Update

My Whole Entire Life Story still had us living in Baytown, so I updated it.

Better!

So who's tired of looking at my Wii-injured eye? I AM. Therefore, I'm updating my blog to push that photo down a little. Incidentally, my eye is much better now. I can use my eyebrow pencil without crying.

Some recent excitement (that doesn't involve bleeding or bruising... yet) is our lovely new toy. Some friends sent us a Target gift card a couple of weeks ago and I knew exactly what we needed. We needed to pulse. We needed to chop. We needed to blend, shred and liquefy. We needed an Oster 12-speed blender/food processor combo.



Ta-da!!

There is no end to the fun we can have with this new toy of ours. The first day, Julia and her friend Angel came home from school and we made Thin Mint milkshakes. Oh, YES. They were grand. The next day, the girls came home and we looked around the kitchen for stuff to make a milkshake with (since all the Thin Mints were consumed the day before.) We found bananas, chocolate ice cream and a Hershey bar. So we made Banana Chocolate-Chip milkshakes, which were even better than the Thin Mint ones.

But at this point, I started to get a little nervous. I got a gym membership a month or so ago, and I realized that daily milkshakes might undo everything I was getting accomplished at the gym. So I decided I should fire up the food processor attachment and make something healthy. My friend Katie gave me a recipe and, a quick trip to the store later, I was enjoying hummus on wheat pita bread with roasted red peppers. YUM. (OK, a different kind of "yum" than the milkshakes, but still yum.)

We're excited to see what all this thing can do. The other day, Julia pureed some fruit, poured it into a cup, froze it and later said it was the yummiest thing she had ever eaten. This appliance is life-changing, I'm telling you!

Just so you won't think I'm spending all my time blending things or getting socked in the head by the Wii remote, here's my latest article from Arkansas Life magazine. It was a lot of fun to research and write (I got to interview some Arkansas celebrities, including Jancey Sheats -- a Baytown girl) and it helped get me motivated to start working out regularly. Hey, if I can do it, ANYONE can.

Lately.

I tend to get annoyed by blog posts that go on and on about why the blogger hasn't been blogging lately. So I'll be quick about it: It's not that I don't have time to get on the computer. It's that I don't have time to get on the computer and complete any kind of thought process. So let's catch up.

Here's a photo I forgot to share with you from my quick trip to Texas last month. One thing I've noticed about Arkansas is that you don't see humongous state flags flying all over the place. So it's something that stands out to me when I visit the Lone Star State. Here's a photo I took in Waco while driving AND trying to find a radio station that wasn't playing Tejano music. Am I talented or what.

We had Thanksgiving -- just the four of us -- right here at home. It was very nice to not have to go anywhere. The last time we had a just-us Thanksgiving at home was in 2003, when I miscarried the day before we supposed to leave to spend the holiday with Chad's people in Lubbock. I have a foggy memory of me wandering teary-eyed through the Baytown Wal-Mart to get stuff for a last-minute Thanksgiving for three at our house. Very depressing memory. So I was glad to replace it with a happy, stay-at-home Thanksgiving memory this year.

I went all out and freed the china and crystal from their prison in my china hutch. I mean, why not?






And what do the Nall girls wear to such a grand occasion?





Their jammies, of course.


The next day, we decked the halls for Christmas. You might notice Jenna is still wearing her jammies from the day before. That's how we roll in our house. The less laundry, the better.






Speaking of rolling, this is how a youth minister's family finds out last year's graduates are home from college:



"Great to see you guys! How long is your break? That long? ... Oh."

Now Christmas us almost upon us. Chad's mom has been with us since Dec. 1, and she'll go with us to Houston on the 23rd. For you Baytown folks, we plan to be at MoSt the Sunday morning after Christmas. Hope to see you then!

December rush

Chad's mom has come to stay for a month, I have deadlines looming and our computer is dying a slow, agonizing death. So that's why my blog updates are a little scarce lately. I'm actually writing this from Chad's office.

You CAN, however, find my writing (free of snide comments about Precious Moments and other collectible creepiness) in the December issue of Arkansas Life magazine. I wrote an article about the health care worker shortage in Arkansas. This crisis is nationwide, and if you know any young people pondering what career to choose, talk to them about the health care field. The shortage is not just in nursing, it's in all areas of the field: physicians, physical therapists, pharmacists, you name it. If you look at the numbers and the shortages that are predicted for the future if this trend continues, it's actually pretty scary.

Latest bit of wisdom from Jenna: The other night I was putting her to bed and the child would NOT stop asking me questions. I finally said, "It's time to stop asking questions so you can go to sleep." She said, "But Sid the Science Kid says it's good to ask a lot of questions!" So thanks, Sid the Science Kid.

Hikers, bikers... they're all the same

My parents came up from Houston last Monday and we've been busy driving them all over creation. On Thursday, we drove them up to a friend's cabin near Jasper in the Ozarks. We've stayed there before and we LOVE this place. It's on the Buffalo River and it's gorgeous up there this time of year.

We planned to do some hiking, and my mom was determined to get my dad a walking stick. (Not the insect... an actual stick you walk with.) None of the usual country bumpkin-type places in our town (like Cracker Barrel) had any, so we decided to stop on the way up to the cabin. We passed a sign that we thought said "HIKERS OUTLET" so we stopped. Surely the Hikers Outlet would have a walking stick! It wasn't until we were all out of the car that we noticed the sign actually said "BIKERS OUTLET." The Confederate flags should have tipped us off. However, we did manage to secure a walking stick at a business adjacent to the Bikers Outlet, so mission accomplished.

After a couple hours of windy, hilly driving (in the backseat with a 9-year-old who is as prone to motion sickness as I am), we finally got there. The cabin comes complete with a resident elk (named "Elkie" by Jenna) who came to see us both mornings we were there.

Why, there she is now!

Julia and Jenna got to do lots of exploring on the land around the cabin. Here are my sweet girls actually being sweet to each other down by the creek.

We hiked Lost Valley trail and poked around in Beechwoods Cemetery, where graves go back to before the Civil War. In fact, if you know anyone whose last name is Villines and they live in Arkansas, just about everyone they're related to who's dead is buried in this cemetery.

Here's Jenna in the original Villines house, which was built in 1850. While we were in there, we looked up and noticed the whole place is being held up by a couple of thin cables. So we left. Rather quickly.

Then back to the cabin, where we walked down to the Buffalo River. My dad loved looking for arrowheads there...


...while my mom pretended to not be related to any of us.








This is the perfect place to find some lovely fall colors, which I tried to capture in this rather artsy photo I took:



We drove back to our house Saturday and my parents flew home today. My next much-anticipated outing: the Twilight movie on Nov. 21! Edward + Bella = love forever! (And I do mean FOREVER.)

Tales of the Crypt

Last night, our house church went to Mt. Holly Cemetery in Little Rock for "Tales of the Crypt." It's an annual production put on by students at Little Rock's Parkview Arts & Science Magnet High School. Mt. Holly Cemetery is the final resting place of a number of Arkansas notables, including 11 Arkansas governors and several Confederate Army generals. For "Tales of the Crypt," the audience walks in groups to different graves, where students act out a short dialogue about the historical figure they are portraying. Last night, we heard from the wife of James Dibrell, who started the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences; William B. Worthen, who started the bank that eventually became the Bank of America; and several others. The actors are all in period costumes and perform at the actual grave of the person they are portraying. That photo up there is of Mount Holly Cemetery in the daytime. Pretty creepy, huh? And we got to walk around it in the dark! It was a lot of fun and very educational. Julia wanted to see David O. Dodd, the young Confederate martyr who reportedly haunts a house not far from our church, but he was on a different part of the tour. We'll try to catch him next year.

In non-Halloween news, I've invented a new sandwich. I want to announce it to the world so I can get full credit. It's a grilled cheese with pepper jack cheese and banana peppers. SO YUM. And vegetarian, to boot! (For those of you keeping score at home, I've been meat-free for over two years now.) I'll never eat a boring old regular grilled cheese again.

20 Years Ago...

I stole this off Jacinda's blog. I could REALLY confuse everyone and just use her answers, but I decided to come up with my own. Here's what I was doing...

20 years ago (1988)

I was a senior at Beaumont Christian High School in Beaumont, TX. I was thinking about breaking up with the guy I had been dating since 10th grade, and I finally did in December. What else was going on in October? Let's see -- at school, we seniors were probably getting ready for the senior spook house at the annual fall fest. I had big hair, and not just at Halloween. And I was a brunette. But not for long.

10 years ago (1998)

In October 1998, Chad and I were living in Abilene and I was gradually coming out of my bout with hyperemesis during my pregnancy with Julia. What a NIGHTMARE. I was also fighting to get my strength back up to pull off ACU's Homecoming, which I was in charge of. It all came together with the help of Kelly and all the other wonderful students on my steering committee. Oh, and after a summer of me staying in the hospital way beyond my sick leave, Chad (who was in grad school) and I were completely BROKE. No savings and sometimes, no income. We made it through somehow and welcomed a sweet baby girl into our family a few months later.

5 years ago (2003)

We had been in Baytown, TX for three years. Chad was a youth minister and I was taking Julia to preschool and writing for The Baytown Sun. That was a rough year -- by October, I had had two miscarriages and was about to have a third. What was up with my reproductive system? Soon Jenna would be on her way, though, and then I would get out of the baby-making business FOR GOOD. Despite that difficult year, I still have sweet memories of Julia as a four-year-old and of our family being active with our church and community.

1 year ago (2007)

Now we're in Arkansas! Julia was in third grade and Jenna was in preschool. I was writing for magazines by then, which, guess what? Pay a WHOLE LOT BETTER than newspapers. So goodbye, newspaper writing... nice knowin' ya! We were also busy with church/youth group stuff and enjoying fall in Arkansas, which is always lovely. The girls were gearing up for Halloween (Julia was Hannah Montana...someone she wouldn't be caught dead dressing up as now).

yesterday (October 8, 2008)

I weeded out clothes to donate to charity, went to my weekly Bible study, went to lunch with friends, managed to lose our cat, and went to Refuge where I spoke to the teens about finding value in others.

today (October 9, 2008)

Secured the cell phone number of our neighbor, who is in Florida, because I could hear a cat meowing in her garage and I was convinced it was ours. She gave me her garage code and when I opened the door, it was ANOTHER cat. Not ours, not the neighbor's, just some random cat. Weird. Chad and I took Jenna to preschool and I'm lining up interviews and doing research for my next deadline.

tomorrow (October 10, 2008)

Friday. I really have NO CLUE what we're doing tomorrow. I guess finding the cat would be good.