End of an Era

Dear Amish Friendship Bread Starter,

It's over.  We've had a good run, but it's time to move on.   Move on to more reasonable things, like banana bread and scones and, well, toast from sliced, store-bought bread with jam on it.  Oh, it seemed fun at first.  I was seduced by the idea of nice, homey bread coming out of the oven every ten days.  I enjoyed folding friends and coworkers into the fun of the project.  And the first time (and second, and third...) I cracked into your crumbly cinnamony crust, I thought it was love.

But here's the thing.  I don't need ten loaves of cinnamon bread in my house.  And it turns out I don't actually have enough friends to keep pawning off starters onto.  And a bag of gloppy goo on my counter just isn't that attractive anymore.  And, let's be honest, I've invested waaaayyy too much flour, milk, and sugar into you for what I get...which is a lecture from my doctor every two weeks about my weight gain.

So it's time to let go.  It's time to stop panicking because it's 9 pm on the tenth day and I haven't started mixing you up.  It's time to eat more carrot sticks and less sugary cinnamon bread.  It's time to maybe be okay with store-bought bread for a while, especially when getting to the grocery store is already challenge enough.

So long.

Missy

An Idaho Shower

The girls threw me an absolutely gorgeous baby shower while I was in Idaho a week or two ago.  What a great time, celebrating with people I love from the first couple of decades of my life!  There was candle light and delicious food and lots of laughter.

Group picture

The lovely set up

 This whole baby experience has been full of humbling moments where other people's love for us has taken my breath away.  I think I've mentioned before the Sara Groves song about real friendship that has the line, "At my good news you're dancing on the table--baby's born, a celebration!"  What dances on the table there have been for this little guy over the past seven or eight months!  What a privilege and joy it has been to share our good news--and the tears and laughter that go with it--with friends who have shared our sorrows and burdens and worn out their knees praying for us!

Alison, Amanda, Jenny, and Debi

We had personal fruit pizzas.  Um, delicious.  One for me and one for the baby...

There were some pretty ridiculously long estimates about how big my belly is...

 

Pretty tables!

It was particularly special to me to celebrate with my family, who was as excited about the shower as I was.  A year and a half ago or so, Jason and I ended up at a family reunion just a couple of days after having a miscarriage, and oh! every single one of them found the exact right moment during the weekend to hug and listen and cry with me.  My throat catches just thinking of it.  And to celebrate with them now is even sweeter as a result.  It made for a pretty special shower.  Tearing up when I think about it isn't all pregnancy hormones.

The Johnson Girls

Anyway, wanted to share some pictures of the fun, even if it was hard to snap photos in the romantically dusky basement.  And seriously, don't Shaanti, Jenny, and Kim look fantastic (and Mom, of course!)?  I am definitely living vicariously through their wardrobes...

My birthday wish list

A couple of weeks before my birthday, Jason asked me what I wanted.  After three weeks of working 11-12 hour days, putting together baby registries and shower lists, multiple weekends in a row of picking out bathroom fixtures, and the eternal car seat/stroller debate, I honestly had nothing.  For the first time in my life.

Here are the things I wanted for my birthday:
* For our house to be done before the baby is born.
* An end to hearing season at work.
* To not spend a single moment of a weekend shuffling things around our house.
* Pride and Prejudice.  In whatever form it takes.
* No major decisions, just for one weekend.  Oh, and finding the car seat we want online.
* An afternoon of "Downton Abbey."
* Dark chocolate cupcakes and good food.
* Regular clothes, and fitting into them.

So, the status of the house is still up in the air, though clearly from previous blog posts you can see that things are moving as well as can be expected.  But otherwise, I had a pretty nice birthday.  I worked all week in Idaho, but on Tuesday night we had waffles for dinner and Mom and I curled up on the couch and fell asleep to P&P.  I spent my birthday weekend having lunch with my dear Oxford friend Krista, whom I hadn't seen in years, and dinner with Dawn (as usual!).  We finally, FINALLY started "Downton Abbey"...after finally, FINALLY finishing the child birth prep video.  Jason made cupcakes for our Sunday school class and took me to Proof for dinner, which was delicious.  I even wore a non-maternity tunic and felt kind of good about things--and I got some nice gift cards for post-baby shopping.  It was a perfect 33.

Dos for Coop

I have missed 13 nephew birthdays over the past five years.  That is a lot of sad-faced "wishes I could be there" to evites.  So what fun to be able to celebrate Cooper's big two with him in person! 

Enjoying his pah-resents.  A boy after his mother's own heart.

The birthday boy with Aunt Shaanti (and something a little extra!)

 

Mason and Cole, shooting hoops with the uncles.

We started the celebration at Chuck E. Cheese's--which, since it's the same Chuck E. Cheese's we frequented as kids, held a lot of memories...especially for Casey and me, who haven't been back there for years.  It also held a lot of chaos and out-of-control-ness, especially for Casey and me, who don't have little kids yet and are used to relative peace and quiet.  Sigh.

Kade, enjoying every second of being stuck in that high chair.

A quick pic with Mason

This is the only pic Troy would let me take.  He was very serious about it.

 For the record Chuck E. Cheese's is not quite just for kids.  We all enjoyed way too many skee-ball games, and Casey and I ended up playing the street b-ball game for a good half of the night (I blame the basketball-sized belly for the fact that I lost every single game to him).  And the boys had a blast.

Hangin' with Mr. Cooper

Clearly this kid has too many tickets

Dad and Casey, entertaining themselves the old fashioned way

After that, we went back to my parents' for snacks and Italian sodas and a broader birthday season celebration.  Casey, Coop, Kim, and I all have birthdays within two weeks of each other, followed shortly by Adam and Jenny, so it was fun to get to celebrate all together.  And, by the way, it was way fun to see Casey and Kim, who came down for the shower and the weekend before heading back to snow-ridden Moscow.

New Shed Dormer

Before ...

After!

New Tub and Insulation

Missy's grand soaking tub!

Amazing how much quieter when properly insulated.

Renovation Update

Here are a few internal photos of our 2nd floor renovation project.  Hopefully we will have our close-in inspection this week so the siding, insulation, tub, and drywall can be installed next.

Master Bedroom.  New Linen closet on the left and nook for a desk on the right.

View from Master Bedroom into newly framed walk-in closet.

View of the Bathroom Floor.  New plumbing (and for our guests, a new bath fan in the guest bathroom).

Nursery.  Looking into the new extra large reach-in closet.

Spring flowers that we planted in the fall (included just for fun).

Fun at Work, 2012 Edition

We're smack in the middle of the (first) crazy season at work, when my schedule is stocked with more meetings and hearings than I have hours in the day.  We work really hard during February and March, and, as I've mentioned before, sometimes it takes a few weird moments to keep things light.  Hence the pictures below.

It turns out the thing to do in May 2012 is have a baby--not only are Tilly and Amy due then, but my coworker Kaylyn is, too.  People are starting to get wary of drinking the water in our office.  Kaylyn was one of the first people to find out I was pregnant--and vice versa--because we share the same OB and ran into each other at the doctor's office last September.  Just a little too suspicious...  There was a lot of secret keeping going on there for a while.  Lucky office and lucky boss, a third of the staff will be on maternity leave this summer.

I think the "lucky boss" is getting a bit panicked, based on the expressions in these pictures...

Springing

What a lovely first day of March we had!  It has been raining ever since, but spring decided to spring nicely for a day and a half or so.  This has been an awkward winter--mostly because I don't consider 60 degree weather to be "winter," and I've been all nervous that my bulbs started coming up in January.  But now that it is March it's fine for bulbs to bloom and the sun to shine, and I'm somewhat successfully avoiding associating "spring" with "having a baby."  Yet.

Granted, it's going to be in the 40s the next few days, with possible snow, but whatever.  It was nice this week.