Yet again it has been almost an entire month since I've blogged. There are many days when I feel as though I should blog, but I don't. I tend to be a perfectionist when I blog- I try to find something truly blog-worthy to blog about, but many days I just don't find anything worth mentioning. (At least online.) Which is odd. Because, personally, I find the everyday happenings of people's lives so fascinating. I feel like my friend Hannah and I have practically founded our friendship (the past 11 of our 15 year friendship being long distance) on this concept: that the humdrum everyday comings in and goings out of the average person could be found interesting, if not many times quite amusing. So, without further ado, my little bloggies, here's what I've been up to lately:
Class ended on March 16th after I finished my final for A & P, collected my "good enough" B, and high-tailed it out of the classroom to spend the next 2 months preparing for the arrival of our child. (I left my precious purple water bottle in the lab; I still mourn its absence.) We've had the pleasure of being blessed by 3 showers in our baby's honor since the end of March. We are diligently chipping away at the list of things that need to be done to prepare for baby. This includes deciding what "need" means and what I just "want" to be done. I have this fear, as I assume all first time moms do, that we just won't be prepared well enough for our baby's arrival. I have an arsenal of diapers, thanks to my mother-in-law Kathy's friend Carla Hansen. I have 2 dozen (for starters) cloth diapers. I have many, many onesies. My mom actually took the time to drive up from Oregon on Sunday, ostensibly to finalize the choices in fabrics for the quilt, curtains, and dust ruffle for the crib.
My mom hurt her shoulder about a month ago and, although she wanted to make the aforementioned items for her grandbaby's room herself, she is unable to do so due to her injury. She is in the process of finding a quilter to complete this mission (ideally) before baby arrives.
Honestly, without the help of our parents and people's generous gifts to us, I don't know how we would've paid for everything our baby needs. I haven't worked (please do not get me started on this sour topic) since the end of December. Money is very tight for us. Our Nikon camera was partially run over by Joe's Taurus about a year ago, and although it still took decent pics, it bit the dust last Christmas. We've been relying on our phone cameras every since then to document our lives. (I must say, for only being phone cameras, they do a pretty decent job.) However, I do not want to be satisfied with taking pictures of our newborn with a phone camera. I really wanted a nice camera. Although my in-laws were generous enough to give me a point and shoot Canon for Christmas, I really wanted something a step or two (or four) above the digital cameras I've had in the past. So, we used much of our emergency funds to purchase our Canon 40D from ebay...plus we put the point and shoot Canon up for auction on ebay to be able to afford the purchase of a lens. And as of a couple minutes ago- I just checked it- it's had zero bids...come on now! The purchase of the 40D is worth it because we'll never get back those moments with our baby. However, this also means we are less than 4 weeks away from our baby's arrival with barely enough of what it takes to pay our bills each month. But God's been good to us. Every month, we are watching closely to what we are spending and our bills are within Joe's salary...by the grace of God. In January, we decided to finally get our butts in gear and pay off our credit card debt before May. He made sure we were able to set aside substantial chunks each month to lower our debt and that our tax refund was large enough to finally PAY IT OFF. That's right. We are credit card debt free, folks, as of March. All because of His wisdom and not ours. Every month, we must decide how we are to spend our money for that month. And every month, somehow, we make it.
As you can infer by now, I find myself often worrying about things concerning this baby. I don't really worry all that much about what it's going to take to actually bear a child and raise him/her. Is that weird? I sometimes ponder. But, I assure myself, things that are required to raise a child are all I know how to worry about right now. I am strangely not fearing child labor or all the sleepless nights when I am up with a baby that just won't go to sleep.
Until then, we'll just have to baby our other babies, our furry ones we mean. Below is a shot of Millie after we subjected her royal highness to a bath. Although she temporarily submits to us in the bath, afterwards she is back to her old (usually) pissy self. Mad as a hornet but shivering, she sought out warmth on Joe's lap. He wasn't even allowed to pet her she was so mad. Just provide warmth.
The next several are from our recent trip to Fargo and Minneapolis.
(JL Beers, Fargo. Many wonderful beers on taps. Yours truly had to abstain and settle for a cherry Coke.)
(Downtown Fargo. It's really cute. At least to me.)
(We got to spend the entire afternoon with my father-in-law, who was only to happy to take us for a spin around town. Along with JL Beers, we went to The Plains Art Museum, where we had our Fargo wedding reception in 2007. The current exhibit was of artist's interpretations of songs from the White Album.)
(At the Plains. A nod to the song from the play, Damn Yankees, which Joe was in the summer after he graduated high school.)
(The bell tower at Concordia College, Moorhead, MN, Joe's alma mater. One New Year's Eve, we counted down to midnight underneath it and then kissed at the stroke of 12. Rumor has it that if you walk under the bell tower with your significant other, you'll get married. Must be true. We did.)
(Concordia's Old Main. PLU has an Old Main too. 34 weeks.)
(Soli Deo Gloria means to God alone be the glory. How fitting.)
(The story behind this poster is kind of funny. We kept seeing people around Concordia with no shoes on, just walking around barefoot. We thought that they were doing so because the temperature had gone slightly above 45 degrees and, hey, in MN, that's a heatwave after nearly 6 months of snowfall. We finally asked a couple of students and they said that they were not wearing shoes to recognize the many, many people around the world who do not have any shoes and are in need. This event was sponsored by the art club- which hosted foot painting- and by Toms shoes. Ah, you gotta love the altruism of liberal arts.)
(Storytime at the Wild Rumpus Bookstore, Minneapolis, this crazy little neighborhood bookstore in the same area as my in-laws' condo. I could have spent all day there.)
(They even have chickens there. They also have resident kitties, but they all went into hiding when they saw about 3 dozen kids stampeding in the door for storytime.)
