apparently september is almost over.

i dont know what it is about this september, but i have not been interested in blogging about it at all. i dont think its for lack of things to blog about, because i have plenty of that: we've kept busy with a birthday party, a new workout regimen (ok its just p90x again), a new meal planning system, fun projects, a trip to longwood gardens, a crab feast with friends, another birthday party, tattoo touchups, and even a surprise garden update. september has been very good so far.  

 

enjoying the last days of summer at longwood gardens last sunday.

and yet. there are no words about it. no neat little record of the details stored here for me to look back on later. barely any reassurance to my mom that we are alive and well. just a couple posts lamenting my lack of time/energy/desire to blog anything. so i guess that's just how this month will go down in internet history and be remembered by me for years to come - September 2013: the month i didnt feel like documenting.

glory rays.

"...and in the morning you shall see the glory of the Lord..."

Exodus 16:7a

astronauts, birdseed, and moose.

as the title might suggest, there is no real rhyme, reason, or cohesive thought that holds this post together. it is what it is. because remember that one time i mentioned that July was kind of crazy-awesome-busy? take that, extend it by a few weeks, pack just a little bit more into each weekend, and that's kind of what my August felt like too. and honestly-it kind of wrecked me.

action camp ran straight into a beach vacation dumped us back into craziness at work interrupted by weekends of bonfires and a wedding and then sisters weekend with a quick turnaround into more big work meetings all capped off with a western week of camping and family fun.

ugh. i'm exhausted just reading all that.

each and every day had its own something special, and i kind of just want to wrap myself up in the memories and never leave...so, here's some pictures of august? with maybe a little bit of commentary but maybe not a whole lot? here goes.

action camp was space-themed this year, because when we LOOK UP to the heavens, we should be AMAZED BY GOD. i tried my best to convey God's grace, glory, and might to my young charges as much as i could, but i think i spent most of my time saying "please sit down, i'm so glad you have a dog, put your shirt back on, don't climb on that, come back here, who needs a bathroom break, simon says put your hands in the air! now is not the time for turbo speed, where are your shoes?"

i was the group leader for the green team, which was obviously the best team. here are some of us pretending to be big gorillas while we waited between stations. the rest of the team is either a) confused, b) oblivious, or c) totally pretending not to know these weirdos.

 



mmm... beach.  

 

 

 

 

we were only at the beach with Mark's family for a long weekend, but we did dinner out one night at a restaurant called Sedona. it was a bit more fancy than we were anticipating, but oh my word that food was one of the most delicious, delightful, dareisay thrilling things i've ever eaten.

 

(ps have i mentioned how delightful this fish tasted? let me just tell you one more time. DELIGHTFUL)



 

mark and i have not always agreed on what constitutes proper dress code for certain events: church, cookouts, funerals, weddings, etc. so i was mentally preparing myself for the inevitable "will you please just wear a tie this time?" fight, when Mark surprised me by saying "i think i'll wear a suit."

 

 

 

most tame, un-messy cake cutting ever. these guys are adorable. also: fantastic dancers.

 

 

 the newlyweds stopped by our house to change before they left for their honeymoon, since we live approximately 0.2 miles from the reception venue. mark took it upon himself to clean the extraneous birdseed off their car so that "massive bird attack" was not any part of their wedding story.

 

out of the three days we spent at my sister's house, i only have pictures of one part of one day. i documented the part where we hiked 3 miles to see the fire tower in Cook Forest. i did not document the float down the Clarion River, or the bonfire dinner, or the midnight toilet paper Walmart run, or church in the morning, or the tour of what may or may not be stasi's new house. so many exciting things!

 

 

i took this picture one day at work. on this particular day, i started my day in the Maryland office, attended a meeting in Delaware, hiked several miles of overgrown trail, and then drove to the York office for my fantasy football draft. 1 company, 3 offices, 3 states, 1 day. that was a good day.

 

two days later, i was on a plane. i took 23 pictures out of the plane window as we made our descent into Salt Lake City. the landscape just kept changing so drastically, and i was amazed by it.

 

we saw a moose while we were out west. this was the first picture i took of it, when i thought that this was the best shot i was going to be able to get.

i thought it was just going to quickly retreat back into the woodline, but instead she wandered down closer to the lake.

MUCH closer, in fact. and then, she just wandered her way along the path around the lake. after mom and dad brought the tandem kayak back in, mark and i took a spin and caught up with the moose at the far end of the lake, where we sat and watched that awesomely giant animal just chill by the lake until she wandered back up into the woods. so cool.

i'm thinking about just running away to the mountains. living off the grid. cooking all my food over a fire and sleeping in a tent. as long as said mountains are within walking distance of a bathroom and i have occasional access to a grocery store, i could totally do it. want to come with me?

 

my mom would come with me. she loves me, and she loves the mountain, and she feels the same way about the necessity of bathrooms and a grocery store. we would be unstoppable.

 

i'm not allowed to say much about this photo, or post any of the other ones i took of my mom's super secret project. but keep an eye on her blog for the next few days/weeks/months for the reveal, because you're not going to want to miss this one.

this was the worst part. getting back on the plane to head home. i briefly contemplated initiating a one-woman sit-in in the backseat of my mom's car so i wouldnt have to leave. although getting to board the plane from the tarmac did have kind of a rockstar-esque feeling to it, which was pretty fun i guess.

like i said, i am really wishing i could keep August around a little longer, but its probably better that i actually try to move on a little bit because september? (no WAY can it already be september!!) is starting to look like its just going to be more of the same: crazy. awesome. i can't wait!

(g)name this gnome.

since yardsale season is starting to wind down, my yardsailing buddy Nadine and I decided that we needed to find an alternate activity for girl time, because the thought of not having our weekly-ish hangouts was kind of depressing... so we're thinking crafts might be just the thing to fill the impending yardsailing void.

we held our inaugural craft-time over the weekend: while the boys were being sporty and watching weird kung-fu movies, we were painting a couple tiny garden gnomes.

(their faces and hands came pre-painted)

i think mine looks kind of like a Frans, what do you think?

lodger what?

it has come to my attention that i kind of forgot to mention something in my catching up post on Friday that is actually a pretty big thing that has happened in our life in the past few months: we have a lodger at our house.

note: this is not our lodger.

this is a tiny turkey we found when moving a chair in the basement.

in a nutshell - there is a girl in our community group, (let's call her A) whose long-distance boyfriend (henceforth known as B, aka the lodger) was able to find a teaching job in our area which enabled him to move across the country from Seattle to be closer to her. so he had a job, and a moving date, but was striking out on finding an affordable place to rent once he got here.

and that's where we came in.

in a grand gesture of an attempt to embody Christ's servant heart, we mentioned to A and B that we might probably possibly be able to rearrange the space in our finished half of the basement to relatively reasonably accommodate a short-term lodger if a more suitable situation was not able to be found. apparently this offer, caveat-filled as it was, was too good to pass up because it wasn't long before we were rearranging the basement to clear out the office and turn it into a bedroom.

click to embiggen and see if you can spot the tiny turkey in the chaos!

we made ourselves a mini-to-do list for this project that covered some of the most important items that needed to be done in order to make this space inhabitable:

- get a new dehumidifier. (our old one was on the fritz)
- relocate the office.
- relocate the futon. (and maybe actually get a futon mattress)
- rearrange the basement furniture.
- relocate the contents of the office closet.
- clean out the window well. (it was buggy and gross!)
- install baseboards in the office to make it feel more room-like.

of course, this threw the rest of the basement into a state of semi-controlled chaos for a while, and even spilled into the upstairs guest room with the relocation of the futon and a major overhaul of the organization of all three closets in that room.

there's a tiny turkey in here, too!

one of the biggest hurdles we encountered as we tackled the to-do list was relocating the office and all of the office related flotsam and the modem hookup into the main part of the finished basement. (the lowpoint was living without internet for a few days while we thought through the new arrangement) we also had to find a workable furniture arrangement which ultimately involved moving every piece of furniture except for my craft corner and the blue bookshelf.

 

last chance to spot the tiny turkey!

 

once the room was cleared, Mark scrubbed out the window well, painted and installed some baseboard, and called it good. we also spent a few evenings finally fixing up the little desk we trash-picked a year and a half ago, so that B could actually use it if he so desired, without worrying about the door falling off.

 

i honestly love the new layout of the basement. we were able to work with the furniture we already had down there to create several different "zones" - the office area, a lounge/tv area, and the craft area(which hasnt changed since i reorganized it).

 this arrangement makes the space more functional overall, while still leaving room for the addition of the lodger and all the contents of his moving truck. (the most surprising contents included a sewing machine, a garden fountain, and a dining room table and chairs) B moved in with the help of his cousin on a weekday while we were both at work, so we were not able to help him move in, but apparently it all went smoothly.

its been about six weeks since the lodger moved in and, while there has been a little bit of a learning curve for everyone involved as far as figuring out the best way to coexist in the shared spaces such as the laundry room and especially the kitchen, so far so good. of course, once school starts in a couple days and B's schedule adjusts accordingly, the balance we have maintained so far might get thrown off a little and require some readjustment. i guess we'll just keep figuring it out as we go.

meal plan monday: august 19.

it doesn't feel like its been a week since i last wrote a meal plan post... oh wait, that would be because it's only been 4 days.

since i've totally mastered my current method of meal planning (*snortlaugh NOT) i thought it was high time for my process to go through a pretty major change. in a few weeks, Mark and I are looking to team up to plan meals and snacks that will better fuel the amped up workout regiment we are planning to start after our great western adventure. it is going to require more discipline, more real foods, and probably more than 5 minutes of forethought. the plan as it currently stands is to model our weekly plans from the portion approach of the p90x meal plan. we still have to put some time and thought into exactly how this will best function for us, and i'll be sure to keep you posted as to whether we are wildly successful or we crash and burn.

its a lofty goal, and i am glad to still have a little bit of time to figure it out because until then here's the plan for this week that actually took me LESS than 5 minutes to dream up and throw together:

Monday: pasta with meat sauce.
Tuesday: breakfast for dinner - eggs and potatoes.
Wednesday: fish packets with rice. (recipe)
Thursday: frozen raviolis in jar sauce.
Friday: probably Subway for the road.
Saturday - Sunday: sisters weekend in PA!

catching up.

so. its been a while since i wrote much of anything of substance around here. if pressed for an excuse, i would have to tell you i've been busy. but if you ask me whats new? i would say 'not much.' which is kind of oxymoronic - how can i be busy, but have no new stories to share?

so today i am going to share:

- Mark has started a new project. normally i would say that WE have started a new project, but this one is totally him. he is building us a brand new storage bed, which is to say he is building a queen sized bedframe with a dresser built into it. so far, he has brought all of the material home, and has spent the past two weeks attempting to get all of the pieces cut while dodging scattered showers in the backyard. i swear, as soon as he decided to do all of his woodworking on the back deck to minimize the sawdust mess in the basement, it has done nothing but rain. my only contribution to the project was the first day when i attempted to help cover the stack of plywood with a tarp and ended up dropping the entire thing on my knee and his ankle. i havent even done so much as take a picture since then, to minimize my jinxing effects on the project.

- I have not started any new projects. i blame this on that whole "being busy" thing i've been doing for the past two weeks. this summer has my creativity at a standstill, and i'm having a hard time thinking beyond work, dinner, dishes, laundry. sigh.

- Action Camp was last week. it was awesome. and exhausting. the church does their week of 'camp' for a few hours each evening, so that the maximum number of people from the church will be able to volunteer. this year i was the group leader for the youngest group, the 4-5 year olds, all 25 of them. i had some AMAZING helpers who kept us all sane as we laughed, danced, sang, played, crafted, snacked, learned about our amazing God, and kept tears to a minimum (from both the kids and the adults!)

- we went to the beach last weekend! by the time we got there late on Friday night (after the last night of Action Camp) i was pretty much asleep on my feet. but the beach was just what my exhausted little self needed to unwind and recharge over a long weekend. the beach was sunny, the water was amazing, and i only faceplanted into the sand that one time, and its only because that wave hit me right in the head. apparently getting out of the ocean is difficult, ok?

i felt compelled to take a grand total of 9 pictures at the beach.  and one of them was of my dinner. i have no regrets - that fish was downright thrilling.

- we got rid of cable. we talked about it, and decided that we could live without it. fingers crossed that we actually make it through the end of baseball season without any major withdrawl. and dont even mention football season.

- i partially cleaned my bathroom last night. you dont even want to know how long it had been since i last scrubbed it down, and since i DO know how long it had been i probably shouldnt be proud at all of a partially clean bathroom...but there it is. this is my life.

- i have babies on the brain. this does not mean that i am having babies, or even trying to have babies, but i am thinking about them, and talking about them with my husband. of course some of our conversations are like the one last night, when Mark and I were discussing the merits and possibilities of long distance, virtual babysitters: he thinks that if we knock down some walls to create a more open concept living area, and we get a camera for the tv, we can just have the grandparents skype in to keep an eye on our future kiddos. seems legit, right?

there. now you're all caught up on the must-knows and even the probably-didnt-really-need-to-knows too. we should do this more often.