a.rose

It is strange for me to sit down with a blank screen and the intent to write and have no words come.  Especially when last night I could not fall asleep for all the words crowding my head.  Especially when words are what I use to understand myself and what I am feeling. I guess all I really want to ask is that you do two things for me today.  Pray for my family, especially my brother, Dan and his wife, Rachel, and to hold your babies close.  Hold your loved ones tight for as long as they will let you. (I am sorry I cannot explain, to understand what I am talking about please see my sister's beautiful post here .)

I've been going through our photos looking for good ones to include with this year's Christmas Letter.  I came across this one that I took last winter, and it reminded me of the Mystery I Never Solved. Every morning I would come downstairs, look out my back windows, and see new paths in the snow.  I realize that that is not strange, and I think they all must have been bunnies.  We have only ever had one squirrel visit our backyard that I've ever seen, and somehow a large dog did get in once, but other than that I think our snowy visitors were pretty much just bunnies.   Normal animal (bunny) tracks through the snow. Then one morning I came down to see this. The tracks went straight from our side gate to the play house.  Naturally I just assumed it had been Devin, who had for some reason gone out the front door, then around back through the gate, and into the play house, and then somehow... had come out again and back inside... without... leavi...

I have recently learned two things about myself, about life, about the difference between boys and girls, or perhaps just the difference between any two people, and I learned about my own limitations. The first lesson involved a quilt that I am making, a baby blanket, out of flannel.  The flannel was an impulse choice, I was walking around sort of aimlessly, looking at the fabrics, when I saw four colors grouped together in a way that made me happy, and so I took a yard of each color, not sure exactly what I would do with them, but knowing it would satisfy something deep inside me to do it.  Ah, it might have satisfied if only it had been any fabric but flannel - not knowing then what I know now and all. Here are the things I have learned about flannel: 1. It is a stretchy fabric.  It is quite willing to pull and give and wiggle its shape all over the place. You have to be very stern with it, poking and prodding it with pins to show it who is boss. 2. It is also a ...

*Note: I  have added pictures of the bunk beds to this post. In Nebraska we get gale force winds. I guess it is all part of the package deal of living in the prairie with no trees or mountains (and by no trees, obviously I mean as in forests, we have trees in our yard and such.)  The other factor is that Hallie has fairly long hair, for a three year old.  When you combine these two seemingly unrelated items, what you get is a girl who gets very frustrated going outside because the wind whips her hair into a frenzy and she can't see and it gets all tangled and then she cries when I comb it out.  For those of you who are now thinking that I should just be rational and cut all her hair off in a normal three year old cute cut, I just can't. I have only cut her hair once, and I think it will probably take me another two years to get up the courage to do it again. Hence, we've discovered braids.  I mean, I always knew about braids, but since living here I have lea...

I tell Devin everything. That's good in a strong marriage, right?  It occurs to me however, in hindsight, that perhaps he doesn't need to know every single little thing that I hear/read/see/think about. When I was growing up we always had pets.  Cats, dogs, fish, rabbits, ferret, and usually quite a few at a time. I was also sickly as a child.  Like, all the time sick.  I don't know when it first dawned on me and my family that I was allergic to cats and dogs, but at some point we saw the light.  We kept the pets.  I love cats and dogs, and wouldn't have wanted to get rid of them just because I had a sniffly nose and bad cough.  I had always had those things, I didn't really know what life was like without them, so I didn't see what the big deal was. Then I moved away to go to college, and lived cat and dog free for four years.  And while I still got sick a normal amount, for the most part I could breathe.  I had no idea how effortle...

Having spent most of his adult life living in apartments, with little to no need for powerful power tools, the extent of Devin's selection of tools was fairly limited.  I had a small collection of tools of my own when we got married, my dad had bought me an electric screwdriver, another some sort of screwdriver, and my mother had bought me a set of small tools including two types of pliers, a wrench, a hammer, and yet another screwdriver.  This set was painted.  With flowers.  Devin mainly tried to avoid using these tools. When we bought this house and moved in, Devin keenly felt the absence of a drill.  I would hear him saying things like, "If only I had a drill, my life would be complete."  In all honesty, he has absolutely never said anything like that, but if you take out the female sentimental undertones you can get the gist of what he was saying. Enter Father's Day 2010.  We had a gift card from Sears, courtesy of the nightmare experience of...

 If you had knocked on our door at dinner time on Monday evening, and if we welcomed you in (of course we would have welcomed you in, silly) you might have noticed the following things. The pumpkin pie almost certainly would have caught your attention first, because of the amazing aroma wafting from it.  Hallie's favorite book right now is called "The Little Green Witch" and it is a Halloween version of the Little Red Hen, wherein the little green witch finds pumpkin seeds, goes through the whole thing by herself, and ends up eating the pumpkin pie all by herself.  Well, first she turns the ghost, the gremlin, and the bat into little red hens.  Every time we read it Hallie asks me why she does that.  I tell her that they should have helped.  Anyway, ever since this book became number one on her list she has wanted to go to a pumpkin patch and get her very own pumpkin for pie-making.  We made it out to Martin's Hillside Orchard (an orchard,...

I know very little about art. Even less about photography.  I know that there is an abstract movement in art, but is there one in photography? Devin was clearing the table from dinner a few nights ago, and when he picked up Hallie's plate he said, "Honey! Look what Hallie made with her dinner!" and laughing I told him to run and get the picture, because she had created some form of art, so it seemed to us.  For dinner that night she had carrots dipped in ranch, part of a jam sandwich, and berries that finally ripened in our backyard.  From these elements, can you see what she crafted?  Or are Devin and I losing it? Hope this brought a SMILE to your face, like it did to ours. Have a great day!

Sometimes I really panic.  (No surprise to any of you, I'm sure.)  I get stressed, and worried, and anxious and stumble around in a confused state of mind consumed by this thought that has taken over my being and made it impossible for me to focus on anything else.  Right now the disabling concern is that this state of being that I am currently in, physically, not mentally, is permanent. In one part of my brain I know, of course, that the headaches (I got one every day this week), and the backaches, and the nausea (every morning still, although I do not vomit THANK GOODNESS), and the acid reflux (a new nightly problem), and the sheer, absolute, bone numbing exhaustion are pretty much all neat side effects of making a new person.  That side of my brain knows that in a few short (relatively speaking) months I will feel like myself again, healthy and strong and able to do what I want with my body. And yet, in another side of my brain, I am terrified.  What if ...

I never thought I would be one of those families that has some themed system for naming their children.  I don't think there is anything wrong with it, I just never thought that I would be coordinated enough to pull it off.  So imagine my surprise when people keep asking me if we are going to "stick with the H's", because, shocker though this may be, we did not do it on purpose.  It is kind of fun the way it has turned out, though. My parents did have a system for naming their children. As I understand it, my dad picked the names for the boys, and chose the names of his two best friends. My mother picked the names for the girls, and picked names of friends that she liked (the names, not the friends. Of course she liked her friends.)  She wanted to go with Patricia for either my sister or I, but my dad said no. So, we ended up with Peter, Daniel, Amy, and Michelle.  Then they each gave us a middle name beginning with an H, perhaps because both of my parents ha...