valentine's day

happy valentine's day!

it's not a big holiday around our house, but we try to make the day just a little bit special.

we started out the day with a special breakfast of cinnamon rolls, eggs, and strawberries. i made them last night from this recipe. they are low-carb, gluten, and sugar free. the first batch was a terrible disappointment. they smelled delicious, but were as hard as rocks! i baked them too long and also learned that i needed to add more almond flour than the recipe says. the second batch turned out better. not perfect, but good enough that we were able to enjoy them for breakfast this morning. i put heart stickers on toothpicks and stuck them in the cinnamon rolls to add a festive feel this morning.

we exchanged valentine's cards. always homemade at our house.

and the other day i made some truffles, because i knew the day wouldn't be complete without chocolate. (the recipe is from a book i recently got from the library: sensational stevia desserts, by lisa jobs). they were quite a lot of work, but they are delicious and definitely satisfy a desire for chocolate.

a day in my life: saturday, feb. 9

{i thought it would be fun to record some days from our life...so here is the first one. the disclaimer is that i am not this productive every day and our kids are not this cooperative or portable every day either. this is really long, but i want to remember it. i always enjoy reading similar things that other people post - maybe you will as well? if not, that's ok}

5:30 am. jobot wakes up. i get up so that Jeremy can keep sleeping until the alarm goes off (at 6:30). he is really tired from snow-plowing for ten hours (!) on thursday night. jobot and i go downstairs. i change his diaper, get him dressed, and nurse him.

love wakes up crying at 6 am. jobot and i go into her room and get her out of bed. apparently she thinks it is still night-time. she is crying and i can't figure out why she is so upset. we go downstairs and she stands in the middle of the living room crying. she refuses when i ask her if she will come snuggle on the couch with me. jeremy comes downstairs and she goes up to snuggle with him in our bed. she comes downstairs in a much happier mood. it seems she wasn't quite ready to get up yet.
i give jobot a bottle. love has her juice (she gets one small cup in the morning and then no more juice for the day, so she really enjoys her juice in the morning).

jeremy makes breakfast (a "stack" of a slice of uncured canadian bacon, a fried egg, and a slice of dubliner cheese). love gets a fried egg and some banana slices. jobot has his usual 2/3 of a banana mashed with some rice cereal, raw milk, and cinnamon. he also gets some egg pieces from my plate.

7:35. jeremy heads out the door for a full day of work. first he has to shovel all the snow that the plow has left at the end of our driveway. i get love dressed and cleanup from breakfast.

the kids are playing really well together, so i do some work in the kitchen. i make the day's batch of raw milk formula, throw a chicken carcass and some veggies in the crock pot to make a batch of chicken stock, sweep the floor, and double check my grocery list. i break up a few squabbles.

jobot starts to get tired. i somehow find motivation and decide that i am going to try to work on a house project while he naps. the kids and i head upstairs. i set love up in her room with a snack and the ipad (she watches veggietales). i nurse jobot, he falls asleep, and i lay him in bed. i check on love, who is doing just fine, and start the project...removing the caulk from the shower. (a project that we knew we had to do soon, but after a big piece broke off on friday, it wasn't something we could put off any longer, so it moved up in the priority list to this weekend. jeremy was planning to work on it when he got home from work, but i figured that it would make the day easier if i could at least get some of it done before he got home).

jobot wakes up after twenty minutes (the usual length of his nap). i have made some good headway on removing the caulk. i bring the exersaucer upstairs and put it in love's room. he is happy to sit in there for a while. when he starts to fuss, i bring the exersaucer into the bathroom and buy myself a few more minutes to work.

i think that jobot must be getting hungry, so we all head back downstairs. love's movie isn't quite finished, so we watch the rest of it while i give jobot a bottle. i make sure the diaper bag is packed with what we need, take love to the bathroom, and get boots, coats, and hats on everyone. we are headed to get groceries and meet jeremy for lunch at costco on his lunch break.

i get the kids out the door and leave love on the porch while i take jobot to the van to put him in. his door is frozen shut. so is love's. what a surprise. this happens almost every time we go out on these cold mornings. so...i put both kids in through the front seat. not easy, but it works.

love chatters the whole way to costco. she wants to listen to her kid's cd, but it won't work because it is too cold. it finally starts working.

we arrive at costco. i am there at just the right time and get a front row parking space. i get a cart. hurray - love's door isn't frozen anymore. it makes things much easier. we walk through the store getting the things we need. love samples a variety of foods (her favorite part!). the kids are very well behaved (which is not always how those trips go...especially since they sit in the cart together and can really annoy each other)!

shortly after noon, jeremy calls and says that he is on his way to meet us for lunch. we buy our groceries, and there he is waiting for us. the kids are both excited to see him, and so am i. my mom often sends love $10 to "take her parents out for a treat", which usually means lunch at costco or a trip to starbucks. jeremy and i both get salads and love gets cheese pizza. jobot eats the applesauce i brought for him. we sit and enjoy time together as a family. love eats almost all of her huge piece of pizza(!), with a potty break halfway through. jeremy has to leave before she is done eating, so we kiss him goodbye and sit for a bit longer.

i debate about just going to the grocery store to get the rest of the groceries i need (not very many). i hadn't planned on stopping at both places, but the kids are doing so well that i decide to just get it over with. and both doors on the van are working, so it's much easier to get the kids in and out of the van! on the short drive to the grocery store, jobot falls asleep.

we get to the grocery store and i try to figure out how to get groceries with a one-seat cart, a sleeping baby, and a two-year-old. i feel like a genius when i put our detachable stroller seat in the back of the cart, transfer a sleeping jobot into it, put love in the seat in the cart, and pull a small cart behind me as i go about my shopping. we stop by the bakery desk and get a free cookie for love. jobot wakes up in the produce section. we are almost done with our shopping trip. he happily sits in his seat in the back of the cart and eats snacks while we finish our shopping. we check out and then i realize i forgot something...so we head back to get it. the kids are fading a bit, it's good we are done.

we drive home. love chatters away. when we pull into the driveway, i realize that she has fallen asleep. i bring all the groceries up to the porch, get jobot and then love out of the car. i bring a sleeping love up to her room, lower her into her bed, and she suddenly wakes up and announces, "i want to play!" knowing that's the end of that nap, we head downstairs so she can do just that.

i bring all the groceries into the kitchen and then sit down to nurse jobot. after he nurses, he has a bottle. when he is done i change his diaper and then i start putting the groceries away. love plays and jobot crawls around on the floor playing with various items he finds in the grocery bags. i clean a few things out of the fridge and wash a few dishes.

i decide to try to get some more done in the bathroom, so i bring the kids upstairs. i set love up with another veggietale movie and leave jobot in her room in the exersaucer. he fusses, so i bring his exersaucer into the bathroom. he plays for about fifteen minutes and starts fussing. i'm almost done and i really want to finish, but his fusses soon turn into screams, so i stop and we all go back downstairs. love finishes her movie and i get jobot's dinner ready - homemade pureed butternut squash mixed with some rice cereal and raw milk, mashed up raspberries, and some wheat-free puffs.

the kids and i play on the floor for a bit. then...jeremy comes home! everyone is excited. after some playtime, jobot is getting tired. jeremy gets his pjs on, i nurse him, and jeremy brings him upstairs to give him his last bottle and put him in bed. i get started on supper. we have homemade pizza. low carb and sugar and gluten free (more on this some other time).

after we eat and have devotions, love has her mug of warm milk before bed while i read to her. (we do this almost every night and we usually read poetry. she loves it.) jeremy washes the dishes during that time. then it's on to love's extensive bedtime routine (it's complicated, but it works for her and us)...

she cleans up the toys and gets a sticker on her chart. she brushes her teeth and gets another sticker. and finally, she gets her pajamas on and gets another sticker. she chooses two books for us to read to her, says goodnight to me (i'm in the kitchen putting my freshly made chicken broth into mason jars) and we sing our song twice ("all praise to you my God this night"). she does two flips (she runs to jeremy and he flips her over his shoulder and around) while i watch and cheer, and then jeremy takes her up to bed.

after i wash the dishes from the chicken broth project, i make some chai tea for us and we collapse on the couch. we drink our tea, eat a brownie (low carb, sugar, and gluten free, of course...and it even had cauliflower in it!), and watch an episode of alias, our show for this winter. we had planned to work on the bathroom, but realize it would make a lot of noise while the kids were sleeping upstairs, and we were both exhausted anyway, so that didn't happen.


we sit on the couch, jeremy gives me a backrub (as he does just about every night), and we relax a bit. we start a second episode of alias, but jeremy starts to fall asleep, so we turn it off. we head up to bed and i read for a few minutes in bed, but start drifting off after a couple of pages so i turn out the light and go to sleep.



whew! what a day.

february 4

i have been neglecting this blog. it's been a bit of a depressing winter and i just haven't felt much like posting lately. that's ok.

we've been getting lots of snow and playing in it. jeremy started orientation for his new part-time job on saturday. he has four full days in a row of training this week, then several more over next weekend and the following week. quite a lot of training. unfortunately, it has been snowing every day, so he has also been doing his snow plow job for the last four nights in a row. it's great because he is making money, but it's really hard because he hardly gets any sleep! he goes out to plow in the middle of the night (starts at 4 am on weekends and 2 am on weekdays), stops by the house in the morning for ten minutes to change clothes and brush his teeth, and heads to a full day of training for his other job.

it was a bummer last night with the superbowl. he has looked forward to the superbowl for months and was all settled in to watch when they unexpectedly called during half-time to say that they were going out to plow. it hadn't been snowing much so we thought he would get a night off. so...instead of watching the rest of the game, he headed straight to bed. i felt really bad for him.

i have been having crazy, long days with the kiddos. i took them to church by myself yesterday, which was quite an adventure. we don't have the easiest children in the world, and taking them out by myself is quite an undertaking (if only for the simple fact that jobot weighs approximately 24 pounds now and i just can't carry him around for very long!). we were running a few minutes late for church, but everyone was finally ready and we headed out the door. i left love on the front porch and went to put jobot in his car seat. his door of the van was frozen. problem. i tried love's door. frozen too. only the front doors of the van would open. i briefly considered just staying home, but there we were...i had gone to all the work of getting us ready for church and i was not going to give up that easily...so we climbed in through the front seat. it was quite a sight, i am sure. we slipped and slid to church (the roads were more slippery than i expected!), but we arrived, made it inside, and i was glad we went.

it's been challenging with jobot lately. he hardly naps. yesterday he woke up at 5:15 am and napped for 15 minutes out of the entire day. seriously. he goes to bed around 6 or 6:30 and {finally} sleeps all night, so that is good, but i wish he would take better naps! love was the same way at his age, so apparently we just create kids who aren't nappers. she didn't start taking reliable naps until she was one, so i guess we can hope that he at least follows her with that as well.

here are a few recent pics:

snow fun!

bubble baths!

eight months old!

he is crawling all over and recently started trying to pull himself up on the furniture (there is a lot of grunting involved with that!). he says ma, da, ah duh (all done), and we think he has said dog. quite the boy!

flew the coop

i haven't mentioned it here, but jeremy suddenly and unexpectedly lost his job in october. things have been a bit stressful, depressing, and boring since. there have been lots of jobs applied for, some interviews, a job plowing snow (we've only had one snow that needed to be plowed, though!), and lots of long days of uncertainty.

the winter weather and lack of things to do was really getting to us, and we were missing family. on saturday, we decided that it was time to get away. on sunday, (thanks to my generous father-in-law), we found tickets. and on tuesday, we found ourselves flying across the country (on three different planes, i might add!) and landing in warm and sunny california. we have been playing outside, drinking extra coffee and tea, and enjoying time with family. it's just what we needed.

we thought that we would still be job hunting while we were here...but on tuesday morning, jeremy got a call that he got a job! it's just a job that will hold us over for a few months (selling shoes at a local store), but it's a job, and we are thankful. jeremy plans to become a certified chaplain and will be doing a residency program (likely starting in the summer), so we just needed something to hold us over until then. this is perfect. and now we feel like we can just relax and enjoy our vacation instead of stressing over finding a job.

it's been a stressful few months...grieving the loss of what we thought was going to be our future, struggling with God and his plans for our family, and dealing with the daily stress of providing for our family. through it all, we know that God is good and we are thankful for all the people who have spoken encouraging words into our life as we walk through this. we have had so many people who have prayed for us and who remind us that God loves us, has a plan for us, and will use us to glorify him. we have also been provided for in ways we never could have imagined...from money and gift cards unexpectedly showing up in the mail to an old acquaintance (who had no idea of our circumstances) showing up at our door with a gift card to the grocery store on a particularly stressful day.

as hard as this time is right now, i hope that we can look back on it someday and see it as a time in our lives where we saw God's faithfulness to us. right now, it feels like a huge horrible event in our lives, but in the future, i think it will just be a blip on the timeline of our lives. i hope it's a blip that helped us grow, strengthened our faith and our marriage, and led us to a fruitful place that we never could have imagined. and thanks to all of you who read this who have prayed for us, especially at times where it has been hard for us to pray.

i'm off to have another cup of coffee. this morning, we are going to go for a walk in the sunshine and find a park with a slide (love's request). i'm feeling thankful and even a bit hopeful this morning.

christmas morning

a couple of pics of our kiddos from christmas morning. (love is a big fan of thomas the tank engine. those thomas pajamas were a christmas eve gift from us - i got them at a local consignment shop. i had originally picked out a pair of girly pajamas, but then i came across these. as much as i wanted to buy the girly pjs, i knew that these would make love so happy. so...i put the girly pjs back on the rack and got these, and she was so happy).

love and her new dollhouse.

jobot was excited to open his stocking!

happy new year!

welcome, 2013!

i've been having a bit of an issue with uploading photos to the blog, so i haven't been posting much, because it's just not as fun. i do think it's time for an update, though. 

december passed by rather quickly. we enjoyed the season of advent as much as possible. originally, i was going to do a special activity every day. i ended up doing it a bit differently. a friend told me about truth in the tinsel, a daily advent devotional for kids, so i decided to do that with love. it's an ebook and each day has a scripture reading, devotion, and instructions for making an ornament. i modified some of the crafts for love's abilities and to use materials that we had on hand. we certainly didn't do all 24 days, and we did more at the beginning of the month than the end, but it was a great way to observe advent, and something that we can do in future years as well. 

instead of scheduling an activity for every day, i made a list of things we wanted to do together and we went through the list for what worked on whatever day. we didn't get to everything on the list, and i'm okay with that. here is what we did get to:

- visit the train display at our local mall
- make homemade "gingerbread" play dough
- make salt dough ornaments
- drive around and look at christmas lights
- watch a christmas movie and eat homemade pizza (we watched the polar express)
- send christmas mail to grandparents
- visit the local botanical gardens
- read new christmas book ("room for a little one" from my sister)
- get christmas books from the library
- color in christmas coloring book

we also enjoyed observing advent by lighting our way of light wreath each day and moving the wooden mary a little closer to bethlehem each day. love learned "away in a manger" with motions as we sang it each day after devotions.

the four of us were home together for christmas, and then we traveled to visit family last weekend.

unfortunately, the flu struck our home just before christmas. jobot came down with it the friday before christmas, it hit love on saturday, and jeremy and i got it on sunday. christmas eve found me crawling into bed with a fever and chills, huddled under piles of blankets and snuggling close to jeremy to get warm. it was a bummer. thankfully, we all felt pretty good on christmas morning. we opened our stockings, had a nice little gift exchange, ate some cinnamon rolls, and headed to church. some friends came over in the afternoon and we had christmas dinner and played games. it was a good day.

we went light on the gifts this year, which was the usual for us. jeremy and i decided to get a few things that we needed. they weren't surprises, but i wrapped them up anyway. we got ourselves a nice pair of scissors, a food scale, and i got a pair of tennis shoes and jeremy got some new slippers. we gave jobot a pair of booties for his cold little toes, and we gave both kids a set of wooden blocks. love was given a water bottle and...the big gift which several family members went in on together...a wooden dollhouse, doll family, and furniture! i really think this has been as much fun for me as it has been for her. jeremy did well with my stocking...vanilla almond tea, which i have really been enjoying, a beautiful new mug, and a bar of lavender soap. all things that add a little luxury to life. the best gift was that jobot finally started sleeping through the night, starting on christmas night. it is amazing to sleep all the way through the night again!

of course, more than enjoying the gifts and the family time, we basked in the reality that God is with us. we recently came across a prayer by max lucado, which we have found very fitting for this time. here is an exerpt from the prayer:

"Jesus, the world sure seems dark. i have a good eye for silver linings, but they seem dimmer lately.
your world seems a bit darker this Christmas. 
but, you were born in the dark, right? you came at night. the shepherds were nightshift workers. the wise men followed a star. your first cries were heard in the shadows. to see your face, mary and joseph needed a candle flame. it was dark.
dark with herod's jealousy. dark with roman oppression. dark with poverty. dark with violence.
oh, Lord Jesus, you entered the dark world of your day. won't you enter ours? we are weary of bloodshed. we, like the wise men, are looking for a star. we, like the shepherds, are kneeling at a manger.  
this christmas, we ask you, heal us, help us, be born anew in us."


and to continue the prayer as we enter this new year...may the light of the world shine brightly even through the darkness of our lives. may the hope of Jesus be born in us as we walk on this earth, and may Jesus be invited and faithfully enter into our lives.

happy new year!

polar express day

we've been trying our best over here to enjoy the christmas season...sitting by the tree, enjoying the lights, reading christmas books, doing advent devotions, listening to christmas music...

yesterday was a special polar express day at our house. in the morning, we read the polar express book. in the afternoon, love and i worked through a preschool pack that i had printed off and prepared. there were polar express themed puzzles, coloring sheets, matching cards, etc...

then...after jobot was in bed, we had a special movie night with love. we ate our homemade pizza while we watched the movie, then had hot chocolate, just like the kids on the polar express. love was so into the movie - we had to keep reminding her to eat her dinner. she loved it, and we loved just watching her joy. when we got to the part of the movie where santa gives the boy a bell, i pulled out a jingle bell for love. her eyes lit up and she was so excited.

i find so much joy in making things special for our family, and i'm really enjoying that she is at an age where she can appreciate special, fun things. our polar express day made a great memory, and just might be a tradition that continues every year at our house.