Since Thanksgiving....

Where can you find us at 4:30am? at 3:00pm? at midnight?

Yep! This picture just about sums up our lives since the week before Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving Weekend 2008 part 2: Friends

The whirlwind continued in outline form:

Friday:

• 5:30am: Keren gets up and starts sewing her dress for Megan's wedding the next day. (It was not finished because the weekend before, I went to sew the skirt into the bodice and it didn't quite close. I had cut out the pieces a month before, with what I thought was grow-room....but was apparently not enough! The new plan was to insert a large piece of the trim as a panel down the front.)

• 8:00am: Jon leaves for the airport. (Keren continues sewing)
• 9:00am: We all have breakfast, then Erik and Cat leave. (Keren continues sewing, her ankles keep swelling)
• 11:00am: Keren and Jonathan leave to drive to Danville, where Megan and Peter's wedding rehearsal is that night. (Dress is still not finished, so the sewing machine goes into our trunk with the overnight bag) It is discovered that long car rides are not ideal for deflating swollen ankles.
  
• 3:00pm: Music practice, wedding rehearsal.
• 6:30pm: Rehearsal dinner at Chinese Buffet.
• 8:30pm: We find our hotel room and praise God's providence in providing a large table to set up the sewing machine on. Jonathan watches TV while I sew.
  

• 11:30pm: Dress finished--ankles huge. I try on my boots that I plan to wear with my dress for the wedding the next day and they will not zip up. I decide to use my pillows for my feet instead of my head.
  
• 12:00pm: Bed! Sweet Bed!

Saturday:

• 5:30am: We get up and shower. I immediately put on my boots, they will zip closed, so I don't take them off again. This makes getting my jeans on a little tricky, but at least I won't be wearing tennis shoes as Megan's matron of honor!
• 6:30am: arrive at Megan's aunt's house to make the flower bouquets.

• 7:15am: The girls from Seattle arrive to help Megan get ready and meet Peter for the first time.
  

• 8:30am: Flowers are finished
• 9:00am: Keren and Jonathan practice wedding music with Denny, who's playing the guitar for us.
• 11:00am: We begin playing the prelude at the Wedding Hall
• 12:30pm: Megan officially becomes a Green--she and Peter are officially hitched!
  

• 1:00pm: We all celebrate with toasts and luncheon.
• 2:30pm: We leave with the girls to drive back to Saint Louis.
• 6:30pm: Turkey dinner left-overs for all in our apartment.
• 8:00pm: At this point we are all draped over the furniture in the living room. Jonathan serves tea for everyone on a tray.
  
• 9:00pm: Bed! Sweet Bed!

Sunday:

• 7:00am: Keren wakes up and starts making cinnamon rolls for breakfast.

• Much tea is consumed by all as we wait for them to bake. It is commented that Keren in the kitchen while cinnamon rolls are baking equals a lot of buns in the oven--13 to be exact!
  

• 9:30am: Breakfast with my girls!..these are the good times!
  

• 11:00am: Morning prayers together.
• 12:30pm: We take Abby to the airport...sigh!
• the rest of the day: we discuss different ideas of doing something off and on, but mostly try different positions of lounging while we recover on the couch.
  
• 6:00pm: We order pizza and watch a movie.

Monday:

• 6:15am: Emily and Janelle leave for the airport....sigh!
• 10:30am: Judy comes with me to my pre-natal checkup.
• 11:30am: Soup for lunch at the Saint Louis Bread Co., better known to you as Panera.
• 12:30pm: I take Judy to the airport...sigh!
  
• about 6:00pm: Jonathan wanders into the kitchen to tell me he's lonely. The apartment is really very empty now! And we have no more Thanksgiving left-overs to sooth our pain. We discuss how fun the weekend was, how nice it is to sleep. God is Good!
  

Thanksgiving Weekend 2008 part 1: Family

Thanksgiving was a whirlwind; not exactly restful, but sooooo fun!
Here it is in outline form:

Tuesday:

• Jonathan and I type away furiously at our hermeneutic analysis papers for our Covenant Theology class until...
• 5:30pm: I pick up Jon from the airport.
• 6:10pm: Erik, with lovely girlfriend, Cat, drives in from Georgia.
• 6:15pm: My parents drive in from Houston, TX.
• Much hugging and exclaiming that I am indeed pregnant. It is decided that the progeny in my womb shall from now on be called "nibbling" by the uncles-to-be.
• (Definition of "nibbling": non-gender specific term for niece or nephew, modeled after the word sibling. plural, niblings)
• We all make it laughing into our apartment and fun dinner commences.
• Menu: spinach salad, pumpkin soup and home-baked bread. (Thank goodness for crock-pots!)
  
• 9:30: Guests retire to their beds. Jonathan and I continue as pictured above.
• 2:00am: Jonathan goes to bed.
• 2:30 am: Keren goes to bed.

Wednesday:

• 5:30am: Keren and Jonathan resume their positions at the table.
• 8:30am: Rough drafts finished, showering, dressing and then back to revision.
• 8:45am: Family arrives for breakfast, which Mother is drafted into cooking. Jonathan and Keren receive toast and eggs at their work stations.
• 9:30am: Final drafts printed, J and K drive to school.
  
• 10:00-12:15pm: Covenant Theology Class, papers turned in. (much relief,very sleepy)
  
• 1-2:00pm: Lunch
• 2:00-5:30: We all Take a field trip to the City Museum!

There's me and my mom, watching the others climb through a wire-mesh tube suspended three stories above the ground by a crane and cable .

Apparently the height does not bother them!

The architecture of the place lends itself to interesting views of people. I love my mom's little head poking out here!

Here's dad and Jon, climbing up in the rafters. I had to stick my camera through the rope web to get this shot.

The mosaics were beautiful--as my hubby is handsome!

Nothing like hanging out in the caves, philosophizing.

There were lots of spaces that seemed a little tight for grown ups....

But if you are a kid at heart, you can fit through anything, right Erik?

Or, as we concluded, if you are Cat, you will fit through anything!

Lots of fun!

• 5:30: Now on to the best Indian food in town! We were all very hungry, and the food was very good.
• 8:00: We are all very full, and decide to relax and digest by watching "Enchanted"
• Bed! Sweet Bed!

Thanksgiving Day:

• 9:00am: Breakfast with all, all for breakfast.
  
• Menu: Grapefruit, home-baked blueberry muffins and sage scrambled eggs with commodore tea, coffee and orange juice.
• 10:30am: Thanksgiving Service at local Episcopal Church, Dad gives homily, Keren get's cute little baby socks from a kind woman she has never met before in the congregation.
• 1:00pm: Ernest preparations for "THE MEAL" begin.

• Appetizers for the happy workers: Cheese and cracker tray featuring Goat cheese, sharp Cabot cheddar and Irish Porter; Tapinade medley including Wild Portabella and Walnut, Roasted Asparagus and Garlic, and Rima's fabulous home-made hummus. Wine, sparkling juice and coffee.

• 2:30: The stuffing and turkey are ready to go!
  

6:00pm: Turkey comes out perfectly!

6:30pm: Our first Thanksgiving Dinner!

Menu

starters~
Spinach Salad with Apples, Candied Pecans and Balsamic Dressing

main course~
Roasted Turkey
Apple and Bacon Stuffing
Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes
Marzinke Baked Sweet Potatoes
Green Beans with Orange Essence and Toasted Maple Pecans
Cranberry Sauce
Wine

• 7:30pm-9:00pm: Recovery from meal.
  

It is not really clear in this picture, but my ankles were quite swollen by this point!

• 9:30pm: mmmm Dessert...
  

dessert~
Pumpkin Pie
German Chocolate Pie
Persimon Pudding with Grandma J's Hardsauce
Coffee and Tea

• 11:00pm: Bed! Sweet Bed!

You know you have moved away from Seattle when.....

....The news anchor on NPR sounds excited that it will get to a high of 34 degrees today! That's because right now it is 19 degrees and feels like 7.

...The gas costs $1.47 a gallon.

...The person walking into a building 50 ft ahead of you, stops and holds the door until you catch up. (My question is, are you supposed to run, so they don't let all the heat out of the building? I hope not, because I don't run so well these days, but at the very least it is very awkward! Does this mean I'm supposed to hold the door for everyone behind me too? How impractical! )

...Your boss at work tells you to "do what the Holy Spirit tells you" when you ask her how she would like a business policy enforced with a client.


(I promise pictures of our Thanksgivining fun are coming...I just couldn't resist sharing these little tid-bits of Midwestern life now.)

creativity and rest in the midst of the storm

Jonathan and I decided before school started that we were not going to do any schoolwork on Sundays. We wanted to do this so that we could really honor God by participating in sabbath rest. This has gotten harder and harder as the quarter progressed, but we really have been looking forward to Sunday more and more as a break from all the stress and pressure. Here's a few things that we have done in the past months that have been particularly restfull.
Scrabble in our pajamas with french toast for breakfast.


I love knitting on the couch with a cup of tea. I don't have time for it during the week, so I have been looking forward to Sundays for that. This sweater was finished last month in time for little Margaret Hays...who just joined the world yesterday. Congratulations to Sarah and Jonathan and sister Stella!

I needed something to keep myself warm, and when I opened up my box of winter sweaters, they all reached just to my bellybutton and no further. I bought this Anne Taylor sweater (xl) for $3 at a near by Goodwill. Then I altered the top to fit my not so XL shoulders, and left the bottom to fit my becoming XL belly. It is very cozy!


This weekend I finished knitting a pair of hand warmers for Jonathan. (Thank you Cheryl for the pattern!) I am so excited to be living in a place where it gets cold enough for Jonathan to want to wear anything I can knit. I'm thinking a sweater might not be out of the question here.

Oh, and here's the belly pictures you've been asking for Amanda!

Jonathan wanted to be sure you appreciated it from all angles, so he included this shot too.

Keep us in your prayers. Jonathan has a big Greek test, and a devotional presentation due this week. We both have a big, 16 page hermeneutical paper on passages from the Penteteuch due next week--involving lots of research into commentaries etc. It looks to be a busy couple weeks, with hardly any time left to prepare for hosting our first Thanksgiving. My parents and brothers are coming to stay with us for a couple days. We are looking forward to it, and hope we do the turkey justice!

a little swamped...

Sorry there was no post this weekend. And I probably won't get to it for a little bit since school, pregnancy and life obligations have exploded like Pandora's box all over my desk and ankles. Still all is well, if just a bit hectic!

I did want to assure you, however, that I am well supported. Check out what my hubby did this weekend. (It just goes to show that one should always marry a man who is adept in the kitchen! )
...He also just brought me cookies and a cup of coffee.

Write praises all over his blog!

Everything is fixed now, and heat is really nice! so are garbage disposals, and sooooo are yummy cinnamon rolls! I think we will survive Saint Louis just fine after all!

Let's hope this trend does not continue!

I don't know if this will qualify as whining or not, but I'm mostly just amazed at the appliances in our apartment right now.
Friday, I made up some bread dough, and went to turn the oven on and the knob swung around like the wheel of fortune with no apparent effect. So we called maintenance. This morning, it was 60 degrees in our apartment. When Jonathan turned on the heat, nothing happened. So I called maintenance. Thankfully the soup I'm making is keeping my kitchen warm, so I've been able to take off my hat. Two minutes ago, I tried to put the carrot peels down the garbage disposal. It produced a little whirling fountain of dirty water and food bits in my sink...now the sink is clogged and won't drain. So I've called maintenance. We haven't seen a maintenance man yet. I hope they really exist, because if this keeps up we are going to be camping soon!

Huh! What do you know. . .

I thought I had a tumor growing right below my belly button today. I felt this hard bump that didn't move. I discovered it while babysitting a friend's two year old. I was so worried I asked her to feel it when she got back. She felt it and said, "Keren, that's not a tumor, that's a baby foot!" Such a possibility had never occurred to me! My little "tumor" stayed planted there all during my walk home and long enough for Jonathan to feel it too. Then, then sure enough, the next time I sat down it disappeared!

eclectic update

It is fall break! I had forgotten how lovely school breaks can be. We have really been looking forward to this one. Jonathan and I slept in this morning and were finally pulled out of bed by a windy rainy morning. Well to be honest, I get a little quirky when it is raining and storming outside. I get so excited that I can't sleep any more. So this morning, I made Jonathan get up too. I lit candles all over the house, and then I made him hot chocolate to help him get in the mood of celebrating the RAIN! Though I'm not sure how well my schemes have worked, he is currently settled at his desk in the office happily perusing the internet in the "ambiance" of a candle and steaming hot chocolate...which of course I put there!

(One of my favorite traditions on gloomy days in the fall and dark winter mornings is lighting candles when we get up instead of turning on any lights. This morning it meant rummaging through our storage closet until I could find the tea lights, but it was worth it!)

This last week I did two days of substituting at a different school in their 5th and 6th grade classroom. I got such a kick out of them. They thought they were pulling the fleece over my eyes when I let them arrange their desks however they wanted to, but it sure gave me some powerful leverage to keep them in line when they started goofing off! I only had to issue one warning and they were back to looking like adult learners in a college classroom!
Also, the teacher had asked me to lead a discussion comparing and contrasting the two presidential candidates. (Can you imagine me, having any sort of meaningful political conversation? I feel like I finally got Republicans and Democrats sorted out last year! ) And, I was warned that the class was VERY opinionated...so I wondered how I was going to keep the comments above the belt. Enter my educational ministry class with a cape and red underwear! I remembered we had discused critical thinking and that being able to affirm an aspect of something you don't agree with, or being able to challenge an aspect of something you do agree with are very difficult to do. I thought we would try that in class, though I wan't sure if 5th graders could do that, since most adults can't really either. I was so proud of them, though! We watched a couple clips from a presidential debate, and then each student had to have one affirmation and challenge for each candidate. I put their comments up on the board and moderated the discussion to make sure they were stating more than just their opinion. By the end, we had four colums up on the board. We actually learned a lot about the candidates from each other, by thinking through how their positions were helpful and/or detrimental to the US!
One boy did make an interesting prediction: "If Obama becomes president, we are going to have the third world war with Russia. And since they have so many more nukes than we do, it will probably destroy the whole world. And then Jesus will come back."
. . . OK! . . . and moving right along! . . .

Craft Update:
a little knitted something is finished for a little girly someone who is due to arrive in November in Seattle. It's going in the mail today, so pictures will of course be posted after the recipient gets first looks!

My lovely friend Janelle sent me the most beautiful skeins of baby wool for a sweater for our very own little one. I agonized over the pattern and have started the back.

I'm not sure I'm completely satisfied yet, but I think I need to keep going to find out. It looks like this so far.

My other lovely friend Megan is getting married this Thanksgiving and has asked me to be her matron of honor. I am making my dress. In attempt at thrift, I decided to re-make it from a prom dress I found at Goodwill. So far I have discovered a few pros and cons to this plan.
Pro: You really can't beat $13 for all the fabric you need.

Con: Taking out endless seams on a store made dress is anything but the way you want to start out a sewing project! At two hours in, I have just finished taking out the lining and zipper.

I've never made a maternity dress before. Hopefully the result will not be entitled "Keren, the full-sailed barge billowing down the isle!" I'll keep you updated on my progress.

On that note, my favorite pajama sweater is slowly becoming my pajama "shrug." I think they should invent "favorite" clothes that have the ability to grow with you!

That's all the news I have to report for now.

Our plans for the weekend include: making bread, doing 4+ loads of laundry, going to the Art Museum, catching up on our Covenant Theology reading, starting to study for our Spiritual and Ministry Formation midterm and having friends over for lunch after church on Sunday.

belly shot

Well this is for those of you who have asked for pictures...or have a voyeuristic need to see the expanding size of my belly. Jonathan took me out on the balcony for this photo-shoot with you all specifically in mind. Hope you enjoy!....

And yes, that is coffee I'm drinking. I really hated it for a while there, and wondered what was becoming of me. Hooray for having part of myself back, even if there is another part taking off in a totally alien direction and inhibiting my ability to turn over in the middle of the night, or reach things at the back of the shelf!

Also, the next week is going to be very busy with papers and midterms, so keep us in your prayers!

Diva, Divas, and the Diva!

I have been hired as a contract teacher at Dayspring School of the Arts. In the last 24 hours I was the substitute teacher for three art classes, I taught one private voice lesson and assisted teaching a musical theater class of 20 five-year-olds whose parents enrolled them in the "Diva" class because they displayed a propensity to drama! Whew!

After suffering withdrawal from my lack of interaction with children, yesterday and today were just plain fun--and exhausting! So I just had to share some stories with you!

Here's the highlights:

I had to tell the junior high art class, as they gossiped and chatted and got nothing done, that the privilege of speaking came with the responsibility of getting their work done. I told them if they wanted to be treated like the adults they were becoming , then they needed to act like adults. Hah! It was such a funny self-conscious moment as I realized I was acting like my teachers in middle school had! What was even funnier, to me, was that it worked! I guess that summs up my first foray into classroom management as a success!

Last Thursday, my Covenant Ed. class was about using the art of questioning as a teaching tool. I thought the last art class of Friday would be a good time to experiment with those concepts because the kids were starting a new design project that they needed to brainstorm about. I started asking questions, and in no time the kids were all talking and excited and throwing out ideas. It really worked! Not that I didn't think that the profs at Covenant knew what they were talking about, but what a blast to be able to apply something so soon!

And that brings me to the Diva class. They are singing a dramatic song about the Emperors New Clothes, which I coached them through. We worked on the differences between the first and second and third verse--talking along the way about "nice singing voices" and "ugly singing voices." Then, I had to coach the shy little queen to convince me she had a voice at all as she sang her part. What more can I say, except to describe the short, chubby-cheeked boy with floppy blond hair who crawled around most of the time because he thought he was a lion....or the little girl wearing high-heeled pumps who had blue eyeshadow and glitter all over her face and arms? Deee-lightful!

My conclusion, as I lie here recovering on the couch, is that I think I really like teaching...and perhaps it is also good that the Diva class only meets once a week!

Ahhh the joys of apartment laundry.....

...when the dryer doesn't work, but you didn't know it and already put your money in.....

On the Subject of Pregnancy and Seminary

I have decided that there are at least two hazards to being pregnant and a seminary student at the same time.

First, it is nearly impossible to stay awake reading theology. Novels are OK; I read The Host, by Stephanie Meyer (800+ pages) in one day three weekends ago--never had a nap all day! But put anything in front of me that requires keeping a train of thought and I'm out in no time at all. It's become terribly frustrating to wake up an hour later and realize I've done it again!

Second, there are certain times I have to eat, in class or not. Our Covenant Theology class is at 11am. Its taught by several formal and very intelligent professors, including a Dr. Williams who is the last person you want to eat in front of while he's giving a lecture.

So, the other day I couldn't wait any longer and surreptitiously pulled out my apples and peanut butter. ('d brought them along in case of such an emergency.) Jonathan and I were sitting on the side of the class room, so I thought I could get away without Dr. Williams noticing. But no such luck.
Wouldn't you know it, just as I was about to put a big slice covered with peanut butter in my mouth, he looks right at me...and stopped talking...lost his train of thought....had to walk back to his notes to see where he was...It was embarrassing, and so funny! (AND, I'm really glad he didn't yell at me!)

Curtains

I'm so excited to have actually done something besides reading, writing, sleeping and eating!
Today, in absolute rebellion from the pressure of all the class work hanging over me, I dusted off the ol' sewing machine and put it to work.

It took longer than I thought it would (as always), but I have a fun colorful curtain for the kitchen...

and some longer ones for the living room.

Horray for another step to having a home!