10 December 08
Oops! Today was supposed to kick off the last giveaway here at Anna’s Nest. I remembered this late last night (actually, early this morning) around the same time that I realized that I don’t have anything to give away! Double oops!
The plan was that I was going to get some more paper goods up in the shop, maybe some Christmas thank-you note cards or something, and had thought I would surely have them completed by today (with all that time, I was positive I would have finished something). But no. I haven’t even started on them. And by “them” I mean “nothing”. So maybe tomorrow? Is okay with you if I postpone the giveaway…
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6 December 08
Happy Thanksgiving! Sorry I’m so late – it’s been a little crazy here at Casa Warren of late. I thought about skipping straight to Christmas, but that didn’t seem quite right. Also, I have this awesome picture to share.
Bridget enjoyed her first Thanksgiving meal very much indeed. The sweet potato casserole especially, but everything was met with enthusiasm. And after the meal, she had two doting aunts waiting on her hand and foot. Quite a hit.
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12 November 08
Bridget is such a social little gal! Whenever we go out and she sees another baby, she gets crazy excited, and I feel a little guilty pang that I don’t let her out more often. Poor thing.
Enter the Children’s Museum. Last week I signed us up for a membership – hopefully it will be a nice social outlet for her, since we don’t go to any other play groups…
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10 November 08
Welcome to the new website! Change your bookmarks and RSS feeds, everyone! We have a cool new site with a cool new name!
I decided it needed a proper introduction. The post I wrote late last night, although surprisingly coherent…
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9 November 08
Check out the new site re-design! My web development team has been working overtime on this one! (Thank you, Brian!) Check it out, and make sure to stop by my new etsy shop, YourNest!
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6 November 08
Bridget is now at the stage in her development where she “unpacks” everything. This is, I hear, a very important stage, but which one isn’t…
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24 October 08
Brian and I stayed up late last night filling out our mail-in ballots. We felt so responsible! I really felt like I was prepared, and knew for what I was voting (unlike other years where I got to the voting booth and tried my best to make sense of it all, but came away feeling like I really didn’t). Also, rather than just voting based on what party the candidates have aligned themselves with (this doesn’t seem like a very good judge anymore), I got to see what they really think about things that I care about and make my decision based upon that.
One thing that really made the difference is our newspaper printed a section that listed the ballot issues (with the legal language, as well as a “plainspeak” interpretation), what opponents and supporters of amendments, etc. had to say (some were pretty lame), and what candidates running for election said in response to various questions.
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14 October 08
First mistake: I bought a big bag of Halloween candy at Costco. “To be prepared,” I told myself. “Who knows if I’ll go to Costco again in between now and then,” I reasoned.
Mmmhmm. You go ahead and tell yourself that, Anna. (That was my imaginary sidekick.)
Second mistake: I opened it. What else was I to do? It said “Chocolate” on the bag. You can’t expect me to resist that. And I had to make sure they weren’t stale. You understand. They weren’t, just in case you were wondering.
Third mistake: Well, this one is kind of ongoing.
Hopefully there will be some candy left for the kids on Halloween.
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4 October 08
Happy Birthday to me!
Yesterday I turned a year older! One more year of craftiness under my belt! Woo hoo!
I had a great birthday, just in case you were wondering. AND I have a birthday surprise for you all! It’s actually not quite ready yet, but SOON! Soon, soon, soon. Maybe even this week! So, stay tuned, folks!
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18 September 08
You poor things! I am such a neglectful blogger – leaving you stranded for almost a whole month! Inexcusable, really. I do have one, though. An excuse, that is. I’ve been in another state doing an Extreme Home Makeover in preparation for my sister’s wedding!
How about that? I was out of town and I didn’t even tell you! More neglect!
I have been also been busy NOT neglecting this little gal:
Also, I did give you a nice long tutorial to keep you busy while I was gone. You should have lined curtains spilling out of your cupboards by now. Yes? No?! Well, I say you should get to work! I don’t write these tutorials just to remind myself later on how I did something. Well, maybe I do. But hopefully they help you out, too.
Hopefully I’ll get right back into the blogging zone! I have tons of fun projects swirling around in this head of mine – now to bring some of them into reality!
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4 July 08
Brian and I have taken the One Hundred Push-ups challenge. This is a training program aimed at helping you achieve a goal of 100 consecutive push-ups in 6 weeks. I’m on day 2, and OUCH. You shouldn’t mess with muscles. They remember, and they are not the forgiving type. When I did my allotted push-ups for the day today, they burned like crazy, and almost decided to stop working part way through! But I’m going to do this, because I am a big wimp!
See, before you start the training you do this test where you see how many good form push-ups you can get through. Humbling though it is, I will admit it. I couldn’t even get through one. I did do one. Actually, I did 3 (5 if you don’t count resting for about a minute). But they were all very bad form. VERY bad form. Think of bad form, and then think worse than that. That was me, but probably even worse. I was a writhing, wobbly mess, straining to get up off the floor in any way possible, who cares if it’s in the rules.
Then I changed to “Girl” push-ups (also called knee push-ups), and I did much better. So I’m doing those. I don’t really feel bad about settling for the easier route, because, for one, they’re called “Girl Push-ups” for a reason. Girls just don’t have the same upper-body strength. Secondly, just over six months ago, I pushed a baby out. So, ya know, having done that, I’m not going to worry about a silly form of push-up. I’m secure in my upper body weakness.
The important part is that I improve, right?
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7 May 08
Is post-posting allowed? You know, posting after the fact? This would have been the post on May 1, had I been so inclined that day.
Yes, May 1 it was snowing. Not the wet drippy stuff that you’d expect out of a May snow, either. This stuff was light and fluffy (although it didn’t stick around, and I don’t think it ever stuck to the roads).
This week so far the weather has been really nice though, so hopefully this spring is finally deciding to buckle down and be spring.
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5 February 07
Ever since Denver had the huge blizzard just before Christmas, we’ve had some kind of substantial snow almost every single week. Actually, I think the stat is that it has snowed every week since then. And now they’re predicting snow again this week! Can you believe it? The nerve. Even when I give the falling snow “The Look”, they persist in falling. Such insensitivity to me and my needs (not to mention the needs of Colorado ranchers, who took a huge hit from that first snow with over 8,000 cattle dying as a result).
It’s not that I don’t like snow. I do! It’s just this stuff refuses to melt. Only now, well over a month and several warm sunny days after the blizzard of Dec. 22, has the snow begun to creep back so that I can at least see a few feet of our lawn in back (most of it is still covered in a substantial depth of snow). And the ice. A lot of the snow has been packed down, especially in parking lots and on sidewalks where people haven’t been diligent about shoveling (our backyard sidewalk is a prime example of this right now). Also, when we have a warm day the sun will melt the snow and ice (yay!) but when there isn’t proper drainage, as is often the case when packed snow and ice is involved, the water doesn’t really go away, it just kind of hangs around until nighttime and becomes a sheet of treacherous ice. Ick!
So, as I said, I’ve had it. I’m moving away!
Not very far away, though. We made an offer on this house (if all goes well, the closing should take place at the end of the month) is in Edgewater, just west of Denver. It’s a neat little community that seems to be headed on an upward path of growth and development. We plan on renting our current house in Englewood out.
Somehow I get this feeling that even this move won’t improve my chances of getting good weather…
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29 December 06
Yup. That’s how they say it here. (Brian spells it “Lawn Guy Land”) We’re at Brian’s dad’s house in New York. We got here Christmas eve, our flight only slightly delayed as the airlines recovered from the blizzard conditions of only a few days before.
We’ve been having a really wonderful time. Christmas was, of course, great fun, with gifts and stockings and festive cheer.
Yesterday we took the train out to the city, (we were going to go the day before, but waited out of consideration for me and a cold that’s been dragging me down) where we stopped at a couple of specialty shops (something NYC does very well), rode on the subway, saw the huge Christmas tree in the Rockefeller Plaza, had a nice lunch together, and then Brian and I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Wow! What a banquet for the senses! I’m sure we didn’t see even half of what’s there – just a small percent really (and some of what we did see was skimmed) – but we left feeling as if our eyes had just had the Thanksgiving meal of their lives. The history and the culture that museum contains is so rich it is amazing. We touched the Roman culture section, as well as the Egyptian section, but focused on the American wing, which did not disappoint. There’s something so epic about “Washington Crossing the Delaware”; seeing it in person, as well as other amazing paintings by well-known American artists (John Singer Sargent, Winslow Homer, Mary Cassett) is an incredible experience. It felt as if we were seeing a bit of the history of our country being written.
After the “Met”, we went back toward Penn Station (took a cab partway, and walked the rest). On the way we got to see Times Square at night – we saw it before, but during the day, and at night it’s much more overwhelming. Brian and his dad were making jokes about not having anything to pay attention to, and everything being so drab. Harhar. There were billboards everywhere – and not just regular billboards! Ohhh no! NYC doesn’t do those. At least not in Times Square. If you’ve seen the “countdown” on television you know kind of what I mean. Everywhere you look, there is a screen with some kind of commercial on it. The words “assault to the senses” came to mind. Nothing against Times Square, but maybe it was too much too soon after the huge feast my eyes had at the Met that afternoon. Or maybe it was just too much.
Oh! And what they say about New York never sleeping? It’s pretty much true. There seemed to be more people (if that is possible) battling for their spot on the sidewalk during our walk last night that there was during the day.
I know some people just love NYC, but I don’t think it’s for me. I suppose I’d get used to it if I had to live here (and I could most definitely get used to living near the Metropolitan Museum and certain wonderful specialty shops with artsy crafty things), but the speed at which everything goes would stress me out, at least at the beginning. I suppose it’s one of those things that people adapt to, but I prefer a slower pace.
Long Island is nice that way. It’s well removed from the craziness of the city, yet the city and all the wonderful advantages it holds is only a short train ride away. Still, I like our house and our city. Good ol’ Denver.
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3 November 06
At last!
Okay, so remember this post? Back when we first found out we were pregnant? Well, as some of you may have suspected (or already known), the “Big Stuff” I mentioned in my previous post has quite a bit to do with our “Big News”.
There’s not really any good way to say this, but we had a miscarriage. These past few months – ever since mid-August, when we found out that our baby wasn’t going to make it – were incredibly hard. Strangely, they were not as hard as I imagined, and the sadness was not all-consuming. There were good days and bad days, but the grace we experienced through our church and through various things that happened (which I have no doubt were orchestrated by God) made the pain so much more bearable. And through all that time life went on – there were times when I laughed with Brian, and times when we just sat together, just being.
On September 8, in my 22nd week of pregnancy, I went in for induction, and on September 9, at almost 2 a.m., I delivered our daughter, Sarah Grace Marie. She was stillborn. The hospital staff were incredible – they gave us a room in an especially quiet wing of the maternity ward so we could have plenty of privacy, and supported us in every way imaginable (and in many ways that I could not have imagined). They took pictures of our beautiful baby, made casts of her tiny hands and feet, dressed her in clothing sewed and donated by volunteers, and gave us all the time we needed to say our goodbyes before going home.
That was the hardest part. Before this, I had never really experienced the loss of a loved one. All of my family are still living – even my grandparents on both sides. And the loss of our child? That was so very incredibly hard. Saying goodbye to her tiny sweet-smelling body, with which we had spent so little time, was unbelievably hard. Words cannot describe how wrenching it was to say goodbye to her.
We did get to have a funeral for her. She was buried, along with another stillborn baby, on a hill which has a beautiful view of the Rocky Mountain foothills. We had a little service, with our priest, my Nouna (Godmother), and the Godmother we chose for Sarah Grace. On October 29th, we had a larger memorial service for her – a chance not only for us to remember her, but also for our families and friends to get a chance to grieve for her.
Although our daughter never breathed the air of this world, or reached out her fingers to touch another person, I know she has still deeply affected many lives. We are continuing with our lives.
There are still bad days, when someone says something thoughtless, but most days are good (or at least not bad). If I think deeply on certain aspects of our experience with her, I become sad, but mostly she is a sweet memory – like the inexplicably sweet fragrance that she carried on her body.
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15 August 06
We’re back! Yesterday we flew back in to DIA, picked up the Rust-dog from the friend who has been watching him, and got back home to an eager cat, unpacking and laundry. We’re gradually getting back to normal here and, although I wanted to sleep in this morning (as Rusty is doing – snoring away by my desk as I write), we really aren’t too tired and run-down :)
Hopefully I’ll get back to regular posting now!
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10 February 06
My computer, dubbed Lampy, got sick last night. Strangly and suddenly, the screen froze. I restarted, and Brian tinkered around with it a little bit and decided yes, there is definitely something wrong. So he took it to the Apple store (one of the times we are very thankful to live near one – actually two). They’re going to take care of the problem for me, but for now I’m without a computer. I’m currently on Brian’s work laptop that his department uses for trips. Poor Lampy…
Also, some more techie news is that I (Brian, actually) sold my little shuffle, Mr. Bones. He sold his old iPod also, and with the funds from that we plan to buy one of those nifty little Nanos. Very exciting! My only dilemma is what, if anything, to inscribe upon it? I would like to do a neat quote, but it has to be short. Any ideas?
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From the Category: talkies
