Warning: The entire first half of this story will feel like one long digression. Stay with me.
After a particularly awful Friday that came at the end of a week when the world seemed to be looking for more and more ways to beat me up, I came home today knowing that at some point in the evening, I was going to cry. Sometimes you have days when it's not so much a matter of if you're going to cry as when you're going to cry. In my job, I sometimes have to write about things that are just unbelievably sad. When I was at my first job, I would frequently break down crying at work over these stories, prompting my editor, a very kind man who, like many men, is totally freaked out by crying women, to say to me "Rice, there is no crying in JOURNALISM!" in imitation of Tom Hanks in A League of Their Own saying "Are you crying? Are you CRYING? There's no crying in baseball!" These days, I am able to keep myself from crying over sad stories most of the time while I am physically in my office. I'm not sure if I'm growing as a professional or if I'm just that hardened after three years of sad stories. But the thing that keeps me from despairing over my jaded soul is that I do still cry. I think if I ever reach the point when I am incapable of feeling pain for someone in pain I will know I have been doing this too long.
So on the Friday evening in question, I came home knowing that a crying jag was going to be a part of the evening. I told Dan that his options were to stay home and watch me cry or go out and do something less depressing. To be truthful, I was not in a frame of mind to be good company. Dan, knowing me like he does and understanding that sometimes the best thing he can do for me is just give me some space and some time, left the house. So it was that I spent a Friday evening with Steel Magnolias, a movie I never watch unless I am in the mood to bawl like a baby. And let me tell you, that is what I did. I am not ashamed to say that by the time Julia Roberts was lying in a coma with Sally Fields by her side, I was on my couch, with one hand in a bag of chocolate and another hand clutching wads of Kleenex, wearing a T-shirt that was drenched from the collar to half-way down the chest with tears. And these were not "Oh, isn't that sad," tears. These were huge, sobbing,snot-dripping-from-your-nose kinds of tears. I am not an attractive movie closeup kind of cryer. When I really get going, my face swells up and gets red and I look just exactly like a tomato for a good twelve hours. But I just didn't care. By the time Julia Roberts was dead and Sally Fields was standing by her grave screaming at her friends, I was just pouring tears. But then, that great Steel Magnolias moment happened, when Sally Fields screams "I just want to hit something! I want to hit someone until they feel as bad as I do!"
And Olympia Dukakis grabs Shirley McLaine and shoves her in front and says "Here! Hit Ouiser! Take a swing, M'lynn! Half the town would give their eye teeth to take a swing at Ouiser!" And everyone laughs, except Shirley McLaine, who looks at Olympia Dukakis and says "You are a pig from hell." And then I laughed and laughed and laughed. And I felt so much better.
So tonight, I thank the Lord for Steel Magnolias. Because sometimes, you just need to cry. But sometimes you need to laugh, too.
What movie can you always count on to make you cry or laugh?

Start rant:
Maybe I will pull a George Costanza and get a little sleeping nook built under my desk, with an alarm clock and everything. Because between this 45 minute one way commute lifestyle and the news I heard on NPR this morning, that apparently gasoline costs are going to go up again, it is going to cost me more money that I actually make to get to work every day. In fact, I will need the income of a small country to fill up my car, Molly the Malibu. (Yes, my car has a name, doesn't yours?) The only answer I can think of is that I will just start sleeping at the office during the week. That won�t cause any problems at all for the good old marriage, right?
End rant.

I think I probably live in one of the only major cities in the country where on any given day, it�s not that unusual to see a few hot air balloons floating around in the sky early in the morning while you drive to work. But although I see balloons all the time, I�m still slack-jawed at the sight of the sky filled with tens and hundreds of hot air balloons. It�s a very surreal feeling, and even though I know it�s just the International Hot Air Balloon Fiesta that Albuquerque hosts every fall, for a minute or two it feels like maybe it�s some kind of very colorful invasion. This year, Dan�s parents are coming out to visit while it�s going on. Dan�s dad is an ex-fighter pilot, so it�s hard to impress him when it comes to flying equipment, but I think anyone would be impressed with the sight of that many balloons. They start launching them every day at sunrise (yes, I will be getting my lazy self out of bed at 4:30 to get on a bus and ride to attend this glorious event.) and there are lots of special shapes and cartoon character balloons, so it�s a lot of fun. Also, you can get every kind of deep-fried food known to man there, including the infamous Fried Snickers and Fried Twinkie. As a disclaimer, I have never actually eaten either one, because I am afraid my arteries would instantly slam shut in response to that much grease, but people eat them by the truckload at the fiesta. We are all about our health food out here. So in the next couple of weeks, if I manage not to drive off the road looking at all the pretty balloons, I�ll try to take some good balloon pictures and post them here. In the meantime, here�s a picture taken of Dan and I at last year�s fiesta. The shapes in the background are the balloons getting blown up before they launch.

Dan is forever being entertained by the weird things I tell him about from my adventures as an active sleeper when we wake up in the morning. As my old college roomate, Robin, can attest, I do a lot of talking, gesturing, sitting up, and occasionally, walking around when I am asleep. But I never get to see that stuff, because I�m unconscious, and dreaming. I have always been a pretty vivid dreamer, but lately my dreams have gotten just plain weird. It�s worse when I am stressed out, and, lately, the stress is mounting by the second, so the dreams are getting more interesting. So here, for your entertainment, are the two latest dreams my anxiety-riddled mind has conjured up:
Dream One: I am at a graduation for Belhaven College, my alma mater. I�m not graduating, so apparently I�m there to see someone else graduate, but tons of people from my graduating class are there, too, including people I haven�t seen since the day we graduated. For some reason, we�re all wearing graduation robes, and my hair is really, really messy. And we�re all talking and they�re telling me things that have happened in their lives since 2001 that actually sound kind of plausible. (It�s weird to me that my brain takes the trouble to make up realistic-sounding things for people I haven�t seen in three years to be doing with their lives. Meanwhile, I can�t ever find my keys.) We�re all sitting on these risers that are almost completely vertical, straight up into the ceiling, and you have to lean back so you don�t fall off the front. I�m talking to one of the �01 grads, and then I lean forward too much and I fall and wake up. End of dream.
Dream Two: For some reason, my wedding rings start disentegrating. The platinum is actually falling apart into little flakes, and the diamond is crumbling, and I�m trying to gather up the pieces so I can take them to the jeweler and he can melt them all back together. (How would he do this? I have no idea. But I know what the guy who sat behind me in Biology at Belhaven is doing!) For some reason, in my dream, I am laughing about this, but I�m still really freaked out. When I wake up, I am genuinely surprised to see my rings, intact, on my finger. I am so relieved that I wake Dan up to tell him about it. He is also vastly relieved to learn, at 4:30 a.m., that my rings have not dissapeared into thin air.
If dreams really are the brain�s way of sorting through the puzzles of your life, I have big issues.

I had just drifted off to sleep last night when I woke up to see Dan standing in the light from the streetlight outside out window, looking through the blinds and laughing. I thought this was just another bizzarre dream until I heard the noise. The incredible noise. It was like hundreds of people were throwing rocks at all of our windows. It was hail. Really really big pieces of hail, and it was coming down like you would just not believe.
So Dan and I stood around in our pajamas looking out through the blinds until I had a terrible thought. My plant, the only plant I have ever managed to keep alive for more than ten minutes, the plant my old editor gave me when I lived in Clovis, the plant that has been with me longer than Dan has, was sitting on the porch. In the hail!! So I run out there, in the hail, which is basically flying in horizontally at 100 miles and hour, crunching around in my bare feet (Word to the wise: If you ever need to run around in the hail to save your houseplant, you should pause a moment to put your slippers on, because you will probably also want to walk somewhere the next
day.) and scoop up my plant, which is all broken and naked and leafless and extremely dejected looking. I took it inside and scooped all the ice out of its pot and cleaned off all the killed leaves and talked soothingly to it and gave it some warm water and put it on top of my dryer to warm up, but I�m afraid it�s totally going to die. And if it doesn�t I may still be screwed because my husband might have to leave me after seeing me talking to a plant at midnight in my pajamas. Anyway, here is a picture of my sad little plant, proof positive that I am not fit to have children, since I might leave them out in the hail.

Tomorrow, I am going to go to the New Mexico Motor Vehicles Department to make my SIXTH and, I might add, final, attempt to register Molly the Malibu car in the state of New Mexico. Yes, that's right. I have lived here for going on three years and I have never registered my car here. This is due to many things, among them, my own laziness. But for the last six months, I have been making every attempt to get the job done. However, thanks to a debacle involving MVD, my car title, and the bank that held the title to my car until I paid it off in April, this has not happened. At one point, I was actually on the phone with an MVD employee who informed me that my bank mailed my title to MVD in New Mexico TWICE this summer, when the whole time, it should have gone to me, because I PAID FOR THE CAR! I have thus far restrained myself from physically reaching across the counter and choking someone, but when I walk in there tomorrow with my title, and my marriage license, and my social security card, and my little piece of paper proving that my car does not cause too much pollution, and my drivers license and my blood type and a piece of paper entitling MVD to my as-yet non existent first born child, if they do not give me a tag for my car, someone is going to get HURT. I will keep y'all posted.

I went to the MVD today, and still no registration for my car. But, this is because they did an inspection on my car, and supposedly, once it is approved, in something like 48 hours, I have provided all the proper documentation to register my car, and so I should have a New Mexico license plate on my car in the next few days. So the employees of MVD live another day. Unless they don't give me a car tag on Wednesday.

Is it wrong that I love NBC's show Scrubs so much that I was insanely annoyed that the presidential debates pre-empted it last week and that I am ridiculously overjoyed that is is back on during its regular time this week? I need to know. Because, to quote the Scrubs theme song "I can't do this allll on my own, no, I know, I'm no superman. I'm no superman."

Behold the glory of the New Mexico license plate! This is just a picture of a generic license plate, but one just like this, with numbers and letters and everything, is now proudly displayed on Molly the Malibu. I think the MVD people thought I was crazy, the way I walked out of their office holding my shiny new license plate like it was the Holy Grail. But they probably never waded through six months of red tape in order to obtain a rectangle of metal. Also, they let me keep my Mississippi tag. I think I am going to clean it up and get it framed. It has served me well. But now, it is time for Molly to step up and become a New Mexican like me. It's actually kind of sad. I'm completely official now ... New Mexico driver's license, new social security card with my married name, and now, a car tag with a hot air balloon on it. As far as the government or any other official entity is concerned, I was never from Mississippi. I might have to have a special ceremony to retire my Mississippi tag. But then I will have a big old party to celebrate my victory over the dark power of MVD!

So far in the short life of this blog, I have discussed both the recent hail storm of Albuquerque, and my trials and tribulations as a person who has been trying to register Molly the 1998 Malibu in the Great State of New Mexico. (Official motto: What do you mean, you don't have time to come back tomorrow?) As fate would have it, it now seems that these two events are intertwined. Today, Dan took my car to have an appraisal done related to the extent of the hail damage that Molly sustained in the Great Hail Storm of 04. And, the preliminary verdict from the insurance people is that they are going to TOTAL MY CAR. Yes. My car, it seems, is such an incredible piece of crap that it is not worth paying the two grand or whatever it will cost to get a bunch of hail dents taken out of it.
Now I am not going to argue very much about this. My car is a wreck. When Dan and I got married, various groomsmen of ours thoughtfully smeared shoe polish all over it. They smeared about an inch of polish on the gas cap apparently working on the theory that the gas cap should really stand out. The next day, we ran the car through a drive through car wash, and most of the polish came off. But not the polish on the gas cap. It just kind of streaked downward, creating this very classy look, sort of like milk was frothing out of the gas tank. We left the car baking in the Dallas sun for a week while we were in Hawaii, and, as you can imagine, that pretty much means that I now have permanent shoe polish milk on my car. In the year since I have been doing the Commute from Hell, Molly's windshield has sustained more than one crack. OK, the truth is that if my car ever takes a rock in just the right spot, the entire windshield will shatter. This is also a good look. The inside of my car is perpetually stained with coffee and other beverages and littered with every reciept for gas and fast food and groceries that I have accumulated in the last six months or so.
But the crowning achievement, in terms of my car officially crossing the line between "I belong to a sort of cute girl with a professional job" and "I belong to a sloppy girl who probably wears fuzzy house slippers to work" came when the hubcaps started falling off. Once I lost two hubcaps, Dan decided it was time to make a big investment. So he went to Wal-mart and bought a set of hubcaps apparently manufactured by the Tupperware company for a grand total of ten bucks. These fell off within two days. So now my car is a certified ghetto-mobile. And now we're trying to decide if we should just pay the salvage value on Molly and drive this car into the ground or spring for a used car with lower mileage and a better chance of seeing 2006.
I'll keep you posted. In the meantime, has anyone reading this blog ever experienced a situation this grating? I just got this car legally up to speed. I just paid it off this year. I haven't been so good about the cosmetic stuff, but I have changed the oil religously, fixed every major mechanical issue that has arisen, and put a CD player into it last year. And even though I could be in the position to trade up for a much nicer car, I am totally annoyed that I might lose my hoopty car after all this. It just goes to show you. Never give your heart to a car.

Dave Barry, my own personal hero, has announced his plans to take a year off from writing his column. Not only that, but he isn't making any promises that he will pick it up again after a year. I know it is silly to feel this dejected about a humor column, but I don't care. I haven't been this upset since the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip retired.
Who will make me laugh now? (Sniff!)

On Sunday, I went to the mall to start my search for something appropriate to wear to my brother's wedding. As you can tell from the fact that this is the second post I have written about it, getting dressed for this wedding is becoming very stressful. This is because it's an evening wedding with a reception at a place where my college once held a formal dance. Since most of the weddings I have attended have been of the "wear church clothes" variety, this has created a bit of a wardrobe crisis in the Wachdorf household. Getting Dan up to speed in the suit department was bad, but, as you know if you know me well, I really hate to shop. If I don't find what I am looking for in half an hour, I am very likely to give up. It must be a genetic mutation, because my mom and my sisters could shop until the Kingdom comes and never get tired. So it is to my eternal credit that I kept going for six hours until I found exactly what I wanted.
But along the way, I had the following slightly scandalous, but really funny experience. I was trying on some clothes in The Limited, and while I was in the dressing room, I was listening to the lady in the dressing booth next to mine talking to her four year old son, in a language that sounded like Japanese. Apparently, he was requiring a LOT of instructing, because she was talking to him at a high rate of speed and volume. Then, all the sudden, the talking stopped. I thought "Well, at least it's quiet in here. Now I can focus on trying to figure out how this strappy top is supposed to fit. I think I'm wearing it backwards." So I turned away from the mirror to try to wriggle my way out of the thing. As soon as I got it over my head, I looked down towards the floor and saw that the reason it was very quiet was that the child was lying UNDER MY DRESSING ROOM DOOR, looking at me! I don't want to get too graphic here, but I was in a definite state of undress, and this child was just lying there, staring at me like this was completely normal. So I started trying to tell him to go away, but I couldn't tell if he spoke any English, because saying "Excuse me!" and looking very indignant was having no effect on him. So finally I started making these shoo-ing motions with my hands, and he kind of rolled back out into the dressing room and never came back.
I now think this is hilarious, but at the time, I just kind of got dressed and left. Now I am a big advocate of dressing room doors without spaces at the bottom!

This has been a busy weekend. We voted, bought a car (more on that when I have time to take a photo. Needless to say, I am ecstatic.) and made an executive decision to stop answering our phone unless the phone number of a close relative of friend popped up on the caller ID. I don't know what it's like for those of you not living in swing states, but out here in the Land of Enchantment (really, that's what they decided to call New Mexico) we are just getting pounded with campaign commercials, mail flyers, and worst of all, incessant phone calls advising us on how to cast our vote. It is outrageous. In the last two days, we have logged a total of 18 messages on our answering machine, ALL of them automated recordings of people like Laura Bush or the Secretary of Something telling us why the fate of the world rests on us voting for either George W. Bush or John Kerry depending on who is calling. If there were real people on the phone, that would be great, because then I could explain to them that SHUT UP, I HAVE VOTED! But you feel pretty funny yelling at a recording, not that this has stopped me much in the last few days.
This is all to say that I have many stories to tell, but they are all going to have to wait until after the election. I have to work election night, which means a long time spent hanging out in the county courthouse, waiting for returns. In the meantime, I think the blogging world is going to have to wait for my return. I'm sure I'll have plenty of funny stories to tell on the other side of the election. Stay tuned.

Inspired by my friend Rebecca Tredway, who asked her blog readers to comment if they had voted, I ask my readers, all four of you, to tell me about your voting experience. Was the line long? Did you write something or push buttons on a computer screen? Did you feel powerful when you left the voting booth or was it a let down? Did you get a sticker that said 'I voted today' ? I did not get a sticker, and I was kind of annoyed. It was like when you were little and you went to the bank drive through and you just knew they were going to give you a sucker. But they didn't. In any event, I took advantage of my constitutional rights this weekend, and sticker or no sticker, I have to say I am a little more aware today of how great it is to live in a country where I get to say 'This is what I want.'
So. How did your exersize of constitutional rights go?

I will be the first to acknowledge that I have at various times in my life mocked my mother for her adamant faith in herbal and homeopathic remedies. Usually, the mocking entails me referring to her collection of herbs as "grass pills" or suggesting that I might as well take a spoon full of sugar and then try to fly out the window like Mary Poppins for all the good her remedies will do me. But this weekend, I started feeling the first signs of my annual case of "a cold that turns into a secondary infection that turns into bronchitis that turns into borderline pneumonia." So, in a panic, I called (who else?) my mom. On her advice, I have spent this weekend alternately chugging massive quantities of water, vitamin C pills, echinnacea and zinc lozenges. And I have to say, it seems to be working. I'm not feeling fabulous, but I expected to be feeling much worse. I am not willing to come down off my high horse and become a full fledged herbal convert. But I may have to admit that there might be a little piece of truth in my mother's all natural philosphy. (I love you, mom! Sorry I said you were crazy!)
So readers, today's question is: What is the one thing your mother is more right about than you care to admit?

The Get Up Kids, Red Letter Day EP

This album makes me miss, in no particular order, my friend Cara, who first introduced me to the Get Up Kids, my friend Chuck, who put this EP on one of his awesome mix tapes for me in college, and, for that matter, it makes me miss college. I don't miss college very often, because I'm still close enough to the whole experience to remember how sick and tired I was of it by the time I graduated. But I do miss certain aspects of college, like the ready availability of close friends and time to spend with them and a schedule that allowed you to stay up until 2 a.m. if you saw fit. Once upon a time, when I was much, much cooler, I used to stay up until 2 a.m. all the time, to help put out the campus newspaper, or go to a concert. And it was fun. Funny how 24 feels so much older than 20 did.

Before I moved to New Mexico, I envisioned it as this eternal desert with sand and cactuses (cacti?) and no rain. That's sort of true in the southern part of the state and in the summer. But it's not truly reflective of the winters out here. As of Friday, it's like we're living in a deep freezer. And worse, the wind is blowing. The wind in New Mexico is a phenomena unlike the wind in other parts of the country. It blows your car around on the road and howls and screams around the corners of walls. But although I'm wearing my pea coat 24 hours a day and shivering, I do have to say that the snow still kind of fascinates me. I saw snow maybe twice in my whole life when I was growing up, and so getting to see it all the time out here kind of makes me a little more reconciled to the other oddities of life in the Land of Enchantment.

Greetings, gentle readers. I am writing this from Jackson, Mississippi, where Dan and I have traveled to attend the wedding of my younger brother, Aaron, and his wonderful fiancee Kelly. We are going to stay in Jackson through the weekend and then spend the week of Thanksgiving with my family in Hattiesburg. With a wedding being the kind of event that just makes for great stories and the state of Mississippi being that way too, I am sure I will have many tales to tell on the other side of the three day string of festivity we are getting ready for now. Hopefully I will post something next week. But if not, know that I am well and happy and I am eating good food to my heart's content. May you all be so fortunate.
In the meantime, here's a topic for you: What's the best and/or worst conversation you've ever had with someone who sat next to you on an airplane?

I love Thanksgiving. To me, it's the eating and the merry making without the stress of gift-buying that Christmas brings. And when you are at my parents' house, you will eat. I am currently sitting at the table in our house in my pajamas (at 11 a.m.! How great is that?) putting off eating anything until we eat at three in the afternoon. Then, the plan is for everyone to collapse in a coma on the couch and watch Arrested Development on DVD, which we have gotten my family hooked on during this trip. I do realize that this holiday is not entirely about eatinig, so here, for your enjoyment, is a list of the things I am thankful for on this, Thanksgiving Day 2004:

* Two years ago yesterday, Dan asked me to marry him. I am so thankful for him. He is my best friend and I am the luckiest woman in the whole wide world to have such a great husband.

* I am thankful for my family. We're not all together on this day, because my brother, Aaron and his new wife, Kelly Rice, are on their honeymoon in Jamaica. We will all be together in a few weeks for Christmas, and that makes me happy. This year is a little different, because after Christmas, my brother Aaron is leaving for a seven-month deployment to Iraq. So Christmas will be the last time we are all together in one place for quite some time. I'm glad to know that and be able to make the most of our time together.

* I am thankful for my new car.

* I am thankful for nasal spray, because I have caught my annual cold. I am also thankful that I did NOT catch the flu, which is what happened last year at Thanksgiving. That was awful.

* I am thankful that it has actually gotten kind of cold here in Mississippi. Now I am going to go sit on the swing on the pier overlooking the lake and look at big beautiful pine trees.

May God bless y'all and yours.

We got 90 percent of our Christmas shopping done last night, from our couch. Online shopping has got to be one of the top ten greatest ideas of the last century. I would rather chew on tin foil than go to the mall any more than I have to in the next month. It also helps when you mainly traffic in music and books for presents ... keeps Amazon.com in business. Anyway, just thought I would brag. How's the shopping going for everyone else?

1) How great is it that "The Princess Bride" is on VH1 tonight? Inconceivable!
2) Our (four-foot-tall fake) Christmas tree is up and glowing beautifully in our little living room. I love Christmas.
3) We are going to send out a Christmas letter this year. I'm not sure if you're supposed to wait until you have photos of your cherubic children to send with the letter, but we're still going to send the letter. If you want a copy, let me know. Dan is going to be in charge of printing up address labels, which is also going to help us by providing an address database of all those addresses I collected when we were sending out wedding invitations. Much more convenient than the "Maybe-that-one-is-written-on-this-paper-napkin system we currently have going.
4) The new U2 album totally rocks. Very God-laced, very thought-provoking, very good. Run out and buy it, folks.
5) We bought tickets today to see Sarah McLachlan in concert in April. I am so excited. I know I am a nerd, but I just don't care. I love living in a city that occasionally attracts concerts from people I would like to see perform.

What's making y'all happy?

I meant to put this picture up before now, but here is my new car. After Molly the Malibu suffered serious hail damage in October, I got a nice check from the insurance company and we put it towards a new car that starts on a more frequent basis. She's a 2003 Nissan Sentra, but I haven't settled on a name yet. So, please vote for either Sally or Sylvia as a name. Or, make your own nomination based on what she looks like:

Just now, during a commercial break for ESPN Sportscenter (who do y'all think was in charge of the remote?) a commercial for a hair removal product came on. I wasn't really listening until this sentence: "What a perfect way for a woman to keep the man in her life perfectly-groomed!" This, accompanied by a scene of a woman smiling while she uses this device to rip out the unibrow of a smiling handsome man. This raises many questions for me, the main one being "What makes the people making this product think that any man would sit still while the woman in his life did that to him?" I know for a fact that Dan would take up residence in his car if I even suggested such a thing. I think it's pretty apparent that women have the corner on the hair-removal product market, and probably the commercials for these items should still be directed to the women. Thank you.

At the paper, we ask for parents to send in their childrens' letters to Santa and we run them in the paper. Some of them are pretty funny. Today, we got the all-time winner from a kid who has obviously been reading some Harry Potter. I want to put it on the front page. Enjoy this excerpt:

"Dear Santa: This year, I would like a Time Machine, a pair of sneakers that can take me anywhere, a remote control that will control everything besides TV, a cap that would help me breathe underwater, a sweater that can make me read thoughts and understand other people's languages, a magic stone that can make me fly, and chopsticks that can give me magic powers so that I can turn into any size and other things when I touch them.

Plus, I want peace on earth and on the sun and on the moon and on the other planets. I also want a flame thrower.

P.S. When you get to my house, wake me up so I can have a friendly conversation with you and show you around. And tell Jesus Happy Birthday and bring him a gift, too."

How's that for covering all your bases?

I don't have my digital camera cables with me on this trip to Mississippi, so I can't show y'all a photo of this, but try to envision it. This year, our family went and got a Christmas tree on Monday, the 20th of December. That's right. Five days until Christmas. On Tuesday, I was alone at the house, because every body else had errands to run, so before Dan and my brother, Ryan had to leave the house, I got them to put up the tree so that I could decorate it. I had a good time doing it, except for the part where I got about 100 little scratches on my hands from the branches, and it looked good. But the next morning, we could all sort of tell that the tree was, ummm, leaning. So last night, Dan and my dad straightened it back up, and we thought that would be that. Unfortunately, today, on this hallowed Christmas Eve, the tree is once again pitching towards our kitchen. At this point, I think the general attitude is "Whatever. It's almost Christmas anyway." But if we're going to keep up our proud Rice Family tradition of leaving the tree up until late January, it's going to require a few chiropractic treatments. However, the lights and the ornaments are beautiful, and very well-spaced, if I do say so myself.
On that note, I wish you all a very merry Christmas. Goodnight.

I am having trouble making this into a pretty link, but if you copy and paste this address into your browser, it should take you to a hilarious column I read today.

http://www.herald-mail.com/?module=displaystory&story_id=101478&format=html

I think this makes me laugh so much because I could see it happening where I work.

Today, I had one of the more surreal experiences of my life. One of my jobs with the newspaper is to write about the school system where I work. This means that I spend a lot of time in schools, doing interviews, taking photos, and just generally hanging around until someone asks me to leave. One of the schools was kind enough to ask me to speak at their Career Day since the students see me a lot and might want to know what it is that I do. This is what the nice school counselor told me. I kind of wanted to ask if he was kidding, but I refrained. I also kind of agreed to be the "keynote speaker" (Their words, NOT mine!) which meant that I talked to the entire student body of about 300 students to kick off their day of hearing from a wide variety of professionals, all of whom would have been immenently more qualified to be the keynote speaker than I am. Nevertheless, this morning at 9 a.m., I drove up to the school after a car ride rehearsing my speech and drinking LOTS of coffee, to see this sign.

And I almost drove up onto the curb. On the one hand, the sign cracks me up, because it sounds like Haley Wachdorf and The Career Day Presenters are some kind of lounge act coming to perform big band hits for the student body. "We'll be here all week. Try the veal!" On the other hand, my 25th birthday is looming up in a couple of days, and for some reason, seeing my name on the sign as some kind of role model, i.e. Legitimate Adult, really freaked me out. Who am I to tell these kids anything? I still remember being in sixth grade. It was sobering. The surprising thing was that the students actually seemed interested in what I had to say, and it wasn't nearly the train wreck that I had envisioned, once I got over wanting to throw up from fear.
For your purposes, you should try to imagine me trying to inspire 300 students to greater heights of academic achievement. Don't you just wish there was a video? We could sell it in the comedy section of our local video stores. Alas. At least I can say I have had my 15 minutes of fame. And it was more than enough for me.

It is with great relief that I have realized that the fast food-industry is not stalking me. But here, in case you were wondering, is how I came to believe that I was being targeted: Last week, I went to Wendy's. I try not to do the fast food thing too much, but when you live the life of a 100-mile a day commuter, Wendy's is sometimes your healthiest option in that they will actually sell you a salad. So I end up there on days when I run out of time to pack a lunch or leave it sitting on my kitchen table, where it is so very useful. So I was at the Wendy's drive through window, picking up my salad. When the girl at the window gave it to me, she looked me right in the eye, and said "See you tomorrow." My car was already moving past the window, so I didn't have time to say "What?" But I spent the rest of my drive home wondering if I have come to be such a fixture at the Wendy's drive-through window that they truly believe they see me there every single day. Should I say something? Do they think I'm someone else? Am I going to Wendy's in my sleep and ordering huge quantities of French fries while unconscious? I was really quite disturbed about the whole thing.

But today, I worked up the nerve to go back to Wendy's. This time, I went inside to order because I needed to get cash out of the ATM, and while I was standing in line waiting to order, the cashier gave the man in front of me his food, smiled at him, and said "See you tomorrow." You could tell he was a little freaked out, but I was having the very reassuring epiphany that "See you tomorrow" must be Wendy's new little catch phrase. Kind of like "Have a nice day," but more intrusive. I still don't like it, but at least now I know they don't actually think I come in there every day.

See you tomorrow indeed.

My good college friend Chuck recently sent me one of his genius mix tapes. Actually, now they're mix CDs, but they're still awesome. On this tape is a song by a weird little band called "Mountain Goats." Based on the song on this compilation, they sound like two guys with guitars, but I could be wrong about that. Anyway, the song is absolutely hilarious, and I thought y'all might enjoy the words. Imagine these lyrics sung in the most wild-eyed, border-line insane, sarcastic way possible, backed by two frantically strummed guitars, and you have the basic idea. Also, since I was confused on this point, apparently, Heaven 17 was some kind of synthesizer-based funk band of the 1980s.

Cubs in Five
By Mountain Goats

They're gonna find intelligent life up there on the moon
And the Canterbury Tales will shoot right up to the top of the best-seller list
And stay there, for 27 weeks.

And the Chicago Cubs will beat every team in the league
And the Tampa Bay Bucks will make it all the way to January
And I will love you again.
I will love you like I used to.

The stars are gonna spell out the answers to tomorrow's crossword puzzle
And the Phillips Corporation will admit that they made an awful mistake
And Bill Gates will single-handedly spearhead the Heaven 17 Revival.

And the Chicago Cubs will beat every team in the league
And the Tampa Bay Bucks will take it all the way to the top
And I will love you again
I will love you like I used to.

Chuck tells me he put this song on the CD because of the part about the Canterbury Tales shooting to the top of the best seller list. I know it will never happen, but it really would make me happy.

Feel free to hate us now. We just got tickets to see U2 in Phoenix in April. We're going to make a trip of it and celebrate our second anniversary, which is only a few days later. If you want to hate us further, know that we got FLOOR SEATS, meaning that we actually don't have a seat per se, but instead we get to stand up in the area in front of/around the stage and dance with the other crazy people. Paying more money to be further away from the stage but have an actual seat would have been a total waste of money, because the idea that I would actually sit down during this show is laughable. Everyone knows you have to stand up when Bono enters the room. I can't wait for April.

My husband is currently sitting on our couch playing Halo 2. Actually, the more accurate statement would be that he's been sitting on our couch playing Halo 2 every spare waking moment for the last three days. I am agape at the endless capacity of men to do something so pointless for such a long stretch of time. Dan tells me that this activity is justified because a group of guys from our church are getting together this weekend to play each other in Halo 2 and "I need to defend my honor, because they threatened to snipe me."

There you have it, people. Our honor comes down to how much butt we can kick in Halo 2.

OK, folks. To make up for my total lack of posting this week due to the fact that I've been getting home after 9 p.m. for the last three nights, I pose a question with which you may entertain yourselves and one another until I am coherent enough to post some photos and stories from the last couple of weeks. Here goes:

What is the worst haircut you ever got?

For the record, the worst haircut I ever had happened during an ill-advised period during college when I decided it would be a good idea to grow my hair out, resulting in what I thought at the time was a semi-short, layered, flippy-in-the-back kind of Meg Ryan thing and what in retrospect I have realized looked very much like a free-range mullet you might see in any Wal-mart in the Deep South. A note to the people who knew me then: WHY didn't you just do me a favor and cut my hair off in my sleep?

Dan says that the worst hair-related decision he ever made was the time he shaved his head. In case I don't have it in writing anywhere else, let me say in this forum that he is officially forbidden from ever doing that again.

So ... what's the worst thing you ever paid someone to do to your hair?

I need some help, bloggers. I am completely out of ideas for things to take to lunch. I realized a long time ago that if I'm going to eat healthy things on my daily commute to the land of no restaurants but McDonald's I have to shop beforehand. But I have run out of good ideas. This week, I did a bad job of pre-shopping and ended up eating fast food three days in a row. Yuck. So, lunch packers, what do you take to work? I need things that are relatively easy to prepare. Any suggestions?

I am a big fan of the Super Bowl, for the simple reason that it means that football season is over, and I can have my husband back on weekends. Prior to being married, I never really understood having Super Bowl parties, because I had no emotion in any direction about football, but now it seems like a good idea to celebrate the end of the season. So, we went with great enthusiasm last Sunday to the home of our friends Sam and Shanelle with a bunch of people from our church. Shanelle, being the domestic goddess that she is, made a TON of really good food, and we pretty much sat around and ate ourselves into oblivion while halfway watching the game and commercials and spending more time watching Sam and Shannelle's daughter, Annabelle, and our friends Patrick and Jasmine's daughter, Kristen, playing with each other. Both of the girls are, I think, between two and three years old, and they are both very into Disney princesses and My Little Pony. Both girls had brought out their My Little Pony collections for the party, and as a result, the best line of the whole party was spoken by little Kristen, who apparently has recently learned to use her posessive pronouns.
When Kristen got to the party, Dan was helping her take off her pink jacket, and saw that she was holding a My Little Pony. Dan, being the type of person who makes a major effort to have conversations with little kids (I just get freaked out and stop trying) asked her:
"Kristen, is that a My Little Pony?"
To which Kristen responded by giving him the Look of Death and saying with as much acidity as a three-year-old can muster:
"No. It's MY Little Pony."

This is a photo of Annabelle, on the left, and Kristen, on the right, "helping" Shanelle clean up and cook in the kitchen. You can tell how helpful I was with all of that by the fact that I was standing around taking pictures. But notice that while Kristen is assisting with the chores, she is not putting down her pink purse with the tail of a My Little Pony hanging out.

Purse snatchers, beware.

This is a long-overdue posting of a photo I took of the Wachdorf family. This is not the whole family, since Dan's grandmother, who lives with his mom and dad, is not in the photo, but it's pretty complete. In the back we have Dan's dad, Arthur, Dan the Great, and Chris Gilbert, the boyfriend of Dan's sister Dinah, who is standing in front of him in the blue shirt. Then, there is Hannah, Dan's youngest sister, and Dan's mom, Lorrae. Last but CERTAINLY not least, we have Maggie, the family's dog. Maggie is probably the most revered member of the family, and is certainly the most highly entertaining, even though she doesn't like me very much. We think she has somehow made the connection that I have something to do with the fact that Dan isn't around the house much anymore, and this does not make her happy, because she LOVES Dan. But she has started to accept me more, so that's good. Aren't they a good-looking bunch?

Here, as a bonus, we have a photo of Dan reading airplane magazines with Sammy, one of three triplets in a family that the Wachdorfs know in San Antonio. When Dan and I were dating, the triplets were really little, but now they are three years old, and watching them is better than watching TV. When we last went to visit in San Antonio, Dan and Sammy enjoyed a little reading session so they would not be behind on the latest advances in the field of radio controlled airplanes. Photos like this make me know that Dan is going to be a good daddy one day. That is, if I can convince him to act like an adult instead of one of the kids.

I just learned on TV that Disney is releasing the two-disc special DVD of Bambi "from the vault." This is probably a silly question, but who is going to be buying two discs worth of Bambi, the world's most traumatic movie made for children? Was anyone else as upset by this movie as I was when I was little? I mean, Bambi's mom gets KILLED within the first 20 minutes! You would think that Disney would be doing its utmost to forget that anyone with their company ever thought this was a good premise for a children's movie. I'd keep that WELL within "the vault." But, I suppose this is why I am never going to be the head of a multi-billion dollar entertainment industry. Incedentally, this movie, as well as Old Yeller, which they played for us in my SECOND GRADE CLASSROOM are the reasons why I am highly suspicious of any movie involving a cute, lovable animal as one of the main characters. Because inevitably, the animal is going to get the raw end of the deal.

Sometimes you can see interesting things just driving home from work. First off, the other day, I saw Harrison Ford when I was sitting in traffic at a stop light. OK, it probably was not Harrison Ford. But it looked eerily like him. I was looking in my rear-view mirror, and behind me, idly playing with the air conditioner vents in his car, was this guy who looked EXACTLY like a Regarding Henry era Harrison Ford, but with glasses. It took me a minute to realize that the likelihood that Harrison Ford was sitting in a Ford Taurus in Albuquerque was extremely low, but even then, I kept looking just to make sure it wasn't him. In Albuquerque, that's as close to a celebrity encounter as you're going to get.
Then, I was driving past the golf course near our house, and I saw three high school girls each carrying one of those huge golf bags. I knew they were in high school because of the high level of glossed lips, flippy hair, hip hugger pants, and dangly earrings. Needless to say, the image was hihgly incongruous with the term "gold course." Then, I noticed that there were high school girls ALL OVER the golf course. There were probably 25 of them, in small groups, interspersed with the typical middle aged guys one normally associates with golf courses. Ever since then I've been wondering if it was Take Your Daughter to Golf Day, or if this is some kind of marketing ploy on the part of the golf course. "Look! Golf is, like, hip!" I can't think of any other explanations. Any ideas out there?

It's not really that late, only 10:30, but I'm aggravated that I am awake even though Dan is snoring blissfully in our bedroom. On a happy note, Dan has indeed come back from his many world travels, and I am so happy. But back to whining. I am desperately tired and I cannot go to sleep. I have a hard time winding down at the end of weeks like the one I've just had. It's been very full and very stressful and even though it's over now and no new deadlines are coming my way until Monday, I just can't let it go. I am re-running conversations I had this week in my mind, mentally reciting every word I have written for tomorrow's paper, and feeling my shoulders get more and more tense instead of relaxing into the sleep that I need so much right now. It's amazing that your mind is capable of keeping your body awake even when all you need physically is to sleep. I'm sure this serves many purposes, such as keeping us from falling asleep at dangerous times, but sometimes I wish there was an 'overide' button on the system. For now, it seems that David Letterman and I will be spending the evening together. I am optimistic that this will put me to sleep.

"In my younger and more vulnerable years, my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. 'Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,' he told me, 'Just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.'"

F. Scott Fitzgerald
"The Great Gatsby"

I think I'm going to get that tatooed on my arm so I can do a better job of remembering it. On the other hand, that's an awful lot of words and I bet it would hurt. So maybe I'll just settle for "Shut Up" as a reminder to myself.

I think I had a semi-religious conversion experience last night when Dan and I went to see Alison Krauss and Union Station in concert. I have seen a great many concerts in my life. Live music performances just never cease to mesmerize me, and I frequently annoy Dan with my immediate willingness to fork over large chunks of money to see an artist perform live. I get the impression that a lot of people just figure if they have the CD, they can live without going to the concert. I am not one of those people. I love concerts for their loudness and the cheering and the opportunity to just sit and actually focus on the music, which isn’t usually how you listen to music if you think about it. I love concerts even more than I love chocolate, and that is saying something. So needless to say, I was thrilled when Dan got me tickets to see Alison Krauss and Union Station live in Albuquerque. I’ve heard they put on a great show, and I figured it would be a lot of fun.
However, prior to last night, I didn’t really count Alison Krauss among my “all-time, top five, desert island” favorite artists, to quote a line from an excellent movie which I will give you a nickel if you name. I liked her a lot, yes, but I kind of figured I could get by without her music if I had to.
Well.
About ten minutes into the concert, I repented of my wicked ways and I am now ready to declare that Alison Krauss and Union Station may just be the finest musical group of our time. I swear, people, it was like watching magicians levitate giant boulders with their minds or shoot lightning out of their hands, that’s how amazing it was seeing them perform. I have never seen anything like it. There is really no way to understand how complex the music is until you see it performed live. That realization alone is jaw-dropping. But they played these incredibly complicated songs like they were tying their shoes or brushing their teeth, or doing something else that normal people do all the time. Like it was nothing. You know how when you hear a recorded song, it’s almost too perfect, and you think “There’s no way that’s real. It’s got to be spliced and digitally vamped up somehow to sound like that.” I really thought that about Alison Krauss and Union Station. I just thought there was no way that that many people could possibly play that many notes and not mess one up somewhere along the way.
Again, I repent. They were flawless. And hilarious. Who knew that Alison Krauss was a funny woman? That just doesn’t really come across in the music, I suppose, but between songs she would tell these stories that made you spit out your Coke you were laughing so hard. And then they would take you right out of that laughing and make you want to cry with one of those heartbreakingly-sad songs they play so well. It was the single most entertaining show I have ever attended, and I was amazed when Dan told me they had played for two and a half hours, because it just went by so quickly.
I don’t even know what else to tell y’all except that if you EVER get the opportunity to see them live, you should run and not walk to get tickets. It’s well worth your money.
Hallelujah, world without end, amen.

It is sunny and warm in Albuquerque after what seems like MONTHS of rain and gloom and cold. I think we get spoiled in New Mexico, because most of the time, it's very sunny and mild here. So as soon as it rains for more than 10 minutes, people are immediately in a depressed funk. You can even see it in the way people drive ... like the rain makes them so angry at the world that they just have to act out. We've had an unusually wet winter, which is good for the whole drought situation, but bad for the state-wide psyche. So let's hear it for the sun! Spring is, indeed, on the way.

On Saturday, Dan and I had the pleasure of going to the zoo with the Lowrance family. It's a good thing that Sam and Shanelle invited us to come with them, because the nice weather we were having on Friday had gotten Dan on a kick. Specifically, a "Why don't we go to the zoo, Haley? Huh? Huh?" kick. When Dan gets on one of these kicks, he's hard to distract, so it was pretty much inevitable that I was going to end up taking my own child to the zoo. At least this way, we were able to pretend that we were two of the adults on the trip, and not two of the kids. Or, at least, that's what I pretended. Dan did a pretty fair impression of a small child, racing along ahead of the rest of us with Annabelle, calling all of us to hurry up. In fact, Dan and Annabelle even started to sound alike after a while. Annabelle would say "Mommy Mommy! Look at the giraffe!" and Dan would say "Haley! Haley! Look at the zebra!" I did learn something useful on this trip, which is that when Dan and I have kids, I am NEVER going to the zoo without him. By the end of the day, I was shuffling along with aching legs and a dazed, somewhat sunburned look on my face, and Dan was still saying "But we haven't been to the Africa exhibit yet! Come on!" I also realized that it is much more fun to go to a kid-geared place with kids. They just get so excited. Enjoy some photos from our excursion.

Shanelle and Annabelle enjoy the flamingos. Annabelle considered it her bound duty to inform us, repeatedly, that the flamingos were "Pink! Pink!"

If you look at it just right, Sam and Annabelle look like their own weird kind of giraffe.

A nice break by the goldfish pool.

The maniac toddlers. Yes, both of them.

Below, we present the three stages of Samuel "Little Man" Lowrance.

First stage: "Bring on the animals!"

Second stage: "Aww, mom, can I keep him?"

Third stage (late in the day): "Zzzzzzzz." I was sympathizing with his exhaustion by this point.

Remember two days ago, when I was exulting in the gloriously warm weather? Me too. It was nice. I even had a little bit of that sunburned pink cheeks look going. I was thinking about putting up my heavy sweaters for the season. Apparently, I had forgotten that we live in ALBUQUERQUE, the world's most schizophrenic weather town in the United States. Here, for your enjoyment, we at Missing Mississippi present "Saturday and Monday: A Photo Essay by Haley Wachdorf."

Saturday, around 2 p.m., at the zoo:

Monday, 4 p.m. outside our apartment:

This storm blew in out of nowhere late this morning. By 3 p.m., I was stuck on the interstate plowing through heavy snow at 30 miles per hour. Dan got sent home from work early too, so we've pretty much been in our apartment cooking dinner and staring in awe at the snow. It's still falling and supposed to do so all night. Also, it's worth noting that the broken-down truck in the photo from our dining room window appears to belong to some relocated good-ol' boys. At least, that's all I can think of, since I can't imagine anyone else parking a completely non-functional truck in a public parking lot and coming out to work on it on the weekends. I'm serious. It's these two guys who get out there with their beer and their tools and play their radio and work on the truck all day long. They're very friendly and they wave at everyone who goes by. It's very entertaining and I will be amazed if the truck isn't fitted out with a gun rack before it's completely finished.
Anyway, if you are somewhere where the weather is warm, or even reasonably mild, please enjoy it for us. We'll be busy dressing in layers.

I found this on a friend's blog and thought it was pretty funny. I'm not sure how I scored ten percent Yankee. A lot of people out here tell me that I don't sound very Southern to them. I'm convinced this is because they firmly believe everyone from the South talks like Dolly Parton and Julia Roberts in Steel Magnolias. That is a great movie, but the accents are way overdone and it and a lot of other movies have created bizarre expectations for what a Southern person is "supposed" to sound like. Since I moved away, I also have noticed that my accent tends to come and go. There really is no distinct accent in the Southwest, so anything different stands out, and occasionally someone will ask me where I'm from. When I tell them, they always ask me to say "y'all," and they ask me if it's hot there, and I say "Yes, and it's humid,too." And thus ends the accent conversation. But it always makes me wonder. I never really made a conscious effort to not have an accent and sometimes I worry that I just misplaced it, like you do your keys. But then I'll get really excited or angry about something, or I'll talk to my family on the phone, or I'll tell Dan that I am "fixing" to do something, and then I know that you can leave home, but you can never really "lose" it. That's oddly comforting.

I am back from the wedding I attended in Nebraska this weekend, and I am aware that I need to post an update here soon. I have every intention of doing that once I am able to sit still for ten whole minutes in somewhere other than the Omaha airport, where I spent about six hours yesterday. Please bear with me. Once I write about how Aaron is doing, I also plan to write about my weekend, including the fact that I have now been to Nebraska three whole times, which is exactly three times more than I ever thought I would go to Nebraska, and the beautiful wedding that I was privileged to attend there this weekend. So more words to come. But first, I have a few things to take care of such as work, eating, and sleeping. Especially sleeping. Wow, I need sleep.
Hang in there.

Here's a story about how air travel can change your life.
In the summer of 1995, which is ten years ago this summer for anyone who's counting, my friend Autumn Fredericks, long may she live and prosper, convinced my parents to let me get on a plane with her and go to Horn Creek, a summer camp in Colorado. I know for a fact that this caused a major schism in the Rice household since I had A) never flown anywhere before B) never been out of the Deep South. But in the end, I went, and I'm pretty sure my mom cried the entire time we were on the plane. In fact, when we arrived safely and were registering, the people in charge of the camp gave me my name tag and said "Oh, you're Haley Rice. Your mom has called here three times wanting to know if you made it yet." (I love you, Mom. And that wasn't at all embarrasing.) Truth be told, I was terrified too. As shocking as it sounds now, when I was 15, I wasn't a big fan of talking to strangers, and I was pretty sure the week was going to involve a lot of people I'd never met.
I turned out to be right.
Accounts differ as to whether or not it all started the first night of camp or the second day of camp, but ten years later, the undisputed facts are that very early into the week, Autumn and I met three girls named Rebecca, Charity and Bryonie, and although we're pretty sure the earth didn't actually move when that happened, it was a very important moment.
Autumn was assigned to stay in Cabin #2 with Charity and Rebecca and Bryonie for the week, and I was assigned to Cabin #7. I liked my cabin group alright, but because Autumn was the only person I really knew, I ended up hanging out with her cabin so much that I was declared an honorary resident of Cabin #2 for that year. And the next year, and the next year, and the next year all through high school.
We all went to college, some of us went overseas, we graduated from college, moved all over the place, four of us have gotten married and one of us is the mother to a beautiful one-year-old baby. But through it all, we've kept in touch. Several years ago we started to notice that, post-camp and post-college, it was getting more and more difficult to see each other aside from the occasional wedding. So we started what is affectionately known as the Horn Creek Cabin #2 Reunion Tour. The Reunion Tour is always on Labor Day weekend, and for the last three years, we have spent those three glorious days in Autumn's parents' lake cabin in Minnesota. None of us lives in Minnesota, but it's the closest thing we've been able to find to a middle point between Albuquerque, Nebraska, Washington D.C. and St Louis. This year, things have gotten even more complicated. Bryonie and her husband moved to England, and soon, Charity and her new husband, Andy, will be living in North Carolina. Change, it seems, is everywhere. But some things don't change.
All the Cabin #2 girls were able to attend Charity and Andy's wedding two weeks ago in Lincoln, Nebraska, and it was just such a fantastic weekend. Here we all are together. From left are Rebecca, Bryonie, Charity, Autumn and me. Trust me when I tell you that this is a much better-looking photo than some of the ones we took as teenagers.

Each time we get together, I realize again how important these ladies have been in my life, and I'm thankful all over again that I know them. The more time passes and the more things change, the more comforting it is to get together with friends who have known me for longer than I've been a newspaper reporter or a New Mexico resident or, for that matter, had my driver's license. Every time I'm with them, I just feel like things are simpler and I can be myself.
So here's to the first ten years of my friendship with these women. Here are a few more photos from the weekend of the wedding.

Rebecca with Livia, she and her husband Jeremy's baby girl:

Bryonie and I grin for the cameras at the reception:

And, finally, the happy couple, Charity and Andy, getting hitched on a beautiful spring morning in Nebraska. This photo is crooked because I was all choked up when I was trying to take it. Joy and love to the new couple.

Today, I am enjoying the new Coldplay album, "X and Y," to a degree that I am pretty sure qualifies me for the All-Time Geek Hall of Fame. Dan, who finds infinite amusement in my music nerd tendencies, went and bought it for me yesterday on his way home from work because I didn't have time to go to the store during my travels that day. And heaven forbid I should buy the new Coldplay album even one day later than it is available in the United States, because then I might slip down a notch on the Dork-O-Meter.
After one good listen on my way to work today, I'd say it's really good. I know that makes you all want to run out and buy it, and you should. What's the best CD you've bought lately?

For those of you who don't know, I commute about 45 miles to work each day. Sometimes it's a pain, but I've learned you can see a lot of interesting things on the road. If you're a habitual people-watcher, that's a pretty big perk. Today, for instance, I was at a stoplight and I started looking at the guy in the car next to me. Initially, I was looking because the guy had a full-on Napolean Dynamite-style hairdo, a six inch tall bushy, red, curly mass.

It was amusing. However, when we started moving out of the intersection, I noticed that the guy was apparently conducting an orchestra in his car. He was waving his arms around, giving cues to the percussion section and the strings, bobbing his head, meanwhile using NEITHER OF HIS HANDS to drive the car. He was swerving all over the place, but he had this look of beautific joy on his face. If I wasn't so afraid the guy was going to hit me, I would have laughed. Anyway, I just think it pays off to watch the people around you on the road. Because then you can get out of their way.

"If you want to write well and live well at the same time, you better arrange to inherit money."
~ Flannery O'Connor, quoted in "Conversations with Flannery O' Connor," a publication of the University Press of Mississipi.

It's one of my life-long quests to get everyone I know to read my favorite book, Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird," and to read at least one book by my favorite author, Flannery O' Connor. I know it's weird that my favorite book isn't written by my favorite author. It's a long story. But in case you were wondering, the best book to buy if you want to get started reading Flannery O' Connor (and you should want to) is "Everything That Rises Must Converge." It's a collection of short stories that are easier to sift through than a whole novel might be right at first. But don't read Flannery O'Connor if you're looking for affirmation of the basic goodness of human nature. Ms. O'Connor was a firm believer in the depravity of man, and it's kind of hard to look at such a stark depiction of original sin for very long without squinting your eyes. We're not used to hearing about that, but it's kind of refreshing to be given a walloping dose of the truth once in a while. If that doesn't sound like your kind of thing, it's worth noting that O'Connor was also a very funny woman and that comes across in her writing quite frequently.
Again, I promise to get back to writing things you actually care about soon. Hang in there.

We're getting ready to watch Game Seven of the Spurs vs. Pistons NBA Playoffs. Obviously, we're very concerned. Cross your fingers and tune in if you want an idea of how we're doing. It'll be a toss-up between elation and despondence. This is why I try to avoid caring about a sports team.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2005/basketball/nba/specials/playoffs/2005/06/23/pistons.spurs.game7.ap/index.html

Thank you Spurs, for hitting your free throws in Game Seven. Tim Duncan, you are the man. Thank you Manu Ginobili. Robert Horry, we might name our first born child after you thanks to this series. Tony Parker, what can we say? Thank you, Detroit, for a phenomenal series.
But let's hear it for the San Antonio Spurs, 2005 NBA Champions!

We're back in Albuquerque trying to get laundry and errands taken care of before the start of the work week, but I promise to post pictures and stories from our adventures soon. Right now, we're very thankful we were traveling Saturday and not Sunday, when the Gulf Coast is expected to get hit by Hurricane Dennis. Our flights were delayed without the help of a hurricane, so I can only imagine what it would have been like today. Keep the folks on the coast in your prayers, and I'll talk to you soon.

This month, our very good friends the Lowrances moved away. Sam and Shanelle Lowrance, and their children, Annabelle, 2, and one-year-old Samuel, have been very dear to us in the last year and a half. They were stationed in New Mexico with the Air Force and attended our church here. We became friends almost immediately after we met, largely I think because none of us are natives to New Mexico and although this is a beautiful state, people who have just been relocated here find the lack of trees remarkable. We really enjoyed each other, and Dan and I learned a lot from knowing a couple not much older than us wading through the deep waters of parenting small children, something we hope to do ourselves one day but find somewhat intimidating at the moment. Annabelle and Samuel were very obliging in allowing us to babysit them from time to time with only minimal screaming and crying, and it was helpful to us to see that they survived being under our care for a few hours at a time unscathed. Perhaps, one day, our own children will be willing to put up with us. Their new station with the Air Force is in Ft. Walton Beach, Florida, which is good for them because it put them nearer to their families in Alabama and Tennessee, but bad for us, because we had to say goodbye to them. It's always hard to say goodbye to good friends, and it almost made me resolve not to become friends with Air Force people anymore, until I remembered that two of the best friends I have made in New Mexico, Shanelle, and my dear friend Kate, are Air Force wives, and that knowing them was worth feeling sad when they moved away. I am now especially sad to lose Shanelle, who cooked me lots of dinners when I had to stay late in Valencia County (where Sam and Shanelle lived and I work) to cover night meetings, and who trusted me enough as a friend to go out and eat sushi based solely on my assurances that it's really fun to eat raw fish dipped in wasabi. Here is a photo of Shanelle and I before we left on the night of the Japanese cuisine adventure:

And here is a photo of the whole cute family:

Godspeed, friends. We will miss you. Save that guest room for us down in Florida. We like the beach.

"I take no leave of you, Miss Bennett! I send no compliments to your mother. You deserve no such attention.I am seriously displeased."
-Lady Catherine DeBourgh, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.

Wouldn't it be great if you could still say things like that to people when they annoyed you? "I send no compliments to your mother." That's hysterical!

Clearly I've gotten into my A&E Pride and Prejudice box set and I am enjoying it immensely. I think I will start using the phrase "seriously displeased" if nothing else. Count on it.

Dan is coming back in about two hours. Yayy! I am really over hanging out by myself. Last night, I rented three movies, one of which was scratched so badly that the DVD wouldn't play, one of which I've seen, and one of which I didn't like. Thankfully, I had bought a book I like, but it generally got me to thinking. If that happened on a night when Dan was home, we would have just talked or whatever and it wouldn't have been a boring night. But since he's been in Las Vegas, it was pretty sad. I'm glad Dan is coming back.
In other news, here's a brief tutorial on How to Make Your Car Smell Like Trash, as I did this Friday:

1) Leave work early because you've worked your 40 hours and decide to go to Barnes and Noble.

2) Buy Damien Rice's "O" album because you've heard so many people say it's wonderful.

3) Get in your car, put in the CD. Like it a lot.

4) Go home. Get absorbed in cleaning the house because you've got a houseguest coming next week.

5) After a couple of hours, decide you need to go to Target to get a new CD folder to replace the dilapidated 250-CD holder you've had since you were a senior in high school. You're not doing anything! Why not reorganize your CD collection?

6) Decide to take out the trash you've gathered in your hours of cleaning on your way out of the apartment complex. Put it in your trunk.

7) Get in your car and immediately become so absorbed in the brilliance that is the Damien Rice CD you left in the car that you forget to stop at the trash compactor on the way out of the parking lot.

8) Go to Target. Get your CD folder and then wander around for another half-hour. Because Target is awesome.

9) Get back in your car which now has reached the prerequisite 100 degree heat level of Albuquerque. Notice that your car smells funny. Not funny "haha." Funny "Like a dumpster." Realize your mistake.

10) Drive back home as quick as possible and deposit your trash in the proper receptacle, thinking about how much you appreciate the fact that your husband usually takes care of the trash situation.

Just in case you wanted to know.

Overheard at the zoo on Friday, while we were walking past the the zebra habitat, spoken by a heat-flushed eight-year-old, with all the righteous indignation possible for a person of such short stature to muster:

"Mom! How come the zebras can kick the dirt and I can't?"

I apologize again for the lack of posts. School is starting up here in New Mexico, and as an education reporter that means my life gets a lot busier. So until I can catch up on things in this space of my life, I thought I would ask you what was your favorite year of school and why? Did you have a really great teacher, or a cool new backpack? Personally, my life still kind of moves in school-year cycles even though I've been done for four years, but I miss all the fanfare of new supplies and new books. I might buy myself some new pencils and sharpen them really, really well to make up for it.
So what was your best year of school?

I am in love with this machine. Behold it in all its compact glory:

I still love Dan, but at this point, it's a close call between him and our new Bose wave radio. Now, before you think we've won the lottery and therefore actually paid for one of these babies, which are outrageously expensive, you should understand that we got this radio through a major act of mooching. Dan's parents recently purchased some Bose speakers for their home at an outlet store where they got a really good deal. Part of the deal was that the store threw in a free Bose wave radio. Because Dan has no shame about asking for his parents' things and because Dan's parents love us, they shipped the radio out to us. Since we don't listen to the radio a whole lot, we have rigged up a little CD player to it, and are using it mostly just for the great speaker sound. This brings us to the part where I admit that as of today, I want to get down and kiss the feet of whoever came up with the Bose technology. I never knew that recorded music was supposed to sound this good. It's an epiphany, like when I got glasses and realized that yes, you are supposed to be able to see the leaves on the trees. It's like people are standing in our living room playing the instruments, but really it's just this incredibly small white box. I realize I am geeking out, but I love music, and for me, this is like reaching my own personal Nirvana. I want to listen to every CD I own just so I can hear what it was really supposed to sound like.
So I'm telling you this right now: If Dan ever decides that he wants to leave me, and we have to decide who is taking what out of the house, he can have just about everything we've ever owned together, but I will fight him for custody of the Bose wave radio. Because I love it more than he does, and it should be with me.
I am, of course, kidding. Sort of.

Last night, Dan and I went out for a hot date. We went downtown and ate at Ambrozia, a very nice restaurant, and then walked a few blocks to have dessert at the Melting Pot, a fondue place where they give you all this fruit and cake and other things to dip in melted chocolate. It's heavenly.
We even got dressed up for the evening. I have photo evidence.

Now if you know us well, you know that we don't get dressed up for much. (Click here and here to review the stories of the carnage that ensued when we had to shop for clothing to wear to Aaron and Kelly's evening wedding last year.) So clearly, the question is, what was the big occasion? We were celebrating something, so what was it?
Anniversary?
Nope.
Birthday?
Nope.
Are we pregnant?
No, Mom Rice and Mom Wachdorf, there are no little Wachdorfs on the way.
But there are some big changes coming. Last night, we were celebrating the fact that I have a new job. I will be covering tourism and education for a New Mexico publication with offices in downtown Albuquerque. The work sounds very interesting, and I will only have to drive 15-20 minutes to get downtown, as opposed to 45 minutes, which is how long it takes me to get to my current job. I can't say that I will miss spending 10-12 hours a week in the car. With gas prices skyrocketing, it's also nice that I won't have to fill my car up as often. But, like most good things, this decision brings with it some sadness. I'm going to miss my current newspaper; it was really hard to tell my editor and co-workers that I will be moving on, even though they were really excited for me. I have worked there for two years, and they really are like family to me. The next few weeks of finishing things up there and saying goodbye are going to be tough. But in spite of the anxiety that I guess is just a normal part of making a big move like this, I am looking forward to a new challenge.
And that is worth getting dressed up.

This is a photo of Rebecca and beautiful baby Livia, taken the weekend that I first met Miss Livia. Livia is the daughter of Rebecca, my friend of ten years since we were 15-year-olds at camp, and her husband Jeremy. They live in Nebraska, and View From the Prairie Box is their blog. For some time I have been meaning to start a sidebar linking to all the blogs I read, but I can't figure out how to do it. (Any pointers out there, blogging people?) So since I have mastered the art of linking to things in posts, and since Rebecca is one of my blogging heroes, I thought I would tempt you with more photos of this adorable child and her adorable mama. Enjoy.

This is turning out to be a really busy week, but not for entirely bad reasons. For example: on the downside, I worked late last night and then couldn't go to sleep. Thus, I am sleepy this morning. Tomorrow morning, I have to get up at 5 a.m. to get to an early meeting, and I'm going to be exhausted. But on the upside, the reason I'm going to be tired is that we are going to stay out late tonight seeing Coldplay in concert. (!!!) And that is a very, very good thing. So it's all a tradeoff. The point of this post is that you should hang in there with us. Life will slow down in a couple of days, and then I will come back and talk to you. Until then, behave yourself.

I just talked to my mom, who said that she thinks the worst of Hurricane Katrina has passed through their area. As far as they can tell now, about 200 trees broke and fell down on the land, but none hit the house, which is a mercy. Some shingles got torn off the roof, but nothing else seems to be wrong with right now. If that was the damage in Hattiesburg, I can't imagine what the coast and New Orleans look like. We're very worried for some good friends of ours down there right now. The levees and pump system failed in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans, where Desire Street Ministries (www.desirestreet.org) and a couple of large housing projects are located. According to the news reports I'm reading, that area has completely flooded and is now under six feet of water. Obviously, the whole city will have a difficult road ahead, but the Ninth Ward in particular has a very high poverty rate and the people there are really going to have a hard time. Many of them didn't even have a way to leave the city before the storm hit. People with insurance will eventually have their belongings restored, but there are probably more than a few people in New Orleans who have literally lost everything they had. It's very sad.

Since I talked to my mom yesterday, I have been unable to get a call through to home, which I assume means there is no phone service. This is totally understandable in light of the devastation in Mississippi, but it's still very stressful to not be able to reach family in the age of cell phones, wireless, and text messaging. I had never realized how spoiled I am by my usual instant access to the people I love. Even though I know my family is OK, it still freaks me out to not be able to talk to them and reassure myself. It's not comforting to watch the news, I've learned.
Please pray for the people in my home. A terrible thing had happened there, and as much as I wish I could fix it, I'm pretty sure I can't.

I feel like I'm going to need to start a "Hurricane 2005" category on the site before all is said and done.
I don't have a lot of information on this, but my dad just called to say that he heard from Aunt Barbara Jackson in Louisiana. Aunt Barb's husband, Steve Jackson, is a Louisiana State Police Officer, and has just been called up to go to New Orleans and help with the evacuation and crowd control in what is an increasingly tense situation. Please pray for his safety there and for the Jackson family, since I know they will be anxious for him while he is gone.
I've talked to Mom and Dad a few times since the storm and although they aren't likely to have power for a while and don't have water service either, they are doing well overall. Keep praying for everyone there.

Information is online about the status of Desire Street Ministries. There is information on how to send money and what their prayer requests are at this time. Me, I'm glad to have a list ... it's just so overwhelming.

In a few minutes I am going to leave for my last day of work at my current newspaper in Belen, New Mexico. The word "Belen" means "Little Bethlehem" in Spanish, so for the last two years, I've enjoyed saying that I work in Bethlehem.
Yesterday I cleaned all my little knicknacks and photos off my desk and had lunch with my co-workers. They all gave me gifts ... mostly references to my mooching capabilities: A box of Kleenex from Sandy because I'm always popping into her cubicle to steal hers, a box of mints and a big bag of peanut M n Ms from Jessica, because those are the things I steal from her. Coffee mugs, magnets, things to remember my time there by. It was nice. And it helped me start to recognize that I am really leaving.
So today is my last day in Bethlehem. It feels weird.
Dan and I will be leaving tonight to go and visit Dan's parents in San Antonio, so you will be without my lovely voice for the next few days. Try to get along without me.

I am currently basking in the glow of three days of glorious unemployment. I finished my last week at my former job last Thursday, and then we went out of town to see Dan's family this weekend, which was a great break for us. I don't start my new job until Thursday, so since Monday I've been officially unemployed. It's been kind of nice. I've cleaned the house and taken care of pesky things that I never seem to get around to when I'm working, like cleaning out closets and cooking actual food and catching up on email and laundry. It feels really good to have gotten done with the laundry for once instead of always being three loads into a six load cycle. And I love for our apartment to be clean ... really, really clean. But tomorrow is my last day of endless available time, and then it's back to work. That's probably a good thing, because after a while, I start to feel kind of edgy if I don't have somewhere to go, something to do. Three days is about the maximum amount of time that I can be at leisure and still be comfortable. Still, I'm going to make the most of tomorrow. I think I'm going to cook breakfast, drink coffee, go to the bookstore, buy a good book and just enjoy my day. Time really is the greatest luxury in the world.
What do you do with free time?

Today, September 17 is the day that Ryan and Aaron, my dorky little brothers, entered the world and took up plaguing the life out of me. I remember that in order to prepare my three year old mind for the concept of "twins," someone bought me two baby dolls in matching blue nightgowns before the boys were born. I thought the baby dolls were great, and I thought the boys were OK too, when they were in that phase where they just lounged around drooling a lot. But then they started walking and talking, and according to family legend, that's when I started turning to them before we entered any public place and saying to them in the most threatening voice I could muster "DON'T embarrass me." That's a riot now, but it wasn't a totally unreasonable request at the time. These were boys who once ran around in our yard buck naked waving beach towels behind them like superhero capes. Did I mention that it was the front yard? And that at the time, the family of a friend of mine was pulling up in our driveway to pick me up for a sleepover?
But today, they are 22 years old, and it's been a long time since I was embarrased to admit that I am related to them. Now, I'm actually really proud of them, just like I am of the rest of my family.
This is the first time the boys haven't been together on their birthday, and so it was a little weird to make two separate phone calls to catch up with them, but they were both doing about what I would have predicted. Aaron was in D.C., on a way to visit a tattoo parlor to have one of their artists draw up an design for an emblem he wants inlaid on the base of his prosthetic leg. Ryan was grilling himself some filet mignon ("My present to me, Haley," he told me.) and watching some college football. It was so normal it made me want to cry. But I didn't. Instead I teased them about getting old and told them to have a happy birthday. I also told them that I love them. We've always said that in my family, but I think we say it a lot more now, which is a good thing.
So here's to my baby brothers. May they live long and prosper.

One year ago today, I started this blog. I almost missed my blogging anniversary due to the business of starting my new job, but tonight I remembered. Thinking about all the things that have happened since I started hanging my life out on the World Wide Web like so much dirty laundry amazes me. I'm still not sure why I got fascinated by blogs in 2004, but I did, and in September, I got my own, much like other people might decide to get a Chia pet, as a friend of mine remarked at the time. Originally, I just meant to use it as a way to keep friends and family posted on the life of the Albuquerque-based Wachdorfs. I figured that about 10 people would read it, since we're not all that exciting and that was fine with me. Then, on March 18, everything changed, and the Supporting My Troops Category became the focal points of the blog for a while. That was a difficult time to say the least, but one good thing that did come out of it is that my family got to see live on the Internet how many people love us and wanted to help us in our time of need. I never expected that when I started the site, but I believe things happen when they happen for a reason, and I am glad that my seemingly random decision to get a hobby one year ago gave all of us such a remarkable opportunity to be in one another's lives. I've enjoyed having you all here.
So here's to the Internet, the 210 entries I have written and the 745 comments y'all have left over that time. And in honor of my first year as a blogger, here are my personal favorite entries, a kind of Missing Mississippi Greatest Hits Collection. Feel free to nominate others if you wish:

How do you say "Go Away" in Japanese?
Hail, Albuquerque!

What a wonderful world. (Aaron and Kelly get married.)
Peace on earth. And a flamethrower.
The neighbors really hate us.
Don't mess with My Little Pony.

A Letter from Aaron.

It was a beautiful day.

Some things are meant to be.

Go, Spurs, Go!
Here's a challenge, sports fans, aka The Biggest Blog Controversy of the Year.
Less a little laughter, a tribute to the world's greatest stupid dog.

And, of course, Sweet Nothings, the monkey post.

What a year. Keep coming back, and I'll keep writing. Life seems to provide plenty of material.

This weekend I developed a weird craving to watch the first season of "Scrubs" on DVD, which we own. That's not all that unusual because I love that show to a degree that is highly abnormal, but about halfway through watching the DVDs while I cleaned my bathroom, I realized why I was doing it on this particular weekend. The first season of Scrubs is all about a group of medical students who are starting their first year as doctors. It's terrifying and they feel like they are screwing up left and right and they are going to be terrible doctors. And in a way, I relate to that right now. As you all know, I started a new job this last week. And even though I've been doing the same basic job I'm doing now for the last four years, I'm doing it at a differernt newspaper with new people and situations now, and it makes me very anxious. My first week has been overwhelming to say the least. There's something intimidating about coming into a new place where you have to learn everything from where the bathrooms are to what is expected of you on a day-to-day basis. It's stupid, and maybe it doesn't happen to more confident people, but it makes me feel less like a competent professional and more like an awkward junior high student with braces and acne.
The good news is that I have really cool new co-workers and editors who have been very kind to me in my first few days on the job and have graciously overlooked my breakouts of first-week jitters. (It's an embarrasing story ... I don't want to commit it to the eternal memory of the Internet.) The other good news is that things are getting better. I'm sure that in a few months, I will look back and laugh at the fact that right now, walking into my office is an absurdly frightening experience. Time makes a lot of things seem easier. That's one thing I know from experience.
So back to my TV habits this weekend. One of the things I love about Scrubs is that it is a narrated show. The main character, J.D., is the voice of the story, and he provides the over-arching insights that tie together the otherwise random incidents of the show. Possibly one of the finer speeches of the first season is delivered at the end of an episode that is all about the fact that sometimes, you just don't measure up to your own expectations in life. Here it is.

"I think one of the most universal human experiences is feeling alone. You'd never know it, but there are most likely tons of people feeling the same way. It may be because you're feeling completely abandoned. Maybe because you realize you aren't as self sufficient as you thought you were. Maybe because you know you should have handled something differently. Maybe because you aren't as good as you thought you were. Either way, when you hit that low point, you have a choice. You can either wallow in self pity, or you can suck it up. It's your call. .. But that's not what this story is about. It's about the day I realized that admitting we're not heroic is when we're the most heroic of all."

I don't really believe that our entire destinies rest on how we handle situations. If I thought I was the only one who could save me, I'm not sure I could get up and go back to work tomorrow in spite of my anxiety. Ultimately, I'm resting on a much higher power. But there's truth to the idea that sometimes you just have to keep going at it until you get it right. I'm also realizing how much I need the people in my life lately. Like Dan, who tells me that everything is going to be OK, and that if it's not, I can still be his wife. (I know, he's so generous.) And my parents, who believed in me enough to help me load up a truck and move off to Clovis, New Mexico when I was 21 and had no money because I had this crazy idea that I could be a journalist. Or my brother, who called me just now and told me about how nerve-wracking his first day of Marine drill was just to encourage me. Marines don't often admit that they were scared, and that meant a lot to me. Everyone, I think, is scared sometimes. But it doesn't mean they aren't doing the right thing.
So yes, this time of job transition is probably the final straw that will mean that I will forever think of 2005 as the year that I remembered that life is truly scary. But I will also remember that I didn't go through it alone. And because of that, I consider myself very blessed. Certainly not heroic, but very blessed.

It's been a long time since I've seen it, so I could be wrong, but I think it's raining outside. This water-like substance has been falling out of the sky since yesterday, and last night, there was thunder and lightning and, Dan says, hail. However, I am not talking to Dan, because he's decided to take the day off work, and I can't. It's such a perfect rainy day to stay home and drink coffee and read and be lazy, and I have to go to work. Cruel world. If you know our home number, feel free to make prank calls to Dan all day long. I need some revenge.

I realize that this blog has been awfully neglected of late, and I promise to update it soon. If you leave a comment telling me what you want to know, I will do my best to answer your questions in my next post, unless you ask about Dan's continuing monkey campaign or whether or not I finished washing all our laundry this weekend. (No, I didn't, OK? I'm a bad housekeeper.)

A few quick notes:
Aaron called this week to ask me to email a photo of him to "this producer at The Today Show."
"Yeah, did I tell you I'm going to be on the Today Show?" he said. Apparently, he's going to be on The Today Show sometime between now and Christmas. We'll try to get a more specific date nailed down sometime in the future so you can all tune in.

Best wishes to a dear family friend, Jill Howell, who got married this weekend in Alabama. I wish I could have been there to see the Howell family and share in the festivities, but I understand the Rice family was well-represented, which is as it should be since we pretty much think we're related to the Howells anyway. We love you, Jill!

With that, goodnight. I will write soon, but now it's time to get ready for a whole new week. Wow.

On Thursday nights, primetime television is pretty lame. (Am I the only person who just can't beleive that ER is still on the air?) So the way Dan and I amuse ourselves on Thursdays is by watching Iron Chef, the most unintentionally hilarious show on television. If you've never seen this show, you must watch it, because it's fantastic. It's a Japanese reality competition type show that pits celebrated chefs against one another in a timed contest to see which chef can create the best four course meal out of the same key ingredient. The unveiling of the ingredient of the evening is the greatest moment of the show, because the crazy little man who is apparently in charge makes a HUGE production out of it, and there's all this dry ice and dramatic music and the man is always sporting a hair style that has got to involve at least three cans of Rave hair spray and wearing these insanely elaborate outfits that look like something Liberace left behind. There are a lot of capes. Then, the rest of the show is dubbed in terrible English translations, and it's just hands-down better than anything you're going to see on NBC.
Recently, thanks to Iron Chef, I realized why primetime television in America is just so awful these days. Someone in corporate network television America who evidently has no sense of humor whatsoever, in a collosal lack of understanding of WHY Iron Chef is actually popular in America, has gone and made an American version of Iron Chef that is just about ... the cooking. And that's not funny. It's not funny at all. Martha Stewart does shows about cooking, and they don't make me laugh.
Thank goodness for cable. Tonight's ingredient is salmon.

"And the one son who had no choice but to keep them all together."

It's Arrested Development!

Dan is at Wal-mart right now buying the second season of Arrested Development on DVD, which was released today. We've been counting down, and I am so excited. TV shows on DVD are really the worst invention that could possibly have happened in terms of my personal development, because it's so easy to just hit that button and watch another episode. But I really don't care. Because ... IT'S ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT!
If you call us sometime in the next few days and we don't answer the phone, well, you know why.

Dan sent me a link to this, and although I was kind of confused at first, once you read the little explanation below it, it's pretty funny. Hurricanes and floods are not funny, but sometimes the TV people covering them are quite entertaining. This is one of many reasons why I write for newspapers.

So since you all tuned in to your television sets today and didn't see what you were looking for, I thought I'd give you something fun to watch. I'm stealing this from Rebecca, who stole it from Jason, but it's worth plagiarizing.
This is a link to the page for Bob Ebel, a guy who apparently directs commercials involving kids. Read Jason's post about it here.
Click on the fifth and twelfth images on this page, and follow this link for another one with the kid who is going to have just cracked you up saying "We're doing business here."
Enjoy.

The wonders of Google never cease. If you type "(Your name) needs" into google, it will generate a random list of statements about your needs. According to Google, these are the things I need. I should give credit to my friend Chuck, from whose blog I stole this. Drum roll please:

Haley needs a fair amount of exercise and would probably do best with a fenced in yard, walks and playmate to help.

If Haley ever needs any of the money, the court has to be petitioned for any and every penny that is released.

Haley needs help circumventing security protocols.

Haley needs to avoid procrastination and try to be more reliable and punctual. (That is so true.)

Haley needs to be more involved with family.

Haley needs a lifestyle.

Haley needs to put on some weight. (Survey says ... not true!)

Haley needs to fix the streets.

Haley needs more details to make the posters.

Haley needs a home with no other cats or dogs. (You hear that, Dan?)

Haley also needs new glasses. (I do! Mine are so old and bent!)

So there you have it. My needs according to Google. Feel free to help me get or do any of those things.

Call Cara! (Because today is her birthday. Happy 26th, Cara! I'll soon be joining you in the Four Years to the Big 3-0 Club. I did remember to call Cara, so that's good.)

Call K.R.! (Initials of a public relations gal I needed to check something out with. Turns out she knew what I needed to know. Here's to good information.)

Email B! (Initials of our realtor, who we are hoping is going to help us buy our first home soon.)

I know they make these things called "Palm Pilots." I actually have one. But I can't seem to stop inking up my left hand with personal reminders for the day. Some people get tatoos, I write on myself and wash it all off at the end of the day. It works for me ... it's kind of my personal version of the Palm Pilot. The Haley's Hand Day Planner.

Your IQ Is 95

Your Logical Intelligence is Below Average Your Verbal Intelligence is Genius Your Mathematical Intelligence is Below Average Your General Knowledge is Average

See, this is why I'm a writer and not a rocket scientist.

Well, the blank space on this blog is freaking me out, so I thought I should post a note that we are, in fact, alive and well, but just trying to get through the tail end of three very busy weeks that seem like one long week that just won't end. Between a business conference, a trip home for a wedding and the general craziness of life, I haven't had time to write much here, but this weekend, I plan to post some pictures from the wedding I went to, some pictures I took of my parents' place post-hurricane (I think the photo at the top of this blog may now be the only historical record of all those beautiful trees) and generally update you all. Until then, hang in there, only one more day until the weekend. I realized today that what my car looks like is usually a good indication of how my life is going. Right now, my car is covered in dirt on the outside, and in the backseat are my gym clothes, a pair of dress shoes, a bunch of files from work, travel coffee mugs, and a lot of miscellaneous trash. That pretty much sums it up. I need to get my life in order. How about you?

As promised, here are some photos from the wedding I went to in Picayune, Mississippi last weekend. It's weird to know that I need to refer to my friend Lindsay Burrell as "Lindsay Carr" now that she's married to Chris. But I'm going to give it a shot. Cheers to Lindsay and Chris Carr, pictured here at their reception:

I was extremely blessed to have Lindsay as one of my roomates in college. Here she is pictured with our other roomate, Robin, who was my date to the wedding in Dan's absence. It was just like at Belhaven College, when Robin and/or Lindsay were my dates for almost every formal event. I think I could have done worse:

And finally, me with the bride. Tell me something, do I always look like this much of a giant?

For some reason, I woke up this morning very aware that it is going to be Christmas in 33 days. In fact, that's what I told Dan when he came in to wake me up. ("Hey, know what? It's almost Christmas." He told me he had to go to work anyway, but thanks for the update.) I knew this yesterday, so I don't know why it seemed like such an important fact this morning. I think I might have been dreaming about Christmas shopping, which since I don't really have any good ideas this year is kind of a stressful dream.
What is your Christmas shopping strategy? And am I the only one who hasn't started at all?

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Dan and I just finished cleaning up from the HUGE mess I made in our kitchen making cornbread dressing to take to Thanksgiving dinner. We're going to share the day with friends from church here in Albuquerque, and they are graciously allowing me to bring cornbread dressing, even though I am probably the only person who is going to want to eat it. Apparently, it's also unusual in Albuquerque to purchase just the inside parts of a turkey and not the turkey itself. (You have to call it "the inside parts of a turkey" because if you say "giblets" they look at you like you are speaking Swahili. Alas, the clash of cultures.)

Anyway, as I was crumbling up cornbread earlier amid all the dirty pots and pans, I was thinking about everything we have to be thankful for. It's a long list this year, too long to write down. It would just go on and on. But I realized that the one thing all the things I am thankful for have in common is mercy. God's mercy to us this year has been infinitely beyond what we would have even asked for if we had known beforehand how much we were going to need it. It sort of makes me laugh when I think about how I have prayed this year, and compare it with how good God has been to us. It's like what happens when you tell kids they can ask for anything. If kids were capable of thinking ahead and knowing what they will really need in life, they would ask for college scholarships or a million bucks or a reliable car. But they always ask for something immediate and not that hard for any adult to give them, like candy or a toy. I've kind of decided that's how we are with God. We can't even comprehend how vast our needs are in the first place, and even when we do know we need something, we still can't imagine how infinitely capable God is of giving it to us. So we ask for the things that we can wrap our minds around: that our families will be safe and we'll do well at our jobs and that we'll be able to pay our bills. And meanwhile, God gives us so much more than that. It's mind-boggling.

So this year, I am thankful for mercy.

"Now to Him who is able to do exceeding, abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus forever and ever. Amen."
Ephesians 3:20 and 21

Love to you all. Be thankful.

How had I never heard of Emmylou Harris' Christmas album "Light of the Stable?" Probably because I wasn't born when it was recorded, but still, I am dissapointed in myself. But all's well that ends well, and I bought it last night when Dan and I were in Borders. I would highly reccomend it if you need a break from the usual heavily-orchestrated arrangements of Christmas songs. Those are great and all, but it's nice to hear songs just sung. Dan objects to the rendition of "Little Drummer Boy" on the album that doesn't feature a whole lot of drums, but I think it's nice. And my new favorite Christmas song is the last track on that album, "Light of the Stable." Beautiful.

I also bought Diana Krall's "Christmas Songs," which is fun. Heavy on the non-sacred Christmas music, since I imagine it would be difficult to sing "Away in a Manger" in a jazzy manner, but really good.

I knew you were all anxiously awaiting my Christmas music reccomendations. But really the point of my buying that music yesterday was that we only have a little Christmas music. So what do you consider to be your must-have Christmas albums? I anxiously await your answers.

This takes a little while to download, but it's hilarious. Watching it will actually save you some time at this busy time of year, because you won't have to drive around in your neigborhood looking for the tackiest light display. You'll already have seen the world champion. Thanks again to Mike, who linked this on his site, and from whom I am stealing.

Who knew that there is a Pedro the Lion version of "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day?" That makes me want to get out my Pedro the Lion t-shirt from 1999 and be nostalgic.
Check it out here.

AAAGH! I'm sorry, I just felt the need to vent a little. We're leaving town to go home to Mississippi in 48 hours, and I am just never going to get everything done. The deadlines are looming, stories are falling through left and right, I need to get a manicure for the wedding I'm in this weekend, and I feel silly for even listing that as a concern, but I just don't have any time. So if you've got any extra time lying around at this busy time of year, send it my way. Otherwise, I'm going to be up until 2 a.m. packing tomorrow night.
But it will all be OK. Because in a few days, I'll be home, fulfilling my most comfortable role: Haley the Couch Bum.
Breathe in, breathe out, right?

We're on our way out the door to go home for Christmas. I am so happy. I just wanted to wish you all a merry Christmas and say that I may update the blog a bit while we're home, but on the other hand, my laziness may overtake me to a degree that renders me completely motionless, so I'm not promising anything.
So that you have something to look at, I thought I would post this.
A few days ago, Aaron got a box mailed to him from the Marines full of everything that belonged to him when he was hurt. Apparently, they keep up with that stuff and eventually, it comes back to you. In the box was a photo chip that had pictures that Aaron took while he was in Iraq. This is one of them, a photo of the inside of the door of Aaron's humvee. From the date information, you can tell it was taken on March 18, a few hours before Aaron was hurt. Although it's got some glare on it, you can also tell what he had written on the door just then.
'Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me." Psalm 23:4.
Amen to that.

We're back in Albuquerque, and I promise lots of writing and some photos soon. But for now, I would like to know if anyone else who traveled this week noticed the enormous number of babies in the airports? I said something about it early in our trip and Dan laughed at me, but by the time we were standing in baggage claim in ABQ at the end of our trip surrounded by not one, not two, but FOUR women holding small babies, he had no choice but to acknowledge that some kind of baby migration is clearly taking place.
What I want to know is where are they all going?

I fought it off valiantly, but I'm afraid that I now officially have a cold. I've been sneezing all day and I've used enough Kleenex to stuff a king-sized mattress.
But at least I'll have lots of time on the couch to write a remarkably tedious end of the year blog entry and watch one of the many girly movies I got for Christmas. What do you think: "French Kiss" or "Steel Magnolias?" Maybe both. If anyone wants to offer Dan sanctuary in a manlier living room, feel free to give him a call.

So the good news is that Dave Barry's 2005 Year in Review is posted here. Enjoy it, because the bad news is that Dave Barry has decided that he will not be taking up his humor column again after his year sabbatical ends. Read it and weep. This is pretty much the final straw. I hereby declare 2005 to be the Worst Year Ever.
But it makes for funny reading, so check out the article.

We are getting ready to spend New Year's Eve with some dear friends from my former home of Clovis who are in town for the weekend. I am glad we are going to hang out with this particular couple tonight because in 2005, some pretty amazing things have happened for them that remind me that God is good even in the midst of years that are difficult. Our friends have wanted a baby for as long as we've known them, but had trouble conceiving. Then, this fall, they told us the joyful news that they are expecting. Their baby will be born in May. The odd thing is that at the same time in 2002 that we got to know this couple, we became friends with another couple who were also not able to have children. That couple now lives in Oklahoma, and their baby will be born in February. The thought of these much-prayed-for little ones coming into the world in 2006 makes me so hopeful. It's nice to feel that way going into a new year.
On New Year's Day of 2005, with Aaron's deployment to Iraq imminent and a lot of uncertainty facing us in general, I remember thinking that the sooner the year was over, the better. That was without a doubt not the best attitude to take, but I wasn't wrong to think this was going to be a tough year. It has been. Still, God has been faithful to us.
On Christmas Day last week, we went to see The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe with my family. (Stay with me, I am going somewhere with this, I promise.) There's a line in that book that was somewhat truncated in the movie, but that reflects something I've definitely learned this year. In the book, Mr. and Mrs. Beaver are talking to the children about Aslan, telling them who he is. There's a great piece of dialogue that turns up in sermon illustrations a lot, but it's worth repeating.

"Is he a man?" asked Lucy.

"Aslan a man!" said Mr. Beaver sternly. "Certainly not. I tell you, he is the King of the wood and the son of the great Emperor beyond the sea. Don't you know who is the King of Beasts? Aslan is a lion, the lion, the Great Lion."

"Oh!" said Susan. "I thought he was a man. Is he quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion."

"That you will, dearie, and no mistake," said. Mrs. Beaver. "If there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most or just silly."

"Then he isn't safe?" asked Lucy.

"Safe?" said Mr. Beaver. "Don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? Of course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you."

If I have learned anything in 2005, it is that trusting in God isn't always going to make me feel safe. If you really understand who he is, you know that he is infinitely powerful and he can do anything he wants with your life. But you also know that he is infinitely good.
So although I can't say I am sorry to see the year end, I can say that on the other side of the joys and trials of this year, I have a much better idea of just how little control I have over my own life. And that can be terrifying at times. But it's also the most comforting thing I've ever known.

He's not safe. But He's good.

Joy and peace to you in 2006.

Over the break, Dan and I made the fatal mistake, along with the rest of my family, of getting sucked into the first season of Lost on DVD, which my sister Audrey got for a Christmas present. On the last day we were in town, we all watched on obscene number of episodes of that show, but Dan and I had to leave the next day and missed the last disc. So we rented it via Netflix, and watched the rest last night. Big mistake. The thing that has always irritated Dan about Lost and that now bothers me immensely is that the show is so good at building up all this suspense about why the surviviors of a plane crash are not being rescued from the desert island they've landed on and whether or not there are other people on the island with them. And the suspense is all just fantastic, except that they never really give you any ANSWERS. I suppose that is how the creators of this show are able to sustain an audience for a plot line that in a rational world would end after about 4 episodes, but it's still annoying. So last night, we got down to the last episode, the season one finale, and whoever is in charge of this awful show leads you to believe that you're finally going to find out who else is on the island and why.
Once you've been watching Lost for a little while, you become intensely aware of how long an episode is, and without fail, as the final moments of the show are ticking away, you realize in despair that you are once again going to be left hanging. So as the season finale wore on into its second half, I was realizing that there couldn't be much time left, and I STILL DON'T KNOW WHO IS ON THE *#&$@ ISLAND!
At that exact moment, the writers chose to use precious time that they COULD have spent telling me something useful to include a deep conversation between a man, Michael, and his son, who is his child from a previous relationship, and whom he hadn't really known until his former wife died and left him the child. It's a very heart-wrenching side plot, and were it not the season finale, I would be all in favor of this moment of character development. But as it was, I was totally irrational, which lead to the following piece of dialogue between me and my TV set. Talking to your TV is not exactly a sign of great mental stability, so this was the exact moment when I realized that this show is invading my mind to an unhealthy degree.

Little boy character on the show: "So Dad, why didn't you and my mom stay together?"

Me, bolting up from the couch and yelling: "No one cares, kid! It's the season finale and I just want to know who is on the island! You could have discussed this at any other point in the last 24 episodes! Aaaah!"

Dan, looking over at me in that way that only your spouse can look at you: "You have got to get a grip."

And it's true. I need to get a grip. But still. I just want some ANSWERS!

Hey, bloggers with more experience than me: What do you do to combat spam? I just got done deleting about 400 spam comments left on the blog offering me prescription medications and all manner of other, umm, things I don't want, and I need to find some way to slow the influx. Any tips would be appreciated. Thanks.

Apparently, this is National Delurking Week. To lurk is to visit a site often without alerting the host that you are reading via a comment. I do this all the time. It's kind of a compulsive habit of mine. But I'm going to try to do a better job of declaring myself, and you should too. If you read this blog, but have never commented, step up to the microphone and leave a comment. I promise, you're welcome here. Unless you're the one offering me all the prescription drugs via comment spam. Then you should be forced to attend whatever the Internet community's version of Traffic Court is. Every day of your life.

I love Thursdays. Do you know why? Because on Thursdays, Dan cooks dinner. Thursdays are usually the point in my work week when I have just about had it, and even though it's almost Friday, I am just fried and I do not yet see the light at the end of the tunnel. So a while ago, Dan volunteered to start cooking dinner for us that night. This means that if you come and have dinner at our house on a Thursday, we will eat hamburgers, red beans and rice from a package, bratwurst, or stromboli sandwiches, but really, those are pretty good choices. Laugh all you want, but the fact that Dan cooks even one night a week is one of the things that makes me love him more every day. Because I know that cooking is not exactly something that Dan loves to do, and he does it for me, because he loves me.
So all those silly magazine's that write articles on "How to Spice Up Your Marriage" should talk to my husband. He would tell them that the best way to make your wife even more attracted to you than she was when she married you is to do things that ... here's the amazing secret ... make her feel like you love her.
Write it down, men.
Cook dinner.
Your wife will thank you.

Time to play a game, readers. Which of the Rice girls in this picture is having a birthday tomorrow?

OK. It's kind of a trick question. Because Hannah, over there on your left, had her 19th birthday last week. Happy birthday, Hammer. And my mom, who isn't in this photo, had her birthday the week before that. Lots of January birthdays in our family. Audrey, in the middle, was born in May, so it's not her birthday. (Sorry, Audge.)
Nope, tomorrow, Monday, January 16, is my birthday! I'm the one on the right. Still the tallest, too, if you notice. (Haha, baby sisters.)
Since Monday is kind of a boring day for a birthday, I decided to celebrate on Saturday. Dan took me out to a nice dinner, and then we had dessert at the Melting Pot, a fondue place where they let you pick out your chocolate for the fondue. So good.
But tomorrow, I will officially be 26 years old. Twenty-six! I'm trying not to think of that as four short years until I'm 30, but it's definitely started to occur to me. Still, 26 is a good age, and I like my life a lot, and I'm sure 30 will be great, too.
So wish me a happy birthday, people!

Tonight, I have opened a bottle of wine that Dan bought on one of his business trips to California a couple of years ago. I've been saving it for a special occasion, and I think my birthday qualifies. This particular wine was bottled in 2002. That was kind of a watershed year for me, one that has quite a lot to do with where I am with my life today.
Let's review.
In January of 2002, four years ago tomorrow as it turns out, my mom and dad helped me load up all my worldly belongings (the funiture pieces of which were actually some of their worldly belongings) and the next day, my mom and I started out on the long, boring drive to Clovis, New Mexico, where I was headed to take my first newspaper job. A few weeks earlier, my dad had flown out to Clovis with me to see the town and meet the editor of the paper, who told me that if I came to Clovis, he would teach me how to be a reporter. His name was David Stevens, and he was a quiet kind of man. He still is. And he wasn't lying. He taught me everything I know about newspapers. Which isn't all there is to know, but which is a lot more than I knew then.
But back then, I didn't really know how the whole thing was going to turn out. It was the scariest decision I ever made, and I'm not sure that if I had to do it over again, I would be brave enough to go for it. And if I hadn't, a lot of good things would never have happened.
I went to Clovis, and my mom helped me find an apartment and move into it. She stayed in town for a few days and hung curtains and blinds in my very first apartment. I am pretty sure that if my mom had any grey hair, I gave her some of it on that trip. But when it was time for her to go, she did, and she's a brave woman for doing it. Thus started 2002. David taught me how to write for newspapers, and bore with me while I made mistakes that some people would have fired me over.
And then in March, a weird thing happned. I got an email from a guy named Dan who I had met about a year before when I was helping my friend Liz move to Texas to be an intern with Reformed University Fellowship, the campus ministry of the Presbyterian Church of America. Dan told me that he had just accepted a summer internship with Sandia National Labs, and he'd be coming out in May. And when he did, he'd like to stop by and take me to dinner. We started emailing back and forth, pretty much every day for the next two months.
In May, he came to visit, and we went on our first date to a little Mexican place called Guadalajara Cafe. It's this hacienda-style place, and it's not designed for tall people. I remember that Dan hit his head on the door on the way in. It looked pretty painful, but he took it with a sense of humor. And that put me so at ease that we had a great night and sat on my porch and talked until midnight. We started dating that summer. By the time he was ready to go back to school, we had decided we were going to get married. I went to San Antonio to meet his parents. He came to Mississippi to meet mine.
In November, I came home for Thanksgiving and was surprised to see Dan in the airport, holding a bouquet of roses and a beautiful ring. He had driven in two days early to ask my dad for my hand in marriage. And Dad said yes, a brave move considering that he didn't know a whole lot about Dan at the time. I said yes, too. We got married in April of 2003.
I am still a newspaper reporter. I am married to Dan and we live in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Life is good.
So here's to 2002. And 2006, the 26th year of my life. I have every reason to believe it will be good.

I have to say I got some pretty awesome birthday gifts this year. Not to brag, but I bet your birthday gifts weren't nearly this cool. Here's my list.

From Hannah: Death Cab for Cutie’s 2005 CD “Plans.” So very fantastic. I can’t listen to “What Sarah Said” too many times though, or I’ll cry. Break down and weep.

From Mom and Dad: The Gregory Peck memorial edition of the classic film “To Kill a Mockingbird.” My favorite book, also one of my favorite movies. Amen.

From Mom and Dad Wachdorf, Dan’s parents: A $50 gift card from Borders, and a Starbucks gift card too. Books and coffee. These people have my number. I am going to have a great time.

From Aunt Merry Lynn and Uncle Steve: An awesome T-shirt from Broad Street Bakery, my favorite Jackson, Mississippi eatery. My aunt bought it for me when she stopped there for lunch on her way to catch a plane back to L.A. after a trip home this fall. How cool and thoughtful is that?

And, from Dan: A car adapter for my MP3 player he got me for Christmas. Now I can pretend that I am listening to the world’s greatest radio station, composed entirely of my own CDs, even in my car! Woo-hoo!

And perhaps best of all, my own big copy of this photo.
Hannah’s fantastic photographer boyfriend Daniel took this photo early one morning on my parents’ land in Oloh a while ago. It was foggy, and the trees look kind of surreal in a very beautiful way. The picture means even more to me than it otherwise might since, a few months later, 90 percent of those trees were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. I’ll probably never see this sight again in person, but at least I have this beautiful picture. Major props to Daniel and Dan for getting this all fixed up for me without me knowing. You guys are awesome.
Daniel is working on a new Web stie for himself these days, so when it's done, I'll post a link to it so that y'all can see more of his work and say that you knew him before he was world-famous.
So, are those good gifts or what? I feel so loved.

A few days ago, Aaron called me. We talked for a while, and then he told me that he and Kelly were on their way to buy a puppy. He sounded kind of noncommittal about it. When he told me that they were going to buy something called a "maltapoo," I thought he was kidding. But no, I was informed that a maltapoo is a cross between a maltese and a poodle, and Kelly had fallen in love with one, and they were on their way to buy it. Aaron's only real comment on this was to say that Kelly had told him the dog will only weight seven pounds when it's fully grown so "at least I won't spend a lot of money feeding it."
So the next day, I get this photo emailed to me, apparently taken about an hour after Aaron and I talked. Mr. Tough Man appears to be warming up to the dog, wouldn't you say?

Aaron called to tell me to look at the photos. Then he emailed the photos to mom and called and talked to her about the dog for an hour. About how smart the dog is, and how Kelly is better at disciplining the dog and house-training him than Aaron is, because Aaron feels bad when he starts whimpering. The dog's name is Jake. It's a great name, but it makes it hard for me to think of the dog as well, a dog. So I've just decided to go on and think of Jake as my nephew. Welcome to the family, Jake.
Of course, this doesn't mean I'm not still going to make fun of Aaron for owning a maltapoo. Hahahahaha.

Here is a photo of the final signature page that came at the end of about 4,000 pages of documents Dan and I signed in the last week. My hand hurts.

But I'm pretty sure it's going to be worth it, even if I do develop carpal tunnel syndrome. Because this is what we bought:

Yes, we are officially homeowners! Or, at least, we will be when we close next month. Three bedrooms, two-and-a-half baths worth of our own little corner of the world. And while I am sure I am violating all kinds of rules about what you should and should not say on the Internet, I have to tell you the funniest thing about this house. It is on a street called Sea Breeze. In Albuquerque, a city located in the middle of a landlocked state! The irony is so perfect that I don't see how we could not buy the house. I laugh every time I think about it.
No doubt, we'll have lots of stories to share from our upcoming adventures in home ownership and, of course, moving, a fate worse than Wal-Mart, and those will make for good reading. So really, this is good news for y'all, too. Celebrate however you feel is appropriate.
And if you have any boxes, please give them to us.

As Leigh and Sara P. have pointed out in the comments section, the advertisements that Google Ads chose to place on the site after the hair gel post are hilariously disgusting. I'm not going to type what they say again lest they come up with something even more gross, but I don't like it any more than you do. Note to Dan: The ads are not long for the world.

Since you won't be clicking on those ads, and I don't blame you, click on over to the Web site of my genius artist friend Leigh. After you see it, you will think I am a cooler person than I am, just for knowing her. That's pretty much how I feel.

Dan and I have been getting a big kick out of this video clip. Before you watch it, you have to understand that apparently, this is from some Japanese reality show, and the girl you will see has been dressed up as a seal and sent to the zoo. This went well until she encountered a predator. No one gets hurt, so don't worry. Just watch.

The lesson is, don't wear a baby seal hat to the zoo.

If you notice, the Google ads are no more. I am not going to reprint the exact phrase generated by a Google ad that resulted in their expulsion from my blog, but suffice it to say that the sound of my indignant yelling finally forced Dan to admit that the ads were perhaps not working out like he'd hoped. If I knew anything about how to manage the coding on my own Web site, they would have been gone a long time ago, but knowledge is power.
So now they are gone, and I think it's safe to say that we will not be experimenting with any content-based advertising again any time soon.
Please enjoy your blue box free reading.

In the last two days, I have met two new people from the motherland who stumbled across this site in random Internet surfing. So please welcome to the blog Randolyn from Oloh, whose son recently started a job in Albuquerque, and Alex, who is a University of New Mexico grad student from Tupelo. Randolyn wants to know how our collective hometown of Oloh, Mississippi, got its name. I have no idea. Any thoughts, Internet folk? And although Alex may not know it, his hometown calls to mind a great Emmylou Harris song called "Boy from Tupelo." Cheers to home state connections. It's not such a big world, really. I love how the Internet makes that true.

I bought a new journal the other day. It was a very impulsive purchase, the sort that you weren't planning, but suddenly makes a lot of sense. Since I was 16 or so, I've always kept a journal, and there is a shelf in our living room filled with the old ones, at least a dozen of them, which no one including Dan will ever read unless I am dead or they have a serious wish to be so. It's kind of like classified information. I could tell you what's in those books, but then I'd have to kill you.
The reason this journal is different is that I still have half of my old one left. Usually, I write on every last page of a journal and then take a long time picking out a new one, like some people would treat buying a car. But as for my last journal, I just quit writing in it last year around the time that I was blogging every day to write updates about Aaron. Then, when I went back to it, I was overwhelmed at how much I would have to write in it for the huge gap in between entries to make sense. I tried a few times, but the reason I have always written in a journal is to help me sort out my thoughts, and right then, journaling would have involved writing out things that I had already thought about and prayed about until there was nothing I could write in a journal that would make matters any clearer to me. Because of the circumstances, my thoughts were remarkably easy for me to understand, and I was writing them here, both for my benefit and to help others stay connected to our family's story so they could pray for us. For a while, I needed to write about what was going on publicly so that we would have the support of our community in a difficult time more than I needed my own internal monologue. I don't know if I realized why I was doing it at the time, but I just gave up the journal.
Then on Sunday Dan and I were in Barnes and Noble, and I wandered over to the wall of journals -- stacks and stacks of beautifully-bound books full of empty, flawless pages. It was so tempting. They had a soft black leather one with lined paper just like I always have to have in my journals, and gold edging on the paper. I picked it up and flipped through it, and the thought came to me that there's no rule that I have to write on every page of my old journal before I can start a new one. And the more I think about it, I like the symbolism of a new book to write in, and leaving the old one unfinished. I still feel like there's nothing I could say in the old book that hasn't been said here on this web site and in my own mind plenty of times.
But now I have thoughts that aren't really ready for public consumption again. And when I picked up that journal, and realized that I wanted to write again, I just walked up to the counter and bought the journal. I've been writing in it for three days, and I'm so happy to have that part of my life back again. It feels like walking back into a quiet room at home after a year at the state fair. If I want to sit in that room and think unfinished, fragmented thoughts, it's alright, because there is no one but me to hear.
So here's to my new journal, and the hope that it will help me to present better-developed thoughts here. You all deserve that much.

Do me a favor today, folks, and say a prayer for Jill Caroll, the 28-year-old journalist who is being held hostage in Iraq by madmen who are threatening to kill her shortly even though she has never done anything to them. Of all the people to kidnap, I am always mystified when journalists and aid workers are taken. Why hurt people who only came to tell the rest of the world your story or to help you? But I realize it's more complicated than that.

I would never be brave enough to go and do what Jill Carroll was doing in Iraq, but as a journalist, I understand the set of principles that led her to do so, and I am praying for her safe return. Please join me in prayer, even if that's not something you normally do.

And if you want to, click here to read a very good column written by a Chicago journalist about this situation. I know that the news media isn't always viewed as the best or most upright aspect of modern culture, but I think this is a good opportunity to remember that really, "the news media" is just a bunch of people, most of whom do what they do because they believe that, as Mulder says on the X-files, "The truth is out there." Or, to quote a better source, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." (John 8:32.)

Weekend three of packing up for the move. We're trying to pack up gradually, so as to avoid a last-minute rush. I've only spent a few hours each weekend packing boxes, and that's a good thing, because packing is boring and really tiring. But I can tell I'm making progress, because there are now lots of piles of boxes taped up and ready to go. I've only made a few tactical errors. For example: Last weekend, I piled up a bunch of boxes in front of a closet door, before I realized that inside that closet, along with another bunch of boxes, was our supply of paper towels and, more importantly, toilet paper. So we got to move those boxes away from the door later. Live and learn.

Anyone have tips on packing dishes?

I know this is my third blog post today, but I have to note that Dan has been watching FIGURE SKATING for the last three minutes and counting. To his credit, he was mostly mocking the male half of the figure skating couple ... (Check this guy out! He has a mullet AND a sequin jumpsuit! It doesn't get much worse than that.) ... but still, he is watching figure skating! I think it's clear that he's trying to fill the void left in his life by the end of football season. That or he is shopping for a jumpsuit of his own. I'll keep y'all posted.

Attention, people! Drop what you're doing and help us welcome to the world baby Elizabeth Marie, the brand new daughter of our good friends Kate and Mike of Enid, Oklahoma! I understand that she will be known as Ellie, which is such a great name. We're glad you're here, Ellie!

Celebrate this new life as you see fit, even if you don't know Mike and Kate. I'm off to Baby Gap online to buy something pink and fluffy for Baby Ellie from her aunt Haley.

Dan is in California this week, for a conference that is habitually scheduled on Valentine's Day. It's a computer geek type of conference, and I'm convinced they get a discount on the conference center for scheduling it that week, and they just figure it doesn't matter because they assume that none of these guys have girlfriends or wives, and therefore can't think of anything more exciting than hearing Bill Gates speak on Valentine's Day. But that's just my personal opinion. Dan actually gave me some great gifts on Sunday, and we're going to celebrate with a night out later in the week. I just tell you this to introduce the following story:

Because of my temporarily-single state, I found myself wading through the consequences of Valentine's Day this evening, as I tried to get some food and go home after a long, long work day. I originally thought I would pick up some takeout from one of my favorite restaurants, only to be informed by the guy on the phone that the wait ... for takeout ... was an hour and a half. So I went to Whole Foods to pick up some of their great pre-prepared food, and had to fight my way through a crowd of men who were, at 6 p.m. on Valentine's Day, buying flowers. The floral area was like a mosh pit, there was so much elbowing and shoving going on. Seriously, gentlemen! It's just one day a year! It's not like you don't know it's coming!

So a poll, male readers: How far in advance did you get ready for Valentine's Day? Make me proud, men. Don't tell me you were one of those guys in the store at 6 p.m.

Or if you were, maybe you want to consider commenting under a pen-name.

A week from today, we were planning to move into our first house. Unfortunately, in the last week, our plans have changed. The people who were selling the house we were going to buy mysteriously changed their minds at the last minute, and now it seems that the deal won't go through. It's a little more complicated than that, but that's probably as much as I should say here.
It's very disappointing, and also frustrating, because as I've mentioned, we had boxed up about half our things, and now we're left with a lot of boxes and nowhere to put them. For now, we'll probably pile them up in the guest room and just hope it won't be too long before we find a house. I'll be deciding what "too long" is based on how many times I have to open one of those boxes to find something ridiculous, like a food processor attachment.

We'll keep you posted on our whereabouts.

Is it just me, or is anyone else getting tired of the Olympics being on TV? If I can't get that music out of my head, I don't know what I'm going to do. Also, I spend most of the time wondering who originally thought something along the lines of "Dude! I bet if we made this super long ice tube, we could slide down it, and if we lived to tell about it we could call it the Luge, and it would be an Olympic sport!"
Of course, Dan wants to watch the Olympic games just because football if over and this represents some sort of carbon-based life form playing a sport on international television. If you think I am exagerrating, consider this: On Sunday, I got up from a nap to find Dan deeply absorbed in watching a sport called curling.
From the hour of this that I was then treated to, I have gathered that curling is an extremely wussy sport probably invented by the British, which involves sliding rocks over ice so that they land in the middle of a little circle. While the rocks slide, men walk along beside the rocks and rub little brushes back and forth in front of the rock, to smooth out the ice so that it rolls faster or slower depending on what they want. Sometimes, it takes several presidential administrations for the rock to make it to the circle.
I think I can honestly say that it is hands-down the most boring thing I have ever seen.
On the other hand, short-track skating is pretty awesome. I don't understand how they can keep moving while they are leaning so much that they can touch the ice with their hands.
But still. It's too much ice.

A question, readers, and later, I'll give you an answer: When you were a kid, what, if anything, did you do with the cardboard tubes left over after your mom had used up a roll of paper towels?

I ask this because tonight in the children's progam class that Dan and I lead every week at our church, we're going to do a craft with those little cardboard tubes, and I am having seecond thoughts about it because I'm not sure if I was the only kid who grew up having fun with those things.

So if y'all tell me what you thought those were for, and it's not too far off from what me and my siblings used to do with them, I'll tell you all about it.

Let's be honest: Even if y'all never played with a cardboard tube in your life, I'll probably still tell you what we did.

The last post elicited some great answers to the burning question: What is the true purpose of those little cardboard tubes you find inside paper towels and toilet paper?
Let's see. We've got people who, when they were children, used the tubes to make mazes for hamsters, kazoos, binoculars, kaleidoscopes, and pretend swords. Then we've got Grant, Kelly's husband, who Kelly says still uses the tubes as trumpets. We're getting warm!
But the true name of these cardboard tubes, as Aaron pointed out in the comments section, is ....
Doo da doos!
Yes. When we were little, our mom, teaching us how to make horn noises through the tubes so we could pretend that we were playing trumpets, told us that the cardboard tubes were actually called "doo da doos," a name that, to a 4-year-old's mind, sounds much like the noise you make when you play it like a horn: "Doo da dooooooo!"
All through my life, even into adulthood, I have referred to these as "doo da doos," and I never thought anything of it until I one day told Dan to "throw away that doo da doo," and he looked at me like I was crazy. So I converted him, and now he, too, refers to them as doo da doos.
So for the last few weeks, we've been collecting doo da doos, and tonight we took them to our church class to let them make decorated cardboard trumpets. And there must be something universal about the magic of a round piece of cardboard, because the minute we handed them to the kids, before we even told them what we were going to do with them, they put them up to their mouths and started making trumpet noises.
It made me laugh and feel homesick all at the same time.
Funny what a stupid little piece of cardboard can do.
Thanks for playing, y'all.

Congratulations to Aaron, who today won a run-off election to become Attorney General of the Student Body Association of Mississippi State University! It was a tough election, with three candidates, and Aaron and Kelly both worked really, really hard to get people to go out and vote. They even made 3,000 Rice Krispie Treats and handed them out on campus to help people with name association. How great is that?
No doubt this is the first of many political victories for my kid brother and his first lady. I've told him I just want to visit Camp David every once in a while.

How I spent my Saturday morning:
Drinking coffee brought to me in bed by Dan.
Reading Walker Percy's "The Moviegoer," which I read years ago, but which I think I am actually getting this time around.
Listening to Elliott Smith's "Figure 8."
My life is so good. Don't ever let me tell you otherwise.

Best passage from the first half of "The Moviegoer," thoughts from a charachter who is having something of an existential crisis, much like the one Percy had in his own life when he had to spend a year in a sanitorium recuperating from tuberculosis, which resulted in his spiritual conversion. These are the words of Binx, the 30-year-old New Orleans stock broker in Percy's novel, who is telling the reader that it has recently occurred to him that there might be a need for him to search for something more significant in his life.

"What is the nature of the search? you ask.
Really, it is very simple, at least for a fellow like me. So simple that is it easily overlooked.
The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. To become aware of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.
What do you seek? God? you ask with a smile.
I hesitate to answer, since all other Americans have settled the matter for themselves and to give such an answer would amount to setting myself a goal which everyone else has reached, and therefore raising a question in which no one has the slightest interest. Who wants to be dead last among on hundred and eighty million Americans? For, as everyone knows, the polls report that 98 percent of Americans believe in God, and the remaining 2 percent are atheists and agnostics, which leaves not a single percentage point for a seeker.
So am I, in my search, a hundred miles ahead of my fellow Americans or a hundred miles behind them? Have 98 percent of Americans already found what I seek, or are they so sunk in the everydayness that not even the possibility of a search has occurred to them?
On my honor, I do not know the answer."

It's an interesting point: As Americans, we tend to make up our minds about something and then just quit thinking about it. So even if we say we believe in God, the idea that we should seek Him doesn't always follow.
I love Walker Percy.

Courtesy of my friends Summer and Kelly, I have taken the What Kind of Princess are You? quiz. Here are the results. I would like to state, for the record, that Dan calls me a princess when I demand my coffee in bed and refuse to kill bugs. But on the other hand, he is currently on a trip to Walmart, at 9 p.m. because I forgot to get contact solution, and I don't want to throw away a perfectly new set of contacts. So it's possible that I'm a little more high-maintenance than I'd like to admit. Here's to knights in shining armor.

The Traditional Princess

You are generous, graceful, and practical with both

feet planted firmly on the ground. You tend

to be a little on the old-fashioned side. You

value home, hearth, and family life and love

to be of service to others.

Role Models: Snow White, Maid Marian

You are most likely to: Discover a hidden talent

for spinning straw into gold.


What Kind of Princess are You? - Beautiful Artwork (Original Music is BACK!!!)
brought to you by Quizilla

Since I have nothing of real significance to say today, I thought I'd ask y'all a question. What is your favorite word?

My favorite word is epiphany. It's such a great-sounding word, with such a great meaning.

Share in the comments section if you want.

This is a special time of year in our home, the time of year when Dan and I fill out competing brackets predicting who we think will emerge victorious in the NCAA National Basketball Tournament. Dan and I have decidedly different methods of choosing our winners.
Dan puts great effort and time into analyzing the records of the teams, their strengths and weaknesses, and how they will most likely play against each other. In effect, he does the math.
I, on the other hand, ask the following series of questions about each team: Who is from a town I have been to, that is in the South, or that I would like to visit some day? If neither team falls into that category, or if it's absolutely clear that the one I like is going to lose, I pick the top-seeded team. But by and large, I go with my gut. I watch zero college basketball prior to March Madness, and I have no idea who has an even remotely decent team.
Here's the kicker: For the last three years, my teams have THUMPED Dan's. The first year we did this, he laughed at me when I explained how I was picking, but his picks were out in the first round, and one of mine went to the finals!
So today, we've chosen our teams. I had a slight conundrum in that I could, conceivably, have pitted Memphis against Tennessee in the final round, but in the end, I chose Duke and Tennesee to go all the way, and Duke to win it all. Dan has Duke and Florida going up against each other at the end, with Florida winning.
From now on, Dan will watch most of the games, and if history repeats itself, I will watch a few and, for the most part, sit back and laugh. The fun part about this is that I have actually come to enjoy watching the tournament, because what everyone says about the virtues of college basketball versus professional leagues is true: In college, it's really anyone's game, and it's so much more emotionally-driven. So it's fun to watch, and a little lighthearted competition with the husband is a nice diversion, too.
Perhaps this will be the year that my reign will end and Dan's more logical system will prevail.
But I doubt it.

This is Sunshine Week, which, if you didn't know, is the week in the newspaper world devoted to the promotion of open government laws. Open government laws vary from state to state, but all states are subject to the federal Freedom of Information Act, and all open government laws are all born out of the principles in the First Amendment and the belief that open government is better than secretive government. (Short sermon on open government and free speech to follow from the rabid newspaper lady.)
The First Amendement is first for a reason, people. As an American citizen, you are entitled to know 99.9 percent of what the leaders in your country, county, city or tiny little town are up to, and if anyone tells you differently, you can almost always be certain that they are lying to you. The First Amendment protects your right to free speech from interference by your government, whether your speech is offensive, religious or just plain absurd. Make no mistake, oh multitudes who aren't so fond of the media: Your right to a free press is directly tied to your right to free speech, free assembly and your freedom of religion. It's all part of the same constitutional amendment. And while you may not like what you read in the newspaper and see on the news on a daily basis, the majority of complaints and lawsuits that take to court the continued upholding of your First Amendment and open government rights are filed by media entities who have been denied access to some government record that should have been handed over with a smile. That is one of the primary functions of a free press, and I'm proud to say, I've been part of newspapers that have gone to the mattresses over things like that. It's the least we can do. Because people have fought and died, and are fighting and dying every day all over the world, for things like this.
So check out this and this and this, and this , and go forth prepared to embrace your rights. It's the least you can do.
End of sermon.

Thursdays make me tired, because there's one whole day until the weekend and I just don't feel like I have the gas to get there.
So, to cheer me along through one more long, long day, tell me what y'all are doing this weekend. Me, I plan to sleep in, clean the apartment, maybe pick up a good book and try to read it over the sounds of Dan screaming at the basketball games on TV. Big fun!
What kind of serious partying will go on in your world? Admit it! You're going to clean the bathroom, too! Or maybe I'm just old.

A sore throat is such a minor complaint, but it makes you feel so, so miserable.
Any great home remedies I should know about?

My favorite series of commercials currently on television are the Volkswagen hip-hop style commercials, where the guy says "V-Dub, representing Deutschland!"
I laugh every time. Enjoy these three.

A while back, I promised y'all a link to the web site of Daniel Meigs, who is the boyfriend of my sister Hannah, and therefore clearly a man of good taste with an eye for beauty. On top of that, Daniel is also a very accomplished photographer. Some of his work is now up on his new web site. Check it out, and go back from time to time, since I understand he is planning to build this site up gradually.

Well, people, hang on. For the second time in three months, we have made an offer on a house that has been accepted. In theory, this means we will move into this home on April 29.

We love this house even more than the first one, which must be our reward for the previous debacle. It's got this huge living area in which our one little couch is going to be swallowed, and a back yard with a real, fully grown tree, a rare commodity in Albuquerque, the high desert. So congratulate us, and pray that this deal goes through like it is intended to do.

And if you have boxes, we're taking those again.

So glad that this story ends well.

Guess where I am?
I am sitting in a big fluffy hotel bed drinking coffee and waiting for room service breakfast. Really. Dan and I are in beautiful Ruidoso New Mexico for the weekend, celebrating our third anniversary a little early. It's actually on April 19th, but what with all the moving to be done in the next few weeks, we'll probably celebrate the actual day by ordering some pizza to eat while we continue to pack boxes.
Ruidoso is a beautiful little ski town, so we'll post some photos when we get back.
Have a good weekend!

This weekend was wonderful. We are really not big activity people, so while Ruidoso is having a slow tourism year because of a lack of snow, and therefore, a lack of ski tourists, we were not there for the skiing, but more for the wandering around in weird little shops and eating. Some day I'll tell you some stories about why I don't go for high-risk sports. (Or low-risk sports for that matter.) But for now, photos from our trip.

Dan getting ready to dig into the room service breakfast I mentioned in my earlier post. It was excellent.

Me on the balcony of our hotel room overlooking Mescalero Lake at the Inn of the Mountain Gods.

Dan goofing off in front of the same magnificent view.

In Ruidoso, we went into this candy store that had ... well, lots of candy. Dan got strawberry ice cream and I bought two pecan turtles. Mmmmm.

The following two photos were taken in front of a store that for some reason, had lots of statues. I don't really know what they sold, because we didn't go in, having no need for a giant-sized statue of a chicken, but we did take some photos. Here is Dan with a baby dinosaur.

Me and two knights in shining armor. One inexplicably shorter than the other.

There are lots of other photos, but I'm tired and I need to go to sleep so that the Daylight Savings Time wallop doesn't render me completely useless tomorrow. Have a good brand new week. Thank you for the kind wishes for our early anniversary, and I'll post more photos soon.

On Wednesday nights, Dan and I teach a class of 3-6 year old kids at our church in a sort of Sunday School class environment while their parents are in a Bible study. We've been doing this for about three years, and I regret that I have not been writing down some of the hilarious things these kids said over that time. But, better late than never.

Tonight, I stopped in the lesson I was teaching about brothers and sisters to ask a question. The Bible story was about when God told Moses to go talk to Pharoah about letting the Israelites leave Egypt. When Moses told God that he didn't want to go, God told him that since Moses' brother Aaron was a good speaker, Aaron would go with Moses to talk to Pharoah. After all this setup, the kid-friendly lesson I was delivering was about how our brothers and sisters can help us and we can help them. Towards the end, I asked the kids what kind of things they thought they could do to help their brothers and sisters this week.

The child next to me was a newcomer to our class, an adorable little blonde-haired blue eyed boy. He raised his hand, so I called on him to answer the question, expecting to hear something like "You could help them make up their bed," or "You could share your toys."

Instead, the little boy paused a moment, looked at me hard and said "You're pretty big."

No further comment was offered, so I just agreed that yes, I am pretty big, and asked the question again. But then I tried not to laugh, because seriously, where does that kind of comment come from? I doubt the kid was calling me fat, but I would love to see some kind of flow chart documenting what question he thought he was answering with that pronouncement.

Thus ends tonight's installment of "Things Our Church Kids Said." If you want, I'll tell you another one next week.

Greetings.
I write to you from my bed, where I am propped up waiting for the Advil to kick in and make me once again able to move without agony after a weekend of packing boxes. You would think that after the first round of this, I would figure out some kind of technique that does not involve quite so much bending and lifting, but alas, I do not learn from my stupid, stupid mistakes, and so I will be hobbling to work tomorrow.
I am mostly writing to ask for your patience in the next few weeks, as blog entries will probably be few and far between. I'm not saying that I won't post at all, just that things are going to be a little crazy for a while. Here's what I mean: In the next 21 days, I will get on a plane and go out of town for four days, Dan and I will celebrate our official three-year wedding anniversary, Dan and I will close on our house, Dan will get on a plane and go out of town for five days, I will start moving carloads of small things into the house at night after work while he's gone, and the day after he gets back, a bunch of very nice people from our church will come and help us move all the furniture into our brand new house. Then, we will begin the process of unpacking the boxes and trying to decipher the incoherent code words I have scrawled on the side of the aforementioned boxes in a futile effort to make the process simpler. All of this will be accomplished while we hold down full-time jobs! If there were cameras, this would make a great reality show. Who will crack first under pressure? Who will get packing-taped to the wall by an irritable spouse? Who will show up to work with Sharpie marks on their face? And who will survive to win the big prize: A three-bedroom, two-bath house on the West Side. Find out on tonight's installment of "First Time Homeowners!"
But seriously, if you feel alone and abandoned in this space in the coming weeks, hang on, because we really will be back.

I know I was just saying that I'm not going to be posting very much these days, but I am fickle and even though I should be packing boxes tonight, I don't want to. There you have it
So instead , here are more photos from our trip. Since we were in the southern part of the state, we swung by Alamogordo, New Mexico, where Dan lived when he was a little boy. His dad was stationed at Holloman Air Force Base twice, if I'm not mistaken. Using Goosle maps and Dan's sense of direction, we actually managed to find his old house on Shadow Mountain Drive.

A few years ago, a college friend of mine drove with me to Yazoo City, Mississippi, where we drove to my childhood home on East 16th Street. It was a weird experience seeing it again after years, and realizing that the street really isn't that big, and the house isn't either, and my world was generally a lot smallere than I thought it was at the time, age eight. Dan and I had a good conversation about the Childhood Home effect, a kind of surreal feeling that if you just turn around fast enough, you might see your childhood self jumping over a fence or coming home from school.
But the main point is that now Dan will tell you why this house is known in Wachdorf family lore as The Scorpion House.

"When we lived in Alamogordo our house had a nastry scorpion infestation. Scorpions would show up in the mornings in various corners of the house, usually above one of my sisters' beds. I can't count the number of times we had exterminators come and spray the attic to no avail. The scorpion infestation continued. It got to a point were we would spray the scorpions and place the deads ones in the guest shower, which we rarely used. This worked well untill we had an out of town guest come and we forgot to clean out the shower. Needless to say you could hear the screams from quite a distance."

Hahaha! What's your favorite Childhood House story?

Today I was on a shuttle bus from the airport to the parking lot where I had left my car over the weekend. Since Easter Sunday is not a big travel day, I was the only one on the shuttle at the moment, so I had a lot of time to think about the experience of shuttle-riding. As I was doing so, I noticed that a Bach concerto was playing over the sound system in the shuttle instead of the rap music/country music/ bad pop music station you're usually treated to.
Then I noticed that over the luggage rack there is a dry erase board that usually says "Your driver is:" and then the name of the driver. But today, the sign was adjusted to read "You are listening to: BACH!"

It was so random and funny that I tipped that guy extra just for making a valiant effort to inflict some culture on the masses, even if he is driving a shuttle. I think I'm going to start doing something similar, like reading great literature out loud while I walk from my office to my parking garage on the off-chance that someone might enjoy it and be moved to go out and read a book. In that case, though, I suppose I would have to tape a sign on my shirt saying "You are listening to: FLANNERY O' CONNOR."

It was funny, and it made me laugh, but it also made me think. If you stand around in our culture for more than ten minute, it's clear that people want tacky reality TV, mediocre fiction and talentless music, and from a commercial perspective, you gotta give 'em what they want. It's just capitalism, and I don't have a beef with that. But every once in a while, shouldn't someone try to give 'em a little bit of what they need, too? I think so. And now I'm not alone. The shuttle driver and I will start a revolution. I'll let you know how it goes. Or call me up if you want to join.
I'll let you pick your own book to read and everything.

Here is the free advice I am dispensing for the day.
Ladies: No matter how enthralled you are with the new sandals you bought for the summer, no matter how comfortable you think they are, do not succumb to your desire to wear them for the first time on a day when you know for a fact that you must make a professional visit to Local University With Completely Inadequate Parking, where you will be forced to park about 6 miles away from where you need to go. You will, of course, be late, and will be forced to speed walk in an extremely unprofessional manner across campus, and by the time you get to the third floor of that building, you will have blisters on your feet that will make you want to walk barefoot back to your car after the meeting rather than suffer through that walk again. It will also not look good when you go back to your office and use up all the Band-Aids in the first aid kit by taping them all to your feet.
Simple, straightforward advice. That's what we're all about here.
Now, does anyone have any tips for blister treatment? I'm considering wearing bedroom slippers to work tomorrow.

The Spurs just lost to Dallas in overtime and are out of the series. It's not a good night in the Wachdorf house. But it was nice to see Gregg Popovich and Avery Johnson hug each other and look really sincere about it at the end of a bitter seven-game series that came down to a handful of points each game. That's what I like about the Spurs, and therefore former Spur Johnson - they are nice boys, gentleman, even when they lose. So there's part of me that supposes it's OK that we lost, since we lost to such a nice coach.

But then I think about Mark Cuban and it just makes me mad all over again.

Better luck to your team, readers. Perhaps I'll consider rooting for you now that the real best team in the world is out of the running.

Recently, I took the Myers-Briggs personality test for the first time in a number of years. (At least, I took an online version ... I seem to remember the real one being more in-depth.) Personality tests are something that you seem to be called upon to do a lot when you're in college, but that seems kind of silly to me now that I've been out of college for five years and realize how much I was still kind of trying to find my way around my own personality back then.

For instance, on the Myers-Briggs test, the first letter of your four-letter personality profile is either "E" for extrovert or "I" for introvert. Back in college, I used to test right on the line between the two. Now, I consistently test out as an introvert, something I used to doubt but am now convinced is accurate.

Perhaps that is why I so enjoyed this article, "Caring for Your Introvert" that talks about some of the misconceptions related to introverted people and how to deal with them. It made me laugh, because as an Extrovert married to an Introvert, I think Dan is competely mystified sometimes by my need to just ... be ...alone. But bless his heart, he tries to understand me, and if you are an introvert, or have an introvert in your life, you should read this. It's just about the best thing I've read on the subject.

And if you want to read something really funny, check out the descriptions of my personality type, the INFJ (Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling, Judging) and Dan's ESTP (Extraverted, Sensing, Thinking, Perceiving). Notice how none of those letters are the same? It must be true what they say about opposites attracting.

If you want to take the test, go here.

I got new glasses this week for the first time in five or six years. I usually wear contacts, and I haven't bothered to replace my glasses as my prescription has changed over the years because I never needed them enough to make it worth the money. But this year's unusually dry and windy weather has made it really uncomfortable to wear contacts somedays, so I broke down and bought new ones, since I'm probably legally blind in my old pair. Dan is a brave man for spending about two hours with me trying on pair after pair of glasses until I found these. They're MUCH bolder than my old pair of glasses, but that was kind of what I was going for. I figure, if you're going to wear glasses, you should at least wear some cool glasses. I'm shooting for a look that's more Lisa Loeb than Buddy Holly, but let me know if I'm succeeding. There's a 30-day return policy on these.

Greetings. The recent dearth of entries on the blog has been partially due to my own laziness, but also due to the fact that my mom has been in town since last Thursday. She came out to help us with house stuff, and I honestly didn't know what we would have to do, since most of the major unpacking has already taken place. But I had forgotten how great my mom is. In the last few days, Mom has helped me do so many little projects that I probably would have taken a year to get around to if she weren't here. We did some yard work, clearing up my flower beds and pruning my rose bushes. We took down a border in our bathroom that featured a variety of colorful fish, cute, but not really the look I was going for at the moment. We cleaned our garage, which is now incredibly organized, with hooks for mops and brooms and yard tools, and a place for Christmas ornaments and all of Dan's radio controlled car stuff. We went consignment furniture shopping to try to find a bargain armchair to help with the fact that currently if we have more than three people over, several of them have to sit on the floor. When we found the dream armchair, she bought it for us as a housewarming gift. And today, when I went to work and mom stayed at the house, she did all our laundry and various other completely demeaning jobs like washing out our trash cans and wiping off our windsills. Tomorrow, she has proclaimed that she is going to wash our windows before some people come to install the blinds that we ordered, and I am horrified that anyone is going to do such a hot, sweaty, dirty job without being paid for it. But I know there's nothing I can say that will stop her from doing it anyway. She's my mom, and she loves us. You can't reallly argue with that.
Recently, I realized that it's been five years since I graduated from college. About six months after that, I moved out of my parents house and even though it wasn't my plan to stay gone for so long, I never did come back. While I think everyone grows up a lot in college, I count it as five years since I've really been on my own as an adult. They've been great years, and I think my parents did a good job of preparing me to be a functioning adult. I can keep my house and pay bills and do it all without thinking much about it, because that's what adults do. But I've realized this week that every once in a while, even though you can do it yourself, it's so nice to have someone just take care of you. That's why everybody needs their mama, even when they're all grown up.

A bit of housekeeping: Due to an absolutely ENORMOUS round of spam that got through our comment filter and was posted in the comments section of the blog, we've put some new safeguards in place that may cost you a little extra time if you want to leave a comment here.

You'll notice that at the bottom of the form you're used to filling out in order to leave a comment, there is now an extra question you must answer. It should be an easy one if you made it through kindergarten, but it should also make it a little harder for web-trolling programs written to post mass comments to get through. Try it out, let us know what has worked for you if you've had this problem with a blog, and if you have any problems with the new procedure, email us at danandhaley(at)wachdorf.com.

Trust me, it's for a good cause: Most of the spam that got put up here recently contained links to really vile pornography, and we don't want y'all to have to deal with that. Thanks to Cheryl and Jon for alerting us to the spam and some other technical issues.

Thanks for reading, and I promise you some real blogging soon.

Here's a tip: When you give blood at a blood bank in the middle of the day and the nice nurses tell you to drink lots of fluids for the rest of the day and make sure to eat a good meal soon, you might want to listen to them. You might not want to totally ignore them, drink no fluids, eat very little lunch and then run around in the blazing heat to various appointments getting in and out of your progressively more oven-like car. If you do that, you might wind up at home at the end of the day wondering why you're sweating, seeing green spots and generally having the feeling that although you've never actually passed out before, this must be what it feels like right before you do.

I'll be spending the evening on the couch trying to bring my blood sugar back up. What's up in your world? I've missed you all and promise to blog more soon.

Dan is a wonderful husband for many reasons, but one of them is that he understands what is going to make a good gift for me. Lucky for him, it's usually nothing that's too expensive. In most cases, I'd be just as happy with a really good book or a really good CD as I would with anything that cost a lot more. His big gift coup was buying me an MP3 player for Christmas, which has changed my life. Now, I can drive in my car, and walk around on the street, and work in my office, all while plugged into my own personal radio station, which only plays things I like. It's a dream come true.

Tonight, Dan brought a CD home for me as a random nice gift because he's a sweet man and he typically keeps a running list of CDs that I want. (There are always 5-10 albums on this list. I'm kind of a freak.) Tonight's gift was Radiohead's "The Bends." I have loved this album for more than 10 years, but have previously only had a really bad tape of it for reasons that will be explained later.

So now I'm siting here soaking reliving my love of this album circa 1995, and it made me think about five records that were huge for me when I was 14-17 or so,and, therefore, had a dramatic impact on my musical tastes from then on. It also made me realize that almost all of them were bootlegged for me by my very much cooler than me friend Leigh, who made me tapes because I didn't have a CD player for a long time. I have since grown up and bought legal copies of these records, but my love of them has not faded, even though in some cases, it's kind of embarrassing to admit how much I love them. But I thought I'd share my list, and you can share yours, if you're the kind of person who can remember what kind of music you liked when you were 15.

So without further rambling, here are the Top Five allbums that rocked my socks off from 1994-1998 (and still do), in no particular order:

Counting Crows, "August and Everything After." If I knew how many times I have listened to this album, I would be able to count up the countless hours and days of my life that have been narrated by the voice of Adam Duritz. And while that might be a really depressing number if I thought about it in terms of what I could have been getting done instead, I can't say I regret it.

Indigo Girls "Swamp Ophelia." I know, I know, the Indigo Girls are terminally un-hip, girly, and otherwise questionable. But I don't care. They make beautiful music. True confession: In college, I was the less impressive part of a cover duo/band made up of me and my friend Julie. We almost exclusively sang Indigo Girls songs in the coffee shop of our college. And no one stopped us. No, there is no surviving video of this unfortunate phase, and today I would have to have a great deal of some controlled substance in my system to do any such audacious thing. But it was big fun.

Radiohead, "The Bends." Radiohead today of course has a borderline cult-like following of geeks who are perfectly cool with the fact that they turn out an album once every six years or so and that the aforementioned albums seem (to me) to be getting less and less comprehensible as time passes. I don't have any issues with their later work, but I've never loved anything they've done like I love "The Bends." The video for "Just (You do it to yourself)" is my favorite video of all time, and in 1995, my family did not have cable, so the fact that I've ever even seen it is a testament in itself to my fascination. Long live Thom Yorke.

Vigilantes of Love, "Blister Soul." For this one, I have to thank my friend Cara. Vigilantes of Love is an ever-changing lineup of musicians whose essential purpose is to back up the musical stylings of Athens, Georgia's Bill Mallonee, who has been referred to as the Flannery O' Connor of folk music. He's a believer with both feet firmly planted in the fact that we're all sinners in need of grace, and I think he's one of the finest songwriters of the last 20 years, Christian or otherwise. Keep your CCM music, I'll take Bill Mallonee any day. The VOL song "Skin" is kind of my personal theme song for a lot of reasons. If you're going to check out Mr. Mallonee in all his glory, I highly reccomend that you buy the compilation album titled "V.O.L." Heck, I'll buy you a copy if you want me to.

And finally, we have Ben Folds Five's "Whatever and Ever Amen." Piano! Bass! Great weird backup vocals! What's not to love?

Honorable mention goes to R.E.M.'s "Automatic for the People," Jeff Buckley's "Grace," Jimmy Eat World's "Clarity," Sarah McLachlans's "Fumbling Towards Ecstacy," Pedro the Lion's "It's Hard to Find a Friend," and Toad the Wet Sprocket's "Dulcinea."

So now ... your turn.

So Dan is out of town this week, at a "business conference" he attends every year ... in Las Vegas. I'm pretty sure it's just a big excuse for a bunch of computer hacker nerds to get together and see who can come up with the weirdest things to do to one another's computers.

In any event, I'll have some time on my hands this week, and I've ordered some movies I've been wanting to watch on Netflix. Here are my selections: Monsoon Wedding, Everything is Illuminated, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, and The Office Season One (the British version, which I've heard is better than the American version).

Pretty much all of these come highly reccommended and I'm looking forward to watching them, but since I have a hard time making really stupid choices, I think I'll let y'all tell me which one to watch first. I'll post my reviews as I watch them, so if there's anything in that list you really want to hear about from my skewed perspective, or anything you have found particularly good, speak now or forever hold your peace (Chris Carr, you whiner, you and your wife better come see us anyway.)

In case you were waiting for my movies reviews here is an update on the progress of the Haley Wachdorf Film Festival: Apparently, the overall lack of concern with time that pervades the culture of the great state of New Mexico (Which non-natives affectionately refer to as the "Land of Manana," a variation on the state's actual motto "The Land of Enchantment") also affects the delivery schedule of Netflix in the state. Which is to say that my movies aren't here yet. They'll be here manana ... ish. So since I have plans tomorrow night, the festival is delayed for a little while. Good thing I have books. And my reading chair. Stay tuned, if you care.

Since I am not writing much these days, please take a moment and visit a few of the blogs I visit every day. I keep saying that I'm going to get one of those sidebars that links to your friends' blogs, but in the meantime, I'll start posting a few links at a time. Today, we'll start with people I actually know, and whose blogs I check on a daily basis. I check a lot of blogs every day, so eventually, we'll get to People I Don't Know At All, and Who Would Probably Think It's Weird That I Read Their Blog.

But for today, people I actually know.

Rebecca.

Charity

The Grand (Formerly Charity, Renae Joie and Brook, now Renae and Jason.)

Bryonie and Josh

When these people don't post for a while, or go on vacation, I feel sad and lonely in my online world. So go show them some readership love.

We're headed out of town to celebrate the marriage of Dan's sister, Dinah, to a wonderful man named Chris. So there will be yet another lengthy silence here. But in the meantime, amuse yourselves by viewing the following blogs. These blogs fall into the category of People I Know from Church, or, as I like to call them "The Evil People Who Forced Me to get a Blogspot Password." I must have missed the memorandum endorsing Blogspot as the hosting forum of choice for the PCA.

Kelly (Who just moved away and broke our hearts.)
Summer
Tim
Pinky
Mike (He also moved away, but we handled it with reasonable composure. Barely.)
Patrick and Jasmine (Who had the audacity to move to Austin in spite of the fact that they are not in the military, and were, therefore, not expected to move away ever ever ever.)
Jennifer

More links are coming, so if your blog hasn't turned up here yet, I'm probably just trying to figure out how to categorize your blog so that it looks like I have some kind of logical pattern behind my blog-reading addiction.
Back in a few days with photos.

Hello, all. We are back from the wedding, which was wonderful and perfect and very, very tiring, as weddings tend to be, no matter whose they are. We got back to our house at about 12:30 on Sunday evening, and have been trying to get caught up on sleep since. We must be the oldest 26-year-old couple on the face of the earth, because we were completely wiped out after three days of wedding festivities.

But before I forget, I have to share two more Jesus signs for you to add to your collection, one that I saw myself and one that my Dad told me about.
Monday morning when I was driving to work in a haze of sleep deprivation, inhaling coffee from a travel mug and praying that the day would go quickly and allow me to go home and go to sleep at a resonable hour like 6:30, I found myself following a minivan much too closely in traffic. As in, had they slammed on their brakes, I would have been wearing my coffee instead of drinking it. And from that vantage point, I was able to read the following bumper sticker. The punctuation is rendered here exactly as it appeared on the Caravan:

"Do you follow JESUS this close?"

I have to admit, I laughed, and I quit tailgatng them.

Then today, my dad called me from his truck, as he does occasionally, to pass on the following jewel that apparently is displayed on the sign of one of the churches of the Baptist persuasion near our family home in Sumrall. This one requires no further explanation, feel free to groan, or laugh to keep from crying if you want.

"Be an organ donor. Give your heart to Jesus."

I think I'm going to offer a reward to the first person who can prove my hypothesis that there is some kind of massive list of these cheesy slogans that is circulated by well-meaning, but theologically impaired churches all over the country. People can't just be coming up with these things on their own.

Pictures soon. Sleep now.

Here at last are the long-promised photos from the wedding. But first, a few words about being part of the Wachdorf/Dubovik family. I am a relative newcomer to this clan, having joined only three-and-a-half years ago, so I don't exactly qualify as an expert. But if I have learned anything about being loved and welcomed in this family, as I have been, it is that it will not be a quiet process. Nor will there be a lot of sleep involved. Basically, you should eat your Wheaties if you're going to hang with this group.

I should clarify my meaning with some background. In my family, as everyone gets older, the way we enjoy one another's company is by cooking gigantic meals, drinking some good wine, having a long conversation during which we usually laugh a lot, and then we either lie around in a daze fom the cholesterol, or we watch a movie, or sit on the pier, or in some other way enjoy a period of silence. Then we go to bed and no one except my dad gets up until we absolutely must eat something or risk failing to meet our weight-gain quota for the visit, which is firmly set at five pounds a piece. Rinse and repeat.

There are some similarities between a Rice family event and a Wachdorf/Dubovik event. Food is involved with the Wachdorfs, and it's good food. There's also a lot of talking. But the fundamental difference becomes clear at 11:30 at night or so. Around this time, my family is usually at least starting to ponder sleep. Not so the Wachdorf/Duboviks. Eleven-thirty is EARLY for these people. Let me tell you a story, in case you don't believe me. On Thursday evening, Dan and I arrived in San Antonio, suitcases in tow, ready to celebrate the wedding of Dan's sister Dinah and her fiancee Chris. However, since we arrived at 11 p.m. and didn't get to the house until midnight, I was pretty much assuming that we would sneak into the house quietly so as to avoid waking up the rest of the family, go to bed, and start the partying the next day. But I had forgotten the basic tenet of Life in the Wachdorf Family, which is: Thou Shalt Not Sleep if thy Blood Kin are Anywhere Within a 150 mile Radius.

Well, Amen. Because when we walked into the kitchen that night, we were greeted by no fewer than 10 family members, who all appeared as chipper as if they had just gotten up from a nice four-hour nap, except that they hadn't. So hugs and kisses ensued, and during that process, I heard words I was sure I must have been dreaming into existence. But no, it was not a dream, but rather my sister-in-law Hannah informing Dan and I that we were expected to leave the house momentarily to join the bride, groom, and friends for drinks. I was on the verge of refusing on grounds that it was, umm, way past my bedtime, when Dan's aunt Jerlene, a woman who has FOUR SONS, said she wanted to come. And I mean, if the woman with four kids wants to go out, your 26-year-old childless self is just going to look like an utter wimp if you don't go. So we went, and it was great fun, and we got back at 2:30 a.m., whereupon the bride, Dinah, and sister Hannah proceeded to talk SOME MORE and somehow sucked me into continuing to have fun with them just exactly as if we were 13 and at some kind of high-powered slumber party, until about 3:30, at which point, I collapsed. Rinse and repeat.

Perhaps that story will explain why, in the one photo in which I appear in the following set, I have a sort of dazed look going on. It might also help explain why it has taken me a week to post these photos ... I've been going to bed at 7:30 every night in a desperate attempt to catch up. But that is totally worth it because we had an absolutely fabulous time at the wedding, and it was the first time I got to spend any significant amount of time with a lot of Dan's side of the family. And it turns out that they are wonderful, loving, hilariously funny people. I wish we lived nearer to them so we could hang out with them more. I'm sure we'd get used to the sleep deprivation, and I know for a fact we'd laugh even more than we do now. So with that, many thanks to the Wachdorf/Dubovik family for taking me in with such open arms over the last few years. I feel so rich.

And now, the pictures.

Dinah, Hannah, flower girl Dani, and I spent the morning at the hair salon getting beautiful before the big event. This photo was taken moments before I went on a Starbucks run that pretty much saved my life. Rest assured that this was not the final product of the hair lady, and that Dinah was much more enthused than she looks here.

A few hours later, we were in the bride's room getting ready to go and being art-directed by a very enthusiastic woman with a European accent who was taking the photos and at one point had Hannah and I holding the back of Dinah's dress aloft so that the train could serve as a backdrop for a portrait of Dinah. Since it was a pretty lengthy train, Hannah and I were starting to feel our arms give out at one point, but we soldiered on, because being a bridesmaid is not about you and your joint pain. It's about the bride, and we were committed to that. In the end, that was the most hardcore moment of commitment Hannah and I had to exhibit, since Dinah was the world's least demanding bride, but here is Hannah helping Dinah get into her dress.

And then, at three o' clock in the afternoon, Dinah and Chris got married, and it was beautiful. Here is the happy couple. Much joy to Dinah and Chris Gilbert.

As ringbearers and flower girl in the wedding were Sammy, Dani and Blaine, triplets and close friends of the Wachdorf family. They nearly stole the show walking down the aisle in their miniature adult outfits and cherubic smiles. Here they are posing for the paparazzi with Dinah, Chris, and Hannah.

Dan and I in our matching chocolate brown ensembles:

The next day, we went to church with the family and then everyone came over to help with some cleanup-related activities, whereupon ensued the Folding of the Tulle. Behold Hannah and Jerlene in action:

There was a great deal of cake left over after the house, and at one point in the afternoon, this resulted in Hannah getting a nice fistful of it smushed into her face by her boyfriend, Josh, aided, of course, by her big brother Dan. Here are Hannah and Josh washing up in the kitchen sink.

And as the credits roll, here are some photos of the family we spent time with during the wedding. To the Wachdorfs and Duboviks and other last names I have failed to remember, thank you for traveling all the way to San Antonio. I know it meant a lot to Dinah and it was fantastic for me to spend time with you as well. Who can we marry off next?
From left are Papa (Dan's grandad), Dan's mom, Angela bending down in front (Dan's cousin), Aunt Kim, Nana (Dan's grandmother), and Aunt Jerlene, the coolest mother of four in the Western Hemisphere.

From the Wachdorf side, Dan's Aunt Diana far right, and her girls Tracey, left, and Whitney, center.

And last but not least, we have Maggie, the Wachdorf dog, who really runs the show. I think it's a sign of what kind of weekend it's been when even the dog looks kind of worn out.

Another blog I read is dooce.com, which is actually very popular reading with a whole lot of people, so many that its author now supports her family off the advertising revenues. (Let me know any time you're prepared to make me a similar offer.) Heather Armstrong is kind of a blogging legend for many reasons, one of them being that she once got fired for writing about work on her blog, but it helps that she is a truly funny woman and a great writer, even when you don't agree with her. And be forewarned, you will most likely be offended by something on her blog if you read it long enough.
But this post made me laugh so hard I cried big, rolling tears and had to step away from the lap top. So I think you should read it. For background, Leta is Heather's daughter, and Jon is her husband.

It's probably a result of being a person who works in media, but I find an awful lot to be annoyed with in television news broadcasts, especially cable. Most of the time, I just don't watch because I don't need the blood pressure spike. But in recent weeks, with the re-emergence of the JonBenet Ramsey case, everything that I loathe about the way news gets done in our time has been shoved to the forefront.

Now, with the news that John Mark Karr apparently had nothing to do with anything related to this girl's death, I keep wondering if any of the news organizations that gave this non-story such obscenely constant and completely un-examined coverage will be issuing public apologies. I think they should. But somehow I doubt it will happen.

In any case, Dan and I have both enjoyed a couple of pieces of media criticism that the Christian Science Monitor has written in recent weeks examining how it has come to be that a story like this can come to receive more coverage than, I don't know, genocide in Africa or that pesky war we're still involved in in Iraq.

I think that this and this are good reading on the topic. So read if you want. They're saying it better than I can. Especially since my head will explode if I think about it much longer.

You know your husband loves you when you develop a fever blister and he is willing to go to Walgreen's to fill a prescription that normally indicates that the purchaser has, for lack of a more polite term, a social disease.

I am getting ready to leave on a trip that is one of the highlights of my year. It's not going to be quite what it usually is this year, due to the unavoidable absence of a couple of members of the group. But I'm very much looking forward to it. We will miss you, girls. We love you and the cabin misses you too.

I'll be back on Tuesday. In the meantime, stop by the blogs of a couple of friends and mentors of mine. David Stevens is the editor of the Clovis News Journal, and is the man who gave me my first job in newspapers back in 2002, when there was very little real evidence that this was even remotely a good idea. David convinced me to move to Clovis, taught me everything I know about newspapers, including that there is no crying in journalism and that sometimes you have to play hardball, and he is one of my heroes. Still, I like to think I have some influence over him, too. After all, he did get a blog after he started reading mine. His blog is "Falling, With Style" and I have linked directly to a great post he wrote about his anniversary with his wonderful wife, Rhonda.

Get Religion is a blog headed up, in part, by Terry Mattingly, religion columnist and known to those who love him as Tmatt. Terry is one of the leaders of a journalism program in Washington D.C. that recruits students from Christian colleges and unversities, which often don't have established journalism programs, but often have students who would like to get into the field. (This lack of journalism programs by evangelical schools is another soapbox of mine, but that's for another day.) Tmatt admitted me into the program in the summer of 2000 based on a set of clips that, once again, indicated very little about why this might be a good idea. And on the other side of that month in Washington, I knew I wanted to be a journalist. More importantly, I felt like it might be something I could do, because Tmatt believed I could do it. Six years later, I'm a newspaper reporter, and that's a very important calling to me.

Tmatt's blog is run by a group of media types who critique and analyze mainstream media coverage of religion.

These men taught me a lot, and in the terms of human influence, they collectively set in motion a chain of events that got me to New Mexico, where I started dating Dan, where we fell in love, got married, moved to Albuquerque and on and on and on. In retrospect, it's always tempting to remember the moments that ultimately changed your life as having this radiant glow around them. I'm pretty sure that when I met Tmatt, and later, David, I was mostly just incredibly nervous with that unique form of anxiety that comes from knowing you're in over your head. But when I look back, it's hard not to see that it was all meant to be.

Happy Labor Day.

On this fine Saturday morning, I have about a dozen errands to run, and I'm pretty much ready to go. I've had some coffee, showered, made a list and generally am prepared to conquer the world. But here I sit at 11:30, in my house. And do you know why? Because my keys are currently sitting inside my car, which is in the driveway, locked. Dan, who is at an all-day radio-controlled car race, has the other key in his pocket.

We set ourselves up for this last night, when we were trying to be smart. Dan, knowing that he would need to be sure to have all of his RC car related paraphrenalia in his real car (and believe me, there's a lot of paraphrenalia associated with this hobby) in time to leave for the race early this morning, decided to load it all up in his car last night. However, since that meant his car was now full of a lot of relatively expensive hobby equipment, we didn't want to leave it parked in the driveway. So we decided to put it in the garage before we went to attend a going away party for some friends from church who are moving in a few weeks. Thus, I got into my car, using my keys, and backed it out of the garage. Dan then parked his car in the garage, using his keys with my spare key attached to them, and came and joined me in my car.

After the party, Dan drove home using his set of keys, so I did what I always do with anything that I'm holding and don't need to use right at the moment, and dropped my keys on the floor of the car, where they stayed as we got out of the car, locked it (since it would be sitting out in the driveway all night and all) and went to bed, secure in the knowledge that we had outsmarted all manner of would-be car thieves.

Dan's bringing me his keys right now, taking a break from his races to come and rescue me from calling a locksmith yet again (this is not the first time this has happened to us, but that's a long story). And the only reason I'm telling this story is because as I was standing at the window a few moments ago, pondering what I should do, I glanced up and saw our two college degrees, which sit proudly on the top of a bookshelf in our office, and I felt like I should probably just mail mine back to my alma mater with a note reading "Thanks for the excellent education in literature and writing. Too bad you couldn't teach me any common sense."

Tonight, I had a transcendental experience. Dan and I were sitting on the couch, when the first preview I've seen for the motion picture version of All the King's Men played on television. I almost cried.

I probably should not go and see this movie. It's almost certainly going to break my heart to see the elaborately constructed plot and characters of Robert Penn Warren's absolutely masterful novel broken down into anything that would fit into a marketable movie length. But I'm going anyway, because they've sold me with the casting. Sean Penn, Jude Law, Anthony Hopkins and Kate Winslet. I can't resist, and I've been looking forward to seeing it ever since I found out it was being made into a movie in Louisiana. The movie was supposed to be released almost a year ago, but I've heard the schedule was thrown off by Hurricane Katrina. It's out on September 22, and I've decided it's a congratulatory present to me from the entertainment industry for getting through a massive work deadline that falls that day.

The rest of you have two weeks to read the book if you want to know why you, too, should be geekily ecstatic about the movie. I'll loan you my copy. Call me.

Now if someone could just recognize what a fantastic family drama Eudora Welty's "The Optimist's Daughter" would make.

It recently came to my attention that both Kandid Kiwi and Motherhood had tagged me to do a meme, and I didn't know because I've been woefully behind in my blog reading lately. So in an effort to be a good Internet citizen, here are my answers.

Three things I am doing right now: Trying to feel sleepy enough to go to bed after taking a ridiculously long nap this (Sunday) afternoon, resisting the incredibly powerful temptation to long into my work email account and get a head start on Monday’s inevitable landslide of concerns, and watching “Mythbusters” with my hubby, Dan.

Three nicknames: Tuna Tummy, Big Girl (both of those childhood names given courtesy of my dad) and Hales, which you are not allowed to call me unless you are one of two people. You know who you are.

Three people that make me laugh: My friend Liz, all my siblings (I know that's four people, but they all slay me and I can't pick one.) and my husband, who is never afraid to look ridiculous if it will make me smile.

Three things on my floor: Two framed pictures I’ve been meaning to hang on our wall for months now, Dan’s tennis shoes, and a box of instant oatmeal I’m going to take to work with me for snacks more healthy than what’s in the vending machine.

Three things I can do: I can write a little, I can wiggle my ears, and I can make a mean roasted chicken thanks to Real Simple magazine.

Three things that I love (things, not people): Good books, clean sheets, and a perfect cup of coffee.

Three people I’m tagging: Charity, Bryonie, and Rebecca. You knew it was going to come to this, ladies.

I've been meaning to blog for about a week now that Time magazine recently had an edition (Sept. 18) that seemed tailor-made to make me thankful that I subscribe. First, the cover story was about the resurgence of Health and Wealth theology in the American church. It seemed to me to be very well done, and included a great sidebar contrasting the scriptures used by both sides of the debate -- Yes, God does want you to be rich, and No, He doesn't. Good stuff, and very good to see a major magazine tackle an issue that could easily be ignored.

The second thing that made me happy in that edition was an excellent review of All the King's Men. It's shorter and easier to read than mine, so check it out, and raise your glass to Time magazine. You know you love the media.

OK, fellow New Mexico residents: Please share with me your tips for avoiding tracking into your home those little prickly things that get stuck in the carpet and then embedded in the soles of your feet. I don't know if they're called sand burs or what. All I know is that in the last 24 hours, I've gotten FOUR of them stuck in my feet and had to spend subsequent minutes pulling them out, which is a painful process, and I need to know how to avoid this in the future. I await your sage advice. For now, I'm wearing flip flops indoors at all times.

I know, my life is very glamorous and exciting. Don't be jealous.

This makes me so sad I could cry. Dan and I had our first date at the Guadalajara Cafe in Clovis in May of 2002. The story I'm linking to is written by my former newspaper, and it's a sad story to tell. Not only does Guadalajara have some of the best enchiladas known to man, they also have exceptionally short doors, a fact that six-foot-six Dan failed to notice while he was trying to hold the door for me while looking sideways and talking to me at the same time. He should have ducked, but instead, he smacked his head on the door frame. It looked like it hurt, but it was kind of funny, so we laughed, and that took away that weird, awkward feeling you have on a first date, and it was pretty much gone from then on. I never felt awkward around Dan again. We went back to my little apartment and sat on the porch and talked until 1 a.m. or so, and less than a year later, we got married. I had fond fantasies of taking my grandchildrend to the Guadalajara to show them the place where their future got started over plates of fabulous food. Now the restaurant is closing. I suppose it's the inevitable fate of small businesses in small towns that are coming to look more and more like everywhere else, but it's a shame. It's probably no consolation to the owners, but we'll remember it fondly.

We're really not. We've just been busy. Very very busy.

To keep the blog from being blank, and to keep Chris from whining yet AGAIN, I will tell you that I want to go and see the upcoming movie, "Stranger Than Fiction." It has so many of the things I look for in a film: Emma Thompson, Will Ferrell, a plot about writing, and most importantly, the guy who plays Buster on Arrested Development and is thus my all time favorite actor from one of my all time favorite shows. Who's with me?

Happy Friday, people.

By my count, I have posted all of six times in the month of October. Not good statistics, but I have a decent excuse: I didn't realize the month would be over so fast! I am stunned that November is upon us, but given how busy the last month has been, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. Early in the month, Dan's parents came to spend a few days with us and go to the Balloon Fiesta. I forgot to bring our camera to the fiesta, so I don't have any photos from that, but it looked much like past years, except that we only saw about a third as many balloons take off as usual because the weather was bad the morning we went. Still, we had a good time, and it was fun to have Dan's parents for a visit. We even went and watched Dan race his radio controlled cars on Saturday night, which was cool, because Dan and his dad share a passion for small motorized vehicles. Dan's dad has his airplanes, and Dan has his cars. I have a feeling our future children are in for a lot of talk about engines.

Two days after Dan's parents left, my dad came into town to spend a couple of days with us on his way to go elk hunting. New Mexico has vast expanses of public lands, and there are outfitters that set up camps and send guides out with individual hunters to track elk. Dad didn't kill one because he didn't see one that looked like a good trophy, and he wasn't hunting just for the heck of it. He saw lots of elk though, and had a great time. We enjoyed hearing all the stories from his hunt, especially the ones about his guides and fellow hunters. To me, the strangest part about a trip like that would be spending five days out in the wilderness roaming around with a perfect stranger. But then, my dad can talk to anyone, so I don't think it was awkward for him.

Obviously, the wild is not known for its fabulous running water and shower facilities, so Dad came back with a beard. I don't know that I've ever seen my dad with a beard, and it got us talking about the one and only time that dad shaved off the mustache he's had for as long as any of us kids have been alive. My sister Audrey was about three years old at the time, and for whatever reason, it totally freaked her out. She started bawling and would not be consoled when dad walked out of the bathroom with a hairless face. Needless to say, he grew it back out. So here he is with a beard. Don't cry, Audge:

The reason Dad looks so pleased with himself is that he and Dan and I had just spent 20 minutes wrestling the sub-zero down sleeping back he bought for the trip back into its ridiculously small carrying bag. I was convinced it wasn't going to fit, and kept saying so the whole time that we were all laying on top of it to crush air out of the lining. As usual, I was wrong to be so pessimistic.

In my almost complete absence from the web, another exciting thing happened along today's theme line of family: The birth of the son of our friends, Megan and Andy, who started a new blog a few weeks ago to document their new adventure in parenthood and life in California. There was much rejoicing in the news of baby Joseph's birth at our church in Albuquerque. I'm also proud to report that their blog has the coolest design and name ever. So stop by There's Treasure Everywhere if you haven't already.

Across the country, my cousin Jenni got married in what I'm told was a beautiful outdoor ceremony in Florida. To Jenni, Aunt Emily and Uncle Gil, my cousin Dan and the rest of the family, I'm so sorry we couldn't be there, but we wish Jenni and Nate many happy years of marriage, and we miss y'all.

And in sad news for another family, we watched the St. Louis Cardinals win the world series. Normally I care about baseball about as much as I care about lengthy congressional reports, but this year, I found myself rooting for the Tigers, and even praying for them because of the Overbeek kids. The Overbeeks are fanatical Tigers fans, and their children, Joshua, Abigail and Chloe are all in the Wednesday night children's class that Dan and I teach at our church on Wednesday nights. In that class, we have been faithfully praying for the Tigers in recent weeks, from thanking the Lord that they made it into the series to praying for them to have good games, so it broke my heart when they lost. But the Lord works in mysterious ways, even in baseball, and there's always another season. I'm buying my Tigers sweatshirt now. I should add that I am so happy that our church has such an abundance of beautiful, sweet, hilarious children right now, but I am also tempted to snatch one of them up and take them home every single week. They are that adorable.

I'm off to make some potato soup. It's getting colder at night here and it makes me want to make warm food and wear sweaters and enjoy my own little two-person family.

Last night was our first Halloween as homeowners in a neighborhood populated largely by young families, so I knew we would need to buy some candy for trick or treaters or risk being labeled the least favorite house on the block for all eternity. Still, I thought Dan was overdoing it when he picked up a second giant bag of assorted candy on Monday. I was convinced that we would end up eating half that candy ourselves, and told Dan so as the trick or treaters started to arrive early yesterday evening. They started coming while it was still daylight, mostly really little kids who had to be steered up the walk and instructed to hold their bag out and say their lines. They were cute, so I was handing them candy by the fistful. "Take it!" I said. "We have too much anyway!"

I don't want to ruin the surprise for you, but if you know anything about literary foreshadowing, you can pretty much tell what happens next.

Two hours later, Dan and I had resorted to a buddy system of swapping door shifts to deal with the sheer number of munchkins piling up into our yard. There were so MANY of them. I would sit in the front room with the window facing the street and yell "Incoming!" when a group turned towards our house. Dan would get the candy bowl, and by 7 p.m., we were getting more stingy with the handouts. Still, those two giant bags of candy were gone by 8 p.m. and we had to turn off our porch light and cower in fear, hoping we would not be eaten by the mobs of sugar-buzzed children storming around outside.

I am still so stunned by the whole thing that I'm not sure how many lessons there are to be learned from this, but I have figured out the key to trick or treating, should I ever decide to go: Be cute, get out there before the candy is gone, and hit the stupid new neighbor first!

File under "Further proof that retail America loves me and wants me to be happy. And fat."

As an exiled Southerner, one of the things I miss most is food. Sweet tea, okra, chicken and dumplings -- these are things that are hard to come by here in the great Southwest, land of green and red chile. The chile is great, it's just that I didn't grow up eating it, so I'm still amazed at the fact that unless I specify otherwise when ordering my food, it pretty much will arrive smothered in one or the other colors of chile.

The only place I can find some of these foods I miss is the chain restaurant Cracker Barrel. Those of you who live in the South probably don't go there very much, because you can get better versions of the same stuff by just wandering up in some neighbor's kitchen. But I love it, and every few months or so, when I just have to have something that tastes like home, Dan braves what is always an incredibly long wait line at the one location of Cracker Barrel in Albuquerque. It's way up on the Northeast side of town, and while it was never convenient while we lived there, it's certainly out of the way now that we've moved to the West Side, or as some of our friends refer to it, Arizona. Just the other day, I was saying to Dan that I could not believe that Cracker Barrel does not have a location on our side of town.

This is why I almost drove off the road tonight when I was returning from a trip to Walgreens and saw for the first time, a sign in front of a lot that Dan and I had recently noticed is being cleared for some sort of development about four blocks from our house. The big beautiful yellow sign read: "Coming Soon: Cracker Barrel." I could have cried for happiness.

So now that my buying world is complete (Our new Pottery Barn opened this week, as well as a second location of Ann Taylor Loft), what would you like for me to add to my list of retail longings, fellow citizens of Albuquerque? I've decided to start loaning my petitions out, since I clearly have a direct line to the commercial deities. Right now, I'm feeling benevolent enough not to charge for this service, televangelist style. But get your requests in before I change my mind. Or start camping out in front of the Cracker Barrel.

I just had a revelation: This is the first election night since I started working as a newspaper reporter in 2002 that you could not have found me sitting around in a county courthouse waiting for election returns until midnight or later. I now work at a publication that focuses on coverage of business, so we have no real need to give blow-by-blow coverage of the evening, and I have to say I'm pretty happy about that. Not that I don't have some fond memories of election nights past.

One election night in Clovis, while we waited for the pizza my editor David had ordered, the biggest, baddest thunderstorm I've ever seen rolled into town. For a while we were wondering what would be the bigger story: The election or the apparently eminent total destruction of the whole town. I remember standing by the little tiny window of the back door to the newsroom with my co-workers Gwyn and Kate, watching trash blow by in the wind and thinking about how I was glad the courthouse was just across the block.

After covering one or two of these shindigs as a print reporter, you learn to bring a book or something else to keep you occupied while the votes are tallied -- because it turns out that the process of democracy is slow and remarkably lacking in drama until the end result is known.This is why when you watch live television coverage of elections, there are huge stretches of time when all you get is random people speculating about what might possibly be indicated by the fact that Candidate A is leading now that 1.5 percent of the vote has been counted.

Tonight, I can't say that I'm sorry that I'm not occupying a folding chair in a musty, fluorescent lighted municipal building. But I will say that I'm thankful for the experiences I have had in doing that work. For one thing, being a reporter forces you to be a somewhat informed voter, because you have to write about the bond issues and sheriff's races and school board elections for months before the voting starts. I think it's also made me more committed to actually going to the trouble of voting. I'd like to say this is motivated by a lofty, overarching sense of duty to my country. But really it's because I know that right now, there are volunteer poll workers making a second pot of coffee for everyone and candidates standing around in the halls making small talk and trying not to look too nervous.

It's not a flashy scene, but it's an important one, and it helps me remember that voting isn't really about all the ridiculous campaign messages that get left on my answering machine and the barrage of political commercials and mailings we've endured lately. That's the sideshow. This is the part that matters.

So here's to democracy, and all the many people who make it possible, including you and your vote. And now, if you don't mind, I'm going to bed. I'll look forward to reading about who won what tomorrow morning. It will be nice to be surprised like everyone else.

I can tell we're getting close to Thanksgiving because the Christmas commercials have already started. Tonight, Dan is very sick, poor thing, so we've been sitting on the couch and watching television in the kind of dazed, non-committal way you do when you don't really even care what's on. We hadn't said anything in ten minutes or so until this commercial came on and we had one of those great marriage moments where have a thought at the moment when you KNOW your spouse is thinking the exact same thing.

I think it's a Hallmark commercial, and the setup is this: A crowded airport, apparently Christmas Eve. A blizzard is raging outside, and left and right, passengers are getting the news that their flight is delayed for at least two hours. The camera zooms in on this woman with two small children who are leaning on her, asleep. She's looking all bummed out, but then, she perks up, and reaches into her luggage and whips out this stuffed toy with three snowmen on it. She hits a button, and these plush snowmen start swaying back and forth and singing a Christmas song. And in the commercial, all the tired, cranky, stranded holiday travelers start gathering around and singing along with the snowmen. The message, I suppose is, "Awww! Happy Holidays from the airport!" This is a hilarious sentiment in itself, comparable to saying "Merry Christmas from The Department of Motor Vehicles!"

Dan and I have spent considerable time in airports during our marriage, a lot of those trips having occurred around the holidays. So we watched this, and then I turned to Dan and said: "In real life, holiday airline passengers would destroy those snowmen with their carry on luggage before they made it through the first stanza. And I would help them."
"I know," he said. "And that woman would never make it on the plane."

Then we laughed cynical laughs and went back to channel surfing. It was a nice moment. But if any of you are contemplating firing up a stuffed, singing snowman in a packed airport around December 23, keep your head down and move fast, because Dan and I will be ready.

Heads up, people. You're going to want to go pick up a copy of Regina Spektor's second album "Begin to Hope." I know, it's been out for months, but I just got around to buying it.

I have declared it good. I know you are caring so much right now. Still, what follows is my review, should you be able to sustain consciousness much longer. The only people who are not excused from reading this are two people for whom I highly recommend this record even though they might have bought it already because they are way cooler than me:
Leigh (Hey mama)
and Chris ( and that cool wife of yours, you lucky man.)

One of the joys and frustrations of trying to find new artists to love and enjoy is that first albums are often creative, fresh, and somewhat rough around the edges, which isn't always a bad thing. But if an artist attracts any substantial level of recognition, whether from the critics or the consumers, the sophomore album seems to suffer. I am convinced that this is because record labels put pressure on artists who have commercial potential to make something more "accessible," which seems to be code for "something we can play on the radio until everyone hates you and your music."

Regina Spektor's first major album "Soviet Kitsch" seemed to set her up perfectly for this. It's not radio material, but it's very smart, with simple piano-based melodies serving as the backdrop to some really great, well-written lyrics. Spektor's voice is about as unique as they come, as is the uninhibited way she uses it, with a lot of hiccups and beatboxing and talking while singing that would be ridiculous from anyone else, but that work for her. If "Soviet Kitsch" has a downfall, it's that she has a tendency to get into a kind of a stream-of-consciousness thing too much. Some songs are just too long because she's being repetitive, and it seems out of place and undisciplined on an album that is otherwise so spare and simple.
This is my only criticism is of her first album, which I loved, and which got a lot of favorable press. (I should here give a plug to the coolness of my sister, Hannah, who gave me the album for Christmas last year. I'd like to think of this as my big-sisterly investment in Hannah's early musical taste paying off for me in the form of impeccably-tasteful recommendations from her. But really, she's just cool in her own right.)

So as a fan, I'm happy to say that Regina Spektor seems to have succeeded in doing something very rare with "Begin to Hope": She's made a second album that is A) more accessible than her first one and B) better than her first one, both artistically and from a writing standpoint. I could not be happier.
It's clear from the first track that "Begin to Hope" is a very different record than "Soviet Kitsch." It's more heavily mixed, there are some killer instrumental arrangements and great bass backing up the still-prominent piano. Track two, "Better" has (gasp!) a guitar, used to good advantage, and a lot more orchestration and momentum than her early tracks.
By the third track, "Samson," we're back to a more traditional piano-and-singing Spektor song, but even this one has a touch of backup that gives the repeat phrase a really nice richness. More to her credit, she does not use her voice in a harsh way, or let the song ramble on too long. It's really just perfect. This is probably my favorite song on the whole album.
After that, there's a fantastic song called "On the Radio" --- fun, light, and, I'm sure, the song on the album destined to get some popular play. The great thing, though is that it's actually a good song.
I won't bore you with a tour of the whole album, but suffice it to say that it's a very eclectic, skillful recording with something for everyone. She even has a bluesy-type track with "Lady." There are still those odd moments of trademark Regina Spektor when the eccentricity can throw you the first couple of times. But overall, it's a fantastic album, worth listening to when you've got time to really enjoy it.

I'll get back to blogging about things people actually care about soon.

At our church, we have this great Thanksgiving event called Pie and Praise. On the Sunday night before Thanksgiving, everyone brings a pie to the church and then we all eat pie to our hearts' content and share what we're thankful for and pray and thank God for it. It's one of my new favorite traditions for my all-time favorite holiday. So since it's so encouraging in person, I thought I'd try it out on the blog.

I have no pie for you, but if you want, list your blessings in the comments section. This is just quick post from me, and I plan to do another post soon about all the many things we're thankful for this year. In the meantime, I'd love to hear what makes you thankful.

Yesterday afternoon and evening, I was cooking a few things that we'll be taking over to the home of some good friends of ours for Thanksgiving dinner in a few hours. I enjoy cooking, especially when I have plenty of time and good things to make, so it was a pleasant afternoon. I started to run out of room on my kitchen counters so I decided to just put everything that I would have to take today on the table so it would all be in one place. When I got done, I realized that just the food and drink and dishes that I'm going to bring to this one meal, this one day, fill our entire kitchen table. So much, and so much more than we could ever need.

That's pretty much how I feel about this year. Plenty. It's not just adequate daily provisions we have, but extravagance. It hasn't been as eventful a year as others have been, and really that's part of the blessing for us. Overall, it's been a year of the kind of happy news and simple, common landmark events that make life so joyful.

I'm sitting in our living room in the home we were able to buy this year. I'm thankful for how fast this got to feeling like our home. We love this house and I think we're going to love it for a long time.

It's been a year for weddings. Since last Thanksgiving, we saw Dan's sister Dinah get married to Chris, who we're so glad to have in the family. Before that, I got to attend the weddings of two of my best friends -- within six weeks of each other! Those couples, Chris and Lindsay, and Robin and Jeremy are celebrating their first anniversaries these days. My cousin Jenni got married to Nate. Aaron and Kelly just celebrated their second year of marriage. We've been married for three and a half years now, and it's truly amazing to me how it's possible to love the person you marry more with each passing year than you did when you married them. So we've had an abundance of love.

Our families are well and healthy and happy. Ryan is in Africa, and we miss him, but he keeps us updated, and we're looking forward to seeing him in the spring. My baby sister Audrey is a senior in high school. This means that I am plenty old, in case you were wondering. Kelly will graduate from college in a few weeks. My sister Hannah moved to Tennessee to go to school and got herself a job at Starbucks, which I am hoping means lots of free coffee for me. Aaron was elected the Attorney General of the Student Government Association at MSU, a position which has proven thus far to have relatively few perks for me, but maybe if I get a speeding ticket, Aaron can bail me out. Dan's sister Hannah graduated from college at Texas A & M.

I could go on, but you get the picture. It's all so typical and undramatic, but it's beautiful. We have more blessings than we can count, and for that, we're thankful. Happy Thanksgiving, y'all.

Now thank we all our God with heart and hands and voices.
Who wondrous things hath done, in Whom this world rejoices.
Who from our mother's arms hath blessed us on our way
With countless gifts of love and still is ours today.

Oh may this bounteous God through all our life be near us.
With ever joyful hearts and blessed peace to cheer us.
And keep us in His grace and guide us when perplexed
And free us from all ills in this world and the next.

All praise and thanks to God the Father now be given
The Son and Him who reigns with them in highest heaven.
The one eternal God whom earth and heaven adore.
For thus it was, is now, and shall be evermore.

Martin Rinkart, 1636

We spent a fabulous Thanksgiving at the home of friends along with a couple of other sets of friends. Excellent photos of the day are posted by Mrs. J here, but I wanted to share the one truly great photo I took. After dinner, the men of the house busted out the Risk board game and promptly entered into a 30-minute discussion about what set of rules to play by. As I was walking by, I noticed that Chloe, the two-year-old daughter of our hosts, was sitting at the end of the table, quietly perusing the rules book, looking for all the world like she was trying to find the answer. So here is my photo of Choe, the Risk Referee:

Lately, I've been enjoying cooking a lot, so much so that I'm thinking about taking a class to learn a few new things. This new hobby of mine has had me leafing through cookbooks that have sat on my bookshelves largely untouched for two years, and in doing so, I came across a Southern Sideboards recipe for something called Buttermilk Chicken that I wanted to try.

Here's me in the kitchen. I'm actually cutting up some chicken in this photo, but I look like I'm cutting up a random collection of stuff in the wrought iron plate holder to my right, and looking kind of evil while I'm at it. Nonetheless, here I am:

So last Tuesday night, I made the Buttermilk Chicken. It's not a complicated dish, and basically once you assemble your various ingredients in the baking pan (in my case, it was a glass Pyrex baking dish.), you just put it in the oven. That's what I did, and as it got closer to time for the dinner to be done, I opened the oven to check on the dinner. Then, I closed to oven and turned around to get some oven mitts so that I could take the pan out. But I never got that far, because at that moment, there was this enormous shattering sound IN THE OVEN, and I opened it to find this sight:

Yes, the Pyrex dish, supposedly made from the most indestructible stuff on earth, EXPLODED in my OVEN. It was disgusting, with chicken and sauce and glass shards being turned into a cloud of black smoke. There was really nothing to do until the oven cooled off, so we got takeout. But it did occur to me to be glad that I was not holding the stupid dish when it exploded, and the next night when I was writing an email to Ryan, who as you may recall, is stationed in Africa right now with the Marines, I told him about my culinary brush with potentially moderate injury.

When Ryan wrote back to me, with his usual sense of humor, I remembered why you never tell "I almost got hurt" stories to your brothers who are in the armed services: Because you're always going to wind up sounding like a weenie. Ryan wrote this to me:

"Your adventures in the kitchen sound pretty perilous. I'm glad that chicken IED didn't get you."

Yes, to quote George W., "There is madmen and there are terror" in my oven. And even Improvised Explosive Devices. But i will stay the course. Because I still want some Buttermilk Chicken, and a new Pyrex dish, too.

I'm sick today, running a fever, sore throat and the whole thing. It came on pretty suddenly Sunday afternoon and since then I've had a lot of time to think, because that's what you do when you're alone in your house all day and have slept for four hours but can't muster the concentration to watch television or the will to take a shower. (It just sounds like a lot of work, you know?)

Here are some of the things my overheated brain has revealed to me today:

The best cup of hot tea in the land is made with Lipton decaf, sugar, and a drop of vanilla extract. You laugh, but it's true.

There is a blank spot on the right-facing side of our Christmas tree. I know because I spent a lot of time looking at it today, and as soon as I have the energy I'm going to go put an ornament there.

If you have a fever, shouldn't it just make you hot? That would help me a lot, because what I hate is that process where you're freezing and then you're sweating. It's really annoying.

Thank goodness for the December Photo Project over at View from the Prairie Box and friends. Gives me something pretty to look at.

I haven't taken a sick day at my job in over a year, and now I've taken two in the last week. What's up with that?

Profound, I know. This is why I want to get better. I'm boring myself to death over here. The end.

Today was a strange day. I went back to work since I finally stopped running a fever and was pronounced strep-free by my doctor. (I wish I had kept track of the number of times in my adult life that I've contracted strep. It's like my own personal plutonium.) But overall, it's been a week that has seen the utter derailment of all my plans. I had every intention of being at work this week, and that didn't happen until today. And today didn't quite turn out to be what I expected either. Wednesday seemed to start off from the first moment with bad communication and mechanical failure. The first obstacle course was a completely unprecedented, unprovoked and inexplicable overflowing of our hallway bathroom's toilet that sent me running for a plunger. It's great fun to plunge a toilet at 6:45 a.m., before you've had your coffee, let me tell you.

Then the minute that crisis was averted, the phone rang. The caller ID listed an unidentified number, and at first, I wondered what telemarketer would be calling my house at the unholy hour of 7 a.m. When I picked up the phone, there was even that tell tale five second delay of silence that usually makes you know you're dealing with a pre-recorded phone call. But I was rewarded for my patience when I heard my brother Ryan's voice! He was trying to call me from Africa, where he's stationed with the Marines, and it was so good to hear him. Unfortunately, we had an awful connection, and he couldn't hear me. Rather, it was like I would hear him, say something, then he would hear me, and say something, but there was such a delay between our voices that we canceled each other out. I gather that he was trying out a new computer-based phone system he's got, and something wasn't configured right. Eventually, he ended up saying that he wasn't sure I could hear him, but if I could, to know that he really wants to talk to me and will call me back soon. It's weird how happy it can make you just to hear someone you love get mad at a technological device. I would hear him muttering at the thing and pressing buttons, and once, he even said the trademark Ryan phrase -- "Sweet!" -- when we actually had a brief moment of connection. I'm sorry the conversation couldn't have lasted longer, but it was great to hear him and know that he still sounds like Ryan, even on another continent. It made me happy, in a sad, homesick kind of way.

The day continued to be weird, though. I was trying to catch up after two days out of the office, which is like an eternity in Newspaper Land. There was a mysterious lost email, a very important message that apparently just went into outer space after a professional contact of mine sent it to me. There were multiple phone calls about that, and in the end, the message had to be sent via fax, and we never did figure out what happened to the first one. I'm sure it will turn up next week some time.

It all got me to wondering if there are just days or weeks that are destined to bad communication and unexpected crises. Nothing catastrophic, just annoying failures of technology and human understanding that stand between you, the information you want so badly and your all-important schedule. Maybe it's not a bad thing to be reminded that you are, in fact, not completely in control of your own life and personal appliances. Annoying, but not completely without purpose. It made me think of that old phrase you hear elderly people use sometimes -- "If the Lord's willing and the creek don't rise."

So, Lord willing, tomorrow's another day.

Dan is out of town for a couple of days, and this means that I've been doing something I haven't done very much. I'm staying in the house by myself. Now, Dan going out of town is nothing new, and I stayed in our apartment alone plenty of times. But this is kind of different because we now live in a free-standing house, and somehow this makes me feel more like I'm really alone. Probably because if something weird happened, I couldn't just pound on the wall until someone heard me. Also, I figure that if I climbed out my bedroom window, I'd have to jump over our fence before I could reasonably expect to find someone to save me from whatever ran me out of the house.

This is the line of thought that probably led to my adventure last night. I fell asleep while I was reading a book, and since Dan wasn't home, there was no one to turn off the light. So around 2 a.m., I woke up kind of suddenly, and was lying there trying to go back to sleep, this time with the lights out, when I started hearing a thumping sound down the hall. Not a loud one, but persistent. In retrospect, putting on my bathrobe and looking for the nearest heavy object with which to arm myself was probably not the thing to do, especially since the heaviest thing in reach turned out to by my economy sized bottle of shampoo. I wasn't thinking clearly, which is why it's a good thing that after I crept down the hall in stealth mode, the noise turned out to be nothing but a door getting bumped against the door frame by the current created by the central heating. I then felt kind of silly, standing there without my glasses (read: legally blind), brandishing a bottle from my tub. Criminals beware! I have shampoo!

All that to say I'm glad my husband is coming home tomorrow.

A few weeks ago, when Dan and I were decorating our Christmas tree, I asked him what his favorite Christmas song is. This turned out to be a more educational question than I had anticipated, and it resulted in one of those moments when Dan and I realize again that even though we were both raised in two-parent, multi-kid, church-going American families, there is a rather large chasm between our childhood experiences. They were both great, even idyllic childhoods, but they were very, very different.

For example: Dan, in spite of living for a good portion of his developmental years overseas on various military bases, still manages to know the basic plot lines of shows like "The A Team" and "He-Man," and can have nostalgic conversations about them, and even hum the theme songs. My family, meanwhile back in the states, got rid of our television entirely some time in the early 1990s, and even before that, we weren't allowed to watch "The Smurfs," because my dad said they were communists. I am not making that up. Ask my siblings. They will tell you. This, by the way, is why I'm not sure I could ever write a novel: Nothing I could ever make up would be more amusing than true stories from my family. (Hi, Daddy! I love you, and I am sure that you were right about the Smurfs. Weird little blue commies.)

Still, you kind of assume that there are only about 45 Christmas songs out there, and so this has to be an area of common ground. So when I asked Dan what his favorite Christmas song is, I was confused when he named a song called "Mary Did You Know?"

"What?" I said. "I've never heard that song in my life. Are you sure you've got the name right?" I was working on the theory that Dan has a tendency to get the words to songs wrong. Just the other night, we were driving home after going to dinner with some friends, when the Bon Jovi song "You Give Love a Bad Name" came on the radio, and Dan confidently sang his version of the opening words to that song: "Shot in the dark! And you're too late!" I thought our friends, Mike and Kate, were going to throw up they were laughing so hard. But back to the Christmas music.

"Yes!" Dan said. "Someone sang "Mary Did You Know?" in church every Christmas of my life I'm pretty sure. Seriously, how can you not know this song?" He even told me some of the lyrics, clearly just knowing that any minute I was going to remember this integral part of Christmas. When no lights of recognition went off in my eyes, Dan looked at me a long time and blinked, like he does when he's realizing what a good job I'm doing of passing as normal most of the time, considering that I was homeschooled for a few years and never saw "Star Wars" until I was 16.

While Dan was turning to Google to find a downloadable rendition of his song, I said that my favorite Christmas song is "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel." I've loved that song since I was a little kid, which is odd, because it's kind of a somber, Old Testament reference-heavy song, not exactly "Jingle Bells" or anything that just rolls off the five-year-old tongue. (Sample line: "O come thou Rod of Jesse, free thine own from Satan's tyranny." I don't think Hallmark is going to be putting that on a Christmas card any time soon, you know?) I was telling this to Dan when he started playing me his song from various Web sites. It turns out that a million people have put this song on their Christmas albums, from Reba McEntire to Clay Aiken, and it's a good song. But still, I've just never heard it before.

When Dan was done demonstrating to me that "Mary Did You Know" is, in fact, a bona fide Christmas staple as confirmed my millions of albums sold, I told him to search and see if there are any good renditions of "O Come, O Come Emmanuel." And it turns out that once again, I am a weirdo. There are only about four recorded versions of this song that we were able to find, and they are all done in that nauseating souped-up, overdone style that plagues so much Christmas music.

I was feeling rather alienated by this until I made a purchase that reminded me that I am not alone in my weirdness. Yes, Sufjan Stevens' EP collection "Songs for Christmas" has "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" on it FOUR TIMES! This is now officially my favorite Christmas album ever. And we'll have to find a Christmas album with "Mary Did You Know?" on it too so that Dan will be happy. I'm just hoping it doesn't have to be the Clay Aiken.

What is it about a snow storm that makes you want to call your mom? I would welcome your theories on this, since Dan and I both, without prior discussion and with no real purpose in mind, called our moms at some point during the last 12 hours to say, essentially: "Hey, Mom! It's snowing a whole lot!" Like this affects our moms in any way as they go about their business in Mississippi and Texas. Did anyone else call their mom who lives several states away yesterday to comment on the weather? Or are we just extraordinarily odd?

In other notes, the snowstorm led us to realize that, as homeowners, it would behoove us to buy a snow shovel. As it was, we were thrown upon the charity of our lovely neighbors, who loaned us theirs so that we could clear off our driveway, thus allowing my Nissan Sentra, which is not an off-road kind of vehicle, to make it up into the carport. It was the only moment in my recent life when I wanted a big truck.

Pop quiz, no lying. How many of you still have a Christmas tree standing in your living room? Don't think about how bad that is and how ashamed your mother would be of you. Just answer truthfully.

And if your answer is that you tree is still inhabiting your home, take heart, because so is ours. Yes, as of January 7, I cannot muster the will to take this thing down, partially because we got back home this week after a lot of traveling and we've been tired and busy since then, and partially because it's so pretty. It's also not real. It's a plastic one bought at Home Depot. If it were a real tree, I'd be motivated to remove it because of the fire hazard it presents, but having no such concern, I continue to gaze at a relic of last month's celebrations.

I mention this as a sort of apology for abandoning the blog for the last few weeks. I should have mentioned that Dan and I were headed to Mississippi and Texas for some time with family and friends. Technically, we've been back for five days now, so I should apologize for neglecting you since then as well. Consider yourself apologized unto, and know that, like the fact that I will, eventually, get the tree put away, I will also return to blogging.

Also, if you have taken your tree down, like the good citizen that you are, feel free to nag me in the comments section so that I can get motivated to do the same. Happy new year!

For one of my Christmas gifts, Dan signed us up for a cooking class that I have been wanting to try at the local university. It's called Intuitive Cooking, and it's about learning to just take what you have and make a meal. I am woefully recipe bound, so I'm really looking forward to trying to think more creatively about cooking. But I think tonight, my adventurous side may have suffered a setback.

I decided to make a recipe called Lemongrass Chicken Stir Fry from a cookbook published by a Very Large Cookware Company with Pretty Stores, and I was kind of excited about it, even though the recipe called for at least three things I have never had any reason to purchase before: Fresh ginger, lemongrass, and Asian fish sauce. I was somewhat skeptical of my ability to obtain any of these items at the Wal-Mart down the street from our house, so when I went to another store with a more eclectic ethnic food section, I found the items and took it as a sign that this would be a good week to make this dish. Lemongrass, check. Asian Fish Sauce, check. No fresh ginger, but I have dry ginger and it will have to do.

The cooking was going very well, and the dish was even looking a lot like the nice picture in the book, which I assure you my cooking rarely does. Then I got to the last step, where the recipe calls for you to dump 2 tablespoons of Asian Fish Sauce onto your beautiful, lemony, gingery creation. Out of curiosity, I put my nose to the bottle of fish sauce to smell it before I added it to the stir fry. And then I almost fell down. Because it turns out that they market this product as "Asian fish sauce" because it wouldn't sell as well if they called it something more truthful, like "Essence of Rotting Fish -- In a Convenient Bottle!" I have never smelled anything like this in my life except when I have passed dumpsters sitting in the blazing heat. It was stunning.

I would like to say that based on my revulsion, I skipped the fish sauce altogether, but I couldn't bring myself to rebel against the recipe enough for that,. This is why I need to take a class. So I put the teensiest little bit into the stir fry, not enough to taste it, but enough that I could justify the fact that I probably paid four dollars for this stuff. I shouldn't have bothered, because there's no way I'll ever be using that again, unless I need to lure someone's housecat down from a tree top. (Note: I am sorry to anyone who loves and adores fish sauce. I love okra. And grits. I bet you hate both of those things, but maybe we can still be friends.)

As Dan and I were cleaning up the kitchen after our brush with Death via Olfactory Implosion, it occurred to me that if I keep trying new recipes, I'm sure this won't be the last time I buy some weird product only to be disgusted by it. So if you had to save me from one culinary misadventure you have personally experienced, what would it be? I should add that Dan will thank you if you share it and keep me from inflicting it upon him. He's a brave man, but he has his limits, so tomorrow I'm making beef stew, a traditional meal to make up for the ill-fated stir fry.

If he doesn't like that, I'm going to threaten him with fish sauce until he eats it anyway.

January 16 is my birthday, and I am happy about that. I think 27 is going to be a good year. But today, I have a story to tell you. A wonderful, wonderful story. Gather 'round, children.

As you know, Dan and I recently returned from a trip to Mississippi. When we were unpacking our suitcases after our return to Albuquerque, I came across this shirt. Behold it in all its glory.

That's right. It is my mother's "Bush Country 2004 -- My America!" T-shirt. (Exclamation point rendered exactly as it appears.) I don't think there are words sufficient to convey to you the background on this shirt, but I will try.

I can only assume that Mom bought this item some time in 2004. She got to meet the president during the 2004 campaign, which was a big highlight of the year for her, since the president is her homeboy, as documented here. But 2004 or not, from the moment this shirt appeared in mom's wardrobe, we, or at least I, have come to view it as a member of the family. A loud, tacky member of the family who you don't want to take out in public.

I'm not sure why I don't like this shirt. I don't really dislike the president. I don't always agree with him, but I don't wish him any ill. I don't think it's even about the president. I think it's about the shirt. Maybe it's the exclamation point. Maybe it's the wildly inaccurate map representation of how much of the country joins my mom in total adoration of the president. Maybe it's my belief that any sentiment you can fit on a T-shirt or a bumper sticker has probably lost all meaning in the editing process. (That goes double for religious bumper stickers.)

But no matter my reasons, mom has somehow picked up on the fact that I don't like the shirt. (Perhaps it was the subtle fits of dry heaving I engage in every time she brings it out. Hard to say.) But what is beyond dispute is that she was being mean to me when, over the holidays, I asked to borrow a T-shirt while Hannah and Audrey and I were soaking our feet in the tub in my parents bathroom before giving ourselves pedicures. My mom, recognizing that I was stranded with wet feet and that all of my T-shirts were upstairs, took total advantage of the situation and tossed me the Bush Country T-shirt. She then proceeded to take photos of me wearing it. I don't know what happened to those photos, but should they ever surface on the Internet, I would like to state for the record that I was wearing it under duress.

Still, as we all know, revenge is sweet. Because as I have mentioned, I have the shirt now. I guess I just wore it up to my room and it got mixed in with all of our clothes. So the question on this, my birthday, the day when my mom cannot disown me even if she wants to, is: Should I give the shirt back, and what should my ransom demands be? Leave me your thoughts in the comment section. I'm considering some pretty lofty demands. Possibly free lodging and good food every time I'm in Mississippi. Or maybe unconditional love and great cookbooks for my birthday. I don't know what would be a high enough price in exchange for continuing to let the shirt live.

I'll keep you posted on the hostage situation as breaking news develops.

On Sunday night, we had some friends over, people who are from Albuquerque originally, as opposed to transplants like ourselves. I decided to make something called "Good Luck Soup,' which involves black eyed peas and okra. I did, just for the record, realize that I might be the only one who would want to eat this, so I made sandwich fixings available, too. But I was pretty excited about my soup, especially since it meant that a bag of frozen okra that I bought a few months ago would not go to waste. (You can't buy fresh okra out here for love or money. It's sad.)

The okra had to sit on the counter and defrost for a while, and at some point, the following unintentionally hilarious definition of okra printed on the back of the bag caught my eye:

"Okra, sometimes referred to as gumbo, is used often in the South to flavor and thicken soups and stews that are a specialty of that region. Originating in the West Indes, okra has been a prominent source of nutrients for Southerners for many years. It is a significant source of Vitamins A and C and magnesium and at the same time has a low caloric count."

It's funny to me that the makers of frozen okra felt the need to define a vegetable for consumers. "if we just ship this stuff out, there will be rioting in the grocery store aisles! People won't know what to do! We better attach a disclaimer." Also, I'm pretty sure that the exotic, foreign Southerners described in the definition have not been eating okra all these years for its nutritional value, considering that we traditionally either fry it or boil it beyond recognition. As for a low caloric count, that wasn't anyone's top concern last time I ate okra, either. And I've never heard anyone call okra "gumbo." But aside from that, great job, copy writers for Albertsons! Y'all should write for them there fancy dictionaries we hear about sometimes, down in the South.

I realized the other day that the 27-year-old me is considerably more preoccupied and possibly ruder than, say, 21-year-old me. I had this epiphany when I was sprinting out of a building at Large Local University with a Parking Shortage, which I occasionally write stories about in my job. I had been to a meeting there that lasted longer than I thought it would, and was therefore desperately late to my next appointment.

As I huffed and puffed my way across campus, calculating how much time it might save me to take the stairs versus the elevator up to the top of the parking garage, this blonde-haired, sweet-faced college boy held out a flyer about global warming to me and said "Excuse me, ma'am, do you have a moment for the environment?"

And with no hesitation whatsoever, I said. "No, I'm sorry, I really don't. I'm very late. But thank you." I was fairly apologetic about it, and if I had had time, I like to think I would have stopped and listened to him. But I think 21-year-old me would have stopped and taken the flyer. Of course, 21-year-old me didn't have anywhere to be in the next ten minutes, ever.

Moments from tonight's Pioneer Clubs class, where Dan and I are referred to as Mr. Dan and Ms. Haley.

Ms. Haley (bending over 3-year-old Chloe, who suddenly appears to be chewing gum): "Chloe, what is that purple thing in your mouth?"
Chloe (pulling the object out of her mouth and pondering it.) "Um, I don't know."
Ms. Haley: "Well then spit it out!"
Chloe: "Yeah."

Mr. Dan: "OK guys, we're going to use glue now, but don't use too much or you'll glue your paper to the table. Seriously. Easy on the glue."

Ten minutes later, said by Eliana, age 2, I think: "Mr. Dan, don't take the glue away from me!"

They do looooove to glue things.

Oh my poor readers. February has been a sad month on the blog, hasn’t it. I’m sorry. February, as a month, has always kind of drained my inspiration and focus, and this month has been no exception. There’s plenty going on. I just don’t have the will to write about it. I'm too busy trying to stay warm.

I’ve decided that instead of stringing you along, making you think that perhaps I might get it together enough to post something any day now, I’m going to take a declared blog hiatus starting today. Not a long one, not any longer than some of the longer gaps between posts that I’ve had lately. Ten days. Come back on Monday, February 26, when I promise you a new post, and a good one, with pictures, and links. I'm doing some interesting stuff between now and then, including going to New York City for the first time in my life, so I am sure I'll have plenty to say when I get back. I won't be any warmer, but I expect to have good pictures of myself freezing and perpetuating the notion of tourists as complete idiots. I'm going to be lucky if I can take a cab without screwing it up. But once I get there, my friend Leigh will be able to herd me around.

In the meantime, a note. The Missing Mississippi webmaster (Dan the Great) is pondering a redesign of the blog and a possible switch to Wordpress as opposed to Movable Type. This is more of a distant goal than an immediate one, but I wondered: Has anyone out there in blogland made that switch, and what have you though about Wordpress? Also, were we to do a redesign on the blog, are there any features you would want to see?

One of the things we’re most anxious to resolve is the thing where the blog seems to just eat the comments that you leave. What’s happened is that in the process of tightening up security so that we don’t get so much spam, we’ve set a filter that seems to trap nearly everything. Or, it makes you think it’s rejecting your comment, and then it posts it 5 or 10 times. We know it’s happening and we’re sorry.

One of my goals is to finally get a good blogroll going so that when I’m being lazy about blogging, you can go visit other, more interesting people I know. But again, is there anything you want that we might be able to include? And does anyone have any great graphics ideas for me? I’m not the most creative person, visually, but I want to do something nice looking, so help me think about it. All design ideas featuring fireworks or firearms will be immediately disqualified. But maybe we could work a piece of okra into the new logo.

Come back on February 26.

Lately I've been thinking about how the big moments in life seem to take a long time to arrive, but when they do, they happen fast. Usually in 30 seconds or less. For example:

It took about 30 seconds for Dan to ask me to marry him. Dan is not a beat-around-the-bush kind of guy, and I was ready to say yes. It was a quick conversation, but it meant that we were engaged, and that changed everything.

It takes about 30 seconds to repeat your wedding vows, if you're going with the traditional, to have and to hold, until death do us part version, as we did. But once you've said those few little words, you've committed yourself to a whole new life.

And, as I recently learned, it also takes about 30 seconds to find out what a $7 pregnancy test you bought at the grocery store has to tell you about the rest of your life.

In our case, a few days after Christmas, one of those tests told me that we are going to have a baby! I'm about 13 weeks pregnant now, and our first child should arrive sometime around September 3. We're ecstatic, and so happy to share the news.

It's funny, the ways in which this little piece of information changes your life from the second you know it. Even if you just think about something simple, like food. In the first few weeks, I strove to be the world's most balanced, healthy eater, diligently getting my quota of milk, lots of water, and three solid meals a day. Then around week 6 the morning sickness kicked in and I readjusted my goals to "Eat something, anything, other than cereal and a vitamin at least once every day and keep it down." Now as I'm getting into my second trimester and the nausea is blessedly subsiding, my restated goal seems to be "Try every fruit known to man." Apparently, the baby likes fruit. Especially oranges. This is weird in that I have never particularly cared for oranges, and suddenly I am buying them by the crate. It's like some form of insanity. I look at myself, standing in the supermarket line with a basket almost entirely composed of fruit products, and I think "This kid is running my life already." But I don't really mind.

It's probably natural that we talk about the baby all the time, but seriously, we talk about the baby All. The. Time. The bad news is that this probably makes us really boring to be around. The good news is that it gives us plenty of opportunity to pray for our child, which is something we do every day now. If you're willing, join us in praying for Baby Wachdorf, (who Dan refers to as "Little Mo" for some reason best known to himself) and pray for us as well. If thinking about being a parent has convinced me of anything, it's that we don't know what we're doing. So we're counting on a lot of wisdom and love being granted to us for this baby, who we already love so much. The one thing we know for sure is that our lives have changed again. And that is just grand.

Here, to start us off on what I am sure will be a whole new photo documentary project titled something like "How Haley Got to be the Size a House" is the first pregnant photo for the blog. This is me and my dear friend, Leigh, who I visited in New York last week along with my friend Autumn.(More on this trip soon.) Leigh is about six months pregnant, and so has a much more impressive baby belly than I do. Mine just looks like I've been going to Krispy Kreme too much. But in any case, here we are, showing off our babies.

So welcome back to the blog, people. Strap yourselves in. It's going to be an interesting six months.

I will join in the collective whining and say that I hate daylight savings time. It seems to me like a pointless exercise that messes with everyone's schedule and puts the whole nation into a funk for a few days, but what do I know? At any rate, yesterday's daylight savings time was only time I've ever sustained a clock-related injury.

There is a yellow clock in our kitchen that I bought at Wal-mart a few years ago for my first apartment. It's been a good clock, and I like it. Yesterday, I was standing under it, bending over to put a new bag into the garbage can, when I heard this "pop" sound. Before I could fully form the thought "I wonder what that was?" I felt something hit me on the back of the head ... HARD. Then I saw the clock hit the ground and its motor break into pieces. Yes, a matter of hours before daylight savings time, the clock apparently committed suicide, throwing itself down off the wall and hitting me on the head on the way down.

This was alarming for several reasons, not the least of which is the fact that I'm starting to think that my house is trying to kill me. But more than anything, it seemed appropriate. I mean, if I hate daylight savings time so much, why shouldn't my clock? So tomorrow, as we all go groggily about our days, trying to get adjusted to the new time, keep an eye out for falling wall clocks. Or you'll have a nice bump on the back of your head, like me.

In the last few days, I have learned what everyone is always whining about here in Albuquerque this time of year. It’s the juniper. It should be classified as a bioweapon. We could bring our enemies to their knees with the stuff, provided we could expose them to it for long enough. I think since moving here, I’ve been going through an allergy grace period where you haven’t been around the new allergens in your new home long enough to have a bad reaction to them. But that appears to be over, just in time for me to be pregnant and unable to partake of prescription medication. Glorious. So the last few days have found me using a Neti Pot to pour saline solution into my sinuses (that’s is just as much fun as that picture makes it seem, and you feel just as ridiculous as you look when you do it, let me tell you), hauling a box of Kleenex everywhere I go like a toddler with a blankie, and finally, today, staying home from work out of sheer exhaustion after days of sneezing and nights of bad sleep.

The good news is that this has given me a chance to think of a few things I’ve been meaning to blog about. So, first off:

I am starting the question my own sanity because of how insanely overjoyed I am about a stoplight.

The stop light in question is at an intersection near our house near the notorious traffic nightmare that is the Coors Boulevard interchange to get onto Interstate-25, which Dan and I both have to do every day in order to go to work. Since we moved here almost a year ago, this intersection has been the bane of our existence because there has been a four way stop there handling an enormous volume of traffic created by thousands of people who all, surprisingly enough, use the interstate to get to work. Why it took so long to get a light put in I don't even want to know, but a couple of weeks ago, there magically appeared a stop light, and it has made my life so much better that I want to pull my car over and kiss the light poles that hold it up every time I drive through the intersection. That is how much I love this stoplight.

Next up on the list is the fact that my Cracker Barrel is about to open! This may be the one aspect in which I have timed m pregnancy well. In spite of enduring allergy season unmedicated, and making sure that I will get to be enormously pregnant throughout the entire long hot summer, I will have the comfort of being able to drown my sorrows in fried okra and chicken and dumplings just a few blocks from my house. I will also gain 75 pounds, but you have to do what you have to do.

And lastly, I thought I would leave you with a charming sentiment that Dan voiced the other night when we were reading our weekly email from Pregnancy.com, where you can receive email updates on how your baby is developing, complete with illustrations. Dan was pretty quiet as I was reading aloud about how our beautiful child now has fully formed arms and eyes that are tightly closed. Then I clicked on the picture:

And Dan, in response to an artist's rendition of his unborn child, said "Awesome! It looks like an alien!"

Yes, that is certainly awesome. Let's hope he can come up with a better comment when we go in for an ultrasound.

I'm going home on Tuesday to see my family and most especially my brother Ryan, who is just home from a tour of duty to beautiful Djibouti, Africa. I hear he's glad to be home, and I would be too. Anyway, since I'm headed to the land of Jesus signs, it seemed like an appropriate time to share with you a new one, emailed to me by Daniel, my sister Hannah's boyfriend, who knows that I collect these things.

For those of you unfamiliar with rap music, the phrase "Drop it like it's hot" is a refrain from a song by Snoop Dogg, thus qualifying this as maybe the worst collision between pop culture and a church sign I've ever seen. I especially love that the word "it's" in "drop it like it's hot" has no apostrophe and the word altar is spelled wrong. This means it qualifies it for top honors in two categories: Poor Taste in Religious Messaging AND Bad Public Grammar. I just KNOW this church is somewhere in the South.

See y'all soon.

Tonight, I have been watching a Tivo-d episode of Austin City Limits, which I recently decreed we would Tivo for all time after I read that Sufjan Stevens is on the season that is currently being rerun. The episode we were watching tonight, however, featured a performance by Coldplay, which also makes me happy. What made me even happier was that halfway through, musical legend Michael Stipe of R.E.M. came out to sing a couple of songs with Coldplay. The first song he sang for was from a recent R.E.M. project, and it was great. Then Chris Martin of Coldplay walked over to the piano, sat down and introduced the next song Michael Stipe would sing with the words "This is the greatest song every written, in my opinion." Immediately, because I am a freak, I started screaming "They're going to sing Nightswimming! This is the best show ever!"

My hollering brought Dan into the living room just as the opening chords of (what else?) "Nightswimming" were starting, and I was starting to cry. But my music geek high was totally killed seconds later, when Dan looked at me and, in all sincerity, said "What song is this?"

WHAT SONG IS THIS? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I immediately started trying to give Dan clues, hoping that a light of recognition would go off in his eyes. "Dan. Think. R.E.M. Automatic for the People! Nightswimming! Come on!"

Nothing.

So now I'm downloading "Automatic for the People" to Dan's computer so he can get caught up on musical history circa 1992 and marveling at how Dan and I can be so well suited to one another when he can't identify what may, in fact, be the best song ever written, and I don't know anything about computers. It makes me wonder if our child will be really interested in something neither of us has even thought about, like competitive scuba diving. Or worse, will actively love things we hate, like musical artists who have backup dancers but no actual musical instruments anywhere on the stage, or Windows XP. The biggest irony of all would be if our child actually turned out to be athletic. We'd have to hire someone with motor skills to stand in for us.

But I suppose we could work around that, too. Love isn't about hobbies. Still. Nightswimming!

In other news, I'm back from my adventures and had a great time. I'll post pictures soon.

This is so annoying. For some reason, the two new posts I put up on Monday have fallen into the Black Hole. I don't know why this happened. Dan the Great has been alerted. Perhaps he can find them. Be patient. We are having an bad hair month on the blog.

Any thoughts on what I might have done to deserve all this technological retribution? I'm wracking my brain, but I don't think I left hostile comments on anyone else's blog or sent out a ton of pointless email forwards with massive attachments or anything else against the rules of good Internet taste. Maybe I'm being punished for my tendency to read an email and then delay responding. What do you think?

I think I need a new hosting company for one thing.

UPDATE: So I watched the finale last night. HOLY OTHERS, BATMAN! That was amazing. I think they somehow managed to redeem what started out as the worst season of this show ever and then pulled off the best season ender they've ever had. If you quit watching halfway through this season, which I almost did, go download the episides you missed and get caught up. Because ... WOW.

Previous entry: Note to my "Lost" watching friends: I have not seen the season finale that the rest of the civilized world watched last night! Dan has got something he's doing out of the house tonight and my plan is to watch the finale from Tivo while he's gone. Please do not tell me any major plot details regarding the finale, or else I will hunt you down and beat you and then I will never let you come to my blog again. (That would be the real punishment, since I hit like a girl.)

But tell me this: Is it any good?

Stealing an inspiration from this post on Rebecca's blog, I now share with you what we've spent our weekend on, as told in words that end in -ing.

Friday

Opening: Presents at a baby shower thrown for me by the sweet people at my office. Kate and I walked away with quite a haul, including some really wonderful children's books including the fabulous, always proven to make me cry even when I'm not pregnant classic "The Giving Tree" by Shel Silverstein. It was so nice of my co-workers to have a shower for me. As this will be my last week at work, it was also a sort of going away party for me. More on that big life change soon.

Babysitting: Our friend Ellie, the world's happiest baby. This essentially meant that Dan and I watched Ellie eat some finger foods, played with her on the floor for a few minutes, put her in her pajamas, put her in her crib, and then watched a Harry Potter movie until her parents came home. We're hoping that by exposing Kate to Ellie in utero, maybe she will pick up some of her temperment. We'll let you know how that works out when Kate is born and proves to be a champion screamer.

Saturday

Weeding: Our back yard, which we had done absolutely no work on since the weather got warm and things started, you know, growing. Since Saturday morning was so nice and cool and shady, I got out there and weeded, even though Dan was going to do it for me. While this was a fun activity, since I brought my i-Pod and listened to some Sufjan Stevens while I conquered the weeds and enjoyed being outside, it later proved to have been a bad idea to spend such a long time on my hands and knees while six months pregnant. I paid for it later with some serious muscle pain and walked around like an arthritic old lady for the rest of the day.

Celebrating: The promotion of our friend, Luke, to the rank of Captain in the U.S. Air Force. Luke and Katie, parents of Ellie the Happy Baby, had a party to celebrate. We went and ate lots of food and tried to leave about three times but kept staying because more fun people kept showing up. That is a good kind of party.

Cleaning: Our house in preparation for a visit from Dan's parents and his sister Dinah. It's amazing how much dirt you don't see in your house until you know company is coming.

Sunday

Worshiping: At our church.

Helping: Our friends Mike and Susan skin a whole pig in preparation for the annual pig roast they host for the church on Memorial Day. I should clarify that really what I did was eat some snacks, talk to people, hold Lily, the brand new baby of our dear friends Cody and Erika, grill some hamburgers, and then sit around and read while Dan actually assisted in the prepping of the pork. But at least one of us was helpful.

Cleaning: Some more.

Monday

Sleeping: In. Late. I am committed to enjoying this now, as I'm sure it will be the last time in my life I have the opportunity to sleep past the crack of dawn.

Baking: My chocolate chip cookies to take to the pig roast. I make some good cookies if I do say so myself. And I got to play with my bright red Kitchen Aid Artisan mixer that Dan gave me for Christmas. It is so beautiful.

Eating: The pig. And a whole bunch of other stuff. It was yummy.

Starting: A water fight. Dan has taken it upon himself to bring water guns to the pig roast every year for the kids, who then run around on Mike and Susan's property shooting each other. Inevitably, a few adults get involved in the water fight. Hoses are turned on, buckets are filled, chaos ensues. Dan always stays surprisingly dry considering that he is the root of all mischief in this. I'm not sure how he gets away with that.

Cleaning: Even more.

Watching: The San Antonio Spurs whoop up on The Utah Jazz in the playoffs to take as 3-1 lead. It just ended, and it was a nasty game. Utah's coach and star got ejected at the end, and now the fans are throwing things at the Spurs as they leave the court. Nice.

Going: To bed. Hope you had a great holiday weekend.

This morning when Dan came to wake me up, he was laughing about how ESPN was advertising the fact that they are live, on location for the National Spelling Bee. It is pretty funny, when you think about it, that the same network that broadcasts football also gives minute by minute coverage of 13-year-olds spelling really long words. But I would say that on the scale of dramatic competitive moments, it's actually kind of hard to top the National Spelling Bee. I know this because I've been there. It was seven years ago and I was there not as a contestant, but as a newspaper reporter. It was very fitting that on this particular morning, the memory of that experience should come to mind.

When Dan came in to wake me up today, he was helping me start what will be my last full time day of employment in newspapers for the foreseeable future. With my life as a mommy set to start at the end of the summer, I've decided to take the next three months off to spend time with family and friends, get the nursery ready, and just generally have a transition period between full time employment outside the home and full time employment in the home. This is a decision that was made months ago, and I'm happy about it and feel privileged in a lot of ways to have all my options open. I know that not everyone does.

But this morning, my last day has finally arrived, and I found myself thinking about spelling bees. In 2000, I was a college student, and I somehow got accepted to a program that paid for me to go live in Washington, D.C. for a month with a bunch of other students, work as a stringer for my paper back home, and learn all about how to be a reporter. My first real assignment for the program and, as it turned out, for my newspapering life, was to go to the National Spelling Bee and write about the little girl who was there from Mississippi. I spent two days at the bee, talked to the girl's mom, met a lot of other contestants from all over the country and was struck by how the whole experience, in some cases, seemed to be much more stressful for the parents of the contestants than for the contestants themselves. I ended up leading my story with a parent interview talking about how nerve-wracking it is to watch your child compete. I got really good feedback for finding an interesting angle on what could have been a pretty standard spelling bee story. Looking back, it still wasn't a very good story, but it was the first time I thought "Wow. Maybe I could really be a newspaper reporter. That might be kind of cool."

Well, as of now, I have been a newspaper reporter for five years, three years at community newspapers in small towns, and approximately 2 at a business newspaper in a bigger town. And it has been pretty cool, in a lot of weird, unexpected ways. Because of those small town experiences, I guarantee you I've been to more spelling bees than the average American citizen. I also can't even begin to count how many parades I've attended. Small towns love to have parades. It's like the default celebration for everything. It's a very endearing trait, even if it does get annoying to have to be the one to photograph and write about all these high school marching bands and local dance troupes. There are perks. You do get candy.

All those memories are coming back to me today, and I know, as I've known somewhere in my mind all through the process of choosing to walk away right now, that I am going to miss newspapers in all their stressful glory a little bit, if only because it's rare to find a job where you get to sit down with total strangers and ask them to tell you about their life. When you are a reporter, not only is that not considered socially awkward, but also, people will tell you the most fascinating things if you sit there long enough and they believe you really want to know. They'll tell you about how much they loved their parents and when they fell in love with their spouse, and how they felt when their kids were born and their war stories and they do it when really, they don't have to tell you anything. And that's what makes it's a privilege when they do. There are a lot of things that I am not going to miss about the life of a reporter. But I will miss those moments a lot, because they are the ones that have meant the most to me over the years.

So here's to spelling bees. And now, if you'll excuse me, I have a last day to get to.

This morning, I had a haircut appointment across town, miscalculated how long it would take me to get there, and showed up at the salon significantly early. My stylist, meanwhile, was running behind schedule because her previous client showed up late. So, with my newly-discovered period of free time, I decided to go across the street to a little cafe and just hang out.

I ordered a cup of coffee and a blueberry scone and sat down at a table next to a young couple with a two-year-old son. As I ate my breakfast, the little boy was doing about what you'd expect from a two-year-old ... chattering a lot, not showing much interest in eating his French toast, and just generally requiring a great deal of direction from his mom. This meant that there was a steady stream of noise from their table, but I didn't mind. About the time they finished eating, I pulled out my journal to spend the last few minutes before I needed to leave catching up on some writing. At the table next to me, the young couple got ready to leave, so the mom started cleaning syrup off the little boy and talking to him about where they were going next. As she was doing this, she turned around in her seat and saw me sitting there writing in my journal. Eyeing my pregnant belly and still talking to her son, she said in a knowing voice:

"Yes, honey, let's go now and let this nice lady enjoy her quiet time. It's clearly about to come to an end."

So true.

My sister-in-law Dinah is in town and we are having too much fun for me to blog. But if you go to Rebecca's blog, you can read a pretty funny post from her about her daughter, Livia, and some of the more hilarious things she is saying these days.

See how useless I've become now that I've quit work?

Awesome.

We may have, as Tony Parker puts it, "a lot of old guys" on our team, but we sure do win a lot of titles. Robert Horry gets his seventh NBA Championship ring. Michael Finley gets his first. Tony Parker is the MVP. And then, you know, we have Tim Duncan. Yes, it's good to be a Spurs fan tonight.

Sorry to have disappeared for a few days. I forgot to leave a note here saying that I was headed to Mississippi for one last visit with the family before the baby comes and airline travel takes on a whole new dimension of drama. Not that this trip wasn't exciting. I managed to book a flight on the day of the great United Airlines Computer Crash. I can't even remember the last time I flew United, but of course I did this time. It was swell, let me tell you. Nothing like being in Denver with hundreds of very testy airline travelers who are trying to grasp how a computer problem could ground flights all over the country.

I have lots to write about, including dramatic before and after pictures to post of a kitchen flooring replacement that Dan and some intrepid friends of ours took on in my absence, but today I need to unpack, do some laundry and go get some groceries. It appears that Dan has been existing entirely on fast food and condiments in the fridge for the last week.

My big accomplishment for the week is that I have gotten all caught up on my Harry Potter reading and am now ready for the release of the final book on Saturday. Since there are a couple of years between books, I always have to go back and read the last one so that I can actually remember what it was I wanted to know so badly when the last book was over. But now I remember. Oh, yes, I remember, Snape.

A few days ago, my dad called me up to ask me if I had gone to see the Harry Potter "Order of the Phoenix" movie yet. The mere fact that my dad knows who Harry Potter is is testament to the fact that my younger sister, Audrey, is a complete fanatic about these books, kind of the strung-out junkie to my relatively casual user. I am proud to say that I am the one who gave her her first Harry Potter book. (So I guess in this analogy, I would be her drug dealer.) I told Dad that yes, I took myself to see the Order of the Phoenix movie one recent evening. I was not that impressed with the movie, but I wasn't as upset as Audrey, who later gave me a passionate rundown of all the ways in which the movie was just terribly, unforgivably wrong. Not that I've never gotten all bent out of shape about the movie rendition of one of my favorite books. Remember this?

But movie or not, it's the new book that's really important now. Since the last time that one of the books came out, Audrey and I have also gotten our sister Hannah to start reading Harry Potter. So what this means for Dan, Cade and Daniel, the significant others of the Rice girls, is that they had better go out and get some plans of their own this weekend. Because we have a hot date with Harry Potter.

Anyone else getting excited?

In my previous post, I failed to mention that Dan's side of the family contains some pretty dedicated Harry Potter fans as well. Specifically, Dan's sister Hannah and her fiancee Josh. Josh and Hannah are getting married on Saturday in San Antonio, and Dan is catching a plane this afternoon so he can go and be part of that celebration. Kate and I are staying at home due to our collective hugeness and unsuitability for air travel, but we are very sorry to miss the festivities.

Since Hannah and Josh chose this Saturday to get married, an obvious problem emerges for them as Harry Potter fanatics: Enjoy your wedding reception and honeymoon, which you've been planning since January, or read the last Harry Potter book, which the world has been anticipating for two years?

Josh informs me that they've got it all worked out so that they can have their wedding cake and eat it too:

"A trustworthy groomsman is picking up our copies on the wedding day so that we don't miss out on any Potterific plot developments. We feel like it would be rude not to invite our favorite fictional wizard to be a part of our marriage experience."

So there you have it. They'll be lying on the beach in Hawaii, reading Harry Pottery. That sounds like a perfect honeymoon to me!

Have a great wedding day, Hannah and Josh. We love you. (This is a picture of the love birds about a year ago when we were in San Antonio for the wedding of Dan's sister Dinah and her husband, Chris. There was a lot of wedding cake left over, and as you can see, some people can't resist an opportunity to attack one another with baked goods. Let's hope they show more restraint when they are in formal wear.)

This is one of the surprisingly frequent times in my life when I wish I lived in Nebraska. For several reasons, I actually know more Nebraskans than I have any right to, given where I grew up, and they are all pretty cool. This weekend, I wish they lived closer because I know then that I would not have to go by myself to see Over the Rhine in concert.

This is a great little husband and wife duo whose music Dan and I greatly enjoy. However, they are playing this coming Saturday night at a bar downtown and Dan is going to be in Nevada on a business trip. I have gamely purchased a ticket for myself and plan to attend, but I thought I would ask if anyone in my life in Albuquerque has ever heard of this band and might want to go with me. It’s a non-smoking, 21-and-up only show and starts at 8 p.m., which means it should be over at a reasonable time.

I’m excited about the set up for this show because last week, I had to do the adult thing and pass up the opportunity to see Jimmy Eat World in concert. This was because the show was

a) On the night of our childbirth class and I couldn’t justify ditching the section on early labor to see a band

b) In a decidedly smoke-filled, standing-room only, non-pregnant-lady-friendly kind of venue and

c) Undoubtedly going to be full of squealing 15-year-old girls who started listening to Jimmy Eat World last week when they heard them on the O.C. I realize I’m being an elitist snob here, but that’s who I am. And as an elitist snob, I am tired of going to shows to hear bands I have loved for years only to have beer spilled on me by some underaged girl in a halter top who talks through the whole show because she’s only there to hear the one song she knows. I’m getting old and cranky and one day I’m going to turn around, grab one of their eternally-ringing cell phones, and throw it out into the crowd to make my point.

Anyway. I responsibly decided I’d have to pass on that show, and now to reward me, the concert deities have sent Over the Rhine to play a nice, non-toxic, adult kind of concert, and I’m really looking forward to going. So if anyone wants to go with me, let me know. I promise not to throw your cell phone anywhere.

In news that no one else cares about: Congratulations to Rupert Murdoch on his successful acquisition of the Dow Jones & Co., and with it, the Wall Street Journal. Of course, the fact that the man who brought you The Star and Fox News now owns one of the nation's bastions of great print journalism pretty much means that the Journalistic End Times are upon us. And that it's just a matter of time before the Journal plays patriotic theme music when you open it and gives front-page coverage to Britney Spears complete with commentary by Bill O' Reilly.

So, you know, cheers. I think I'm going to cry.

A couple of weeks ago, Dan went to San Antonio to be part of the wedding of his sister, Hannah, and our new brother-in-law, Joshua. I wasn't able to attend, but the family was kind enough to put together a CD of pictures from the weekend for me. Since there are other family members who weren't able to attend the wedding, here are a few of the pictures from what was obviously a beautiful day.

Hannah and maid of honor Dinah:

Hannah and the beautiful mother of the bride:

The ceremony was performed by Uncle Jack:

I could be wrong, but I think this is Josh's dad, his best man, with Josh, Hannah and maid of honor Dinah:

And of course, we have the triplets, Sammy, Blaine and Dani, holding down the fort as ringbearers and flower girl:

Congratulations to Josh and Hannah Butcher!

Today, Dan and I were running around town doing a variety of baby-related errands. Dan has been kindly dropping me off right at the front of stores so that I don't have to trudge through the heat on the way in, a small act of kindness that I appreciate more than words can say. He was getting ready to do this at Target when he saw a really great parking spot and told me to just stay in the car. As we were pulling into the spot, he said he was sorry for making me walk a little further, but he was afraid he wouldn't get the space if he waited. I said I understood and it was no problem. Then we had one of those moments that makes me realize how lucky I am to be married to someone who knows how to make me laugh. Because Dan said:

"Well who could blame you? You've gotta lock that down."

Which, for those of you who are not named Cody, is a reference to this moment from our favorite defunct TV show, Arrested Development. The setup is that Michael, the main character of the show, is going to meet the parents of his son Michael's girlfriend, Ann to warn them that he thinks his son, George Michael, is about to ask their daughter to get "pre-engaged" even though they are in high school.

No one else would probably even catch that reference, but I laughed the whole time we were in Target. There aren't many people who can make me laugh that much with just a few words. So it's nothing profound, but I think it makes my list of reasons it's great to be married.

There are a lot of parenting things that I don't have strongly-held views about, which is probably good since I have zero credentials to back me up, and I've been told that proclaiming your opinions about child-rearing before you have a child to rear is a really good way to guarantee that you have a child who refuses to conform to your plans. But the one thing I feel safe saying, as a certified English major, is that reading is better than television watching.

So I enjoyed this article. Of course, it kind of makes me laugh that we need a study to tell us that it's not particularly good for kids to watch a lot of TV. But that's why we've got a nice little starter library going for Kate, including such literary classics as "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" and "The Giving Tree."

Which brings me to my point: I keep a running list of books that I want to read, and it's probably realistic to expect for that list to be replaced by books I want to read to Kate for a while. That is totally fine with me, so long as they're good books, but I need some help making the list. So what was your favorite book when you were a kid?

This is a picture of a part of my life that has never gone particularly well. It's a houseplant:

This particular houseplant is, allegedly, a plumeria. Plumerias are a beautiful plant that grow like mold in Hawaii and on my mother-in-law's porch in San Antonio, Texas. They grow in Texas because my mother-in-law has done a fabulous job of bringing them back from her trips to Hawaii and transplanting them. She has at least six of them, and they have grown into trees that bloom luscious, sweet-smelling flowers all summer long.

Well, I have a plumeria too, because when Dan and I were dating, his family took a vacation to Hawaii, and his mom sent me a cutting for a plumeria, which I planted in a pot, where, for about a year, it looked like a stick in a pot. In fact, when I dropped this plant off at the home of my friends Gwyn and Mondo to be plant-sat in Clovis, New Mexico while I went home to get married to Dan, Gwyn made the mistake of trying to ask about the plant, which always goes the same way: "What should I do with the, ummm ... I'm sorry, what is it exactly that you're growing here?"

Once we moved into our apartment in Albuquerque, the plant did slightly better, putting out a few leaves due to the sun on the porch. But once the weather turned cold, it had to be moved inside, and its leaves yellowed and died and it looked, once again, like some horticultural radiation victim. People would come over for dinner and see it sitting there in the dining room and try not to ask about it, but eventually they would say "So, what kind of a plant is that .... It is a plant, isn't it?"

There have been many times I have been convinced that the plumeria was dead, and I've considered just admitting defeat, throwing it away, and acting like I don't remember my foray into tropical gardening. But instead, I water it and fertilize it, and these days, it has a nice crop of green leaves that I'm proud of, even though I know, in my heart, after five years, that it is never, ever going to make any flowers no matter what I do. Still, my mother-in-law hasn't lost faith in my ability to grow this plant, in spite of my repeated demonstrations of ineptness. Last time we were in San Antonio, she gave me a cutting off of one of her own trees so that I could start another plant. Apparently, she's now working on the theory that the plant itself is biologically challenged, and that's very gracious of her, since what's closer to the truth is probably that I am just a hopeless gardener. I've decided to embrace her optimism, and so as you can see if you look behind the big plant in the photo, I've stuck the new little plant in a pot of its own and am dutifully tending to it in hopes that it will flourish. It's a baseless hope, but one I'm fond of these days nonetheless. It's good to have hope.

Who knows? Maybe it will work out. After all, I may not have had much luck growing fabulous, sweet-smelling tropical flowers, but I am the undisputed queen of growing weeds. We really are going to pull those up this weekend. And by "we" I mean "Dan."

Our church has been blessed with five new babies in 2007. For a church that isn't exactly large, that's a lot of babies! On Sunday, we took a picture of all of them. From left we have Lily, with her dad, Cody; Heidi, with dad Oliver; Kate, with someone I think you all recognize; Zeke, with dad Tim; and Bonny, with mom Lynne. I think it's going to be a funny time when all these kids are learning to walk ... we'll need traffic control on Sundays to keep them from crashing into one another.

As is probably clear by now, we're on vacation in the great state of Mississippi, and my motivation to blog is low due to the massive amounts of home-cooked food I am consuming every few hours. But we wish you a merry Christmas, and we'll be back in the blogosphere soon. Cheers!

Conversation that took place in our living room as Dan was helping me make a grocery list for the week. (Yes, my husband does the grocery shopping. Isn't that great?)

Dan: What do you want for dinner tonight?
Me: Twelve hours of sleep.
Dan: I don't think Wal-mart sells that.

So yes, it's been one of those weeks, and I apologize for the lack of posts. We'll be back soon, I promise. And if you find any sleep lying around, you know where to send it.

In honor of my 28th birthday, which is January 16th, I am posting a Jesus sign photo I took in the spring when I visited Mississippi. I can't believe I forgot to share it, but better late than never.

For a while, these signs were everywhere in the town where my parents live. I have never gotten a clear answer on who was distributing them, or why, but I think they may be the best specimens of the Jesus sign genre I've ever seen, since they combine a baffling slogan (Enough is enough? Enough of what?) with totally unnecessary capitalization. I especially love that the word JESUS is in really, really big letters. It always is. I think the logic is that if people are driving by at 70 m.p.h. and don't have time to read the whole sign, you want their eyes to be drawn to the important part of the message.

So enjoy, and if you've seen any better signs than this lately, don't hold out on me. Share. It's my birthday.

Since it's an election year, I thought I would come out and say for the record that if I am ever elected president, the first thing I'm going to do is seek mandatory 10-year jail sentences for anyone convicted of running an Internet spam operation. And that's just for first-time offenders. Repeat spammers would get locked up for life with nothing to read but the drivel they've been posting on the blogs of law-abiding citizens. So vote for me. I might not know what to do about anything else (the war, the budget, health care, etc.), but you'll be free of junk email, and wouldn't that make you happy?

Full disclosure: I'm not sure if you've noticed, but over the last month or so, we've been inundated with spam comments on the blog, most of them from people allegedly named "Iris," "James" and "Betty." They appear to be posting some kind of serial novel in eight-word snippets. And trying to sell me real estate. So we've had to go back to doing something we've done in the past to try to prevent this, and that is asking you to complete a simple math problem before posting your comment to prove that you are, in fact, a human being and not a spam-posting android. The problem is 2+2. I don't want to ruin the surprise, but all you have to do to get your comment posted is enter "4" in the box provided. Unfortunately, if you don't answer 4, we will know you are a robot and a little gun will come up out of the screen and shoot you in the face. I know it's harsh, but I've had enough. So please count carefully.

Dan has set the new protocol up in the comments section, and we'd very much appreciate it if you'd help us test it out by leaving a comment. I think the sheer amount of spam has been discouraging people from commenting here lately, so it's very likely that you have many things you're just dying to tell us. Go for it. You can comment about the new comment procedure, anything you've read here, or just anything that's bothering you: Dan's beard. The presidential campaign. Amy Winehouse. Whatever. Just let us know you're still there, help us troubleshoot the new comment section, and if you have any problems, send Dan an email (daniel(at)wachdorf.com). I am probably kidding about the little gun. Unless your name is Iris.

Albuquerque officially becomes a one daily newspaper town on Saturday, when the Albuquerque Tribune publishes its last edition. I'm really sad to see this happen, even though it's pretty much been viewed as inevitable for a while, given the overall decline in newspaper circulation, particularly among afternoon papers. When we first moved to Albuquerque, it was my fondest ambition to work for the Trib. It never worked out, but I have continued to admire them from afar. They always did the most interesting, well written stories, and had such beautiful art to go with them. From the outside, at least, it really seemed like a place where people cared about what they put out there, and that always makes for a better product.

I'm not in newspapers anymore, but I still care about them because I love them and I think they are truly one of the last things standing between the future of intelligent, civilized public dialogue and mindless cable news infotainment. So here's to ink. Best wishes for the staff of the Tribune. I'm sorry to see you go.

My sister Hannah and her fiancee Daniel are here this week, visiting us and doing some snowboarding in Santa Fe.We've been baking cookies and playing Skip-Bo and drinking wine and watching Lost. And practicing our sweet ninja moves. Life is good.

Dan found this site the other day. The idea is that you go and play this vocabulary game and every time you get a question right, some rice is donated to the UN World Food Program. But we're not really playing for altruism. We're playing for bragging rights. Dan started playing this weekend and called me in to watch him. After I stood over his shoulder and laughed, hard, about the words he didn't know, he made me play, which I sat down to do secure in the knowledge that I was about to wipe the floor with him. But the interesting thing about the game is that it very quickly figures out your overall vocabulary level and starts asking questions that will challenge you. I have never heard some of the words it asked me about, and have therefore been learning lots of new words, which is great. If the site works the way these people say it does, it may be the only time that my interest in big words has helped end world hunger. Or do anything useful, for that matter.

For the record, my best level was 43, which means I seriously stomped on Dan's top score of 30, but I had to break a sweat to get there. If you get higher than that, feel free to come back here and brag. But if you do, you have to use one of your newly-learned words in a sentence.

This is a portrait Daniel took of us when he and Hannah visited a few weeks ago. I'm not sure what the technique is called, but it involved him taking lots of little pictures of us and our surroundings and then piecing them together like a puzzle for the big picture. To see more pictures done this way, visit Daniel's Flickr page and check out the pictures tagged "New Mexico." Amazing.

Note: I realized a few days ago that this will be my 500th post on this blog. For a while, I considered trying to do something significant with it. But then I decided it would really be much more in the spirit of what I usually do here to write about something utterly pointless. So here's to 500 largely frivolous entries.

A few days ago I had a dream and as I woke up from it, for about 30 seconds, I was totally convinced that I knew how to find out the answer to "Lost." As in, the Big Answer, the one that will explain what in the heck is going on with that island, and why the plane crashed there, and what is the black smoke monster.

In my dream, I saw these fuzzy TV screen/computer modules sort of like the ones in the Dharma Initiative surveillance stations. Jack Shephard was sitting in front of one of them, looking rugged and sweaty, desperately trying to get one of the screens to resolve into a clear picture. And then, he did. On the screen was a baby sitting in a kind of greenly-lit, sinister-looking room. Maybe the baby was being held captive. I don't know. But when the baby saw Jack, he started whispering in a totally adult voice. He said "I can't talk, they'll hear me. But I'll tell you everything you want to know."

So Jack started asking him questions, all the big questions of Lost. And the baby started signing the answers back to him! For those of you without small children, a lot of parents teach their kids to use sign language to communicate needs and desires before they could really talk. We think this is pretty cool, and so we've bought Kate these videos that teach babies the signs using peppy little songs. Little songs that will get stuck in your mind and replay themselves constantly. Especially when you try to go to sleep at night after you watch that episode of "Lost" that you Tivo'd.

Obviously, this is what I get for no longer watch anything but Lost and Baby Signing Time videos, but I swear, at the time, the idea that captive babies will sign the answers to Lost to us seemed 100 percent plausible. And given how that show works, it might be as likely as anything else. It would be just like the writers of Lost to make everyone go out and learn to decode the baby's messages just so we could understand the series finale, in which case I will be one step ahead of the rest of you thanks to Rachel the Signing Time lady. So I wanted to put it out there and go on record as saying that this, apparently, is my theory, and if it turns out to be true, I want credit. And a giant refund on all the hours I have spent watching Lost.

Kate and I are getting on a plane tomorrow morning and will be in Mississippi with my family until next week. Dan isn't coming with us, which we're sad about. Kate is sad entirely because she loves Dan. I am sad both because I love Dan and because I have this sneaking suspicion that my very busy eight month old is not going to nap through this series of flights like she did at Christmas. The good news is that she has recently learned to eat Cheerios, and finds this activity so engrossing that if I bring a big enough bag with me, she should be entertained for at least one leg of the journey. Here's hoping.

See you when we get back!

Wouldn't you love to sit here and think for a while? This pictures makes me want a glass of iced tea and some blank journal pages.

Kate and I have been back from Mississippi since last Thursday, and I have meant to blog every day since then, but somehow, I just don't have the energy to write anything. This could have to do with plenty of things, including the partial sleep boycott Kate scheduled for almost every night of our trip. (Side note: How do babies know when would be the worst possible time to refuse to sleep? HOW?)
So until I get my writing mojo back, here are a few things I learned on the trip, and then some pictures.

Fact No. 1: It is nearly impossible to travel with a cute baby without having to talk to every single person in the airport. And the airport bathroom. This is fine, because it's not like it pains me to be told that my baby is cute. But seriously people. Leave me alone in the bathroom.

Fact No. 2: The new Southwest Airlines "family boarding" policy makes me want to write a strongly-worded letter. Because it turns out that "family boarding" is a nicer sounding way to say "Oh, you have a stroller and a 40-pound diaper bag and a baby and you're traveling alone, so you'd like to chance to pre-board so you don't have 65 antsy airline passengers breathing down your neck while you try to get all that onto the plane? Well too bad, lady!"

Fact No. 3: In my absence, Mississippi has apparently embarked on a widespread public awareness campaign regarding the criminal consequences of statuatory rape. I know this because on the drive from the airport in Jackson to my parents's house near Hattiesburg, there were these enormous, tacky billboards every five miles or so that featured the mug shots of people apparently convicted of the crime in question, and the catchy slogan "STATUATORY RAPE IS A CRIME." It was rather jarring, in part because not two minutes before I saw the first billboard I had been marveling at a statue of a bucking bronco (Correction: It's a bull. I got my animals confused.) that someone had thoughtfully placed alongside the highway. It had been painted school bus yellow, and on its flanks were the words "JESUS SAVES" in black spray paint. These are the moments that make me realize I will never amount to anything as a fiction writer, because I could not invent anything so odd as the reality you can witness just driving along a highway sometimes.

Fact No. 4: It's good to be home. But we had a really good time on our trip and these pictures alone make all the airline hassle worth it. More pictures soon, I promise.

My brother Ryan telling Kate about the art of being a ninja.

My sisters, Hannah and Audrey, helping convince Kate that she is, indeed, the center of the universe.

My brothers and sisters. Hannah, me, Audrey, Aaron and Ryan. We have a lot of fun together.

These guys are pretty much my new heroes. If I had a job, I would quit it and follow them around the country, because they are doing what I always want to do. They are fixing all the atrocious spelling and grammar errors they see on public signs. With Sharpies.

My favorite quote: ""If we can inspire enough people to carry Sharpies and help out, then we will be satisfied and happy."

Count me in.

The trip to Mississippi that Kate and I took a couple of weeks ago was actually unplanned. And while surprises are good and it's always nice to go home and see the family, I can't say I was particularly happy about the reason for our trip. We were going to say goodbye to Ryan, who called a few days before to say that he was leaving for Iraq in less than a month. Technically, he was leaving for California to train for the deployment, which will officially begin in a couple of months, but you get the picture. And it's a familiar one, because we've been here before, and it was hard.

Once we got home from our trip, we rapidly got ready for a visit from Dan's parents, who went home yesterday. Now we're back to our normal routine, and that is good. Except that now I will have time to worry. I can hear my own thoughts more clearly in the lull, and they are fearful. I knew they would be, and it makes me feel tired in advance to think of how hard I will have to grapple in the next few months just to keep the anxiety from running me over. It pretty much owned me last time, I'm not proud to say.

But I came across this quote yesterday in my online wanderings, and it really seemed to have my name on it. Iain Duguid has this to say:

"God has not promised to give us the grace to face all of the desperate situations that we might imagine finding ourselves in. He has promised to sustain us only in the ones that he actually brings us into. He therefore doesn't promise that we will be able to imagine how we could go through the fire for his sake, but he does promise that if he leads us through the fire, he will give us sufficient grace at that time. Like manna, grace is not something that can be stored up for later use. Each day receives its own supply."

I honestly had not thought of that in quite this way before, in spite of all the lilies of the field and the manna and the direct statements like "Do not worry" that speak over and over from the pages of Scripture about how we'll have what we need when we need it. I've been acting like I have to have all the answers in advance, which is ridiculous. I'd love to say that this epiphany will drastically change the way I walk through this situation this time around, will make me do it better, but I can't promise that. Thankfully, grace also means that I don't have to.

My sister Audrey, who is visiting us this week, was kind enough to bring me a picture of the aforementioned golden cow that you can see along Highway 49 South between Jackson and Hattiesburg, Mississippi. If I ever write a book, I think this will have to be the cover.

I realized a few weeks ago that a couple of people have tagged me in a blog meme that asks you to list seven random things about yourself that your readers might find interesting. While I sometimes worry that the Internet knows way, way too much about me already, I think I'll make it official and give you these last seven pieces of information you need to go on some kind of trivia show about me.

1) I never have cash. I mean, if you need a quarter to make a phone call from a pay phone, I am not your girl, because it will take me 30 minutes to scrape 25 cents together from under the floor mats of my car. And even then, it will be in pennies.

This bit me in the rear on two very recent occasions, one of which I will recount for you. When I picked my sister Audrey up from the airport for her recent visit, I parked my car in the short-term lot, and because I basically walked up to the waiting area as Audrey was walking out, we were leaving again in less than a half hour. This meant that we only owed one dollar for the parking fee. One dollar that I did not have. So I got out my credit card. And it wasn't enough that I already felt stupid for charging a one dollar fee. No. The parking lot attendant, acting on behalf of the Universe or something, leaned out of the little booth and said. "Do you really not have a dollar?"

No, I really, really don't.

2) I cut my hair short for the first time when I was 18. That first time, it was really, really short. Boy short. Too short. No, I will not show you pictures. But it's basically been short-ish ever since then. On an interesting note, Dan's sisters told me after we got engaged that on several occasions when they were growing up, Dan said he wanted to marry a tall girl with short, dark hair. So I guess that one worked out for him.

3) I have been wearing the same necklace for ten years. I have averted detection by the Fashion Police for this lack of accessory variation by moving states and changing my (last) name. But I bought my necklace, which is a silver Celtic knot, in Belfast, and I love it. That makes me sound more well-traveled than I am, when the truth is that I went to Northern Ireland when I was 18 and haven't been out of the country since. But it was an important trip for me because it was one of the first experiences that showed me in a very direct way that not everyone in the world is like me. In Belfast I saw that necklace and fell in love with it and bought it and I've been wearing it ever since. Meanwhile, people are still not all like me. So I suppose that lesson, like my necklace, has some longevity.

4) The single regret I have about college (aside from the usual stupidity and immaturity) is that I did not study abroad. I have since realized that it is never going to be easier to live in another country for a while than it is when you're a student. So heed that, youngsters. Go to Europe. And send an old lady a postcard.

5) I wish recommending books for people was a job for which you could get paid. Every once in a while, someone in my life will humor me and ask me what they should read, and I spend a lot of time thinking about my advice. When someone loves a book I have told them to read, I am ridiculously happy, like I set people up on a blind date and have now been invited to their wedding. Really, it's very rewarding.

6) The first three CDs I ever owned are as follows: Counting Crows, August and Everything After; R.E.M. Automatic for the People; and the Indigo Girls, Swamp Ophelia. And I still love all those records, and the Indigo Girls. I don't care how uncool that is. Shut up.

7) My ears are not pierced. I am not sure how that failed to happen, except that when I was under 12, I wanted to get them pierced and my mom wouldn't let me, and by the time she would have, I had forgotten about it and gone on to start my career as a person who wears the same necklace for ten years and is currently carrying a purse that has a lining so badly ripped that everything falls through it and gets lost. Which makes it hard to pretend to look for a dollar in change just to placate the parking lot attendant at the airport.

Please pray this week for our friends, Summer and Oliver and for their family. Summer's cousin Eric was killed in Afghanistan last week and his family is gathered in Kentucky making preparations for his burial. Eric was a Marine on his third tour of duty overseas; he was also a believer, and so there is comfort in the knowledge that he is surely now safe and well. But the grief is immense for those he has left behind.

There is a news article posted here and a video clip here regarding Eric. There is also a beautiful photo of him on Summer's blog, holding his nephew and niece in his arms. One day, they will be reunited.

How to make me smile: If you are an adult, bring flowers for me, a rattle for my little girl, and a an inflatable globe ball for, I suppose, Dan, when you are our dinner guest. It isn't required for admission, but we like it. I mean, Dan played with that bouncy ball all night. Thanks, Bob.

If you are the resident nine-and-a-half-month-old of the house, start dragging a stuffed animal (in this case, a monkey) around with you everywhere, and rub your face on it when you are tired. My heart will melt. By the way, Kate P, do you recognize the monkey in these pictures? Congratulations. I think you may have given us the toy that we will have to buy 3 extras of in case we ever lose it.

On another subject, I think Kate is really close to crawling. I also think my life is about to get much more complicated.

It occurred to me on about day five of the ten-day trip to Mississippi from which we've just this last hour returned that I should have mentioned on the blog that we were leaving and some serious blog neglect was about to ensue. But since I didn't have the foresight to do that, I'll just have to apologize as usual. I always have grand plans to blog from my parents' house. This time, I even brought a CD of all the photos I might want to include in my planned writings.That's how good my intentions were. I can't really say that I regret not blogging, since instead I spent time talking to my sisters, playing with Kate with my mom, and eating fabulous food. The food pretty much always wins when I'm in the South.

Now we're back in Albuquerque, and laundry and unpacking our giant suitcases is going to have to take priority for a few days. But here's an airplane/parenting related pop quiz just to make this a legitimate blog post.

Question: If you take a plane ride with your ten-month-old child and pack a bag full of entertainment objects including, but not limited to, a stuffed monkey, a measuring cup, a chewy toy shaped like a popsicle, a rattle, and plastic baby keys, which of these objects will entrance your child for the duration of a flight from Jackson, Mississippi to Houston?

Answer: None. But during the beverage service, the flight attendant will hand your baby a plastic cup with the words "Continental Airlines" on it, and the baby will behave as if this plastic cup is the long-sought key to her happiness in life and play with it for the remainder of the flight.

Whatever works, people. I do whatever works.

There have been a lot of days lately when I have sincerely wished that we could just reschedule the election for tomorrow purely so that I could stop hearing about it. New Mexico is a swing state when it comes to presidential elections, and in 2004, we got so many political messages on our answering machine that (true story) I actually missed an offer of a freelance job because we skipped it as we flipped through the more than 25 pre-recorded candidate messages that piled up during a brief trip out of town. Just a heads-up to those of you who have yet to survive a presidential election out here. I, for one, plan to change our phone number sometime around October 1.

There are plenty of things that make me weary when it comes to our political process, and I don't often vent about them publicly, because I'm not a very political person and they're just the usual stuff that annoys everyone. The lying. The posturing. The simplifying of complex ideas into sound bites. But far and away the thing that has come to offend me the most is seeing certain self-proclaimed leaders of the Christian evangelical community turn themselves into political pundits during an election cycle.

I bring this up because it came to my attention this evening that Dr. James Dobson is preparing to weigh in with his assessment of who Christians should vote for this year.

I don't know about you, but this is an enormous weight off my mind. I have been having a really hard time considering the merits and claims of both presumptive candidates and applying a critical thought process to my vote. But now, apparently, I can rest easy and say "Oh! Dr. Dobson might endorse him? Well in that case, my decision is made!"

I'm not saying that Dobson and Pat Robertson and whoever else is supposedly speaking for the Christian community these days don't have a right to their political opinions. But I don't think that the use of their Christian ministry platforms to endorse a political candidate is advancing anything other than A) their own standing as quasi-celebrity Christians and B) a perception among non-Christians that "evangelical" is some kind of third political party. The gospel is supposed to be a sacred thing, not some secondary vehicle to be rented out as ad space for a political message.

So please, Dr. Dobson, focus on the family. Knock yourself out. But put a sock in it when it comes to politics. And I can make time in my schedule to vote this week, if everyone else could just check their calendars and get back to me so that maybe we could bump this thing up a few months. I'm afraid I'm not going to make it to November without blood pressure medication.

Interesting article here on a court case in New Zealand involving a child's right to change their name in cases where parents have displayed the intelligence of zucchini when naming their children.

I mention this mainly so that I can tell the story of the worst baby name I have ever heard. When we lived in Yazoo City, Mississippi, our family came across a birth announcement in the local paper for a little girl whose parents had chosen to name her Desert Stormy Ocean Country Cinnamon Blossom (Last Name Witheld). Really. Can you just imagine what it is like to fill out forms asking for your whole name if you've got six or seven of them?

When I was pregnant with Kate, we used to sit around and try to invent awful names we could give our child if we were so inclined. I think the worst one we came up with was Zephaniah Wachdorf. I mean, if you put anything weird in front of "Wachdorf" you're asking for trouble, so for our kids I think we'll be sticking to fairly classic names. Classic, short names. The kids will already have a job in front of them when it's time to learn to write their names in kindergarten. Poor things.

On Monday, I was playing around with our camera trying to take some pictures of Kate and I. This turns out to be harder than it sounds, even with a ten-second timer option on the camera. I don't think I got a single shot where we are both smiling and fully in the frame. But some of them turned out kind of fun anyway, so I thought I'd share them.

Me in the frame completely, Kate not.

A desperate attempt to immobilize the little one by lying flat on my back and holding her still. Didn't work.

And finally, as is inevitable these days, it just deteriorated into a game of Grab the Camera. So much for art.

This is a really interesting and, I think, well researched article on segregation in America's churches. It's obvious that the writer spent enough time to understand some of the subtleties of the issues rather than just throwing numbers out there. I particularly love this paragraph:

But interracial church advocates say the church was never meant to be segregated. They point to the New Testament description of the first Christian church as an ethnic stew -- it deliberately broke social divisions by uniting groups that were traditionally hostile to one another, they say.
DeYoung, the "United by Faith" co-author, says the first-century Christian church grew so rapidly precisely because it was so inclusive. He says the church inspired wonder because its leaders were able to form a community that cut across the rigid class and ethnic divisions that characterized the ancient Roman world.
"People said that if Jews, Greeks, Africans, slaves, men and women - the huge divides of that time period -- could come together successfully, there must be something to this religion," DeYoung says.

I might have to pick up a few of the books mentioned in this article. I also recommend a book called "More Than Equals" by Spencer Perkins and Chris Rice. That was a book that helped me start thinking about a lot of things including whether or not the tradition of separate churches is acceptable since it makes everyone more comfortable. I've come to believe it's not OK. I'm still sorting through what should be happening instead, and you will be surprised to learn that as of 3 p.m. this afternoon, I have not come up with any great answers on that one. I don't hear anyone in this article saying there's an easy solution either, and they appear to be experts. But if only five percent of our churches are interracial, I can't help but conclude that we might not be trying hard enough.

Kate and I are home from our Minnesota adventure. No time to do is justice on the blog right now, as Kate's Grammy Wachdorf is in town and life is busy, but Rebecca, my friend of View from the Prarie Box fame, has a great Flickr stream of pictures from our weekend.

And to continue my blog plagiarizing, I will also link to this post from Charity's blog highlighting one of her favorite conversational moments.

As I said when we were eating Oreos and drinking red wine the first night at the cabin, I love this weekend. I recently read a poem on someone else's blog that reminds me of all the late night conversations I have had with these girls over the years. So now I've stolen three people's work.

The Good Nights

by Joseph Mills

On the good nights
when the bottle’s empty
we always want
just a little more,
half a glass,
a few sips,
a taste.
We know
this desire
can be dangerous
to pursue,
that it can make
mornings difficult,
so usually we
brush our teeth
let the dog in,
lock the doors,
but sometimes,
even as we say
We really should
get ready for bed,
instead of loading
the dishwasher
we will search
for the corkscrew,
all the while
shaking our heads
in wonder
at this willingness
to ignore the clocks
and the fact we have
to work tomorrow,
this irresponsibility,
this evidence
even after all these years
of the unquenchable desire
for each other’s company.

Our friend Liz came to see us this week, and so I've been away from the computer, seeing the sights of New Mexico. Isn't it interesting how you forget what's in your own city and state until you start showing someone else around? It helps that all the driving to Santa Fe and around Albuquerque was done with Liz in the car, and Liz makes me laugh, which is my favorite way to pass the time. So here are a few pictures from our adventures, and I'd also like to insert a brief commercial here for those of your considering a trip to New Mexico: Come on out! Dan will pick you up at the airport. I will show you the sights. Kate and I are unemployed and available to go to Santa Fe at a moment's notice. I will cook you dinner. I will even take Kate's pack n play out of the guest room and let you have the whole thing to yourself. I will do all of this out of sheer relief at not having had to get on an airplane with a baby in order to visit with you. Thanks to the airline industry's new customer service approach (Motto: "If we could charge you $25 for oxygen on the plane, we totally would.") I am getting to the point where I would pay large sums of money NOT to get on a plane.So please consider the Land of Enchantment next time you are planning a vacation. Maybe I'll give you the money I would have spent on a plane ticket. End commercial.

Here are Liz, Kate and I on the top of Sandia Peak. We rode the tram up, and I couldn't tell if Kate really like the ride or was really really scared, because she kept hanging on to the rail in front of the tram car windows like she was either just really taken with it or was trying to reassure herself that she wasn't going to fall.

With Liz checking out the trees changing colors on the backside of the peak.

In Santa Fe, we had gelato, and Kate cried if I didn't get another bite of it into her mouth quickly enough. Child after my own heart.

We sat on the square downtown and watched hippies and elderly folks in town with guided tour bus groups. Oddly no one was protesting anything that day, which may mark the first time I've been in Santa Fe without seeing someone marching in protest of the war/animal abuse/purple shirts on Thursdays or whatever sorts of things you start protesting when you run out of actual injustices. Someone did talk to me about the environment, but they didn't have any signs and were really nice, so I didn't mind. And Kate enjoyed her pita bread picnic.

Actually, the most intrusive thing that happened during our travels wasn't in Santa Fe, World Capital of Sign-Waving Concerned Citizens, but in Albuquerque, where, during an otherwise unremarkable lunch at Einstein Bros. Bagel Co., this guy came up to Kate, grabbed her toy monkey, and started making it kiss her face. Which might have been cute for about 30 seconds, but the guy just kept doing this for about five minutes. I didn't know what to do. Kate handled it pretty well, but she kept giving Liz and I these looks like "Seriously? Is this guy nuts? And is he going to give me back my monkey, or what?" I really think he was trying to be nice, and so I tried really hard not to laugh until we got out of the restaurant, but it was such a weird thing to do. So when you come for your visit to Albuquerque, we won't go to lunch there. Promise.

This should not be taken as any sort of insight into how I'll be voting in a few weeks, and if you are expecting me to blog about that, you'll never take me alive. But the other day I was leaving a restaurant and saw this bumper sticker. As someone who isn't a card-carrying member of either major political party but did, with great pride, line up to join my fellow countrymen in buying the last Harry Potter book the day it came out, I laughed pretty hard.

I started writing this yesterday, but as a couple of other people have noted, it's hard to find the words, even a year later. So I also want to link to Kelly, Megan and, most of all, Pinky, so that I can use their words, and their pictures, too. Edie, we love you and your family.

I have been thinking a lot about heaven the last few days. Not because I am deep, but because this week makes it one year since a good friend of ours got there before us. I think Brent and Edie and their kids were some of the first people we met at our church when we first started visiting there in 2003 when we were engaged. After we were married and joined the church, we spent hours over at their house along with other friends. Brent was a Texas Tech alum, and so of course he and Dan had to talk trash for weeks before the Tech vs. A&M game. One Sunday after Tech stomped A&M in the Saturday game, we walked out of our apartment on the way to church to find Dan's A&M Aggies rock that sits outside our door replaced with another rock hand-painted by Brent and Edie, sporting the Texas Tech logo and the score of the game. It's probably not to my credit that I laughed as hard as I did, but really even Dan thought it was funny. Eventually Brent gave us our rock back, and then displayed his Tech rock on their porch. It's still there and I smile every time I see it.

Another Sunday a few years later, Brent and Edie and our friend Susie came to the hospital to meet Kate, who was born the night before. They brought me smoothies and chocolate pretzels and held the baby, and Brent got seriously uncomfortable when the women started talking about childbirth. But he was a good sport and stayed anyway, and held the baby, and I'm so glad for that memory.

And then one Sunday morning, we came to church and heard that Brent had died. Since then, probably as a result of needing to work on grasping the simple reality of his absence from us, I have thought about heaven more than I ever have in my life. It always seemed like a distant, hazy sort of eternal church service before. But now that I know someone there, it seems more real. Oddly enough, I also now think of it as a place with a lot of laughter. I know that the point of heaven is that we'll be in God's presence without sin or death forever. But, I mean, come on. Brent is there. So you know we're going to do some laughing.

We miss our friend terribly, and in this life, I don't think there will be an end to that. But we have no doubt about where he is, and that we'll see him again. That is the good news. And, as we say in our church every Sunday, to that good news all the Lord's people can say Amen.

"And He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away." Revelation 21:4

I am excited to announce that my awesome sister-in-law, Kelly, has launched a blog to chronicle the life she and my brother Aaron are starting in their new home of Oxford, Mississippi. Aaron is in law school at Ole Miss, and they just bought their first house. I am glad they have a blog so that I can see what their life looks like these days. But mostly I am happy that now, someone besides me can take on the task of telling funny stories about Aaron online. It's a big job, but someone has to do it.

To that end, I will link straight to my favorite Kelly post so far, How to be Married to Aaron Rice.

Of course, a close second is this post. I think it sounds like a fine idea.

Welcome to the blogosphere, Kelly! Happy storytelling.

Three cheers for Jason Morehead of Opus Zine. I think he has just articulated why I pretty much delete without reading 95 percent of the email forwards that I get, especially during an election season.

My favorite part:

"If you ever receive an e-mail claiming that so-and-so is a godless heathen who wants to teach America’s schoolchildren how to participate in gay threesomes, or that they have a history of committing war crimes and want to drown cute baby seals in crude oil—you know, the kind of e-mail that you just can’t wait to send off to your family members and friends (Facebook or otherwise)—there should be a red flag or two popping up in the back of your head."

Whole post here.

On Friday night, we headed out to the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta with some friends of ours. The balloon glow we were gong to see was canceled due to high winds, but we still go to eat some fair food, hang out, and watch the fireworks after it got dark. Here are some pictures we took.

The city runs a great park and ride shuttle service to the fiesta using school buses, so here is Kate on a bus, talking to Chloe, her buddy.

Funnel cake. Yum.

Since the balloons couldn't inflate, some of the pilots entertained the crowd by blasting the flames up into the air. The kids we were with were alternately thrilled and freaked out.

Ellie (shown here on Luke's shoulders) was thrilled. She kept saying "Fire come again, mommy!"

This was definitely one of those occasions when I wish I could see what Kate is thinking. "OK. I'm not in bed, and instead we're in a giant field staring at a pillar of fire." As the evening wore on and we still didn't go home and put her to bed, she got more and more confused looking. But she was a good sport about it.

One day, I am going to make the Jeromins teach us how to take family photos that look like J. Crew catalog covers.

Ellie was the commentator for the evening. During the fireworks she kept getting Dan's attention and then telling him "Look at the fireworks, Mr. Dan!" Later on, Dan got Ellie's attention and told her to look at the fireworks and she was all "I see them, Mr. Dan," like "Stop distracting me me, dude. I have this fireworks thing down." It was hilarious.

Kate almost fell asleep in spite of the fireworks. Maybe next year she'll be a little more into it.

Thanks for a great night out, friends! Maybe next year we can see some actual balloons.

Three days after the election I have to say my main emotion is still relief that it's over. Not that some of the robocalls weren't funny. One of them, which I heard via my answering machine on election day, featured a guy with a creepy voice and tone of speaking you usually hear in the previews for horror movies saying "The Democrats are flooding the polls right now ...." and I didn't hear the rest. But I did laugh. I mean, really? Now you're going to scare me into voting by mentioning Democrats? You're going to have to come up with something a lot more terrifying than that.

With that said, I didn't vote for Obama. But I'm not going around in sackcloth and ashes over his election either, and I'm fully prepared to respect him as president for the next four years and keep an open mind about what he will do. I also think we've come a long way as a country to elect an African American man to the presidency, and that is more progress than I would have credited us with before this.

A few people around the blogosphere who I gather also didn't vote for Obama have said things in recent days that I think are very insightful. In order to qualify for this post, they also didn't involve the phrase "liberal media." So I will give them props here via linkage. A couple of these people don't know I read their blogs, because I am a world-class lurker. So, umm, hello to Half Pint House and My Life in Sweatpants. I hereby delurk and declare my love of your blogs. Sorry to have been stalking you.

Tim of The Wrestling Mat, who knows me in real life, on what Obama's background could mean for interracial families.

Megan of Half Pint House on the fact that the world, if you notice, has continued to turn.

Leura of My Life in Sweatpants with some great thoughts, election or not, on what the pro-life movement might look like in an inhospitable political environment. Or what it should look like in the lives of Christians no matter who is in office.

And Ligon Duncan on praying for our new president and his family. I have always thought that it must be extraordinarily difficult to move your family into the White House, with all the scrutiny and stress that entails, and I think this family, especially because they have two young daughters who will do a lot of their growing up in the public eye, will need those prayers.

Food for thought. Thus end my political musings. Like Megan, I have laundry to do.

Well, after a year hiatus from molding the minds of the kids in our church, Dan and I are teaching a Sunday School class again, and this time, the stakes are a lot higher. Why? Because it's the junior high class, and I am scared they will make fun of me. Not because the kids are mean, but just because the mere phrase "junior high Sunday School" takes me back to my own junior high days. I had a pretty major lack of confidence at that point in my life, and for good reason, since I had glasses, braces and a crippling fear of speaking in public, even to answer questions in Sunday School.

The good news is that the kids in our class, all three of them, are really nice to me, and probably would even have been nice to my junior high self. The bad news is that the curriculum we have, while very easy to use and actually pretty insightful, has this laser-focus on making us discuss, to put it delicately, awkward concepts with the kids. I feel like they loaded the deck in favor of awkward by choosing to teach big portions of the early Old Testament. I never noticed it until I was required to explain it to impressionable youngsters, but some crazy stuff happens in the Old Testament, people. For example:

Abraham and Hagar: "Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar; so she said to Abram, "The Lord has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my maidservant; perhaps I can build a family through her." Genesis 16: 1, 2

That one made me want to conduct a quick poll of our students' parents before we got started to determine what the kids do and do not know about the birds and the bees, so to speak. If that answer to that turned out to be "not much" then I was thinking I would, without warning Dan, just change the subject of the lesson on the spot. "Today, kids, we'll be talking about ... ponies." Dan would just have to go along with it. I think part of what makes it awkward is that our church is small, and so it is not surprising that we taught all of these kids when they were in the little kids class, where we mostly did crafts and sang songs and did most certainly not discuss family planning customs of the ancient world. And then while I wasn't looking, they started growing up, and gluing popsicle sticks together no longer holds their attention.

But the week about Hagar pales in comparison to the next lesson, where we got to talk about the seal of the covenant between Abraham and God ... circumcision. And I kid you not, the writers of the curriculum suggested that if we wanted to, we could split the group up into guys and girls so that we could explain to them in a non-embarrassing context just exactly what circumcision entails. No, thank you! I think we'll just gloss right over that and move on, as my good Southern upbringing dictates.

This week, we talked about the story of Isaac and Rebekah and the practical application had to do with dating. We made the mistake of telling the kids that's what we would be discussing ahead of time, and based on the looks on their faces when we started, I think they thought we were going to bring them into the room and make them practice asking people out. So overall, I think they were relieved when we just stuck with the story and what it tells us about how God takes care of his people's lives, even down to details like who they marry. And I kind of thought it went well. Until Eli pulled out his list and I realized that for the most part, these kids would still rather die than be seen in public with a member of the opposite gender.

So far, Edie, who talked us into this in the first place, has not intervened to fire us, so I am assuming we have met my main goal, which is to avoid saying anything that makes anyone's parents have to re-explain the aforementioned birds and bees. But on the way home from church yesterday it occurred to me that, as impossible as it seems, one day Kate is going to be old enough that I need to talk to her about stuff like dating and relationships, and it isn't like that's going to be any less awkward just because it's my own kid. Probably more so, really. So I am thankful that people in our church are letting me practice on their kids. That is community for you.

Not that I won't totally understand if someone fires us. Next week they want us to do a skit. My junior high self is really freaked out about that.

This is not the greatest photo, and I was somewhat hesitant to start the December Photo Project with it, but it's funny when you understand what is happening. On Saturday, we took Kate to the aquarium. There is a part in the Albuquerque Aquarium where there is a big walk-through tunnel devoted to the habitat of eels. Big, slimy, creepy eels. I was worried Kate would be freaked out by them. I mean, I am sort of scared of them. All they do is sit there and and open and close their mouths and never ever blink. And she loved them. After watching them for a few minutes, she turned to us and started opening and closing her mouth in perfect imitation of the eels. I managed to get one picture of her with her mouth open, and as you can see, that eel on the left is helpfully opening his (Her? Beats me.) mouth so you can see what Kate was going for.

I am not sure if this is cheating, but I am going to post a couple of other photos of Kate with her new BFFs, the eels. I have a feeling a year-long pass to the aquarium is going to be on her Christmas list.

Since I haven't blogged yet in 2009, I thought I'd give an update from Houston Hobby airport, where we are waiting for what we desperately hope will be our last flight on this trip. After four significant delays out of five flights, we are a teensy bit skeptical about our odds of getting home today as planned. But as you can see from this photo, Kate loaded up on her collard greens and black-eyed peas on New Year's Day, so our luck should be improving any minute now. Happy New Year, y'all. I promise to blog once we get home and get settled. And after I get done kissing my kitchen floor and writing strongly-worded letters to various airlines.

As I'm still working on getting us back up and running in the laundry, groceries and general household organization categories after our trip, I'm not going to write much about these photos, but still wanted to share them. We really did have such a good time, and got to see a lot of people we miss in our life way out here in the desert.

First, here are Chi and Kate enjoying the slides at a park near the home of my in-laws. We tried to do a cute photo opp where they would go down the slide together, but they weren't having it.

One of the silver-lining type results of our flight delays was that when we arrived in Jackson, Mississippi, a day later than planned, it turned out that the flight of my friend, Leigh of Marvelous Kiddo, had also been delayed. Under our previous flight plans, we were going to miss one another by just a couple of hours. Instead, we got to swoop by her parents' home in Jackson and have a too-brief, but totally worth it visit, in which we got to actually behold one another's children for the first time. The Kiddo is even cuter in person, if you can imagine that.

One of the difficult parts of our trip was that Kate busted through four molars and came down with a terrible cold, which she then passed on to a handful of innocent bystanders, including my mom, my dad, my friend Liz who came to visit us, and, we think, Dan. So she wasn't in the best frame of mind for some of the trip, and thus, this photo sums up a lot of what we did for the first few days of our time in Mississippi: nose-wiping and crying. I could devote an entire blog to the topic of how much this kid hates to have her nose wiped, but I will spare you.

On Saturday, my college roomates Lindsay (left of me) and Robin (right of me) came to the house for dinner, and afterwards we took the same photo we always take, which is the one where I am in the middle, with my shoulders resting on these two, who are so cute and petite that I look large and gawky and weird in comparison. Next time I am sitting down for the photo.

And these last two photos are of Kate with Aaron. Aaron and Kelly gave Kate this thing called My First Purse, that comes equipped with a play cell phone, keys, compact, mirror, lipstick and, I kid you not, a pink and purple plastic debit card. Kate, needless to say, was thrilled, and walked around for the rest of the day in such a growny manner than you would swear she was just about to take her new purse, jump into her very own car, and whiz off to college. Here is Aaron helping her get her purse settled on her shoulder so they can go on a walk. I think he's going to make a great dad one day.

Tomorrow, January 16, is my 29th birthday, which I suppose means that as of tomorrow, I am on the big countdown to 30. As you can see from this picture from our family jaunt around the neighborhood to watch the sun set, the view from my 28th year has been pretty sweet. Also, Dan promises me breakfast in bed and a fun night out tomorrow. (Complete with a babysitter! And a restaurant where you don't order at the counter and there is no playground!) So bring on 29. I can be old later.

Here are a couple of pictures of Kate helping us with things we needed to get done around the house this weekend. First, she helped me sweep up the kitchen to get ready to host our small group from church. I love how serious her face is in these photos. Housekeeping, apparently, is important business.

And here she is helping Dan play the Wii. Her expression isn't quite as serious here, but she really does think she is helping. Lately, she has taken to bringing Dan the Wii remotes and demanding that he play so she can sit in his lap and help. Raise your hands if you are at all suspicious that he is training her to do this. That's what I thought.

Since we've been home from our trip, I've been having a really hard time finding socks for Kate. It seems like almost every time I am getting her dressed, I can only find one of any given pair of socks she owns, and some pairs just seem to have disappeared completely. For a while, I kept waiting for them to turn up in the laundry, but we've been home for a while now, and while I am not exactly the Donna Reed of the Southwest, I have managed to do all the laundry from the trip now that it's been three weeks since we came home. It's been a mystery, but not a glamorous mystery, just a vaguely irritating one.

In what I thought was a completely unrelated phenomenon, when I've gone to get Kate up from her afternoon nap lately, I've found her sockless in her crib. I hadn't really thought about how many times this had happened, because who has time to think about that kind of stuff what with all the laundry piling up? And then last night, as I was drifting off to sleep, it suddenly came to me where all those socks were. Predictably, I went to sleep and forgot all about it, but this afternoon when I went in to get Kate up from her nap and found her barefoot, I remembered my theory and looked between her crib and the wall. Sure enough, there were all the socks. By which I mean about a dozen socks, some in complete pairs, some loners, but still rendering the pair of socks to which they belonged unwearable in their absence. No wonder I can't find a pair of socks to put on the kid! She's been squirreling them all away!

What cracks me up about this is that in order to get all those socks down there, Kate has to have been waiting until I leave the room, thinking she's drifting off to sleep, and then taking off her socks and standing up in her crib to drop them down the chute. I don't know what ever gave her the idea to do that, but she's been very quiet about the whole thing, and very efficient too. So this afternoon I pat myself on the back. Maybe I am no Donna Reed, but I bet I could give Nancy Drew a run for her money. Thus is solved the Mystery of the Missing Socks. Here is the cute little culprit with some of her stash.

It really is a wonderful thing to live in the digital age. For instance, I don't watch Ellen, but thanks to YouTube, I can still watch this hilarious clip of Ellen Degeneres talking to an 88-year-old fan named Gladys. It's making the Internet rounds under the title "I love Jesus, but I drink a little." I think that should be a bumper sticker. It probably will be soon. Aside from the title line, this clip makes me laugh because it is so much like dozens of conversations I had with elderly folks in small towns as a newspaper reporter. I guarantee you Gladys is on a first-name basis with everyone at that local station she's talking about. She probably calls them once a week. Enjoy.

I am so glad it isn't February any more. I don't know why, but I am always ready for February to be over. It seems to be a month of waiting, and as an impatient person who wants timelines and schedules and boxes to check off, I hate waiting. This February was about waiting for Kate to finish getting her fourth wretched molar in two months, waiting to be done with a series of visits to the dentist that I dreaded days in advance, being sick and waiting to get better, feeling like the wait to see progress in my growth toward patience is a total lost cause and, of course, waiting out the last of the serious cold weather. The last week or so it's been really nice outside, so we've been getting out more, and I can already feel that helping. Tomorrow my mom is coming for a visit, kicking off what will be a round of seven house guests we are scheduled to host between now and the end of March. The momentum is picking up around here. By April it's highly likely that I'll be ready to crawl into the quietest corner of my house with a book and not talk for a couple of weeks to recover. But right now it feels good to be moving into warmer weather and visits from loved ones and maybe along with it all some renewed energy. Perhaps I'll even have an original thought or two that doesn't bore me so badly I can't even consider inflicting it upon y'all, my loyal three readers.

Kate is my role model for energy and enthusiasm. Today, she and Dan went to Wal-Mart to pick something up for me. He bought her a 99-cent pinwheel and she was enthralled. It was all I could do to get her to put it down so she could take a bath. I mean, look at that face!

I originally meant to do Quick-Takes Friday, which I've seen lots of bloggers I admire doing lately. It's a great idea, but as usual, I am doing it all wrong, since it's Saturday, not Friday, and mine didn't turn out to be so quick after all. Oh well. Maybe they will still let me play. So here are seven quick takes for a Saturday morning (at least it was morning when I started writing):

1.This week, Dan and I went on our first overnight trip since Kate was born. Actually, I am not sure it really qualifies as a trip, since we went one exit up the Interstate from our house and stayed at the Hotel Albuquerque near Old Town. But it might as well have been a million miles it was so strange to be away from her for 24 hours. That said, we had a fabulous time, and are really thankful to Dan's mom, who stayed with Kate overnight. It was really wonderful to spend some uninterrupted time together. I drank all my coffee while it was still warm, people. I didn't do this while supervising 7 a.m. outdoor playtime in the 35 degree weather. It was decadence.

2. Since we're going to be apart on our upcoming sixth anniversary, we decided to treat this as our nice night out to celebrate that. We went to Seasons, which is in Old Town. We've meant to go there for a long time, and now I just wish we had gone sooner. Incredible wine list, excellent service, nice atmosphere and most of all, fantastic food. I highly recommend it, ABQ peeps.

3. While we were away, I broke down and bought a copy of Twilight. I expect that someone will be here to force me to relinquish my English degree shortly, so I hope it's worth it. I have been hearing about these books forever, like everyone else, but have had no interest in reading them because I just can't get past the fact that they are about vampires. I hear it, and my brain starts laughing. I mean, come on. But I also don't want to be a literary snob, and it's gotten to the point where so many people in my life can't shut up about the vampires already that I feel like I am going to have to read them just to see what the hooplah is about. I think I have Harry Potter to blame for this. I refused to read HP for years, and when I finally picked up the first book it was because I was in Clovis, New Mexico and my airman neighbor plunked it down on my dining room table and told me to shut up and start reading. And I did, and it was glorious, not only because of the story, but also because Harry Potter was my ticket back to the world of reading for pleasure. I'd graduated college so tired from four years of required reading that I hadn't read very much of anything in more than a year. So reading Harry Potter was a good lesson for me, to remember that sometimes you can read something just because it's fun and not because it says important and profound things about the human condition. So here we are with the vampires. I remain skeptical, but I'll let you know if I drink the Kool-Aid about these books any time soon.

4. Last week, our family observed my brother Aaron's fourth annual Survivor Day, March 18, the day his life was spared when an IED destroyed the Humvee he was driving in Iraq and his leg had to be amputated below the knee. (That whole story is here.) Because Aaron is busy being a first-year law student, I understand he didn't get to do anything that exciting for this year's anniversary, but I hear big things are planned for the five-year mark. Cheers to you, baby brother. I am glad you are alive. May we celebrate this day for many years to come. (I'll also take the opportunity to plug the blog of my lovely sister-in-law, Aaron's much better half, Kelly.)

5. I mentioned that Dan and I won't be together for our anniversary. This is because on the heels of March, the Month of Houseguests, we've managed to make April the Month of Travel. Kate and I will be leaving next Sunday, April 5, to go to Mississippi, where my family is thrilled to be planning a homecoming for my brother Ryan, who has been in Iraq since last summer. We're beside ourselves to see him of course, but we also sort of feel we have something to make up to Ryan this time around. A couple of years ago, Ryan spent 8 months in Africa with the Marines, and when he was coming home, we were given a particular date as his arrival day. Instead, the Marines decided to send him home ten days before that, which would have been great except that ... none of us were in the state at the time. My parents were at a wedding in Florida, my sisters were in college in Louisiana and Tennessee, Aaron and Kelly were in D.C., and I hadn't flown in yet. So Ryan had to call a friend to come and get him from the airport. True story. Ryan was a great sport about the whole thing, but we're hoping this time we can do something a little more, umm, special. Like showing up. Kate and I get back from that trip around the 14th of April, and then on our anniversary, the 19th, Dan leaves for a week-long business trip. Hopefully Kate will still recognize him when he gets home.

6. Megan over at Half Pint House is doing a really great series right now telling the story of how she and her husband, Craig have journeyed through the process of finding a church home, ultimately ending up in the PCA, which also happens to be our denomination. Megan has been very honest in writing about the struggle to find a church that can be a home, and reading it I have been amazed at how much of it rings true for me, too, even though I have only ever been a member of three churches in my life, all of them in the same denomination. I think this is because whether you move around or plant yourself in one spot, the trouble with the church is that it's here in the world, and the world is broken, and nothing works like it should, not even the church. There will be struggle. I think this causes a lot of people to just wash their hands of the entire church thing. So it's great to read a story of a family fighting through the messiness.

Some my favorite lines from the series so far, to get you started before you head on over and read the whole thing, which you should definitely do. You'll laugh. You'll cry. Maybe you'll cringe when something hits a little too close to home. But it's a great read.

"Two years later, our first daughter was born. When she was two weeks old, we took her to church, but when we walked toward the sanctuary, we were stopped and informed we couldn't bring the baby in so as not to be a distraction to the preaching of the Word. They said we could put her in the nursery (if you think I'd ever put my first two-week old baby in any nursery, think again), or there was a nursing room at the back of the sanctuary. I had this flash forward of spending the next many years in a nursing room while our kids were forced into a children's church program. We walked out and didn't go back."

"Church C was another of the mega-churches in town - large, suburban, and very white. We went on "name-tag" Sunday, which meant that that Sunday we were greeted by pretty much everybody, which was strange and a bit cheese-ball. We sang a U2 song in the service and our kids were served a helping of Brother Bob and Pastor Larry. This one wasn't the right one for us, either."

I'm looking forward to the final installment, Megan. Thank you for sharing.

7. Yesterday, this owl was in the tree in our backyard, just hanging out, like he was any old bird. Tell me that isn't freaky looking:

I don't have much else to say about that except that the spooky thing stayed and stared at us for almost a half hour before it flew away. I think it might have been trying to decide if it could kill one of us if no smaller birds showed up.

Facebook is the dangdest thing. Because I am friends on Facebook with the five or six people who read this blog, I now have instant accountability about my rate of blog posting. Here's an example. Today is Saturday. I actually arrived back home in New Mexico from my trip to Mississippi on Tuesday night. Wednesday morning, my Facebook status said something to the effect of "Haley is so glad to be home!" Big mistake. Apparently my 4.5 blog readers saw that status and then set their timers to give me a two-day grace period to get my act together. Then at two days and 10 seconds, I started receiving messages like "Hey! When are you going to blog? I know you're home now! I need some pictures of Kate! Get on it! Chop chop, woman!" So here I am! Back from the abyss! Sorry to keep you waiting. Here are some photos to make it up to you.

Before Ryan came home, my sister Audrey and I spent a whole hour of our lives thinking of clever things to write on our welcome home signs for the airport. We're not really the kind of family that's going to make super-patriotic signs when we welcome you home from war. It's not that you aren't a hero. It's just that ninja is a much cooler word, and it's accurate too, since Ryan is a black belt instructor in the Marine Corps Martial Arts Program. So Kate's special baby-sized sign reflected that:

Other signs we made said "Byaaaaah!" which is a nod to our family's love of the Howard Dean scream (previously blogged about here) and "Have Mercy," the sign Audrey held in reference to an ongoing conversation she and Ryan have been having via Facebook during his deployment about how when he got home, he was going to beat her up. I am not sure why that's funny, but they've been at it for months. You can see these signs in the shot of the crowd that gathered to welcome Ryan home. (Hat tip to my Aunt Lisa for getting these photos. I was a little busy, since Kate kept trying to sneak off and take a joy ride on a nearby escalator.)

We waited for what seemed like a really long time for Ryan to come out of the gates. In fact, we saw all of these people who had been on his flight come out, and several of them told us that he was coming right behind them. I think he was putting it off to make a more dramatic entrance. And it worked, too, because we cheered and cheered when he finally did come out. Here he is with my sisters Hannah and Audrey.

Aaron and Kelly had arranged for us to all head over to the Crawdad Hole (Yes, that's the name of an actual dining establishment, and they make some great crawfish, too.) and hang out for a while, so we did. Ryan entertained everyone with stories.

Kate entertained herself by stealing my cousin Adrian's purse. Adrian was very sweet about it.

I have some more great photos from the weekend and I'll post those soon. But for now, I just want to thank everyone again for all their prayers for Ryan and our family during his deployment. We are so blessed to have him home safely.

Lately, Kate is on a very big "I can do everything by myself" kick. I will be exploring this theme in great detail in the newsletter I will write for her soon, but in the meantime, one of her self-initiated projects yielded some funny photos, and I thought I'd post them.

There are a lot of challenging things about Kate's new-found drive to do things herself, but one of the nice things is that she's insisting on helping me unload the dishwasher every morning. This isn't actually very helpful now, since her "helping" me means that I stand by the dishwasher while she lifts each individual plate, bowl, spoon, fork and whatsit out at a painfully slow pace and then hands it to me to be put away. It takes what I would estimate to be approximately one hundred years to get the whole dishwasher unloaded this way. Not to mention that I pretty much have to wash all the spoons again by hand since Kate insists on licking them before she hands them to me. (Not the forks. Only the spoons. I don't know why.) But I figure if I'm patient, she might actually learn to unload the dishwasher herself, and then I can hand the job over to her on a permanent basis and sit around painting my nails in all that free time. Sure, she'll basically be my little slave, but look how happy she is about it now:

After I took the above photo I was just kind of standing there with my camera, waiting for her to give me another individual spoon to put away, and instead, she started digging around in her purse, which of course she has to have on her shoulder in order to unload the dishwasher.

After a while, she came up with a set of keys. No, not her little plastic keys that came with the purse, but the actual keys to my actual car, which I did not know she had. She must have taken them out of my purse and put them into hers when I wasn't looking. And unless I had been watching her, I might now be shopping for a new remote clicker to unlock my car, because this is what she did with my keys.

Yes! Put them in the dishwasher! Where I always put my keys! Surely that would have been the first place I looked next time I was frantically searching for the keys.

Needless to say, I recently became the proud owner of an over-the-door hook upon which to hang my purse, high out of reach behind a closed door. But I would have had the cleanest keys in town if Kate's plan had succeeded.

My sister-in-law Dinah took this photo when she was here last week. Obviously, it's mostly a photo of Kate having animated talks with imaginary people on Dinah's cell phone, which she swiped. But if you look closely, you can tell that it's also a perfect little impromptu family portrait. Kate's doing something very typical of herself, and so are Dan and I. He's on the computer, which is what he gets paid to do (sort of) and I am writing something. I'd like to say it was the Great American Novel, but it's probably just a grocery list. So in case you ever wonder, here you have a glimpse into the average day in the Wachdorf household. It's a good thing Kate makes it all look so glamorous and exciting.

Today I feel like I have passed a major milestone into being a real grownup: I bought a china cabinet. Not that having a china cabinet is really any kind of indication of maturity, but having 12 place settings of fine china and crystal packed in the Styrofoam peanuts it arrived in straight from our wedding registry has made me feel like a disgrace to genteel Southern women everywhere for the last six years, to exaggerate slightly.

Last night, I hauled all those boxes out and surrendered my kitchen to the Styrofoam peanuts so that I could get the china really nice and clean before the delivery men came with the cabinet today. It was quite an arduous process, since most of it still had stickers on it, which is another thing I would probably not admit to in public if I thought I had any kind of chance at ever being on a party planning committee for the Junior League. Things being what they are, I'll happily tell you that I've used the china for nice dinners on a few occasions, but having to unpack it, clean it up, and then repack it at the end of a night is enough to disuade me from using it even when it does occur to me to do so. Since it's been packed away, it's kind of out of sight, out of mind.

Hand-washing all of it last night and drying it to a nice shine, it hit me that every single piece of that set was given to us by someone as a gift when we got married. Really, that's true of every thing we used to set up our first place together, since if we had started with what we had when we combined our two single apartment existences, we'd have been in trouble. When I moved into my first apartment, my mom and I went and bought one of those 4-place-setting box o' plates and bowls from Wal-Mart so I'd have something to eat off of. It wasn't great, but it served the purpose. Flash forward a couple of years to the first day I was by myself in mine and Dan's new apartment, just a couple of weeks after our wedding, and discovered that Dan had apparently been living in this apartment for several months before I arrived and had yet to buy a broom. Who knows what he was eating off of. Needless to say, in addition to the beautiful china and crystal, the Target gift cards and matching dishtowels and kitchen utensil sets were also desperately needed. And people just gathered around us and gave us those things because they love us. It was humbling then, and last night, as I was washing all that beautiful china that is so fragile it's almost frightening to touch, it was humbling again. I don't deserve any of these beautiful things or the love that people put into giving them to us, but I'm thankful for all of it. Even better, now I have a nice place to put the china, where it can stay clean and hopefully make an appearance on my table from time to time. With the season of life we're in right now, when I do use it, I'll probably still be serving spaghetti and a bagged caesar salad. But it will look gorgeous.

Here are some pictures of the china cabinet, which I promised my mom I'd post. By the way, I have to indulge in some shopping bragging, because I found this china cabinet, which is an Ethan Allen piece, on consignment, and got a great deal on it. This really says less about me and more about the fact that there is a wonderful consignment shop just off Eubank called Consignment Interiors that has earned my loyal business over the years. They only buy nice things in great condition, and their prices are very reasonable. I've bought several pieces of furniture there, and it's pretty much my first stop now when I'm in the market for something. End commercial.

And from the front, with the lights on inside. I think it looks nice. And at least when every other dish in my kitchen is dirty, I can look at something that's clean and in order!

Lately we've been trying to get Kate to learn the first few questions of the Children's Catechism. We're not too intense about it, since her attention span is pretty limited. Mostly we just ask the questions and then answer them ourselves. Frankly, I feel kind of stupid. But every once in a while, Kate will actually answer the very first catechism question, I think because it's the only answer she can really say. The question goes like this:

Q. Who made you?
A. God. (Which Kate pronounces "Dod." We take what we can get.)

Or at least, that's how the Q & A is supposed to go. The other night, Kate was in the bathtub, playing with her toys and splashing around. I had gone through the questions a couple of times, so this time I just asked the first question and then paused and prompted her to answer me. Here's how that went:

Me: Kate! Who made you?

Kate: (long pause ... thinking): Daddy!

I didn't really know what to say to that one. I mean, she's not completely wrong, but I was hoping we wouldn't have to have that conversation for another few years. Wow.

And speaking of all things baby, head on over to my lovely and talented sister-in-law's blog for some fabulous news. Looks like Kate only has a few more months to hog that grandbaby spotlight on the Rice side of the family. Woo-hoo!

One of the fun things about Kate right now is that she loves to pretend. One of her favorite games is to pretend that she is putting her monkey, her Elmo doll and her baby doll to bed. Her favorite version of this game happens in our bed, and she gets them all tucked in before she settles down beside them. It doesn't exactly leave much room for Dan, since she tends to pick his side of the bed for this little tableaux and squawks at him if he tries to reclaim his spot. He's not at all whipped by a toddler. Not at all.

Before I had a child and would think about why I wanted to have one, I am pretty sure that this exact picture came to my mind: Dan with our child on his lap, reading a book after a nice family dinner on a lazy summer evening. On this side of the chasm between my pre-child life and post-child life, I now realize that these moments of idyllic family quiet are few and far between, but they are also sweeter than I ever imagined, even in my most air-brushed fantasies. Of course, I probably thought the book would be a great classic like The Velveteen Rabbit, and not an Elmo pop-up book, but again, that's reality for you.

We've had an interesting week here in the Wachdorf home. The kind of week your insurance company is not too happy to hear about. Health insurance. Car insurance. Take your pick. We are breaking everyone's statistical risk models this week. It started with Kate.

Saturday before last, Dan and I were in the kitchen talking while we were getting dinner ready. This sounds too active, so let me rephrase: We were standing around in the kitchen waiting for some Trader Joe's Mandarin Chicken to heat up in the oven. We were having some idle conversation,and appeared ready to cruise to a somewhat boring but not unpleasant evening at home. Then, the Great Variable that is having a small child took effect. Kate, in a moment that I have replayed in my mind 1,200 times since it happened, walked up to the oven and paused for a moment to look through the window at what was inside. The reason this moment keeps bothering me is because it is the moment I could have changed what happened next. I could have told Kate to move away from the oven. I could have made her move. She weighs all of 22 pounds. She pretty much has to do what I say. But it never occurred to me that she was going to do what she did next, which is that she stuck her fingers in between the bottom of the oven door and the broiler compartment of our gas oven. It's an external part of the oven, and I would not have thought it was very hot. Of course, being a rational adult, I would never stick my hand down there to check, either. And it turns out that it is hot, in case you wondered. Really freaking hot.

Over the course of the next hour, there was a lot of crying, some of it done by Kate, plenty of it done by me, and her poor little fingers developed some pretty rough looking blisters. Kate eventually fell asleep, and when she woke up in the morning, she actually didn't seem to be in any pain at all. But her hand looked just terrible, especially this one blister that I promise you was the size of a dime and thicker than the entire circumference of the finger it was on. So that afternoon, we took her to urgent care, where I told the whole story to at least four surprisingly understanding health care professionals, none of whom tried to make me feel worse about what had happened, and Kate's hand was examined by a doctor who pronounced it to be healing just fine. Ten days later, I can barely even tell where the burns were. Kids' skin heals so amazingly quickly, certainly by design since they are so very haphazard with it.

Skipping the part where I process all the massive guilt that I STILL feel about Kate's accident, let us move along to Incident No. 2. This Saturday morning, a week after the oven drama, Dan and Kate went on their usual trip to Einstein's Bagels to have some daddy daughter time and let me catch a few extra minutes of sleep. (Bless that wonderful husband of mine for starting this tradition.) This went fine until Dan attempted to drive home on a New Mexico Freeway, an absolute obstacle course of orange cones, uneven lanes and concrete barriers. I have been living in Albuquerque for six years now, and they have been doing some form of construction on some part of this particular Interstate for all six of those years. It. Never. Ends.

In traffic on this particular morning, Dan was being edged closer and closer to the barrier for one of these construction projects by a semi truck driver who was taking more than his fair share of the road. On Dan's left hand side was a long line of the never-ending New Mexico orange cones, and Dan managed to avoid hitting all of them. Except for the last one, which was conveniently located about two feet further into the line of traffic than the rest. That one caught the side mirror on our Saturn and blasted it into oblivion. The mirror was hanging on to the car by a mangled cable when Dan made it home. The car insurance representative Dan had on speaker phone a few minutes later actually asked if the orange cone was damaged. Because that is the main thing.

Now, as we move on to Incident No. 3, bear in mind that the preceding story was about our blue Saturn, the car that I usually drive. Dan drives a silver Nissan Sentra to work, a car that is extremely reliable and efficient, if comically small for Dan, since it used to be my car. Dan basically folds himself into it, and one day I expect his feet to pop out of the bottom of it, like a Flintstone car. This car is generally parked in our driveway. Yesterday morning, I woke up a little bit when Dan left the house at his usual crack-of-dawn hour, but quickly fell back asleep. So I was startled when about five minutes later, I opened by eyes and Dan was standing right there at my bedside again, asking if I left anything important in the Nissan the last time I drove it. No, I said, and I think I actually rolled over in bed before it occurred to me to ask why he needed to know this? Why? Oh, well, just because someone broke into the car last night.

Technically, it's a bit of a stretch to say they broke in. There wasn't any breaking in involved, since we hadn't locked the car. But it's not like that makes it totally cool that someone just opened up our car and rooted around to see what they could take. The take-home lesson for any would-be car plunderers might be that you should target higher-end vehicles if you want to find anything worth taking, because all they got out of our car was Dan's XM Radio equipment and an i-Pod tramsmitter. Since there is also a garage door opener in our car and anyone who was in the car could easily have gotten into the garage, we took a good look around there to make sure our highly valuable collection of half-empty paint cans, bags of outgrown baby clothes and dirty laundry was safe. Surprisingly, it was untouched.

I'm not sure I have come to any really deep conclusions about this week we've had. Out of everything that happened, the only thing I still feel upset about is Kate's hand getting burned, and even that could have been much worse. The rearview mirror thing was mildly inconvenient, since we have to wait for the part to come in and in the meantime I'm turning around completely backward in my seat every time I need to change lanes. But Kate and Dan weren't hurt. The door between our garage and our house was deadbolted, so I don't feel creeped out by the thought of anyone having a serious chance to be in our house. I'm thankful I don't have anything to be more concerned about from any of these incidents. I don't actually believe in luck, but all the same, I don't think this would be my best week to go to Vegas. I worry that maybe a slot machine would fall over and break my toe.

Our friends Mr. and Mrs. J got some great photos of a group of the little girls from our church at a recent picnic. Here's their daughter, Heidi, giving Kate a big hug. I understand that they promptly fell over in a heap and started crying after this photo was snapped, but don't let that detract from the sweetness of the moment.

Wagon rides! Here we have Ellie, Lily, Kate and Heidi. They couldn't get enough of the wagon, and suckered quite a few people into giving them rides. I mean, how could anyone resist all that cuteness?

And a photo of Kate and I, rare, since I'm usually behind the camera. I've given up trying to find photos in which we are both looking at the camera and she actually looks happy to be with me. Now I just settle for me looking happy to have caught her.

The photos posted here illustrate two points. The first point, in keeping with the title, is "It's Dan's birthday tomorrow!" The second point of the pictures is to let the grandmas see Kate's new hair cut. I took her to get her bangs trimmed the other day because she was starting to look like the guy from Flock of Seagulls. Now we have cute bangs instead.

In less than 12 hours, we here in the Wachdorf house are embarking on what Dan has dubbed "The Weekend of Dan." Tomorrow is his birthday, and Sunday is Father's Day, so he has taken the opportunity to just call a three-day holiday in his honor and plan an elaborate series of celebrations, some of which I think will be more amusing than others. Let's see if you can pick that part of the story out for yourselves. The plans for tomorrow are as follows:

1. Breakfast at Einstein's Bagels.
2. Ice cream cake. Dan loves him some ice cream cake. Seriously, seriously loves it.
3. Presents. I am probably looking forward to this more than Dan is, just because it will mean that he will know what I got him and will therefore be able to stop asking me about it every. ten. minutes.
4. Having secured a babysitter for the evening, Dan and I will go to restaurant of his choosing (he still hasn't made up his mind, so for all I know, we're going to Taco Bell.)
5. After dinner, we will go to an indoor shooting range for target practice.

Yes. That's right. My husband, when told that I was up for whatever he wanted to do for his birthday, chose a romantic evening at the firing range. The back story on this is that Dan recently purchased a hand gun. I am fine with this, since we have taken very extensive security precautions with it in light of Kate's presence in our home. Still, at no point have I expressed a desire to shoot the thing. In fact, I think I may have expressed the exact opposite sentiment, something along the lines of hoping that we never, ever have reason to use the gun. It's not that I have anything against guns. In a recent conversation, some friends from Alabama and I agreed that when you grow up in the South, guns are just kind of around, like scenery. People shoot guns recreationally, they hunt with them, they have them in their trucks. In fact, you can pretty much bet that several people around you at any given moment in Mississippi are packing. So it's not that I recoil at the sight of a gun. But my first thought upon seeing one is about the kind of extreme circumstances in which one might have need of a gun, and those thoughts do not make me go "Woohoo!" This, I am starting to understand after six years of marriage, is not how men think, or at least not how my husband thinks. My husband sees a gun and thinks "I need to shoot that gun. And so does my wife." So off to the shooting range we go.

The ostensible reason for this jaunt to the land of ammo and testosterone is that since we do own a gun now, I need to learn how to handle it reliably and safely, and that's probably true. But I know that once we're past all the safety stuff, it's going to turn into a competition. So I invite you, dear readers, to place your bets now: Can I outshoot Dan? Here is all the relevant information you need: I have fired a gun before, but not for a very long time. I am, however, not a terrible shot once I remember what I am doing. Dan on the other hand has been target shooting for a while now, and claims that he is pretty good. I, on the other hand, am very good at distracting Dan when he's trying to concentrate, and I am totally prepared to play dirty, so that may even the playing field a bit. Leave your birthday wishes, predictions and wagers in the comments section, and I'll let you know what happens. That is, after I finish grand marshalling the festivities Dan has planned for his Father's Day celebration, which include more gifts, more ice cream cake, and the grilled shish-kabobs he wants me to cook for him. If Kate knew how much ice cream there is going to be in this house this weekend, she would stay awake counting down the hours until tomorrow.

A few random things from a week that got way too busy, before the start of a week that will also get pretty hectic:

1. Kate insisted on wearing these glasses to church today. Paired with a hot-pink polka-dotted sun hat, purple plaid dress, three sets of plastic beads and two purses, the effect was quite stunning. We are in so much trouble.

2. Regina Spektor has a new album out. There are no words for how happy this makes me, but more importantly, it's going to make Kate's entire year. Anyone who visited us about four months ago know that for a long long time, every single time we got in the car, we had to listen to Regina Spektor's song "Fidelity," sometimes twice. She does this, gets hung up on songs, decides that they are her favorite driving song, and then insists that they be played first thing every time we get in the car. She's ruined quite a few great songs for me this way, including:

Allison Krauss and Robert Plant's "Rich Woman," which is basically a song about the joys of having a sugar mama.

Feist, 1,2,3.4 and "Mushaboom."

Lately she's all about "Jacksonville," by Sufjan Stevens, which is fine with me, because it gives me an excuse to put the full Austin City Limits version up on the blog. One of my remaining live music aspirations is to see Sufjan in concert. I say "remaining" because at this point in my life there are very few artists that I would stay up past 9 p.m. to see. I am totally uncool that way now.

We'll probably have to get Kate her own i-Pod for her fifth birthday so she can make her own super cool playlists. As it stands now, I have more Elmo videos on my formerly-pristine i-Tunes library than I care to admit.

3. Having returned to the land of books that don't have immortal heroes, I recently read Charles Dickens Great Expectations for the first time all the way through. For some reason, every other time I tried, I lost the thread of the story and gave up. But I enjoyed it this time, in spite of some re-entry troubles I had in remembering how to read British literature. They call everything by different names, or at least Dickens did, so in every third sentence, there's a noun I don't have any definition for. So when I get to those words, and pay attention here, because I'm about to unveil the secrets I learned in four years as an English major ... I just ignore them. It's a lot like how I got through reading an entire mystery novel in German during college in spite of the fact that I understood almost no German even after TWO YEARS of trying to learn it. And from that experience, I learned that it turns out you don't have to know what all the words mean to figure out the general gist of a story. Neat, huh? I realize that I could choose to learn the definitions for the words I don't recognize and thus become a more educated person, but I am lazy, and I don't want to.

4. Have I mentioned how I can't take a decent picture of myself and Kate? Here is proof. Our friend Bob took this the other night when we were enjoying the gracious hospitality of the Podgurski home. I understand there were actually some good photos that resulted from the photo session, but there was also this one, in which I look like an absolute crazy person. The reason for this is that Kate starts flopping around like a recently-caught trout when I try to get her to sit in my arms and smile for a photo, so I'm constantly going back and forth between trying to smile and trying not to let her crack her head open on the tile. The result is photos like this.

So now we're opening comments on this awful thing to see who can come up with the best caption? Post it in the comments section and I'll pick a winner. This means that Bob owes me $20, because he bet me that I wouldn't post it on the blog. He doesn't realize how little dignity I have left.

My suggested caption is "Crazy lady with frizzy hair kidnaps half-naked toddler," but I'm sure you can do better.

Having just returned from a trip to Texas to visit with Dan's side of the family, travel with a toddler is on my mind, in a post-traumatic stress kind of way. Don't get me wrong, Kate was pretty good for the most part. But there's really just no way to take a kid her age on a plane and not have a few moments that make you want to get out on the wing. This trip I had Dan with me, but in a month I'll be traveling alone with Kate, and so in an attempt to help myself not suffer the amnesia that clearly sets in between plane trips with her, I'm blogging Awesome/Not Awesome, the Toddler Travel Edition. This will be a list of the good and bad things about traveling with Kate, so that I can maybe not be so shocked by the bad and can remember the good makes this worth doing. So here we go:

Awesome: When you wake Kate up at the crack of dawn to get on a plane, she is actually sort of excited, because she seems to sense that we're going to do something special. She chatters all the way to the airport. It is unbearably cute.

Not Awesome: When you wake Kate up at the crack of dawn to get on a plane, by the time it's 3:30 in the afternoon and you're on your last flight of the day, she is so epicly cranky that you think you might just get sanctioned by the FAA for bringing her on a plane.

Fun: Airports generally offer lots to look at and plenty of new people for Kate to flirt with. The first couple of airport hours are like Disney World for her.

Not As Fun: On the other hand, when your airline suddenly announces a gate change after you've schlepped your kid, your stroller, and all your worldly belongings across DFW, the airport starts to feel like the Amazing Race, and not in a good way, because you're definitely losing. Kate will choose that exact moment to develop a strong objection to riding in her stroller, and therefore you will march 20 gates down the terminal at a pace best described as Sleepy Turtle. Kate will be thrilled. She will wave to people. You will spend the whole time apologizing to the air travelers of the world who have to walk around Her Highness.

Great: The i-Pod is the greatest invention in modern history because you can put videos on it. Kate has figured out how to hold the little ear bud up to her ear so she can hear the music while she watches "Annie." This makes you look like a terrible mother, but it is really useful at times.

Not great: Since Kate has your i-Pod and is sitting on your lap, your entertainment options for yourself will be to stare out the window or read the American Way magazine article on Billy Joel for the sixth time. You will hate Billy Joel's stupid face before the flight is over.

Yayy!: Kate gets confused by the time zone and sleeps until a decent hour in the morning during the first part of the trip.

Ugh!: Kate gets confused by the time zone on the way back, too, and wakes up a full hour EARLIER than usual for days on end. Rarin' to go. At 6:15. Cue up Sesame Street!

Happy: Coming home again.

Sad: Coming home again. We miss these people we fly such a long way to see. This trip it was especially fun to see Kate, Chi and Jeremiah have fun together. Here are a few pictures of that, mostly courtesy of my mother in law Lorrae, since in every picture I took of the kids, at least one of them is a blur of motion and pure speed.

Grammy and Grandpa treated the kids to Chuck E. Cheese on Friday. Kate and Jeremiah rode this Barney tractor ride approximately 50 times.

Kate does not understand the actual point of skeeball, but she thinks it is really neat.

Thanks for the fun times, Wachdorf family!

Since Kate's birth almost two years ago, there have been a series of moments that have caused me to get a sudden clear glimpse of who I am now versus who I was before I had a child. The comparison is sometimes better for the new me, sometimes much, much worse. For example, I'm pretty sure that at no time in my pre-child life did I have the "If the food on your shirt isn't visible, it's OK to wear it again" rule. Score one for the old me.

One of those moments happened last Friday. A big one. It was the first time that Dan and I left town without Kate. Several months ago, we left Kate with her Grammy so we could have a quick night out of the house, but we were all of three miles up the road, so that was more like a warmup exercise. This was the real deal. Dan goes to a conference in Las Vegas every year for work, and while it isn't the romantic getaway destination we'd pick, it is just a short flight from Albuquerque, and since he was there for work, it meant we really only had to pay for my part of the trip. So in May, Dan's mom booked a ticket to Albuquerque, I booked a ticket to Las Vegas, and I then promptly stopped thinking about the whole thing, and not in a forgetful way, either. More in an "If I don't think about this too hard, maybe I won't freak out" kind of way. I believe it is called denial. I am a big fan.

We've been pretty busy this summer, and before I knew it, it was the third week in July and time to start planning out the logistics of my mother-in-law's time in Albuquerque with Kate. If I do say so myself, we did a pretty good job of it. Dan had the brilliant idea of having her bring my father-in-law's GPS unit so that we could program in various places she might want to go with Kate and have clear directions, especially on how to get home again. I wrote a seven-page document on the various aspects of Kate's schedule, what she eats, says, can and can't do. We got a power of attorney document notarized in case Kate needed medical care in our absence. And all of these preparations happened with relative calm on my part. Then it was Friday.

Dan's mom got into town on Wednesday, and although Kate was having a great time playing with her, she seemed to be sort of picking up on the fact that something was going on. She was getting really clingy to me, and it just ratcheted up my feelings of guilt. Then, in typical small child fashion, Kate had a minor little health hiccup happen. I'm not going to get into what it was. It's one of those things you can't even believe you'll ever have to know about another person until you have a child and suddenly find yourself freely discussing every bodily function there is with your child's pediatrician with the kind of detail usually reserved for scientific research. Suffice it to say it happens sometimes and while it isn't serious, it makes Kate uncomfortable and I hate it. So of course -- OF COURSE -- it started to be apparent late Thursday that it was going to be a problem. By Friday morning, Kate was really not feeling great, and every single fear I'd been trying to avoid about leaving her was in full swing. She would have to go to the doctor. They would want to do some invasive procedure I couldn't even imagine at the moment. I'd have to hear about it all via cell phone and the stress of it would kill me on the spot. And most of all, Kate would have to go through it all without me, because her mother was so selfish as to leave her and go to Las Vegas, of all the trampy places in the world. Clearly I was being very rational at this point.

Long story short, Kate's ailment resolved itself pretty quickly, as it always does. We got on our plane, boarding without 46 pounds of child-related equipment for the first time in two years. I actually just had a book and a purse. And I read the book, too. It was amazing. We talked to Kate a couple of times every day during our trip, and while I had worried that she would be upset by the sound of our voices, she talked to us happily for a few minutes each time before signing off with "Bye bye Mommy! Bye bye Daddy!" I think her absolute glee at how her time alone with Grammy was spent is perfectly summed up in this picture my mother-in-law took of her on the train at the Rio Grande Zoo:

So much for her heartbreak and abandonment issues.

As for us, we had a great time. We slept in mornings and ate meals together during which we stayed seated the entire time and finished our sentences. It's amazing how much talking you can get done when there is not a toddler in the room. We walked up and down the Strip, looking at the spectacle that is Las Vegas. I went to the pool in the afternoon and alternately read my book and just plain stared at the parade of eccentric humanity that gathers at the pool at Caesar's Palace. Which reminds me that I kept a running list of things we witnessed in Vegas that I knew I would have to blog about. It's been several years since I've been to Las Vegas, and what I had forgotten in the intervening years is how prime the people watching is there. Apparently, people leave behind both their inhibitions and their better judgment when they fly to Nevada. If there had been any subtle way to whip out a camera and document some of the horrendous fashion decisions I saw happening in the casinos, I would totally have done it. Some of these people probably would have proudly posed for the photos, too, based on the degree of strut with which they were perpetrating these atrocities. But the written word will have to do. So without further ado:

The Award for Best Costume goes to the 70-year-old woman who was parading through the poker room of Paris Casino in a dress that I promise you could easily have passed for an Olympic figure skating costume. Sequins, Spandex, and Short Skirt appeared to be her fashion motto. It was stunning. .

Top honors for Least Class Ever are tied between a young lady we rode the elevator with one morning and a middle aged woman I saw at the pool later that same day. The young lady in the elevator at 9 a.m., who was not a small person, was wearing a white skirt so short it could easily have come out of the closet of a third grader. Dan and I both found ourselves leaning away from her out of fear that if she moved too quickly in that small environment, we were going to find out exactly what was -- or, worse, wasn't -- under that skirt. But it's hard to make a call between her and the lady at the pool, who was wearing leapord print lingerie in lieu of a swimsuit. That's all I'm going to say about that. Wowee.

And the coveted title of Drunkest Drunkety Drunk Drunks, a tough title to win in Vegas, where everyone is walking around with a giant adult beverage in their hand at all times, goes to a couple of moviegoers we encountered when we went to see Harry Potter at the Palms Casino. Halfway into the movie, two people came staggering into the theater and sat down in the row in front of us. I actually smelled them before I saw them, that's how strongly they smelled of alcohol. We didn't have much time to contemplate that though, because almost immediately upon sitting down, they began having the following conversation in Drunk Stage Whisper, which is equivalent to Hoarse Screaming in the sober world. I will reproduce it with the cursing bleeped out.

Guy: Wait. Is this (bleeping) Harry Potter? The ones with the books?
Girl: No No it's not Harry Potter because that kid has glasses ... (a closeup of Harry Potter comes on the screen, glasses and all..) Oh, (bleep).
Girl (turns to moviegoers to our left) Heeeyy! Heeeyy! Is this Harry Potter?

Upon being informed that yes indeed, this was Harry Potter, these two got up to leave. The woman bleeped her way down the stairs near the exit before realizing that the guy had taken a wrong turn and headed up the stairs to the back of the theater instead. She had to go and get him. My only complaint is that laughing that hard somewhat detracted from the drama of the epic struggle to vanquish He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Otherwise it was quite entertaining.

Dan is coming home from his business trip today, and Kate and I are happy. It will be nice to be all together as a family again. I'm glad we went, although if I had known how hard it was going to be to actually leave the house and get on the plane, I might have hesitated more. But once we left, it was good for us to go spend a few days alone and remember a little bit about what we are like without kids. I highly recommend it. Next time maybe we'll go somewhere a bit less tacky. In the meantime, if you go to Vegas, please take pictures of what you see for me. Because no matter how much they claim that "What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas," the truth is that it makes for some really fun blogging.

Moment 1:

Tonight Dan, Kate and I piled into the car for an impromptu trip to Barnes and Noble, or as Kate refers to it "choo choo train." She calls it this because in the children's section, there is indeed a model train table where children can play. On any given day you will see lots of moms chilling out with lattes and a book or two while the kids play with the train. I have no idea how many books this actually sells, but it gives me an undying love for Barnes and Noble. There is even a Starbucks inside. Go massive corporations!

Tonight we just had an hour or so to kill before Kate's bed time, so we took off and left the house while having a conversation that was absorbing enough that we didn't really do any of our usual parental pre-flight safety checks. We did make it out the door with Kate's monkey, and the pacifier, and her sippy cup. What we didn't have was a diaper bag. Or a diaper. Or so much as a single diaper wipe.

I think all you veteran parents out there know what happened next.

But maybe someone here is unfamiliar with how Murphy's Law works when applied to parenting. Or maybe y'all are just smarter than us and have therefore never let this happen. Either way, in case you're in the dark at this point, let me spell it out for you: If you leave the house without a diaper or a wipe and go to a public location your child will (not "might" -- definitely WILL) have the world's nastiest dirty diaper within five minutes of your arrival at the aforementioned public place.

I'm not going to tell you the gory details of how I totally failed to handle this little crisis. Suffice it to say that was the shortest trip I have ever paid to a bookstore, and we left with Kate announcing to everyone we passed "No panties! No panties!" I hope no one understood her, and I feel I owe a personal apology to whomever had to empty the trash can in the ladies' room.

Moment 2:

Lately, Kate is getting very aware of our surroundings. This is good in that when I say things to her like "Go into your bedroom and get me your shoes," she does it. It's complicated in that when we drive places, she starts trying to guess what we're going to do based on what part of town we're in. Tonight, we exited the Interstate onto Louisiana Boulevard, which happens to be the location of three places we go a lot as a family: McAlister's (Where Kate always has macaroni and cheese) adjacent to the water fountain at ABQ Uptown (where Kate runs around and screams "Water! Water!") and across the street from Barnes and Noble (alternate name of "choo choo train" established earlier in this post.)

We were not even off the exit yet, and the following comments came from the back seat:

Kate: Choo choo train!
Dan: What is she saying?
Me: Oh, just wait.
Kate: Cheese! Mac and Cheese! Water! Water!
Me: Yeah. We can't drive over here any more.

Moment 3:

I wrote Kate's newlsetter late this month and so it reflects what was going on during the actual 23rd month of her life regarding her fixation on these awful, smelly pink shoes she has. What I didn't write about, because it's a development of the last few days, is that she has actually made room in her life for another pair of shoes. They are a pair of pink plaid ballet flats, and she loves them mostly because they are just a little bit too big for her feet, and if she stands just so and works really hard at it, she can put them on herself. To distinguish these shoes from the stinky ones, which she calls "pink shoes," I taught her the phrase "plaid shoes." After all, that is what they are. Plaid. Plaid, the word that starts with a P and ends in a D. The word that does not sound at all like an expletive. Right? Except that this morning, when Kate started asking for these shoes, the word that came out of her mouth was a word that starts with "F" and is generally reserved for episodes of the Sopranos. Yes, that word. Crystal clear.

Since Kate has never heard that word in her life, I know this is just a somewhat horrifying mispronunciation. Still, since she totally thinks that's the name for these shoes, I'm doing some emergency speech therapy and trying to get her to say "plaid" correctly. She pronounces each separate part of the word perfectly. Pah. La. Duh. And then when I ask her to put them together, there it is. The Cuss Word of all Cuss Words. When I cringe, she looks at me like "What? I just want my shoes!" Oh goodness.

Given my child's new propensity for cursing like a sailor, announcing the status of her undergarments and demanding to be fed macaroni and cheese every time we drive East on the freeway, I am starting to think we may have to stay home for a while. Dan made me an emergency diaper and wipe packet to keep in the car so the Epic Diaper won't be repeated. But still. I just think you should all visit us at home until we're more fit for public consumption.

When Kate and I were in Mississippi last week, my amazing and talented soon-to-be brother-in-law Daniel Meigs very graciously took some photos of Kate in honor of her upcoming second birthday. This shoot was, I imagine, a bit more challenging than when he first photographed her, since she was still in the womb for that one. And the second time she was just a three month old baby, so she couldn't do much protesting. This was a different story. She's almost two now, and she cannot be bothered to sit still for photos. I should know, based on how many hopelessly blurred photos I have taken of her.

Daniel should get some kind of combined photography/athletics award for these photos, because towards the end of the shoot, Kate started running away from us while we were trying to get her to smile and stand still. Just took off down the driveway and never looked back. Daniel ran after her in the sweltering August heat and kept shooting while she squealed and laughed and kicked up dust. Those of you who have been to my parent's house know that's a loooooong driveway. What a pro.

Photos like this are a real gift to me as a mother. It's a rare moment when I can actually just look at Kate, even though I live my life in constant contact with her. Even when we were taking these photos, I was mostly focused on getting her to look at the camera, smile and stop stepping on ants. I knew the pictures would be great, but then when I saw them, I got all choked up. It's amazing how a really good picture can show you what you see all the time in a way that makes you realize how breath-taking it truly is.

Daniel is here and here for when you need to see more of his work. If any of you New Mexicans want to fly him out to do photos for you, I'll provide his lodging. Maybe he could bring my sister with him. I'm just saying.

Tomorrow morning, I am getting on a plane to go to Minnesota. Rural Minnesota. Well first I'm going to Minneapolis, but then we're driving to rural Minnesota, a phrase I've been saying a lot in the last few days because it invariably makes people blink a few more times than necessary. For some reason, if you say you're going to Minnesota, people don't take you seriously. Throw "rural" in there and you've got them.

I'm going to see some friends. Three of them have blogs and then there's another one who persists in not having a blog but did get on Facebook recently, provoking gasps of astonishment across the country. This monumental event will be only one of the many things I am sure we'll be discussing at length.

Last year, Kate came on this trip with me as a crawling one-year-old, and this will be the first time I've been away from both she and Dan at the same time in two years, I realized today. Kate and I have gone on trips alone, and Dan and I have gone on trips alone, but I haven't gotten on a plane by myself and gone anywhere in two years. I've got three good books and I plan to stick my nose in them and steadily ignore everyone between here and The Land of Lakes. It sounds mean, but when you travel with a toddler who is outgoing, you have to talk to everyone in the airport all the time without ceasing and it is exhausting. I pretty much spend a solid day in whatever silence a lot of Sesame Street and graham crackers can buy me after one of our trips. So even the plane ride will be a real treat.

The year that has come between this friend reunion and last year's has been ... well, I guess momentous is a word for it. There has been great joy and heartbreaking loss and much prayer and there will be a lot to talk about. A lot.

Mostly I am looking forward to being with my friends again. When people have known you for as long as these girls have known me (fourteen years or so), there's a certain relief to spending time together. I don't feel like I have to explain myself at every turn for fear of being misunderstood. In newer friendships you spend a certain amount of time, years in most cases, just laying the groundwork to understanding each other. That's good and valuable work, but it can be hard work.

Once you've done all that work though, a friendship is really worth hanging on to. Even if it means doing the hard work of traveling to rural Minnesota and sitting on a porch with a lake view and a hot tub, enjoying the crisp fall-like weather and cooking glorious good meals. Yep. Hard, hard work, I tell you. So here we go.

I never intended to take a blogging break, but two weeks after my last post, it's clear that's what I did. My apologies. I may have an explanation for that, but for now, I'll just jump in with a few random notes to see if I can remember how to put a sentence together.

1) Not to start any rumors, but today for about ten minutes I was convinced that Lenny Kravitz must have died. Here's how that happened: I got back in the car after Kate and I had joined some friends at the zoo and couldn't find my i-Pod. I figured it was buried in my purse somewhere (which it was) so I turned on the radio instead. First channel was playing Lenny Kravitz. Not the biggest fan, so I skipped to another station, which was also playing Mr. Kravtiz. Third channel --- ALSO PLAYING A LENNY KRAVITZ SONG. Maybe I don't fully appreciate the Kravitz genius, but at the moment, the only possible explanation I could think of for this phenomenon was that he had died suddenly and I had missed the news, kind of like how I figured out Michael Jackson had died when "Bad" was being played everywhere I went one afternoon. When I got home I actually got online and checked CNN to see if I had missed something regarding Lenny, but he's fine. I'm sure you're relieved.

2) This is the time of year when I remember why I love living in Albuquerque. We just had a cold front come through, and the weather today was crisp and beautiful. In two weeks, the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta kicks off, and Dan and I are probably looking forward to taking Kate to it more than we've looked forward to anything since we saw U2 in concert. This is what parenthood does to you, but I'm telling you, she is going to freak out. The highlight of her life right now is when we drive somewhere early in the morning and see hot air balloons in flight, which we do frequently since that's a big hobby in New Mexico. Seeing several hundred of them at once is going to be the greatest thing she's ever imagined, assuming we can convince her to get off the school bus we'll ride to the field from the Park and Ride lot, which is going to just rock her entire world, she's so in love with buses and trucks right now. I don't know if toddlers are the target audience for this event, but mine is going to be ecstatic. Thank you, Albuquerque. We have kind of a love/hate thing going on, but in October I heart you.

3) Our dryer is broken. Well, actually it's not broken, you can still turn it on, but when you do, it makes this AWFUL noise like WAAAAAAAAAAAAGH that has progressively gotten so loud that I am now afraid to turn it on for fear it's going to spontaneously combust. A repairman is coming tomorrow to assess the damage, but we're on Day Three since the laundry stopped getting done, so some of us are wearing ... interesting outfits. Dan and I are actually OK, but because Kate's outfits have an average life span of about three hours before they have to be washed, she's down to just about nothing. So today I did a load of her many many pink clothes and they are air drying all over the house. At least that's the idea. What's actually happening is that Kate is going around pulling them all down and trying to put them on. What can I say? She loves her clothes.

4) We are going to this wedding in three weeks and I am so happy! Kate also is in a state of near-hysterical excitement, because I stupidly told her there would be dancing at Hannah and Daniel's wedding, and now every time it comes up, she says "Hannah Daniel wedding dance! Dance! Dance!" And then she gets mad that we aren't dancing at the wedding right this minute. So heads up Hannah and Daniel, I don't know who is in charge of the music, but they better be prepared to bring the party, because Kate is ready. I'll try to keep her from dancing during your church ceremony.

5) Note to self: Write embarrassing rehearsal dinner speech for sister's wedding. Include photos.

6) I'm afraid I'm going to forget this if I don't write it down. The other day we were eating spaghetti at the table, and around the same time, Dan and I looked up to see Kate dropping spaghetti down the front of her shirt. "No! No! No!" we said And she looked at us and said "Pockeet!" Now I am wondering where my kid got the idea that the front of your shirt is a pocket. I suspect that she has been observing the popular New Mexico practice of large women using their bras as a place to hold their cell phones. (I'm not even kidding.) This is probably our fault for taking her to Wal-Mart, but I'm not sure why she decided spaghetti would also be an appropriate things to put down there. Now she's obsessed with having "pockeets," and I keep finding weird stuff that has fallen down the front of her diaper after she dropped it down her shirt and totally forgot about it.

So I think that covers some of the stuff that's been going on around here lately. I promise some real substance soon, or at least what passes for substance on my blog, and hope you're all doing well. Maybe I will come over later and use your dryer and you can tell me about it.

Since Kate got a step-stool for her birthday, she's been obsessed with finding reasons to use it. We keep it in the bathroom, so this mostly results in her spending a lot of time washing her hands and brushing her teeth. I'm OK with both of those activities, but it gets kind of boring to stand there and just watch her piddle around with the water. I've started bringing a book, because we can be in there for up to a half an hour. Still, she makes some pretty hilarious faces when she's brushing her teeth. Dan caught a few of them with the camera the other night, so here they are, mostly for the grandmas, who I know are about to come out here and thump me on the nose if I don't post some new photos soon.

On Saturday morning we got up at a quarter-to-five, made some STRONG coffee, dressed in layers, and then woke Kate up so we could go to The Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. This is a seriously cool event, but it's not without its drawbacks, specifically the fact that the main event for the day is the Mass Ascension, in which hundreds of hot air balloons take off from the field -- starting at sunrise. "Sunrise" as in "when the sun comes up." That one. It's pretty brutal. I mean, I get to get up pretty close to that time every day thanks to having a toddler, but I spend a good half hour after that just sitting around drinking coffee and trying to wake up. Of course, at the balloon fiesta, you can buy a funnel cake to reward yourself for being conscious at that time in the morning.

We actually haven't gotten up in time to go to one of the ascensions in years, opting instead for the evening events. But as I mentioned in a previous post, Kate has become completely fascinated by hot air balloons in recent months. When she gets to see TWO hot air balloons fly over our house at the same time, she talks about it for hours. So the opportunity to let her see 500-something balloons at once was just too good to pass up.

The city actually operates a pretty efficient Park and Ride service from various points around Albuquerque directly to the field, and since trying to drive in and out in your own vehicle is a nightmare, we almost always use that service. Thus, Kate got to ride on a Big! Yellow! Bus! in the Dark!, a fact she told us repeatedly as we waited in line to board one of the school buses used for shuttles. She could not get over it about the Bus! It was Yellow! When we went over bumps, she squealed like we were on a carnival ride and this was the fun part. I started to worry that she would cry when we had to get off. Here's a picture from the ride back to our car, when it was actually light outside. You know. Several hours later.

We really hadn't given a lot of thought to how Kate would react to a balloon close up. She always sees them from a distance, but one of the coolest things about the fiesta is that spectators are not restricted to one area of the field. You can walk right up and touch the balloons if you want to, and it makes you realize how huge they are. While we were milling around on the field (having a breakfast burrito with green chile, like good New Mexicans) I started to wonder what Kate would think about that, and we didn't have to wait long to find out. The first time one went up in the air, as part of the Dawn Patrol balloons that take off to test the conditions for other pilots, Kate clapped. But when turned in our direction, flying really low, she started hollering "Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!" and ran to hide behind Dan's legs. He had to hold her for the next half hour or so until she learned that the balloons were not going to hit us. Then we had to deploy the Monkey Backpack/Hidden Leash to make sure she didn't go jump in a basket and stow away for takeoff. Here's a shot of the balloon that took the flag up for the national anthem at the start of the ascension.

Once the ascension starts, the field gets pretty crazy, and there are points in time when you're basically just stuck in a big crowd until the balloon next to you takes off and you can move again. It's kind of a claustrophobic experience if you lean that way, and I do, but this year we got caught next to the Creamland Dairy Cow balloon, and that actually gave us the funniest moment of the day.

The cow balloon is huge and complex because it's shaped, well, like a cow. I think almost every year I've gone, they've had trouble getting it launched, and this year was no exception. Three times they got it all blown up, and then something would happen and it would collapse again. Kate's interpretation of that was that the cow must be having trouble waking up. So when the cow would start to inflate, she would shout encouragement to it: Wake up cow! Except that "wake" sounds like "yake" when she says it. So she sat on Dan's shoulders, screaming "Yake up, cow! Yake up!" and when it would fall over again she would say "Uh oh. Cow sleepy." She was a big hit with all the people standing around us.

After the cow fell down for the third time, we managed to break out of the little people-knot we were stuck in and go find our friends Cody and Erika, who were there with Kate's friend Lily. They were both in a state of near-narcotic happiness over the morning's events. They hugged each other about six times.

The cow finally took off, which just made the girls even happier.

I got to see the bees, which made me happy.

And then we went home, where we fully expected to pay a heavy price for waking Kate up so early. But she was actually in a marvelous mood for the rest of the day. She talked about the balloons non-stop. And the first thing she said this morning when she got out of bed was "Cow? Cow flying? Yake up, Cow!"

Totally worth it.

Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name.
Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

I can't remember at what age the Lord's Prayer became something I could recite without even thinking about it. When you grow up in the church, you hear those words spoken so many times they become embedded in your brain, and I think that's a good thing. It makes them quick to come to mind. But in the last few years, I have been spending a good bit of time pondering why, when Christ taught his disciples to pray, he gave them four words in particular. The words I got stuck on are "Thy will be done."

I'm going to get back to those words in a minute, but first, it cannot go unsaid that the reason I have spent so much time thinking about those words that had rolled off my tongue with such ease my entire life is because they began to stick in my throat a few years back. The first time it occurred to me what a difficult thing it is to pray "Thy will be done" sincerely was when I was praying for the safety of my brother, who was headed off to Iraq. I realized that I didn't really mean those words. What I meant, if I was being honest, was some form of "Thy will be done, but of course, You and I both know that what I want is best, right?" I am no great theologian, but I know enough to know that's not how you're supposed to pray that prayer.

It got even harder for me to reconcile those words with my heart when my brother was injured. For the first time in my life, I was confronted with the will of God in a form that I would never have chosen, and it shocked me. How could God's will look like this? Why would I pray for that? Furthermore, why would God want me to pray for that?

That was almost five years ago, and today when I look back on all of that, I see much more of God's mercy than was immediately apparent to me at the time. But "Thy will be done" is still a phrase I think about a lot harder than I used to do. This week, we as a family and our church family as a whole observe two years since a dear friend of ours, a husband and father, died quite unexpectedly. We were in no way prepared to lose him, and the shock of it is something I can still feel quite clearly. We miss him, and that hurts. Then yesterday Dan and I heard a new piece of sad news from friends who have been going through what can only be described as a severe trial this year. We had prayed so hard for different news, and maybe the beginning of a happy part of that story, but that wasn't the answer we got. And once again, because I could not think of anything else to say about it, the Lord's Prayer came to mind as I sat in front of my computer screen and wept for those who weep.

"Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by Thy name.
Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."

The truth I've been grappling with for the last few years is that me praying those four words does not somehow magically activate the will of God. God's will is going to be what happens no matter how I pray. So all I can conclude from the command to pray this way is that Christ knew that we would have moments of doubt and struggle, and that in leaving us those words, He was giving us a way to practice accepting God's will when it does not look like what we would choose. In saying "Thy will be done," I am acknowledging that it is God who is in control, not me. It's true whether I say it or not, but saying it helps me remember that it's true. I need the reminder.

Another reminder at the end of the prayer gives me a lot of comfort:

"For Thine is the kingdom, and the power and the glory forever."

Not "Thine will be the kingdom." Thine IS the kingdom. Right now. In everything, no matter how good or bad it seems to me. That's not an easy Sunday School answer, or an idea that instantly takes away the pain and the sorrow we feel while living in a world broken by the fall. This week, we miss Brent. We grieve for our friends who are going through such a dark and difficult time, and it is right and good that we do that. I'm thankful that nowhere in Scripture do we hear that Christians aren't allowed to grieve. But we do so as people who know that God is in control of even these things, and His is the kingdom.

We've returned from our trip to Mississippi for Hannah and Daniel's wedding, and I'm writing this as I steadily ignore our overflowing suitcases and the shoulder-high piles of laundry I need to deal with before we can return to normal life. Why does that always happen? I really left the house reasonably clean, and within ten minutes of us bringing our stuff through the door, the place was in total squalor.

I'm being so irresponsible because I have to blog about how much fun we had. So. Much. Fun. I think it would be fair to say that Dan and I loved the trip. We were thrilled to be at the wedding of two people we love very much, we got to see so many people we miss, and we generally had smooth travels, which helps a lot. But our enthusiasm pales in comparison to Kate's. I swear. That child now thinks "wedding" is a word that means "awesome dance party that lasts way past my bedtime and has cake." She had the time of her life, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank the many people who probably threw their backs out when they took a turn dancing while holding her after Dan and I got exhausted and had to sit down. She did not want to miss a single song, and unfortunately I am now so old that I have to take a one-song-on one-song-off approach to wedding dancing. But this is where having younger siblings pays off, because they all took turns steering her around, and she is still talking about it. She danced! With Hannah! And Audgy! And Unca Ryan! And Aaron! And Kelly! And Rebekah! We are going to have to ration our exclamation points for the next month because Kate is using them all up reliving this wedding.

Dancing with Ryan:

A few of my favorite moments from the wedding:

The Toast from a Total Stranger. At the rehearsal dinner, the owner of the Lebanese restaurant where the dinner was held grabbed the mic after the father of the groom and gave a toast to "The boy and the girl," and urged us to please come back to his restaurant. It was hilarious, and I bet we would go back if we didn't live in Albuquerque, because the food was great.

The Music: Hannah and Daniel have such good taste. Sigur Ros and Coldplay for processionals.Yes! No one had to do the Chicken Dance at the reception. And during the ceremony, Hannah's friend Hannah (yeah, that's confusing, but hang in there with me) sang a solo of "Wonderful Grace of Jesus." It brought tears to my eyes both because it was so beautifully-done and also out of sheer gratitude that someone has finally written a tune for that song that doesn't make it sound like Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall, as I think the original version does. It's got such beautiful words, and the tune I've always heard sounds like something you'd sing at camp with hand motions and clapping. Here's to progress. And if anyone knows where I could get a recording of the newer version, I'd love to hear about it.

Four out of five siblings ain't bad. I wish Audrey were in this picture, but she was probably off being an amazing maid-of-honor and taking care of stuff. Good work, Audge!

Great Moments in Parenting/The Thrill of Victory: I would say we reached a new peak in our parenting skills when we fed Kate a Lunchable in a pew inside a historic chapel before the wedding. Yes, a Lunchable. One of those awful pre-packaged sandwich meat and cheese things. I'm not proud of that, but I am proud of us for anticipating the fact that if we didn't find something she could eat without much fuss before the 5:30 ceremony, we were going to have big problems. So we shoved processed food down her and flinched at every crumb that fell on the possibly-historic carpet, and she did great during the wedding. We may get some credit for that, because we spent a LOT of time trying to help her know what to expect. The way we explained it was that there is a Quiet Church Part of a wedding and then there is the Party Part, and during the Church Part you have to be super-quiet and sit still. That part of the message seems to have been absorbed, since she was great during the ceremony.

Here she is before the ceremony with her new best friend, Daniel's younger sister Hannah. There were a lot of Hannahs involved in this wedding. Little Hannah was the flower girl and was so sweet to Kate all weekend. They danced together a lot.

The Agony of Defeat: What we might not have done such a fabulous job of explaining to Kate is that there is something of an interlude in between the Church and the Party. This failure to communicate became apparent when Kate started demanding to go to the party the second Hannah and Daniel walked down the aisle as man and wife. Through pictures, through milling around talking to family and friends, she was asking about the party. Where is the party? Hey, remember the party? Party? Party? Party? And when we went to get into our rental car and drive to the party, she thought we were leaving WITHOUT GOING TO THE PARTY and wigged out completely. She was in her carseat, screaming "Paarty! Paarty!" with much weeping and wailing. You could tell she thought we had lied to her about there being a party altogether, and she would not listen to us explaining how we were driving to the party right that minute. It was one of those situations where you realize the here-and-now nature of the two-year-old mind. As in "If it isn't happening here and now, it's clearly never going to happen." The crisis ended when we pulled up at the house where the party was going to be. Her tears instantly dried up. So did mine when I saw the table loaded down with my next point, which is ...

The Food: There were cheese grits at the reception. CHEESE GRITS. I don't think I need to say anything other than CHEESE GRITS in capital letters again to let you know how happy that made me. Also while we were home, my dad made us both Shrimp Curry and Seafood Gumbo. Do you even know how much butter is involved in those recipes? We lumbered home weighing about five pounds more a piece than when we arrived. But it was so worth it.

Meeting Some People Who Read the Blog: During the wedding weekend, I met or heard about a bunch of people who read the blog that I didn't even know about. Hey Mrs. Meigs! And Eli! And Mrs. Vicki's Mom! Sarah Emily, it was great to meet you in real life after being Facebook friends and talking to each other through Hannah for years. I'm glad you're all here.

I'll have more to say when I dig out of this hole my house is in, but as you can tell, we had a glorious time even though I couldn't smuggle any food home with me. We love you, Hannah and Daniel!

Dear Kate,

As I start writing this, I can hear you opening the closet in our living room, dragging out a big plastic container that holds your dress-up clothes, and fumbling with the latches. You haven't figured them out yet, so in a minute, you're going to call for me to help you, and thus will begin the first part of a new morning ritual you and I have developed in recent days: Arguing over your clothing.

I sort of thought this was the kind of thing that would happen when you were approaching adolescence and wanted to wear skirts that are too short, but here we are, at two years old, and you'd be stiff competition for any 13-year-old pouting in a department store dressing room. Our conflict is about what you want to get up every day and wear: Your diaper, a pink mesh tutu, white dress socks, and black dress shoes. Sometimes you want to layer a red and white polka dotted skirt over the tutu, but most days it's just you and the tutu.These are adorable dress-up things, and it would really be fine with me for you to wear them, except that Kate, it's almost November. Yesterday, we woke up to absolutely freezing cold weather with rain and wind. Today it snowed violently for an hour. No matter what I do it's hard to keep our house warm enough. I've got on layers of sweaters and socks, and here you are, running around half-nude, like you're on a Caribbean island. You will not discuss the possibility of putting the tutu on over some warmer clothes. You do not want to hear about these things called "pants." And you are very particular about how the tutu must be arranged. The ribbon must be in the front. The flowers must face a certain way. You will not tolerate any irregularities of the tutu. It is like living with a tiny obsessive fashion designer.

Last night we had a breakthrough. Your Grammy Wachdorf sent you a box containing two super-cute knit dresses with matching footless tights, and you love them so much that you actually consented to letting me put one of them on you this morning. As of right now I'm still typing and you haven't come in to make your usual tutu-related demands. Maybe these dresses will save me from insanity and you from hypothermia. If so, I owe your Grammy big time. But these little episodes really just point to the big trend of the last two months, and that is You are a Big Girl. You want to Do It Yourself. You actually say that phrase all the time, except no one would ever know, because you pronounce it "I tay it!" (I do it.) From what I can tell, all this means is that you're right where you should be developmentally, and that's good. I want you to learn how to do things. You have a pretty independent personality even if this weren't the phase you would be in by default right now, so it's no surprise. But that doesn't mean it isn't frustrating sometimes. Learning to do things means doing them reeeeaaaaalllly slowly. Sometimes we're in a hurry. Sometimes we actually have to be somewhere at a certain point in time and space. This means nothing to you. You still want to put on your own socks (No Mommy! I tay it!), and it takes forever. I'm taking a lot of deep breaths these days. Counting to ten an awful lot. Trying to leave plenty of time for you to do things. Praying that I don't actually burst a blood vessel.

While our conflict level is definitely up this fall, so is how much real communication we can have, because you are talking so much. You never stop, even when I'm not in the room. You're puttering along, having a conversation with imaginary people about imaginary scenarios, and in those unguarded moments, it's been funny to me to hear my own verbal patterns parroted from your mouth. Apparently, when I talk to you, I end with the word OK a lot. As in "We're going to put on some pants now, OK?" I never realized I do this, but now I know that I do, because when you are playing, you end most of your sentences with "OK?" I also call you "Honey" a lot, especially when you're hurt. A few weeks ago, your daddy and I moved a dresser in our bedroom, and for the next two nights when I got up to go to the bathroom during the night, I ran straight into its corner because I forgot it was there. I got a massive bruise on my leg for that bit of clumsiness, and when you saw it, you said "Oh HONey! I get some me-cine. (medicine). Alll betta. (All better.)" You actually went and got a little bottle of lotion and pretended to be putting in on my bruise too. It was hilarious.

Here you are "reading" Harry Potter to Dangles. Or, as you call it "Parry Hotter." I'm reading it to your dad in the evenings, so you had to get in on the act. You are very dramatic when you read out loud.

Since I've talked about how you're being difficult in one area, I should probably be fair and mention an area of your life that you're suddenly being amazingly un-difficult about. Ready? Here it is: You're eating. Eating food. Willingly. And lots of it. I don't know what to do with myself I'm so surprised. It isn't that before now you haven't liked food. You like it fine. You just don't eat very much of it, and that is why when we go to your pediatrician for checkups, I don't even ask them to tell me what "percentile" you fall into on the growth chart anymore. After years of conditioning to think of numbers in terms of academic grades, it just makes me feel like a failure, and I worry that your doctor is going to burst into the room and demand to know why I have been denying you food. She never does that, of course. At all your checkups, we have the same two conversations. The first one is about how it's OK for you to not to be very big if you're gaining weight and not losing it. The second one is about how it's also OK that your head circumference continues to outstrip your overall growth. Seriously, it's kind of comical. I believe I may have recently used the phrase "Onion on a toothpick" when describing to your Aunt Hannah what you look like when your hair gets wet. Sorry about that. Clearly, right now you're having a growth spurt, and I'm having to constantly tell myself that this is what it is. A growth spurt. Not the Glorious New Normal where you eat like a human being and not a bird. This too shall pass. But in the meantime, we're getting a huge kick out of giving you food and watching you actually consume it. It's like a bizarre new TV show in our kitchen. "Kate Eats an Entire Turkey Sandwich." We are riveted.

The other thing I can see coming out in you that is allllllll me alllllll over again is the fact that you are pretty bossy. Yes. It was probably your lot in life anyway, since you'll be an oldest girl in birth order, and I think that just predisposes a person to lots of babysitting and the overpowering urge to tell people what to do. But there's no denying that you got it from me, and your daddy is having a big laugh over it, when he isn't busy trying to find things you took from him by force. Last weekend after we came back from Hannah and Daniel's wedding, we were having a lazy Saturday morning, and you piled up in our bed, where we were drinking coffee and talking. At first, you were content to sit between us and listen, but it didn't take long for you to start ordering the universe as you saw fit. You had to hold the plate with the bagels on it. You wanted to hold a coffee cup too but were overruled on that one. You wanted your legs covered up with the blankets, and directed me on how to arrange them for you. Then you turned to Dan, grabbed his pillow, and said "Daddy own pillow" as you took his pillow away from him. Yes. You get your own pillow, father. I need this one. That about covers your approach to most things these days. So we're talking a lot about sharing and asking for things instead of just taking them. It's slow going. You don't want anything to do with it.

But whether you want it or not, the world of sharing and considering others is coming to you, Kate. I've buried the lead a bit here, but the other big piece of news from the last couple of months is that you've got a baby brother or sister on the way. (At 14 weeks along, everything looks good.) He or she will be here in April, and we couldn't be more excited. I'm not sure what you understand about this news. You talk about the baby in the tummy a lot and when we pray for the baby, you reach over and pat my stomach. You consistently refer to the baby as "baby sister," which makes me nervous that you might not react so well should our new arrival turn out to be a boy. You notice other people's babies a lot, but I know that you can't really comprehend what all this is going to mean. I'm not sure I've got my head wrapped around it either, frankly. Two kids. What in the world are we going to do with two kids? I feel like I just figured out how to manage with one.

When I was expecting you, I spent a lot of time thinking about how you would change my life. I didn't know you, so I couldn't really think very concretely about what you would be like. Maybe it's because the new baby is such an unknown to me at this point, but this time I mostly spend a lot of time thinking about how he or she is going to change your life. While I know that initially, there is bound to be some struggle to get used to sharing our attention (not to mention your toys) my main emotion when I think about this is excitement for you. You're going to have a sibling! You have no idea what good news this is. Kate, as I've become an adult and my own siblings have too, I have found that my brothers and sisters are some of my favorite people in the world. There is a very powerful connection that comes from growing up in the same family if it's a loving family, and I want that for you. I want it for this new child. So that's why we're getting on the roller coaster again. This time around, I know what we're signing up for. I know now that there is almost no force of nature that can equal the chaos a newborn can bring into your life. I know what sleep deprivation is like. But what I know this time around that I couldn't have known before is how much we're going to love this new child. I know that because I know how much we love you. So here we go.

Dear April Baby: We love you already and can't wait to meet you. Grow healthy and strong. You have a lot of people waiting to meet you.

Love,

Mommy

This is a picture we emailed to our families in August to tell them the big news. Yes, August. I've been holding out on you, Internet.

Kate and I just got back from a trip to Kohl's, and we had the most disgusting experience I've had in recent memory while we were there. It was so unbelievably freakish that I knew I was going to have to come straight home and blog about it. Because that is how I view my life, in chunks of Blogable Material. But seriously, I really think this stuff could only happen to me. See this post if you don't believe me.

This morning I had to get out to run a few errands that ended up taking far less time than I had anticipated. Since we were out of the house and didn't need to be back for Kate's naptime for quite a while, I decided to swing by Kohl's to look for a new pair of sunglasses. I think I have blogged about this before, but I am murder on sunglasses. I only allow myself to buy ten-dollar pairs of them because in my possession they have a life expectancy of anywhere from 10 minutes to two months before I break them, lose them or they are destroyed by a certain individual in my home who likes to raid my purse and try out the lipstick and whatever else is of interest. (Dan. OK, not really. It's Kate.) I left my latest pair on the last airplane we took on our trip home from Hannah and Daniel's wedding, so now I'm back to the dreaded process of trying to find a pair that I can justify paying for but that also fit my admittedly very narrow standards for what makes an acceptable pair of sunglasses. Here are the standards: Solid black, medium frames (Those big square ones that are in fashion right now make me look like a bug), must sit well on top of my head since I wear them there as much as on my face, and, perhaps most importantly, must NOT be adorned with rhinestones, doodads or bling of any form. So basically all I want is a simple pair of black sunglasses. This should be easy to find, right? Wrong. Apparently when you buy cheap sunglasses, you are automatically assumed by the fashion industry to be 12 to 14 years old and therefore very interested in rhinestones. So it takes me weeks to replace sunglasses once I break them. I think I'm just going to go ahead and buy three pairs of the next ones I like and save myself the trouble for a while.

Today at Kohl's was no different. Some nice glasses and definitely great prices, but bling all over the place. I just don't do bling. So no luck, but since Kate was happy walking around the store and we didn't really have anywhere else to be, I decided we'd walk over to the children's section to check out their warm pajamas. When we got there, I found a really great pair of fleece pajamas marked down from $20 to $10, but they were hung up on this rack almost near the ceiling, so I had to go find an employee to help me get them down. When that was accomplished, we headed out of the department towards checkout, and that is when the disgusting incident started. (Dramatic music here.)

We stepped off the carpet onto the middle aisle which is tile flooring, and it's a good thing I was watching Kate, because all the sudden, her feet were flying out from under her! Apparently I have developed ninja mom reflexes, because before her head hit the floor, I had managed to get my hand under it, which was a good thing, because she would definitely have cracked the back of her skull pretty hard. It hurt my hand it hit so hard. She wasn't injured but was pretty freaked out by the fall, and in the immediate moment I was so adrenaline-whacked from moving that fast that it took me a moment to notice that the reason she had fallen was because the floor was covered in this ... unidentified liquid. Kate was screaming, and I was helping her up, but now part of my brain was busily trying to figure out what this stuff was and where it had come from. Whatever it was, it was all over the back of Kate's outfit, and now that I noticed that, I realized it was also on my hand because I caught her head before it hit ... and it was white. Then I made a really bad decision: I smelled it. And instantly I recognized the unmistakable smell of .... infant spit up. Puke. Vomit.

Now, I have a kid, and in her day, she definitely puked on me enough that I realize there are more offensive things than a little spit up. But there is a big difference between being spit up on by your own infant and slipping and falling in a giant puddle of someone else's kid's spit up. Someone else who has clearly chosen to leave the scene of their kid's liquid explosion. And so three things happened simultaneously that did NOT help the situation.

First, Kate, having recovered in the last five seconds from her trauma, looked up and realized that the display she had fallen in front of contained dozens of Disney Princess figurines. She immediately started jumping up and down in front of the display, trying to reach one and pull it down.

Second, my brain, which had just realized that both of us were covered in another person's bodily fluids, immediately and unhelpfully started screaming "SWINE FLU! TYPHOID! ROTAVIRUS!" and the name of every other communicable disease it knows.

Third, my stomach, which is pretty sensitive right now because of all the pregnancy hormones, totally revolted, and I was struck by this intense fit of gagging and dry heaving. This was not a quiet affair. I was bent over in the aisle of Kohl's, retching violently, while my kid jumped up and down like a chimpanzee in front of a display of Disney Princess dolls and Christmas music played over the sound system (IT IS NOVEMBER 3, PEOPLE! HAVE YOU NO DIGNITY?). This went on for several of the longest minutes of my life until I could get a grip on myself and start looking around for an employee to whom I could explain this unbelievable situation and request that they clean it up. You know, like the person whose KID DID IT should have done. The employee I found was as horrified as I was. I imagine part of her horror was fear that I was going to sue, but I wasn't interested in hanging around long enough to do that. I had enough on my hands, what with herding Kate away from the Disney Princess display.

Once again, as in the Diaper of Doom incident, I didn't have so much as a baby wipe in my purse with which to clean us up, so I had to wait until we got out to the car before I could even take a shot at it. In retrospect, I kind of can't believe I actually went and got in line and paid for the pajamas. I think I was in shock. As soon as we got home, I put Kate in the bath tub and all our clothes in the wash. I may have to take another shower even though I had one this morning.

I haven't come to any really great conclusions about the meaning of this whole thing. But I'll tell you what I do know: The other night I was at Macy's and I found a pair of sunglasses that I really liked, but that were a little more expensive than I usually allow myself to buy. I have decided that tomorrow, I am going to walk (carefully, keeping my eyes on the floor) into Macy's, buy the sunglasses and not feel guilty about it. Assuming I don't have swine flu by then.

My sister Hannah and my sister-in-law Kelly AND my Aunt Emily ganged up on me today on Facebook and told me I have to blog now. I wouldn't pay them any attention except that Kelly is carrying my nephew Clark, and since I want to be his favorite aunt ever when he makes his appearance in a couple of months, I had better be nice to his mama. So here is a random story for a Monday evening.

The other day, Kate and I went to Wal-Mart for some inconsequential item that I can no longer even remember, and during that shopping trip Kate discovered the magic of Christmas or, at the very least, the magic of Retail. The reason I can't remember what we were there to get is because I didn't really mean to go to Wal-Mart in the first place. Kate and I were headed home from visiting some friends, and all the sudden, from the back seat, she starts screaming about how she wants to go to the "Stooooooore! The stoooooooore!" Apparently, she was under the impression that we were going to The Store (Wal-Mart) and when I turned in the direction away from Wal-Mart she could not continue living. So we went to the store.

We were toddling along in the pharmacy section when it happened. Kate looked down the giant aisle and saw that Wal-Mart, about ten seconds into the month of November, had transformed their Lawn and Garden section into a Christmas tree display area. I realized she had seen this because she stopped in the middle of the aisle and squealed "Ooooooh! Pretty tree!"

We spent the next half hour observing all the many ways that a fake tree can be made to look like ... something that is not even remotely a tree. There are silver trees, gold trees, and even pink and blue tinsel trees. Kate's favorite was a three-foot-tall hot pink aluminum tree that I know she would buy and set up in her bedroom year-round if she were allowed to do so. If it were up to her, we'd also have a tacky inflatable glowing Santa Clause on our roof. I had to drag her out of there, and I warned Dan that through the month of December, we're basically going to have to stick to the grocery side of Wal-Mart unless we want to take a detour to Tree Land.

But even though it wasn't what I had planned for the morning, a little part of me smiled. This will, I think, be the first Christmas that Kate really "gets." Last year she liked the tree and loved getting presents, but I think she just saw them as random unconnected events. This year, she's already dancing to Christmas music because of a CD I am using to learn seasonal choir music at church. She's noticing the decorations all over the place in stores, and she has loved going to a couple of rehearsals for a Christmas pageant at church, in which she and a lot of other two-year-olds are going to be angels. Adorable, hyperactive angels. The weekend after Thanksgiving when we drag out all our Christmas decorations, she's going to be beside herself, and I can't wait. As cheesy as it sound I'm really looking forward to seeing Christmas through her eyes. It's easy for me to see the month of December looming up on the calendar and start thinking about all the things I have to get done. But having a two-year-old around pretty much forces you to stop and soak up the moments, like roaming around the Christmas tree aisle at Wal-mart for fun. So bring on December and all the pretty trees.

As if I didn't already know how much Kate has changed since the last holiday season, last night I flipped through my pictures from the 2008 December Photo Project, and was shocked by how much she looks like a baby in those images from just a year ago.

A few months ago I posted my thoughts after reading through Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series. My conclusion was that while I thought the books improved greatly in quality as the series progressed, and I found them harmless and entertaining and engaging in a pop culture kind of way, I would not let Kate read them if she were, say, 14 right now. In the last couple of days I have come across two articles that articulate why I feel that way a lot better than I could, and I wanted to link them here.

The first is from Wired magazine, which manages to make a surprising number of very astute points in pulling apart what's disturbing about the Edward and Bella love story in their article "The Top 20 Unfortunate Lessons Girls Learn from Twilight."

The second is from Credenda Agenda, where Doug Wilson is blogging his way through the first book. That's a pretty funny proposition to begin with, so I've been following that series. I'm not always Wilson's biggest fan, but I think he's right about why this is not the ideal love story. Particularly this bit:

"Any pain is preferable to the pain of having the destructive male gone. Got that? You can think up a lie to tell the nurses at the ER when you go down there to have that black eye looked at. There has to be another option to quickly skip on to, right?"

And now back to my regularly scheduled programming of photos of my kid.

It's about 2 p.m., Kate is down for a much-needed nap, and we her parents may take one too if we get a chance. It has really been such a fun day. Here are some pictures and video of the highlights.

We started the morning off with Monkey Muffins, a variation on Monkey Bread ala The Pioneer Woman. I heart the Pioneer Woman. I'm cooking another recipe of hers for dinner. But more about that in a minute. Kate was thrilled with the name of the muffins, and wanted to wear her monkey pajamas and eat breakfast off her monkey plate. And it's Christmas, so she got her way.

Then we read the Christmas story and prayed and headed into the office. Bless those locking double doors that close our office off from the living room, because they allowed us to hide the tree and all its presents until we were ready to open them. I mean, we were already up at 7 a.m., and being able to get some coffee and have a little time to wake up made the whole thing much more humane.

It was such a funny experience to open gifts with a two year old. Every time she opened one, she just wanted to stop and play with it for a while, so we'd hang out and do that and exchange our own gifts until she was able to move on to a new gift. I thought we were never going to get past the fact that there were Hello Kitty stickers in her stocking, which was the very first thing she opened. Stickers! Can you believe her good fortune? It was hard not to laugh, knowing that she had so much bigger gifts waiting, but it's still adorable.

Her two big gifts were given by grandparents. Gam and Geez, my mom and dad, sent her a totally frilly ribbon and tulle extravaganza of a ballet outfit, which she promptly put on and wore until I persuaded her that it would not be very comfortable to nap in. Here is video of her opening that and the dancing that ensued:

And from her Grammy and Grandpa Wachdorf, she got a play kitchen. I love the video we got of her seeing this for the first time because of her reaction: "Awesome!" I think I say that more than I realize, but it does pretty much sum up how she feels about the kitchen. Kate also got about 6,000 pieces of play food to go with the kitchen, and she has been cooking us elaborate meals since then.

The morning was so exciting she needed a sit-on-the-couch break by about 10 a.m. because she was getting so tired. So we watched some "Annie," and then it was time for more dancing and cooking.

As for me, I got the Pioneer Woman's cookbook, which I have been longing to buy since it came out in October. I am going to have so much fun cooking from this thing. I love the fact that the cookbook is set up like the Web site, with a lot of photos of each step of the recipe process. It makes things turn out well even that first time you cook them, which for me at least is usually the time when I make mistakes and take notes for next time around. Anyway, I am loving cooking these days, and now that I'm armed with this book, you really want to get invited to my house for dinner sometime soon, because I've never cooked a Pioneer Woman recipe that wasn't fabulous. I'm just saying.

And my big gift from my sweet husband was this:

A Bissell ProHeat steam cleaner for the carpet! Now I realize there are women who might not appreciate this gift, who might even be offended to receive a housework tool for Christmas, but I am ecstatic. If I had realized before we had a child how much damage kids do to carpet, I would have ripped every square inch of carpet in our house up before Kate was born. There is not enough Resolve carpet spot cleaner in the world to keep up with it, and I am just obsessive enough that it drives me crazy to vacuum and spot clean and still have carpet that constantly looks dirty. On the other hand, it's not like you want to have a hard tile floor when you've got babies crawling and learning to walk and such. So my husband comes to my rescue, because he knows me and accepts that I'm crazy, and that the filthy carpet is making me crazier. If this thing does a good job, I might end up doing a commercial for Bissell. I mean, if it cleans my carpet, it must be good. I'll let you know after the epic day of carpet cleaning I have planned soon. Seriously, I can't even tell you how excited I am about that. Many thanks to Mike and Susan, who helped Dan pull off this surprise by hiding my gift at their house and then smuggling it to church last night. Sneaky people.

Dan is currently playing the new Super Mario Bros. for Wii game to his heart's content, playing with his I-phone, which was not a Christmas present, but is a whole other story in itself, and has a pretty sharp new Minnesota Vikings jacket to wear thanks to my awesome wifely gift-buying skillz. Since I confessed my blog crush on the Pioneer Woman earlier, have I mentioned that my lifelong and largely dejected Vikings fan husband is probably just a few more wins away from leaving Brett Favre a love note next time we're staying at my parents' house and drive past the Favre estate? (The Favres live in Hattiesburg, where my family lives. I once served Brett Favre a sandwich at McAlistar's Deli, where I had a summer job, and did not recognize him. The male kitchen staff nearly had a collective aneurysm when they asked if Brett liked his sandwich and I was like "Brett who?") But seriously, I think I might have to compete with Brett for my husband's affection pretty soon now that he's gone to Minnesota and made my husband's football dreams come true. Good thing I have that cookbook.

Stuff aside, it's really just been such a lovely thing to spend a day at home together and be thankful for our health and our growing family and the blessings God has poured into our lives this year and every year. I hope your celebrations have been filled with the deep joy of the salvation we celebrate today.

"For unto you is born this day in the City of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you: You shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying 'Glory to God and on earth peace, good will to men.'" Luke 2:11-14

Tonight we had loaded baked potato soup for dinner. I made this because Dan loves it, but Kate slurped down two bowls of it and said "Yum! Potato soup!" in between bites. She adds about three extra syllables to the word "potato" when she says it, so that it sounds like "Po-tay-toe-tah-to." Here's a (very) short video of that, along with the Loaded Baked Potato Soup recipe, which involves bacon. A lot of my soup recipes involve bacon, and this makes my husband happy.

Loaded Baked Potato Soup

4 large baking potatoes
2/3 cup of butter
2/3 cup of all-purpose flour
7 cups milk (Note: Whole milk makes for a thicker soup, which is good, but not necessary. I would not recommend anything less than 2 percent, since I'm not sure the soup would thicken up right with 1 percent or skim.)
4 green onions, sliced (I use more.)
8 pieces of bacon, cooked and crumbled
5 ounces shredded Cheddar cheese
1 8-ounce container sour cream
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper

Bake potatoes at 400 degrees for one hour or until done; cool. Cut potatoes in half lengthwise; scoop out pulp, mash to desired texture (I don't like a lot of big chunks, so I mash them down pretty well, but that's a matter of taste). Reserve pulp and discard shells.

Melt butter in a Dutch oven over low heat. Whisk in flour until smooth. Cook one minute, whisking continuously. Gradually whisk in milk, cook over medium heat, whisking constantly, until mixture is thickened and bubbly. (Don't be afraid to raise your heat a little to get things bubbling at this point, because that helps thicken things up, just keep a close eye and stir well to make sure the milk doesn't burn.)

Stir in potato pulp and green onions; bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat and simmer for ten minutes. (Really you can cook it ten minutes or, if it seem like it's the thickness you want before that, you can cut the heat earlier.) Add remaining ingredients, stir until cheese melts. Heat through and serve immediately, topped with bacon and cheese. Yield: 14 cups.

It might not come as a surprise to anyone noticing the total lack of posting on the blog that January sort of ran all over me and got mostly out the door before I could collect any thoughts about it. I knew it was going to be this way, but still, here I sit on January 25, shocked that the month is almost over. I really can't even begin to cover everything that we've done this month, but I'll tell you about the highlights, tell a funny airport story and then later post some super-cute baby photos of my nephew Clark so that you don't notice, OK?

When we decided we would not be traveling to see family for Christmas this year, we instead scheduled trips to see both sides of the family in January. That allowed us to work in one good visit with each side before the baby comes in April. April, incidentally, is starting to seem alarmingly close now that it is within the calendar year we currently inhabit. But that's another post. My point about January is that for 18 of the last 26 or so days, Kate and I have been out of town. When we saw Dan's family in San Antonio, Dan was with us, and then when we flew to Mississippi to see my family, we traveled on our own.

For anyone counting, I am 27 weeks pregnant right now. During this trip I took with Kate to Mississippi, I apparently passed over that threshold of looking pregnant enough that total strangers started asking me when I am due. It was weird, because on the way to Mississippi, not a single person asked about the baby. Ten days later, on the return trip, I bet I told 15 people that I'm due in April, that it's a boy, etc. I blame sweet tea and that chocolate cake my mom made for my 30th birthday, which I celebrated while we were in Mississippi.

I might be 30 now, but I felt about 65 by the end of the days when I traveled by myself with Kate. Traveling alone with a toddler is a very physical process that involves a lot of bending down, picking up and twisting around in an impossibly small airline seat to pick up dropped crayons. It turns out that having a waist capable of bending and a functional center of gravity is also an advantage in that situation, and let me tell you, I no longer have either of those. So I am relieved that this was the last airplane trip we're scheduled to make while I'm pregnant. All told, it went pretty well, with one massive exception, which I now refer to in my mind as The Chicago Incident.

Usually when we fly to Jackson, we're routed through Houston. Hobby is not the nicest airport in the world, but having spent countless hours there over the course of eight years of connecting flights home, I have gotten really familiar with it, and when you have a kid in tow, there's something to be said for the familiar. When we went to book this trip, we were taking advantage of a very very good fare sale that Southwest did in the fall, and in the process of trying to get the best possible price, it became apparent that I would have to fly though Chicago Midway airport on at least one leg of the trip. This added a pretty good chunk of flight time to the day, which wasn't great, but I was actually the most annoyed at the prospect of a layover at Midway. I haven't been there in years, but my enduring memory of that airport is of claustrophobia-inducing low ceilings, inadequate seating in gate areas and very little in the way of food options in terminals. It turns out not much has changed in the four or five years since I was there last, with one notable exception: Moving walkways that take up 80 percent of the already narrow hallways between gates.

Those might have been there for years, but I at least had forgotten about them, probably because in my pre-kid life there wasn't any reason to look at those things as a tool of Satan. But now I loathe them, and here's why. Kate loves the moving walkways like they are some kind of fair ride. When Dan is with me, we just take turns riding up and down the moving walkway and everyone is happy. When she and I are traveling alone, however, this sets up a bad situation. For safety reasons, you're not allowed to take strollers on the walkways. I can't leave my stroller and all our gear behind to escort Kate up and down the moving walkway, but I also can't let her get on there alone. So I have to tell her we can't go on the walkways at all, and much weeping and gnashing of teeth ensues.

This scenario kicked in approximately one minute after we deplaned in Chicago, so things were already not going well when I decided that the first thing we needed to get done was a bathroom stop. In Chicago, they do have a family bathroom, which is one of the greatest innovations in recent travel history as far as I am concerned, since it gives you a little more space and privacy when you're traveling with kids. However, if you only have one family bathroom for an entire terminal, as Chicago Midway apparently feels is adequate, it is pretty much always occupied. So after a while I gave up and we went into the main ladies' restroom. This is where I discovered the following series of true facts: First, sometime during the plane trip, Kate's diaper had sprung a leak of massive proportions and the back of her pants were soaked. Second, it had clearly been wet long enough for her to slide her wet pants around on the plane seat and pick up a nice layer of airline grime that was now coloring the pink pants a disturbing shade of gray. So now we've got wet, filthy pants. (And no, I don't know how I failed to notice that this had happened when we were on the plane. So that one's on me. But I don't want to even think about what is on those seats. Yuck.) Third true fact: For the first and only time in our two-year history of flying with Kate, which has encompassed dozens of flights, I failed to pack a change of clothes. I want you to know that I have faithfully packed that change of clothes every other time and never ONCE have I needed them. But on the one day when it really mattered, did I have any extra pants for her? No I did not. Total Mommy Failure. And don't think she didn't notice, either. When I took the wet pants off her, she immediately started going "I not need pants, Mommy. No more pants! No pants!" thus casting her vote for not putting the wet pants back on, and I don't blame her. But it was 15 degrees in Chicago that day. Warmer in the airport, obviously, but not run-around-with-no-pants warm. There is really no way to let your kid strip down half-naked in that situation without looking like a delinquent.

I love how in parenting, you are inevitably confronted with this kind of complex problem-solving situation when you are in public and surrounded by so much chaos you can't even think straight. There were other travelers milling around and bumping into us left and right, incredibly loud announcements were blaring out of the PA system non-stop, and Kate was continuing to lobby for her no-pants policy loudly, while kicking her legs on that useless fold-out changing table. My first thought was that if there was a hand-dryer in the bathroom, I could dry the pants and we might be saved. But no. In the year 2010, surrounded by all manner of public campaigns to stop overflowing the landfills of the world, the Chicago Midway airport has chosen to go with only paper towels in their restrooms. And not nice paper towels either. Those brown ones that have all the absorbency of cardboard and fall apart. Fantastic. So under pressure, I draped Kate's pants over the back of our stroller, strapped her in, used her jacket to cover her legs and told her that she was going to have to stay in her stroller until her pants dried. I tried to make this sound fun. Like "Hey, you get to pretend that your jacket is a pair of pants! Won't that be a fun game?"

I'm going to let you take a moment to laugh at the very idea that that worked. Go ahead. It's OK. And just like you thought, she was happy to stay in that stroller for about the next five minutes. During the span of time I managed to grab us lunch at the McDonald's that was one of my two choices for food in that awful terminal, and tried to find us a relatively quiet corner to eat in, but it didn't matter. We were still seated next to three or four business travelers when Kate ran out of patience for pretending to be an old lady with an afghan draped over her knees, got up with a French fry clutched in each hand and started running back and forth in tight little loops, squealing and wearing a top, a diaper, no pants and her tennis shoes. Meanwhile I sat there and tried to be a good sport as passing travelers laughed at Kate's glee and my obvious chagrin over the situation.

On the upside, her pants did dry during the course of the layover. Also, at some point, the powers that be cranked the heat in the airport up so daggum high that she was probably more comfortable with no pants on than anyone else had the option of being. I wish I could say that this was the only travel crisis we had, but that would be historical revisionism. It would ignore the time we had to prop Kate up on her training potty, which was balanced on the front seat of my Mom's Suburban, which was parked on the side of the highway in Gluckstadt Mississippi, where it turns out that one exit has lots of rest stops, but the other one has NONE. It would fail to take into account that Kate's car seat got lost somewhere between Albuquerque and Jackson. And people, these were things that happened during what I would classify as a relatively smooth trip with a toddler. No wonder I can't even think about learning to do this with two kids without breaking into a sweat.

The good news is that we had a wonderful time with all our family, and I'll post more about that soon. For now I am going to let Kate watch an absurd amount of Sesame Street while I unpack our suitcases. I figure after the pants fiasco, my shot at Mother of the Year for 2010 is pretty much over anyway. Big surprise.

If there were no factors but my personal preference to consult, we would be naming our son Walker. I like that name a lot, both on its own merits and because of the great Southern writer Walker Percy, who died ten years before I read his work for the first time. I never got to thank him, and I feel like I owe him something.

But nearly seven years ago I married into the last name Wachdorf. This is not the same thing as being named, say, Anderson. With a last name like that, you can name your kid any crazy thing you want and it will come out sounding kind of respectable. No, with Wachdorf, you pretty much owe your kid a classic and preferably short first name. So for the same reasons that I had to abandon my wish to name a daughter Flannery, I had to give up on Walker. Because come on. Walker Wachdorf. How much is that kid going to get beat up on the playground?

True fact: Dan was actually willing to go through with my first choice and name our son Walker, so long as his middle name(s) could be "Texas Ranger." Walker Texas Ranger Wachdorf might not get beat up as much given his possible Chuck Norris connections, but he would almost certainly grow up to resent us pretty severely. So I passed on that generous offer.

Since that was really the only name I felt strongly about and it was off the table, it took us a while to come up with a name for the new baby. So long that I actually started feeling guilty about my complete inability to think of even one other name that I liked enough to give to my son. The good news is that while we've never had a boy, we did talk about names a lot in the months before we found out Kate was going to be a girl. The talk about what we would name a girl was pretty short, and it went like this:

Me: If we have a girl, her name will be Katherine Elizabeth and we will call her Kate.
Dan: OK. I like that.

But our boy-name conversations were more lengthy, and so it was to those conversations we returned in November when we found out that this, our second born, would be a boy. Once we picked up that thread again, Dan reminded me that the last name we had been considering for a boy was Isaac. It's funny how long ago three years can seem when in that same period of time a child who was in your womb as a completely unknown entity has learned to walk, talk and demand Gummi Bears in reward for using the potty. Three years ago sounds like a different life. Maybe a different dimension. But by squinting and concentrating really hard, I was able to ascertain that yes, Dan was right, and our last boy name candidate was Isaac. Dan said he still liked it a lot and that's what we should name the baby. I said I would think about it, and Dan knows what that means. It means we're going to be here for a while.

This is one of the major differences between Dan and I. If you want to come over some time, I could show you some impressive charts and graphs demonstrating how utterly un-alike Dan and I are in terms of how we process information and arrive at major decisions. I have these charts because my whole family did Meyers-Briggs personality type testing a few years ago. I had to laugh at mine and Dan's results, which seemed to indicate that, on paper, we are the world's most unlikely match. Take this baby-naming scenario as an example. Three years ago, Dan (ESTJ all the way) and I talked about naming a theoretical baby boy Isaac. Dan remembered that and, within five minutes of having that recollection, was able to definitively declare that there was no other name in all the world that he liked more, and that if presented with the birth certificate paperwork right there on the spot, he would name our son Isaac and never look back.

I had to think about it for a month. (INFJ, if you were wondering.) And after doing that, one random Saturday morning weeks and weeks later I told Dan that I too thought we should name the baby Isaac, and that his middle name should be Daniel, after Dan of course.

And there we have it. Our baby boy will be named Isaac Daniel Wachdorf, and I like this name very much. In the weeks that I thought about the name and let it sit with me to see if it would stick and become real, I remembered that there were reasons why we liked this name three years ago. In the Bible, Isaac is the long-promised son given to Abraham and Sarah, who are way too old to expect children, but who have nonetheless been told that God will give them descendants more numerous than the the stars in the sky. They've been waiting so long for that promise to come true that when a messenger of the Lord tells Abraham that he'll have this son within a year, Sarah overhears it and laughs. And a year later, the baby is named "Isaac," which means "laughter" in Hebrew. I love that Sarah, clearly a skeptic like me, laughs in disbelief and yet God still blesses her with a son. I identify with Sarah a lot. I would have laughed too. But I do believe that God does the things I would long ago have given up as impossible. I have seen it, like Sarah, and laughed in joy.

Perhaps the best-known biblical story concerning Isaac is of a time in Isaac's life when God tells Abraham that he must sacrifice his only son to God as a burnt offering, and Abraham is on the verge of doing so when an angel of the Lord stops him and shows Abraham a ram in the bushes nearby who can be sacrificed in Isaac's place. A few years back, Dan heard someone teach on this passage of Scripture and point out that when this event occurred Isaac carried the wood for the sacrificial fire up the mountain himself, indicating that he was stronger than Abraham and plenty old enough to know what was going on. He could have run away, but he didn't. He believed, like his father, that God would provide a substitute. That is some pretty serious faith, and that made a big impression on Dan. We want our son to be a man of faith, and we claim for him the same promises God made to Abraham about his children: "I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you." (Gen. 17:7)

As for the middle name Daniel, that's a name from the Bible too, and a good one. But most immediately in my life it's my husband's name, and that has so much meaning to me that I am grateful to have a son just so I can name him for the wonderful man I married. I think Isaac is a blessed little boy to have as loving a daddy as Dan is, and I know he'll be proud to have his name.

Not to mention it's so much better than "Texas Ranger."

So we have a name. And here are Isaac and I at 29 weeks. Eleven weeks to go.

Rice/Meigs/Wachdorf family portrait, January 2010. By Daniel Meigs. (Minus Dan, who couldn't come on this trip.)

One of the smartest things my family ever did was start recruiting outside for talent. By this, I mean that when we get married, we really do our best to bring people into the family who have useful skills. It's great if you're a nice person and all, but what can you do for me? That's really what matters. For instance, Kelly has the ability to get Aaron in line, and that is more than anyone else was ever able to do. Also, she has such unbelievably cute babies. Go look at this and then tell me I'm wrong. Then there are the Daniels, my husband Dan and my sister's husband Daniel. They both know about computers, which is great, because none of the rest of us do. And as I may have mentioned a couple of times on the blog before, Daniel is an incredibly talented photographer. When my family got together a few weeks ago in Mississippi to collectively fawn over Aaron and Kelly's new son Clark, Daniel documented the whole thing beautifully, and so I have some great pictures to share thanks to him. Sorry it's taken me forever to post them.

Pretty soon we're probably going to just go ahead and declare Daniel MVP of the family, since he also spent hours salvaging photos and data off Kelly's dying computer during this trip, and on a Mississippi visit a few months back, he installed a new kitchen faucet in my parents' kitchen. Frankly, he's making the rest of us look bad.

Here I am blowing out the 30 (!!!) candles my mom and Kate put on my birthday cake. I like how Kate looks halfway scared of all the fire gusting off the cake. She has good reasons for that. I was worried we'd set off the smoke alarm.

Clark attends his first late night coffee drinking session with my siblings. We'll probably make him wait until he's three before he gets his own cup.

The newest member of the family. LOOK HOW HANDSOME HE IS.

With his beautiful mama.

Kate, of course, racked up in the loot department on this trip as she does every time. Here she is sporting some of her new dress-up/Mardis Gras fashions. If this child doesn't grow up to be a Rockette, it isn't going to be because our families aren't trying.

Daniel, I love you so much for taking this photo. Aaron modeling the feather boa. It looks good on you, Arnie. Pink is a nice color. I don't know why more men don't wear it.

Kate works the camera with her Aunt Audrey.

Audrey and Kate take two, Napolean Dynamite pose:

Hannah and Baby Clark snuggle on the couch.

My brother Ryan and his lovely girlfriend, Rebekah.

And then just for purposes of making Daniel's work look even better, here are a couple of pictures I took of Kate holding Clark. She loves Baby Clark. She pretty much wanted to hold him all the time, but she definitely requires adult supervision, since when she's done holding him, she just starts getting up to walk away. It was good information to have for our own upcoming adventures in having a newborn around. But really she was so sweet with him.

As always, you need to check out my amazing brother-in-law's work here.

As I type this, it is noon on a Tuesday and Kate does not have a stitch of clothing on, having taken it all off in order to play "beach." Where this child got the idea that playing beach requires being in the nude, I don't know. She has never even been to a beach, so it's possible she picked this idea up from television, in which case I might want to pay a bit more attention during Sesame Street. But she's been naked for about an hour and now she's lying on the living room floor eating pretzels straight out of a plastic bag while (I admit it!) watching television. In addition to this squalor, there are dirty dishes in my kitchen and laundry that needs doing and all I want to do is go to bed and take a nap instead.

Welcome to a scene from the 32nd week of my pregnancy. I think it is safe to say I have hit the wall. I cannot believe there are eight weeks left, and at moments like this I have no idea how I'm going to survive them. I really was feeling a lot of momentum and energy until now. I actually had this list of projects around the house that need to get done before the baby comes, and I was getting them done. Which meant I could check them off my list, which I love more than anything. In addition to anemia, which was a problem for me in my last pregnancy and is back this time, I think the main difference is that I am getting into that territory where even under the best of circumstances I am not sleeping very well at night. I start out reasonably alert in the first part of the day, but by the afternoon I'm pretty much toast. I think I am alternating "good mom" days with "lazy mom" days on about a one-to-one ratio. Yesterday Kate and I spent the morning at Explora, the children's museum here in Albuquerque and then had a picnic lunch on their playground. The house was in decent shape and I cooked dinner. But today, after we got out for a regular Tuesday commitment we have, it was all I could do to get home, turn on the TV and hunker down until naptime. Dan is on a business trip, and if I had to bet I'd say Kate and I will be heading out to Chik-Fil-A for dinner tonight. Tomorrow's plans call for a trip to the zoo with friends, which I think qualifies as a good mom plan for the morning. (Exotic animals! Fresh air! Educational plaques!) But I get tired just thinking about it, and that is frustrating.

I recently read this advice about transitioning from one child to two posted on It's Almost Naptime, a blog I have started following and really find hysterical and wise. Being at this point in the pregnancy made her advice about dropping the supermom expectations hit home for me. These last few weeks might just be my opportunity to start working on that so that I don't go into total shock when Isaac gets here.

Update: Kate's changed into a Minnesota Vikings cheerleading outfit and a pink tutu. I am choosing to view this as an improvement. Hey, it's clothing. And it's also naptime, so I'm going to clean up the breakfast dishes, put on the one load of laundry we can't live without, email my editor the final touches of a freelance project I've been wrapping up and then go to sleep for an hour or so.

It's just eight weeks. It can't last forever.
And it's not like I'm going to get any sleep once the baby comes, right? Sigh.

Unrelated note: I started reading It's Almost Naptime because a friend linked to this post, "I don't want my children to be happy," which I loved and think worth sharing. You should head over there, since I'm not exactly keeping the blog lit up with new content these days. Thanks to Paula for the original link.

One afternoon last week, this was my sister Hannah's status update on Facebook:

Is anyone in Nashville free and able to help me change a flat? I should have learned this in high school, I know... I was too busy with show choir. Why don't I ever have an emergency in which I need to dance to "Superstition"?

I laughed so hard I started crying. Hannah has that effect on me a lot, and it kills me that I don't live closer to her. It also reminded me of a story that I meant to blog and didn't. So here it is.

One day week before last, Kate and I went to Burger King for lunch. This pretty much means it was a weird day to start with, because I can't remember the last time I went to a Burger King. But after a morning that featured several mini-crises, I had a starving kiddo on my hands, no real food in the house and Burger King was the only place I could think of in a two mile radius that would be fast and did not have a playground attached. At this point in my life "restaurant playground" is code for "half-hour of my life that WILL end in me climbing my giant pregnant self up a purple plastic tube to drag out my two-year-old." I have decided that I have to stop doing this, since I can see the headline now: "Fire Department Called to Dislodge Pregnant West Sider from Chik-Fil-A Slide. SUBHEAD: Hose deployed; playground flooded." And I just didn't have time for that on this particular day. So off to Burger King we went.

I mentioned recently that the pregnancy is starting to make me tired, but it's also making me stupider. By the minute. In the course of four days, I set off our smoke alarm twice while cooking. Kate had never heard it before, was totally traumatized and still occasionally points to it on the ceiling and says "No more youd! (loud) No more youd, OK Mommy?" The other day when Kate and I went to the museum, I lost my keys, a fact I failed to notice until I was leaving ... three hours later. Thank goodness lost and found had them. And I pretty much cannot be trusted to grocery shop these days, since every single time I try to leave the register without either the groceries or my wallet.

So on Burger King Day, Kate and I got some lunch and headed home about ten minutes before I was going to need to put her down for her nap. Shortly after we got on the road, we got to a four-way stop. Now I do not wish to make generalizations, but in seven years of living in New Mexico Dan and I have decided that the rules for four way stops must not be covered in whatever driver's education course is offered here. It's just a free-for-all. Maybe the other drivers know the rules. Maybe they don't. Thus, I usually pay pretty close attention when we get to a four-way. But I am willing to admit that Pregnancy Stupidity may even be affecting my driving, because I can't honestly say who was at fault in what happened next.

I pulled out into the intersection to make my left turn, truly under the impression that it was my turn to go, but all the sudden there was this giant truck RIGHT on my bumper and then pulling around me on the left while I was still getting out of the intersection and straightening out for the turn. I don't know if I pulled out in front of him or if he was just driving really aggressively. What I do know is that I did the one thing you should never do -- I looked away from the road, lost track of where I was in the turn, and as a result I ran into the curb. Actually I didn't run into the curb so much as I ran all up onto the curb and then came back down. One whole side of our car jumped up, and there was a terrible loud BANG. I got the car straightened out and driving in the right direction again quickly, but I could tell our tire was flat immediately because of the WHUMPA WHUMPA sound it was making over the sound of Kate screaming "Too YOUD mommy! Too YOUD!" from the backseat. Poor child is developing a fear of sudden loud noises and it's all my fault.

I pulled over into a residential neighborhood and got out just to visually confirm that the tire was flat. Then I called our roadside assistance number. We have been paying for this service through USAA, our insurer, for more than five years, but in that entire time I have never had so much as a fender bender. So it was with some sheepishness that I told the woman on the phone that why, yes I did have a flat tire, and yes it was because I ran into a curb. But that moment of humiliation was just the start, because after getting all the basic information on where we were so the assistance vehicle could find us, she threw this one at me:

Insurance lady: "Do you have a working spare tire?"
Blink. Blink. Dogs bark in the background. Birds chirp. Kate screeches about wanting to get out of the car.

Me: "Umm. I think so. I don't know for sure."
Her: "Well do you think you could check?"
Me: "OK. Stay on the line. I'll be right back."

I left Insurance Lady to enjoy the peaceful Muzak of Kate's whining and tried to think about where in the world a spare tire might be stowed on my car. I am not proud to say that it took me about ten minutes to find it, a fact I'm sure made it painfully obvious to Insurance Lady that she was dealing with a genuine idiot of a motorist. I imagined her typing notes into our customer file while the minutes ticked by: "Wife is obvious liberal arts major. Cannot be trusted. Clearly a liability."

For the record, the spare tire is under the floor in the trunk of our car. We haven't cleaned out our trunk since about 2006, a fact that did not help my search, so I had to conduct an archeological dig to find it. When I finally got the floor clean enough to lift it up and saw the spare tire, I wanted to high five someone, but Kate did not seem to be in the mood, and somehow I felt that Insurance Lady was not sufficiently impressed with my accomplishments. But she did send out the guys in the truck, and they fixed us right up. They only made a little bit of fun of me about running over the curb. They did say "Wow. This looks like a brand new tire," which it totally was. Dan had the tires on our car replaced not three weeks before this happened. He was really nice about it.

Not that I'm happy I blew out the tire, but really the whole thing wasn't that bad. Our roadside assistance service is clearly worth the money, and they had us fixed up in a matter of minutes. It turned out that the tire was under warranty, so the tire shop gave us a new one for no charge and it was fixed by the end of the day. Almost two weeks later, Kate has even stopped talking about how "Mommy broke the car! It YOUD!"

But I am sure the whole thing would have been much more fun if Hannah had been there to sing and dance to a Stevie Wonder song while we waited for the truck.

I started writing this post yesterday, got stuck, and stopped. This is more indicative of the sad state of my writing mojo these days than I would like to admit, but I did finish this up today and am posting it, even though it's a day late. So pretend it's yesterday.

Five years ago today, my brother Aaron survived an IED attack on the Humvee he was driving in the Al-Anbar province of Iraq, where he was serving with the Marines. That whole story is over here. Every March 18 is important for our family as a day to pause and be thankful again that Aaron's life was spared. Five years seems like a long time, but when I think about how many questions we had that day, I can relive the uncertainty and fear pretty completely. Our questions were so basic. Was Aaron conscious? How long would it take him to get to the States from Germany, where he had been airlifted for surgery? Did he know what had happened, or would someone need to tell him when he woke up?

There weren't a whole lot of good answers at first. It was terrifying.

Sometimes I wonder if it would have made much of a difference on March 18, 2005 if the Marines who brought that news to our various doorsteps could have said "Your brother, your son, your husband, has been hurt very badly. He's lost his leg. But in five years, he'll be a law student. He and Kelly will have a son named Clark and they'll own a home and Aaron will be obsessive about yard work.You will actually joke about his prosthetic leg sometimes, and this will all seem normal. Incredibly normal." I am not sure we would have been able to believe that even if they had said it. The future seemed irrelevant and unimaginable in light of the immediate crisis.

But life goes on in five years. A lot. And all those things that no one could tell us that day are true now. Aaron is in law school. He and Kelly have a home and a dog and the coolest baby boy ever. As I was reflecting on this anniversary in the last few weeks it occurred to me that Kate and Clark and Isaac and all our family's future children will have no direct memory of March 18. How strange. That in itself brings up all new questions. Will we need to explain to the kids exactly what happened to Aaron, or will they always just accept that he has a prosthetic leg? Aaron and I have talked about that, but Kate so far seems not to notice. When she does ask questions I'm going to follow Aaron's lead, since lots of kids have asked him what happened to his leg in the last five years and he has worked out a way of answering them. For that matter, he's handled adults very graciously, some of whom are even less tactful than small children. These are weird little skill sets that most people don't have to learn. But all around, I like the questions we have now more than the ones we had five years ago. More surprisingly, they no longer seem unusual to me. They are just part of life as the family of someone who survived. We thank God every March 18 for the mercy and the privilege of being that family.

We love you, Aaron, Kelly and Clark, and are thankful for you and everything you did.

Fabulous blogging news alert: My sister Hannah recently started her own blog, which I am looking forward to reading every day. No pressure, Hannah! She wrote about this here.

A friend recently emailed to ask if everything was going OK, since the blog has been so hopelessly vacant for long stretches this spring. I told her we are fine, just doing our normal stuff and moving through a list of pre-baby house preparation projects that would make anyone forced to read about them here weep with boredom. But when you look at all those odds and ends in a lump, they are enough that I could get one exceedingly mundane blog post out of them. So get your extra-caffeinated coffee and I'll tell you what we've been doing. Seriously, put a pillow on the table in front of you so you don't get a knot on your head if you pass out from the tedium.

First off, I've been being pregnant and getting bigger and bigger by the minute. This week, Dan went on a three-day business trip, and last night when he got home, he looked at my stomach and said "Wow. He got a lot bigger just while I was gone." I didn't throw anything at him, because he's just speaking the truth, and he's not the only one. Throughout the pregnancy, Kate has been confused about where exactly Baby Isaac is, and most times when we ask her, she'll say that he's inside her tummy. On Sunday morning, Dan was getting Kate ready for church, and when she took her shirt off, she leaned back, put her hands on her stomach and said "Wow! This baby getting BIG!" which is a phrase she probably hears me say about 10 times a day at this point. Kate does sometimes have quite a little pot belly, but these days I've got her beat. Here's a photo of Isaac and I at almost 37 weeks:

I'm due on April 25, but remembering the mental agony of being six days post-dates with Kate, I've decided to just tell myself that this baby isn't coming until May 1. In a few days I could healthily and happily have baby Isaac any time, but I don't believe any such thing will be happening. My mom is coming on April 19, at which point I am sure to be so enormous that I'll be thankful for the help even if we don't have a new baby. He seems to be doing great, based on the number of rib-cracking kicks he is delivering to my insides on a daily basis. So everything is status quo there.

Last weekend a sweet friend hosted a church baby shower for me, and now we have this amazing collection of little boy clothes that are so tiny that they freak me out. I know I've forgotten how little newborns are, but looking at those clothes reminds me again. We were also given a bunch of diapers and then in my closet spelunking adventures I found this whole stash of infant diapers that we must have had leftover from when Kate was born. I had forgotten all about them, and it is no exaggeration to say that at this point in my life, rediscovering them was like finding money hidden in a closet, or maybe even more exciting. Seriously. Don't laugh at me. So we have diapers, clothes and a bassinet, which I guess means we're ready to have a baby. Funny how this time around I know that's all we really need.

Speaking of the diapers, here is a photo of the diaper centerpiece my friend and shower hostess Cora made. It's a little airplane. How cute is that?

Meanwhile I am doing what I do while pregnant: Nesting. I think that a lot of women go through an intense period of this at the very end of a pregnancy, but since I am kind of a neat freak by nature, I take it to a whole new level and nest for months. No joke. Those hormones in charge of my brain start making me see all the dirt! And clutter! In my house! So since about January I have been working through a list of projects, some big and some small, that I'll just feel better having accomplished given that they aren't likely to get done again for about two years. I've cleaned appliances, reorganized our closets and drawers, vacuumed under furniture,washed curtains, steam-cleaned carpet, flipped mattresses and gathered up so much stuff to give away that a local charity will be making a special trip to my house next week to pick it all up. I say that "I" have done all of these things, but I should give major credit to Dan, who has had to do a lot of heavy lifting, since I can't exactly be hoisting mattresses safely at this point in my life. He is being a really good sport about all the house projects considering that if it were up to him, the question wouldn't be "When should we deep-clean the kitchen?" so much as "Why would one ever need to deep-clean a kitchen?"

And speaking of our kitchen, last week we checked off one of the last major projects in our always-in-process revamp of our kitchen. When we bought this house, one of the things we fell in love with was the kitchen, because it is so big and has such a huge dining area and great light and tall ceilings. Unfortunately, when whomever built this house was considering how best to finish the kitchen, they apparently latched on to an interior decorating theme called "Salvage appliances and fixtures from a local junkyard." This is the only explanation I can think of for the cheapness. If you don't believe me, please remember that this is the same room where we had to rip carpet up out of a DINING AREA. Carpet. The other half of the room was finished in a linoleum so cheap it was peeling and broken even though the house was just over five years old when we bought it, and all the appliances were on their last legs. Over four years, we've replaced the stove, put in an over-range microwave, new dishwasher and new flooring. But the one remaining vestige of the crapiness that was this kitchen's original state was our sink.

I want to make it clear that I understand that it is a privilege to live in a part of the world where I can have such petty concerns as what kind of kitchen sink I have attached to the indoor plumbing connected to a reliable, clean water supply. I take these things for granted perpetually, but I love our house and I am thankful to have it, so it's not as if every day that we have lived in this house I have spent in a state of discontent over a kitchen sink. No, not every day. Just any time we needed to wash a really big pot. Then it was all I could do not to curse whoever put this sink in. It was, at best, 6 inches deep, with a faucet so short that in order to rinse anything of any size, you had to wedge the object in between the sink wall and the faucet and then rotate it at all these bizarre angles and just hope that water would flow over all the surfaces and wash off the soap. There wasn't even a sprayer to help you out with that whole process. Here is a photo of the horror:

Given that this project involved plumbing, we did not attempt to pretend that we were up to doing the job ourselves and instead hired a contractor friend who did an excellent job. Here is the new sink, in all its deep cast-iron glory. This thing makes me want to cook something in my biggest, baddest gumbo pot just so I can wash it. I was expressing this to my sister-in-law Kelly when we were talking on Skype, and her response was "Man, you guys are really getting old." So true, Kelly. But don't say that while you stand next to me at my new sink or I will soak you with my TOTALLY COOL HIGH-POWER SPRAYER. Take that!

At some point, I mentioned in passing to Kate that one thing we could do with a new sink is give Baby Isaac a bath in it when he's big enough to sit up. Somehow in her mind this has translated into the whole purpose of the sink being to give Isaac a bath and every time she notices it, she says "Our new sink! Give Isaac a bath!" She's also been making Isaac lots of pictures and cards, which is pretty cute.

So there you have it. I'm still pregnant and driving everyone crazy with my cleaning. Dan is putting up with me as best he can, and Kate is leading the busy life of a two-year-old. Like I said, we're pretty boring. But this is our life, or at least it will be for the next few weeks. Then we get into that limbo existence known as Newborn Land where life as you know it disappears into epic chaos. We're getting ready for that, and every new pregnancy discomfort and twinge makes me more and more ready, but we're also enjoying this. Blessed, boring normalcy. I will miss it.

Coming soon: Guess the baby's birthday and some hilarious Kate video.

In my last letter to Kate, I mentioned that she has gotten very interested in how stop lights work. This interest has morphed into a new game called "Driving." We have these big green pillows that used to be part of a whole coordinated thing I had going on with our bed. You know, on the good days, when I make the bed. But now those pillows have been declared "Kate's car," and every day she lines them up in this very specific way and then pretends that they are a car she is driving. Sunday afternoon she roped Dan into playing with her, and this was the resulting video footage. I guess at some point she decided it would be much more fun if she made Dan drive and just sat in the back seat and told him what to do, like some billionaire trophy wife. Dan puts up with a lot around here, as you can tell.

I didn't get any great photos of Kate in her Easter finery this morning, but I did my best considering that she will not stand still for anything, especially not today. There was quite a saga surrounding this dress, one mostly caused by my own stupidity. We picked up her dress more than a week ago one day when we were out running a bunch of other errands. Score one for me for being prepared, something I did not do such a good job on when it came to buying an Easter basket. I did that last night at Albertson's at about 8:30 p.m. Unfortunately, Kate saw, tried on and fell in love with the dress the day we bought it so of course she proceeded to ask when she could wear it starting from the minute we left the store and continuing for the next two days. Fortunately, my mother-in-law saved me from myself. A couple of days after we bought Kate's Easter dress I went to the baby shower that a friend hosted for Isaac and I. Not only did my mother-in-law send gifts for Isaac, she sent one for Kate -- a great little dress perfect for playing. So Kate forgot about her Easter dress long enough for it to be Easter, and I did not have to talk about her Easter dress every minute of every day for a week. Seriously, that's what was about to happen. We did tell her last night right before bed that the next day was Easter and that she could wear her new dress, and so the first words out of her mouth this morning when Dan went to get her out of bed were "I wear my dress?"

We did also talk to her a lot this week about what Easter actually means aside from new dresses. Last week's Palm Sunday service and Sunday School lesson helped her grasp the ideas, I think, as did this Sunday's festivities. But it's still really hard to explain the concept of resurrection to a two-year-old, mostly because they are so literal and immediate about everything. Right before church started today, I was telling Kate again that today was a special day, that we were celebrating because Jesus rose from the dead and is alive. Her response to this was "Yes! And we see Jesus at church today!" She was looking around the sanctuary, like He was going to walk through the door any minute. So then we had to explain that umm, no, probably we won't see Jesus at church today because Jesus is in heaven and we don't know when He's coming back.

But it got me thinking that my two-year-old might have a little better grasp on how I ought to look for Christ's return than I do. When I tell her that Jesus is coming, she looks around for Him. She believes it with no trouble. I hope she always does.

Having learned from our mistake with the dress, we did not tell her about Easter eggs this morning. But we've got a basket and have hidden some eggs filled with candy, so it's time to go introduce her to that part of the day as well. Based on her joyous reaction to special Easter cupcakes in Sunday School today, I think she's going to be pretty pleased. Happy Easter everyone. Christ is risen!

Sometimes on weekends we go out after dinner for what Kate refers to as "special treats." This phrase is pronounced "sepple tweats" and in her world, it means ice cream. After a long stint at Cold Stone Creamery, we were getting bored, so lately we've been heading downtown to 66 Diner, a 1950s-style diner with fabulous milkshakes. Kate is impressed. The only problem is that once she latches on to the straw, she doesn't want to let go. It's like she thinks someone is going to take it from her if she doesn't drink it all in one giant slurp. We have been working on teaching her how to take breaks so she doesn't freeze her brain. But look how happy that face is! It cracks me up. (Photos taken with Dan's i-Phone.)

I like this little family tradition.

With ten days left until Isaac's April 25 due date, I thought I'd open up comments for your guesses, wagers and predictions as to when this little guy might make his appearance. Feel free to guess how much he weighs too, but when you do, please be kinder than my husband, who has consistently been predicting a nine-pounder for months now. This is not nearly as funny as he thinks it is.

Speaking of Dan, he's convinced that the baby will arrive this week, as in before the end of Sunday, April 18. I have no idea what he's basing that on other than my general hugeness, but at least once every day he looks at me and says "Yep. He's coming this week and he weighs nine pounds."

My midwife, meanwhile, is offering me no such assurances, but certain things are happening that would lead one to believe that we could have a baby sometime in the near future. I'm not a big fan of posting information about my uterus online, but let's just say things are more progressed now than they ever were until I went into active labor with Kate, She Who Was Six Days Late. My midwife also believes that the baby weighs somewhere in the average 7-pound range. On the other hand, that's what my doctor with Kate said too, and Kate came in at 8 pounds 8 ounces. Ask me. I was there. If I get to 41 weeks, my midwife and I will talk about induction options, so I suppose the outside limit on guesses would be sometime around May 3.

Kate, by the way, predicts that the baby is either coming in "two hours" or "two weeks" depending on when you ask her. This may be because these are the only two time-related phrases she knows, but it's still disconcerting, given that we're in the time frame when it really could be two hours .... or two weeks. I have stopped asking her. She is freaking me out.

If you ask me when I think he's coming, I don't know what to tell you. I have contractions all the time, and some of them hurt, but they don't seem to mean anything much. Some days I feel pretty good and other days I feel terrible and absolutely convinced that I cannot stand to be pregnant for another five minutes. I believe this is the average mental state for a nine months pregnant woman. I'm trying not to think about it too much, which is to say that it's all I can think about, but I try to stay busy, and that is easier this time around. Kate and I are hanging out with friends and getting ready for my mom, who is coming on Monday the 19th. That will be fun, and I'll be thankful for the help with Kate. It's amazing how much more being pregnant requires of you physically when you have a small child to keep up with.

So there you have it. We are waiting for a baby, and there isn't much more to say about it. Your prayers for the four of us would be appreciated. If I don't have a baby by Cinco de Mayo I'm going to go to the crazy all-night party our neighbors always throw and do the limbo.

Isaac is five weeks old today, and to celebrate I thought I'd get it together and take some pictures off the camera. Woo! Big accomplishments! Seriously though, Dan's mom went home on Wednesday, so at this point I'm just happy to have survived two days on my own with both kids. There were points on both days when both kids were screaming simultaneously, but they were brief. One morning I got all ambitious and tried to get out of the house. In order to accomplish this I spent every minute from 6:30 a.m. until 9 a.m. getting me, Kate and Isaac dressed and fed, and it was going pretty well until Isaac peed on me during a diaper change. This happens all the time because more than a month into this I have still not mastered the art of changing a boy's diaper without incident. This time I made the rookie mistake of stripping him down and picking his naked self up so I could move all the wet linens out from under him, and that's how he pooped on my clean shirt minutes before I thought we were about to get in the car. That set our departure back by about 30 minutes, so all told it only took us three hours to get out the door. Needless to say the house pretty much looks like it has been ransacked by vikings most days. But I'm optimistic we'll find our new normal in ... I don't know ... a year maybe. I appreciate all the encouragement I've received from moms of more than one. It's good to hear that one day this will seem less like a complicated circus trick every minute of every day.

And now, pictures!

Grammy and Isaac.

Isaac is starting to give us some real smiles, which is so much fun.

But those sweet little newborn sleep smiles are also pretty amazing.

Kate has been keeping it fabulous.

Since we're not quite ready to move Kate into a big girl bed, Isaac has no real room and has been sleeping in a bassinet in our walk-in closet at night. When it's time for a nap I just put him down on whatever flat surface is available. Poor neglected second baby. Of course sometimes he gets our whole king size bed to himself, so it's not all bad.

And now, back to the circus!

In the last week we have taken some video of both of the kids and thought we'd post a clip of each of them here in hopes of keeping our mothers from disowning us.

On Saturday, we went to the Explora Museum, which is a children's museum dedicated to hands-on learning in science, technology and art. Or, as Kate thinks of it, the place with the giant bubble-blowing station.

Previous to Saturday's excursion that was her favorite part of the museum, but I think we may have a new winner. Towards the end of our visit, Dan and Kate walked ahead while I stopped to tend to something for Isaac. When I caught up with them, they were in a part of the museum dedicated to demonstrating various aspects of light. I had never taken Kate there before, assuming most of the experiments would be over her head, and many of them are. But what I didn't know was that in the heart of that section of the museum they have a mirror room. Yes. A small room covered from walls to ceilings, with mirrors. Stepping into it as an adult is pretty horrifying since it enables you to see yourself from every possible angle. I could not get out of there fast enough. Kate, on the other hand, has zero inhibitions and possesses an abiding faith in her own fabulousness. And so perhaps it will come as no surprise when I tell you that Kate LOVED the mirror room. Apparently she has been waiting her whole life to see herself reflected 6,000 times. We had to drag her out of there a half hour later. But not before we got some video of Kate singing and dancing ... with herself. This was shot with Dan's I-phone, so it isn't the best quality, but I'm so glad we had a camera.

And while that is a tough act to follow, I caught Isaac in a chatty mood on a recent morning and got some video of him too. Notice his double chin(s).

I love having kids. I truly do. But there are moments in my life as a parent that are only redeemable because I think "This is going to be funny later, and I am going to write about it." This is the story of one of those moments.

Kate and Dangles, January of 2010. Photo by Daniel Meigs

Wednesday morning, Kate, Isaac and I met some friends at the Sprayground. We had a fun time, which for Kate meant putting on a swimsuit, sunscreen and water shoes in order to barely get wet. I got some good conversation in with friends. Isaac took a nap in his stroller. Around 12:30, we loaded up and went home.

Two weeks after Isaac was born, I posted on Facebook about how we had attempted our first family-of-four outing and the process of getting in the car had been such utter chaos that we drove along for a pretty significant amount of time before we realized that while we had remembered to put both children in the car (Points!) we had failed to buckle Kate into her car seat. (Major points deduction!) Since then, we have gotten more of a routine down and it's not quite such a circus when we all leave together. Me going places with both kids by myself is still a bit of a work in progress. Leaving the house is OK; it's getting back in the car in public parking lots that feels a little scary to me. Getting Kate in the car first seems like the thing to do because then I don't have to worry about her stepping out in front of a moving car. But it's July in Albuquerque and our car is perpetually oven-hot, so then I face this weird dilemma of whether to put Isaac in the car too or leave him in the stroller, unattended in a public parking lot, while I start the car so the air conditioner gets going. No matter what order I do those tasks in, there's a pretty big delay between both kids being in the car and us actually leaving because I am loading up all our stuff and our Big Honking Infant Stroller. On Wednesday I got all of this accomplished, pulled out of the parking spot and realized that YET AGAIN I failed to buckle Kate's car seat. The good news on that one is that Kate has now learned that her parents are absent minded idiots, and so she goes ahead and tells me when I don't buckle her in.

We pulled into our garage with a few minutes to spare before nap time. Isaac was starting to fuss because he was hungry and Kate, who had lunch at the Sprayground, was saying she wanted to eat a banana in her big girl chair over and over and over like this: "I wanta bananainabiggirlchairabananabananabanana!" It was a little distracting, but eventually I got everyone in the house and settled with the food of their choice. Isaac and I were on the couch in the living room and Kate was in the kitchen enjoying her much-requested banana. This was the state of affairs for maybe ten minutes and then I told Kate that it was nap time and she should find her monkey. You know the monkey, right? Dangles the Monkey? The one she takes everywhere? That one.

Let me tell you a few things about this monkey. Dangles was a gift from a good friend of ours who incidentally is also named Kate. When our Kate was 10 months old, she happened on the monkey in a pile of stuffed animals that had previously been sitting in her room unused, picked it up, and hasn't parted with it since ... that she knows of. When it became apparent that she had chosen this monkey to be her constant companion, we did what several really smart parents we know advised us to do and bought a couple of backup monkeys. One benefit of this is that every few weeks I slip into Kate's room while she's asleep, put a clean monkey in her crib and take the dirty one out for a run through the washing machine. That's nice, because you would not believe how filthy a stuffed animal can get, but the real point of the backup monkeys is insurance. I am not actually sure if Kate could go to sleep without Dangles. I don't want to find out.

Photo by Daniel Meigs

In the process of buying our insurance monkeys we learned that Dangles, while made by a very prominent toy company, has been discontinued in the sense that they aren't making any more of him. At the time, there were still quite a few of them available online, so we bought two, bringing our monkey total up to three. Well, some time last year Dan and Kate returned from an errand minus a monkey. With no idea where the little guy got left behind, we were down to two monkeys, leaving us one backup in case of emergency. Which brings us back to last Wednesday.

I told Kate to get her monkey so we could go get ready for nap time, but she couldn't find him. No big deal. I started looking around the house. No monkey. I looked in the car. No monkey. I rechecked everywhere I had looked. Nothing. I thought back to the last place I could remember having seen Dangles ... in the stroller on the way out of the Sprayground. Maybe he got put in the trunk with all of our bags? Nope. Now I was starting to get worried. What if I dropped him in the parking lot? I went back in the house and asked Kate if she knew where she had put Dangles. No, she said.

Since it was nap time, I didn't have much choice but to deploy the decoy monkey, who thankfully was ready and waiting in the guest room closet. I just acted like I found Dangles, put Kate down for her nap and then got down to the business of seriously tearing up my house looking for this ridiculous monkey. Kate has a weird habit of hiding things -- usually small things -- in a few key places in our house including the pantry and certain drawers and cabinets. She doesn't usually hide Dangles. Still, I checked all her usual spots, to no avail. After yet another run through the car, the trunk and all of the bags we took with us that morning, I called the business office at the community center where the Sprayground is located. I am not sure I have ever felt sillier than I did explaining to the woman on the phone about how I needed her to go check lost and found for a monkey. "He's very important to my daughter, and I need to get him back if we left him," I told her. I actually got a little choked up, thinking that maybe Kate's little friend was lying on the asphalt somewhere because of my air-headedness. (Some day I am going to write a book about motherhood, and it is going to be called "One Thousand Ways to Feel Guilty." This will be one of the chapters.) The woman was really nice and took my phone number, but when she called back she said she had looked everywhere and hadn't found him.

Right around then Dan called to check in. I filled him in on the Great Monkey Crisis. We agreed that the thing to do was to start looking for a new one to buy online. Being down to one monkey just is not smart, since it leaves no margin between us and complete catastrophe. So I got online and started shopping. OK now remember how I told you that we realized a couple of years ago that Dangles is technically a discontinued item? Turns out they weren't kidding about that. Amazon had one for sale -- one -- and they wanted EIGHTY DOLLARS for it. I reported this fact to Dan via email and then decided that I needed to take a break from the whole situation. Lie down on the couch. Do some deep breathing. Over a monkey.

There are a lot of moments when it is a good thing that Dan is a much less neurotic person than I am. He calmly spent a few minutes checking around online, persevering beyond the initial sticker shock of Amazon, and found two monkeys available at much more reasonable prices on eBay. I have never bought anything on eBay in my life. I realize I am the last person on the face of the planet who isn't buying things there, but I don't completely understand how it works, and I am vaguely suspicious of the concept of PayPal. I mean, how is the money changing hands? Is this just the idea of money we're exchanging here? And why do I want to be giving total strangers my mailing address? I don't know. But I overcame my paranoia, got all set up with an eBay account and set to making my first and probably last purchase --- a stuffed monkey, brand new from a seller in Great Britain for about thirty bucks. Yes! International monkey transactions! Currency conversions! Weird mailing instructions! I navigated all of it, got a little congratulatory email from Ebay confirming my purchase and closed the lap top, rather impressed with myself. Crisis averted. Time for a break. I got up, walked into the kitchen, and opened the cabinet under the sink to look for a pitcher to make myself some lemonade.

And
instead
I
found
THE MONKEY!

Y'all. I didn't know whether to cuss or laugh. Two hours of my life. Frantic phone calls. Thirty bucks. Ebay. All because Kate put the monkey in a cabinet and forgot about it. On the other hand I suppose it's entirely possible that she knew where the monkey was the whole time and was just messing with me.

Maybe this is her way of paying me back for forgetting to buckle her in.

Oh, people, the week we have had. I can't do it justice without whining, so I'll spare you the long version. The short story is that Dan left on a business trip a week ago, and mere moments later, Kate came own with a little bug. Two days later the little bug morphed into a double ear infection, poor, poor baby. Lots of antibiotics and Dan being home again have helped our collective state, but I lost so much sleep that I can barely remember my own name and now it's time to pack so that we can leave on Wednesday for my brother's wedding in Mississippi. I am working on a letter for Kate, but in looking back over some photos for that, I saw a few pictures from my efforts to get both kids in a photo at the same time. Getting one kid to sit still is hard enough. Getting a decent shot of a three year old who never stops talking/twirling/fidgeting and an infant who never stops working on his motor skills is near impossible. So far I've shot dozens of photos. Three of them are worth sharing, mostly just because they are funny. So here you go.

A recent morning with Kate sporting her headband Rambo style and coloring while Isaac plays. Notice the tasteful basket of unfolded laundry in the shot. This is a new accessory that I am sure will be showing up in all the finest home fashion catalogs soon. We're trend-setters.

The kids hanging out on the bed. I like how both of my children have the facial expressions of bored rock stars in this photo, looking off camera like they can't be bothered. A preview of adolescence?

And a little early morning time with the kids. Saturday mornings start so much earlier than they used to, but they are still pretty nice. Coffee helps, too. Strong, strong coffee.

Last weekend was a busy one for us. For starters, we held Kate's first official big girl birthday party. Prior to this year, my philosophy about the birthday party thing has been "Yeah, but she doesn't know it's her birthday." When she was one year old, we gave her a cupcake and then went out on a date night by ourselves. When she was two, we gave her a cupcake, blew up some balloons and let her open some presents. It was pretty sweet being a negligent mother. But the gig was up this year, because Kate went to a few birthday parties and wised up. She started talking about her birthday party MONTHS in advance. It was obvious she knew I had been holding out on her and that she expected me to make it up this time around. From the way she was describing this party, it was starting to sound like something out of Cirque du Soleil, but with more cake. I knew I was going to have to step up my game.

But here's the problem: I have no game. You can ask anyone. When it comes to making cute crafty things or planning a theme for a party, I am useless. One time I tried to be a good sport and sew a Christmas stocking for Kate with my friends Erika and Summer. Their stockings were perfectly respectable, with tops, and bottoms, and closed toes. Mine looked like a violent crime had been committed against an elf and this had been left behind as a warning to the others.

So I did what anyone without a shred of party-planning skillz would do: I told everyone (in an email!) to meet us at Chuck E. Cheese. Then I went to Target, bought some party hats and goody bags, and called it a day. And it was actually a pretty fun little party. Here are some photos and a quick video clip of Kate blowing out the candles on her cake. Notice how adorable the cake is too -- it's a little princess castle, and it was made by the super-talented Mrs. Erika. Kate was in love with it.

Here is Erika taking on three-year-old Lily, who is a few months older than Kate, in air hockey while holding Owen, who is a few months older than Isaac. I think Erika won, which is pretty impressive with a baby on one arm.

Kate's friend Bonnie proved to be the adventurer of the group, taking on the giant hamster wheel. Her mom, my friend Lynne, was pretty brave about it too.

Isaac, meanwhile, snuggled with Mrs. Carol. I think they were both happy.

Speaking of Isaac, the next day it was his turn to have a cake made for him.

Isaac was baptized at our church, and it was such a happy occasion. Dan and I agreed that a second time around, we were humbled both by what we are charged to do as Isaac's parents and by remembering all the ways God has met and aided us as we have tried to raise Kate to His glory these three years. Here are some photos.

Kate found the whole thing really fascinating. We started trying to explain it all to her a few days beforehand and it made me realize again that it can be really challenging to talk about these things in a way that a three-year-old would understand. I think she basically understood it eventually, but along the way I answered some really funny questions like what color the water they put on Isaac's head would be (umm, clear?) and if we would put him in a bathtub.

Isaac had his eyes open during the prayer. Incidentally, these photos were all taken by Erika, who apparently does everything for us. Thank you, Erika!

And then we smiled for a family photo, which reminded me why I never try to take one for Christmas. I always end up with my mouth wide open, not because that's how I mean to look, but because I am loudly instructing Kate to "Look at the camera! Smile! We will have cake in a minute!"

(Note: No, your eyes did not deceive you. I did post this, then take it down for a couple of days, but not for any reason that impacts our plans. If you really want to know why, email me -- haley at wachdorf.com. I'll be happy to share.)

The first real conversation Dan and I had was an argument. I know this will shock those of you who know us in real life. I am now so mature that I would never backtalk my husband in public (Ahem), but when I was 21, I didn't have a husband, and I was just backtalking some random Texas A&M Aggie I found myself sitting across from at a pizza place on a Sunday afternoon in College Station, Texas. It was the first time I had ever been to Texas and I was not overly impressed. I was just there for the weekend to help my friend find an apartment since she was going to be starting a new job with Reformed University Fellowship at A&M. We had done what we came to do and that very afternoon I was going to get in my car and drive back to Mississippi. We went to church that morning and then went to get lunch with a bunch of A&M students. I sat down across from Dan and that is when the trouble started.

Dan to this day is convinced that I was hitting on him during this conversation. Possibly I was flirting with him a little. But that is not the point of this story. The point is that what we were arguing about was whether or not Texas is, in fact, the greatest place on earth, and whether or not I should drop my plans to find a job in Mississippi and move to Texas instead. Dan was in favor of all the above statements. I was not. Neither of us was backing down. We did not agree to disagree. No phone numbers were exchanged. I got in my car. I went home to Mississippi. Haley: 1. Dan: 0

According to my sister-in-law Dinah, who was there that day, when she and Dan got back in their car after lunch, Dan turned to her and said "That is the kind of girl I could marry." If what Dan wanted that day was a wife who would leave no ridiculous statement unchallenged for the rest of his natural born life, then he is a man to be congratulated for having gotten exactly what he set out to gain. But today he is also be a man to be congratulated for having finally won an argument with his wife -- an argument that started when she wasn't even his wife -- the argument over Texas.

Why does he win? Because we are moving to Texas. San Antonio, to be exact. I can hardly believe it myself, but it's true. After almost nine years of living in New Mexico for me and almost eight years for Dan, we have decided that Dan will take a great job he has been offered in Texas so that we can be closer to our families. Dan's folks live in San Antonio, and from there we can drive to see my family in Mississippi. Nine hours in a car isn't my idea of a great time, but as the kids get older it will get easier to do. And when we do the math on what it costs to buy four airline tickets for, say, the Christmas holidays, a nine-hour drive sounds like an absolute dream come true.

The being nearer to family makes us very, very happy, and it's good to have that motivation. Because moving -- the actual act of getting all your worldly possessions transferred to and put away in a new home -- is basically my worst nightmare. When I was pregnant with Isaac I had this insane compulsion to go through all our stuff, get rid of junk and finally organize every corner of this house. It might not look like it on some days, but there actually is a place for everything. After four years in this house I accomplished that amazing feat just in time for us to move, put everything in boxes and never find it again.

I suppose a decision to move on to a new place always brings with it a certain amount of reflection on the old place. This is no different, and the entire process has been tinged with a feeling of mourning even though we are so excited about this new chapter in our lives. I have really come to love it here. We came here as newlyweds who did not know a soul in Albuquerque. We leave as a family of four, and we leave behind dear, dear friends. We're leaving the house we brought our babies home to, and that breaks my heart even though I know it is just a house. I will miss the proud little quirks of Albuquerque -- I don't imagine anyone puts up a tumbleweed snowman on the side of the Interestate at Christmas in San Antonio, for instance. And good gracious, the heat and humidity we are going back to are enough to make me weep for the high desert. I'll admit that the West did not immediately strike me as beautiful, but I have come to appreciate the enormous sky and the ability to see everything for miles and miles around.

The blog name will stay the same. I still miss Mississippi, I'll just do it from a more nearby location, and I'll get to visit more often. I think I'll always be more of a displaced Southerner than anything else and I doubt that I'll ever really consider myself a Texan. I'm under the impression that in order to truly qualify as a Texan you have to get up every morning and sing a song extolling the greatness of Texas, and I'm definitely not doing anything like that. But Texans do seem to have pretty strong powers of persuasion/brainwashing, so maybe in a couple of years I'll have a Don't Mess With Texas bumper sticker on my giant pickup truck. Stranger things have happened. After all, Dan did finally convince me to move to Texas -- and it only took nine years.

Dan: 1. Haley: Moves to Texas.

Obviously, this move has been in the works for quite a while and I've just put off writing about it here. Now that's it's almost upon us, I have no doubt my posting here will be even lighter than usual, but I also imagine I will emerge on the other side of this process with some stories to tell. I am fairly confident one does not move to another state with a three-year-old and an infant without a few bizarre moments.

I promise you that we really did move to Texas. Not that you would know this from the life of this blog. I have taken some long pauses in my six years of blogging, but I think a seven-week break between posts is a new record, even for me. My problem is that I keep putting off writing anything until I can write everything -- the complete chronicles of the move and our transition and all the high and low points along the way. And that is just never going to happen. So the short version is that we moved. It was crazy. We're here now and some days are good and some days are hard. I know there are a ton of people who really miss us and our kids. So here are a few short videos I've taken in the last few weeks that should at least give you a good idea what the kids have been up to.

Isaac has been getting cuter by the minute. And trying out his first park swings at a nice playground near our new house. He is a big fan.

Kate has been conducting symphonies played by her automatic keyboard and generally bossing everyone around. Isaac is happy to dance in one spot for now. When he gets that crawling move he's working on figured out, she might have more trouble getting him to do what she wants.

And the kids have been exploring the wonders of our new house. Specifically, the door stoppers. I never realized that we didn't have those in our old house, but apparently we did not because Kate finds them fascinating. Isaac thinks anything Kate does is super cool, so he's entertained too. Not that she's letting him have a turn.

That's what I've got for tonight!

If I had to pick one word to sum up what it was like to get ready for Kate when we were expecting her in 2007, it would be "expensive." I realize there are prettier, more motherly words. But the truth is that getting all the stuff you need for a baby in the modern age is like being on a weird retail scavenger hunt for crib bedding and bouncers and pacifiers, and it adds up. I know that a lot of this is due to the fact that we don't really need all of this stuff, but when you're expecting your first baby it feels like you do.

So when I was pregnant with Isaac, Dan and I could not stop commenting to one another how great it was that we already had all the stuff we needed. Aside from a bassinet for the swanky nursery we prepared for him in our walk-in closet and baby boy clothes we were given by sweet friends and family, we needed almost nothing. At least not for the house.

The car was a different story. When Kate was born, Dan and I switched cars. I took his blue four-door Saturn and he got my silver Nissan Sentra, a car that was great for commuting but not so great for a car seat. In making this trade, Dan was doing a very sweet thing. The Saturn is much more comfortable. It's bigger, and the Nissan is tiny. When you consider that Dan is a big guy, the sacrifice is even more apparent. I am not sure I have ever seen anything more noble than my sweet, extremely tall husband folding himself into that little car every day to go off to work so that Kate and I could ride in space and safety to the park and the zoo -- but it was also kind of a comical sight. His head almost touched the ceiling.

This arrangement was fine until Isaac was born, and then we had a problem. When all four of us are in the Saturn, Dan usually drives. This means that the driver's seat has to be put allllll the way back, too far to allow for a rear-facing car seat behind it. That wasn't so hard; we just moved Kate's forward-facing seat behind Dan, and while it gave her a really good vantage point from which to kick Dan's seat incessantly, it worked. Then we put Isaac's car seat behind my seat, and, well, the results were less than great. I am not nearly as tall as Dan, but I'm not short either. Basically I had to move my seat so far forward that my knees were almost touching the dash in order to install Isaac's car seat at the right angle. You add a diaper bag and the inevitable pile of stuff that accumulates in the cars of people with small children, and we pretty much looked like we were falling out of a clown car every time we got somewhere.

We were willing to try to make this set up work for the sheer beauty of the fact that both of our cars, while small, were paid off. It's hard to beat no car payment. We agreed that we would keep the Saturn as our main family car through the end of 2010, and would start looking for a larger car then. Thus began the conversations about what we should buy after that.

From the get-go, it was clear we had a problem. I was pretty strongly of the opinion that the only purchase that made sense for us in light of the fact that we now have two kids and could have more was a minivan. It's not like I was happy about this. I realize that a minivan is the height of unsexy pragmatism. But I am now at a place in life that makes an insulated lunch bag a more practical accessory than a cute purse. The ugly purse I do own has Band-Aids, hand sanitizer and 62 receipts from Chik-Fil-A in it all the time. Unsexy Pragmatism is my home address. While I have been making my peace with that, I have scoped out a lot of minivans in the zoo parking lot. Yes, they are ugly. But that whole thing where you click with the keys and the doors just open by themselves? That is magical. That makes me misty-eyed just thinking about it. I heart that.

Dan, of the two of us, is actually the more practical one most of the time. So I was shocked when we totally did not agree with me about the gloriousness of minivans. Not only didn't he agree with me, he flatly refused to consider owning a minivan. Started going around telling people how he was not under any circumstances going to be buying a minivan. Kept talking about how we could just buy an SUV with a third row instead. To which I was like "And then what? We can throw our third kid over the bench seat and just see what happens?" Nothing. He was not having it.

Apparently, back in high school, Dan drove his parents' old minivan and Hated. It. I say it was their old minivan because at one point they owned two. They still own a minivan as a matter of fact, even though now it's just the two of them most of the time. Kate finds this to be part of the magic of Grammy's house. She climbs in the minivan and rides around town on leather seats with her own air conditioning controls, watching Finding Nemo on the in-car entertainment center and loves it. But to Dan, owning a minivan is all tied up with driving that beat up clunker minvan they owned 15 years ago, and he just cannot get over it. As far as he was concerned, it was SUV or 15 passenger van. No in between.

We were at an impasse. Then this summer when all the stuff about the new job in Texas started coming up, the car conversation got moved to the back burner and then rescheduled entirely until after the move. Which brings us up to a few weeks ago, when we arrived in Texas, closed on the sale of our house in Albuquerque and returned to the topic of cars.

In the months we took off from having this argument/thoughtful discussion, Dan had done a lot of consumer research to back up his position that we could buy a non-minivan vehicle that would meet our current needs and leave room for guests or future children. Specifically he was impressed with the GMC Acadia, a crossover-type vehicle that has bucket seats in the middle row, making the third seat more accessible than a bench-style second row. As it turned out, Dan's sister Dinah and her husband Chris recently bought one of these. Even better, Dinah was going on a trip shortly after we got to Texas and said that we could put the kids' car seats in her car and drive it around while she was gone. Meanwhile, Dan's parents were also going to be out of town and offered us the use of their minivan for the same period of time.

This is how we basically embarked on the week long test drive of our two front-runner vehicle styles -- crossover third row SUV and minivan. It was perfect except that ten minutes into driving the Acadia, I found myself waffling on my Minivans are the Best position, because that thing is fun to drive. Having once owned a Chevy Malibu that couldn't get through an entire tank of gas without breaking down, I have not been the biggest fan of domestic-made cars, but that Acadia rocks. And it looks cool too. I could feel Dan's evil plan working. Then we drove the minivan and I swooned every time I opened the door with a clicker. It was not going to be an easy decision.

Two weeks later, we bought a new vehicle and I'll tell you what it is in my next post, in which I will also relate what it was like to shop for a car with Dan. (Preview: At one point I turned to Dan in a car dealership and said "Do we need to leave right now before you do something we're going to regret?" True story.) Feel free to guess whether we bought a minivan or an SUV in the comments section in the meantime and no fair spoiling the surprise if you've already seen us in our new ride. I hope the suspense isn't killing you.

Part one of the saga is here.

I've decided to put the big reveal at the start, so to see what kind of car we bought, watch this video of Kate seeing it for the first time. Dan brought it home after she was asleep, but we had told her there might be a new car in the driveway when she woke up in the morning. It was the first thing she asked about, as you can tell from the fact that she's still got her jammies on in this video.

Yes, after all of Dan's opposition and even after my brief love affair with a GMC Acadia, we bought a minivan. A Honda Odyssey, to be exact. No one is more surprised by this than me. After months of disagreement on the subject, I figured I should do my best to visualize our lives as SUV owners because I was certain Dan would never purchase a minivan. I really did like the Acadia. It was fun to drive and roomy, and Kate loved it. And in perhaps the shock of my life, after having argued for buying a minivan for months, I really didn't enjoy the Chrysler minivan we drove that week.No offense to Chrysler owners, because I loved the automatic doors and features, but I couldn't get comfortable driving it. It felt too big and I couldn't park it to save my life. I was ready to give the Acadia serious consideration and I told Dan so. But before we ruled the minivan out completely, I said I wanted to test drive the top two foreign-made minivans -- the Honda Odyssey and the Toyota Sienna. Dan agreed, and since we had a date night already scheduled with babysitting from Dan's mom, we headed out to the Honda dealership a few nights later.

I have seen my husband fall in love a few times. Once with me. Once with Kate. Once with Isaac. Once with a Nintendo Wii. And five minutes into that test drive, Dan was in love with the Honda Odyssey. I laughed at him until I drove it and then I couldn't laugh because I was too busy LOVING THAT MINIVAN. We intended to just do a quick test drive and ended up on the lot for over an hour talking with the salesman about options and prices. Well, OK, that's what Dan was doing. I was sitting in the back seat, lying down in the bucket seats and trying to figure out if Kate could possibly kick me in the back of the head from what would be her seat. (No? I'll take it!)

On the way off the lot, we walked up to the main dealership building and viewed the brand new, just-arrived 2011 Honda Odyssey. It was pretty, but we didn't have time to test drive it that night. Besides, when we were getting ready to car shop, one of the few things we could agree on was that we would definitely not be buying a brand new car. Used was the way we would be going, no questions asked, end of story. If you could see what the inside of our Saturn looked like after three years of kids riding around in it, you would understand our commitment to not starting out with anything nicer than we can keep up. It's just too heartbreaking when it ends up encrusted in goldfish cracker crumbs. But over the next week Dan kept mentioning going back to the dealership to drive the new Odyssey. The 2011 one. The one with a model year later than the calendar year that isn't even over yet.

Earlier in our marriage, this would have made me nervous. When we were newlyweds, I used to get all worked up over stuff that Dan said in passing, but that was before I realized an important fact about my husband -- he is a verbal processor. I am not. I still forget this some times, and chaos ensues. We'll get up on a Saturday morning and over breakfast, Dan will say "I think we should go to the zoo with the kids today. We could leave by 9:30 and be back by noon." And I'll say "OK!" Then I'll spend the next hour getting out picnic blankets and sunblock and strollers. As I'm getting ready to put the kids in the car, Dan will wander back into the room and say "So what are we going to do today?" And then my head explodes because what do you mean what are we going to do? We are going to the zoo. GET IN THE CAR. It's a moment that is totally my own fault, because I have forgotten that as a verbal processor, when Dan says "I think we should go to the zoo," it is because that thought just entered his mind for the first time ever. Maybe he doesn't even want to go to the zoo. Maybe he wants to go to the movies. If he's still saying he wants to go to the zoo an hour later, and I have gotten him to sign several documents stating his intentions to go to the zoo, then it's time to get out the backpack. Until then there are no plans, just a man talking.

As an internal processor I cause a different kind of problem, the kind where one day after weeks of thought and zero verbal expression, I announce over dinner "I am going to paint the dining room purple" and Dan chokes on his green beans trying to ask when we decided we were painting the dining room. Dan really gets the worse end of the deal in all this because whereas he knows he is just trying his thoughts on and can easily be talked out of them, I have invested in my thoughts in all the time I have been not sharing them. By the time it comes out of my mouth, I really think that painting the dining room purple is the right and holy thing to do. For the children. Try to talk that down.

The way this played out in the car buying scene is that when Dan started talking about wanting to drive the new Honda minivan, I immediately chalked it up to verbal processing and quit listening to him. After all, we had agreed in multiple previous conversations that we were in the market for a used car only. So I just said "Uh huh?" and "Mmm" while he looked at the new Odyssey online and read me interesting facts about it. When he started saying how it was really hard to find used Odysseys with low mileage and recent year models and maybe we should consider just buying a new one, I smiled and nodded. Because I am not taking the bait! That man is just talking! Nothing to see here. Move along.

Well. A week later when after arranging for a babysitter so that we could attend an event hosted by the church we are visiting, the event got canceled at the last minute. Since the babysitter was coming anyway, we decided we should still go out. The Honda dealership had emailed Dan that day to say that a used Odyssey that we might be interested in had arrived on the lot that day, so Dan said that we should swing by to take a look at it and maybe, just maybe, we would test drive the 2011 Odyssey while we were there. This was when I started to worry a little.

Twenty minutes later, we were test driving the new 2011 Honda Odyssey and it was awesome. Of course it was. They don't make newer models to achieve less awesomeness. They make newer models to achieve higher expensiveness, and let me tell you that they have definitely met that goal with the new Hondas. Yikes. The mere mention of the price tag was enough to send me straight to "How about that used one y'all called us about? Where is that?" But Dan was still talking to the salesman about the new one. Not in a casual way, either. In a way where suddenly it was nine o clock at night and the dealership was closing but the manager was out taking a look at our Nissan so they could tell us what they would give us for the trade-in if we drove a new one off the lot that night. That was the first time they left us alone together all night and I could hardly wait for the salesman to get out of earshot before I whipped around to Dan and whisper-screamed "What are you doing? We were going to buy a used car! Do we need to leave right now before you do something we're going to regret?"

Maybe if I had car shopped with Dan more I wouldn't have gotten so worried. Truth be told, we've bought one car together in the course of our marriage, and even that wasn't really a joint effort. In 2005 my lemon of a Chevy Malibu, in what can only be described as a merciful act of providence, was hit with hail damage twice within 24 hours and totaled. When the insurance company cut us a check, Dan did a ton of consumer research and narrowed it down to a few cars that would work for us. Then I gave him helpful suggestions about the things I care about. In that instance, I think my input was "I think silver cars are pretty." I never set foot on a car lot until it was time to pick up the silver Nissan Sentra we were buying.

In a calmer moment, I might have reflected a bit more and remembered that with no involvement from me, the car that Dan bought on that occasion was perfect for what we needed at the time. The Nissan got great gas mileage and never once broke down when I was driving it on the 45-minute daily commute I did every day for two years. I probably also would have remembered that Dan has never once in the course of our marriage made any decision, financial or otherwise, that was irresponsible. But I didn't reflect on any of that, and I freaked out. I do think the relentlessness of car salesmen was a factor. I felt like Dan and this salesman were playing a weird game of poker and I was supposed to be playing too, but I couldn't figure out if my hand was any good. Come to think of it, that is how I feel when I play real poker, which is probably why I don't play poker.

After my little meltdown, Dan assured me that he mostly wanted to go through the negotiation process and find out if they would give us a deal that would make a new model feasible. They made their best offer, we said we'd think about it and we walked away. We talked it over for a couple of days and ultimately decided we'd keep looking around for a used one, and within a few more days one showed up online at a dealership a half hour from where we live. Dan drove out there that night, looked at the car and bought it. There was very little drama, possibly because I wasn't there. Clearly I do not handle high pressure situations well.

Now that the saga is over, we are quite happy with our minivan, even Dan, who put a Texas A&M bumper sticker on it about 20 minutes after we got it home. It really is easy to drive, there is so much more room, and loading the kids up is easy now that I can just open the doors remotely and let Kate climb into her seat. Kate, incidentally, believes that the doors are voice-controlled. This is something she picked up from riding with my mother-in-law, who would let Kate say "Doors open!" and then hit the keyless entry button on her minivan so that the doors slid open as if on command. I don't even want to know what the option package that includes voice-activated doors would cost, so I just hit the button when she says to and let her think she's in control.

Come to think of it, we should have taken her with us to the dealership to negotiate. Three-year-olds take no prisoners. After a few hours they would probably have given us a new van just to get us to stop asking about it.

Maybe next time.

This post is dedicated to all of our friends in and formerly in Albuquerque, who listened to this argument play out for months and never once suggested that we might need an intervention more than we needed a new car. We love and miss you all.

Two new babies and a new sister-in-law since last year, everyone in one place, and an amazing photo by my brother-in-law Daniel Meigs. We had a great Christmas and I hope you did too.

All photos are by my brilliant brother-in-law Daniel Meigs. Special credit belongs to my sister-in-law Kelly Rice, who jumped around behind Daniel waving her arms and singing songs and just generally making a fool of herself to get my kids to look at the dang camera. Someone had to do it.

On Wednesday when we returned from our trip to Mississippi for Christmas, I was putting together a grocery list to get us through the remainder of the week. After staring into the distance for a good five minutes trying to come up with something to cook for dinner on Friday evening, I remembered that tonight is New Year's Eve and therefore something of a festive occasion. I turned to Dan and said "Hey! Friday is New Year's Eve! What do you want to do?" I meant this mostly as a question about menu choices, but Dan apparently thought I was asking him to go clubbing as judged by his response, which was, and I quote, "Are you actually going to stay up until midnight?!"

"Oh no, of course not" I said. "I just mean do you want to make guacamole and watch a movie or something."

I have been thinking of sending out change-of-address cards, but clearly I should just wait until next week, when we will be moving to The Home.

Allegedly a person gets one year older every calendar year but after 2010, I have decided that some years age you by a minimum of five years and other years, like this one, make you feel like a senior citizen at the ripe old age of 30. It has been a doozy, 2010. This was the year in which we surveyed the upcoming challenges of having a new baby and a three-year-old and decided that it just wasn't going to be crazy enough for us. No, you know what would really be great? If we put our house on the market three months after the baby was born and then two months after that moved to a new state! That would be exciting.

Boy, was it. I am never going to recover from all the exciting. My sincere hope for 2011 is a little boredom. A whole lot of normal with a side of average. Some sleep would also be amazing. But even though 2010 has thoroughly worn us out in every way, it has been a year of God's overwhelming blessing and provision in our lives. So here, in the form of blog posts, are a few of the highlights of the year for the Wachdorfs. It's definitely the closest thing I'm going to do to writing a newsletter. Pretend you just got this in the mail:

Kate turned three this year. She is very very three. (Three will be the subject of an entire post at a later time. Like in ten years, when I can laugh about it.) And it really was a big year for her.

She got a baby brother!
She got potty trained in spite of my best efforts to fail at that.
She continued channeling her inner diva.

On my list of accomplishments this year are the continued survival of the kids and then a series of screwups and fiascos:
Isaac was born.
His main accomplishments so far have been getting born, being adorable and doing the usual baby things. So he can get his own category next year. Back to me:
I almost lost the monkey.
I called roadside assistance for the first time ever.
And survived more flying with small children including the Chicago Incident.

Dan and I celebrated seven years of marriage in April. I read somewhere that moving is one of the top stressors on a marriage. Also on that list? Having a new baby. Hahahaha. Ha. Ha. While surviving Year Seven of being married to me, for which he deserves a medal, Dan also managed to:

Get a new job.
Pick out a great name for our son.
Proclaim for months and months that he was not ever going to buy me a minivan.
Buy me a minivan.

As you can tell, we have a lot to be thankful for this year, and on that list are the wonderful friends and family who have loved and supported us through all of this change. We are so thankful for all of you. May our great God bless and keep each of you in 2011. If you find yourself in Texas, come on down and see us.

Love,
Dan, Haley, Kate and Isaac

If there is some kind of category in the Guinness Book of World Records for whose kids got sick the most number of times in a three-month period, I am pretty sure we are close to upsetting the former title holders. A friend of mine who moved to a new city one fall and then had an incredibly long winter of illness upon illness speculated that the stress of a move may make you less able to fight off sickness. I think she might be right about that. Whatever the reason, we have been sick more in the last few months than we have ever been in the history of our little family, and it's going to be hard for me to look back on this period of our lives without smelling pink amoxicyllin and Children's Motrin.

On the most recent sick visit we made to our pediatrician's office, he opened the door to the exam room, saw us sitting there (Again.) and joked that we should just open up a tab. I laughed and said I'd rather get my own parking space, but I only laughed because I didn't want to cry in the office. (Again.) On that particular day I was there with Isaac, who had broken out in the most spectacular rash I have ever seen in my life after having a bad reaction to the penicillin-based antibiotic he had been on. This episode started out a week earlier with a cold that morphed into an ear infection and a whopping case of bronchiolitis which required a super-fun Saturday night excursion to what I now think of as Pediatric Urgent Care Purgatory. If you have small kids, you know about this place. This is where you wait in a tiny overheated room with the sickest kids in three counties for two hours while debating whether you should just sprint out the door before you catch something even worse than what your kid has now or keep waiting to see the doctor. Thankfully you don't have too much time to think about that dilemma. You have to focus all your energy on keeping your sick child from getting down on the floor and licking the toys thoughtfully put in the waiting room for the amusement of I don't even know who, because no one is letting their kids play with those toys. At this point in my parenting experience, waiting room toys look like giant germ lollipops. That night in urgent care I think I actually earned the distinction of Sickest Kid in the Room. Isaac would cough and all the other parents would cringe and cover their kids' faces. Isaac probably could have had the run of all those toys and no one else would have let their kids anywhere near them once he touched them.

Usually, the point at which you go to the doctor and get medicine is rock bottom and from there things improve. Usually. This time it was the start of a week-long experiment at the end of which we learned that Isaac like his mother before him is allergic to penicillin. First there was epic throwing up of the medication. Then that stopped and the medicine stayed down for a while, which was good in that the ear infection subsided. But on about day eight of the antibiotic, I got Isaac up from a nap and noticed these red welts on his chunky little thighs. I didn't think much of it until I changed his clothes a while later and noticed that the rash was spreading -- rapidly. It was like if I kept looking at his skin, I could see new bumps popping up before my eyes. I called the doctor's office and was told to just keep an eye on it and call back if certain other more alarming symptoms popped up, which they didn't. But "alarming" took on a whole new meaning the next morning, when Isaac woke up looking like he was made of pink velour. I wish I had a picture of this rash. It was unbelievable. It was so incredible that our doctor asked if he could take Isaac and show him to another doctor in the practice, just so they could marvel over the splendor of the rash from a medical standpoint. Like I said, you could put us in a book.

To fast forward through more whining, I'll just say that right now we're all healthy. Of course, the fact that I just typed that sentence probably means one of us will come down with a rare tropical illness in the next 12 hours. If that happens, I am glad to know that there will be plenty of people who will help us out. During the worst of Isaac's illness, which eventually turned into some form of a cold for all the rest of us too, I did get to learn that we are not alone even if we are new here. My in-laws took Kate to church with them the Sunday after I spent half the night in urgent care with Isaac, giving Dan and I a much-needed few hours to just focus on taking care of him. In the following week our community group from church prayed for us and brought us a homemade meal that tasted like heaven in the midst of a week that had contained way too much cold pizza and takeout. The week after that, my mom came for a visit and played with Kate and did all our laundry and let me take naps. It's amazing how much better clean laundry and a couple of hours of sleep can make you feel.

It was a hard month, and I had a pretty terrible attitude through a lot of it, but every day God let me see little mercies, small things that made me think I could probably keep going for another little while after all. It made me thankful that we're really healthy most of the time and that my kids have only ever had run-of-the-mill childhood illnesses. I'm thankful for Dan, who kept telling me it would be OK and who sent me out of the house by myself a few evenings just so I could remember what the outside world looked like after days shut inside with sick kids. Now that we're well I find myself giving thanks much more frequently for health and the ability to have a totally unremarkable day when our schedule hums along with play times and nap times and dinner-making and laundry. Praise the Lord for normal. It has never looked so beautiful.

For everyone who is way more interested in seeing the kids than in hearing me talk about how sick they've been, here are a few videos of them that I've taken over the last month.

You know how it's a little bit hilarious when you watch a musical and some character will be talking in normal dialogue and then just burst into song? I know that's the whole point of a musical, but it always struck me as funny. I mean, who just goes around singing whatever they want to say? Well. Kate does. Here she is cooking a pretend meal, musical theater-style:

This first video called "Isaac starts crawling" really only shows a tiny bit of crawling, followed by a great deal of enthusiasm for the crawling from Isaac and Dan and I. I think for a while he thought that was really the only point of crawling -- to get us to clap.

And now that he crawls everywhere all the time, I've gotten used to listening for the sound of a door closing, followed by a few moments of silence, and then very upset crying. This means that Isaac has crawled into a room, shut the door behind him and then panicked because he can't get out. I always go and rescue him and sometimes I sit with him and let him play his little game for a while just to get it out of his system. At least he can't reach the locks on the doorknobs yet.

Here's what Isaac got into this afternoon while I cooked dinner.

I turned my back on him for maybe 30 seconds and then heard the unique scattering sound that 200-some-odd Cheerios make when hitting the tile. It probably says a lot about how completely wrapped around his baby finger this kid has me that I took a picture instead of telling him no. Then I let he and Kate sit there and eat the Cheerios straight off the floor for a few minutes because A) They were happy and I could finish cooking dinner and B) Hey, it was a couple dozen fewer Cheerios for me to clean up.

Apparently, this is something my kids decide to do at exactly ten months based on this blog post from when Kate was Isaac's age. Also, except for Isaac's overall chunkiness compared to Kate's petite baby style, I think they look a lot alike.

I realize that it is February and no one wants to think about Christmas again until several weeks after all the stores start playing Christmas music on Halloween, but we had something of a holiday-related parenting fiasco back in December and I have been meaning to write about it ever since. If you can stand to transport your mind back to the mother of all holidays I think you might enjoy the story. This also gives me an opportunity to belatedly show off more of the photos my brother-in-law extraordinaire, Daniel Meigs, took on Christmas morning. All of the images below are his work.

Kate on Christmas morning with her new tricycle. Which most definitely did not come from Santa.

In retrospect, I can see that it was naive of me to think that we were going to get through Kate's third Christmas without deciding whether or not to tell her about Santa. I should have realized that since this was the first year she understood what Christmas was and noticed things like decorations, it would probably also be the year she started wondering who in the heck all the jolly fat men in red suits were. But as I may have mentioned a few thousand times, it's been kind of a hectic year for us and as the holidays rolled around I was pretty much in survival mode.

I realize that Santa is one of those parenting issues you're supposed to have strong feelings about, especially if you go to church. My own parents told us Santa wasn't real and while I don't feel traumatized about it, I'm pretty sure my cousins do. That's because one year my brother took it upon himself to inform them that Santa Claus was a figment of their imaginations. He argued with our cousin Shelley about it until she got exasperated and ended the fight with "Well, if you keep talking about Santa like that, he isn't going to bring you any presents!" Which was pretty hard to argue with, really.

Kate in the awesome pajamas my Aunt Emily sent to her from Shanghai, where my aunt and uncle are living right now. Thanks, Aunt Emily and Uncle Gil!

But somehow I can't get too worked up about the Santa issue. I don't want to dress Dan up in a suit and wig to perpetuate the myth, but I also don't feel the need to carry on as if Santa is evil and in direct competition with Baby Jesus. Sometime in December I did read an article that summarized what I thought would be a reasonable approach for talking about Santa in the future. I shared it with Dan, and you can go here to read it. The basic idea is that you tell your kids the historical truth -- that today's Santa story started with the life of Saint Nicholas, who was a man famous in the early church for his generosity. For the record, what I like about this approach is that it avoids the Santa-is-evil extreme on the one hand but also allows for a clear distinction between the harmless cultural fun of Santa and the true purpose of Christmas, the celebration of Christ's birth.

For this year, the idea of a past person who once gave people presents and whose memory was later edited to include flying reindeer and red velvet seemed a little complicated for Kate, who still divides her life into things that will happen "before my nap" and "after my nap." And I really thought "If we just don't make a big deal about it this year, it probably won't even come up. I mean, it's not like anyone is going to sit her down and tell her about Santa."

Then one day at preschool, they sat her down and told her about Santa.

Well, technically I don't know who brought Santa up. It could have been another kid rather than the school staff. All I know is that on the last day of preschool before Christmas break, I dropped Kate off for her Christmas party and was halfway home when I realized she had left her jacket in the car. Since it was pretty cold, I turned around to drop it off, thinking I would just slip into the classroom, put the jacket in her cubby and leave. But when I got into the classroom, Kate's teacher said "Oh, it's actually a good thing you're here. We were talking about Santa and Kate says she doesn't want him to come down the chimney to her house."

"Well ... is she upset about it?" I asked.
"A little," said her teacher.

I didn't really know how to respond to this. It didn't seem like a great moment to reassure Kate that Santa is totally imaginary and is under no circumstances going to come to her house, what with 8 other kids sitting there who probably believe in Santa. This was the moment when I saw the giant hole in my logic up to that point. In the back of my mind I had assumed that if Kate did somehow hear about Santa, we would just roll with it and she would have one of two reactions: Either she would think it was great and be happy (normal kid reaction to news of loot brought by a magical man on a sleigh) or she wouldn't care too much (normal three-year-old reaction to ideas that do not have immediate physical consequences). What I completely failed to anticipate was a third reaction -- anxiety over the idea of a strange man who comes into your house uninvited in the middle of the night. If you think about it, this is actually the rational reaction. I mean, we don't let other people in the house at night. It doesn't matter if they have a sack.

At the moment, Kate seemed fairly absorbed in her finger painting, so I just left and went on with the morning. But when I picked her up from school, the first thing she said was "Mom, I don't want Santa to come to my house!"

I had to decide right there in the car what in the world to tell her about that. This was bad, mostly because I am a horrible verbal ad-libber. When required to answer a question I am unprepared for I ramble, wander and just generally babble in a completely unorganized way, all while hearing a voice in my mind screaming "Stop talking now before you say something really dumb! Too late!" I think one reason I like to write so much is because of the beauty of the backspace key -- the ability to just delete all the crazy and sound concise and well-spoken.

So, reverting back to the last organized thought I had on the Santa topic, I started trying to tell her about Saint Nicholas.

"Well, sweetie, a long time ago there was a man named Nicholas who gave people gifts because he loved Jesus, and Santa Clause is kind of a pretend story about him."
"Today?"
"No, not today, baby. A long time ago."
"After my nap?"
"Umm. Not really. Anyway, people pretend that he brings their presents, and that's fun."
"He will come to our house? No! I don't want him to come to my house!"

This is when I saw the other thing I hadn't factored in -- Kate has no idea what pretend means. This is one of the funny things about kids at this age. They pretend things all the time, but they don't have a word for what they're doing, so when you try to explain that something is "pretend," they don't know what you're talking about. About 10 minutes into our increasingly circular conversation, realizing I needed to back up and define my terminology, I got the great idea to try to explain the concept of pretend by bringing up various cartoon characters Kate is familiar with.

"OK, Kate, it's like when you watch Curious George on television. He's not real, right?"
"Yes, he is. He talks."
"But he only talks on the TV. You've never met him. He's just fun pretend. Like Santa."
"But he moves his head."

Yes, clearly if something talks and moves its head, it is real.

By the time we got home, I had given up trying to explain the historical intricacies and had started doing exactly what I had wanted to avoid doing - telling her emphatically that Santa wasn't real and was definitely not going to come to our house -- not because I really want her to reject the whole idea, but because I don't want her to be scared about it. But I think my inability to stick with a story convinced Kate that I had no idea what I was talking about at all and that it was her job to set me straight.

So in the week leading up to Christmas, every time we saw a Santa, which was about every ten minutes, Kate would point and tell me, "Look Mom, he's real. He moves his head," like that proved everything.

Santa would be on TV. "Look Mom, he talks. He's real."
Santa was on a billboard we drove past every day. "Look Mom, he has a nose. He's real."

Eventually I stopped arguing with her, which I hadn't wanted to do anyway, and she seemed to talk herself into being OK with the idea that Santa might be real and might come to the house, which may be all she needed to do in the first place. I'm hoping that by next Christmas, she will have forgotten this little incident and we can start over on the Santa issue. In the meantime, preschool is apparently going to give me lots of opportunities to practice how I discuss mythical characters who come to your house in the middle of the night. This month, they are having Dental Hygiene Month. As a special treat for the kids, the Tooth Fairy is coming for a visit. Kate has already started telling me she doesn't want the Tooth Fairy to take her teeth "when they fall out after my nap."

That's my girl.

Kate trying on the helmet we got to go with her trike, which totally did not fit because of her exceptional noggin girth.

I love this shot. It's of Kate listening to my dad read the Christmas story from the Bible before we open gifts, like he has done every Christmas morning that in my memory. I can't look directly at this photo for very long without getting choked up.

The kids have started holding hands and laughing in the car. It is unbearably cute and I am going to give myself a back condition turning around to try to photograph it. Which I only do when Dan is driving, for the record.

April has been a busy month around here. I don't have a lot of profound thoughts about it, but I do have some pictures and I think those are what most everyone wants anyway. You gotta give the people what they want.

We've had extended family in town this month including my brother Ryan and his wife Rebekah, of whom I managed to take exactly zero pictures. (My bad, Ryan Rices. Next time I will get out the camera.) I also didn't take a photo on our anniversary, but we celebrated eight years on the 19th with a nice night out at a restaurant where they took two hours to bring us our entrees. We didn't even care because we had appetizers and wine and we had a whole conversation where no one was interrupting us every four seconds to say "Mom! Mom! Mom! I need juice! Juice! Juice!" This is the kind of perspective that small children will bring to your life. Slow service? But I have a babysitter? Oh, no problem then. Take your time.

Around that same time, Dan's grandparents came down for a visit from Chicago to see this branch of their many great-grandchildren and meet Isaac and Baby Ezekiel. Dan's sister Hannah and her husband Josh drove up from Texas with their kids, Chi, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and Dan's other sister Dinah came from Ft. Hood with her daughter, Mercy. All together, there are six grandkids under four on this side of the family, and that number will grow to seven in July when Dinah and Chris welcome Baby Naomi. As you can imagine, it is loud around the family lately, but also very entertaining.

From left: Jeremiah; Nana, who has on her lap Ezekiel and Mercy; Kate, Isaac, Papa and Chi.

Last Thursday, we took all the kids to Sea World. I didn't get many pictures because I was busy pushing Isaac around in a stroller and wishing someone would push me around in a stroller by the end of the day, but here are Chi and Kate waiting for the Shamu show to start:

Isaac's first birthday was on Saturday the 23rd. He was not very enthusiastic about his cupcake once he realized we were not going to let him have the lit candle, but loved his new toys.

Here are some general shots of fun with cousins.

One last picture. On Easter, Dan stayed home with Isaac, who was a little sick. When Kate and I got home, the two of them were sacked out on the couch asleep in front of the TV. You have no idea how many times I told Kate to be quiet and not wake Isaac up so I could take this picture. Dan accommodatingly pretended to be asleep again so I could get this.

As I am typing this I am sitting on my bed. Beside the bed stands Isaac, who is clawing the sheets, whining, stamping his feet and generally doing his 17-month-old best to convey the message that me ever writing another sentence in this world is down pretty low on his personal priority list and I should give it up. This is a pretty good word picture for what happened to this blog and any other writing I was doing. But having reached into the bedside table to hand Isaac a baby monitor charging cord, I have momentarily distracted him and so in spite of the very real possibility that he will use it to harm himself or someone else, I will seize the five seconds of quiet to tell you some very boring things. I will not overthink them and they will not be deep and whenever Isaac comes back I will hit "publish" and thus will have ended my two month long dry spell.

Random thing No. 1: The shower in our master bathroom has been broken for going on four months. It looks a little better than this right now, but this was the view a few weeks ago:

If my blog were anonymous, I would write the entire absurd story in detail with much commentary on the worthlessness of various supposed professionals, but since I am readily available on Google, I will just give you this advice: If a crack ever opens up in the floor of your shower, you should get out, dry off, walk out of the house, lock the door and never come back again. (You should probably also get dressed before that part about leaving the house.) You will have to find a new place to live and get all new stuff but believe me, that will be way less annoying and expensive than trying to fix the shower. Just walk away. Thank goodness we are renting.

Random thing No. 2: Kate recently turned four and as her big gift from Dan and I she got this outrageous dress made by the Disney Marketing Mothership that is a wedding dress modeled on the one in Cinderella.

It is pretty fabulous and she loves it, which is great. What is not great is what I discovered moments after she unwrapped it and put it on, which is that this dress has approximately 50 pounds of glitter embedded in the fabric and the decorations, such that her ever move results in a sprinkling of glitter drifting to the floor like magic fairy dust from the wand of a fairy godmother. Maybe this is part of the charm, but my OCD can't handle it. Now if I had to list my hobbies the first one would have to be "Researching the best ways to clean up glitter off every surface of my life."

Random thing No. 3: The only thing Kate is more interested in than her Cinderella Wedding Dress right now is the movie Tangled. That is part of the reason why in the picture with the Cinderella wedding dress, she is wearing a blonde dollar store headband/hair extension piece. It's her long Rapunzel hair. I will write an entire post about this soon, using my newly-discovered method of making time for writing via ignoring my children and not editing anything.

Random thing No. 4: Last weekend Dan and I left the kids with my in-laws and went on our first overnight trip together since Isaac was born. We went to a day of the Austin City Limits music festival and then stayed in historic Gruene, which is very charming in a flea market kind of way. We had a great time, we saw some great musical artists and the people-watching was incredible. Maybe I don't get out enough anymore, but that was almost my favorite part. However, it did remind me of my number one concert attendance peeve, and I thought I would share it here. At a festival the size of ACL, obviously you are going to be exposed to some artists who are not your all-time favorite. But here's the thing -- that artist probably is someone's all-time favorite, so it would be the height of rudeness for you to talk through that artist's entire set without interruption. Please shut it.

And now it's time to make dinner. If I ever pull this off again, I can post some pictures of Kate's birthday party. Don't get too excited, though. I think we all know I am about as reliable as the people who have been fixing the shower for four months.

Kate with our friend Abigail during our trip to Albuquerque.

(As usual for me these days, I started writing this eons ago, so some of the information is dated. For instance, tomorrow it will be October. The trip I'm talking about and showing photos of happened at the end of July. But the part about it being 108 degrees? Yeah, that happened, and it seems like it was just yesterday.)

Recently we returned from a trip to Albuquerque, and while I am happy to say that our trip was a smashing success, I have been suffering a bit of post-high-desert depression upon returning to the absolutely smothering heat that is engulfing South Texas right now. The weather app on my phone says it is going to be 108 degrees tomorrow. One-zero-eight. That is just inhumane.

So since my current plans involve camping out in my air conditioned home until January, I thought I would go ahead and share a little horror story from my recent brush with airline travel. I need to note at the start that I am acting in solidarity with my sister Hannah and my sister-in-law Kelly, who have both recently blogged terrible travel stories of their own. Both of their stories make me look like a whiner, but in the Rice family, storytelling is a sport and Kelly said she would only blog hers if I would blog mine, so here we are. Game on.

We started making plans for a return trip to Albuquerque back in April. This is important because in April, Isaac was not walking. That small fact explains a lot. Specifically, it explains why I chose to have all four of us travel to Albuquerque together, but for the kids and I to stay in Albuquerque an additional three days after Dan went back to Texas for work. This means that I would be doing the return trip to Texas without Dan. In my mind, when I was planning this day of solo flying for me and the kids, I was picturing Isaac being happy in the stroller and Kate being the model veteran air traveler that she is.

Isaac and his buddy Owen shared a snack at the Albuquerque Zoo.

Well, it turns out that babies change all the time. I am not sure if you knew that or not, but it's true. You might want to write that down and tape it up somewhere in your house if you have small kids. Because by the time July rolled around and I was watching Isaac sprint all over my house like Thing One every minute of the day, I was starting to wonder what had ever possessed me to sign up for this. But tickets were already bought and there wasn't really any backing out of it. So off we went.

Our time in Albuquerque was so much fun, so worth the travel and deserving of another post on its own. To illustrate that point, I will intersperse some photos from our trip through this post of us and our Albuquerque peeps. Dan went back to Texas on Sunday, the kids and I stayed a couple more days and then it was time for the big return trip. Since realizing what I was in for, I had spent a lot of time planning how I would survive, but in fact many of my plans turned out to be unneccesary because Mike and Susan, who were already hosting us for our trip, rode to the rescue, as they always do. It turned out that Susan was leaving for a trip on the very day we returned to San Antonio, and our flights left Albuquerque within 15 minutes of one another. It would have been amazing enough just to have another adult to go through the security line with me and the kids, but going above and beyond as they usually do, Mike and Susan managed the return of my rental car and helped me get us and all our luggage checked in. Then Susan, who could have been having a totally reasonable pre-flight period of eating a meal sitting down or reading a book, chose instead to go through security with me and my three-ring circus, then help us get breakfast and do bathroom breaks before it was time to board. May her reward be great in heaven. Seriously.

Mike and Susan also hosted a cookout at their house during our visit and all these kiddos ran around in a screaming pack in the rain and had a completely wonderful time. Here they are in a brief moment of stillness.

So my fretting was largely in vain, but when I was still in fretting mode I had come up with a solution for almost every travel issue that could arise, save one. I could not, for the life of me, figure out what in the world I would do if myself or one of the kids had to visit the lavatory on the airplane. We've all seen these things. You can barely fit yourself in there, much less yourself and a kid. Add a second kid in and the whole thing starts to sound like a clown car act. No, I decided, there was no way to do it, so I just wouldn't, Our flights were reasonably short. I would make darn sure we went to the bathroom immediately before boarding and just avoid the whole issue entirely.

When I made this plan, it should have set off red flags in my mind, since every other parenting strategy I have ever come up with based purely on denial has backfired spectacularly (Santa, anyone?) but I really thought it was reasonable. Thus, on the morning of our flights, we made multiple trips to the bathroom. Minutes before we boarded I made one last trip for insurance. And, sensing my desperation, Kate did what any three year old would do in that situation -- she refused to go to the bathroom. I put her up on the toilet and sat there, telling her why it was important for her to go now. But all to no avail. She really didn't have to go, she said.

Kate with her good friend Bonny, who mails her letters.

I think you all know what happened next. We got on the plane. I performed the one-handed folding up of our stroller at the end of the jetway with Isaac in my arms. We got into our seats and got our seatbelts on. Then, in a miracle of timing, Isaac stopped bouncing around like a ping pong ball, nursed and fell asleep during takeoff. He was out like a light and I was starting to feel like there was a really good chance he would sleep through the whole flight if I just ignored the tingling pain of my arm falling asleep and didn't move a muscle. Kate was happily watching "Annie" on the i-Pod. We were about 45 minutes into the flight, and I was about to breathe a sigh of relief.

(We celebrated Katie's Lilevjen's birthday while we were in town, which made me almost as happy as getting to see all the Lilevjens again!)

And then Kate turned to me and said the words all parents dread hearing on a trip. "Mommy, I have to go potty." Well, that's not entirely accurate. What she said first was "I don't want to wear this seatbelt." Then when I told her she had to keep wearing the seatbelt because it is one of the airplane rules to be safe, she pondered that for a moment and then pulled out the potty trump card. I could see the thoughts forming in her brain -- "If I say I have to go potty Mom will have to let me out of the seat belt!" -- and it made me want to bang my head on the seat because I knew that it was total fiction. I don't want to give you more information than you need, but Kate has demonstrated many times since she got full potty trained that she can hold it for incredible amounts of time when she wants to. Key words: Wants to.

My attempts to convince her to use her bladder-holding superpowers for good ended in increasingly high-pitched proclamations of "I need to go POOOOOOOOOTTTTY!" And really, to your fellow airline passengers there is no way to get through that without sounding like you are A) torturing your child and B) about to ruin a perfectly good airplane seat. So there was nothing for it but to unbuckle all three of us and start the trek to the front of the plane, where there was not, as far as I could tell, any line for the bathroom. Isaac woke up in the process and started doing that angry, disoriented thrashing move that small children do when woken from a deep sleep. Kate was doing little dance steps up the aisle while I tried to keep Isaac from kicking people in the head. It was a long walk to the front of the plane, only to find once we were there that the lavatory was, in fact, occupied. This fact was relayed to me by a flight attendant who I had not seen sitting there until that moment. "It's occupied," she said, glancing up from her book.

I want to take a moment to state that I have flown a lot in my life, and never once have I been anything but charming to airline personnel. For the most part, they have been nothing but charming to me. And maybe this woman and I were just not having the best day, but we surely did get off on the wrong foot. Because when I paused there in the empty space next to the bathroom with my two children, trying to determine what would be the best thing to do in the probably 10 seconds before whoever was in the bathroom came out, Book Reading Flight Attendant glanced up again to say, "Ma'am? You can't stand here. You'll have to wait in your seat."

Yes, she did.

I don't know if I should be sorry that I could not contain the exaggerated eye-rolling that this statement provoked in me or proud that I did contain the desire to reach over there and smack that book out of her hand. Either way, we had a very tense exchange wherein I gestured to the back of the plane and asked if I could go back there and join the absolute CROWD that was standing around idly by that lavatory door. Seriously, there were two flight attendants and some other person just hanging out, shooting the breeze, and I didn't notice TSA coming to arrest them. So we started the long hike to the other end of the plane. Dance, kick, dance, kick, squawk of indignation from toddler, repeat. Man, people on that plane LOVED us.

Me and my friend Erika in the blue light of the seal and sea lion exhibit at the zoo. The look on my face is one of joy over being with Erika. This stands in stark contrast to the look on my face during the incident I am describing.)

Once we got back to the block party and pried the lavatory door open, I realized I had another problem. Airplane toilets are absurdly high off the ground, and there was no way Kate would be able to sit on one unassisted. Meanwhile Isaac had reached a critical juncture in his flailing that required him to try to bang his head on the walls of the plane. Clearly there was no way I could deal with him and Kate at the same time. Thankfully at this point a flight attendant redeemed the name of Southwest Airlines forever for me and bravely offered to hold Isaac while I helped Kate. Isaac, of course, was thrilled with this plan, right? No. He screamed his head off for the entire time it took me to assist Kate, which, by the way, I had to do with the lavatory door wide open because there was no way to get us both in and close the door.

So in summary, flying with both kids overall went much, much better than I could have imagined. Except that the part about the bathroom was every bit as horrible as I thought it would be. I am trying not to read too much into this as I ponder attempting my first drive to Mississippi alone with both kids in the near future. I am assuming the whole two-kids-to-the-public-restroom experience doesn't improve much in, say, a gas station in rural Louisiana. I'll let you know.

It is 75 degrees in South Texas today and as I am typing this the kids are playing out back in the faux springtime weather. They are running around to the side of the house and waving their hands in the kitchen window and then laughing themselves into fits when I pop my head over the ledge to catch them. Some time in the last six months they have become excellent little playmates for one another and it has been a huge turning point in our lives. And by "our lives," I mean "The new part of our lives where Dan can sometimes sit still for ten minutes and speak entire sentences to one another." Not that we get to engage in this luxury all the time but it does occasionally happen that they keep one another occupied and we can converse. It is quite a novelty.

This weekend Dan bought me a new laptop and it is making me want to break my year-long writing drought and type and type just for the pure joy of how nicely my sleek new little laptop goes along. Our old laptop was developing the annoying habit of crashing during Skype conversations and thinking for an extremely long period about simple tasks like opening a document. So it's nice to have a handy little tool. I think there are a lot of reasons I haven't been writing for the last little while. None of them are bad -- there isn't any hidden drama behind that statement. There's just the fact that for a long time I wanted to write and didn't have time, then when I did find some time I didn't really have a lot to say. Not that I have anything profound to contribute to the Interent now, either. So moving on:

Like everyone else in the Western Hemisphere I have gotten sucked into Downton Abbey. I would be embarrassed to be watching what is clearly a soap opera if it weren't for the fancy clothes and British accents. But since those save my credibility, I am OK with admitting that I am addicted. I am currently putting off watching the season finale that is on my DVR for sheer grief that I will have to wait the rest of the YEAR for new episodes. It is too cruel. But so far I like the experience of watching Downton Abbey better than I liked watching LOST, the last show I got hopelessly sucked into. At least they tell you stuff on this show, and you don't have to invest four years of your life just to figure out what the basic premise of the show really is. I still want those years back.

I have now done the drive back to Mississippi on my own with the kids twice. It has gone pretty smoothly with the exception of one scene in a Cracker Barrell somewhere in Louisiana were Isaac decided he was done sitting in his high chair right about the time our food arrived and illustrated this point by arching his back, waving his hands and screaming "ALL DONE! ALL DONE!" until I let him get up and wander around the room. Obviously there is a pretty short clock on how long you can let an almost two-year-old child wander unassisted through a restaurant with a working fireplace before people begin to question your parenting skills, so in short order we were out in the retail display area test driving noisemakers and novelty candy containers that someone who is a marketing evil genius places right at the eye level of irritable small children who have been on long car rides. It took me about ten minutes to talk the kids away from that and back to the table, by which time our food was cold. I don't know why I even order food for the kids on these trips because they don't eat it. But I was starving, so I shoveled as much of my meal down as I could in five minutes while whipping my head around every three seconds to try to see what in the world the kids were doing when they weren't sitting in their seats. We barely made it through check out without another candy related scene and on the way out the door Isaac picked up a wooden duck toy that he clearly intended to take to the car with him had I not noticed it.

In our travels I have noticed that newer Target stores now have family restrooms located right near the exits, and this makes me want a write a love letter to Target. Family restrooms are so nice because you don't have to wrangle in and out of a stall with your kids and there are more places for them to stand without requiring you to say "Don't touch that! Do NOT touch that. Oh my heavenly gracious do not under ANY circumstances put your hands on that!" There is just such a new Target in Lafayette, Louisiana and we now stop there every time because we can do a bathroom break and then let the kids run up and down the aisles for a while and burn off steam. On this last trip the kids and I stopped there during an absolutely pounding rainstorm and it was a huge relief to be out of the car for just a few minutes before taking on the Atchafalaya Basin bridge. I don't know how big the basin is, but the bridge is miles and miles long extending over swampland with no place to stop. So far we've never needed to stop, but I'm just waiting for the day when one of the kids pulls the "I have to go potty" trump card while we're on the bridge. It's not going to be pretty.

It is 75 degrees in South Texas today and as I am typing this the kids are playing out back in the faux springtime weather. They are running around to the side of the house and waving their hands in the kitchen window and then laughing themselves into fits when I pop my head over the ledge to catch them. Some time in the last six months they have become excellent little playmates for one another and it has been a huge turning point in our lives. And by "our lives," I mean "The new part of our lives where Dan and I can sometimes sit still for ten minutes and speak entire sentences to one another." Not that we get to engage in this luxury all the time but it does occasionally happen that they keep one another occupied and we can converse. It is quite a novelty.

This weekend Dan bought me a new laptop and it is making me want to break my year-long writing drought and type and type just for the pure joy of how nicely my sleek new little laptop goes along. Our old laptop was developing the annoying habit of crashing during Skype conversations and thinking for an extremely long period about simple tasks like opening a document. So it's nice to have a handy little tool. I think there are a lot of reasons I haven't been writing for the last little while. None of them are bad -- there isn't any hidden drama behind that statement. There's just the fact that for a long time I wanted to write and didn't have time, then when I did find some time I didn't really have a lot to say. Not that I have anything profound to contribute to the Interent now, either. So moving on:

Like everyone else in the Western Hemisphere I have gotten sucked into Downton Abbey. I would be embarrassed to be watching what is clearly a soap opera if it weren't for the fancy clothes and British accents. But since those save my credibility, I am OK with admitting that I am addicted. I am currently putting off watching the season finale that is on my DVR for sheer grief that I will have to wait the rest of the YEAR for new episodes. It is too cruel. But so far I like the experience of watching Downton Abbey better than I liked watching LOST, the last show I got hopelessly sucked into. At least they tell you stuff on this show, and you don't have to invest four years of your life just to figure out what the basic premise of the show really is. I still want those years back.

I have now done the drive back to Mississippi on my own with the kids twice. It has gone pretty smoothly with the exception of one scene in a Cracker Barrell somewhere in Louisiana were Isaac decided he was done sitting in his high chair right about the time our food arrived and illustrated this point by arching his back, waving his hands and screaming "ALL DONE! ALL DONE!" until I let him get up and wander around the room. Obviously there is a pretty short clock on how long you can let an almost two-year-old child wander unassisted through a restaurant with a working fireplace before people begin to question your parenting skills, so in short order we were out in the retail display area test driving noisemakers and novelty candy containers that someone who is a marketing evil genius places right at the eye level of irritable small children who have been on long car rides. It took me about ten minutes to talk the kids away from that and back to the table, by which time our food was cold. I don't know why I even order food for the kids on these trips because they don't eat it. But I was starving, so I shoveled as much of my meal down as I could in five minutes while whipping my head around every three seconds to try to see what in the world the kids were doing when they weren't sitting in their seats. We barely made it through check out without another candy related scene and on the way out the door Isaac picked up a wooden duck toy that he clearly intended to take to the car with him had I not noticed it.

In our travels I have noticed that newer Target stores now have family restrooms located right near the exits, and this makes me want a write a love letter to Target. Family restrooms are so nice because you don't have to wrangle in and out of a stall with your kids and there are more places for them to stand without requiring you to say "Don't touch that! Do NOT touch that. Oh my heavenly gracious do not under ANY circumstances put your hands on that!" There is just such a new Target in Lafayette, Louisiana and we now stop there every time because we can do a bathroom break and then let the kids run up and down the aisles for a while and burn off steam. On this last trip the kids and I stopped there during an absolutely pounding rainstorm and it was a huge relief to be out of the car for just a few minutes before taking on the Atchafalaya Basin bridge. I don't know how big the basin is, but the bridge is miles and miles long extending over swampland with no place to stop. So far we've never needed to stop, but I'm just waiting for the day when one of the kids pulls the "I have to go potty" trump card while we're on the bridge. It's not going to be pretty.

I think I spent the first two years of Kate's life convinced that she was getting sick. Never once was she sick, not really anyway. She got colds and minor stuff like any baby, but it wasn't until she was almost three that we had our first bout of real, scary, acute sickness. And that first time was a doozy: Two months after Isaac was born, Dan went on a business trip for a week, leaving me on my own for the first time with both kids. While he was gone Kate got a cold that morphed into a double ear infection, except I didn't figure out that was what was going on until I had spent two nights shuttling between a hysterical child running an outrageous fever and a newborn waking up to eat every couple of hours. It was horrible. I still break out into a sweat thinking about how scared and overwhelmed I was.

I thought about that experience a lot this week, and not for happy reasons. This week Dan was on a business trip, and we were sick. Specifically, I was sick here in Texas and Dan was sick on his trip. What we didn't know was that we had the flu. We figured that out when Isaac got sick and ran a fever that got my attention more than my own four days of misery had done. So Isaac got taken to the doctor and diagnosed with a case of "We know you had a flu shot in this exact same room not five months ago, but you still totally have the flu."

In the end, only Kate escaped unscathed which was mystifying since she was just as exposed to me and my illness as Isaac, but I'll take a win where I can get one. Usually when Dan is out of town I fill our days with lots of activities to pass the time. But since I was too sick for any of that, instead I had a lot of time to contemplate the subtle art of being sick and being the mom. It is not a good gig. But I do have a few disconnected observations:

1. The all-pervasive guilt that comes with mothering also extends to communicable illness. This fall my kids got flu shots, and I intended to get a flu shot myself. I even went so far as to start filling out the paperwork for one in Target, and then the kids freaked out and I had to go before I could actually get the shot. So for the first time in five years, I forgot. Then I got the flu and passed it on to Isaac. Thus, in my mind there was a very straight line between my failure to get a flu shot and Isaac's suffering. His every cough made me wince. I understand of course that this was ridiculous. There are any number of factors that contribute to a person getting sick, and at any rate it isn't like Isaac's shot worked anyway. But still, I was the weakest link in our family and it just killed me.

2) I really need to go to Vegas soon. Did I mention that I have gotten a flu shot for five consecutive years prior to this? And that we got our official flu diagnosis on March 2, late in the flu season no matter how you look at it? And that a few days earlier I had been reading a news story about how practically no one got the flu this year and it was a miracle of science? And that when the doctor told me Isaac had the flu, his exact words were "Congratulations! He is my first flu case of the year."

We win all the good prizes.

1. TamiFlu is a wonderful thing, and I wish I'd had some when it would have done me any good. Back during the great H1N1 scare of 2009, I read online a pretty hair-raising story from a family in Great Britain whose children had a really bad reaction to TamiFlu and suffered from hallucinations. It did not make me want to have my kids on that drug if I could help it. But when Isaac got sick and was diagnosed within 24 hours of the onset of the illness, our doctor felt like treating him would be the best course of action since he is under two and therefore in a high risk group for complications from the flu. I took his advice, but watched with great trepidation for any negative side effects once I gave him the first dose. And you know what? He was fine. He never seemed bothered at all, and he clearly felt better much faster than I did. Right now, a week later, I am still moving pretty slowly and he is tearing around the house like he's on wheels. As a parent I take very seriously the job of making informed decisions about my kids' health, but sometimes I feel like the Internet means I am living in the age of way too much information. It's good to know what could happen, yes, but it isn't neccesarily always helpful to read a first-hand account from the one person who had a bad experience, all in the name of being informed. And The Google will always make sure you find that one person.

4) It turns out that if you are really incapacitated you can get out of bed only to perform key child care tasks like preparing hot dogs and mac and cheese (yum!), and the rest of the time you can just let your kids do whatever the heck they want. I am pretty sure I read that in a very reputable parenting book. I may be exaggerrating slightly, but our kids surely did watch an obscene amount of television and I don't even know what they were doing that resulted in the kind of messes they made. They also apear to have dug a sizable hole under one of the bushes in our back yard one afternoon when I told them to go outside. But we all survived until Dan got home, and that is what counts.

5) Times like these are when you cannot place a value on having family members nearby. My mother-in-law Lorrae bailed me out so much while Dan was gone. She took the kids off my hands a couple of times, shuttled the very un-sick and very bored Kate to school, and even brought me soup. I owe her big.

6) Taking cold medicine and then falling asleep with the lights on while reading "Into the Wild" on a night when your husband is out of town is a recipe for some weird, fevered, confusing dreams. It was my own little homemade TamiFlu hallucination. I do not recommend it, and I may never be able to finish that book.

We are a lot better this week, if a little weak, and I hope to be able to look forward to a spring featuring a few less trips to the doctor. And on that note, it's a beautiful day outside and I think I will take the kids and soak up some of that lovely sunlight. It's been too long since I've seen any.

The house we live in right now is a rental home. We were very blessed to be able to sell our home in Albuquerque, but it wasn't a good time to be a seller and it didn't make us eager to pick up a new mortgage any time soon. And San Antonio is a big place. Since we weren't sure where we would attend church or eventually want to put the kids in school, we figured renting a home would be a good decision for the first couple of years while the dust settled and we figured out where some of those puzzle pieces would fit for us.

San Antonio is big on suburbs. If you drive for 20 minutes in any direction you will pass areas that have their own housing developments, grocery stores, shopping and schools in regular clusters and they never seem to stop coming. Our home in Albuquerque was in what was clearly a preplanned community built by a single construction company -- each house very similar to the next -- but I wouldn't really call it a suburb. I never lived in one of those until we came here. On the whole the experience has been like eating oatmeal. It hasn't been unpleasant and it hasn't been particularly exciting. I seem unable to arrive at any strong feeling about it, good or bad.

Similarly to Albuquerque, our neighbors seem like nice enough people, but I don't see much of them. Between the hours of 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. it is like a ghost town here. But I recently had reason to realize that just because I don't see my neighbors doesn't mean they don't see me.

Diagonally across the street from us is a huge brick house with the nicest yard in the entire neighborhood. Last summer when a severe drought was baking South Texas and restrictions on sprinkler systems were in place the owners of that house, a retired couple, would sit in their lawn chairs once a day and hand-water their grass while the rest of us gave up in June and watched our lawns turn a sickly brown color. Not content with merely making our yards look worse, they eventually took more drastic measures. One day I was getting the mail and saw a truck parked in front of the yard advertising some sort of yard service which, upon closer observation turned out to be a guy spray painting the grass a deep lustrous green.

Around this same time we received a notice in our mailbox from the homeowners association informing us that we were in violation of the neighborhood covenants. Our offense, it seemed, was that we had been leaving our trash can visible from the street. This has never occurred to us as a problem, but according to The Association, we were supposed to be keeping the trash can inside our garage or fenced in the alley. We dutifully complied but then the logical question began to creep into our minds -- who in the world alerted the homeowner's association to our trashiness? A few days later, it hit me: The Grass Painters! Who else has the time to care about my trash can placement?

Once I decided it had to have been them I had a good laugh about it and moved on, now with a more properly disguised trash can. I tell that story mostly so that I can tell this one: One of our next-door neighbors is clearly out of town a lot. I see her maybe once every six weeks and only know she is home if we happen to pass one another in the driveway. But the other reason I know this is because she pretty much never mows her yard. Last summer this didn't matter much since it wasn't like the grass was growing anyway, but this spring we have actually gotten a good bit of rain and we have the weeds to prove it. Neither Dan or I are big outdoors people and one of the main things we learned about ourselves when we owned our first home is that yard work is not one of our spiritual gifts. Our negligence was obvious enough even when we had a yard that was the size of a postage stamp and 85 percent landscaped in rocks. But when we moved to a part of the country that is actually capable of growing grass, we agreed that we would save ourselves the drama and hire a yard guy. (And by "the drama" I mean "The nagging that I would have inflicted on Dan while also not doing anything about the yard myself." Lest you think I am a better wife than I am. Nope.)

So while we might not have been all caught up on trash can etiquette, our neighbors can't fault us on our yard maintenance thanks to the yard guy. Meanwhile the yard next to ours made us look like rock stars. It basically grew six inches deep in weeds, not even grass. The bushes were out of control. And all the while the grass painters were across the street trimming stray blades of grass with nail clippers. I knew that overgrown yard directly across from them had to be making them crazy.

On Friday, as I mentioned before, I took Isaac to the doctor to get treated for the flu. It was a long morning and the first time I had been out of the house since I got sick a few days before. I felt shaky and like I had to squint in the sunlight. The doctor's office is never an easy trip with Isaac, who hates to have his ears checked out and screams and thrashes and has to be restrained. With the need to get the inside of his nose swabbed for the flu test it was even more traumatic than usual. Then we went to the pharmacy and got out minutes before nap time. He was a mess, I was a mess, and I just wanted to get home and lie down. But as I pulled up to the house I saw something that made it worth having gotten out of bed that morning:

The Grass Painter Wife was in the crazy yard mowing the grass! She had her push mower and her rake and her hedge clippers and had filled up four GIANT bags with clippings. She was moving like a person seized with righteous anger who has finally had enough. It was like in her mind, she was beating back the forces of evil right there in that yard. When I pulled into the driveway she was clearly finishing up, and she stacked those bags of clippings in a straight line at the garage door and marched back across the street, triumphant over disorder. I sat in the minivan in the garage and laughed for a minute and a half.

Who said the suburbs are boring?

Actual transcript of a conversation the kids had tonight in the car while we were on our way to get frozen yogurt after dinner:

Kate: A!
Isaac: A!
Kate: B!
Isaac: B!
Kate: C!
Isaac: C!
Kate: D!
Isaac: .....No!
Kate: Yes!
Isaac: (screaming) NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!
Kate: (Queen of the screamers) YEEEEEEEESSSSSS!!!!!!!!

This went on for five straight minutes. Some of the time they were really sounding angry, and some of the time they were laughing. Then we got to the yogurt place, ate yogurt and watched the kids dance around with great gusto and no apparent memory of their recent fight to "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun," which was playing on the sound system.

Then we went home. The end.

I would like to say that I take my kids to the library every week, but the truth is that we make it in maybe once a month. Since books can only be checked out for three weeks at a time this means that on average our last batch of books is at least a week overdue. So even though we are relatively infrequent fliers at the library I am probably still on the top of their list of regular financial contributors/library criminals. Any day now I expect to see my face on a WANTED poster, if not because of our fines then because of Isaac's penchant for exiting the library while throwing a level of tantrum that he never achieves when we are not in a public space specifically dedicated to quiet and order. (Seriously. It never fails.)

Kate loves it when we bring home new books. In the last year what was her nap time has been transitioning into more of a semi-quiet rest time. It goes better some days than others. On good days she stays in her room and looks at books or plays with her puzzles or dresses up and sings her original narrative songs. Even though she doesn't sleep much anymore it seems to help her be more refreshed in the second half of the day. So on a recent library trip I was brainstorming for new books to keep her interested when I stumbled on a book that gave me a flashback to my own childhood reading. Shel Silverstein's "Where the Sidewalk Ends" and "A Light in the Attic" were some of my absolute favorite books for years. I read them so many times that they fell apart. Something about the silly poems and simple pen-and-ink drawings kept me coming back even though I know I couldn't have understood some of the plays on words that the poems hinge on. It was just a little over my head but I think that made me like it more, like the poems were little word puzzles to figure out. For that reason I wasn't sure Kate was old enough to enjoy it yet. In the past I've gotten all excited about reading some book to her ("The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" comes to mind) only to have her space out within the first few pages. So I'm learning that I need to be patient and wait for her to be old enough to enjoy something rather than forcing it on her. But she does like Silverstein's classic "The Giving Tree," so I checked out "Where the Sidewalk Ends" anyway and we read a few of the poems before rest time. Two hours later Kate came out of her room carrying the book and asking to have certain poems read to her, and I knew she was hooked. We read through that one and went back for "A Light in the Attic." A couple of weeks later when I was shopping for the kids Easter baskets I found a 30th anniversary edition of "Where the Sidewalk Ends" and got it for Kate. She was thrilled to have a copy of her own.

So now to the story I actually wanted to tell: Several times yesterday Kate told me that she and Dan were going to write a poem when he got home. I wasn't really sure what she was talking about but she was very insistent that they were going to write a poem and it was going to be called "The Girl Who Brushed Her Eye." Ummm, OK. I blogged earlier about how Kate has been working on learning to tell jokes but her punch lines leave much to be desired. So given the non-sensical nature of her chosen poem title I thought maybe she was just trying to make me laugh, which I obligingly did and then I forgot about it.

Last night Dan came home from work for dinner but then headed out again to get together with some friends from church. While I put Isaac down he got Kate ready for bed and spent some time with her and when I came out of Isaac's room he had just left. On the coffee table were two pieces of paper with Kate's drawings and Dan's handwriting -- and the poem! They actually did write a poem! Later Dan told me that Kate had started talking about wanting to do this the night before and he was surprised she was still talking about it the next night. I think it was a very collaborative effort since Kate doesn't know how to read yet, and I assume Dan helped her rhyme the endings but the basic idea was hers. So here is Kate's first poem, with assistance from Dan:

The Girl Who Brushed Her Eye:

The girl who brushed her eye
It made her start to cry
She was sad
It hurt bad
She'll brush her teeth next time.

This was accompanied by a drawing of a stick figure poking herself in the eye with a hairbrush. It was a joke poem! And it was actually funny! This is huge progress. The poem is on the Refrigerator of Honor right now, but I think I will keep it. It is her first poem, and I hope it won't be her last.

One more great memory, courtesy of Shel Silverstein.

At the end of this somewhat lengthy post I promise you a cute kid photo and a funny story but first you will have to suffer through a not-very-funny story and some whining from me. If you're up for it, keep reading.

Last week during a visit to a park near our house Kate tripped on her way up some stairs to a slide and hit her mouth when she fell. I will leave to your imagination the amount of blood and screaming that resulted but whatever you are picturing, picture more of it. Being the ultra-prepared mom that I am, all I had on hand in the minivan to deal with this emergency was baby wipes. Somehow that worked to stop the bleeding (what can't you do with baby wipes, really?) and then we went home, where a string of phone calls between me and our pediatric dentist ensued. Kate by this time was acting totally fine and not bleeding and if you just looked at her in passing you wouldn't have thought anything was wrong. But on her gums up above her two front teeth there was this wince-inducing cut and as her mom I felt that it was my duty to look at it every few minutes to determine if it was better, worse or the same. Mostly it was the same. It was a fun way to spend an afternoon.

Our dentist advised me to bring her in for X-rays in the morning, so at 8 a.m. the next day we were sitting in an exam room. Within minutes of our arrival Kate was kicked back watching a Barbie movie on a screen mounted on the ceiling and I was sitting in the corner wishing I had brought a paper bag into which I could breathe slowly. Or puke.

I think almost everyone who knows me in real life knows the following biographical fact because I bring it up any time the subject of sports, teeth, dentists or crippling phobias are mentioned. But for anyone who has somehow missed it, here's a story: When I was 11 I was on the playground at my school and I got hit in the face with a baseball. As I remember it, I wasn't even playing baseball. I just happened to be standing behind a kid who was supposed to catch a ball but didn't. Not that this is his fault. Kids are pretty unreliable at catching balls, as my embarrassing youth softball career demonstrates. Unfortunately, the ball hit me in the mouth and the damage was pretty serious. To date I have had a total of four root canals on two front teeth that were injured plus several incarnations of cosmetic work to cover up the gradual discoloring of those teeth. It was very generous of my parents to pay for my college considering that by the time I was 18 they had probably shelled out an entire college degree's worth of money on dental procedures, plus braces. Thanks to them and my wonderful childhood dentist, (Hey, Dr. Amzi!) I had great dental care. But something about the amount of dental care I have had in my relatively young life has left me with some heavy-duty anxiety about going to the dentist. They take X-rays and I spend the entire time trying to guess what giant problem will be uncovered. I pretty much feel like happy gas should be mandatory for dental cleanings, but that seems to be frowned upon for some reason.

So while Kate was blissfully spacing out with Barbie I was envisioning 20 years of dental procedures resulting from this one slip on the playground. The X-rays were much less dire than I had imagined. There aren't any clear fractures or problems but we'll go back to the dentist several times this summer for followup X-rays to make sure her teeth don't suffer any ill effects from the trauma. These are her baby teeth and while it wouldn't be great to lose them early, it won't be the end of the world either. The gum gash will heal on its own with proper care and already looks much better than it did a few days ago. Most importantly Kate hasn't been in a lot of pain and she seems completely unfazed by her brush with dental trauma. Which brings me to the actual reason I wrote this post in the first place -- so I could show you a picture.

At the dentist office they took two sets of X-rays, one where Kate sat in a chair and held the film in her mouth, and one where the dentist aimed a handheld superhero gun-looking contraption at Kate's face and took X-rays from a different angle. During all of this I would have sworn Kate was paying no attention she was so fascinated by the movie. The next day I came upon her and Isaac playing a new game in my bathroom. Kate kept telling Isaac to lie down. Then she would put a washcloth over his shirt and tell him she was going to "take some pictures." Next she would point my hairdryer at his face very seriously, make a beeping sound, and say "Good job! Let's take another one!" I have no idea what Isaac was getting out of this game but he was extremely compliant. That may be because he recently had his first dental checkup and got about ten pounds of prizes and loot at the end. He's probably still waiting for a balloon.

When I told my mom this story, she said maybe Kate would be a dentist and that we surely could use one in the family. So if Kate ever does become a dentist I know what photos I can get out for her graduation dinner.

A brief administrative note: I have closed comments on my blog due to a massive spam comment attack. I am probably going to leave them closed since most people now leave their comments on Facebook. If you want to friend me there you are welcomed to do so or you can always send me feedback via my email address, which I will now give to you in clever code: It's my first name@my last name.com. You can figure that out, right?