Sunday is Fun day. 6/365

Sundays are usually long days for us, but always nice. It's the day we wake up early and actually comb our hair and then go to Church. We haven't made any new friends since moving back from China and since we live a bit out side the nearest town we don't get out much. But Sundays are fun because we get to go out and see people. Even if we don't really talk to them.


We've been going to church at the local Catholic church, St. Patrick's. It's a really cute little church and the priest is so warm and friendly and sincere. It's taken Baby a little bit of time getting used to having to sit still and be quiet in church, since in China we met at our house and baby was aloud to crawl around and talk to every one, But she's been so good. The nicest part about going to this church, though, is that people really love kids and they don't mind if babies make a little (or some times a lot) of noise. Parents are never glared at or asked to step out side and we are never made to sit behind some stupid window in a separate "cry room". If babies make noise most people just ignore it, or occasionally smile at the baby and just enjoy that they are there. The Priest never gets annoyed or distracted. He just keeps on taking and occasionally talks to the kids in the congregation.

We haven't really talked to or met any one at church so far. But we're really enjoyed just being there and basking in the freedom and reverence of the service.

This Sunday was especially fun because after church we went home and William made fried catfish and Aunt Mae came over! We love spending time with Aunt Mae. She lives in town and she's so much fun to hang out with and talk to. And Baby Bonita loves her. I think it's because Aunt Mae talks to her and laughs at her jokes.

Fried Cat fish is a local specially in this area and William has gotten really good at making it. He fries it in corn meal and he secret seasoning. Aunt Mae brought the vinegar coleslaw. or "slaw" as they call it. It's made with vinegar and cabbage and is served cold. It's wonderful.
Usually, when Aunt Mae comes over she leaves right after we eat, but today she hung out and talked with us and watch a Baby Signing Time video with Bonita Rose and even went outside and looked at the goats with us. It was really nice having her stay so long and spend time with us. (did I mention we don't get out much or meet many people?) (actually she's pretty funny and we like talking to her )

Then it was nap time. William's been reading a book about dragons to me and baby. Baby loves it when he reads to us and loves falling asleep to his reading.

After our lovely nap we decided it was time to make Buckeyes! I've been wanting to make this since Christmas but we just never got around to it.

Buckeye's are Chocolate covered peanut butter balls and they are so so yummy. It was really fun making them all together because they are super easy and every one can help.

Even baby helped! Here's a picture of her laying out the papers for them.
William looks very cool mixing the peanut butter and sugar.
Then we rolled the peanut butter into balls and put them on the paper. Baby was very good at helping put the balls on the paper. Until she decided to put one in her mouth and discovered their sugary goodness.

We all had a lot of fun dipping the peanut butter balls in melted chocolate after they had sat in the freezer for a while. We even had some chocolate left over and made some chocolate dipped peppermint sticks. Then we remembered we had a Mickey Mouse ice cube tray. I'm really happy with how the Mickeys turned out.

William even put little candy hearts on some of the buckeyes. Aren't they cute!
To top off our eventful, fun Sunday we all watched a new show on TV called The Cape. My Dad had called earlier this week to tell us about it and thought we'd really like it. So I taped it and we finally got around to watching it. It's basically a comic book super hero story. I love how well my Dad knows our geeky taste. We all really enjoyed the show. It helped we had some great buckeyes to snack on while watching it.

So that was our Sunday. It was really fun and relaxing. Now I'm going to go eat a buckeye.

5/365 Cleaning up, then date night

Today (Saturday) we took down the Christmas tree and put most of the Christmas decorations away. It's always sad for me when we have to put Christmas away.

But we had such a great Christmas this year and got to do all the wonderful Christmas things that we haven't been able to do in the past 3 years because we were in China. The best part was being able to spend it with family.

After we got the tree all put away William took me to the store for a little mini date and cheered me up by taking me to the Christmas sale isle. Then we spent some time reading the Valentine's Day cards.

I'm looking forward to Valentine's Day now and I think I'll even try to decorate for it a little. Plus reading funny cards always cheers me up.

Baby Bonita got to stay home with her Nana and take a long bath. Baby loves it when Nana gives her a bath because she gets to take as long as she wants and Nana lets her splash all she wants.

After we got home from the store Baby was in a really good laughing mood. Here's a picture of her playing under her blanket with her Daddy.

Doesn't she have the most perfect smile?!

4/365 Camp Fire cooking

William is still burning off the stumps out in the back pasture so we decided to take advantage of the open fire. We went to the store and bought some amazing Angus beef hot dogs, yams, and marshmallows and hiked out to William's fire.

William wrapped the yams in foil and buried them in the coals.
While we waited for the yams we roasted our hog dogs. They were so yummy!
Even Baby enjoyed the hot dogs and yams. She also really enjoyed that Yogi came out and sat with us while we enjoyed out dinner.

Here's an awesome picture of mom with all the hog dog roasting essentials.
Isn't she so cute!

3/365

Today was burning day. William has been spending most of his days tearing out stumps on the property and today he started burning some of what he's been digging up.


Baby and Nana and I got all bundled up for our sunset walk in the woods and went to admire William's work.

Evening Walk 365/2

It's snowed here for the past two days and I hadn't been out of the house so right before it got really dark we went for an evening walk. Sammy the cat followed us down the road.

It's really wonderful to be able to talk peaceful walks any time we want. And to have crisp clean air. Everything smells so fresh and clean and earthy here. When the starts came out we could see hand fulls of tiny sparkling diamonds where ever the clouds parted. Not at all like shanghai where on a very clear night William and I would stand in the ally and count the stars. The most we ever counted was 12.

365/1

Happy 1/11/11 every one!

Today is a special and exciting day. Today is the day I start my new Year's Resolution to do a 365 project.
Every day I will take a picture and post it.

Here is a picture of baby with all the jams that her Grandma sent us. She unwrapped them all and then had fun playing with them under the Christmas tree.

I will also be posting my 365 pictures to my Flickr account and I may start a new blog for them.
But for now I'm posting it here.

Happy New Year Every one!

Krogers

Grocery shopping is a lot more culture shocking than you’d think

By Michelle and William

(picture borrowed from the internet)

This past summer we got to go "home" to the US for a wedding or two. It's always exciting to go "home". We always look forward to familiar food, and ordering that food in English. We look forward to things being predictable and to not walking around in a permanent state of confusion. We look forward to clean air and to driving.

During the course of wedding festivities we were given the easy task to drive a mile down the road and get snacks for a flower arranging event with the bridal party.

So off we went, a quick trip to the grocery store.

First of all the parking lot was huge. We didn't even know where to park because there were so many options. We don't have parking lots in China. Just allies between buildings that people try to cram their cars into and than have to crawl out their passenger side door because they’ve parked right up against the wall.

We walked up to the store and a door big enough an elephant could walk through slid open before we even got there.

We were immediately hit with clean crisp air with hints of fresh flowers, baked goods and clean vegetables. But mostly, just the smell of clean.

Then, the open space. Holy Crap! There was so much open space in this place. I could drive a Shanghai car in here, the aisles were so wide.

We didn't even know where to start so we wandered over to the produce section. The vegetables were neatly stacked in pyramids of green apples and oranges and peaches. Piles of leafy greens smelled as fresh as rain. The red and yellow peppers almost sparkled they were so clean. Then there was the packaged and pre-cut produce. Salad in bag any one?

Everything smelled so good and ripe and clean and was so well organized!

I didn’t have to dig through rotten fruit to find the good stuff. I didn’t have to get my hands dirty from the mud clinging to the vegetables, and there were no live chickens in crates waiting to be killed for dinner while I marveled at all the salad options.

The produce section alone was the size of the entire grocery store where we shop in Shanghai.

We knew we had to get food for everyone and be back at our event in under an hour but it was all so overwhelming. I know you don't believe me, but have you seen the rows and rows of breakfast cereals? We had forgotten most of those even existed.

Next we got lost on the juice aisle. Have you ever marveled at all the different juice options we have in the US? There's apple juice and cranberry juice and grape juice and a bazlilian other options. And that's just the single flavor juices! Then they start combining them into apple-grape or apple-cranberry or cranberry-grape… so many choices! On top of all that, each flavor comes in three or four different brands and labels.

We couldn’t decide on just one juice so we got a few. I did notice that while there were so many more flavors than I’d ever remembered seeing before there were a few missing that we often see in China. Like Aloe Vera juice or mixed fruit with tomato juice or lychee fruit juice. I was not sad at all to be missing these juices. They are nasty.

I could go on and on about all the overwhelming things we saw that day; but let me just say, Dear Lord the cheese aisle. Cheese is NOT popular in China. They think it smells bad, tastes bad and they say foreigners smell like it. Living in Shanghai we are lucky enough to have some cheese options, but when I saw the cheese and meat section in the United States Kroger Grocery store I was giddy. Literally Giddy.

There were several kinds of cream cheeses and spread-able cheeses and sliced cheeses. Brie and gouda and swiss cheese. Hard cheese and soft cheese. And did I mention there were NO live chickens waiting to be killed for dinner and smelling the place up?

There was so much I wanted to look at and try and BUY!

William was overwhelmed enough to be stunned speechless but mumbled something about time and cash and limited supply.

When we finally made it to the cash register we had way more food than we needed (those ridiculously large shopping carts came in handy) and spent way more than we planned. But we had cheese! And several juices, and ice cream, and a bunch of other packaged and overly processed things we didn't need to be eating but were totally excited for.

When we checked out someone put our food into plastic bags for us instead of having to do it ourselves. Boy, were they liberal with those plastic bags. I think one of the bags only had one thing in it!

In China plastic bags are not free so everyone carries their own shopping bag and you have to put your own food in it. If you do have to buy a bag you try to get as much as you can in it so you don't have to buy another one.

We then rolled our very handy shopping cart to our car and put all the food in the trunk and drove the very short mile back to our hotel. I felt so spoiled not to have walk back carrying all that stuff home like we usually do.

Later on that week after all the festivities and craziness of the weddings were over and we had some free time my mom asked me if there was anything I wanted to do before we left.

"Yes, actually," I said, "I'd really like to go to the grocery store and just walk up and down every aisle."

Who do you write like?

So there's this web site that you can submit samples of your writing and it tells you what famous Author your style most resembles.

I entered a few blog posts and these were the authors that came up the most.

I write like
Kurt Vonnegut

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

I write like
James Joyce

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

My mom says it's because Joyce is descriptive and Vonnegut is "brash".
I wasn't really sure what she meant by that, so I looked it up on Dictionary.com.

brash

–adjective

1. impertinent; impudent; tactless: a brash young man.

2. hasty; rash; impetuous.

3. energetic or highly spirited, esp. in an irreverent way; zesty: a brash new musical.

new

Um. I'm going to go with, she was calling me "zesty" rather than unthinking and "impertinent"

Incidentally, I entered two samples of William's writings and they both came up as H. P. Lovecraft.

We decided it was because his writing sounds like early 19th century writing rather than because he's weird and creepy.

Any way, I guess it could have been worse.

So who do you write like?

Happy World Breastfeeding Week!!

This week (Aug 1-7) is World Breastfeeding Week!
I wish I had something profound to say about it.

I love breastfeeding my baby.
I love holding my baby close and I love the communication, and attachment we have with one another.



I love that she needs me and I need her.


I love when she gazes into my eyes and we just stare at each other. Silently taking in the details of each others eyes and the love and trust there.

I even love her little pinches, kicking leg and occasional bite.

I love laying next to my baby at night and hearing her gulp down her night snacks as I drift back to sleep.

Yes. There are wonderful, irrefutable health benefits in Breastfeeding. For both Baby and Mother.

There are facts and studies that will tell you it's the best thing for your baby.
There are facts and studies that tell you why you should do it for "long time" (two years in the life time if a person is not long.. but whatever)

But really. I do it because I love it. And so does baby.