So Much Christmas. So Late.

From the moment we pulled away from our house on December 17 and Ben drove Asher and I to the airport...Christmas began.   And it continued until after New Years.  So I shall do pictures, lots and lots of pictures.  There will be captions.  There might be a few stories.  A lot of it will revolve around Asher...because, well, our lives sort of revolve around him.  Not to mention, this was his first time meeting many of the various and sundry extended family members.

Just so you have an appreciation for what is to follow...I had this blog completely finished, went to publish it and lost it all. Somehow my connection was bad the whole time I was writing it and so it wasn't saving along the way...I was pretty disappointed and basically abandoned the whole thing until today when I finally had the courage to start over.  

*pressing save*

But it's hard when you have really witty and/or informative captions and then they are gone.  Secondary ones just aren't as clever and come across sounding so boring.  

Anyway.  Here goes.

*pressing save*

Grandma and Grandpa D helped Asher get this gift for Mommy and Daddy for Christmas.  Super cute, and really yummy.

Asher and I flying to CA a few days before Ben.  I was a little apprehensive, but it turned out great!  He did so well the whole time!

First stop...the ocean.  It really made my heart happy to take Asher to a place that means so much to me.  I look forward to coming back when he is older and letting him get salty and sandy and generally enjoy the beach like I did growing up. 

Uncle Joey meeting Asher for the first time =)

Papa and Asher bonding over morning conversations.  Last time my dad saw him, he was a few days old...so much has changed!

J&K had a Christmas party, and Asher was the only little there.  He did super well being passed around and talked at.  But then finally had enough and pulled this.  It was super adorable.  

Asher meeting Great-Grammy.  It was so special to have her meet him, hold him and love on him.  

Asher showing off the signature nostril flare, passed down from Papa to me, and now to him.  

Nothing like a California sunset with palm trees...

*pressing save*

These two... They set up this chair and proceeded to belt out "Angels We Have Heard on High."  What isn't pictured is them trying to get Little Sister to sit up there with them, sit still and participate without squirming.  Needless to say, it didn't work so well.  

These three lovelies at the Americana.  

So Ben told me a few weeks before I went to California to have Wednesday evening blocked off.  He said he had a suprise date-night for us.  When I asked him details, he said, "Everyone who needs to know something, has the information they need.  Asher's care is already arranged, as are all the details...Just don't plan anything for that night and enjoy the rest!"  

This was fairly difficult for me.  

After an early, yummy Mexican dinner with my parents Ben and I hopped aboard the metro train headed for Union Station.  There we got off.  Ben said he wanted to explore a little bit, so I took him to Olvera Street and we enjoyed this little piece of LA that I have come to love so much. 

I also love Union Station.  One of the reasons he brought me here was because I had planned to take some of our wedding pictures here, but we ran out of time.  He had never seen it, so wanted me to show him my ideas for our pictures. 

Then we hopped aboard another train (side note:  Ben totally had the train stuff all figured out...the transfers, stops etc...I was really impressed.  Though it shouldn't surprise me, since he is really good at that kind of thing.) 

We transferred to another train and finally got off and walked over to a little place in Downtown Los Angeles called LA Live.  

(When I say little, I might be exaggerating.) 

There were festive ice skaters, giant Christmas tree, lights, people, restaurants, and so much happening.  

There were two events going on down there that night:

Dancing with the Stars

Lakers Game. 

Now this is the true test of how well Ben knows me...

Because our final destination was....

The LAKERS GAME!  

It has been on my bucket list for a while now to see a Lakers Game at the Staples Center. One of those things that makes me feel like a true Angelino at heart.  

I had been talking about it for a while...and he got tickets and planned the whole evening on the down low!  It was doubly special, because basketball is not Ben's favorite sport to watch...and yet he knows how much I love it.  

Just something about the whole experience felt epic. 

Ben got the tickets like the week before Kobe Bryant announced his retirement.  Which was a good thing, because the prices skyrocketed.  

So that was our date night.  The Lakers lost miserably (down 35 points) to OKC.  Ben kept saying he hoped the experience wasn't ruined by such a bad game.  I told him it wasn't possible.  It was on my bucket list for the experience of it, not necessarily because I am a diehard Lakers fan.  And we got the full experience.

It will be hard for me to come up with a Christmas gift or date night that rivals that one...You did good Ben. =)

*pressing save* 

Christmas snapshots:

Karlina learning the art of Jenga with Uncle Joey

The family puzzlers.  Ender was very intent on helping with this Norman Rockwell classic. 

Asher hanging out with Papa...

Then they both got a little tired, and took a mid-Christmas snooze. 

Overall it was a fantastic time in CA.  

We then headed to Phoenix for a little quality time with the other side of the family.  

This was one of like two pictures I took while we were there.  Cousin Portia has Asher, Nate is in the middle and Great Grandma has Judah (born a few weeks before Asher).  We had some good times together, and I was glad they got to meet Ash too.

Finally on the way home!  It was nice to have Daddy on the return flight.  Again, Asher did famously.  

While we were gone, the dogs grew their tolerance level for each other!  This is pretty close for them!

Whew.  Well finally I got Christmas done.  So much has happened since then...I'll post again soon, hopefully.  

Overwhelmed

Overwhelmed comes in many packages for me.  It isn't always a negative thing.  But right now, in this moment...it is hard. 

I went back.  I drove the familiar roads back to our house.  Well, not "our house" any more.  His house.  Whoever "he" is.  I knew it wasn't a good idea.  I'm too fragile.  I wasn't ready to leave when Ben and I pulled out of the driveway on that cold morning to head to the airport.  It all happened too fast.  I was in denial for most of it.  But I went back. To get the mail.  To get closure?  Who knows.  

I parked out front.  I never park out front.  Its an odd feeling, you know, to be in a place so familiar...so yours...and realize you are a stranger and totally don't belong.  Only a few weeks had passed.  It's as if the house itself forgot who I was.  

I knocked on the door.  To get the mail.  To see him.  His car was in the driveway so I knew he was home.   I never do this.  Knock on doors of people I don't know.  But it was my door.  It felt so strange to be knocking on my own door.  A door that I used to just unlock and go into...but now isn't mine anymore.  

He fumbled with the lock.  The chain lock.  Funny, we never used the chain lock.  I saw his face briefly and thought, "This is the guy who bought our house?  Who is living in our space?"  It was judgmental, I know.  And when he finally got the door open, I realized it was a hasty judgment.  He looked nice.  Interrupted, but nice.  I apologized for bothering him, but before I could get out my introduction, he said, "Oh you are the previous tenant."  It felt good, you know.  To be recognized.  It hit me that he had been in our house when it it was our house.  He had seen our pictures, examined our space and approved of it.  He knew who I was.  

I wanted to be mad at him.  Afterall, him buying the house led to these feelings of being overwhelmed and uncertain of our future.  But he was...nice.  He interrupted his conference call to write down my name and number for future reference if any important mail or packages showed up.  He said he or his wife would call.  He has a wife.  Somehow that detail made it hard to be mad at him.  He and his wife would be in our space the way Ben and I were.  They may cook together, sit in the living room together, grill on the patio together, walk to the cemetery together.  

Even though I couldn't be mad at him, I was still overwhelmed.   I got back in the car and began to cry.  I drove away from my house.  Ugh...not my house.  His house.  I drove away from his house.  And I cried from someplace deep inside me that had been boxed and set aside like most of the contents of that house.  I drove past the cemetery and cried harder.  I will probably miss that place as much as the house.  It is where I walked and talked with God. It is where Ben and I discussed names for our baby and settled on Asher Warren.  It is where I walked while I labored before Asher's birth.  It is where we went on our first walk as a family together.    

I know I can go back there.  But lets be realisitic.  When will I drive to a place that isn't exactly on the way to anywhere just to walk in a cemetery, when there are dozens closer.  I make plans to, but I know it won't happen.  

I texted Ben and told him I wasn't ready.  Wasn't ready to leave.  Wasn't ready to go back.  But now its done.  Maybe it was good afterall...

Now, if you can imagine this... Along with this overwhelming sadness and loss, comes overwhelming gratefulness and peace.  My in-laws have so graciously and generously taken us into their home for an indefinite period of time.  We aren't sure about our future or where we will end up.  But we both feel peaceful being here.  It will take some adjustment.  There will be some ups and downs to be sure... but we are so so blessed to be able to spend this time with family, to have a place to live, and to have time and space to figure out what we will do next.  

And to answer the question we have been getting pretty much non-stop is:  No, we don't know what we are doing next.  We are here, we are fine here, and we will continue to stay here until it becomes clear what we are to do next.  We were just discussing last night that we feel God will make it clear when to move on.  In the meantime, we will bask in the peace of having a roof over our heads, a space to raise our baby in comfort and family to do it with.  

I pray that man and his wife will be blessed in our little house.  Good things have happened there.  it has been filled with love, laughter, memories, yummy food and family.  The Spirit was invited in with us when we moved there and we pray He stays and continues to impact the lives of everyone who knocks on that door and enters.  

Embracing the Unexpected.

We got some not so fabulous news yesterday.  Our landlord finally sold the duplex we are living in (which we knew was going to happen eventually).  We had been reassured that more than likely the new owner would probably be glad to have renters in it and so we wouldn't have to move.  Well they were wrong.  New owner apparently wants to live in our unit while renting out the upstairs unit.  And we have to be out by January 6.  To add to that, we will be gone about 2 weeks this month, leaving very little time to find a new place, pack up and move.  More than the actual having to move, we were a bit frustrated with the timing...holiday time just plain isn't convenient.  This stirs up so much in me.  I know that God will take care of us.  But I have lots of feelings that are running wild.  

We are settled here.  I have come to really enjoy and appreciate that.  We just got Asher's little space all situated and it works well.  

What will it mean if we don't find a house right away.  What if we don't find a deal as financially good as this one.  If we stay with family for a little while while we look, it will mean not feeling settled in my own home using my own things.  How long until I sleep in my own bed again?  Use my own dishes?  Cook with my own spices?  

It will mean NEW routine just after I got established in this one.  

It is exciting because it could mean exciting new things.  But I was okay without exciting.  I was okay just having life be.  

I keep looking around and thinking these are the last days enjoying this house.  I get so dramatic with my lasts.  

I want to enjoy my time in CA without worrying about all of this.  Packing seems so insurmountable.  I am overwhelmed just at the thought.  After this, we will have lived in 3 places in 2.5 years of marriage.  It is definitely upending what my idea of "home" is.  And I confess I didn't want it challenged, messed with or redefined anymore.  

People have said how parenting exposes how selfish they truly are?  Well in my experience so far, this is exposing far more of my selfish thoughts and feelings than parenting.

  I feel like a petulant 5-year-old: all I want to do is sit down, cross my arms over my chest and cry about how I just don't want to do it, and they can't make me.  

Embarrassing...but kind of what I'm struggling with. 

*deep breath*

Lord, I give these selfish thoughts to you.  I know they are all about me and my comfort and convenience.  Thank you for holding everything in your hands so that as I work through letting this go, I can trust you will handle it.  Thank you for your patience as I struggle to translate my head knowledge of your provision into heart trusting.  I am grateful that we have such a strong support network.  People who have already offered their rooms for us to sleep in, their time and labor to help with packing or watching Asher, their prayers and encouragement.  It is undeserved given my inner-most thoughts.  Thank you for Ben, because I don't know what I would do without him. 

Actually I do.  I would be a basket case. 

I choose in this moment (as I will need to keep choosing in future moments) to trust you, to keep on moving forward, to be grateful that we have had a home and will have another roof over our heads, even if it looks different than we expected.  

Amen

Life These Days

So much has happened the last few weeks, it may be hard to contain it all in one post.  But maybe if I do bullet points, it will help. 

1.  

Winter is here.  ish.  Not really traditional Minnesota winter. We have had our first [sticking] snow.  It graced us on Thanksgiving day and was beautiful.  The weather has been surprisingly mild.  I love it because it hasn't dipped much below freezing during the days.  It is not Ben's favorite because it is damp and slushy and he prefers the crisp dryness of really cold weather.  After 4 years, I get where he is coming from, but I still am grateful that I only have to pull on a sweatshirt and slip into moccasins in the morning to take the dog out.  

2.  

Asher is growing by leaps and bounds!  He will be 2 months on Friday!  

*He is smiling and "talking" to us in response to our smiles and talking

*His neck, leg and arm muscles are so strong! He loves "standing" with our help

*He is around 10 lbs and is comfortably fitting into 3 month clothes

*Bathtime remains his all-time favorite and even just turning on the water will calm him down immediately

*He is still a snuggler and while he would prefer to sleep in someone's arms, he is learning to do naps solo.  

*Is down to 1 feeding a night.  Generally around 4:30.  Grateful he is a good sleeper right now. 

Morning talks

Meeting Great-Great Uncle Richard

Meeting Cousin Karlina!  She was so good with him! 

"I am very good at holding babies, Auntie!" 

So true, honey. 

He loves being in his sling.  Curled up in a ball and watching the world go by.

Meeting Violet (Girl I nannied this summer).  She also did superbly with him!  

Daddy Time! 

Asher loved meeting and hanging out with Uncle Jim.  It was so sweet to watch them bond a little. 

Yay for tummy time!  

He isn't sure he likes being the most adorable Christmas gift of all time (note the bow on the side of his head)

And then there is this face.  I could look at it all day.  I DO look at it all day.  And I love it.  

I was about to apologize for posting so many baby pictures.  But I'm not sorry.  I often read other people's blog posts about their babies and I don't ever get tired of looking at their pictures and sometimes wish there were more!

3.

  Thanksgiving!!  This year we combined the holidays.  Ben's sister Meg is expecting her baby right around Christmas so they came up here from IL and we celebrated Christmas with Thanksgiving.  

Also during Thanksgiving week we had a special and unique dinner we prepared in honor of the Foreign Exchange student living with Ben's parents this year.  He is from Senegal, and his name is Chico. 

The following are pictures from the past week. 

Four generations represented here!  

Claire had her senior recital...it was beautiful, she was beautiful and it was really neat to witness it! 

Chico and Dale frying the whole fishes! 

there they are!  Once you get past the awkward eye contact with cloudy fish eyeballs, it wasn't so bad! 

It was served with this rice and vegetable dish.  Very tasty. 

We all sat around and ate familiy style off of the platters.  The meal consisted of rice, vegetables and fish, with tea and fruit for dessert.  We also ate at 8 pm, which is the earliest the people eat dinner in Senegal.  If Chico had his way, we would have eaten at 10 pm but we convinced him to do it a little earlier.   We ate with utensils, but he also taught us how to make rice balls with our fingers and eat it that way.  Before dinner he gave us a presentation of his country.  Very informative and interesting!  It has been neat to get to know him...and we have him here until the end of the school year! 

On the day before Thanksgiving, we went to Feed My Starving Children as a whole family.  (Except Mama D.  She so sweetly stayed behind to watch the kiddos who were too young to go.)

Ben and Maria were a fabulous box packing team!  Maria took her job very seriously and did it very efficiently. 

Rose and I looking spiffy in our hairnets. 

Uncle Ben being great with his nieces.  

Love capturing moments like this. 

Crazy family photo after we celebrated Christmas.  There are so many of us...by next year we may not fit on that couch!  

Girls! plus Asher.  

4.  

Life is full of ups and downs.  Wildly unexpected, frustratingly reliably predictable and everything inbetween.  So many things that continually turn me back to the Father for reassurance and hope.  There are pieces of this season in life that are really hard.  Feelings and emotions and thoughts that I don't know quite what to do with.  

But I also have these overwhelmingly peaceful moments of being totally content.  God's hand is in this.  His love and care for me and my family is abundant.  

"From the rising of the sun, to the place where it sets, the Name of the Lord is to be praised.  The Lord is exalted over all the nations, his glory above the heavens."

We Are Structurified!

One of the *many* things I have learned about myself is that I do not handle unstructured free time well.  This has been the case for as long as I can remember.  And contrary to what I previously thought, I have not grown out of it.  

In the past, the night before a day off was filled with excitement and anticipation.  No time to wake up, no obligations, no one to see, nothing to do...it was magical.  Until I slept in until 10:30, kind of ate lunch, binged on netflix, putzed around and found myself at the end of the day feeling really dissatisfied and a bit unsettled and generally moody.   

Why did this keep happening?  Days off were supposed to be the wind beneath my wings!  The respit from a busy and stressful life!  But instead I felt like I had wasted my time, accomplished nothing and kind of felt like a slob.  

So, armed with this discovery, I have faced this new season of my life as a stay-at-home-mom (SAHM).  Initially, I had that same excitement of feeling totally unobligated to anything or anyone besides the task of keeping the baby alive.  That excitement was followed by the weight of knowledge.   I knew that I could not allow my days to slip by without structure of some kind.  I was further encouraged in that by my mom and husband, who both have experienced me at the end of a day when I feel totally blah after having wasted it entirely.  And they don't love it either.  

What does this structure look like in my days?  Well, when my mom was visiting for Asher's birth, she bought me a great big white board and Ben hung it in the kitchen.  On it I have three lists.  A weekly to-do list of things that are regular tasks (laundry, vacuuming--we have a lot of dog hair, grocery shopping etc...).  A Miscellaneous to-do list (take things to goodwill, Christmas shopping, organize closet, write thank-you notes etc...).  And then I have a list of the days of the week.  Every Sunday evening, I write what I have going on each day of the week.  I try to get out of the house every day.  Whether it be a walk to the lake, grocery shopping, swinging by a friends house or even just regular weekly things like church on Wednesday night, I need to breathe other air than my own.  For the most part it works really well.  Sure, there are days it just doesn't happen, like yesterday when it rained all day and so we cozied up inside all day.   But I made it a point to keep busy...doing things around the house that helped me to feel productive.  

When I follow this model, I end my days feeling accomplished. And even better, whatever rest and indulgance in doing nothing that I carve out for myself feels deserved and actually seems to accomplish its purpose.  

Because schedules work so well for me, I have gotten Asher on board (not like he had much of a say in the matter.)  It all came about one day when I was using my free time on facebook to stalk look up old aquaintances who are not technically in my friends list.  This one in particular, I'll admit that I looked her up because I think she is beautiful and put together, and I was always envious of her as a young teen and wanted to see where she was at now.  I was looking at the adorable (of course) pictures of her children and there on her wall was a link to a blog with a caption she wrote saying how this lady and her technique helped her kiddos sleep through the night as babies.  I was intruiged because my sweet baby boy was NOT sleeping through the night and was in fact starting to get needy in ways beyond necessity.  Long story short-ish, the technique is based on Baby Wise, and essentially follows a schedule during the day so that he gets his days and nights straight, eats well, rests well and ultimately has reliability so that he can sleep well at night.  The first night he cried himself to sleep--took 7 excruciating minutes...Ben and I laying on the couch in the living room in silence as we used each other as an anchor so we didn't run in and cuddle him.  By the next night though, he went down without a peep.  That kind of proved to us that he was using his crying to get held, not because he actually had a need that had to be met.  And when he fussed at his normal 12:30 am feeding, I just popped in his pacifier and he went right back to sleep.  For the first week, I still did one feeding in the middle of the night around 2:30.  But last night, I didn't do one then at all...and he slept 6.5 hours straight!  He got fussy around 4:30, and I fed him and then he slept until 7:30.  

Moral of the story:  you never know what will come from keeping tabs on beautiful people from your past...it might just help you transform your baby's sleeping habits!  

Here are a few pictures of life that I haven't posted on Facebook or Instagram: 

A stroller-walk around the lake!  He is such a little peanut in that thing!  

Beautiful grove of bare oak trees by the lake.  

I could watch him sleep forever.  

One day he was fussing a little as he was falling asleep in his swing, and I look over and Sierra had layed down next to him and put her head on the swing and was watching him.  It was so sweet...she has definitely taken on a more "protective" role.  The night we let him cry himself to sleep, she was going back and forth from his little nook, glancing at us with what can only be described as a nervous/worried look on her face.  It was as if she was saying, "Aren't you going to do anything?" 

This kid produces two loads of laundry like this a week.  At least.  So many bodily fluids.  

Speaking of bodily fluids... For two of our showers, people could write messages on diapers.  This one says: CAUTION, contents may be explosive.  

Lets just say, you're welcome that I didn't post the picture I took after I opened the diaper...

Comfy on Auntie Claire's couch when we went over to her apartment for Friday morning sibling breakfast!  

milk drunk smiles!  

Actually, I think he was so happy because last week, he got a NEW COUSIN!!!

Baby #2 of the Klotzle Kousins Krew Trilogy

Between me and my two married brothers, we are all having babies within 4 months.  

 Anyway, introducing this little sweetie.  

Reese Everly

While she looks a bit skeptical of this big ol' world, she is totally adorable.  Amy and I have decided we need to get together sooner rather than later for a little baby-snuggle-swap. 

Welcome, baby Reese!  We are so excited you are here!  Can't wait to meet you and to also welcome together the next cousin in the triolgy!  

The three cousins will meet officially at Joe and Heather's wedding in March.  

How our family has changed this year!