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.

The Water Whispered Her Name

Here’s something I started on months ago that I decided to finish for Julia’s birthday, which is today.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I was getting close to seven months pregnant and Chad and I still hadn’t decided on names. We had pored over the baby name book numerous times, but nothing had really grabbed us. The names we did like had been shot down by others. “Bethany” was the name of a problem student my mom had as a teacher, so that was out. I had always liked “Jason,” but that was also the name of the guy I dated before Chad. Also out. Because we had chosen to not know the baby’s gender before the birth, we had two names to pick out. And the weeks kept going by.

Then there’s the story I don’t tell people. It’s one of those stories a mother treasures in her heart, but seems too precious to speak aloud.

Then one day at work, I saw a woman I knew in the hall. A woman named Julia.

“Hi, Julia,” I said as I passed her.

She returned my greeting and kept going. Then it hit me. Julia! What a beautiful name!

The truth is that years before she was born, her father and I hiked into the Alaskan wilderness and set up camp near a stream that fed into a swift, salmon-filled river. At that point in their journey, the salmon are still; suspended in the blue mass of the frigid river. He stood among them and fly-fished, zipping his line across the water’s surface.

I checked the baby name book that night to make sure it didn’t mean anything odd, like “Delaney” meaning “from the alder grove.” Or sad, the way “Dolores” means “sorrows.” Or funny, the way “Oliver” means “elf army.”

Much to my delight, the name Julia has a lovely meaning. “Youthful.” I had been raised to cherish youthfulness. Not in outward appearances, but from the heart.

“You’re only as old as you act,” my grandmother used to tell me.

My grandmother, who, widowed at the age of 80, moved into a retirement center and began socializing, dating and having the time of her life. Not that she didn’t have a wonderful life with my grandfather. She was just having fun with the time she had left. My grandmother was 88 when she died, but she was really only about 16. I loved her youthful spirit and hoped to pass it on to my own children. Julia was not only a beautiful name, but it had a meaning that was close to my heart. That was important to me.

I stood on a wooden bridge over the narrow stream. The stream was glacier run-off; pristine water so cold it shocked when you touched it. Underneath my hiking boots, the wooden bridge hummed as the water rushed and bubbled in its hurry to join the river.

Now I just had to get it past Chad. I had been a fan of Julia Roberts, the actress, for several years. After I convinced him that I was not trying to name our baby after a celebrity, he agreed that I had found the perfect girl name.

And it’s still perfect for her. I can’t imagine having named her anything else. I’ve always been glad I passed the other Julia in the hall that day.

Years later, I first held her in my arms. So new, but her name already ages old to me, like it was always planned to be hers. My mind traveled back to that day on the river. Standing over the rumbling current, did I not hear the sound that stands so clearly now in my memory? Amid the creek’s splashes and ripples, God spoke through his creation. I heard the water whisper her name.

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.

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.)

Another cook in the kitchen

Julia, our resident Bobby Flay fan (although she thinks he's a bit arrogant), has been making us omelettes in the mornings. She does a great job -- even on the tricky fold-over part. (She's still honing her cooking skills. This morning she forgot to turn the burner on and wondered why it was taking so long to cook.)

Over the last year or so, Julia has become quite the foodie. Food Network has replaced Disney Channel as her favorite thing to watch, and I have a feeling we will be shopping Williams-Sonoma instead of the Target toy aisle for her birthday. We're planning an Iron Chef birthday party in our church kitchen, where kids will be given some random ingredients to make into dessert.

Speaking of food, I'm getting to do something really fun AGAIN for an article I'm writing for this magazine. I get to go to this place and interview the owner today. Watch for the story in the November issue!

One more thing: for a pre-Halloween scare, go to my dad's blog and read his column about the haunted house he used to live in. And go here to read my old blog post about the same house.

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.

Sliding sisters

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




(Photo courtesy of Michelle Cook!)

My British Daughter

To the woman at the pet store yesterday:

No, my daughter does not have a foreign accent. She has a speech impediment. A speech impediment that makes her sound British.

She's about to end her fourth year of speech therapy, and her "R" remains as elusive as ever. But hopefully before junior high, she'll be sounding like an American.

And yes, she is a little sensitive about it. I just wanted to explain the awkward silence that followed your comment.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I also struggled to find my "R" in elementary school. I wouldn't say my middle name (Carol), and I would only name the state we had moved from (New Mexico) because the actual town (Roswell) had an "R" in it. I heard the passing comment every once in a while from kids outside my circle, but my friends were cool about it. Especially my best friend, whose name was Lori. Yep, as luck would have it, Little Miss Speech Impediment had a best friend whose name had an "R" right in the middle of it. I couldn't avoid saying her name. She was my best friend. So I just called her "Low-ee." We both knew I was saying it wrong, but she never said a word about it. That's the mark of a true friend.

Julia has also been blessed by good friends who have never poked fun at the way she talks. She just gets occasional comments and questions from strangers (usually adults, like the pet store lady) who are surprised to hear a British accent in central Arkansas.

However, Julia is getting close to the age that I'm afraid she will get made fun of if she doesn't conquer "Mt. R" soon. Maybe it would be easier for us to move to England and have everyone wonder about my accent instead of hers.

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!

Revolve!

We had a whirlwind trip to Houston this past weekend with a group of junior high/high school girls and four other adults from our church. We went to Revolve, which is the Women of Faith conference for teen girls. We had GREAT seats -- fourth and fifth rows from the stage on the floor -- so we got to see Hawk Nelson, KJ-52, Natalie Grant, Max & Jenna Lucado and others SUPER UP CLOSE. I had only vaguely heard of Hawk Nelson before. Turns out they are a high-energy band that is extremely popular with teenage girls. (And I really mean high-energy -- the lead singer acts like he gives himself regular caffeine injections.) KJ-52 was completely new to me. He's a skinny little white rapper dude who completely ROCKED THE HOUSE. Then there were all the other singers and speakers who all had powerful messages. It was an amazing event and the girls are already asking about going back next year.

Chad, Julia and Jenna also made the trip and hung out with my parents. The girls even got new Build-a-Bears. (In our house, Build-a-Bear is reserved for very special occasions, such as graduating from diapers into panties. At my parents' house, all you apparently have to do to get a Build-a-Bear is just show up.)

For some reason, I always forget how horrendous Houston's traffic is until I make a return visit. I did get a kick out of hearing my friend Julie, who grew up in England, comment on Houston's traffic in her lovely British accent. ("It's OH-ful! Just OH-ful!")

Two books I'm reading right now:

I mentioned A.J. Jacobs, the author of "The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible" back in September at the very end of this post. Now I've got the book he wrote about his experience. Jew by birth and agnostic by personal philosophy, Jacobs spent a year attempting to follow every single law in the Bible. I'm only a couple of chapters into it, but I have to say I really admire the guy for taking this on. So far, he has had his wardrobe checked for mixed fibers (outlawed in Deuteronomy 22:11) and refused to discuss the U.S. Open with his wife for fear she may mention Venus Williams (Exodus 23:13 forbids even mentioning the names of other gods.) The book is funny, but it's also interesting to see how an outsider interprets and attempts to live by the Bible. This is the kind of book I could finish in a day, but I've had to hold it at bay since I've got a heavy workload this week.

Last week at the library, I scored Eric Clapton's auto-bio. He's had an interesting life (beyond the music, he survived a monstrous drug addiction, as well as the tragic death of his young son) and I look forward to reading it.

Jenna vs. Garage Door, Part II

Remember Jenna's first run-in with our garage door? Well, they met up for a rematch yesterday. Julia, Jenna and I walked into the garage, I hit the button to raise the door, and Jenna took off running towards the driveway. Unfortunately, she didn't wait for the door to get high enough before attempting to run underneath it. I heard a "WHAM!" and then the thunder-like rattle of the garage door, and then saw Jenna sprawled in the driveway. I ran to her, certain there would be blood and possibly insides of her skull exposed, but no. After a moment of crying, she was fine and up running around again.

This is our first house with a garage (yep, we were married 13.5 years before moving into a house with a garage) and the remote-controlled door was a novelty at first. I'm not so impressed anymore.

And now for the book I devoured last week. Imagine learning, at the age of 35, that you have an identical twin. Sounds like a Lifetime movie, but this really happened to Elyse Schein and Paula Bernstein. In their book, "Identical Strangers," they take turns telling the story of how they came to find out about each other, and describing the wide range of emotions that comes along with such a discovery. The sisters are very honest about the joy, grief, anger and resentment that entered their lives upon learning of each others' existence. The twins' story is intriguing as they take the reader on their journey of uncovering the mystery of the circumstances of their birth and the search for their birth mother. I got this book from the library Thursday evening and finished it the next night. I didn't skim, either -- the twins' story is pretty complex, so you'll find yourself reading every word trying process it all. The story of Elyse and Paula is amazing and one that could make you grateful for your family members in a new way.

We are recovering from Julia's birthday (a pop star party for a bunch of hyper third-grade girls). She got a Target gift card from Lois, my best Baytown girlfriend and Julia's adopted grandma, and Julia bought the new Nancy Drew PC game, "Legend of the Crystal Skull," with it. We're both working on solving the mystery now. Julia and I started playing these games when she was in first grade, and we're still hooked.

Dear Mr. President

The other day, Julia and I were talking about some of the challenges her grandmother faces as an American with a mental illness. Julia was outraged to learn that her Meemaw can't get insurance because of her condition and said, "We need to write the President about that." She came home yesterday with this letter, which we are mailing today:

Dear Mr. President,

My grandma has a mental illness and no insurance company will cover her. I think it is unfair that people won't help her because they don't want to lose money. To me, it sounds like when black people were not given the same rights as white people all over again. Before your term is over in the White House, maybe you could make a law declaring that people with disabilities like my grandma can have insurance.

Sincerely,

Julia Nall
age 9

New Improved Blog Roll

Here's a joke Julia told me the other day:

Q: Why did the monkey fall out of the tree?

A: It was dead.

She told me at lunch and I laughed so hard I nearly choked on my Boca.

I finally updated my blog roll today. I added Michelle (who had quit blogging, but she's BACK!), Leecy (my best friend from elementary school who I stalked, I mean, found, on Myspace) and some others I have been meaning to add forever.

I also got rid of my "What I'm Reading" section because I never update it and it looks like I spend months reading the same book.

Oh...guess who's coming to Little Rock Dec. 1?



Yep, Hannah Montana. With the Jonas Brothers. Merry early Christmas to Julia!

We have a third-grader!