Day 242: New clothes, clean place

We picked up a whole bag full of clothes and shoes for Zaria at church on Sunday, all nicely laid out in sizes and FREE. Too bad I still am not sure what to start gathering for X and Y. There were a lot of cute girls' clothes. A big thank you to the parents (moms, mostly) that put on the clothing give-away! Zaria's already been having fun trying on the shoes (too big still) and hats that we grabbed. She was also a little scared of the vacuum again. It seemed to help leaving it out and playing with it with her to get her used to it.

Day 65: Special delivery

What a nice surprise! There was a package from Zaria's Great Grandma Mary when we got home, so I opened it today and let Zaria have fun playing with the card that was with it. And then she wanted to play with the rest, so she pulled down the outfit from the blue bin. She was getting around everywhere today-- I needed to nap with her this afternoon.

Day 64: The long journey home

We left at about 9 am EST and arrived home at about 11 pm Central. For those of you that aren't math wizes and are as confused as I get about travel time changes mixed with daylight savings time changes, that means we spent about 15 hours in the car. With a baby. Long, long day. But we had this short respite in Milwaukee by Lake Michigan. We took a short walk by the beach, wondering why there weren't more people out on such a lovely (if cold) evening. We sort of figured it out when we smelled the dead fish nearby. It was still very beautiful. We bundled Zaria up in this cute little bundler that looks a bit like a starfish. I had almost gotten rid of it because I thought she wouldn't fit in it this year, but my mom rescued it and it was nice to have along.

Day 51: Blessings from "Auntie Jen"

I mentioned last week (or recently) at Mother's Fellowship that I was in need of some 12-18 month girl clothes. I took a photo so I could remember which clothes I got from Jen-- she handed me quite a stack, and may need them back if they have another girl, so I wanted to keep track. What a great blessing!

We were sharing in our Mother's Fellowship group how we became friends and the strange circumstances of us knowing each other's husbands before we had met them. We realized that was also true for Nikki, Jen's sister-in-law, who is also in our mothers group. Both their husbands went to Bethel, my alma mater, and Jamin went to the U of M Twin Cities where Nikki and Jen went. I met Jen at the U of M's Campus Ambassadors group, which I believe no longer exists. I came with Jamin, and that week they had decided we should all pick accountability partners. Jen and I were the only females, so we ended up together and hit it off really well. We've been accountability partners now for about 8 years, I think. It was a little harder while I lived in Portland and we had to just talk over the phone, but we always kept in touch, and our friendship has been an incredible blessing over the years.