Blessings of a New Year!

2010 has given me 3 amazing milestones. 1.) I got to marry the love of my life, 2.) received my graduate degree, and 3.) brought our amazing daughter into this world.  Most people don't get to experience these events within 5 years of each other, so considering, I have lived 15 years within 1. Despite these, 2010 has not been a great year.  It has been filled the a lot of heart ache, uncertainty, stress, disappointment, tears, and fear.  But there is a lot to look forward to.  So far the introduction to 2011 has been filled with hope, renewal, and excitement.  I pray that the path that has been laid out for my family and me stretches far and wide.  2011 has great things in store so... Let the Good Times Roll and Happy New Year!!

A Glorious Birth!!

I behold a new and wondrous mystery.  My ears resound to the shepherds' song, piping no soft melody, but chanting full forth a heavenly hymn.  The angels sing.  The archangels blend their voice in harmony.  The cherubim hymn their joyful praise.  The seraphim exalt his glory.  all join to praise this holy feast, beholding the Godhead here on earth, and man in heaven.  He who is above, now for our redemption dwells here below; and he that was lowly is by divine mercy raised up.

The Mystery

St. John Chrysostom

It's a Wonderful Life!

Today was the first full day, in a long time, that my husband and I got to spend together.  We got to sleep in (more like we got to take a morning nap will our daughter did), made a trip to Costco, enjoyed a Costco dog lunch together, went shopping for local, organic vegetables, shared a wonderful potato, vegetable soup for dinner, a bottle of wine, and watched the romantic movie The Crazies ;).  As we finished our night we both looked at each other and remarked how blessed and happy we are.  This last year has been filled with more than two people usually experience in 10 years.  There has been high high's and low low's all while life flew by without giving us the chance to really process what was happening.  Now that we are settling into our new home, we have been given the opportunity to really breath and remember.  What we both noticed was through it all we never second guessed our relationship.  There were definitely times where is was hard but never a mistake.  I can deeply and honestly say I wouldn't give any of it back and, am excited to see where God is leading us.  My life has, without question, been and continues to be a blessing and I can't wait to see what it becomes.

    

Merry Christmas from the Perry's

 We laughed hard putting this together, it's perfect! Enjoy!!

 

http://elfyourself.jibjab.com/view/aAj1DvHggxs9AFln?cmpid=ey_fb_self

How To Be Alone

Beautiful advice :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7X7sZzSXYs

From the Devil!!

I will eat these chips like a crazy monkey trying to devour its meal before any of the other monkey's notice what it has.

While Babies Sleep

This is pretty darn cute.  This mom creates a new story back drop for her daughter while she sleeps. What a great imagination :)

Glosoli

I don't know exactly what this video stirs inside me, but it makes me won't to cry every time. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zr_MJAOyOeU

Chicken Tetrazzini

I just finished watching Julie & Julia and was in the kitchen thinking up some fancy dinners I could make in the future & chicken tetrazzine popped into my head.  I immediately started laughing to myself remembering when my husband and I tried to make chicken tetrazzine and why.  I can't remember who sent me the email but a video link in regards to the very tantalizing meal, chicken tetrazzine was shared.  We both cried laughing as we watched the video but immediately after we both turned to each other and stated we should try it :).  So we did and it was good,  however, I don't know if the pull of chicken tetrazzine could swoon a man into leaving his wife. But who knows, maybe the secret's in the sauce ;)
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RZxbKvD1YQ&feature=related

Oh The Joy!!!

I have been in awe that I am a mother and have the most beautiful daughter.  Visions of her dancing, twirling, smiling, and laughing one day invade my thoughts everyday and bring me to tears.  Until then the complete joy of each day I spent with her is breathtaking.

The Naughty List!!

A Reading for Advent!

To Be Virgin

Loretta Ross-Gotta

     Lots of people these days are seeking recollection, writing books about it, urging us to do it.  It seems like a nice idea all right - until you try it.  What a lot of the books don't tell you about is the terror.  To know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge  may mean not knowing much of anything else.

     With the peace and quiet of recollection may come the stark edge of fear that this doing nothing, this being, this offering of oneself for God to be the actor, cannot possibly be enough.  It all seems so passive.  Do something, produce, preform, earn your keep.  Don't just sit there.  It may be good and well for Mary to offer space in herself for God to dwell and be born into the world, but few of us posses the radical belief much recollection requires.  

     What matters in the deeper experience of contemplation is not the doing and accomplishing.  What matters is relationship, the being with.  We create holy ground and give birth to Christ in our time not by doing but by believing and by loving the mysterious Infinite One who sits within.  This requires trust that something of great and saving importance is growing and kicking its heels in you.  

      The angel summoned Mary, betrothed to Joseph, from the rather safe place of conventional wisdom to a realm where few of the old rules would make much sense.  She entered that unknown called "virgin territory."  She was on her own there,  No one else could judge for her the validity of her experience. 

      She can measure her reality against Scripture, the teachings of her tradition, her reason and intellect, and the counsel of wise friends.  But finally it is up to her.  The redemption of the creation is resting on the consent - the choice of this mortal woman to believe fearlessly that what she is experiencing is true.  And to claim and live out that truth by conceiving the fruit of salvation.

      To be virgin means to be one, whole in oneself, not perforated by the concerns of the conventional norms and authority, or the powers and principalities.  To be virgin, then, is in a sense to be recollected.

      Though recollection appears to be passive, it is worth nothing that conceive is an active verb.  It's Latin root means "to seize, to take hold of."  Because Mary recollected, she is able to take hold of God.  Elizabeth, in whom John the Baptist leaps for joy at the approach of Christ in Mary, exclaims, "Blessed is she who believed that there would be fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord."  Blessed are all virgins, male and female, who believe that there will be fulfillment of what is spoken to them by the angelic messengers of grace.

     Jesus observed. "Without me you can do nothing" (John 155:5).  Yet we act, for the most part, as though to make Christmas come, which is to say we think we have to bring about the redemption of the universe on w our own.  When all God needs is a willing womb, a place of safety, nourishment, and love.  "Oh, but nothing will get done, " you say.  "If I don't do it, Christmas won't happen."  And we crowed out Christ with out fretful fears.

     God asks us to give away everything of ourselves.  The gift of greatest efficacy and power that we can offer God and creation is not our skills, abilities, and possessions.  The wise men has their gold, frankincense, and myrrh, Paul and Peter has their preaching.  Mary offered only space, love, belief.  What is it that delivers Christ into the world - preaching, art, writing, scholarship, social justice?  Those are all gifts will worth sharing.  But preachers lose their charisma, scholarship grows pedantic, social justice alone cannot save us.  In the end, when all other human gifts have met their inevitable limitation, it is the recollected one, the bold virgin with a heat in love with God  who makes a sanctuary of her life, who delivers Christ who then delivers us.

     Try it.  Leave behind your briefcase and notes and proof texts.  Leave behind your honed skills and knowledge.  Leave the Christmas decorations up in the attic.  Go to someone in need and say, "Here, all I have is Christ."  And find out that that is enough.
     Imagine a Christmas service where the worshipers come in their holiday finery to find a sanctuary empty of all the glittering decorations, silent of holiday carols. 

     What if on Christmas Eye people came and sat in dim pews, and someone stood up and said, "Something happened here while we were all out at the malls, while we were baking cookies and fretting about whether we bought our brother-in-law the right gift: Christ was born.  God is here"?  we wouldn't need the glorious choruses and the harp and the bell choir and the organ.  we wouldn't need the tree strung with lights.  We wouldn't have to deny that painful dissonance between the promise and hope of Christmas and a world wracked with sin and evil.  There wouldn't be that embarrassing conflict over the historical truth of the birth stories and whether or not Mary was really a virgin.  And no one would have to preach sermons to work up our belief.

     The intensity and strain that many of us bring to Christmas must suggest to some onlookers that, on the whole, Christians do not seem to have gotten the point of it.  Probably few of us have the faith or the nerve to tamper with hallowed Christmas traditions on a large scale , or with our other holiday celebrations.  But a small experiment might prove interesting.  What if, instead of doing something, we were to be something special?  Be a womb.  Be a dwelling for God.  Be surprised.

A Mistake Turned Right

I received this beautiful scan of yarn from my great friend Laurie for a Christmas present last year.  I was extremely excited to use it because it was so beautiful and I knew I wanted to make a hat with it.  If I am to be completely honest about my knitting abilities I would have say that I am pretty good however it's my measurements that always get me in the end.  A fine example of this are my families very own knitted Christmas gifts.  Everything would have been fine if all of their heads were the size of a child's.  Needless to say I knocked out two hats that would have properly fit a five year old.  Frustrated I tossed them in a box and forgot all about them, until yesterday.  As I rummaged through my yarn, I pulled out a hat that was too small for anybody and knew exactly who it would fit.  So I gave the hat some last minute touches, sat back and admired a piece of work that I once hated.  I must say she pulls it off fabulously!!!

WTE... What the Expolsion!!!

I am amazed at how many times, throughout the day, my daughter blows out her diaper.  No matter the size the diaper the poop seems to blow, with the force of a jet engine, out the back of her diaper and up her back.  At this point in her development I think it's fair to say that my daughter has the Gerbatz Curby and has no problem filling out her diapers :) But if I am lucky I can spot the early signs of the messy act and stand her up so she isn't pooping against her chair but then there is the changing table.  Now I have to gently and strategically lay her down so the poop doesn't squish out and end up everywhere.  The real puzzler is when she has poop overflowing out of her diaper, on her clothes, on the changing table and I must figure out how to maximize clean up and minimize poop damage.  Sometimes it can get a little harry.  In the end however, poop doesn't really matter when she is smiling and laughing the whole time I am cleaning her up.  

The 2 Hours Nap!!!

Naps used to be a priority in my life however, the last 4 months of proven to be the nap vortex.  When the opportunity arises I am struck by some strange energy boost.  Today, however, I was able to take a 2 hour nap with my little sugar bee but not because of her sweet disposition.  My daughter is the queen of power naps but since she sleeps so great at night I don't complain.  However, after two power naps she was as nasty as pie :)  After screaming her head off for about 45 minutes it was time to take a good long nap.  So we settled in and had a good 2 hour nap together.  It was a nice unexpected part of our day which made it that much better.  I absolutely love love love sleeping with my daughter because there is nothing better than waking up to that smiling, giggling face every morning. 

Regarding the Title

There is an idea in psychotherapy called self soothing.  It refers to the actions we take or don't take to sooth ourselves after a difficult or taxing situation.  For example, the last 3 years of my life in Seattle were spent in grad school pursuing a Masters in Counseling Psychology at Mars Hill Graduate School (name will be changing soon).  Throughout those 3 years I had gone through countless hours of lectures, group meetings, personal examination, peer examination, paper writing, note taking et cetra, et cetra, et cetra.  Needless to say there was a ton of self soothing taking place and my self soothing habits have lovelingly been named spreadin peanut butter.  It's that one thing that brings comfort in the midst of crazy and we all have our own prescription.  I have come to recognize that any action which causes my brain to short circuit and remain in a continuous loop of meaningless action (i.e. spreading, stirring, circle drawing, doodling) is my spreadin peanut butter.  So I have decided to try and make blogging my comfort in the midst of crazy.  Life is never what we seem and checking out only leaves you behind.  So here is my attempt actively spread peanut butter for the world to see :)

Examples of my academic peanut butter spreading:)

I did these two doodles during a particularly hard intensive weekend class.  You would have to wonder if I actually learned anything ;)

Sittin Pretty!!

We have finally arrived at what will hopefully be our home for at least a year or two.  Ashland, OR is where we have landed and haven't looked back once. It's strange how things come about and it is hard to not see the Lords hand in all of it.  The only reason we are here now is because of a detour my husband took about a month ago.  After driving a budget rental truck with all of his grandmother's belongings through the little city of Ashland, my husband was sold.  After returning, he simply suggested that we open our job search to include Ashland and bibbity bobboty boo about a month later we're settling in. Our new place is a two story townhouse that seems to fit our little family just about right.  There is not much room for growth but it doesn't feel like just another place but a home. This last year has consisted of a marriage, a master's diploma, a baby, and five moves for my husband and I so a home is just what the doctor ordered.  I am excited for our future here and can't wait for tomorrow :)

Welcome to Ashland!!

 Ashland is home to the Shakespeare Festival which runs for about 10 months out of the year.  I am really excited to see and experience the festival in all its glory!!

 The city at night in the winter is absolutely beautiful.