no guarantees

okay, in a former post, perhaps my last one though i didn't go back to check, i remember promising to try to blog more often. my last post was announcing our pregnancy with sweet josie jane. she's now eight months old. i'm busy for sure. i hate not keeping my promise.

i am back today and i give you this new post with no guarantees, no promises of future posts BUT the promise that i am doing my best at these things: being a great mom to my children, keeping up with all of your blogs by reading them almost daily, and praying for your families. i long for a time when i can maintain this site a little more regularly but in the meantime thank you for the time you set aside to chronicle your lives and share them with me and here is a little contribution from me that will hopefully inspire you:

the sun has finally arrived and so this morning it became time to create my list. every summer i make a list of things i want to do while the weather permits and then i add to it and cross it off throughout the summer. here is the start of this year's list. i hope it inspires you and i hope you make your own list and share it with me.

Summer 2010
Make and drink homemade lemonade
Harvest and eat everything I grow
Sit on the stoop in the evenings with a cold glass of iced tea
Wear more sundresses
Camp
Wear more bold dangly earrings and maybe more bangle bracelets
Make and eat homemade popsicles with the kiddos
Call my sisters more often
Make caprese with my basil and tomatoes
Make fresh pasta with fresh from my garden pesto
Drink cold-brewed iced coffee in the morning
Eat avocado right out of the shell with salt and lime
Eat tomato, cucumber and mayo sandwiches on fresh seedy bread
Make and eat lots of strawberry shortcake
Make Sophie a sundress out of a vintage pillowcase
Get too hot
Hike somewhere
Read outside in the shade
Wear my new oversized sweatshirt with shorts barefoot
Buy some fun sandals
Drink Rosé
Shop Farmer's Markets
Walk the Eastside waterfront with the children
Eat outdoors most nights
Keep up my pedicures
Swim laps and swim with the children
Nap with Josephine
Get tipsy
Can and pickle things with Gen
Drink more water with lemon (& sometimes cucumber)
Sleep in a tent in the backyard with Jonas
Take more pictures
Go on a long car ride with the sunroof open
Have a picnic with a rustic baguette, salami, brie, and a reisling
Have cocktails in our backyard
Grill more
Try new recipes for summer
Get more outdoor exercise
Cook seasonal food simply
Freeze surplus produce
Grill more peaches
Pick berries with Marisa & Jennie
Go on family bike rides
Make homemade ice cream and sorbet
Make a rhubarb galettte with sour cream ice cream
Eat our tomatoes off the vine
Wear sunscreen
Shop more garage sales with Tiff
Remember to pray more throughout the day
Buy expensive olive oil
Start doing yoga again
Take an overnight trip with Micah and no children
Go wine tasting
Go to the zoo lots
Wear my cute aprons
Play in the dirt with Jonas and his trucks
Help Sophie learn to walk

our baby girl

today we had our ultrasound and got to see our baby girl! i am so excited! hence the blog background color choices. wanted to do all pink in celebration but there were only like 4 pink choices so pink and purple and everything girly today!

two BIG announcements...

i know, i've been absent of late. i'm so sorry. i have not one but TWO great excuses:

first, i finally finished and successfully defended my dissertation. the last step in the graduate school process. my defense went really well and now all i have left is to print and bind four copies of the manuscript and finish out my internship (it ends mid-August)!

second, i have been really sick for the last... ummm.... about eight weeks. really sick. it can only mean one thing. yup. we are expecting. we are very excited about our arrival in october but getting through this first 12 weeks has been rough on all of us. i was sick until about 14 weeks with jonas so we're praying that we're almost through the icky part.

so i've been busy, exhausted, and nauseated. pretty good excuses for not blogging. i promise to try to keep up. i have been keeping up with all of you by reading your posts! miss you all!

under the big top

jonas first birthday party was SUPER fun! i probably had the most fun planning it and then seeing it all come together. it is so satisfying to see something you pictured turn out just as you had planned. i told micah i was going to quit everything and plan kiddo birthdays to which his reply was "i sure wish you would have launched that business before we were 100K plus in school loan debt." um, yeah.

our theme was under the big top, vintage circus. here is a picture of the invites we sent out:


they read "jonas is turning 1, under the big top! appearing one day only: February 15, 2009. venue: yarborough family circus, show time:2pm. don’t clown around! tickets are going fast! reserve your seat with the ringmaster!"

each kid recieved a large, yellow "admit one" ticket. we hung a banner over our entry that read "tickets", sadly i didn't get any pictures from the outside of the house. we decorated the walk with helium balloons, four of which escaped into the tree.

with micah's help we converted our dining room into a circus tent. wow. you can't even tell from this picture how magnificent it was but trust me, it was pretty cool.


we also hung banners that read "under the big top" and "happy birthday jonas".


the circus fare included apple slices and carrots but the healthy stuff ended there. there were also chicken nuggets, mini corndogs, and cheeseburger sliders- all kiddo-sized. for treats there were bags of cotton candy, boxes of cracker jacks, red ropes, and m&ms. my fantastic mother made homemade elephant ears which were a huge hit.

i made little goodie bags for each of the kids. they were monogramed with the first letter of the child's name and each had a circus animal on the front (work on these began several weeks ago and they were so much fun to put together). inside were all sorts of wonderful treats like circus stickers and tatoos, bubbles, juggling balls, a clown nose, animal crackers, a horn, and a handmade lollipop.


i set the table for all the kiddies and put the goodie bag at each place setting. in addition to the goodie bag, the placesetting included red standard party plates, red and white striped napkins, and the cutest circus cups with animal noses- when the kids drank from the cups they looked like they had animal noses!


jonas' high chair was decorated with balloons and he wore a special birthday boy bib, he did not however wear his special birthday hat that i made him, too bad, it was super cute.


my sister, bless her, dressed up as a clown and painted the kids faces.

i made a picture booth out of a tri-fold cardboard display board (the kind you did a presentation with at the science fair when you were a kid). i made a lion and a clown and then cut out their faces so the kids could stand behind. so cute! we sent the families home with photos.

we made a ball pit with 750 colorful balls in the basement and we played dumbo on the big screen with theatre sound.

i made a circus cake and topped it with an elephant and a single candle. jonas did not enjoy the cake but everyone else seemed to.


all in all, i think it was a success. super fun for mom!

more arctic blast photos

arctic blast 2008

weekend update

wow. what a fun few days we've had.

first, thanksgiving. i'm so thankful for our family. this year we spent thanksgiving with my side of the family at my grandmother's house. everyone contributed to the preparation of a fantastic meal and we had a wonderful time.



the day after thanksgiving we skipped the crowds at the mall. usually black Friday is one of my favorite shopping days of the year. i love to get up early, shower and dress up in a festive holiday sweater and scarf, and hit the mall stopping only for starbucks to fuel my way through the madness of materialism that is our modern christmas season. i love the energy of the mall on black Friday. i love to see all the christmas decorations. i love to shop the "bargains". i love to see the families in line for santa in their holiday finery. as much as i look forward to that day every year, this year spending time with my boys seemed like it would be so much more fun and IT WAS! we just lounged around our house all day and enjoyed each other's company. jonas is getting to be so much fun and it brings me such joy to watch micah watching him. that night we had some friends over and rather than going out as we might typically do, i took advantage of my time at home to prepare a delicious meal and a yummy pie for dessert. this was the second pie that i've EVER made for Micah (that's another story). we had a wonderful time catching up.

saturday we watched the civil war game. F-U-N. go ducks.



today, perhaps my favorite day of all, we went to the christmas tree farm. my family has gone to the same farm since my sisters and i were all little girls. there are acres of gorgeous trees, a pond with geese you can feed, a cocoa shed and fire pit, and of course a gift shop where Santa sits outside in his sleigh distributing candy canes and taking holiday orders from little ones. this year the weather was terrific, andy and lisa joined us and we all found our perfect trees, we watched the ducks and geese while we sipped cocoa and enjoyed the fire, and jonas met Santa for the first time.





for me, this is what the holidays are all about: family, festivities, and first and foremost remembering His birth and the blessings He's bestowed upon us.