Off we go!

We are D.C. bound! Have a great week, the two of you that read this (wait, one of you is coming with me...).

Inspired by Stuck on you...

I'm inspired today by the Stuck on you blog's story to share a memory of my lowest low while planning my wedding. Rule #1: Any time you make something for your wedding instead of buying it, you will have 10 times the work and 100 times the stress. I would do it again... I loved my invitations. They were goregeous and innovative. At the time no one did anything like our invites. But alas, they were the thorn in my side. From driving twice to San Fransisco for paper, to late nights with a giant cutting board at Office Max to the dreaded printers.

My low moment came when I was using our printer to print the addresses (the vellum envelopes we'd bought wouldn't allow you to use any kind of pen... go figure). We finally found a printer that worked on the vellum, and I set out for an evening of working on the addresses.
Steve: Do you want me to help?
Jenny: No, it's a one person job. But I want you close by in case something goes wrong.
Steve: Can Zeke and Eric play Settlers at your apartment?
Jenny: You bet.

Time passes... Settlers play begins... Printing commences... all running smoothly

Jenny: (Bloodcurdling scream... my mind escapes what triggored it)
Steve: Are you okay?
Jenny: No!
Zeke: Can I pray for you?
Jenny: No! I'm not feeling very spiritual right now!

Silence reigned.

We're all still friends, but Zeke never played another game of Settlers at my house again.

My sister and her husband are stopping off briefly at my parents house in between the end of the PhD and starting the new job, and in the mean time they've been helping my folks out with some home improvement. One of the projects deemed necessary was my old room.
Here's the before:


And the after:








Apparently "Princess Emma" is bummed that it was painted "skin" instead of "pink." But hey, what are you going to do?

How I intend to spend Thursday and Friday

Tomorrow our office is being painted. They did some touch-up work and discovered, "Um, we don't even HAVE that paint color anymore!" So we get to pack up the whole office today, then "work from home" tomorrow and Friday.

So aside from checking some email and the phones now and then, and a few small projects, I plan to:
* Sleep in
* Actually MAKE breakfast
* Go for a walk
* Shower at noon. Scratch that. Take a bath.
* Make the kind of dinner that it takes awhile to make, like a roast or something
* Paint my toenails (while I can still reach my toes)

Feel free to make suggestions...

Vacaciones!

THIS is where I'd like to be right now! So I will go there in a few weeks, just because. I'm in the middle of getting the planning done. I hate choosing hotel rooms. However, I think I've found a way to get us there pretty cheap, but still somewhat nice. I'm so excited to go see the places I went when I was in school, and actually experience FALL!

29 for the first time

Well, folks, here's to the big 29. It feels sort of like the closing of an era. I've been reflecting on what wonderful years my 20's have been. I've had the wonderful opportunity more recently to be able to mentor a couple of young women, which has given me a great opportunity to really reflect on how I've grown as a person. I am about to embark on a journey that will likely humble me, knock off my roughest edges, and make me wonder if I was mature at all before this began, but it is a good feeling to reflect on life and see how God has taught me and stretched me and blessed me.

So since I can't have any alcohol to toast to the last birthday of my 20's, how about a picture toast?



This is the day that my father delivered me in a closet. That's the literal truth... My dad was working at Valley Medical Center in Fresno, and because I was a "bargain baby" and there was no room in the inn, they cleaned out a supply closet for me to be born in. My dad writes an email to me almost every year that talks about how he went home late that night while my mom slept and just sat in the dark and thanked God for me. I swear, it makes me cry every time.



Here I'm probably age three or four. Do I look like my dad or what?? It's that square, Danish smile.



Okay, take a look at those HUGE eyes! My sister says they used to scare her, and called them "cow eyes." I think my head grew later and they started to fit a little better.



This was one of the best days of my whole life until my wedding day. I remember feeling like this day belonged to my whole family. None of my grandparents, aunts or uncles or cousins have graduated from college, so I felt that this was something my family sort of owned together.


This was the only day so far that topped my graduation. To finally walk down the aisle on my father's arm and belong to my best friend for the rest of our lives... to put it in Steve's words, "I was overwhelmed with God's goodness to me."

So here's to almost 3 decades of God's faithfulness!

Who cares?

Just posting a pet-peeve. Why do news organizations ask people what they think about world events? Who really cares what Joe on the street thinks about an evacuation of the Washington Monument? He'll say, "Um, bad." I suppose that most athlete interviews fall into roughly the same category. "We went out there and just played football and had a really good game and then we won." Am I right? Coaches are usually more articulate, so I'm alright with that. Maybe an occasional quarterback won't bore me.

Happy weekend!

Love my In-Laws!

Aren't they just the cutest ever? They are here this week helping Steve and I with the house. I go off to work, and then when I come home, things like baseboards appear and dinner is being prepared... it's fantastic! And although the title seems to imply serious sarcasm in our culture, I actually mean it. I get along well with Steve's parents. The only thing I don't care for as much is that Steve works very hard while his dad is here (which is great), so that I don't see a lot of him (which isn't quite as great).

Tonight we choose the carpet we'll have for the NEXT 15 years. Everyone is voting for darker carpet. I love light carpet, but I know better.

I love my job...

This is what I did at work yesterday...
Notice how I snowed my boss. However, another employee got 175,000, so I shouldn't brag. But she has an annual pass, so it doesn't count!

The quick explanation is... we have 3 October birthdays, someone gave us money to go to lunch, so we all went to lunch at Downtown Disney, then ditched the two guys (who don't like Disneyland anyway) and we "girls" all went to the park. We have a student that works for Disney who signed us in.

I sooo love my job.

Stay Tuned...

Every time I go home to my parents' house I come back nostalgic. I have been trying to get through a couple of boxes worth of old letters and fun things from my childhood, so that my poor mother can have my closet back. I haven't lived there in 11 years, I ought to move out, don't you think? I found notes written back and forth with my cousin Kevin in church on the back of the attendance registry paper. I found old balloon slips (in my high school, you could buy a balloon for a dollar and have it delivered to someone in their class), old letters I wrote but never sent. I found a letter from my cousin in Denmark who had sent me a pendant taped to the letter. I never took it off, so it's been in there for 15 years! I pulled it out and wore it to church on Sunday. And look at THIS beauty below: (See # 8. Oh, and # 10 is my sister, and #12 is my best friend from high school... we met when we were 6 years old and sat together at this recital.)

Baby Bookey

Well, tomorrow is the day! (Shh... don't tell my mother-in-law... we're going to surprise her.) We go in tomorrow about 11:45 for the hour-long ultrasound to find out who this little one is going to be. I'm NOT looking forward to the fact that they make you drink a bunch of water and then prohibit you from "voiding." I think you can figure out what that means. I mean, isn't that cruel to not let a pregnant woman, um, void? But regardless, I am looking forward to this first little bit of learning who this little person will be.

Sooo... any bets? My father is CONVINCED that it's a boy. He was right about my sister, me, and my two nieces, so he's 4 for 5. My brother-in-law Jamie is also in the boy camp. My neighbor across the street and my cousin Lisa are SURE it's a girl. So I gotta know... who thinks it will be what? I might have to think of a reward or something for whoever is right. I mean, you've got a 50-50 chance. And I want to know WHY you think it's one or the other, even if the why is just "Because."

And I think we will tell people what the gender is, but not until after we talk to our parents. =)

The storms may come, the storms may go

For those of you who don't live in Southern California, we had some serious storming tonight. Not so much wind, but the kind of lightning I wish I could photograph and sort of rolling thunder. The Biola kids all came out when it started raining big fat drops, and then a huge cheer went up when the sky lit up with the brightest lightning yet. Some of them must have been watching Monday Night Football, too because another cheer went up when Brunell launched that amazing pass down to Santana Moss for the tie. (They got the extra point to break it.) Game is still going with a minute and a half left with Redskin possession at the Dallas 43. I have high hopes for a Redskins victory.

More Home Improvement

Here's the "live" version of the desk. I had an old, brown chair with this faded pink, sort of corduroy seat which I painted black and then covered with that toile fabric. I'm actually not going to keep the toile, but want to get a red stripey fabric that they have at IKEA. But for all practical purposes of the weekend, Walmart was a lot closer than IKEA is, hence the toile.



And here is the window that Steve put in this weekend. Yay!! Still a bit of work left to do, but we're so happy with it! I'm keeping a lot of before and after pictures of our house so years from now we can show potential buyers all the work we've done.

A first

Tuesday, for the first time EVER, I actually put a call in to my doctor's office. I'm the child of a doctor, so you just ask Dad. I had never actually called my doctor with a question before in my life. Well, with this pregnancy thing has come heartburn. I used to think that heartburn came under the category of, "Who's dumb idea was it to have movie popcorn for dinner on Friday night?" But then I gained 10 pounds in 2 months and my organs all relocated and I got to learn what REAL heartburn is. I'm not kidding, we're talking swallowing razor blades. So I call Dad, dad says, you can take Pepcid AC, but call your doctor and make sure it's okay with her first. What? Call my doctor? What do you do, just, like CALL them? You don't need an appointment? I wish I could impress on folks how WEIRD this is. Of course, not being from my family, you also won't understand why I have a hard time actually purchasing lemons, oranges and nectarines (or any stone fruit for that matter). You just never DO that at my dad's house when there are perfectly good trees on the farm just 9 miles away with FREE fruit! So I suppose I'm "growing" here.

Fun with furniture

This is the desk Steve and I just got from Ashley furniture. I was happy with the price, but I can't say that we got a steal. It's not what I would call "quality craftsmanship." However, it's a nice looking desk, and goes well with our black and red decor in the "library/conservatory." =) Now, if we had bought the green piano... I'm glad to get a desk, too, as we were sort of using multiple stations to process our paper stuff, and now we can start clearing some things out of the baby's room.

Speaking of the baby's room... here are a few ideas I have for a boy's room:






And for a girl's room...

Weird Dream

I was inspired by "the Wonderwoman Files" (for those of you don't know, my blogging inspiration and particular friend) to share my weird dream from Sunday night. I dreamt I was the executive assistant to the outgoing mayor of New York City, who happened to be Nicholas Cage. He and I apparently got along great, as I discovered when I was handing him his whisky on the rocks. However, the incoming mayor was much more serious, and there was suspected foul play with the new mayor. That's really it, but I thought it was a pretty funny dream.

Democracy

I don't know enough about John Roberts to give him my support to the death, but I will say that I've been impressed with his answers so far. I love his baseball analagy: "Judges call balls and strikes, they're not there to throw pitches." I also like how he addresses the senators. He shows a lot of respect to the branch of government which brings the will of the people to law. He seems to have a very sober understanding of the role of a judge as well. I also think it's pretty comical that the senators' questions are longer than Judge Roberts' answers. The senators get all riled up, too, and Judge Roberts answers in a really calm, collected way. It really bothers me that everyone wants to bring up Roe v. Wade, because all they want is for Roberts to agree with their position. This isn't really the forum to discuss the merits and demerits of pro-choice vs. pro-life. Anyhow, it's a really interesting process, much as I generally HATE political confrontation.

Saturday with a credit card...

I saved my pennies and went to Old Navy. Tons of stuff on sale, things that finally fit me, since I am done with my last pair of normal pants as of this last week. I love the feeling of saving my money so that I can go try a bunch of stuff on and then actually buy more than one thing. Thank goodness for Old Navy. Seems like everywhere else is either super expensive or just ugly. I mean, when did designers decide that great-grandmas and pregnant ladies should wear the same clothes?


In other shopping news...

I think I may have finally found a color scheme for my living room. I gotta say I LOVE Cost Plus!

Steve should never go away again and leave me with money...

Out of L.A.

My husband leaves early tomorrow morning to get back into nature and go backpacking. Thankfully, his "host" is a former Eagle Scout, so my mind is much more at ease. I made sure he had a CD with him in his bag to attract emergency attention if necessary. Say I'm an overprotective wife, but it's just plain common sense! Oh, and would-be burglers... I have a brother, and I'm not afraid to use him!

In other news, I enjoyed the first NFL game of the season. Ah, the drama. I wish I knew more about the game because I love to watch it. I think because the action is isolated but still active, the pace of the game feels good to me. Some hilights were the Raiders breaking the Pats' 31 game hold against kickoff drives. I think it was within only about 3-4 min. Laughing at Madden's infatuation with Randy Moss, and Moss disappointing us all. I suppose I was going for the Pats, but Brady doesn't do much for me. He's a cutie and all that, but he just doesn't strike me as exactly bright. I'm a Manning kind of girl. Or for that matter, really, still a Montana girl.