Moji & Aurora

I am really out of practice both of taking photos and blogging about my projects. So, you will have to forgive the weird faces. I really thought I was smiling and if I was then I need to work on that.

Anyway, Colette's Seamwork pattern line is fun. Quick and easy projects to whip out a wardrobe in a small time frame. I have made a few of the patterns so far. The Moji pants were a (small) surprise hit. I decided not to make any adjustments because Colette's other pants/shorts patterns fit me well as printed. I wasn't sure as I was finishing them, but realized that the extra fabric for the drawstring closure was throwing me off. 

I like that I can move the fabric more towards the back and create a flat-looking front panel.

This awesome plaid has been in Mom's stash for almost as long as I can remember. It must be a twill since it feels a bit like denim to wear but still needs pressing after the wash. Perhaps Mom can tell us all what and how old it is? I have saved it from the jumper that I am sure it was intended to be.

John says these are borderline pajama pants. I don't feel like I'm wearing pajamas although they are very comfortable.

The top is also a Seamwork pattern, the Aurora tank. It's hard to see the detailing of gathers on the straps from this angle. The gathers help make the front more roomy in the bust area, meaning I can just about get away with no adjustments. The fabric is leftover from a dress I made a few years ago before I was blogging. It has held up well, so I have high expectations that this tank will last many seasons.

I have already made another Aurora tank in a purple/pink lighter weight knit and have plans for denim Mojis. Hopefully the weather stays nice so that I can wear them for a while yet.

Rebooting Life

Our life for the last few years has been defined by loss. We have had three attempts at adoption fall through, lost our two dogs and two cats, and dealt with infertility treatments. Reading the last few posts of this blog, I was getting depressed. It has been about 18 months since I touched this page, or even looked at it. That was right in the middle of all the hard things I just mentioned. I'm sure I was depressed!

It's time for a fresh breeze, like the one that is right now blowing a change of weather into Seattle and bringing rain behind it. A Reboot.

Lacey Mountain's Precocious Gemini

Sirius Black (Kitty)

These two crazy babies joined our family in the last month. We picked Gem up from her breeder on our way home from Montana in late July. Two weeks later John decided we needed a kitty, too. We found Sirius at the shelter. They are 3 and 4 months old, respectively, and are figuring out how to live together and torment each other. They are actually very good together which is a nice change from our previous pack of animals.

So I am trying new things (more about that to come) and getting back into the hobbies and things I love doing. September always brings with it that desire to buy new pencils, crayons, and paper and start something new. Bible Study and a new Seattle Symphony Chorale season will begin again. We will inhale this fresh breeze and welcome the change that it brings, praying that it brings some hope and joy along with it.

Spinning

I started this year trying to be really positive... lots of plans and ideas for what I want to do in 2014. Instead, I find my life is getting increasingly out of control. My house is a disaster (at least to me) and the holiday 5 pound weight gain has turned into New Year 10. My disgust with myself culminated on Thursday after Bible study when I found I had mindlessly eaten 5 doughnuts while watching a TV show. (It was my table's turn to bring treats and instead of baking something like I usually do I bought doughnuts, bringing home the leftovers.) Unbelievable!! I know better than this!

I'm sure it has to do with all the junk that happened in 2013. That was a horrible year from start to finish! John says he feels like the stress is coming off in layers. You relax a bit at a time and each time are shocked at how stressed you were before. That has to be true because nothing else can explain fistfuls of chocolate chips, obsessive baking, and bouts of laziness when what I really want is to be healthy and productive. Making me feel worse is that I constantly have that verse in my head where Paul says I do what I don't want to do and don't do what I do want to do. (Of course I can't remember the reference.) That's the problem with memorizing scripture, it's always right there in your brain for the Holy Spirit to convict you with. 

The hardest daily stuff is the loss of Daisy, Ichabod, and Cameron and the uncertainty of being able to adopt baby D. I can't even describe how much I miss those three. My first dog who was truly all mine, the cat who shared the first 11 years of our marriage, and our first child. I knew that we would eventually lose the animals. Every pet owner knows that before they choose to bring the pet home, it's just part of the deal. Yet we do it anyway because it is so worth it and we choose not to think about the inevitable loss. The anger and frustration with the state over Cameron's situation has lasted longer than I anticipated, if I ever actually thought about it. It comes and goes in waves. Sometimes I am shocked that he isn't here...toddling around, banging things, and waking up the baby. Knowing that he is safe and in a good home helps so much, but it doesn't make up for the fact that I want him here with us. I wonder if that will ever go away completely? What happened there has made me very cautious and skeptical of a successful outcome in this situation.

It's not all bad. My house is relatively clean and I keep up on the mold streaks in the toilet and vacuuming the dog hair off the floor. I have a salad everyday and a piece of fruit. I lead a table at our women's Bible study and sing in the Seattle Symphony Chorale. It all just seems so puny and half-hearted. Like going through the motions instead of actually living. Something is definitely missing, I just can't figure it out.

Maybe the real issue is learning to deal with how out of control we actually are. Life in this country, generally, gives us the illusion that our lives are our own to do with as we like. That is true to an extent and thank goodness for that freedom. However, being a Christian starts with giving up that idea, giving ourselves up to Christ's will for our life, and letting God shape us through experiences and events that we would never choose for ourselves. I think I just answered my own question...

So, in an effort to get out of this pit, I've rejoined FlyLady to help me get my house back in order and put myself back on Weight Watchers to get myself back under control. More importantly, I am reading a daily devotional by Charles Spurgeon and studying Isaiah with the ladies at my church.

Today my sink is shining.

What 2013 Took From Us

John and I both have said that 2013 was the worst year we have ever had. There were certainly seasons before that were difficult and almost broke us apart, but this season lasted the entire year. I'm somewhat amazed that we are still standing in one piece! Looking back at it, it seems quite certain that we were under attack on many fronts. I hope it grew our faith like battles are supposed to do, but we are still coming out of the muck of it all, so we will have to wait and see.

In October of 2012 we were told that our foster son, Cameron, would possibly be moved. We fought so hard to keep him with us, but on Valentine's Day his court hearing went against us. The judge was visibly upset by having to remove him, but obviously felt that she could make no other ruling. With John's grandmother very sick and time constraints for Cameron's (new) family we felt it best to move him sooner rather than later. He left us at the beginning of March. That was the worst week of the whole year. Our only consolation is that his aunt and uncle (now mom and dad) are amazing people and have let us FaceTime with him as often as we need. He is doing so well and has adjusted as we hoped he would. We still miss him everyday.

In April, John's grandmother, Rita, passed away. We were so glad to have had the opportunity to visit her in March in Sacramento. She was the last surviving grandparent that John knew as a child. It's strange how those events feel like a major jump in our own aging process.

Shortly after we returned from California, our cat, Ichabod, died suddenly. We have no idea what happened. He ate a normal dinner and was tearing around the house before bed as usual. When I went in to see him in the morning, he was gone. He was 11 years old. We got him the month after we got married and he went through everything with us. It is strange that he is gone and sometimes I think I see him in a dark shadow or when a black jacket is left in a heap somewhere.

We decided to try IVF in the late spring. It was a hard decision and one that we made uncertainly. We figured that since we were already emotionally drained, if it didn't work we couldn't be too upset. The process was rough, with lots of shots and invasive doctor visits. We did one round and it was determined that our chances of it ever working were low enough to not bother pursuing it again. That was actually easier to take than it sounds, since we had been trying for almost 10 years. It gave us the final permission to move on with adoption and put it all behind us for good.

In July we took a long vacation to Montana. I spent two weeks with my family in Billings and then John flew over to meet us all at Glacier Park. We had a nice, relaxing time reconnecting and making decisions about what to do next.

In August we were given two days' notice that we would be given a newborn boy. We brought him home at five days old. Four weeks later we were asked to take an 18 month old boy and decided to give it a try. We had the older one for three months when we finally realized (or admitted) that his medical care was just too much for us and we had to have him moved. That was another hard decision since he was legally free and we could have adopted him. It taught me to pay more attention to details, ask more questions, and stop making emotional decisions about live changing events. (Still working on that one...)

Then on November 17 I had to make the awful decision to have Daisy put down. She somehow injured her spine and over the course of two days went from limping slightly to complete loss of her back legs and bowels. Losing her was another one of those "end of an era" events. She and Ichabod were with us in the beginning of our marriage and for the first 10 years were our furry children. I hate that she is gone and I miss her all the time. However, I know she is in Heaven with Velvet, playing with bunnies and running like crazy over open grassy fields. I also know she is waiting for me.

In December John changed jobs. It was a difficult but necessary move and has turned out to be the right decision. Then we went to Republic to spend Christmas with his family. It was a great time of relaxing and being away from cell phones.

Our pastor sort of jokingly said that we ought to take a stress test but we thought it would only stress us out more to know how stressed we are. So we are glad to see the back of 2013 and good riddance! Here's hoping that 2014 is our Year of Jubilee!

A Much-Needed Road Trip

Right after Cameron left us in March, we really needed a road trip. We took the opportunity to visit John's grandmother, Rita Bender, in Sacramento. She had been declining for some time and we are so glad we took the trip since she passed away two weeks after we saw her. While we didn't get any photos of our actual visit with her, we did get some of the side trips we made.

Our first stop was Tacoma where we got to meet my new cousin (first cousin once removed, actually), Max William Major. He's such a cutie and so tiny! I had forgotten how small a newborn can be.

From Tacoma we drove to Prospect, OR and stayed at the Prospect Hotel Bed and Breakfast. We were the only guests and had to stay in one of the smaller rooms behind the house since they didn't have time to heat the main house for us. We had dinner at a surprisingly good Mexican restaurant and the next morning drove to Crater Lake. It was beautiful, but cold so we didn't stay too long. We also had a long drive ahead of us since we needed to get to Sacramento that day.

We took the long back way to I5 which gave us a back side view of Mt. Shasta that we probably won't see again.

We stayed 4 days in Sacramento visiting the family there and spending as much time with Grandma Bender as we could. We stayed at another bed and breakfast downtown, Vizcaya. This was a fun place to stay. It is an old home from the Gold Rush times, surrounded by other homes of the same time that reminded me a lot of the style of the house in Lady and The Tramp. I could totally have a house like this one, except that I would probably need a maid!

We decided to take Highway 101 back home because I had never done that before and it would take us through Seaside, letting us see my family. We stayed two nights in Crescent City at the Anna Wolf House bed and breakfast. We used the one day we had there to hike through some of the redwood forests. It was really amazing and so beautiful. John said that it felt like being in a cathedral.

Our last stop was Seaside, OR. It happened to be the last time we will be there for a long time since my brother,sister, and nieces have moved back to Billings. We had a fun time playing around, having dinner, and watching a movie.

John & I took the girls to the local arcade and Bella did a great job on the motorcycle game! We also played a lot of Air Hockey and Ski-Ball (my favorite). We pooled all of our tickets and the girls came away with a good load of candy.

It was very nice to get out on the road, see places that are off the beaten path, and spend time with family whom we had not seen since before we left Los Angeles. We also highly recommend staying in Bed & Breakfasts. It's the best way to go!

Goodbye Kitty Be(e)

This morning we found our kitty, Ichabod, had passed away during the night.

We don't know what happened. He was his usual self yesterday, tearing around the house, whining for his food, and tormenting Daisy. He was only 11. I was sure that he would outlive the dogs, but it wasn't to be.

We called him our Kitty Be(e) because when we brought Daisy home we were always telling her to "leave the kitty be!". The name stuck. We are so sad to lose our first pet. We brought him home just a month after we were married. He was free in the paper in Los Angeles. We always felt a little bad because the boy we took him from really wanted to keep him and cried, but his step-mom said no. He was born at the same time as a litter of golden retriever puppies and they said that he would run around and play with them. He certainly more than tolerated our dogs, being more like one of the pack.

We will miss his chewing on our hair, getting on the counters too much, waking us up for breakfast, chewing off the strings for the blinds, and many other things. See you in kitty heaven.

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Moving On...

I have been meaning to write this post for a while but every time I thought about it I just couldn't do it. It sends me to tears which is very annoying for me. (I know, it's healthy and normal.) I'm just so sick of crying.

It's three weeks today since we said goodbye to our boy. I don't know how I expected to feel. It feels like a death even though he is quite alive. We have known since the court date on Valentine's Day that he was going to leave us. It seemed surreal, though, until his aunt and uncle came to get him.

We honestly could not have asked for better people to take him. If anyone had to I am glad it is them. The transition was as smooth as possible. They spent five days with us, one night at our house, while the baby got used to them and being taken care of by them. He was clearly confused when we left him for the last time at the hotel. He was a trooper, not crying or getting visibly upset, though he was clinging to both of us. They said he was the perfect baby on the flights home and charmed everyone. I would expect nothing less of him and those of you who know him I'm sure are not surprised.

We have Skyped with them twice since he left which is extremely difficult, but also good and helpful. He still remembers us and gets excited when he sees us. He seems to be settling in and is especially interested in following his new big brother (actually cousin) around. We have to cut it short when he gets upset because he can't climb through the screen to get to us. We are still trying to decide if going out to visit him is a good idea. We want him to know that we love him but are afraid that he will think we have come to get him and we will have to go through that horrible separation all over again.

These are some of our favorite pictures of him that don't show his face. Since he is still in foster care we have to continue to be careful about the identity protection policies.

We aren't sure what the future holds for us with regard to other children. It seems certain that we will not do foster to adopt again because of everything that happened surrounding us getting him, thinking we would keep him, but ultimately leaving. For now we are moving through each day one at a time and looking ahead to better times.

Trip to the Olympics

We spent last week at the Olympics with my best friend from high school and his wife and one-year-old son. We had a great time, although most people immediately think we were in England when in fact we were visiting the Olympic Mountains and Olympic National Park in far western Washington. We were watching the Olympic Games on television like everyone else.

We stayed in a vacation rental home on Lake Quinault, inside the national park, at the end of a dirt road about fifty yards from the lake, complete with a wraparound deck, grill, and hot tub. The house was mostly childproofed and allowed pets, which was more important for our friends than for us, since we boarded our dogs and our baby is still blessedly immobile, but it was a wonderful and relaxing place to stay.

Olympic National Park is most famous for its temperate rain forests, with a few locations receiving over 200 inches of rain a year. For as much rain as Seattle notoriously gets, it's actually in the rain shadow of the Olympic Mountains. We spent one day visiting the Hoh Rain Forest, which has a "Hall of Mosses" trail including some thousand-year-old trees. Something like five species of tree have their largest known example in this national park (including Douglas fir, Sitka spruce, and red cedar). The visitor center has a few tree-trunk cross-sections showing off their quarter-inch annual growth rings, meaning that some trees gain half an inch in girth every year -- a lot, if you think about it.

The park also includes large sections of Pacific beach. We took the baby down for his first experiences with sand and with the ocean, and he absolutely loved it. He wanted down into the sand and loved the feeling so much he immediately started eating it. Then I stood him at the edge of the surf and he squealed and jumped as the waves washed over his feet. He wanted down into the water, too, but I thought better of letting him get salt water splashed in his face. He could have stayed there a long time, but we weren't really dressed for the beach and it was getting toward time for his dinner. (He was also willing to sit on a log at the edge of Lake Quinault for 15 minutes at a time, just watching the water. I think trees and waves are much healthier entertainment for babies than mobiles with flashing lights and annoying songs.)

There aren't any roads through the park, so on our last day, we drove home the long way, five hours around the park. The road is US Hwy 101, the other end of which is in Hollywood, near where we used to live in Pasadena. This northern end of the highway is about as non-Hollywood as you can get, but it also passes through the town of Forks, Wash., the setting for the Twilight books. We didn't stop, but we did see (and ridicule) cars full of middle-aged women doing Twilight Tours. We drove up a steep road to Hurricane Ridge, at about 5000 ft. elevation. From the alpine meadow on top of the ridge, one can see Mt. Olympus (the American version), the park's highest point at nearly 8000 ft.

On this day, Hurricane Ridge also had views north across the Strait of Juan de Fuca into Victoria, BC, and the Cascade Mountains on the British Columbia coast behind it. To the east was Puget Sound and then Mt. Baker, a conical volcano in the Washington section of the Cascades. We couldn't have asked for more beautiful weather for this trip. The finale for the day was the ferry ride from the Olympic Peninsula back to Seattle, returning us to our home in this amazing city.

Mt. Rainier to the south

July 4, 2012

This year we were able to go up to Republic to spend the 4th with John's parents. We had a really nice and relaxing visit. Mr Baby had fun spending time with his grandparents and I actually got to work on my cross-stitch for four uninterrupted hours, it was lovely. We canoed on the lake, hiked a bit, watched fireworks off the back deck, and ate way too much ice cream!

Five Months Old

Oh, it kills me that I can't post a better picture of our boy's face. He is so cute! I guess y'all will just have to put up with it with me for a while longer.

Since today Mr. Baby is 5 months old, it seems a good time to update you all about him. We have had him home for about three months now and are still in the Foster Parent stage of this game. We probably will be for quite some time or until the state decides that he must be returned to his biological parents. We aren't able to provide any more information than that, so I apologize for the vagueness.

Mr. Baby seems to have grown by leaps and bounds in the last month. He is holding his head up quite well, sitting up assisted, trying to roll over, and starting to stand while held. It is so fun watching him learn all these new things! He seems to be a contemplative little guy, watching and absorbing his surroundings. His is also having rice cereal and oatmeal with his formula at every meal. He didn't want to do it at first and had quite the little fits for the first couple of days. Once he figured out that he liked it he became much more cooperative. He sits through bedtime stories, his favorites being Hop on Pop and the Little Golden Books (which are mostly Disney in this house).

We are having great fun with our Little Guy and continue to pray that the door to adoption will open soon with a smooth path before it.

Discovery Park

Memorial Day weekend we took advantage of the beautiful Saturday morning to hike around Discovery Park. It is quite close to us, just over the locks in Magnolia. There are eight miles of trails, but we opted for the 2.8 mile circuitous route. At one spot, you come up to look over the sound and it is so gorgeous. Mr. Baby did pretty well in the stroller, this was the longest hike/walk that we've taken him on yet. We will definitely do this again. It's an easy hike, close, and really feels like you've gotten out of the city.

The Magic Tree

I saw this stick-on tree and bought it on a whim when we were getting our bedroom ready for kids, not really sure where I would put it but really loving it. It now is over the changing table/dresser. Mr. Baby has loved it from the first day we brought him home. He stares at it, talks to it, and has started reaching out for it, especially for Piglet. It's a great place to put him when I just need a minute to do something. At least until he starts rolling over...

Spring Planting

A few weeks ago we were able to plant some things in the boxes on our front porch.

Small dahlias in the long boxes.
Last year's rose bush in the pot.

Daisy's inspection.

Daisies for the Daisy: white petals with purple centers.

We also planted green onions, basil, and Kentucky Mint in small pots. We hope to expand our herb garden, but this is a good start. Cousin Aymie found us a small wrought iron patio table at a garage sale last weekend. We are so excited to have it, just have to arrange how to get it here.