June 2015

The other night we had a pretty good storm, complete with grape-sized hail. No real damage right around us, except that our over-achieving tomato plant (Jeran counted 56 tomatoes!) lost one of its most laden branches, Really just bent it good, it might pull through.

Here are some hail pictures - not very good ones since I was in a hurry and holding a squirmy baby, but you get the idea.

Allison has been sick with a decent cold for over a week. I think she's improving but still wakes herself up coughing. Since she gotten sick she has been staying up until 11pm instead of her normal 9:30pm. She has also been pretty much impossible to set down during naps without waking her completely and won't nap well unless she's held. So we've been holding a coughing, sleeping baby a lot recently. I'm not sure whether it is just a normal phase or if it is because she's sick, but hopefully it won't last forever.

Jeran is sick now too, and he gets pretty miserable whenever he gets a sore throat, but it can't be too serious because he was well enough to go wake-boarding twice this weekend despite the rain. :) Allison also wakes up to his coughing, so I got treated the other night to the amusing sight of Jeran rushing into the bedroom to grab a pillow to smother himself with while he coughed after putting her to bed one night.

My sister, Jessica, came to visit us this past week. She braved Allison's sickness and we just hung out and went out to eat and talked. It was so great to see her again and talk baby stuff. Woohoo! Not long for her now!

My work is going pretty well and I think I'm doing a pretty good job balancing work and home even as they are blended together so thoroughly. Jeran has been trying to study most every day for a few hours for his Masters qualifying exams that will happen at the end of July so that's keeping him pretty busy. I'm excited for the few weeks in August between those being over and school starting again, plus my friend Mary and baby Peter are coming to visit during that time so it will be doubly good.

I'm going to try to post a little something much more regularly. I always enjoy my family and friends' blog posts, even if it's only one or two lines or just a picture, so I'm going to try to update my own more even if it's just a tiny post. Happy end of June (already?)!

Snow Days

We had a very fun and exciting weekend. Although we didn't get the 6"-12" of snow that was forecast, we did get a few inches followed by the right conditions to turn that snow into a hard shell on everything that wasn't immediately cleared off.

Church was canceled on Sunday and driving was discouraged (because a lot of the people here apparently are idiots when it comes to snow driving). We made lemons into lemonade and had a wonderful friends-, food- and fun-filled weekend.

We ate at Panda Express on Friday night and then played fun games at R&L's.

I didn't realize just how comprehensively I missed the snow until we were driving and fishtailed on a turn and the only thought I had was a wonderfully nostalgic thought along the lines of "Now this REALLY feels like home!"

Saturday morning, Jeran shoveled our sidewalk and then tackled our friends driveway and sidewalk with a square-mouth shovel. We had sausage egg sandwiches and muffins for breakfast at A&M's and then relaxed and played games.

We also got to play with the cutest baby ever (R&L's). She has learned lots of new things recently like crawling and grabbing anything that looks interesting. She had a hard time moving around on the hard floor though.

We also managed to fit in some homework, apparently unnecessary Sunday lesson planning, and a few other things around the house.

Saturday night we went to R&L's and ate delicious Hawaiian haystacks. We played Bananagrams, Pears in Pairs, Call of Duty (blagh), CatchPhrase, and Rock Band.

In CatchPhrase, the girls stomped the boys by being quick-witted and using ESP:

"Uh, This is something Michael Jordan did."

"Moonwalk!"

"Yes!"

"It's a baseball team."

"Orioles!"

"Yes!"

The boys lost. Example:

After having separately guessing the words "laser" and "beam",

"Now put the two words together!"

"Tractor beam!"

"No"

"Tractor light?"

"No no no! The other word!"

"Tractor beam?"

"NO! The word from before!"

"Uh.............."

BUZZ!

Sunday morning, I slept in since our 9:00 church was canceled. At 11:00, R&L and A&M came to our house for Sunday brunch (Biscuit cinnamon rolls, hash brown and sausage breakfast bake, and muffins). Then we relaxed, watched Johnny Lingo (two people had never seen it!) and one or two of the New Testament lesson supplement videos and played Risk. It was my first time playing Risk the real way and apparently it was a non-typical game, since it only took about an hour (with 6 players) with Mary dominating the world in a very small number of turns. I think I still prefer my made-up way.

Then A&M taught me and Jeran how to play Agricola. It was pretty awesome. And not just because I won. :) After wrapping your head around the complexities of the game and it's strategy, it is very fun and interesting and we had been wanting to learn how to play it for some time now.

So all in all, it was a very fabulous weekend. And the snow is still here on Monday - schools are canceled, garbage collection is delayed, etc. but it will probably almost all be melted after today. I can hear it drip, drip, dripping away outside right now...

Rain, rain go away

The weather the last 5 or so days here has been lousy. Rain! Not our usual dumping-buckets-for-half-a-day rain, but long-lasting drizzly, cloudy, on-and-off, misty rain. I know as I am saying this that I will not get any sympathy at all from my overseas family since that is kind of the norm there, but I still don't like it. When we first moved to North Carolina, I didn't like the rain much at all but I got to like the quick in-and-out storms that are more common here. I like the craziness and randomness of a lovely morning followed by tons of rain for an hour or two and then sunshine. I think one reason why our current weather is now so despised is that we had a marvelous weekend before this with 80 degree days and sunshine the whole time. Psych!

There are a few things I'm really looking forward to this spring:

• Picking strawberries at the pick-your-own farms
• Seeing all the tons of spring flowers all over, especially all along the highways
• Planning and hopefully planting some vegetables in our garden
• Tennis!
• Hiking and camping

Hooray for the first day of spring on Friday! Everyone balance an egg to celebrate!

Picnic Weather

This weekend has been so beautiful! Friday, Saturday and Sunday were all above 70 degrees and sunny. On Friday I wanted to work on fixing up the garden a little to get it ready to plant but after a few minutes I decided it was too hot. Sunday we went on a picnic at the park. We sat on a blanket and had sandwiches (thanks Ryan and Lindy!) and played Kubb (that lawn game where you throw the wood sticks at the other wood pieces). It was fun. We should have taken our camera! Agh! I need to get better at that.