, red cheeks, "blizzards," sledding, snow castles, boots, skiing, even shoveling to a certain extent all held a great deal of joy and excitement. I would languish through the humid summer heat, longing for the exhilaration of the solid cold, and the anticipation of snow. It helped that my mom loved it too. As she put it to me just now "I am a mountain woman living in the lowlands." She made sure we had boots, gloves and hotchocolate in abundance and there was always a warm fire rolling all winter long. Snow days when the Fed. Government closed down were especially exciting, as Dad got to stay home too. The. Best.

Theeen I hit higschool and got a job. Snowdays vanished, and the energy that accompanied them melted into my warm pillows. I suddenly had homework regardless of the weather and 6 a.m. to work was just that much harder when the car needed to be warmed up and scrapped off first. Winter weather and the cold was a pain, but I still "liked" it. What I liked, however, was all the inside parts of winter. I loved the warm cozy evening with the fire when it was snowing outside and everyone was home. I loved it when my mom made hot soup and we all had books to read in the livingroom and I got to call out of work the next morning. I liked sitting in my room with all the shades up watching it snow as I did my homework, glad that classes were cancelled. But then it started to interfere with my social plans. "Ruth I don't want you driving in this weather." And I was not home as much to actually enjoy all of the cozy moments. But if you asked, I still "liked winter."

Then I started dating Ryan and his warm weather loving philosophy must have rubbed off on me. I still advocated for the cold, but I started to actually enjoy summer for the first time. Then we got married in the warmth of the summer, and honeymooned in Hawaii for three weeks and I was officially hooked. Then I was all prego for the epic blizzard of 2009 and still had to waddle into work at 6 , or take a massive feeling call sheet home and spend my early morning calling patients to cancel appointments. I decided that I had become a fair weather lover.

Now that I have a 9 month old to keep warm and dry, I have found that I dislike the cold even more. (Last night, I did feel a little bit of excitement build as I heard reports of snow coming. It was short lived.) Instead, it "wintery mixed" for 2 inches and turned everything into slush and cold and wet outside. We were off to my mom's this morning and I had to bundle both of us up, load up my enormous baby bag that feels like its going to yank off my shoulder, and shuffle through the slushy snow (beautiful, but annoying) to my car, which needed to be scraped, warmed up and coolent filled. I did, however, get some adorable pictures of Leilani in her snowsuit and it made me feel better. Sorta. (It is driving me nuts that they are still on the camera and not on this post, but whatever. I will move on.) My boots got all dirty in the nasty slush by the car and the good feelings faded. Grumble.

BUT Now I am sitting inside rambling about the condition of outside, and all the fluffy friendly winter birds are eating on the birdfeeder, mom is talking about making soup and I am about to build a fire... So nevermind about everything I just said. Mostly. I sorta like winter at the moment. Until I have to pack up and slush back out to Bible Study... But yeah. I sorta like winter at the moment. Fickle me.

I am a bad Blogger.

Oh look. It is January the Tenth in the year Two Thousand and Eleven. And I have not yet recorded how we spent our New Years. I am off to a bad start this year. My excuse is that we have computer issues. Somehow, my laptop (the one with the memory) won't read our camera anymore and has decided it is incapable of downloading any photos. Ryan's laptop (the old one with years and years of photos) has little to no space left. This caused us to spend money that we would have preferred not to, to get an external hard-drive. And we had to format it to work on an Apple. And it didn't work. SO all of the after Christmas pictures are still on the memory card. And I feel weird about writing about things I have pictures for, cause I don't want to bore my adoring fans with lines and lines of text and blather without anything to add visual interest. Or interest at all. I can not imagine how dull it would be to just read lines and lines of ramble with no point to them, without even a picture to relieve the monotony. ...

But, in the spirit of unprocrastination, I shall record the beginning of our year, before I forget everything and add pictures later.

Last year for New Years Eve, Ryan and I were on our babymoon. We started out in Raleigh, NC before heading to Atlanta, then Florida, then back up to Savannah, Georgia. The plan was to spend New Years downtown and watch their annual acorn drop. But after all day in the car, the prego lady was ready to hit the sack early. We tried to catch it on TV, but the aforementioned prego lady had the remote and we accidentally spent the countdown watching about a minute of some random black and white movie. A really exciting part where a woman was pulling a bottle of milk out of the refrigerator. Oops. Our last New Years without children and before mind numbing sleep deprivation was spent missing the festivities and the lights were out before 12:10. Bummer.

This year, we spent Friday afternoon at the National Aquarium. We go for Leilani... She loves it there... Ok and so do I. The mind blowing wonder of God's creation makes me feel like I am 5 years old all over again. Totally incredible. When we got home, Ryan made a beautiful fire and I cooked one of our favorite dinners, chicken alfredo. Seriously delish. And easy. Bedime was scheduled for 9:30 and the thought of missing 2 and a half hours of sleep to watch the apple drop in Times Square online just didn't seem worth it.

So we brought in our New Year with the Brazillians. At 10 seconds to 9, we had our fancy glasses filled up with sparkling cider, and Lei had a bottle full of apple juice and we had our countdown. We toasted and smooched and gave thanks... and got bedtime rolling. I think we will do this every year. Cept next time I want to try and bring in 2012 with India. That way by mid afternoon, all the pressure is off.

It was a great plan. But somehow we didn't get into bed and finish devotions till 11 anyways. Ryan was promptly asleep at 11:03 but I managed to stare at the ceiling till 11:30. 11:40 my sister in law texts me "HAPPY NEW YEAR ALMOST" and wakes me right back up. 20 minutes later, I am just drifting off thinking "gosh I hope it doesn't get noisy here at midnight" and then everything outside seemed to explode. The neighborhood across the street had fireworks (I thought those were illegal in MD?) and there were firecrackers and cheering and whoops and honking and general chaos for 15-20 minutes. Thankfully, the baby (and Ryan) slept through it all. I was rather bummed about the whole being awake thing till I decided not to be. Amazing how great things can be when you decide to make them that way. I watched a few fireworks and spent the rest of the time praying and being thankful for 2010. Turned out to be really nice...

The end.

Happy 2011 Everyone.