A bit of Beauty: budding percussionist

Lately Ransom is trying out his drumsticks on new surfaces and enjoying the sounds he's getting. But when the opportunity presents itself and drumsticks aren't handy, he does't squander his chance to make some noise. I love AJ's face in this picture. :)

A bit of Beauty: Husband bakes lava cake

Bragging, that's what this one's about. In 2012 my husband started to watch Master Chef with me and then he converted into a foodie. He now makes hollandaise from scratch, he introduced me to risotto, makes his own pasta from scratch, and now, for the second night in a row, he's busted out chocolate lava cake. Ah, I am a blessed lady.

Celebrating Life: AJ turns 26

Yesterday I threw a surprise birthday party for AJ's 26th. It worked! He had no clue! There were a few girls over from our youth group for our regularly scheduled small group, so it seemed like a normal night until people started arriving, and we rearranged the furniture to accommodate the crowd in our little apartment, and snacks food and Martinelli's started appearing. He had no idea (a big success, I tell you)!
There was a cheese ball and baked Alaska for my dairy deprived husband and his friends. And the look on his face as I brought him baked Alaska with a candle in it with everyone singing makes me think he knows he's loved. Oh, good.
I don't have a single picture from the party. Instead I took pictures of snapshots of little AJ that I decorated with. I love the one of him in his little suit, the one with his cute double chin grin, the one with his dad baptizing him.
Happy birthday Andrew. I love you!

an achievement

The day came. Finally, yesterday, AJ's band received their long awaited albums. We are SO excited, satisfied, grateful! It's wonderful to hold in our hands the product of long hours of writing, composing, practicing, and recording.

This morning & afternoon Ransom and I have been listening to it nonstop, and he'll constantly point to the CD player and declare, "Dada, Dada!"
He knows his daddy's voice!
Now we're looking forward to the CD release show on Friday night.
Congratulations, to Joshua, Seth, Jordan, Andrew C.,
but especially (because I'm allowed to be partial) to AJ! Great work guys!

Romance

Recently I've been re-reading my journals and I've noticed a few of things:

1) I can be very long winded
2) It is splendid to see in retrospect how God answered prayers I journaled (for instance...)
3) God created a good romance for AJ and me

It's been fun to revisit the specific ways that God answered prayer. How he redeemed days & places I had associated with other boys by giving me precious memories with Andrew in those same places, on those same days. How when I was journaling prayers specifically for my future husband, AJ was really getting refined, and even though we weren't aware, our hearts were being prepared for the relationship God was getting us ready for. It's cute to see how I meticulously recorded dialogue & texts that were exchanged.

This all makes me love and appreciate the man I've been blessed with.

Have a prayer, a romance, a journal that's been collecting dust? Let this be my encouragement to you to brush the dust away & to revisit those hopes & desires (I'm getting all sappy...) and to give the glory to Jesus for how he answered (or graciously didn't answer) those prayers.

Thanks for reading!

Merry Christmas & some Christmas "do's"

Merry Christmas from our family!
(Our photographer friends took these photos. They highly exceeded our expectations & we couldn't be more pleased! We highly recommend them.)

With Christmas almost here, I've been thinking about how to celebrate it meaningfully with our little family of three, and here's some "Christmas do's" I scribbled down today:

-Christmas light viewing drive & good eats or drinks (Loved that this year. We ate at our favorite Mexican grocery store deli & with warm drinks we drove up to the ritzy neighborhood with the amazing city view to look at lights. We took Ransom out of the car to look at the most impressive house at the top of the hill. We also visited the spot where AJ proposed to me & got out & hugged & kissed for memory's sake. There are houses being built there now, in what was a previously almost empty lot overlooking the city. I joked that someday we may have to live in one of them to have access to the precious spot.)
-Advent celebrating with a calendar (I didn't get my act together in time, so I'll have to try to be better prepared next year.)
-Play Christmas songs on the piano (My mom sent me a Christmas songbook that I've loved using this year!)
-Make pulla, a.k.a. Finnish coffee bread, a tradition in my family (Haven't made any yet, but there's still time. Actually, I need to hunt down the recipe.)
-Read Christmas books with Ransom (We're getting a little collection of them.)
-Play good Christmas music (This year it's been Charlie Brown, Sara Groves, Chicago, Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby, Sufjan Stevens, and I discovered a new mini album by Hue & Hum that I might get for next year)
-Be intentional about giving $$ to the Salvation Army bell ringers who are parked outside store entrances, especially because I want to cultivate generosity in our family & model it for our kids. (I need to get better at this one.)
-Get Christmas shopping done early (Yay for avoiding the mall the week before Christmas!)
-Send Christmas photos to loved ones
-Go on an date with AJ for my birthday (Dec. 26...have yet to follow through with this one)

Have yourself a merry little Christmas!

"God chose to have his Son enter the world in a stable and be laid in filthy slop so we could know our sinful hearts are not too lowly of a place for him to occupy." --Jen Smidt, from an article called "The Dirty Manger"

when Jesus was showing off, part 2

Tonight, I'm continuing on a theme from the previous post about how this week has been altering my attitude. Let me explain more by telling the story about an innocent thrifting trip AJ and I had at Goodwill today, and how Jesus used it to, again, show off His crazy love for me.

If you would be so kind, note the shiny, orange family of cookware posing for a picture at the front of our stove. These caught my eye as I was casually scoping out the housewares section, and I flipped them over to check their quality.


Well, they're good, very good quality. Le Creuset. Three lofty Le Creuset pieces resting on the shelves of an ordinary Goodwill. There's a Dutch (or should I say French) oven with a lid, a small saucepan with a spout, and a nice little skillet that begs for some butter to be melted in it. The skillet alone, on the Le Creuset website costs $75 new. The Dutch oven, over $200. We paid $70 for all three pieces.

Andrew bought them for me for my Christmas & birthday (Dec 26) present because after we happened upon this extraordinary discovery, he wanted to really bless me.

I'm still amazed at this find. I'm not used to having really nice things, and I don't expect to get them. So when something like this happens, I'm caught off guard. It feels like a miracle.

(Today I'm linking up to her library adventures, sharing the find.)


Tonight I told AJ how this week has been so much better than I could have hoped. With the band recording the album this week, requiring his absence in the evenings, I expected a lot of loneliness, feeling overwhelmed with the baby, not having the car, the rainy weather & simply missing my husband. But it's been great. Just as the girls prayed on Tuesday, I have been able to be creative (there are still lots of ideas ruminating in my cranium, waiting for action), to have quality time with friends, to have little reprieving pockets of good time with AJ, I've been able to simply enjoy my almost 1 year old son, and I've seen expressions of God's grace poured out on me this week. Like finding Le Creuset cookware that I'd never imagined I'd get to own.

Jesus showing off again.

I told AJ I almost expected to be resentful about the time he'd be away during the recording. It'd be so easy to gripe "He's off doing the band thing while I'm stuck here..." but that hasn't been the issue at all. Looking back at the last several days, I see God's kindness toward me each day has been instrumental in forming a new attitude in me. There's been joy in knowing Andrew's hard work, his faithfulness at pursuing a dream is going to be rewarded soon with an album. It's been a long time coming, and I told him he can rest assured I'm sending him off to record with my blessing, rooting him on from home.

It's not about the luxury of being able to cook with fancy pans. I'm simply aware of the undeserved love Jesus has sent my way & how this week it's doing it's beautifying work in me. He is good.

when Jesus was showing off, part 1

This week I feel as though I've been enveloped into a different life, finding random pockets of peace, spurts of creativity, & unexpected favor. It began humbly, Monday morning, with my expectation that this would be an extra trying week. AJ's band is recording their first album this week (hooray!) but since all members are working men with day jobs, the majority of the recording is done after work hours, 6pm-midnight or later. Since evenings are usually when we get family time, I was prepared to be bummed and to have to get used to a single mom lifestyle.

But, I couldn't see the whole picture. Jesus had a different attitude He wanted me to adopt, and through His kindness, I'm humbled to now describe some of the sweet things that have been happening this week.

First, Monday morning we got the knock on our door from our friend & neighbor Kristin, telling us our dear friends Chris & Lysha, who now live in Colorado, were there for the day & a bunch of us were able to & have lunch, hang out and keep happy company together.

Tuesday, as normal, I hosted a girls small group at my house. Each evening, we end our time by sharing prayer requests and praying for the person on our left. First, I was feeling challenged to ask for prayer for something specific (thanks to encouragement from my sister Liz) and different than usual. I asked the girls to pray that while AJ's recording this week that the time he's away would be good for me, full of creativity & good time with Jesus. Second, those girls blessed me by not sticking to the "pray for the person to your left" guideline & a couple of them prayed for what I asked along with my regular prayer requests.

Wednesday afternoon I got a text from Lysha, inviting me to dinner at her in-laws' house two hours away. I got the ok from AJ, packed up the baby, invited my friend Anne to come along, and we were off. We returned to town well after 1 am and I felt grateful for the company I kept that evening, spurring me to creativity & godliness in my roles as a Christian, wife, and mom.

Thursday AJ has a long lunch & we had some great family time. I accomplished laundry. :) One of the sweetest things was playing with Ransom that day. There was a point before bedtime when I was on back on the floor & he was on my tummy & he quietly rested his head under my chin for several minutes. I just held him, gratefully. Between work & recording AJ came home, was there to witness Ransom climbing all the way up the stairs for the first time and was able to read him bedtime stories before he went to the recording studio. When AJ got home, (12:30 a.m.) we watched the latest Terra Nova on hulu together while I finally finished putting together our birthday banner.

I'll finish by telling what happened today in another post, but what I want to express by all this is that Jesus is showing off. He's taking my lowly, downright pessimistic expectations and by many kindnesses, making my attitude more beautiful.

friends in town

Today we were pleasantly surprised to hear our friends Chris & Lysha & their daughters were in town, visiting from Colorado where they're planting a church. Our neighbor friends John & Kristin, Kaylene (another friend visiting from Colorado, part of the church plant), Andrew & I soaked up all of the time we could with them.

Thrice show in P-Town

As an early third anniversary celebration, AJ & I left the baby with our Poet family overnight & drove to Portland to see Thrice, a favorite band of ours.

There was a moment when Dustin was singing the song "Treading Paper" and he stepped away from the microphone but the crowd/fans kept singing the words:

If anything means anything, there must be--
something meant for us to be, a song that we were made to sing.
There must be so much more than we can see.

It was one of those moments when you HOPE the gospel's getting through.
These sort of shows aren't really my scene (I'm no mosher because I'm pretty sure my 5'3'' self would get crushed) but I really enjoyed it, especially Thrice's bit, and the whole being with my husband part. :) Even the long, late drive home was lovely.

Other items: at the venue, called the Wonder Ballroom, they had a restaurant underneath called Under Wonder and I had the best French dip I've ever had...with no napkins. Intense.


Also, before the show we made an IKEA stop to dream a little, and to pick up a birthday present for a little boy who will be one in a just a couple of weeks!

All Saints' Day and updates

Happy All Saints' Day! What's that, you say? It's a day on the church calendar set aside to remember saints of the faith. Thanks to my previous job as a church secretary at a Covenant church, I know about this holiday. This year AJ & I decided to do a little something to celebrate it.(For more info on this lesser known holiday on the calendar, you can go here.)

This morning AJ & I shared about a Christian saint that had made an impact on us in some way. Our criteria was that the saint had to be a person whose life & ministry was Gospel centered, but we didn't limit ourselves to people who the Catholic church, for instance, beautified as saints.


AJ chose Count Niklaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf (yay!).Count Zinzendorf was one of the most influential and controversial spiritual leaders in modern history. He's also considered the pioneer of continuous prayer. (source)


My choice was Lisa Borden. Lisa's a wife, mom of three boys & a girl, author, blogger & a missionary in Tanzania, Africa. I stumbled on her blog a few years ago and was struck by her authenticity, her love for Jesus, and her ability as a wordsmith to describe sometimes ordinary circumstances in a way that turns them into life's sweet moments, glimpses of the kingdom.

In other news:

-We were the Roosevelts for Halloween. AJ=Teddy Roosevelt, I=Mrs. Edith Roosevelt
Ransom, a Teddy bear.

-Andrew had a day off yesterday and it was lovely.

-I could live on squash & sweet potatoes, especially this sweet potato recipe with cinnamon &
garlic that I've made three times in the last week!
-We have really been enjoying the Cosby Show on Netflix lately. It's like lessons in parenting.


Thanks for reading and again, Happy All Saints' Day! What saints have inspired and challenged you?

when Jesus used Coldplay to say "I love you"

Things haven't been specific for awhile. Do you know what I mean by this? I mean, I haven't asked Jesus for anything really specific in awhile and gotten a response back.


Today was different. This afternoon my I was driving my lovely family to the library and as we were on our way in the heart of downtown, listening to the radio,
I spoke aloud to AJ a desire I'd had for a little while that was bursting at the moment.
"You know, I'd really love to hear Coldplay right now. Viva la Vida..."
We were at a stoplight. AJ fiddled with the radio.
Not five seconds after I had spoken, a song from Coldplay's Viva la Vida album began playing. One of my favorites from the album.
We happened to catch the very beginning of the song as it was being played
on a random radio station he tried.
Love.
Jesus was showing me specific love right then.
He didn't have to, but I knew it & felt it and was appalled. Delighted. Blown away.
AJ laughed. I gaped and marveled for seven blocks.
We drove a longer way to the library to hear the entire song.
It's not that Coldplay is so amazing. It's simply that when AJ & I first married we played that album a lot. It brings back memories of being newlyweds and being broke and making things work and the first Christmas together, apart from our families.
Jesus was showing off for me, and He didn't have to, but I loved it.

How has Jesus showed you how He loves you lately?

Apple-ing

Today we went apple-ing at the Poets' farm. Some of us picked apples (Andrew & others). Some of us peeled them, cored them, and cut them up. Some of us stirred the applesauce on the stove. Some of us made apple cider. Some of us heard new music and found a new favorite band (me). Someone else was cuddled and peek-a-booed with and fascinated with the dogs and cats, shrieking at them (Ransom).
There were good talks. Ideas shared, stories told, recipes talked about, music jargon thrown around, Christmas conspiring.
Andrew & I agreed as we left. Our spirits were fed today while we were apple-ing with our adopted Oregon family.

So grateful.

Tonight we ate applesauce, tomorrow we'll break out the apple cider.
This is a beautiful time of year. :)