Atlanta Trip! Part One :-)

I think I may have just broken a personal record with my lapse in blogging! It’s been upwards of 40 days or something like that. Well, it’s not for lack of things to say. :-) Hopefully, over the next few days, I will be able to catch up! I know…it’s so exciting!

Let’s start with our vacation! We took Ryley’s Spring Break to fly to Atlanta, Georgia, to see Ryan’s family.

Ryley was pretty stoked that her daddy allowed her to bring BOTH American Girl dolls (Emily and Elisabeth) as well as Sarah, Helena, and Lily. Yes, there were five babies/puppy to keep track of. Ryan’s thoughts? She’s asking if she can bring her babies so they’re not left home alone? Whatever it takes to keep her little as long as possible. :-)

In the Atlanta airport, we met up with Ryan’s sister Gwen from New York, and after renting our car,  we drove to Ryan’s other sister Rhonda’s house, an hour north of the airport, and arrived a little after midnight.

Ryan’s birthday was the next day, and Rhonda had a cookie cake awaiting him in the morning:

No, he’s not really 24. Haha. Well, 24 plus a decade. :-)

Because I am always one to squeeze activity and adventure into every possible second AND because I am always over-committing us, we headed out that morning for a little road trip to Columbia, South Carolina. You might say it was a road-trip within a trip. ;-)

Seeing Rhonda’s neighborhood and surrounding countryside in daylight for the first time, we were awed by how beautiful rural Georgia is!

We had to keep reminding ourselves that in a month or two there will be chiggers and sweltering heat.

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We wound our way through a bunch of po-dunk Georgia towns and had lunch in Gainesville, Georgia. Then on to South Carolina!

Though we stay in pretty good touch, we hadn’t seen my cousin Shawn and her husband Patrick in almost eight years, and we had never met their adorable kids Carter and Abby.

Getting to know each other:

Aren’t Abby’s curls just luscious???

See the rockers on the front porch? I would say 90 percent of houses we saw in South Carolina and Georgia have rocking chairs on their front porch! So funny!

Shawn and Patrick took us for a little tour of Columbia (very quaint and southern!) and then to dinner at this restaurant that used to be a train station. Very cool! And delicious!

It was so good to see them and to see their lives in person! We follow each others’ blogs, but it’s just not the same! :-)

It was sad to leave the next day… Shawn and Abby helped carry all of Ryley’s offspring to the car.

Thank you, Shawn and Patrick, for being such gracious hosts! We are so glad we were able to see you!!!!

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We left Columbia and headed for our next stop…Augusta, Georgia! I have followed Melanie’s blog since 2006, and vice versa. So when we realized we would be passing through Augusta on our way back from Shawn’s, we made plans to hook up! We have talked about how fun it would be to meet in person for several years now.

Before we arrived at their house, Ryan wanted to drive by the Augusta National Golf Club, where the Masters would be held just a week later! We couldn’t see much (there were signs of warning and security), but there was a lot of media buzzing around.

Very interesting!

We arrived at Melanie and Wayne’s house. It was a little surreal to pull up in front and see two girls whom I have watched grow up through their mom’s pictures and stories come bounding out of the house in real life!  Ryley loved meeting Abby and Emma. I’m not sure what all they did upstairs, but Ryley did say Abby has a really cool room, and they want to be penpals! We’ve long said that they two of them, specifically, are very similar. :-)

We went to lunch and had a great time talking in person! So cool!

Thank you, Melanie and family, for taking time to have lunch with us! It was so much fun!!!

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Our goal was to make it back to Rhonda’s house in time for dinner, but I had one more stop I wanted to make. When I was exactly Ryley’s age, my family moved to Atlanta for about five months. I wanted to show Ryley the apartment where I used to live in the Atlanta suburb of Roswell:

Funny how some things don’t change:

My brother and me, summer 1986:

Same door?

It’s definitely a little more, ahem, secured these days. I believe we were the first tenants in our unit on the second floor.

Time marches on!

To be continued…..

Confessions of an Unhealthy Eater

Before we had Ryley, Ryan and I were terrible at eating. We skipped breakfast and sometimes lunch, so by dinner time, we’d be so starved that we’d pig out on fast food.

Honestly, when I got pregnant, my biggest fear about being a mom was whether or not I could be trusted and faithful enough to make the time to feed my baby at regular intervals.  We’ve done ok, I think. I’ve always been pretty vigilant about making sure Ryley eats three meals, but all along we’ve struggled with making her breakfast a nutritious one. It’s so much easier when you’re in a rush (which we always are) to throw some pop tarts (which I now consider to be the equivalent of cardboard) in a toaster, slap them on a paper plate, and off we go. Years of this. Seriously.

No wonder she’s starving and moody when I pick her up from school! If she’s famished all through the morning, then her lunch is not going to be enough. So she’ll continue to be hungry in the afternoon, and by the time I pick her up, her blood sugar is so low that she’s crabby as all get out. I’m just beginning to make the connection (yes, I’m a little slow, apparently) between moodiness/behavior and having a good breakfast. I have to stop thinking that, well, having a light breakfast (or no breakfast) has never bothered me, and what’s good enough for me is good enough for her.

As I’m quickly learning, it was good enough for me because my body had slowly become numb to my choices. It was learning to function out of habit, in some kind of deprivation mode -- not from nutrition. And it was declining more than I realized or understood.

So these days, poor Ryley sits at the kitchen table at 7:15 with a bowl of oatmeal and a side of yogurt, while I run back and forth to the fridge, piling apple slices and grapes in front of her, then pouring a glass of milk and handing her a stick of cheese. I’d rather her be late to school than go on an empty tummy. She likes it too, and she says she’s noticed a difference as to when her tummy starts growling in the mornings.

Also, I like it because her behavior is better, and she’s the picture of CHEERFULNESS when I pick her up. :-) Yay!

On another note, since September, I have been trying to drink 150 ounces of water a day. That’s my tall Starbucks water bottle x 6. I figure that if  I drink four of them at work and then two of them at home, I space out my water intake pretty well throughout the day. Some days I’m successful, and other days I’m not.  But on the days I don’t do as well, especially on the weekends, I literally feel like my body starts shutting down. I feel anxious and moody and thirsty. My insides ache. Weird, I know. It’s almost as if I can feel my organs crying out for water!  As soon as I drink it, the aching subsides, and it’s like my body wakes up and comes to life. I love it.

One of these days I will get around to compiling all the great recipes I’m collecting into a binder of some sort. There are so many good things, like parmesan green beans (thanks, Pinterest!) and baked kale chips (thanks, Melanie!). How wonderful would it be to be organized?

I feel like I am becoming like the health nuts I made fun of for all those years. I’d never bought kale before last week. No worries, though, really. I would never actually choose carob chips over chocolate. I’m still fat, and I will always be a fat girl at heart. ;-)

In closing, I wanted to share another fave recipe. We have a place called Yolanda’s Tacos near my work, and my co-worker Leahh and I eat their delicious, cheap tacos two or three times a week. I know. But you would too. In fact, I told my friend Jenny about Yolanda’s, and she tried it and fell in love with it too. It really is the shredded, chipotle-marinated chicken that I crave the most. So Jenny gave me this recipe so we could recreate the goodness at home:

Shredded Tinga Tacos

2-3 chicken breasts

1 jar of chipotle salsa

2-3 tsp minced garlic

1 can of green chiles

Place the chicken breasts in the crock pot. Sprinkle minced garlic over them. Pour salsa over the chicken to cover them. Put the green chiles in on top. Cook all day on low or half a day on high. When done, shred it up!

So you must know, I started with five frozen chicken breasts, so I wasn’t sure how it would turn out. But when we got home, after nine hours of cooking on low, I could smell it outside our house. I think it may have been a little soupy because we started frozen, but it was still perfect. The chicken fell apart when we touched it, so shredding was no problem at all.

We served it in corn tortillas with sour cream, cheddar cheese, sliced avocado, and cilantro. Yum!!!  And we had tons of leftovers for the rest of the week!

Enjoy!

Glimpses of Spring

This morning was perfect…drizzly and overcast and wet -- but not snowy -- which is the first sign that we are crossing the bridge from winter into spring. Almost overnight, the grass in our front lawn (or what’s left of it!) became bright green in spots. We still have a ways to go; March is Denver’s snowiest month, and we are forecasted to get a little bit of snow tonight. So we built a fire and had soup for dinner and are hunkering down in the warmth of our family room for one of the last times this season.

We had the most amazing weekend. We had NO PLANS or commitments for once. None. And I had forgotten how wonderful that could be.  I can’t put into words how genuinely peaceful and restful it was. Everything we did, besides church, was extremely spur-of-the-moment. I took two (yes!) – two – naps!  Never underestimate the value of a restful weekend. I’m actually a little concerned because they can only get worse from here. This one will be hard to top. ;-)

So we woke up early on Saturday and decided to go to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, as well as the planetarium. The museum is Ryan and Ryley’s favorite thing to do together, but she had not been to the planetarium before, and that has been on my list of long-term activities to do as a family. What a hit! Though, I remember it being different and better when I was little. It may have been a different one.

Ryan and Ryley found our house on the interactive GoogleEarth.

Ryley has taken a real interest in space recently. The other night she called upstairs to us: “Oh, guys, you have to see this! I’m watching ‘This Week at NASA’ on TV!” I think working at NASA is her current profession of choice. It changes every two minutes, but it’s almost always science-related. :-)

We also spent some time rearranging Ryley’s room. How can you resist it when your daughter comes to you with a drawing of how she wants it rearranged??

Before:

After:

All we really did was move the bed and take a bunch of stuff down from her walls; unfortunately, the new layout leaves little room to play. But she likes it! I like that she is starting to take some pride in her room. She’s a bit of a packrat, and there is more work that needs to be done in there, but this is a start. :-)

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The other day Ryley was asking me about marriage. “Do you think that if I don’t find a husband when I grow up that I could go on Christiansingles.com?”

I think I laughed out loud.

“Where did you even hear about that??”

“On TV.”

Thus began a several-day-long discussion about not worrying about finding the right guy; first of all, you’re way too young to worry about it. But focus on Jesus and on being who He made you to be, and everything else will work out, etc., etc. Don’t focus on outer beauty; focus on your inner beauty.

You know, all that good mother-daughter talk. :-)

And suddenly she was interested in my stories from high school…how I used to pray that my first date would be my husband, and how when Ryan asked me out in 10th grade, I didn’t know him very well at all, but I said yes anyway. After the date, which Ryan and I both considered a disaster, I told God, “Never mind about my first date being my husband.” But He didn’t forget. And over the next two years, Ryan and I developed the deepest, most meaningful friendship that was beyond what we could even understand. And it just grew from there.

I told her how a certain boy (we’ll call him J) had a crush on me, and how the guys in our class sent him a carnation on Valentine’s Day with a note supposedly from me, saying how much I wanted to be his girlfriend. J sent me a carnation and note in response saying that he too wanted to be together. When I found out, I was upset that the guys could be so mean! After school, I was finishing up a piano lesson when Ryan came in (good friend that he is) and told me that J was waiting in the school lobby for me to have “the talk.”  I had to go out and tell J that the guys had played a mean trick on us. The look of disappointment in his eyes was awful.

Ryley was horrified!  She felt soooo bad for him. “Did he ever get married?” she asked. Because to her, at this moment in her life, being married is the ultimate happiness. :-)

“Yes, he’s happily married with two kids,” I answered.

“Oh, good!”

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Here are some pictures of Ryley’s Odyssey of the Mind presentation at school. The entire project is student-driven -- from the inception of the idea, to the writing of the script, to the set creation, to the presentation itself. They’re proud of it, and Ryley’s team’s presentation was the best of the eight that we saw. But just think pure chaos.

Thanks to my Uncle Paul for capturing the photos!

Ryley and her friend Harry are waiting for their group’s turn.

Here’s their team right before their performance. Ryley is the narrator, which is why she insisted on dressing up. I won’t try to explain the play to you because, honestly, it makes little sense. :-) But it looks to me like the control panel of the rocket ship (to the right) had some adult assistance (gasp!).

Getting the set ready:

Fun, fun.

After we spend a Saturday in rural Longmont for the all-day regional competition next week, I am looking forward to reserving more weekends for doing absolutely nothing at all.

The end is in sight. :-)

Some Ryley Stories (Just for Fun)

Ryley and Ryan are watching Star Wars Episode II tonight. Ryley’s questions are incessant, but Ryan’s patience is endless. They’re actually pretty adorable, sitting there  together on the couch, while Juliet snuggles in close so Ryley will rub her tummy.

“How do you get the force?” she asks.

“You just have it. You’re born with it,” he answers.

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These stories are actually pretty inconsequential, but in light of the fact that this is our family journal, I am recording them because they’re things I don’t want to forget. :-)

Last week, in the car, Ryley was trying to read something aloud to me. After a few minutes, I felt my mind wandering. But by this point, I had missed so much of the story that I realized it was too late.

“Mom, are you bored listening to this?” she asked, interrupting her story.

I felt bad. I was afraid she had picked up on my frustration.

“Well, not bored exactly, but can I be completely honest? I have never been good at listening to people read aloud. My mind wanders.”

Ryley sucked in her breath in excitement. “Me too!! I’m the same way! So you don’t mind if I stop reading aloud?”

“No. Just read to yourself, if you want.”

“Oh, good! ’Cause I hate reading aloud! I read so much faster on my own! But it is a good story, and I would like you to read it sometime.”

And suddenly there’s an explanation for why, when I tried reading Little Women aloud and Little House and even Anne of Green Gables, I lost interest after a few chapters and Ryley started sneaking the book behind my back to read on her own. :-) Reading aloud doesn’t work too well for us, and we’re agreed on that, to both of our relief.

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On Ryan’s first day at his new restaurant, we were getting ready for work and school in the morning, and Ryan admitted to Ryley that he was feeling a little nervous.

“Why are you nervous?” she wondered.

“Well, there are a lot of reasons. I’m going to meet all my employees today, for one.”

“But, Daddy, don’t you think your new employees are nervous to meet you, too, since you’re their new boss?”

Ryan laughed. The thought actually made him feel better.

“I hadn’t thought of that,” he answered. “I suppose they probably are.”

:-)

On Weirdness and Grace

It’s been a very, very weird few days for our family.

On Thursday, when I went to pick Ryley up from her after-school Odyssey of the Mind club, I was met in the pick-up line by a grinning girl carrying a cardboard house almost bigger than she is!

“I get to paint this by Monday!”

Upon further investigation I learned that she had volunteered herself to paint it, and she had also volunteered our decorative sofa pillows (which I found out by discovering a pile of sofa pillows by the front door, ready to go). As annoyed as we were at the entire project, I’m glad she feels enough support from us to feel the freedom to volunteer herself for things. :-)

So Saturday morning, she painted.

One of the stipulations of the project is that the students are to receive absolutely no parental help in any form. That is very, very difficult. But she did it.

The chimney is actually being re-done by another student because it was discovered that I had assisted with the hot glue gun, which I guess is considered to be too much parental help.

Also, when we delivered the house to the school, it was caught in a gust of wind and blew into three pieces across the parking lot. But all was recovered.

Her group is showing their skit on Thursday evening at the school; then they compete on March 17.

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On Sunday, after church, I was in charge of running one of Ryley’s Girl Scout troop’s cookie sales at a grocery store.

This picture cracks me up because everyone looks fairly happy still. But we had one little girl who couldn’t handle standing, or didn’t feel good, or felt like another Scout was stealing the show, or I don’t know what. I never was very clear on what triggered it. But about 30 minutes in, a massive fit took place, which lasted for the next hour and a half. I have never felt so horrified and miserable and embarrassed in my entire life.

It was the cookie booth from hell.

As if it’s not bad enough to have to stand there for 3.5 hours feeling the rejection, right?

We had people passing our booth and rolling their eyes and doing double-takes at the attitude being displayed. Thank goodness Ryan was there, and he finally took her outside to wait for her family.

Anyway, the entire thing was a good learning experience for me, I suppose. It was mentally draining, however, and it’s taken a few days for me to get over my anger.

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I’ve been dealing with anger a lot recently…anger with teachers when I feel they’re being unfair or merciless…anger with other parents who try to be hotshots…anger with Ryley’s friends or a certain little Girl Scout…anger with snotty customers at work….  What happens most often is that I get angry with people who are legalistic…who aren’t extending the grace and mercy we’ve experienced in Christ. But what’s interesting is that they’re not Christians, so why am I expecting them to live in grace that they know nothing about? Isn’t that what I should be showing them, instead of getting so angry with them? Funny how that works.

Then God reminded me that I should be praying for those who persecute us.

I have not been good about that at all, and now I’m trying to remember to be better about it. Instead of getting angry, I need to put it in perspective and realize that the way they handled the situation is due to a lack of Christ in their lives. They, too, need the light and life of Jesus, and my non-angry reaction can play a part in that.

Ughhhh. Right? :-)

I am so tired of pointless rules and rigmarole. Rules for the sake of rules. Obsession with the letter of the law, rather than the spirit of the law. Rules make me angry!!! :-) I often think back to my college days, and I am a different person than the submissive student who bought into all the legalism. I remember one time, as a 22-year-old graduate starting my new job in the PR department, being told that it was not acceptable for me to go without pantyhose under my skirts. This was a school that already required women to wear skirts, and on 110-degree days with 100% humidity and my overweight thighs rubbing together, pantyhose was the last thing I wanted to wear! If someone told me that today, I would have a completely different reaction.

He whom Christ has set free is free indeed. I just keep thinking about that…

I have specifically been trying to extend grace to Ryley, within reason. She has had a great year extra-curricularly, but her classroom experience has been tough. Sometimes, when she gets home, she just needs my love.

I once heard it said that we need to constantly be building our children up…. that the world will take so much out of our kids, that we can’t build them up enough. I didn’t agree with that statement at first because I thought it was an excuse not to discipline. But in the last few months, I’ve come to believe that it’s partially true.

Ryley had an exceptionally bad day at school a couple of weeks ago, and her teacher had her call me to tell me about all that she had done wrong. Well, while the things she did were not right, I also didn’t feel like the world was coming to an end because of them. She was so embarrassed at having to call me, and I was tough with her on the phone. When school was over and I was picking her up, she came running toward the van, and when she got inside, she just melted into tears in fear of what I was going to do. She just wailed and wailed that it was such a bad day!!! I let her get it out for a minute, then I handed her a cookie.

“Oh, Mommy! This is the best thing that’s happened to me all day!”

I just felt that in that particular moment, Ryley needed me on her side.

Like that song says, “I knew you were on my side, even when I wrong.”

I can’t do that every day; I don’t want her to blow off her teachers’ discipline or think that she can get away with things. But I’m learning to be sensitive to what she needs in that moment. I’m learning to extend grace.

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Continuing back to the weirdness, I reported to Court today for the accident I was in in January. Ryan went with me, though he wasn’t allowed in the actual courtroom. It turned out to be an interesting experience overall, and it served to prove how crooked our justice system really is. In order to plead “not guilty,” which I had always intended, I would have had to schedule an actual trial-by-jury for a later date and either hire an attorney or represent myself. But if I accepted their bargain and pled guilty, I would maintain my clean driving record but have to pay a fine. I chose the latter because I just didn’t want to deal with it anymore. It’s a hefty fine too. Ughhh. It was hard because I had to make the decision without consulting Ryan.  Is it wrong that I played along with their system, even though I feel that I’m innocent? It just seems over-the-top for a traffic accident caused by weather.

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Ryan is working late tonight; Tuesdays are kind of my one night to myself anymore. I think I’ll turn on Downton Abbey and pray that the wind doesn’t blow the house down around us. :-)

Good night!

“And There Was Revelry in the Camp”

Ten points to whoever can name that movie! I found that line oddly fitting since today is Mardi Gras/Fat Tuesday, and the theme of this post is “my salute to indulgences,” or rather “the things I’m into right now.” :-)

1. The movie “500 Days of Summer” – My friend Taryn told me about this movie more than a year ago, and it’s been on my list ever since. We don’t find a lot of time to watch movies anymore; it has to really be a priority for us to seek it out (with the death of Blockbuster) and dedicate two consecutives hours of our attention to watching it. But this one… We finally made the time, and I loved it. Ryan really enjoyed it too. It was so unique and well-written and fun, and we promptly downloaded the soundtrack the very next day.

2. Speaking of music, Ryan and I both have a weakness for folk music. I know; I know. Not cool, per se. :-) For me, it started in college with my obsession with Jewel. Then she went more country, and I stopped buying her albums. Nowadays, it’s evolved into a love for Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros’ song Home, which I could listen to all day. It’s definitely a hippie song. I like the idea of a family band traveling the country in a van. I saw that The Magnetic Zeros were coming to perform in Denver soon, and I asked Ryan if he wanted to get tickets. “No,” he responded. “We’d get a ‘contact high’ just being there.” True enough. :-)  

3. Hot green tea. I’m the one that’s always sipped my white mocha while thinking the people who ordered hot tea were uppity health snobs. But I’m slowly being converted. I like Tazo’s Zen tea the best…enough that I bought my very own box and took some tea bags to work. Those will come in especially handy now that I am giving up coffee for Lent. It seems that I always make the decision to give up coffee right after I have stocked up on coffee and creamer at both work and home. Oh, well. It’ll keep, I suppose.

4. Pinterest. Oh my goodness. I always said I didn’t have time in my life for Pinterest. Then someone (Christie, I think) said that I needed to make time. It’s better to sit and be inspired by ideas that spur creativity rather than sit and stalk others’ lives on Facebook. :-) How is Pinterest changing my life? Oh, if I could only count the ways! There’s nothing like Pinterest to make me feel a kinship with other women who may have previously intimidated me. When I see that they, too, are in search of good systems for organizing their wrapping paper, I somehow feel that the playing field is leveled a bit. We’re all in this thing together, and nobody has it figured out quite yet. And if you do have it all figured out, well, you’re sharing it with others, and that’s just a nice thing to do. :-)

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Speaking of intimidating women and Lent, Ryan has challenged me to give up reading a specific blog for 40 days. Every time I read it, I have nothing positive to say about it. I become cynical and icky in my heart, yet I can’t stop reading! That’s hard for me to admit, but this is something I just need to do. I honestly think that the writer has pure intentions and speaks wisdom to a lot of people. But my personal interpretations of it stink and incite anger, bitterness, hatred, and (dare I say it?) jealousy in my heart. It’s certainly not pleasing to Christ. So if my eye causes me to sin, I’m supposed to “cut it out,” right? Thank you, Ryan, for being so candid with me about what my soul really needs.

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Here are some pictures of the last few days:

For Valentine’s Day, my mom and dad gave Ryley money to get a manicure and pedicure! We found this adorable little girls’ beauty salon called Sweet and Sassy, and I made her appointment for last Saturday morning. It was so fun! And now, guess what kind of birthday party Ryley is planning? :-)

Thank you, Mammaw and Pappaw!!

Then, on Sunday, we took Ryley and her BFF to the Denver Dog Show. That black blur? It’s a racing dog.

I didn’t know dogs of this size actually existed outside of Sesame Street:

We watched the Cocker Spaniels and realized just how poorly behaved our Juliet really is:

Definitely an educational experience in many ways!!

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We picked up some overalls for $3 at the thrift store recently, and Ryley decided to debut them at my work on Presidents' Day:

She could wear them every day for the rest of her life, and I would not complain.  :-)

Thank you, friends, for reading my random thoughts. It truly means the world to me.

Nighty night!