Four No More

We had a mostly quiet family of three until five years ago today when Jenna exploded onto the scene. I tell people that when she was born, she hit the ground running. I know there was a time when she was tiny and helpless and had to be lugged around in her infant carrier. But I don't remember that. Jenna has always been a blond-haired blur of joy and energy.



Most of the photos we have of her look like this:


Jenna loves life. I guess a lot of people do, but Jenna really embraces the whole Carpe Diem thing. For her, there is something to rejoice about in every moment of every day. And she cracks us UP. Just two days ago, she stepped on the scale in our bathroom, read the numbers, yelled "YES!", put her arms up in a victory "V" and danced an elaborate dance of triumph all around our bathroom like she was in a Jenny Craig commercial or something. I don't know where she got this because this is definitely not how her dad and I react when we weigh ourselves. But something about those numbers really made her day.

Our Baytown friends will remember that Jenna was not easy to come by. After losing three pregnancies and then struggling through the first several months of my pregnancy with Jenna (I get notoriously ill when I'm pregnant), a friend at church told me "Girl, when this baby gets here we are going to throw a PARTY." And they did. I had a fabulous baby shower and we still have so many blankets and pillows that our sweet friends there made with their own hands. It usually takes two people to have a baby, but, with a lot of prayer, our entire church family in Baytown got Jenna here. That's something I'll always remember about our time in Baytown.

Here's something I wrote a while back about Jenna (with her age updated):

"Blue eyes, my baby's got blue eyes. Like a deep blue sea on a blue, blue day." -- "Blue Eyes" by Elton John

Jenna was born five years ago today. Eight-and-a-half pounds. A golden sheen to her head that promised blond hair. Blue eyes.

At least I tell people they're blue. There really isn't a word to describe the color of her eyes.

But I'll try.

I learned to scuba dive in 1993. And I learned something about it right off: scuba diving is a big hassle. So much heavy, awkward equipment is required for breathing underwater. The tank by itself weighs 80 pounds. Then there's the weight belt, which must be adjusted just right so you won't float to the surface or be stuck on the ocean floor. Then you have the BCD, the fins, snorkel, mask and wetsuit. Once you get all that stuff on, it's hard enough to remain upright, let alone walk normally.

But once below the surface, the oppressive gear becomes your key to the underwater world. You swim around weightless, holding out fingers as curious fish swim up to them. Your teeth clench around the regulator that, on land moments before, was uncomfortable in your mouth. Now it's the only way to get air into your lungs. The sound of your constant inhaling and exhaling is a reminder that you're doing something humans weren't made to do. You are living, thriving, underwater. The hassle, for the moment, is forgotten.

It took us a long time to get Jenna into this world. I got pregnant, then miscarried. Pregnant again, then blood one morning. Pregnant a third time, but then more blood. We started thinking adoption. Then I got pregnant again, and this one held. I got very sick, was placed on home healthcare, and then developed gestational diabetes. Then, one Thursday morning, the previous year-and-a-half faded as I finally looked into her eyes.

And I remembered the circle of light.

Thirty feet under the ocean's surface, it's easy to become disoriented -- to the point that you can lose track of which way you're supposed to go to reach air. As a scuba diver, you learn to look for light. Light means surface. When you find the sunlight piercing the blue mass in which you are submerged, you slowly swim toward it, exhaling all the way. Surrounded by varying shades of watery blue, the circle of light expands and seems to pull you toward itself. You keep swimming up, up, up -- until you think your lungs can't expel any more air. But the bubbles keep coming from your mouth, and you keep moving toward the light.

Then you reach it and you burst through it into air, light, life.

That's what color Jenna's eyes are.

Stuff Christians Like

This has got to be my new favorite blog: Stuff Christians Like.

I might be soulmates with the guy who runs it. He even makes fun of Precious Moments and Willow Tree. I think I love him.

I might come up with my own list of stuff Christians like. Also watch for more posts in my "Clothes/Shoes That Changed My Life" series.

Here's Jenna helping me make French toast this morning. See that face? I wake up to that every day. It pretty much makes life worth living.

Church according to Jenna

We went to a new house church last night and boy, does Jenna know how to make a first impression. The kids were all playing Simon Says and when it was Jenna's turn, she said, "Simon Says... TAKE YOUR CLOTHES OFF!" Fortunately, adults intervened and everyone stayed fully clothed.

This is the same kid who flashed our old house church one night. One couple never came back. Not kidding.

More signs Jenna has been on the computer too much

Today at lunch, I had just prayed and ended it with "In Jesus' name, amen."

Jenna: What's Jesus' name?

Me: His name is Jesus.

Jenna: What's his password?

Me: I don't think he has a password.

Jenna: I think he does. I think it's "jelly."

Me: Jelly?

Jenna. Yes. Jesus Jelly.

Spring Break

This is what spring break does to Jenna's room:



But don't worry, there's an "after" picture:



The last couple of years, we've been fans of not going anywhere for spring break. It's nice to actually take a break instead of packing up the family and exhausting ourselves on a long road trip. So we are staying close to home this year. Besides, I just really didn't have it in me to plan a trip this year.

But we did go to Wye Mountain, where daffodils are blooming by the thousands. We had to leave suddenly when Jenna needed to potty and didn't like the looks of the port-a-potties. I was so proud! A girl after my own heart.



And the girls and I spent yesterday afternoon hanging out in downtown Little Rock. Here are the girls on the trolley. (Jenna loved it. Julia, on the other hand, is getting too cool to think this kind of thing is fun. Don't know if you can tell from the picture.)


And last weekend, I threw a Twilight DVD release party at church. (It was in the teen room, but attendees were mostly made up of lovestruck moms like me.) We had refreshments (don't worry -- it was black cherry Kool-Aid):




And people like the Williams women had fun swooning over Edward:



So that's it. A peek into our boring spring break lives. Hopefully soon I can review one of the books I've been trying to get read.

Safe distance

You know all those warnings that come with the Wii, like "have plenty of space around you... don't stand too close to anyone or anything..." Well, this is why:



Tuesday afternoon, Jenna was playing Wii when it was time to pick up Julia from school. I had told her not to start another game, but she started one anyway. I decided not to fight it and thought I would put her shoes on her while she played. So I was putting her shoes on her while she played baseball and she must have knocked one out of the park because her Wii remote and my eyebrow made contact with so much force that I didn't know what had happened for a few seconds. Then I heard a combination moaning/sobbing sound, which I then realized was coming from me. Then I drew my hand away from my eye and saw that quite a bit of blood was involved. At this point, poor Jenna FREAKED. She not only hit Mommy and made her cry, but made her bleed, too! She was devastated. So, while choking back sobs and running to the bathroom, I was yelling, "Don't feel bad! It wasn't your fault!" Because really, I shouldn't have been so close to her while she was playing. In the bathroom, I frantically grabbed a wad of toilet paper while dripping blood all over the sink and counter. (Which I had to clean up before house church that night, lest anyone think really weird things are going on at our house.)

I got Jenna in the car and drove with one hand to the Julia's school while keeping the almost-soaked toilet paper wad on my eyebrow. Julia got in the car and her mouth dropped open. I must have looked like I had been shot. When I told her what happened, she said, "I've always told you Jenna was strong." (Julia has been the victim of Jenna's brutality -- intentional or otherwise -- for 4.5 years.)

Two days later, I've got an inch-long gash under my eyebrow and a bruise covering my eyelid. Make-up and strategically-placed bangs help cover it up pretty well. I probably should have had it checked out to see if it needed a stitch or two, but Chad was out of the country (which he says is proof he did not do this to me) and I had to do two phone interviews as soon as I got home with the girls. If it scars, I'm hoping it will just make me look cool.

Like Mommy

Every morning, if there's not a mad rush to get out the door, Chad and I like to enjoy a longish kiss before he takes Julia to school. This usually takes place in the kitchen while I've got a dishrag or cereal bowl in my hand. It's not like we're shoving the dishes off the table like in that scene from "Fatal Attraction" (although that might be fun some time). It's just a nice little moment to share before we're apart the rest of the day. A moment that rarely happens without Julia's complete mortification.

So yesterday, I was leaving to go somewhere and Jenna ran up to give me a kiss. As I bent down to kiss her, she closed her eyes and tilted her head to one side.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"I want to kiss like a mommy," she said.

I have a 4-year-old who wants to kiss like a mommy. I don't know how I got on this train, but I need to back it up. And fast.

January.

Right now, on Jan. 6, I am alone in my house. I have not been alone in my house since the last week of November. Chad's mom was with us Dec. 1-26, then we came home from Houston on Dec. 30. Then our friends Jerry and Violetta and their two girls stayed with us until today. Julia started school yesterday, Jenna went back today, so it's just me. Well, the cat, too. But he takes care of himself, so he really doesn't count.

Because Jerry and Violetta live in Alaska, we don't see them very often. In fact, I had not met their daughters Vitalia and Alesa until this past Saturday. It was great to spend time with all of them. We enjoyed Violetta's borscht (she is Ukrainian -- Jerry met her while doing mission work there in 1999), and I could never get tired of listening to her and the girls speaking Russian to each other. Such a beautiful language that you don't hear much in central Arkansas. Violetta and I are the same age but from such different worlds. I grew up in Beaumont, Texas, watching MTV, hanging out with friends and cruising the beach on the weekends. She grew up behind the Iron Curtain and dealing with all the struggles that went along with that. I always love talking to her. And she likes to shop, which the two of us did quite a bit while they were here.

Jenna's finger is doing a lot better. Her fingernail is kind of loose so we keep band-aids on it. It gives me the willies to think about, so let's talk about something else.

Like Facebook, where my social life lives. Over the holidays, I passed the 500-friend mark. And just who are my Facebook friends? Let's see:

- kids in our youth group
- my very best friend from elementary school
- kids in our old youth group
- kids I've met at ACU camps over the years
- my boyfriend from second grade
- a couple of guys I made out with in college
- a guy who was the preacher at a church where we tried to get a youth ministry job but didn't make the cut
- Chad's sister's best friend from high school
- friends I've had in real life who either I moved away from or who moved away from me
- several varieties of ministers
- one friend who is no longer living
- a number of editors and journalism professors
- people from high school who I didn't hang out with then but wish I had because they are really cool
- several people I've never met but who I know through cyberspace
- Chad's cousins
- Chad's cousins' kids
- my 73-year-old dad
- the author of "Writer Mama," one of my favorite books
- Chad's dad's wife
- of course my bff Carol
- someone who is pregnant with twins
- and lots of other people from different places and times in my life.

I realize how pathetic it is to have a socal life that exists mostly online. At least I can admit it.

Coming up for us is Julia's 10th birthday party. We'll have a few of her friends over for an "IRON CHEF ARKANSAS" party. We'll give guests some random ingredients and have them made something out of it. Julia, our resident foodie and Food Network junkie, has been having fun helping us plan it. But she announced the other day that she would like for this to be her last birthday party. More evidence that she's nearing the teen years, I guess.

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.

Betting on Alice and the freedom of the press

Yes, the long-awaited Twilight movie opens tonight. I'm hoping to go Sunday afternoon with friends from church. Yes, it will probably be cheesy. But we're going, anyway. And we're gonna like it.

Over the weekend, I traveled to Austin for Patsy Partin's memorial service. It was very nice and I got to see some old friends. Here I am with Patrick, Patsy's youngest, and Robert Duren. I went to junior high and high school with both those guys and then Patrick and I went to the same college. I thought so much of Patrick that I found him a wife. I guess I thought he couldn't do it on his own. Anyway, Patsy would have loved that her service brought together so many people who hadn't seen each other in a long time. It was especially great seeing Patrick's wife, my bff Carol, for the first time in three years.

Now on to our latest adventures with Jenna. Last Monday, she got our church office staff thrown out of a bar. Really. One of our ministers (WHO SHALL REMAIN NAMELESS) is a barbecue fan and makes a hobby of seeking out hole-in-the-wall BBQ joints in search of great barbecue. Being from Texas, I get this. Sometimes the best BBQ you will ever eat is sold in establishments you might otherwise want to avoid. Like the Rib Cage in Baytown.

(For those of you tracking my vegetarian progress, don't panic. I was going along with everyone on Monday to seek out some potato salad. I've been meat-free for over two years now.)

Anyway, Mr. Nameless Minister thought we should try a certain "restaurant" out here in Saline County. I felt a little funny about going to this place, because I thought it was a bar. But the sign said barbecue, and Rev. Nameless was paying, so who was I to complain? Anyway, we go in there and sit down -- with 4-year-old Jenna -- and the waitress comes up and says, "I'm sorry, but according to Arkansas law, no one under 21 can be in here." Why? Because it's a BAR. So we all left.

For those of you who live around here, it was "The Pit" by the race track. The race track where the hillbillies race their hillbilly cars every Saturday night. Yes, I took my child in there.

The whole thing reminded me of Reese Witherspoon's line in "Sweet Home Alabama": "You have a baby! ...in a bar!"

Then this morning, Jenna kept yelling "MOVE, LADY!" at the woman giving the forecast on the Weather Channel. Apparently the poor woman was blocking Jenna's view of the U.S. map. I guess we need to work on Jenna's manners. Keeping her out of bars might be a good place to start.

Finally, I'm so, SO proud of the staff of the Optimist, ACU's campus newspaper. (Where I was managing editor for one year and senior staff writer for two years in college.) They made a candidate endorsement that they had to know would not be well-received in the ACU/Abilene community, but stood by it anyway. They have taken all kinds of flak as a result, which was to be expected. I just remember making a difficult endorsement while on the Optimist staff (for student body executive offices, that time) and going to press knowing we were going to make a lot of people unhappy, but knowing we had to stick by our convictions. (And one of the guys we weren't endorsing was Chad's friend and scheduled to be in our wedding that summer. Ugh -- still not fun to think about. He got elected, anyway.) That was rough at the time, and I can only imagine what the current situation is like for the Optimist staff, especially since this controversy has made news beyond the campus. Part of learning to be a journalist is accepting the fact that in doing your job, you will make people upset. I think this experience will serve to prepare the current staff for their future jobs, and I also chalk it up to a victory for freedom of the press.

Here's an article about the controversy in the Abilene Reporter-News, and another article at the College Media Matters web site.

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.)

Grocery Gaming

This was our first week to do The Grocery Game. The Grocery Game helps you match up coupons with sales in stores to get groceries for ridiculously cheap, and sometimes free. You actually need to save up several weeks' worth of Sunday coupons, which we haven't had time to do yet, but we still got some good deals. Like a box of 24-count Tylenol PM, which started out at $5.49, then went on sale at Walgreens for 3.49, then I got a $2-off coupon from the Sunday paper, then an in-store coupon brought it down to 49 cents. I kind of wish I had saved this kind of money on something more exciting than sleeping pills, but STILL. At Walgreens I spent $3.71 on almost $14 worth of stuff, and also got some good deals at Kroger the next day. It will get better as my coupon file expands. One TERRIFIC thing about The Grocery Game: Wal-Mart is not included in their list of stores, so I drive to Benton to go to the Kroger there. The money I save on groceries more than makes up for the gas. I may never have to go to Wal-Mart again! One downside: Target is also not included in The Grocery Game's stores. If it ever is, my life will be complete.

A disclaimer for those who know us in person. Jenna is going around telling everyone she has a brother named "John." I guess it's her new imaginary friend. At school last week, her teacher was helping all the kids draw pictures of their families. When I picked Jenna up, she showed me her family picture. It was Daddy, Jenna, and "John," a guy with a beard. No Mommy and no Julia. "Uh, Jenna? Do we have someone in our family named 'John?'" I asked. Her teacher said, "She doesn't? She told me she did!"

I'm all about imaginary friends. Hey, I had a squirrel who rode around on my shoulder through most of elementary school. But I just want to make sure everyone knows Jenna does not actually have a brother named John that we've hidden away somewhere. And I'm wondering what do to with this "family" picture, which looks more like the premise for a 21st Century After-School Special: "Jenna and her Two Dads" or something like that.

Now from the Julia front: the other day Julia and I were in the car and Dire Straits' "Money for Nothing" came on. "Hey," I said, turning it up. "I used to really like this song." Julia looked extremely annoyed and said, "Turn it down. It's too loud." So I said, "You know what we used to say when I was a teenager? 'If it's too loud, you're too old.'" She just looked at me like I was completely insane.

That's the problem with us '80s people. Our parents didn't understand our music then, and our kids don't understand it now.

Jenna, Labor Day and the skinny on things...

Yay for Jenna starting Mothers Day Out today! Yay for me having time to blog! And get work done! And watch shows I can't watch when she's around! Yay!

We usually do something as a family for Labor Day, but this year, it was just Chad and me. The girls stayed with a friend from church and we went up to Heber Springs to stay at a cabin that belongs to some friends of ours. (I've decided to always have friends who will keep my kids and friends who own cabins.) Sunday night, we drove over to Eden Isle Pike and ate at the Red Apple Inn. Other than that, we slept a lot and watched Gustav updates on TV to make sure our Beaumont, Baytown and Houston friends and family weren't getting blown away. Oh, and we played Mario on the old Nintendo -- one of my favorite things to do at the cabin.

Now for my latest soapbox, which I promise to blog about this one time and then not bring up again. I PROMISE. Something's been nagging at me and I think if I blog about it, I'll have some peace.

Last week, a columnist for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette wrote about a woman she sees at the gym. The woman has apparently had several children and is still thin and in great shape. The columnist kept using words like "alien" and "anomaly" to describe this woman since she doesn't appear to be lugging around any baby weight. I looked up "anomaly" to make sure I was understanding it right. My dictionary defines it as "peculiar" or "abnormal."

All right. Can we talk about this for a second?

Let me lay it all out so you'll know where I'm coming from. I don't weigh what I did in high school (I was ridiculously thin back then), but I do weigh less than I did before getting pregnant with my first child. My jeans size is still in single digits. I've never had to struggle with my weight, and I realize I am blessed.

The truth is that thin people still have issues about their bodies and can be sensitive to negative comments. Here are some examples from my own experience:

1) "I hate you because you're skinny." Or "You make me sick." I got this a lot in high school. Not so much now, which is good because I never figured out a way to respond to it.

2) "How did you get so skinny?" This is usually accompanied by what I call "The Onceover" -- a frowning person looking you up and down like something has got to be terribly wrong with you. I still get this one, and I don't know how to respond to it, either. I've thought about telling these people that I have stomach cancer, because that would be easier to explain than the truth: this is just the way I am.

3) "She has GOT to be anorexic." This wasn't said to me, but about me by a group of girls at my high school who didn't realize I was in a stall in the bathroom they had gathered in. I hid back there until they were gone because I didn't want them to know I had heard.

The truth is that no one, no matter what they look like, wants to have their body picked apart and criticized by people using words like "hate" and "alien" and "abnormal." Or "skinny bitch," as the classy Joy Behar so often calls us. There is an assumption that thin people have no issues about their bodies, and it's not true.

There is a more significant issue here. Here's part of the letter I wrote to the columnist:

"What I truly hate about our society is that when it comes to body
types, women can't win. If we're overweight, we're criticized and
ridiculed. If we're not overweight, we're ostracized and considered
fair game for comments such as the ones I listed above. This doesn't
happen to men, and it's not fair."

Why can't society just leave us -- and I mean ALL of us -- alone? I'm trying to raise girls in this craziness...girls who, no matter what they grow up to look like, will at some point be made to feel bad about the way they look.

What I have learned over the years is that true friends don't care about what you look like. Real friends will never ask why your body looks a certain way, or say that they hate you or you sicken them because of the way you look. I just wish we could all view each other this way and forget about what we all look like.

Jenna's birthday

Our Jen-Jen is four today. Here's something I wrote about her on her birthday last year:

"Blue eyes, my baby's got blue eyes. Like a deep blue sea on a blue, blue day." -- from "Blue Eyes" by Elton John

Jenna was born three years ago tomorrow. Eight-and-a-half pounds. A golden sheen to her head that promised blond hair. Blue eyes.

At least I tell people they're blue. There really isn't a word to describe the color of her eyes.

But I'll try.

I learned to scuba dive in 1993. And I learned something about it right off: scuba diving is a big hassle. So much heavy, awkward equipment is required for breathing underwater. The tank by itself weighs 80 pounds. Then there's the weight belt, which must be adjusted just right so you won't float to the surface or be stuck on the ocean floor. Then you have the BCD, the fins, snorkel, mask and wetsuit -- if the water you're diving in is going to be cold.

But once below the surface, the oppressive gear becomes your key to the underwater world. You swim around weightless, holding out fingers as curious fish swim up to them. Your teeth clench around the regulator that, on land moments before, was uncomfortable in your mouth. Now it's the only way to get air into your lungs. The sound of your constant inhaling and exhaling is a reminder that you're doing something humans weren't made to do. You are living, thriving, underwater. The hassle, for the moment, is forgotten.

It took us a long time to get Jenna into this world. I got pregnant, then miscarried. Pregnant again, then blood one morning. Pregnant a third time, but then more blood. We started thinking adoption. Then I got pregnant again, and this one held. I got very sick, was placed on home healthcare, and then developed gestational diabetes. Then, one Thursday morning, the previous year-and-a-half faded as I finally looked into her eyes.

And I remembered the circle of light.

Thirty feet under the ocean's surface, it's easy to become disoriented -- to the point that you can lose track of which way you're supposed to go to reach air. As a scuba diver, you learn to look for light. Light means surface. When you find the sunlight piercing the blue mass in which you are submerged, you slowly swim toward it, exhaling all the way. Surrounded by varying shades of watery blue, the circle of light expands and seems to pull you toward itself. You keep swimming up, up, up -- until you think your lungs can't expel any more air. But the bubbles keep coming from your mouth, and you keep moving toward the light.

Then you reach it and you burst through it into air, light, life.

That's what color Jenna's eyes are.

Mrs. Kafween

My church family has lost a precious soul. Kathleen (or, as Jenna called her, "Mrs. Kafween") died yesterday.

I'm not up to saying much about this yet, but I do want to share one of my favorite memories of Kathleen. One day after church, Jenna was running around with her magic wand and pretending to turn people into different things. Most of them were saying, "Oh, that's cute, Jenna," and going on with their conversations. But when Jenna ran up to Kathleen, waved her wand and informed Kathleen she had just turned her into a frog, Kathleen stopped what she was doing, squatted down and hopped away while saying "Ribbet, ribbet..." Jenna thought it was the greatest thing ever - she thought her wand actually worked. That's the kind of person Kathleen was...the kind who would act like a goofball just to make a 3-year-old's day. No wonder Jenna loved Kathleen and ran up to hug her every time she saw her.

Jenna doesn't know Kathleen is gone. I don't know how to explain suicide to a 3-year-old. Our church, and especially Kathleen's husband and two children, need all the prayers we can get.

Veggie Love

Conversation with Jenna while putting her to bed tonight (Keep in mind that Jenna's grammar hasn't completely come in yet):

Me: I love you. God loves you. Jesus loves you. Everybody loves you.

Jenna: What about Jonah?

Me: Who?

Jenna: Jonah from Veggie Tales. Do that big broccoli love me?

Me: (cracking up)

Jenna: What? Why are you laughing at me?

Sliding sisters

This, my friends, is known as "summer."




(Photo courtesy of Michelle Cook!)

Aborted Apostrophe Rescue Mission

I really appreciated all the comments on my last post. It was nice to hear from other people experiencing the same thing. Too bad we don't all live in the same town, huh?

Jenna's out of school for the summer, which isn't easy for either of us. I miss being able to mop the floor uninterrupted, and she asks "Am I going to school today?" every morning. Julia goes until June 4 (thanks to snow and tornado days that pushed the date back) and then we leave for Houston the next day. We're looking forward to seeing our Baytown friends at a certain wedding on June 7.

From the apostrophe abuse department: Every Tuesday/Thursday at Jenna's school since January, I've been walking down the hall past a bulletin board that says "PARENT'S" on it. Nothing after it, just PARENT'S. Meaning, I guess, that the information on that board is for parents. Which means the apostrophe is completely unnecessary. (Unless the board itself actually belongs to a parent. In which case, why is it hanging there?) All semester, I tried to get up my nerve to reach up and rescue that poor piece of punctuation from its incorrect usage. I never did. As far as I know, it hangs there still. I just really like the director and I really, really appreciated her getting Jenna into the school there (because I had just had a negative experience at her previous school and didn't want to take her back there. For what it's worth, the incident had nothing to do with punctuation.) I hope to keep Jenna in this school for the next two school years, and I think the director NOT thinking I'm an obsessive psycho freak would work to my advantage.

Also related to abuses of the English language, we received some coupons (yay!) in our paper yesterday that have "Stock-up on savings!" printed across the top of the page. Why is "stock-up" hyphenated? I'll tell you why. It's because Americans are losing their grip on their native language. I wonder if this is happening in other countries. Are people in Japan forgetting how to read, write and speak Japanese? I know the world has other problems, but it's troubling nonetheless.

Sisters in the 'hood

Julia was trying to work on something the other day and Jenna kept bugging her. As I walked past the room they were in, I heard Julia say this:

"Jenna, quit gettin' all up in my business!"

Oh, for the record, the building in the picture is a Civil War-era remnant we ran across in our travels over the weekend. No, PATRICK PARTIN, it is not our house in Arkansas.

Easter and the Ozarks

Here are Julia and Jenna post-egg hunt in our front yard today. (I also wanted to show off my daffodils. They've survived two snows and two hailstorms and still look lovely.)

I have a feeling Julia's going to start thinking she's too old for this in a few years, but I'm glad she's not there yet.

Jenna was apparently pretty excited to get this chocolate bunny.





If you're wondering why our yard isn't green yet, that's because two weeks ago, it looked like this:



Earlier this weekend, we took my mom up into the Ozarks for a little Arkansas sightseeing. Friday, we stayed in a cabin near Jasper that belongs to some friends of ours. The cabin's property is right on the edge of Buffalo National Park, and the scenery there is beautiful.

The girls loved playing in the creek...

...and in the hammock just down the hill from the cabin.

We took the scenic route home, winding our way through the Ozarks and stopping at a triple waterfall and some Civil-War era building remnants. When we got back into civilization, we stopped in Conway at the Marketplace Grill and made complete pigs of ourselves. Julia proclaimed it as her new favorite restaurant. I'm kind of glad there's not one in Little Rock -- we'd be in big trouble!