…you would see:

• an expectant mama who can’t bend over her pregnant belly without doing something resembling the squats with a hookie-pokie-and-ya-turn-yourself-around.
• a face that is raw and tired from incessant nose blowing for 3 days (and not sleeping because her and her Hubby sneeze/blow/cough all night long)
• hair that has not come out of it’s rubber band pony tail in 4-5 days (I swear, there’s a female under this mess SOMEWHERE)
• house that is full of scattered packing projects and chaos, dishes in sink, leftovers on stove, oversoaked soaked beans on counter, etc
• laptop that has visited craigslist in the last few days WAY more times than should ever be considered normal
• a mother who has no idea what happened to her normally sweet, energetic boy who has become an attention starved, out of control child a few hours each day to blow off steam
• a wife who makes her Hubby pack boxes and make trips back and forth to new place, despite that he is sick and couldn’t even work these last two days (hey, love is sacrificial! — and I LOVE you too, baby!)
• a cat who wonders why the heck he keeps getting put in the crate while the big wide open door taunts him to come out and play

in a nutshell: an exhausted – yet truly content – slightly ill – pleasantly pooped family!!!
We spend our first night at the new place tomorrow, if all goes well. Finish up moving on Sunday after church, come back next week to clean and paint (back to work for both of us too). Will write again when we get our head above water!

Well, it might have taken the last grueling 9 hours to complete 6 craigslist postings and e-file my taxes, with a major sinus cold coming on and a preschooler who would JUST NOT QUIT!

BUT! I must have been way off with my paperwork when I first figured out my taxes. If there are no mistakes, our refund (direct deposit within 2 weeks!), is supposed to be nearly $2,000 more than we thought! I’m hesitant to get excited about this, but it could just mean that we can pay for the rest of this birth (or at least some of it, we are also behind on some bills so we’d have to catch up a bit there too, lol). ANYWAY, 9 hours of doing that will be worth it if that’s truly what we get back! I also sold a few things to craigslisters so we’ve got a little money for a u-haul this weekend if we need to get one. Woot!

Thank you all so much for all the Happy Birthday messages and stuff! This headache is pretty bad so I’ve kinda avoided anything but essentials today, though I plan to work a bit later (yes, you-know-who-you-are, I’ll get to those assignments you’ve sent yesterday and today- I promise! lol)

Ok, I’m going to make some tea now and figure out where my brain is. (P.S. I smell chocolate from the kitchen! Yee haw!)

http://www.mosaicportland.org/sermon/special-guest/
It was a fun night- if you missed it you can listen now!

BTW – So far for my birthday I have a sinus cold coming on and I’m selling a bazillion things on Craigslist (which is always SO much fun!) and working. Yay!

I hear Hubby has a little something special for me later though, something that involves making a cake with Lil’ E, so I’m super excited!

Tomorrow is by birthday, 25 on the 25th at that!
But it is also the start of lent. And I am a bit perplexed. And when I’m perplexed, I ramble, and it comes out like a big giant vomit of thoughts. So here goes:

I’ve never really gotten what lent was all about. Like, in theory, yes, I know what it is. But personally, in my heart, I haven’t gotten it. I admit this.

Last year I “picked” meat to refrain from for 40 days. This was easy because I never ate much meat anyway. (Of course, when some darling friends -ahemAaronandJoelle- came over with a dinner of pulled pork to share with us just a few days after the start of lent, I completely forgot. Not a good way to get started!)

But, seriously, I find myself again this year going, well, I guess I’ll give this another try. Maybe I’m waiting for something much too magical and mysterious to happen. Maybe I treating it too much like a diet and less like a spiritual thing. Maybe I expect to learn some amazing new lesson and I just, well, don’t.

I want to do it, though. I want to try again. I just can’t decide what to “pick”. I wanted to pick something that would be a challenge and yet something that would also be practical. The common one’s would be too easy (no tv, don’t buy anything new, don’t eat meat, etc). I don’t really have any vices I can think of that would truly be difficult to give up. I thought a few weeks ago that coffee would be a perfect one! But then I had been reading about how caffeine makes it more difficult for you and the fetus to absorb nutrients, so I haven’t had coffee in weeks and its no big deal, we just drink lots of yerba matte instead. And I need to switch to red raspberry tea soon anyway.
So you see, I need help! I have no idea what to do with lent this year. I’m moving and about to have a baby, so it can’t be giving up things that are actually GOOD for me (nutritionally or peace-of-mind things… like Lost, blogging, or knitting, lol). But I can’t think of what I do that bad for me that would really be difficult to do without.

I knew some one who shaved their head to give up their “beauty” for lent. Since I don’t wash my hair and its 99% of the time in a pony tail with a headband, its not exactly my idol.

Then I’m wondering if I’m going about this all wrong. Maybe since I don’t have any vices to “lay at the alter”, I should instead ADD something to my daily routine for the next 40 days? There are plenty of things that would be difficult for me to do each day, both with regards to my forgetfulness as well as my already spread thin late pregnancy existence. And I hesitate to make any rigid commitments for the sake of lent only – such as “pray for 30 minutes each day”- because then I second-guess my whole motive for praying (not to mention I’m treating it like a sacrifice, or worse, a discipline like cleaning my dishes). If I could pinpoint something I could do each day relationally, something that draws me closer to Jesus and incorporates service to others, I think I’d be on the right track. Maybe it is something as mundane as doing all the dishes for Hubby who usually does them for me. I don’t know. I do know I hate doing dishes. With a passion. So it would be a BIG deal for me!

I’m going to keep thinking and praying about this and hope to get some idea of what to do in the next 24 hours. If you have any ideas, please comment!

Lacey shot some good ones while we walked around it yesterday – check them out!

I’ve reworked our budget according to some new figures, including lower rent and some utilities, sharing food and bulk items with our home-sharing family, so on. I am delighted to see our budget starting to look more realistic, and with positive numbers showing up at the end! With a low guess of my monthly income, we should have enough to put a little in a savings account (WHAT? Did she just say SAVINGS? What’s THAT?), a little to give away to those in need, and $350 a month for the birth (if it isn’t all covered by April, I’ll owe another 350 each month until its paid off, so I’m planning for that now).

I think my biggest challenge will be in keeping grocery and food costs down. I currently have our limit (family of 3, one pregnant) at $300 per month. I want to drastically reduce my need for the weekly grocery trip, instead ordering my reoccuring items in bulk from Azure Standard through a local portland parenting group and splitting a large Organics to You bin. I still need weekly items from the grocery store, (milk, eggs, occasional “treat” ) but I read on another blog that when trying to reduce the need for the grocery store trip, limit yourself to $10/per person/ per week, so that you don’t spend more than 50 bucks more than you budget for each month. Our limit will be a little higher than that, but it’s a good place to start.

Cup&Saucer yummies




You know you’re moving when your living room looks like this!

You know you’re having a baby girl when she owns more clothes UNBORN than your 3 year old boy does!

Lacey and I went out to turn in our lease yesterday, had a meal at the Cup and Saucer Cafe on Denver, and walked around the new place a bit, scoping out plans for the yard. There’s an ideal corner for the chickens that we will keep fenced in so they can roam a bit but not get into the veg beds and clothes drying lines. There’s a big ol tree that I can’t wait to rig a tree swing to for the boys. The front yard looks like it might have a great sunny spot for a small square bed for herbs, but we really can’t tell until we move in and see the sunlight throughout the day. A funny moment when both of us stood in front of the house looking up at it like it was one of the 7 great wonders of the world , took a deep breath, and tore ourselves away to get back to the reality of packing and moving and dealing with the “past” before we can move on.

We are starting to think that Hubby and I can have us in boxes/bags by Saturday morning, and the landlord is good with us getting keys then, so if we can get a few guys together and a truck or two, we are hoping to get most of our moving, if not all, done on Saturday. That will give me a week, at least, to get back over here and clean, Hubby can paint the kitchen, etc etc. The sooner we get our current place move-out ready, the sooner we can get back our hefty security deposit, so we are motivated! Yesterday we rolled up carpets, spot cleaned the rugs, replaced a cracked medicine cabinet mirror with a $5 piece found at the Rebuilding Center (holy cow- awesome!), boxed up Ethan and Verity’s clothes, Ethan’s toys, etc. Our room is next – not looking forward to it. Kitchen will be last for me and tv/electronics will be last for Hubby (Friday!).

Pregnancy is going really well, btw. Verity is super duper active, keeps me up at night a lot but mostly its fine. My anemia seems to be doing better, but my leg cramping is worsening. I’m taking cal-mag citrate but its at the point that if I flex my BUTT muscle while sleeping, it will get a charlie horse. (Who knew you could get a charlie horse in your buttocks?!) I know its the last stretch that is the hardest, so I’m very grateful that moving will be underway and finished by the time she is due. I’m excited for my sister, who is due in just two weeks, with her first! I can hardly believe it!

Ta ta for now…

I find…
– my debit card pin number (finally!)
– the 30 christmas letters and cd of pictures from 2007 that never got mailed out
– the order form for Lil’ E’s birth certificate (it’s been floating around for 3.5 years)
– bill statement from that last 8 months or so (we pay everything online – I HATE getting bills in the mail!)
– a pack of batteries
– “Caring for Your Chickens” printed e-book
– many, many, many To-Do lists and assignment instructions for work
– a magazine clipping featuring “how to fold a cloth diaper”
– Lil’ E’s immunization card from the hospital when he was born (shot nazi’s!) that I got out for him to start preschool, which he never did. (later began “playschool” – no immunization records asked of me)
– A picture of Hubby and I when we were engaged, about a week before we got married. I feel kinda sad/triggered by this.
– A picture of Hubby and I, one year married, at the mall on Santa’s lap with our little Chihuahua dog, Chica. Also a bit of a trigger.
– A picture of Hubby and I with our 5 month old son in front of the Christmas tree. Another trigger.
– Our wedding VHS (2002). (Pretty much anything relating to our relationship prior to 8 months ago is a trigger for me still. I call things a trigger that give me a bit of anxiety in my heart and my stomach flip/flops a bit and my eyes glaze over… that kinda thing.)

Now that the pile is separated into “trash”, “to file”, “to pay”, “office supplies”, etc piles, I am exhausted and wonder why I started this project… 15 minutes ago! (I know, what a lazy bum!)

Sitting down for a coffee break now.

This day would have had wayyyyy more scores on the things-not-working-out list had it not been for you three!

People’s- For having the fabulous little co-op in SE Portland from which I can buy local, organic groceries at prices often allowing my moolah to ALSO be sustainable. And for the little shopping carts so Lil’ E can help me shop, and for the kids corner when he doesn’t want to. For the locally made nutritional yeast (score! it’s delish) and for .99 cent/lb local/organic apples and navel oranges. For carrying local raw goat’s milk. And bulk bees wax for 6.49/lb. I could go on.

Bella Stella- for the great resale clothes, slings, and more, but more importantly, today, for showing me up to a room full of large boxes and telling me to have AS MANY AS I CAN CARRY! After getting lost driving around in b.f.e. outer SE Portland to get boxes that were no longer there, I could have KISSED you!

Tiny’s Coffee – For the kombucha and veggie sandwich on wheat that sustained me while I ran around running errands on a chilly, windy day.

These establishments DESERVE the support of us Portlander’s! Bravo.

I guess frequenter’s (all five of you) are hearing some western music and seeing dustballs roll across the screen when you visit lately!

SORRY!

I have been pretty busy with work and life. This time of month get’s a little crazy, if I can help it, because it comes close to invoicing time and I need all the hours I can get. It’s fun though, I actually like working a full work day. I don’t like the dishes or laundry that pile up (but not as much as hubby, since he does them anyway), and I don’t like the PBS Kids that stays on for way too long, and I don’t like being broke (but what else is new!?) but especially not right before my birthday (for my birthday, I get to pick something I can do without for 40 days! Nothing says “Happy Birthday” like the first day of Lent!)… okay, that’s plenty of “I don’t like”’s!

We have been generously donated a vehicle for the weekend to try to find some moving boxes, yay! We get the house keys on the 1st, which is next NEXT SUNDAY! Jimminy Cricket.

At the moment, my cat is looking at me like he is going to eat me. Even I get creeped out by the occasional kitty-crazy-eye look. I’m going to grab some grub and get back to work, while hubby works at a convention today until noon. I am going to really really really try to let him do the packing this time. Every time we’ve ever moved, I did all the work except the manual labor for large pieces of furniture. I didn’t trust him to organize boxes in some sort of orderly way that would ensure we don’t lose things and we can actually unpack half-way civilized. But, I realized, there is no time like the present to LEARN (both myself and him!). My 32 week pregnant self is not about to pull out my back packing boxes. So have at it, honey! (I think he’s secretly excited for the opportunity to prove himself )

We picked a name for our community house – resorting to ye ol’ neighborhood name: “The Kenton House”. Read more about the Kenton neighborhood here. I’ll probably get a blog up and running for us here in the next week so we can document our moving in process.

I’ve started knitting wool diaper covers/soakers in my “spare” time (har har). I’m sleeping better but not long enough because there is so much to do.

Ok, I seriously can’t think of anything else to share and this is going no where fast.

More mid-week when I get some work projects done!

To update you-

Last night I did a cup of warmed goat’s milk with raw honey, cinnamon, and in case it helps with sleep, cardamom like NeoHippieMama uses. This was about an hour before I figured I’d be sleeping.
I started to get a little sleepy so I finished up my work, then took the cal/mag, a small glass of water with 30 drops of Skullcap, lathered myself with natural lavender almond oil, put a few drops of lavender on my bed, and just before bed dissolved 1 dose of coffea (for my hyperactive brain) and 1 dose of Arnica (for my sore back) under my tongue. I had no trouble falling asleep (I think it was around 11?)

At 3am, Lil’ E came in to tell us his alarm had turned off (where does he get these things?!) and I realized I’d been in the same position, sound asleep, for 4 hours! So I turned once at 3am while Hubby got Lil’ E back to bed. Then Hubby’s alarm went off at 6am and I turned again. I woke up when a friend called, 7:30am, with a pretty much perfect night’s sleep (for a mom!).

So yay! I’m gonna keep this up and hope I keep sleeping like this because my body and mind feel super relaxed right now, which is SWEET relief.