I’m glad we went to DTS
so that Joey could graduate and have
access to their job board which would connect him with
Faith Church in
Indiana
and Jonathan Baker, who is
married to Janna.
One time they invited us over for a spur of the moment dinner of
pizza
which was the best I have ever eaten, outside of
Coal Vines in Dallas;
GO EAT THEIR MARGHERITA PIZZA NOW IF YOU LIVE WITHIN A 45 MILES RADIUS.
But back to Janna’s pizza, today she
gave me the recipe:
I made it
and behold, it was good.
I got my hairs cut this afternoon. I could not handle my hair touching my shoulders, so I walked into Mia & Maxx and said CHOP IT ALL OFF.
Two inches and a whole bunch of layers later, it was back to the way I liked it when we lived in Texas. (I have been having communication problems when I’ve been trying out new stylists here. It’s probably my own fault.)
To make matters even more tricksy, I didn’t tell Joey what I was doing and I wasn’t quite home yet when arrived from work. He came out front to meet me and said, “WOAH, you got your hair cut. It looks nice.” And in the very next breath, “Aren’t you happy that I noticed right away?”
After dinner, which was a totally delicious meal of panko baked Tilapia with a (not what you would call fat-free) herbed cream sauce we both love, we decided we ought to take another picture of my recent expansion. Because who knows when I’ll have this child and then maybe I can tie my own shoes again! That would be ridiculous. I might even wear socks if it meant I could tie my own shoes. (I don’t like socks. They make me feel claustrophobic and stressed out.)
So. Here we are.
I look at that picture and I wonder why I’m not uncomfortable except at night. Who knows.
And I know you’re probably coveting the sweet drapes we have hanging from the window in the left of the picture (I mean, I would be) but NO you can’t have them. They were discontinued so now they’re like gold plated drapes instead of just regular old drapes.
Joey also decided to take a picture of me facing the camera, which I normally don’t like to do since I am nearing Orca Whale size. However, this one is kind of awesome.
I just feel like this picture sums up my entire day.
And no, you still can’t have the drapes.
Sometime this week, I’m not even sure what day, we Finished The Nursery. Yes, that phrase requires capital letters because it was a major event and is worthy of capitalization.
Perhaps you are interested in seeing some pictures? Again, I must apologize for the quality of these pictures. Joey has ordered the piece to fix the screen on my camera, and until then…I still can’t tell what I’m doing or, like, turn the flash on/off and basic stuff like that. But I can look through the little viewfinder (which is kind of fuzzy, unfortunately) and push the magic button, so that’s what I did here.
And now: a panoramic tour.
This bookshelf was never intended to go in The Baby’s room, but we wound up not using it as part of our computer desk and stashed it in this room for awhile. Then we got to thinking and decided we liked it and weren’t going to move it. So there.
The bamboo decal was originally two smaller pieces of bamboo, but Joey had an idea to cut them out and pieced them together to make it look like one longer stalk. Impressive? I THINK YES.
The changing table was a gift from Joey’s parents, and Joey put it together in just about no time at all, considering how many pieces it had. The thing also weighs literally 100 lbs. It’s crazy.
I know you’re thinking, WHAT IS WITH THAT RIDICULOUSLY CUTE PANDA?!? And we do too, just about every time we see her. I had fun putting the flower on her head.
And we’re ready to roll with a cute changing table cover, cloth diapers, covers and wipes and Bordeaux Butt Paste. Down below which you can’t see and probably don’t care about is the wet diaper pail. Not to worry. They will be washed often and more than likely the room will smell less diapery with these cloth dealies than with disposables.
I KNOW. Shocking. (It just seems so much grosser, but really it’s not. It’s less grosser.)
The crib came from my Grandparents Laird’s house. We, um, sanded it down and painted it white to match the decor.
But let’s not get all distracted by the fact that we sanded down something that was wood and then painted it. Let’s all…look at the pandas! And the cherry blossoms!
Now wasn’t that more fun?
Ugh, sorry for the out of focusness in this picture, but I just had to show you my Little Brown Chair. This was my rocking chair when I was a little girl. I rocked all my dollies to sleep in it, and I used to polish it every weekend. It clearly could use some polishing because it has been downstairs at my parents’ house for awhile. In fact, I think I may polish it after I’m done with this.
Here’s MY rocking chair! This was a gift from my parents, and it’s way comfortable. Sometimes I come in here and sit in it because it’s easier to breathe sitting in this right now than it is on our couch.
And here again we have the bamboo that Joey cut all up to re-assemble to look like this. I think he did a fantastical job.
The silk embroidered pandas we brought back with us from China. And then broke the frames because one fell off the wall in Texas, so we had to come up with a creative way to re-frame them since they were odd sizes. Joey found some black-stained bamboo frames at Michaels, so we did a floating mount, which I think turned out kind of cool looking. He wins again.
The rug was the one we basically stole from Pottery Barn because it was a floor model and they didn’t love it anymore. Good thing we did.
Oh, and those curtains? I thought they’d darken the room a little more than they do, but we still love them. They are raw silk panels (not lined, unfortunately) from Pottery Barn that a.) we found on uber clearance and b.) we got to use Pottery Barn rewards to purchase. So…they were basically free. WIN.
Then one of us, I’m not sure which…probably me, had the “brilliant” idea to use bamboo poles as curtain rods. Observe:
That’s all well and good and everything, bamboo poles are cheap. Like $3.00 per pole. It’s the anchoring them to the wall and suspending the curtains from them that is the part that will kick you in the hiney. So, any of you who are thinking of doing that? Yeah…factor in the cost of mounting them to the wall before you get all excited and run out and buy some and then remove them from the packaging so they are then non-returnable.
I’m just saying.
We’re 38 weeks on Wednesday, and I think we’ll meet our goal of being 100% ready by then! I know we’ve been on berserk mode getting things ready, but we have been in ONE BIG LONG TRANSITION since we found out we were pregnant and then moved here. We just wanted to actually BE ready so we didn’t get caught off guard. I’m looking forward to having a few weeks to relax with Joey and not have to think about tying up loose ends.
You know what’s funny? Now that we’re ready she’ll probably be born on Monday instead of waiting for Thanksgiving. She can’t be born tomorrow because I have to sing with Krista.
But after church I guess she could decide to come.
So…this may only be funny to me and Joey, but I just received the most hilarious i-tem in my inbox this morning. Back a few months ago, I did some recording on an acoustic hymns album that may or may not be released in the next six months. Frankly, I have no idea because I always forget to ask.
Anyway, one of the songs I sang was Praise To The Lord. Maybe you know it, maybe you don’t. If you don’t, you should. And…you’re about to hear the first stanza. Well, if you push play down there on the music thingy at the bottom then you will.
Where this all went hilarious (well, to me, anyway) was I guess my friend was up late mixing and got tired and ran the first stanza of just my vocals through a T-Pain app and, well…now we have J-Pain.
It maketh me laugh. And, while I don’t generally post musical tidbits of myself on this here blog…I just have to do it with this. The hilarity level is too high. Allegedly the final version sounds “better than this”, but I’m really not sure how that is possible.
906 miles, 2.5 months, 1 temporary residence and we are finally moved in to our house! It is weird.
We’re unpacking boxes that were packed, in some cases, three months ago. I’m pulling things out that I put in while packing with friends; I am remembering where we were, what we were talking about, and I keep getting all sentimental and teary-eyed. Sometime I just miss Dallas because even though Joey and I both grew up in Iowa, Dallas is what feels like home. We had to do more growing up there, in some ways, than we did in Iowa.
I didn’t really get “homesick” much until we started getting so much closer to actually moving in and getting reunited with our things and our memories. And ya know, it’s not bad. I’m glad to be here in Indy, I really am. I just wondered when I’d get homesick and I guess it took this long.
Sunday evening, we were in an unpacking frenzy. We set up enough furniture to sleep in beds and be able to eat breakfast in the morning, and then we all crashed.
And it was then that we discovered that the blinds for our bedroom window were AWOL. There had never been any on the baby’s room windows in the first place, which was where poor Mom was staying. So there we stood, Joey and I, hiding in our bedroom hallway and trying to figure out how to get into our bed whilst wearing pajamas (which, incidentally, I had not been able to locate so I was wearing Joey’s Mountain Dew t-shirt, which really doesn’t fit so well at all anymore) without crossing in front of the big window that faces the street.
We decided it was impossible.
Joey slid across the wood floors to his side of the bed and dove under the covers while cars zoomed by outside. I could see their headlights tracking patterns across our walls and I figured they were moving so quickly they wouldn’t have time to notice we had nothing whatsoever covering our window.
I followed his example, only much more awkwardly since I am rapidly losing my ability to slide and dive.
We decided to let Henry sleep with us since it was a special occasion and all, and we three lay there watching the car headlight patterns on the walls. Joey was about asleep, but I coudln’t shut my brain off. The last time we had seen this bed, these sheets, the down comforter, we were in Texas. Granted, the mattress was on the floor in the dining room, but we were in Texas.
“It feels weird to not be in Texas now that we are reunited with our stuff,” I whispered.
“I know,” Joey whispered back. ”But we’ll get used to it.”
He’s right, we will. I already like my Indy kitchen 100% better than my Texas kitchen, and the bedroom is growing on me daily. It’ll feel more cozy once we can put area rugs down, but we can’t until Friday since we had the wood floors redone. (Henry keeps diving off the bed and wiping out when he hits the floor, and I feel super bad for him.)
Alrighty then. Mom and I need to go to the store to buy toilet scrubbers because I threw mine out in Texas. I just felt like the level of disgusting would exponentially increase if I packed them and then stored them for several months, and I was pretty sure toilet scrubbers would be sold in Indiana. So…yeah, my toilets are gnasty but I can’t clean them because I’m not putting my hand in the toilet water.
No sir.
I’m not doing it.
For the last couple of days, Joey and I have been tossing around me taking a few days trip to Iowa next week to see my family. Joey thinks I should go for a week, I am thinking I might want to come back on Saturday so I don’t miss a Sunday here. Who knows how long I’ll stay.
Here’s what’s weird. My brain is all mixed up. I now seem to think of Iowa and Texas equally as “home”, so in my mind when I am planning what to do when I’m home (in Iowa), I keep catching myself making lists of all my Texas friends I will go and see, and what I’ll pick up from Central Market while I’m there. And then I have to stop myself and say, SILLY JENNA, those people live 16 hours away from Cedar Rapids. You cannot see them and you most definitely can’t go to Central Market.
Holy cows, I am all mixed up.
Speaking of cows…I hope Pops has some good calves but he probably doesn’t. I think they all got born a month or two ago, which means zero cute calves.
I’ll be the first one to admit that there are several aspects of apartment living that get my goat every single time. Observe:
Downstairs Neighbor is silent and altogehter fine except for the fact that he smokes. And the only part of the house where this is a problem is in the kitchen, because mysteriously it comes up through the microwaves vent. GO FIGURE.
But the last part of my house that I want smelling like lung cancer is my kitchen.
Just saying.
Here’s the problem, Internet. HERE IT IS. I will just lay it right out there for you.
Our other neighbor downstairs (not to be confused with Downstairs Neighbor because she didn’t live directly below us) moved out. She was a very nice older lady who was quiet, tidy, and quite friendly.
She was replaced by a college girl who, thus far, we have had negative interactions with. When we came home from work today she had her windows open and was yelling out them to people in the parking lot while the delightful smell of smoke wafted around us from inside her house.
I mumbled, “Oh Joey…..Oh Joey….when is our lease up” all the way up to our apartment.
Then tonight when I was walking back in from trying to get the car washed (unsuccessfully), her door was wide open and she was talking (loudly) to some guy who was standing there with a lit cigarette, polluting our fresh air and lovely evening.
I just have this terrible feeling now that we’ll never be able to open our windows again lest our house begin to smell like a cigarette butt, or the voices of all her yelling friends trickle through our windows and we feel like we’re living in college dorms again.
Maybe it’s time we get a house. Ya think?
Last time we had a freak snowstorm here (which was about, oh, two months ago) Joey and I couldn’t figure out how to shovel our steps. Because when we moved from The Iowa, we gave our shovel away thinking PSSH, we won’t need that anymore like the fools we were.
So last time we had about, oh, a foot of snow on our steps that we just packed down for several days until it turned into this treacherous, slick, ice obstacle course, and whoever could make it upstairs without dying was the WINNER!
This morning? THIS MORNING? We woke up and there were six inches of snow on the balcony. We must live under a rock or something, because we had literally no clue this was coming. And the funny thing is that yesterday afternoon, inbetween torrential rain downpours, Joey brought in all my just-planted herbs and set them on the kitchen counter.
I was all, um, thanks for bringing those in but it was probably not necessary.
And he goes, I have a Feeling. You just wait and see.
Pretty sure those herbs would be dead right now if it hadn’t been for Joey Woestman and his Feeling. Good job, babe.
I put on my bathrobe and Wellies (and let me just tell you, I looked awesome) and took Henry outside, crossing my fingers that none of my neighbors were up to see my totally out of control hair and weird outfit choice.
They weren’t, but Henry wiped out trying to get down the snow-buried steps (which cracked me up) so once he and I got back inside, I determined to shovel the front entryway and the steps. Joey was still in bed reading one of his library (boring) books, I think this one might be actually be about Aristotle…and potentially Jesus…but we all know I can’t keep those religious philosophy books straight.
When I told him what I planned to do, he was indignant and shot out of bed with a bellow and, YOU SHOULD NOT BE SHOVELING. IT IS TOO HEAVY.
I told him I’d take the entryway and he could do the steps, because there was more snow on the steps. And I’d even take the tiny dustpan because it couldn’t move very much snow at once.
But I’m an Iowa girl and when there is snow I have a hard-wired desire to SHOVEL IT SHOVEL IT SHOVEL IT, probably due to the fact that we had to shovel the steps and sidewalks when it snowed once we grew up taller than the shovels. (Which, in my family, took way longer than it probably took in your family.)
Joey acquiesced because he could sense that I was correct, the small dustpan wouldn’t throw my back out or anything. (But sneaky husband also shoveled about half of the entryway while he thought I wasn’t looking. I was wise to him though. I saw him.)
So we suited up in our Columbias for the second time this year, put on our matching gloves and matching hats (thank you Kohls sale four years ago) and, dustpans in hand, marched out the door to take down the snow. Henry watched us from inside with the hesitant look he gets on his face when he thinks we might make him go outside in the snow.
The dustpan concept worked remarkably well. It was efficient and I was pleased with the results. Joey glanced up at me every 25 seconds or so to make sure I wasn’t causing myself any undue strain. I wasn’t.
And since I wasn’t, I also shoveled our neighbors front entry because they share it with us. I hope they don’t wake up and feel all creeped out that I invaded their space. I felt super 007 just being over there and trying to be really quiet so they wouldn’t hear me and open the door and scare the Columbia hat off my head, and expose my birdsnest hair, while I screamed like a girl.
SNOW DAY!!!
This is what seven inches of snow looks like in Dallas, Texas. (I know we have seven because I just shoved my ruler into the mound of snow that has collected on our balcony ledge. I even double checked when I saw that it came up to the 7 on the ruler, too.)
It’s amazing. I’ve not seen so much snow in years.
What you really need to see is a picture of our parking lot, which has not been plowed since this started a day and a half ago. Not ever. Not once. So we have seven inches of snow, some of which turned to slush (so about five to six inches of slush), that froze and turned to a weird kind of ice last night.
Ain’t nobody getting out of that mess until either it melts, or somebody decides to plow it for us.
And even then, I don’t have a shovel necessary to dig the car out once a plow comes through.
Our stairs are totally hazardous, I almost wiped out and fell on my head last night. Exciting.
So I’m just sitting here like a totally nerdy Iowan transplanted into Texas…stuck in her parking lot because of a lil’ bit of snow. That hasn’t been plowed. Which is the problemo.
HA. I just heard on the radio that we officially had 11.2 inches yesterday. That’s a lot for a city that has a.) no shovels anywhere, and b.) like 12 snowplows total.
It snowed all last night and all day today. Yes, you read that right; here in Dallas.
All day long, the only thing I could think about was getting home and playing in the snow. Because I have some bright blue Midwestern snow boots that I haven’t worn in three years, and they have missed me.
We didn’t get home very quickly, but once we did we changed into about three layers and headed outside with Henry. We thought maybe he would like the snow.
Henry hated it. He absolutely hated it. After a few yards down the walk, we realized it was just torturous to the poor little guy, and we took him back in the house.
While Joey was gone, I made a giant snowball.
Then, I wanted to jump on it. Joey told me to be sure that I fell forward, not backwards, so I didn’t crack my head open on the retaining wall.
And so I fell forward with FLAIR.
After I built the snowball and destroyed it, we headed to the soccer fields were there were, like, over a hundred people (and I am not exaggerating) building an entire village of snowmen. There were probably 30 or 40 snowmen scattered everywhere, but it was getting so dark we couldn’t get a decent panoramic picture.
So instead, I told Joey to take a picture of my feet.
These are my snowboots. This is the most snow they have seen in a long, long, long time. (Heck, this is the most snow I’ve seen in a long time.)
I had forgotten how comfy my snowboots are. Thank you, LL Bean. (Also thank you Grandma, because she got them for me me. And also Michele, because she had a green pair and when I saw them I was like I NEED THOSE BOOTS.)
The snow was so wet and good for packing, that some of the snow creations in the soccer fields were humongoloid.
I’m not sure how these homeslices were planning to get the head on the top of this snowman (see it there, in the back?) but they were going to try. We were so cold by then we didn’t want to hang around to find out.
Some creative people made this giant snow tower. It kind of reminded me of the Tower of Babel (not that I know what that looks like because I was not alive when that part of Genesis was written. And neither were you.)
See how tall that thing is? Pretty amazing. Maybe tonight when Joey’s not looking I’ll go try to knock it down.
We wandered around and looked at everything until we were so cold we had to head back.
On the way, we saw this poor wilting snowman who must have been made earlier in the day. It was leaning pretty hard to the right. (Stand up, sit down, FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT! Woah, sorry. Cheer squad flashback.)
And once we made it back to the house, we wrapped up in our cozies and made soup. Because we were chilled to the bone.
Baby, it’s COLD outside.
