Needless to say, BJ did not arrive on the much- anticipated date. Or the date after…or the week after. Eleven days post dates my doctor decided to attempt a medical induction with a baloon foley to ripen the cervix and a pitocin drip the following day. The whole process was a bit of a blur. The foley did its work and we were all hopeful that all would go well with the labor induction. Not so. At the end of the day on December 17th our son was born via emergency c-section for failure to progress and non-reassuring fetal heart tones.

    In the operating room I have a few very distinct memories. One is my husband announcing the baby’s gender several times in a row as if in disbelief and the other is the nurses exclaiming over his hair. The poor little fellow inherited my red locks. There were a lot of boy names that we had considered and tossed around but had never come to a complete conclusion. David brought the baby over to me once the staff were done checking him out and all the names sort of floated through my much-befuddled brain. Daniel? Nathan? None of them fit. Samuel? Wonderful names, all of them, but none of them seemed right. The name that came most to mind was Ezra- one that we had considered and tossed around and then thrown out. He looked like an Ezra- big and feisty. He weighed in at 8lbs and 3oz and was 21 3/4 inches long. He has big hands and long feet and I have a feeling that he is going to much taller than either of his parents (thank goodness for Bellenot genes!).

     A day and a half later David and I finally settled on the name Ezra. It means “helper” and is a name of a well-known priest in the Bible. David and I did not anticipate the confusion that his name brings up in the Seattle-area, though, where most people have never read the Bible and I commonly get asked where in the world we came up with the name. If he finds it too troublesome we figure he can go by his middle name but for the meantime we love our little Ezra and think his name fits him just fine.

        June through October David and I split a community supported agriculture (CSA) share at a local farm with my brother and his wife. We go to the farm once a week and pick up fresh, organic produce. It is delightful and I would recommend it to anyone. But one must remember that these vegetables are organic and sometimes this can come with unwanted problems (holes in the leaves from bugs, etc.)

       One particular evening I was home preparing dinner for my husband as well as several guests. The vegetable with the meal was broccoli that we had picked up from the farm the day before. I was dutifully rinsed the beautiful, robust heads and started slicing them into bite-sized pieces. Much to my horror within a few cuts of the knife I notice the presence of tiny grey-green bugs covering the florets. Our company had already arrived and there was little I could do to hide the fact that the food I was about to prepare for them was riddled with aphids as well as aphid eggs. David helped me to pressure wash the bugs off of the florets as best we could and I continued to chop the broccoli and steamed them.

     We all ate the broccoli and lived to tell the tale. I don’t think that our guests will ever let us forget it. Although to their credit they were more amused than upset with the whole situation. David’s brother, Mark, even seem excited about the prospect of ingesting aphids. His response to the bugs: “oh, cool! That’s great. A little extra protein. I’m game.”

       Eight days ago marked the starting of the grand ceiling and painting project of 2010. David and I have been slowly putting money aside to have the popcorn (and asbestos-laden) ceilings removed from our little 1970’s era home. And this summer enough had accumulated to have the project done. The asbestos removal, it turned out, was the easy part. The removal must be followed by fixing the drywall, texturing, priming, and painting the ceilings. David and I are smart and both work full time (okay, so I don’t quite work full time, but who is counting?) so we hired the painting work out. The asbestos removal took only three days to complete and seemed to go quite smoothly, but when we arrived at the house we were dismayed to find that in order to remove the asbestos and not damage our walls the contractor had put duct tape all over the walls and then had not-so-carefully removed the tape. This left the walls with some duct tape residue as well as removed some of the paint and texturing on the walls. Much to our dismay (and, I will admit, our relief in having the decision sort of made for us) this expanded our painting project from the main areas of our house to our entire house with the exception of the bathrooms (thankfully, popcorn ceiling free although both haven’t seen anything new since 1972 and could probably use a total remodel but that will be a project for another year).

        In the interim of the whole mess David and I have been staying with our ever-generous brother (my oldest brother), his wife, and their three-month-old daughter. We had to move everything our of our home and are very thankful for a garage and a small storage room behind it to house our things. It has felt so strange to be displaced from our home for a week and yet still be living here, going to work as usual, etc. I am terribly excited, though, to have our house all painted and better looking! The light pink shiny trim will now be white and the walls will get some color. I will post a few pics of the project later.

       This Wednesday started out as any regular Wednesday. Breakfast, getting David off to work, straightening the house, and reviewing my list of errands before heading off to Hopelink to volunteer. For just this week I delivered to an extra person as her “regular” volunteer was unavailable. I had agreed to do the extra delivery weeks ago and nobody stopped me from collecting a second round of eggs, milk, bread, and other staples. I chose to deliver to the new lady first, carefully winding my way through an unfamiliar Kirkland neighborhood. Her house was pretty easy to find, a small pink house with an overgrown yard and porch full of hanging wooden knick nacks. I rang the doorbell and a woman peeked at me in confusion from behind the blinds. It took a lot of gesturing at the full grocery bags to get her to open the door.

Lady: What are you doing here? What are those for?

Me: I am from Hopelink. Your regular volunteer wasn’t able to make it this week so I brought you your groceries.

Lady: (confused) My volunteer delivered to me yesterday.

Me: oh, hmmm….

Lady: But my son, you know, he’s been in the ICU on a ventilator and everything. He’s getting better, though, and he is probably going to come live with me for a little while…I sure could use some extra food.

Through a communication snafu the Lord had provided this poor lady with food to feed both her and her son for the week. God works in the little things and it was such a blessing to be part of it. 

       As one can probably tell from the tag cloud one of my favorite hobbies is to bake. I really like being able to create something that looks and tastes amazing, especially when things in my life are stressful. It is relaxing somehow. This past year has been marked by moving away from my standard recipes and experimenting with more complex recipes. I think that I must talk about it a lot because for Christmas my wonderful loved ones gave me things like aprons, cook books, a baking book, and (wait for it) my very own Kitchen Aid mixer! The mixer was a gift from my husband David. It is bright red to match our tea kettle (red is also one of my all-time favorite colors; if it wasn’t for David this whole house would be full of red) and has a bowl-lift mechanism instead of the standard way of the top hinging upward. It looks so big on my kitchen countertop! I feel quite spoiled even having an automatic mixer but it is kind of wonderful at the same time. Inspired by it’s size and color the mixer has been christened Clifford. Of course, I couldn’t wait to use it so here was breakfast the day after Christmas:

Whole wheat blueberry muffins! Here is a link to the recipe: http://www.eatmedelicious.com/2008/02/whole-wheat-blueberry-muffins.html

     The original plans for this Saturday before Christmas was a trip to Baltimore to visit David’s cousins and some old fiends. But as any of you who have been following the news know there has been quite a bit of snowfall along the East Coast and David and I opted to play it safe and stay here at the homestead. We did wonderful things like make Chex mix and walk around while it was snowing. I really like how the snow crunches under your feet when it is freshly fallen. The snow is just gorgeous and it is still falling quite rapidly. David, John, and I are sitting by the Christmas tree watching the snow fall and listening to Linda practice for Christmas Eve service. It feels so picturesque. White Christmas here we come!

     The third day of our New Jersey extravaganza finds us mostly at the homestead. I went running (admittedly the first time since running the half marathon) in the frigid morning with John and then promptly fell back asleep and roused around noon (9 am in Seattle). David and I spent the afternoon wrapping gifts and spending time with Linda. This evening we went over Princeton to visit John and Lucy (longtime friends of David). We had a grand time chatting about home ownership, families, work, and life in general and realizing how old we are that this is the stage of life in which we find ourselves. It was a nice, relaxing day and now we must sleep in preparation for tomorrow which will be a flurry of planning and shopping.

     This post feels short so I will post a quick little story. David and I are staying in his old bedroom. There is a little wooden clock on the wall that makes a ticking noise, although not like a gentle tick-tock. The sound reminds me almost exactly of the sound that my toaster oven makes when it is running and I have found myself lying awake in the bed waiting for the *bing* letting me know that my toast is ready for consumption. 

   Last Tuesday David and I had our 2nd anniversary! As a way to celebrate this joyous event we went on a road trip down Highway 101 through Washington, Oregon, and California before splitting off for a while onto Highway 1 down the coast of California and eventually landing in San Francisco. We lived it up for one day in San Francisco before heading back home via I-5 back to our normal lives and jobs and responsibilities.

     The drive down 101 was absolutely breathtaking. Even in the middle of the fall with the cold, cloudy, stormy weather the views were incredible. Here is just a peak of what we were able to see from our car:

     Along the way we stopped in Tillamook, Oregon to sample some really good cheese and celebrate Tillamook Creamery’s 100th anniversary with- what else? - a delicious ice cream cone.

   We took a detour along the way in California to drive through the Avenue of the Giants. And, no, this is not where basketball players live. It was a winding drive through California’s famed Redwood forest. The trees were huge! Along the way were several establishments that wanted us to pay money to drive through a tree, but we decided just to look at the trees instead.

     The day in San Francisco was spent doing things like riding cable cars, visiting Coit Tower, and taking a ferry to Alcatraz. The day was much too short, but enjoyable. One of my favorite parts were the murals at Coit Tower. They were painted in the 1930s, but very well preserved and depicting everyday events that felt both familiar and yet of a past era both at the same time. The best of the Alcatraz adventure was the audio tour which was a recording of some of the prison guards and prisoners that were there during it’s short time of operation.  Here is a picture of David with a small bit of the Coit Tower murals

       It was a fine trip and David is a fine husband. We had a grand time! Many thanks to our family and friends for all of the love and support you have given us over the last two years!

     My first exposures to running were watching my dad come home in the freezing Colorado mornings. Even then as a small child I thought- this is crazy! It’s 20 degrees outside and you are running. In shorts. As a teen I went on a few runs with my brothers and my Dad. I wasn’t any good at it. I dabbled with running here and there as I was in college, but mostly on a treadmill in a climate controlled gym. I would shake my head at the crazies out in mornings and evenings pounding the pavement and pouring out sweat. It didn’t look like any fun at all.

      A year ago or so my sister and I decided it might be fun to try and run a 5k. It is, after all, only three miles. And we are, after all, our father’s daughters. We could do this. We didn’t train super well but still placed decently. I remember that morning clearly. We got up really early in the morning and raced around Green Lake with 2,000 other people. It was delightful. After that, I began running regularly with breaks for bad weather and the holidays. My running was spotty over the transition to my new job earlier this year, but I started having my heart set on a half marathon. I am in the middle of my training right now. And yesterday morning I got up way too early for the weekend and went out in the cold and fog and ran six miles with my sister. There were many people out running the Sammamish River Trail. My mental thoughts reeled out on auto play- what are these crazy people doing out running in the early morning? Don’t they want to sleep? And then I looked down and realized that I had become one of them. Now I am one of the crazies. There is nothing like the wind in your lungs and the cadence of your feet on the pavement. Going, going, feeling like you could just run around the world.

    Last weekend Katherine and I raced around Green Lake again. This time we ran the 10k. Here is a picture of us roaring and ready to go!

And here is a picture of us after the race with our Aflac Iron Girl tattoos just before we took showers.

The highlights of this week include getting locked in a bathroom stall at the gym and shrinking (accidently) one of my favorite shirts. All kinds of things to bring me down so I am sure glad that I started my week by baking. On Tuesday my good friend Brenda came over and we made chocolate covered gingerbread cakes from Martha Stewart’s Baking Handbook. I checked this book out at the library during my two weeks of bronchitis in which I was not allowed to work and went on a baking frenzy. Other items that I baked included: whole wheat, oat and apricot scones and chocolate shortbread fingers. All delicious. But the recipe that Brenda and I made on Tuesday really takes the cake ;) It looked very fancy, but I couldn’t quite get my camera to focus well. Here is a pic of Brenda and Eden with the finished product:

After laboring all morning we ate one, of course. Here is what Eden thought about it: