We've Gone Viral

I was faced with a terribly difficult decision around midnight, last night. Should I hold my precious, shaking, sobbing little boy close and stroke his head and tell him it would all be alright? Or should I clean up the puke first? I opted for standing there, holding him as close as I could tolerate, both of us dripping over the tile floor, while I said, "Oh no! Oh, NO! Umm... oh no!" Smooth. Praise God Scott was there. He snapped awake, and came to our rescue. Slowly getting a hold of my senses, we both knelt with our little son on the floor, trying a little frantically to get his clothes off. I couldn't help but cry a little with Micah, he was so pathetic. Tears streaked his face, some of the stuff had come out of his nose, even his hair was covered with the mess. It was so sad. Scott cleaned up the floors while I gave him a quick bath. The entire time, he was shivering and wailing. My poor little love.

Finally, after everything was cleaned up and he appeared to be feeling much better, we put him back to sleep. Unfortunately, he kept waking up. Needless to say, I didn't get much sleep last night.

This afternoon, we took him to the clinic on base to confirm our suspicion: he has hand, foot, and mouth disease. Or rather, virus. I don't know why they call it "disease." He has ulcers in his mouth, red spots all over his mouth, hands, and feet, and a few that are looking like blisters. There's not much we can do but try to make him as comfy as we can, and give him Infant Tylenol.

As I'm writing this, it is 40 minutes past bedtime, and we've had to go to him multiple times already to try to calm him down and get him to go to sleep. I am so tired. Afraid we have another rough night ahead tonight.

*sigh*

Ah, the joys of motherhood.

It's your WEDDING today!

To: My precious friend. Rachel NAGEL (it will be when you read this)

Rachel,

You are getting married today! I've been to many weddings before, and have EVEN had one of my own. But I believe every single one is so amazing. We've talked about it, you and I, about how wonderful it is that two imperfect people can come together, and under His blood, strive to become an image of Christ and His church, glorifying to God.

I wonder how you felt this morning when you woke up, your last day as a single person. I wonder when the intense, achingly beautiful reality of it all hit you. I wonder what the scene was like, as you made your preparations with your closest friends and family. I hope there was much laughter and joy involved, and a minimum of stress. I wonder how you felt when all was ready, and you were standing there in your dress, moments away from walking and pledging your whole life to your husband under God. I wonder how your now husband felt as he got ready to take you as his wife.

I am longing to be there, to celebrate with you, to be part of your friends and family and see you take this monumental step in your life. I wish I could see you in your white dress. I'll bet you are STUNNING. I wish I could stand up and see you walk down the aisle, and see the look on Samuel's face as he sees you in all your beauty. I have had moments today with tears in my eyes, wishing I could be there, my dear friend. Don't worry though, it's (mostly) tears of joy for you. I want you to know that I am celebrating quietly over here for you, all day long.

I hope so much that your day goes smoothly. And if there's some stress involved, well, you'll have a funny story to tell your children later, right? ;) I hope someday in the not-too-distant future, we'll see each other again in person, and we can go have hot chocolate at IHOP, and talk about anything and everything like usual, but we can talk about being wives too.

Know that I will be praying earnestly for you and your new life together, for you to both glorify God as you learn to live together, learn to serve each other, learn to lean on each other and be each other's support.

I love you.

Your friend,
Erin

P.S. You're going to have BEAUTIFUL babies. And I don't mean of the pug variety. ;)

Happiness is...

...a five pound bag of sour gummy worms. Oh. Yeah.

And in the blink of an eye...

...my baby can walk. Just like that.

Ahh... I'm a happy husband

Scott (Erin's Husband) here...

Just wanted to drop off a little note explaining what a wonderful wife I have. We have been talking about how I needed to do a guest post sometime. So I guess here would be a good time...

Reasons why I am a happy husband:

1. I came home today(late) after a long day of appeasing the higher ups, to a house smelling of soup (for those of you who don't like the smell of soup you are either communist or you need to get your nose checked), and was promptly greeted at the door with a kiss.

2. The soup was "Tuscan Bean Soup" a glorious comfort to taste buds and soother of souls.

3. Erin called me over to Micah's room and told me "I just had to see my little boy sleep." She was right, he was so calm and peaceful looking... lying there on top of his sheets with his pacifier barely hanging on to his lip.

4. She plays "Just Dance2" with me and laughs along with me as I fail miserably.   

5. My lovely wife (don't read that with to much sarcasm ;-) also comes up with trip ideas to places like Denali...

This could be longer but I'll cut it to this for now...

I LOVE my wife!

Scott

I'm an over-cheeser.

It is a very good thing to do one's best to not waste. Not only is it good for the grocery bill, there's a lot less guilt involved. For me lately, every time I throw yet another piece of food away, my mind is churning with, "MORE excess that's just wasted. 25,000 people are dying every day of starvation, and I'm the rich man who just wastes food. For FUN. Ok, not really for fun. But..." And it goes on and on. I'll spare you the full circle. All this to say, for the past few weeks, we've been trying very hard to cut back on wasting food.

Yesterday's dinner on the menu was lasagna. Upon inspection of our cabinets and fridge, I realized I would have to be a bit creative, since I didn't have what I thought. I had about half the meat, a quarter of the red sauce, and approximately 7 bags of various kinds of half depleted cheese. At least I had lasagna noodles. Except they'd have to be boiled in the big pot we have, which was occupied by a bunch of mashed potatoes in the fridge. Also, no more containers to which I could transfer said potatoes. Being the lazy person I am, I decided to just boil the rest of the egg noodles we had and leave it at that. I felt that I was being creative and resourceful.

I had my doubts as I began the layering process. The rest of the bag of egg noodles ended up being a few more noodles than I thought. Egg noodles also don't lay flat. But no matter, I was being resourceful. The oven heated, I stepped back to survey my handiwork. That's when I started writing this post in my head. The gigantic pile looked mostly comprised of cheese. Which is no surprise given what I had to work with. I was slightly concerned about my lactose intolerant husband how it would turn out.

As soon as the timer went off I ran back in to drag the dish out of the oven. It definitely smelled good. Looks...not so much. Scott got home and stared with ever so slightly bugged eyes.
"Ok!" He bravely proclaimed, "Let's...eat dinner!"
We gathered round the table.

All in all, it actually tasted really good. We horked it down as only very hungry people can do and decided it wasn't a disaster after all; although the rest of the evening, Scott definitely didn't want either his affectionate wife or boisterous son coming in contact with his stomach.

So - point of the story? I've decided to use one bag of cheese at a time, to avoid uncomfortable episodes of this nature.

Now I'm going to go get my husband some TUMS. You know. So we don't waste those, either.

Droppin' the Bass with Baby

Here's a little something we enjoyed the other day. The video isn't the greatest quality, but we thought it was cute all the same. Enjoy! :)

Let Your Heart Be Broken

This song made me cry at church yesterday. The lyrics really spoke to me. I am so convicted in this area, yet, I don't know exactly what to do about it either. I pray this speaks to someone too. 

Let your heart be broken for a world in need;

Feed the mouths that hunger,

Soothe the wounds that bleed.

Give the cup of water, and the loaf of bread.

Be the hands of Jesus, serving in His stead.

Here on earth applying principles of love,

Visible expression, God still rules above.

Living illustration of the Living Word,

To the minds of all who've never seen or heard.

Blest to be a blessing, privileged to care,

Challenged be the need apparent everywhere.

Where mankind is wanting, fill the vacant place.

Be the means through which the Lord reveals His grace.

Add to your believing deeds that prove it true,

Knowing Christ as Saviour, make Him master too. 

Follow in His footsteps, go where He has trod. 

In the world's great trouble, risk yourself for God. 

Let your heart be tender, and your vision clear;

See mankind as God sees, serve Him far and near. 

Let your heart be broken by a brother's pain;

Share your rich resources, give and give again. 

There are hardly words...

It's moments like these that make the hardship of parenthood totally worth it.

A Trip To Be Remembered

I woke up day before yesterday thinking,
"I do not like camping. This is miserable. Why do people do this, anyway? How did I ever like doing this?"
This made me sad. I've always loved camping. In fact, come to think of it, MOST of my absolute favourite memories growing up were of camping, whether it was camping and hiking with my family in Olympic National Park, camping out at Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Elinor with the youth group, or even camping out on a lake with dear friends from another church we used to attend. What happened?

I'm going to start from the beginning. Mistake #1 - I checked the weather. It predicted rain all weekend. I ignored it. Alaska weather often changes with hardly any notice, and I've missed many a clear night for shooting the Aurora because the weather forecast said it would be cloudy. So I decided I didn't want to miss a beautiful weekend in Denali. For once, the weather forecast was right. We packed our bags, left our little son with a kiss, and drove to Denali National Park.

Denali has a bus system on one road that stretches about 95 miles into the park. We booked a camp site about 30 miles in, and found we had 2 hours to wait for the camper bus to take us there. It was sunny outside. So far, so good. We decided to hike around a small trail at the entrance of the park and try out the giant 70-200 mm lens we'd rented for the occasion, and the 24mm wide angle lens we'd borrowed from a friend. It was an enjoyable little hike with little flowers everywhere, bridges that crossed trickling streams, and an unfortunate abundance of mosquitoes.

As we headed back toward our car to grab the rest of our gear and wait for the bus, the clouds began to gather. They grew darker and darker, the air was humid. Thunder rolled in the distance and we saw the occasional lightning bolt illuminate the grey sky.
"This is an adventure!" I happily exclaimed, "I love thunderstorms!"
Scott enthusiastically agreed and we continued on our way. We made it right in time. Droplets began to fall from the sky, and I stopped and snapped a picture of the beautiful mountains that were now shrouded in mist. The smell of fresh rain greeted us as we ran to our car.

We sat in the car, watching and listening to the storm, talking about how fun this was and how it'll blow over soon. We rearranged some camping gear, and just as it was time to walk to the bus stop, the clouds shifted away and the sun came out again. All was well. 

The bus ride was very pretty, and surprisingly short. We enjoyed some conversation with the bus driver and decided it must be a wonderful job driving along the Park Road all summer. We saw a moose far below near a river at about mile 13. Sanctuary River Campground was in our sights in no time, and we bid the driver our farewells and made our way to our camp site. It was a very pretty little place, about a 15 second walk away from Sanctuary River. After setting up camp (with a tarp underneath our tent of course), a camp meal was in order. Afterwards, we decided to get on the bus again to get farther into the Park, perhaps to Igloo Campground to hike around the mountains there and get some pictures. Missing the first bus, we began to hike along the Park Road toward Igloo and decided to just wave the next bus down when it caught up to us. The storm clouds were gathering again. Rain pattered off and on as we walked, but it was all beautiful. The mountains and clouds made for some very dramatic scenes, I wish I had captured them better.

Finally the bus arrived, again, right on time. As the bus continued its route, the rain came pouring in again. It got to Igloo, and here is where we come to mistake #2 - we foolishly decided to keep on with our plan and get out. We got out. The bus left. We were standing there in the pouring rain, with absolutely nowhere to go. I kept the camera and lens safe under my jacket as we tried to hike underneath some trees and figure out when the next bus would come, all the while shaking our heads at our stupidity. Still, it was an adventure. We managed to find a little cabin with an overhang to sit under, and I began talking about how I genuinely loved this sort of thing. Sure, we were soaked through a little damp! But we found shelter, the rain was beautiful, it was quiet and peaceful and everything smelled good. I was still enjoying this. We got the next bus and made our way to our camp.

Mistake #3 - we didn't bring a change of clothes. Both of us were pretty wet, and our clothes were wet. Fortunately Scott had grabbed his fleece from the car before we left, so he was at least able to change his over-shirt to something dry. But our pants were both soaked. We laid them out to dry and sat in the tent, trying to wait out the downpour. We had thrown the second tarp over the tent, so thankfully, the inside of the tent itself stayed relatively dry, despite the water we managed to bring in with us. As it turns out, it's very hard for anything to get dry when it is in a very humid environment. Especially if the articles in question are made out of cotton. Our clothes pretty much stayed really damp through the next day.

Mistake #4 - we thought we might possibly be going back country so we tried to pack as light as possible. We bought cheap camp pads that hardly padded anything, and the worst mistake...we bought sleeping bags that were super thin fleece and supposedly keep you warm down to 50 degrees. I'm not sure how cold it got that night, but one side of our bodies was very chilly at all times throughout the night. The rain poured pretty much all night. We'd wake up, shift sides, and try to warm up, then fall back asleep. This happened over and over again during that long night. The next morning, when we finally decided to brave the cold even more, we dragged ourselves out of the tent and immediately began packing up. We were miserable. We were still damp, and the wind was biting, piercing right through our clothes. A unanimous decision was made to just leave and go back to the warm car at the park entrance and go home, even though we weren't expected back until 6:00 that evening. Scott checked the bus schedule and informed me that the next bus out of the park wasn't due until 2 hours later. This seemed intolerable. We were still very cold, and now we were all packed up and had nothing to do but wait. I didn't want to hike because I didn't have actual hiking boots, and both of us were sore from sleeping on tree roots all night with hardly any padding. We decided to take the next bus into the park to meet the bus that was headed out at the next rest stop. At that point we didn't care what we had to do, we just wanted to get warm.

Things brightened up a bit as we waited for the bus, the rough wooden bench was directly in the sun (which had finally decided to come out), and we slowly began to thaw out. The bus came, we filed on, and headed further into the park. Just before we got to our stop, a lynx jumped out right in the middle of the Park Road! The bus screeched to a halt and everyone stared and snapped pictures. My camera and lens were still packed in my bag, I didn't get to it on time. This was such an exciting event, and we had finally warmed up in the bus, that we decided to go on further into the park instead of heading home. This was NOT a mistake. I am SO glad we did. It turned out to be a beautiful day and I got lots of pictures that really don't do it justice. Thankfully, the rest of the day turned out wonderfully, it made up for the bad part of the trip.

I still love camping. And next time we will be prepared.

Random Fact #5

Micah eats green beans for breakfast. And he LIKES it.

Mommy is so proud.

Dreaming of Heaven

What did you think about Heaven when you were little kids? I know when I read the Bible's description of Heaven, at the risk of sounding sacrilegious, I thought it sounded rather boring. Mind you, I most CERTAINLY did not want to go to Hell, that was a terrifying thought to me. But Heaven didn't sound too interesting either. Streets of gold don't sound terribly appealing (well, maybe for a little while), nor does singing "Holy, Holy, Holy," to God every moment for eternity sound that great either. Or so I thought.

But the older I've grown, and the more I've contemplated Heaven, the more I long for it. It's amazing to me that it never really crossed my mind that GOD is there. The One we've believed in for so long, but never actually seen. The One who made sunsets and mountains and oceans, a vast variety of creatures, billions of people who are all unique in their own way, yet all made in His image - I could go on and on. Earth to me is beautiful, because it was made by the Creator. And Earth is cursed. How much more beautiful will Heaven be? I am certain we can't even fathom how beautiful and breathtaking it will be.

The more I've come to know Christ, the more I actually find myself truly longing to throw myself at His feet and kiss them. I can do that in Heaven. That thought alone thrills me. I know it will be terrifying, because I am so unworthy, but I also know that I am covered by His blood, and I want to thank Him, and see Him, and touch Him.

Also, I've started to see really just how hideous the world is because of sin. I mean, truly disgusting. I've been reading the news, reading books, reading blogs on adoption and poverty and cries to stop sexual slavery, abortion, starvation, corrupt governments, war, and seeing how disgusting my own country is becoming. We are truly beginning to call good evil, and evil good. We as believers were warned about this. It makes me so sad to see it, still. But the wonderful thing is, there is still hope, because of Jesus. When we get to Heaven someday, there will be NO MORE of this. I find myself longing for that day as well.

I've had this post up for days, and every time I read it and change it around, it just does not seem adequate enough to describe what I've been thinking lately. This looks like it was written by a 5th grader. But I am so tired most of the time these days, I just...cannot seem to translate what's happening in my mind to words. Too bad there's no pictures I can share for this one. :)