Emily and Kolby

Exciting News!

Kolby found out a few days ago that two of his poems were accepted for publication in a Christian literary journal called Relief. This will be his first published work (other than Wheaton’s literary magazine that he published in while he was there for school) and I think this means he is officially a poet now! It has a good ring to it, doesn’t it? Poet.

I’m sure this will be the start of many publications for Kolby, and Relief is a great launching point. Several of his Wheaton professors published in it at the beginning of their careers. We don’t know what issue his poems will appear in, but I’ll keep you posted, and you’ll be able to purchase the book on Amazon.com if you want a copy. A lot of his poems are either about the Bible or about baseball (how shocking, right?!?), and these two are the former. One reflects on the story of Cain and Abel and the other on Abraham and Isaac. The Abraham and Isaac one is one of my favorite poems he’s ever written, and I’m so excited to see it in print! Apparently I wasn’t the only person that thought it was a great piece.

So proud of you, honey :) I always knew you could do it.

While we're on the subject of exciting news, Jessica gave birth to her precious baby girl this morning at 9:22am! Her name is Emersyn Jo and she weighed 8 pounds and was 20 inches long. Mom and baby are doing great! Jess and I have been friends for over 10 years and she is the first of my best friends to have a baby. It was so crazy talking to her yesterday knowing that baby EJ was coming today. I just couldn't get over the fact that it was the last time I'd talk to her before her life and all her priorities completely changed. I had the same strange feeling when I said goodbye to Kolby after our rehearsal dinner, knowing that the next time we saw each other I would be walking down the aisle and our whole lives would be different. Congrats to Jess and Steven--- parenthood will be a big change, but I bet it'll be a wonderful one! :)

Labor Day Weekend

Like last year, we had a great weekend hanging out with my dad’s side of the family at my parents’ ranch. Have I mentioned before that we love spending time with family? :)

The agenda for the weekend was the usual… eat, play games, chat, repeat. My cousins that live in San Diego and Michigan made the trip and it was so great to have everyone together. And by “together” I mean really, really together. The ‘sleep your family of 8 in one room together’ kind of togetherness. Luckily my parents built the ranch with these numbers in mind. Although they usually have the master bedroom all to themselves while the rest of us get to listen to our loud, mouth-breathing brothers all night, so touché to them on that foresight.

I’m still working on getting more consistent at remembering to take pictures, but here are a few of the random ones that I did manage to snap.

Here is a series of pictures of my newest cousin, Laura. She is absolutely precious, so I won’t even apologize for the fact that these pictures really have nothing to do with a Labor Day post other than the fact that I took them this weekend.

Laura has a bug-loving older brother, Jackson. He’s pretty cute, too. He will do just about anything to be the center of attention, hence the whole ‘eating a live cricket to see how everyone reacts’ thing. I reacted by taking some pictures.

I couldn’t get Addi (the oldest of the blonde trifecta) to pose for a picture, but I talked her into letting me take a picture of a cricket on her arm and snuck her in, too. I used to babysit Addi several days a week back when she was a baby and we both lived in Waco. She’s 5 now and in kindergarten. Where does time go?!?

Back to the actual events of the weekend. We played some whiffleball:

We played A LOT of One Bounce: My mom is moving so fast that she is a blur in this picture. It’s a knee replacement success story. Or a low-light photo situation.

We managed to lose a few balls to various roofs and/or trees, and then lost even more balls in an attempt to retrieve the first.

Kolby and the kids spent a lot of time shelling peanuts and making peanut butter:

Kolby taught us a grotesque science lesson about how female praying mantises bite the heads off of their mates while mating and then just let him decompose on their backs, and we got to see first hand that he was definitely not making it up:

And we helped my dad corral a cow that had jumped the electric fence and was wreaking poo havoc on our whiffleball field.

I also took a stab at my first family photo shoot:

That about wraps it up! In case you’re interested, just a few minutes ago I heard a fire truck and then looked up from my computer to see that it was parked in front of our house. Turns out someone reported that our backyard was on fire. It wasn’t. Which was good, because I’d feel like an idiot if I was sitting on the couch uploading pictures while our yard went up in flames behind me.

Real Food Page, etc.

I’ve probably mentioned this in bits and pieces before, but Kolby and I are in the midst of overhauling our eating habits. Since the beginning of this year, we’ve been researching nutrition and trying to get more informed about better health choices when it comes to the food we stock our kitchen with. [We’re also trying to exercise more (ok, at all), but that isn’t going well at the moment and I don’t even want to think about Jillian Michaels and her stupid 30-Day Shred right now.]

There is a lot of different research and opinions out there, but the line of thinking that we’ve decided to hitch our wagons to is the very simple idea that eating “real food”—food that is traditional and natural and has been consumed for generations and generations—is a better health choice than eating the highly processed and industrial foods that have cropped up in the fairly recent past. In an effort to eat more of these wholesome and nutritious “real” foods, we’ve made some changes to what we buy and where we buy it from.

Enter the new Real Food page on our blog, which will chronicle our journey to eating more healthful foods. Let me start by saying the motivation behind this new page stems almost solely from the fact that I really enjoy blogging, and my recent interest in nutrition and food is just one more thing that I can write about. But maybe it’s a topic that you guys would be interested in, too, and we can share what we all know and think and cook. Or maybe no one cares—which is why I’m tucking it away on a separate page :)

So, the link is there on the top of the page. Visit if you wish. We’re still learning and I’d love to hear your thoughts or knowledge or good recipes, either on or off the blog.

In other news, we’re headed down to my parents’ ranch to spend Labor Day weekend with my dad’s side of the family. I was talking to my mom on the phone last night to finalize plans for the meal we’re in charge of fixing and she said, “Well, there will only be 15 or 16 of us still there on Monday.” I feel like using “only” to describe a group of 16 people falls into the category of ‘you know you have a big family when…’ Everyone except my cousin that is currently overseas will make it for the weekend… summing to 22 of us for 3 days under 1 roof. My dad only has two sisters, so I’m not sure where all of these people came from. Marriage really has a multiplying effect, I guess. We’re excited for the fun weekend!

First Day of School

Kolby had his first day of school yesterday. He’s been at school for the past few weeks preparing projects and such, and we both went up there one night last week to get his classroom looking ready for the big first day. I met several teachers and a handful of students—each one providing further affirmation that this new school will fit Kolby like a glove. He is loving it already, and we are so grateful.

I made Kolby go to the doctor for a check-up before school started, mainly because he can’t remember the last time he set foot in a doctor’s office and because I want to feel like the health insurance we’ve been paying for this whole year isn’t for naught. Good news—he’s healthy. And tall, according to the nurse who tried to measure his height and had to pull the scale’s measuring stick so high that it came out of its socket. I also asked him to go see the surgeon that did his jaw reconstruction, just for a follow-up. Can you believe it’s been five years? Sheesh, that was one awful summer for him. Other than the quadrant of his lip and chin that never regained feeling, everything looks great!

We’re adjusting to our new routine with both of us being gone all day. We plan our meals for the week on Sunday afternoons and go to the grocery store together to get what we need. After work, we cook dinner together and take turns doing the dishes. It’s a change from when Kolby was able to have dinner ready for us by the time I got home (and vice-versa when I was in grad school), but it’s fun to do the cooking together now and I’m working on not getting a bad case of the hunger grumpies. Maybe I need to add an afternoon snack to my routine :)

Keeping the house clean is another story. How do people do it? I can honestly say that the vast majority of my wardrobe is either dirty and tossed on the floor or clean and scattered across the guest bed in various unfolded laundry piles. Things have gotten out of control, and culminated in a Tuesday night house cleaning extravaganza that will soon take place around here. Then Kolby and I will shake hands and pinkie-swear as we join in a commitment to not living like slobs just because we’re busy and tired.

Maya has been a trooper like always. I’m not sure what she does all day, but we just leave her out in the house and it’s been years since she’s gotten in to anything. I’m hoping she doesn’t revert back to her adolescent days when she acquired quite the taste for remote controls and power cords just for spite. We take her on a longer evening walk now, and we try to take her to the dog park or for a play date on the weekends.

Speaking of dog walking, I’m starting a new exercise routine. Last time I went to the doctor for my yearly check-up, she asked if I’ve been exercising and she didn’t seem too thrilled with my response of, “does walking my dog count?” It was her fault for asking me the question right after I was weighed; I feel like she could have been a bit more sensitive with her timing :). In any case, we’re making some fairly big changes in our eating habits to promote better health, and it’s probably fairly pointless so long as I’m not exercising regularly like I should. The experts seem to be in agreement that working out is good for your health. Bummer. So, enter Jillian Michaels and her 30-Day Shred video. I survived day 1, but it was touch-and-go there for awhile. We’ll see how this goes.

Home Alone

Kolby is finally back after leaving me home alone for two weeks! He had training for his new job that took place in Chicago, and then he had to fly straight to Santa Fe for his grad school residency. He had a great time at both, but he’s glad to be home. Maya and I are glad to have him home, too.

I’d say I fared pretty well while he was gone, thanks to a few friends staying the night with me here and there. I was able to put in some extra time at work and I kept myself occupied with a home improvement project that I’ll talk about later. I’d say the low point of my extended time alone was when I went to the grocery store and purchased nothing but a 40-pack of Bagel Bites and a 2-liter of Coke. It wasn’t my proudest moment.

Kolby really enjoys his time with his grad school peers, particularly because they have a lot in common when it comes to their interest in creative writing. For the graduation ceremony that took place this year, the guys in his cohort decided to don mustaches (not sure why).

I made it abundantly clear that he was not to return home with that stache. Ron Burgandy, anyone?

Kolby started back to work this week. We may have to put Maya in therapy to help her adjust to not having one of us home during the day like she always has. We did finally spring for a decent dog bed for her, though. I’m not sure why that’s related to her getting accustomed to being home alone, nor why it is even worth mentioning, but she’s excited about her new digs.

Back to the home improvement project. For the weeks that Kolby was gone, I spent every day after work turning our (detached) garage into a guest house. The previous owners converted the garage into a game room-type space, with carpet and real walls and an A/C unit. For the past year, we have just been using it as garage storage--- leftover paint, Christmas decorations, power tools, lawn mower, miscellaneous junk, and pretty much anything that we didn’t want to deal with in the house. It wasn’t a pretty sight.

But after some hard work, sweat, the unsupervised use of a circle saw, and a very minor black eye from the back side of a hammer--- I converted the space into this:

The grey curtain is hiding a bunch of shelves that I built to hold all of our junk. Thanks to my fam for helping me put together the furniture, which has been in the family since Brad and I shared a room when we were little. And also thanks to Ikea--- you sure do know how to price some bedding. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. Not that we’re expecting a lot of guests anytime soon, but this was a project we’ve had hanging over our heads for awhile, and we’ll need this space come September when our Life Group starts back up and the little kids need a place to play. I have some cheap decorating ideas in the works, but I’m not in any hurry to spend any more time working on this room for awhile.

While I’m on the topic of home improvement projects, let me post a few more pictures of some other things I’ve done lately. My friend Alayne helped me make a curtain for above our kitchen sink:

When my parents moved, this baker’s rack that had been in their laundry room was up for grabs. It found a great home in our dining/kitchen area. I’m trying to decide if I want to paint the base of it black or antique red or leave it alone. Any thoughts? The shelves are full of things I’ve collected from my great-grandmother’s house. I can’t decide what should stay or what should go, so it’s a bit cluttered right now.

When my parents were here last weekend, they brought me these curtains and curtain rods that were left at their new house. Free guest room makeover… can’t beat that.

I wouldn’t say this is an improvement in any real sense, and definitely a step back in the decor department, but we installed our window A/C unit in our master bedroom for the summer. It allows us to leave the central A/C set really hot at night and keep our room cool at night with this thing for a lot cheaper. It didn’t fit as well in our old window, but we made it work with some foil and binder clips. Classy, eh?

That’s about all that is new here. Oh, and some exciting news--- as a birthday gift from Kolby, I had someone create a blog design for us. It will go live on Sunday (I think). I’m pretty adept at most computer things, but I don’t know the first thing about Blogger or blog backgrounds, etc. I thought it would be fun to add some color around here, so Kolby treated me to some help in that department. Hopefully it’ll look OK!

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Catching Up

So, it’s been awhile since a normal update about what’s been going on with us. I would say that not much has been going on, but since it’s been two months—surely I can come up with something!

Let’s start with Kolby. The kid is getting really excited about his new job! The more and more interaction he’s had with his principal and with other teachers (and students) at the school, the more psyched he’s gotten about how great of a fit this will be for him. The kids are great, and the teachers are fairly young and several are pursuing their Master’s degrees as well (or just received theirs). There is also a great balance of male and female teachers at his school, which has not been the case at the other schools he’s taught at. He’s usually on a teaching team with older women, which has allowed him to learn a lot from some great veteran teachers, but they didn’t really provide the type of social interaction he would have loved to have. He’s hopeful for an all-around great experience this year, and I personally don’t think he’ll be disappointed. It’s a great job at a great school. Plus, senior AP English and a creative writing elective--- I mean if that doesn’t sound perfect for him than I don’t know what does.

I also have some exciting news on the job front--- I got a promotion last week. I won’t really be doing anything different, I basically just got a new title (and it has the word “economist” in it, which is really thrilling to me) to mark the new responsibilities I’ve acquired over the past few months. Still no upgrade from my cubicle though, so Brad can still email me pictures of his plush office at his new job to try to get under my skin :)

Our summer has actually been really busy, although I can’t really recall what makes it feel that way. We went through a three-week stretch where we had something going every night of the week, which isn’t usual for us. Things have settled down for a bit but I’m sure they’ll pick back up once school starts.

One major task that we’ve recently taken on is to watch the TV show LOST for the first time--- all 6 seasons. I was mourning the loss of a summer break, so we (I) decided that a TV marathon could help bring me a sense of the carefree summers that are now a thing of the past. We’re hooked. We’ve already made it to season 5. I’m embarrassed to calculate how many hours of TV that sums to, but the episodes are nearly an hour long and several seasons have upwards of 20 episodes. It’s been so fun, though! I mean why not?!?

In anticipation of dual-income for the first time in our marriage, we’ve really ramped up our spending lately--- upgrading to HD cable and signing up for a pest control service. What can I say, we live on the edge.

I’ve been working on some home improvement projects lately, but I need my regular point and shoot camera to take some pictures of everything. Or a wider lens for my nice camera. I sent my point and shoot with Russell for his study abroad trip to London this summer. I wouldn’t say that I have high hopes of every seeing it again. So far, he’s already managed to lose his debit card, laptop, and passport. My oh my.

And just so I have an excuse to add some pictures to this post, we took a short road trip a few weekends ago to visit some family in Emory, TX. Brad and Remy came with us and we had a great afternoon visiting Ruth & Ray, my great aunt and great uncle who stood in as my quasi-grandparents at our wedding. I try to visit them every few months, and I think that town and that mobile home are some of my favorite places on earth. Visiting them is an experience that only our family on that side can truly understand, but let’s just say that a great time was had by all. Especially the baby raccoon that Uncle Ray was trying to coerce into a humane trap so he could raise it in his kitchen. Apparently he misses Misty, the squirrel he raised from infancy (also in his kitchen), who recently escaped. Like I said, Emory visits are always an adventure and never disappoint.