Our Little California Dude

The whole time Reese was gone, we promised Lane a wetsuit. Daddy got it over the weekend and in my opinion, Lane is the cutest little boogie boarder on the beach. So the last few days we have been riding our bikes down to the beach. The boys have their boogie boards in hand, I my camera and a book. Although I haven't gotten in too much reading, I am too busy watching Lane.

Reese is such a good teacher, Lane learns so much from him!
The waves were great for boogie boarding on Sunday. Lane had a blast and he even wiped out really good once.
Before the wetsuit, Lane liked to boogie board (he calls it buggy boarding), but it was a little cold just in his swimming shorts. With the wetsuit on he is in the water the whole time. This little guy was afraid of the water less than 2 years ago. Now he's in the ocean!

Sorry no pictures of this little girls room. No progress has been made yet, hopefully this week?

sigh......

Today I am breathing a little easier. Our favorite guy is back after being gone for over 4 months. I am so thankful to have him home safely. Now we can really prepare for baby and enjoy our time together. Hopefully we'll have some pictures of baby girls room before too long.

Oh Lane!

Lane's been quite entertaining lately. One day he decided to move the couches and vacuum under them. Great idea! He loves vacuuming with my little Shark vacuum.
The tooth fairy has visited out house twice in the past couple weeks! His first tooth came out on Aug 28th and the second one just came out this week at school. All the kids in his class were so excited that he had lost a tooth and some parents told me that their kids came home and told them. Must of been the highlight of the day :)
I am so glad I got a picture of this. Lane put on the glasses/nose/mustache thing and rode his scooter around. He is a clown and makes me laugh all the time. He acts like he knows it all and always has a big plan in his head. Today he wanted to build a spotlight....he knew exactly how he needed to do it, I on the other hand had no idea. A few days ago he told me he wanted to make a paper mache bowl. So we did, but I had to look up how to do it on the internet. I am so thankful to have him, what a funny guy.

Sew Busy

I've been busy making things for this little girl as well as some other girls in our neighborhood.

I made some iron on fabric things with my cricut, some fusible webbing and fabric.

Burp clothes, bibs and blankets. This girl will be coordinated!

This little gift set for one of our neighbor girls 4th birthday was fun to make! I bought the shirt, cut the flowers out of fabric with my cuttlebug, and ironed them on with fusible webbing. It was fun to also be able to make a matching hairclip for her. I've never done much of this stuff, mostly because I didn't "think pink" very often. But now that I'm in the pink groove it seems like the possibilities are endless!

We have been keeping really busy with school and getting together with friends. Over the weekend we went up to L.A. because my friend Kristen had tickets to Women of Faith. Her husband watched Lane while we got to listen to some awesome speakers and singers. The highlight for me was listening to Natalie Grant sing. She sings "Held" the song we had played at Case's funeral. She performed that song as well as other great songs. It was no coincidence that she was there and that I was invited to go. When I accepted the invitation I didn't even know she would be there. She was awesome and she is pregnant, due just about 5 weeks behind me. The speakers were great, my favorites were Sheila Walsh and Karen James.

Alot of things stood out over the weekend. Sheila Walsh reminded me to love my family and friends fully without putting up a wall to protect myself. After suffering a lot of loss, it would be easy to build walls to protect myself by not giving fully of myself to the people I love. That way if someone hurts me or someone dies I wouldn't be hurt "as bad." But what kind of life would that be, I would never live life fully that way. When Reese and I decided that we would just pray that we would get pregnant in Gods timing, we took a risk, we jumped in with both feet. And when I found out I was pregnant just 2 months after Case died, it was scary. But I have told myself over and over again, if I didn't allow myself to love another child again, I would miss out on life, the life that God has orchestrated and planned for me and created for me to enjoy. So I chose to jump in with both feet, take a risk, trust God with my loved ones, even if there is a possibility that I could lose someone else.

Another thing that stood out to me was a a quote by Shakespeare that one of them made reference to. "Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak whispers the o'er-fraught heart, and bids it break." This is something I have found so true through my journey of grief. It's not always easy to give my sorrow words. I find it hardest to actually speak them to people, it's easier to give my sorrow words through writing. Writing on here and journaling has brought much healing. It gets out all these thoughts in my head, all the feelings that I am not sure what to do with. The conference was great, just what I needed at this time in my life.

Apple Butter

I have had this apple butter recipe for a while now. It comes from the Gooseberry Patch Slow Cooking cookbooklet. When we lived in WA I started canning. I grew lots of tomatoes and Reese's brother had some property down the street where I grew a bigger garden and used a lot of the fruit from his trees for canning. I canned pasta sauce, salsa, applesauce, apple jelly, pears, pear honey, and pickles. I miss canning. I look back fondly on those days when Lane was just a little guy and I would pull him in the wagon over to Uncle Jo's to harvest what we had grown. And his excitement when he would find red tomatoes on our plants at home. Then when he would go to bed at night I would start canning. I would stay up until midnight sometimes, the kitchen would be steaming from the boiling canner. It was so fulfilling to get done and here the "ping" of the lids sealing as I was cleaning up. Some people probably think I am weird (well those of you who know me well enough know that I am in fact weird). I just think that maybe I was born in the wrong decade or century for that matter :)

To get back to my apple butter....I decided this would be a great way to can something without having a garden or fruit trees. I could just buy 4 lbs of apples at the store. It's a crockpot recipe so the stove didn't need to be on for a long time. I started in the morning and by the time I went to bed that night I had 4 jars of apple butter.

The recipe calls for ground cloves which I didn't have, so I just put 15 whole cloves in and fished them out when I was done. Next time I will buy ground cloves...
From whole Granny Smith apples....
to a cooked, deep brown about 10 hours later. It says to use a food mill to separate the pulp and the solids. I pushed it through a colander, picked out the peels and mashed it up by hand. Next time I will buy a food mill.....
Then I returned the juice and pulp to the crock pot along with the sugar and spices. To cook for another hour. I would have liked it to turn out a bit thicker, so next time I might put it on the stove and simmer it for an hour instead of it just on high in the crock pot.
Ahhhh. The fruits of my labor. I had to cut out some apple images from my new Country Life cricut cartridge for the picture. I am strange.
The apple butter is very yummy on an english muffin with peanut butter. I think it would also be awesome warmed up to use instead of syrup for pancakes or french toast.

Harvest Apple Butter

4 lbs apples, cored and quartered 1 tsp ground cloves

1 cup apple cider 1/2 tsp allspice

2 1/2 cups sugar 4 1/2-pint canning jars and lids, sterilized

1 tsp cinnamon

Place apples and cider into a slow cooker; heat on high setting for 10 hours. Sift through a food mill; return pulp to slow cooker, discarding solids. Add remaniing ingredients; stif to mix. Heat, uncovered for one house; fill sterilized pint jars to within 1/4 inch from the top. Wipe rims and secure lids. Process in a hot water bath for 10 minutes. Makes 4 jars.

On another note, I am 29 weeks pregnant. I have been taking a belly shot every 4 weeks, so at 28 weeks I was supposed to take one and never did. Here is my belly shot, one week late.

Lane's First Day of School

Here is Lane's (second) first day of Kindergarten picture. He had a great day. He is excited about his classroom, mainly because they have a lizard and a turtle! They also have some awesome legos that he was really excited to play with. Yesterday I was walking to pick him up and saw his class walking in a line out of the classroom. I spotted Lane right away with his white blonde head sticking out a head taller than all the other kids! Yes, he looks a little "ginormous" next to some of his classmates, but I am confident that this is right where he needs to be.

Now the question is how did I do on Lane's first day? His being at school isn't the hard part, we've done that before. Me being home by myself isn't really the hard part either, I am pretty used to that. The hard part is leaving that school with nothing in my arms, no stroller to push. We went to his orientation on Tuesday, just like we did last year. Last year I had Case in the Baby Bjorn, he was just 3 weeks old. Last year on the first day of school, I pushed Case in the stroller while Lane walked beside it (the picture below has the wheel of the stroller in the left hand corner).

Everything is different now. I have prepared for this, I knew this day was coming, and soon I will have another baby to push in the stroller to school. But my heart aches that I don't have my one year old little Case in the stroller.

I will be honest, it's hard not to compare myself to others. I know that is fruitless, but the sinful, human "me" does it anyway. I watch all of these families with all their kids. Mom's who seem like their biggest problem today is to just find a minute alone while their little one's nap. While I long for a little one year old who won't nap or who is teething, or who wakes up during the night, I would take that over this any day. Why was I the one whose baby died of SIDS? I love my kids and take care of them just as much or more as they do, how is it that my child had to die? Why was our family a statistic? But God keeps reminding me that He has a plan and my life is this way for a reason. On Aug 12th, 7 months after Case went to heaven, I read these words in Jesus Calling:

Do not compare yourself with others, who seem to skip along their life-paths with ease. Their journeys have been different from yours, and I have gifted them with abundant energy. I have gifted you with fragility, providing opportunities for your spirit to blossom in My Presence. Accept this gift as a sacred treasure: delicate, yet glowing with brilliant Light. Rather than struggling to disguise or deny your weakness, allow Me to bless you richly through it.

It's already happened, this is my life, I can't change it. I have no choice but to accept it and allow God to bless me through it.

Knitting!

Everyone always says how much fun girls are to shop for. That is true and I am sure I will get sucked in in no time. But for now, I just can't seem to stop making things for her. I am in luck because she will be in 0-3 and 3-6 months during the winter months so I get to spend less on yarn and the little sweaters get done faster.

This is my first baby sweater. It was super easy and I got it done in like 8 days. I had some leftover yarn and knit a matching hat.
This sweater was really easy after I had completed the first one. They are similar to make but different. And the matching hat...I LOVE!
The flower just buttons on so I will be making some other colored flowers to match a bunch of different outfits. I may not accessorize much, but this little girl will!

I have done some serious nesting since I got back. I loved my time up there, but I kept thinking of all the things I wanted to do when I got back. I have organized two closets, one being a large walk in storage closet! I have organized a few cupboards and decluttered some areas of the house. I also have been working on some fabric projects. And when I am not doing those things I am laying on the couch with my feet up! I have nested so much that when I went to bring Lane's registration paperwork for Kindergarten, I had shredded all my recent utility bills and had no proof of residency! Thankfully I know the lady in the office and told her how "crazy" I've been, she understood. I guess it could be worse, I could have not been able to find the bills in all my clutter.... Needless to say, I am finally being a more productive person. To me that is so refreshing, it drives me crazy to not get things done, and finally I am.