The great itch of my summer

I have poison ivy. This is my second round of it and I've basically had it for six or seven weeks straight. There was one brief week in between episodes when I didn't itch. Otherwise, I've been itching and crazy since around May 20.

This second round has me covered from my neck to my knees. All over. That's apparently what happens when you get it on your hands and arms and then go change clothes to run and sweat while you run and don't shower for a few hours. Everywhere I touched to change clothes and everywhere my running sweat went is covered in itchiness. 

I went to the Dr 10 days ago and got a shot of cortisone and took prednisone and used a steroid cream. I've taken aveeno oatmeal baths and used essential oils.  It hasn't cleared it up. So I headed to an allergist today who put me on a much stronger and longer dose of prednisone (which he told me will make me grumpy and fat...great!) and also prescribed a different steroid ointment and stronger antihistamine. I'm praying that this helps because good grief, I'm tired of itching!

 I know it's not life threatening and I feel humbled when I think about a friend my age who is undergoing chemotherapy or when I think of so many people around the world who suffer from far worse ailments without medical care. So I should really complain? Probably not. Have I complained? Yes. 

As much as I love yard work, I may avoid pulling any weeds for a while!

Our resident chef

Catherine loves to cook. She loves to watch cooking shows on tv and YouTube , read cookbooks, and think of creative dishes on her own. Soon she'll be cooking us dinner!

Here are a few of her creations from the past few days. 

One morning she made me breakfast. An English muffin with artfully arranged fruit. 

For a snack one day she made herself this banana with peanut butter and grapes. She's into food presentation! 

This morning she made homemade Reece's cups at 6am. She melted the chocolate, added peanut butter, and refrigerated them. They actually tasted just like a Reece's cup and was quite the treat before we even had breakfast. 

7--a book worth reading

I just finished reading this book: 7: an experimental mutiny against excess by Jen Hatmaker. I stumbled across her when lots of people began reposting one of her blog entries about being the worst end of school year mom ever. It was pretty funny! It even landed her a quick segment on the Today show. 

So I was reading around on her blog and started looking at the books she's written. I thought this was an interesting concept. She picked 7 areas that she feels like we as a culture overindulge in and did a type of "fast" from each one for a month. For example, clothing. She picked 7 items of clothing and only wore those 7 items for the entire month. Or spending. She picked only 7 stores to spend money at for the entire month. You get the idea. 

Here's the synopsis on her blog about 7:

7 is the true story of how Jen (along with her husband and her children to varying degrees) took seven months, identified seven areas of excess, and made seven simple choices to fight back against the modern-day diseases of greed, materialism, and overindulgence. In the spirit of a fast, they pursued a deeply reduced life in order to find a greatly increased God. 

I think she's so spot-on in many of her observations of current cultural Christianity and the church. I think most of us don't know how to abstain or fast or suffer to create any room for God to speak to us. She is very challenging. Think Radical¨ by David Platt (which you should read if you haven't.) I long to see believers stepping out in faith, questioning some of our culturally accepted practices, and glorifying our Father in Heaven. And that I'm praying about what that means for me too.

Read it and let's talk about how the Spirit may be challenging you.

Look How Much They Grew in One Year!

Happy First Birthday!!

On Saturday, James and Elizabeth turned ONE!! 

I can't believe it's already been a year since these sweet babies were born. It's been the longest, fastest, hardest, most exhausting, most exciting year we've probably ever had. In some ways, it seems like we are still in the new stage of figuring out how to handle two babies, and in other ways it feels like a really long time ago that they were snuggled together sleeping in a crib in our room. 

I always feel like once we get to the first birthday though, that I kind of exhale. Things settle into place a little easier and it's not the constant change of routine with sleep and eating every other month. It seems to get a little easier, and I'm looking forward to that as we head into this second year with them.

   We celebrated, for them and for us, on Saturday.

We had a small party with family and a couple of friends to just enjoy the moment of getting through this year and celebrate how God has sustained us through it and how precious these two are to us.

And it was a lot of fun to watch them eat cake!! At first they weren't really sure what to do with it, until I gave them each a little lick off my finger. Then they dove in, especially sweet Elizabeth who was just face planting into her cake while James grabbed it by the fistful. 

Happy Birthday James!
Happy Birthday Elizabeth!
We love you!!

A Really Fun Week

Last week we had the opportunity to host a missionary family for the week. They are church pastors in Trujillo, Peru and have been home in Louisiana for the past 10 months (to have a baby). They came to town last week for the annual General Assembly conference for our church denomination. We had a great time getting to know them and our kids loved making new friends. After the first night, their two oldest kids had slumber parties upstairs with our kids every night and cried when they left. It was a little busy having 8 kids in the house all week, but totally worth it. One of the reasons we bought the house we live in is because we wanted to be able to host missionaries and guests, and I'm so glad we have the ability to do that.

You can check out more info about them at www.perumission.org and www.stuing.blogspot.com

 Here are our big kids' memories from the week:

Catherine: This was a really fun week with them here. We loved it. It was hard to say goodbye. I love playing with Satomi, Sam, and Ezra. I hope they come and visit us again. And I love this picture. I loved when she slept in my room, played Barbies with me, and loved seeing her and Anna dress up like princesses. 

Will: I liked playing with Sam, shooting the bow and arrow and I didn't want them to leave.

Anna: I didn't want them to leave. I had fun with them. It was hard to say goodbye to them. I had fun with her sleeping in my room, playing Barbies and dress up with her. 

and please note--this is what happens when you take two crawling babies outside. they crawl in opposite directions!!

Teeth teeth everywhere!

It seems like every day we have some kind of teeth activity going on here! 

Will lost his first tooth this morning! It wasn't wiggly at all until yesterday when he accidentally bit down on a Popsicle stick really hard and it made it very loose. This morning we pulled it right out! He was pretty excited!! 

Catherine has lost 3 teeth in the past 3 weeks! She likes to take self-portraits afterwards. She is definitely in the snaggle-tooth stage. Her mouth is so small that I'm not sure where all these big teeth are going to go! 

Unfortunately the tooth fairy occasionally forgets or is delayed in her visits to Catherine!  Oops! But I think Catherine understands now that the tooth fairy is often busy and tired and not perfect :)

And sweet Elizabeth has 4 teeth coming in at the same time! Two top and two bottom, for a total of 8! She's been a little grumpy and clingy because of them and I will be glad when they're all the way in. She's been teething and chewing on everything, including Will's bow and arrow. Don't worry-- it's not sharp! Just a suction cup! 

B

If I can just make sure all these people brush all of these teeth every day we should be doing ok!