Just Life

I am happy to report…well…that there’s not much to report!  Life is rocking along.  Work.  School.  Church.  Repeat.

But since I’m trying to do better with my blogging and I’m still so far behind, I thought I’d keep on telling you about my summer.

I think we are heading into July.  Of course we had a big time down in Pegram as is our tradition.  And Steve enjoyed that all of the US celebrated his birthday.  Unfortunately, the actual day was a complete washout so we celebrated on the 20th down in Pegram.  Kylie enjoyed the parade mostly because they throw lots of candy and who doesn’t like candy?

Kylie loved her Uncle Bob!  I think he might like her a little bit too!!

It was a super hot day and the littles in the family enjoyed some pool time!

Jenna and her friend, Gracie, dressed up for the pageant.  It was rigged and so neither of them placed but they had a really great time dressing up.  How cute are they?!?

We had a great day (or two) celebrating.  It’s one of my favorite times of the year for sure.

Allow Me to Introduce Myself

Yes, it’s been a while.  This has been the longest hiatus I’ve taken from blogging since I started.  In fact, I’ve taken a hiatus from just about everything I used to enjoy.  Call it laziness.  Call it busy-ness.  Call it lack of focus.  Call it “the season I’m in”.  Any way you cut it, I’ve been MIA from many things I enjoy in life.

In addition to not blogging, I haven’t scrapbooked in nearly 2 years.  I quit reading blogs for months.  I quit using my camera.  I quit surfing the net.  I quit Facebooking.  I quit reading.  I quit watching TV.  And if I’m honest, I quit putting much at all into my relationship with God.

There was no specific reason why.  Slowly  but surely those things just went by the wayside.  Oh, I guess you could call “just the season I’m in”…arriving home from work by 6pm (if I’m lucky), play with Kylie, eat dinner, put Kylie to bed…and that leaves about 90 minutes for me to shower and do whatever else I desired.  Most nights I’d play a game on the iPad or read a magazine.  Or many nights, I’d do some Bible study (just because I was filling in the blanks doesn’t mean I was really studying).

A few months ago, I realized how much I’d let go that I enjoyed.  So, now that we are in 2014 and starting with a clean slate, I decided to try harder to incorporate those things I once enjoyed back into my life.  One of those things is blogging.  But I’m blogging now with a different intention.  I started blogging just to document what what going on in my life.  And document I did.  During scrapbooking retreats, I’d have my blog open looking for dates and times of when things happened.  Then we decided to adopt and all of a sudden, I picked up a bunch of new readers and I started blogging every night and really stressing over getting up a new post every day.  And somewhere in all that, blogging became more of a job than something I enjoy.  So I’m going back to blogging as documentation.  And if there are any readers left after my long hiatus, then they can follow along.  Or not.  Either way, I hope to be back.

For a while, it’s going to be a lot of backtracking since it looks like it’s been almost 9 months since I really hit the high points.  I’ll leave you with some of our Easter activities (told you I was backtracking!)

It was a special day because I was able to get up and attend the early service at our main campus.  I love my church but I sure do miss the full orchestra and choir of the “big house”. 

And this is the reason why I got up so early…This is my neighbor.  We lived next door to she, her son and husband since we moved into this house over 8 years ago.  We never really knew them and didn’t do more than throw up our hand as we drove by.  Until we brought Kylie home.  See, my neighbor is Chinese.  Her husband is American and at the time was training to be a truck driver so he was away from home for a very long period of time.  She began to visit with her son (who is Jenna’s age) and as we began the relationship, she began to ask questions about God, church and Christianity.  After several months of this, she and her son were saved and both of them were baptized on Easter Sunday by the pastor of our Chinese congregation.

And there was no way I was going to miss it.  Unfortunately, Steve missed it as he was playing in the worship band at our campus.  I managed to see the baptisms and then make it back to our campus in time to teach my Sunday School class and attend service second hour.

This was after church…my sweet girls looked so beautiful!  And Steve in his pink shirt! 

Incidentally, Easter Sunday of 2012 was Kylie’s first Sunday at church EVER.  We’d only been home about a week.  She’s been every week since.  She’s grown so much!

Well, that’s it.  Thanks for indulging me a break from blogging.  It’s good to be back!!

Ouch!!

We always knew our girl was sweet, but apparently the mosquitoes know too!  A few weekends ago, Jenna noticed a mosquito-esque bug flitting around the car.  We managed to shoo it out without too much trouble and didn’t think another thing about it.  That is, until we got out of the car at our next stop and I noticed Kylie had a little bit right under her eye.  We ate dinner and it never seemed to itch or bother her, so I didn’t think much about it.

Then Sunday she woke up and the bit was red, angry and it was spreading down into her cheek.  Jenna had something like this happen to her when she was 3 and the pediatrician had us bring her in and gave her a shot of antibiotic because the bite she had was on her cheek and they didn’t want it to get infected being so close to her brain.  Kylie’s looked way worse, but I didn’t panic…just gave her a dose of Benadryl and went to church.  This is after the Benadryl (so you can imagine what it looked like before!)

After church it really didn’t look any better than this, so I called the dr. on call.  She was totally not worried and said to keep dosing the Benadryl so I did and went on my way with the day’s activities.

Later that night, I was out with a friend and Steve texted me the following photo which was after a full day of dosing Benadryl.

He dosed her one more time before bed and then put her down for the night.  I was out late that night and about 9:30, I got a text that he’d checked on her and didn’t think the Benadryl was doing any good.  We decided to wait and see what the morning brought. 

The next morning I was off work for Memorial Day and things had definitely not improved.  Not only had they not improved but she now had a runny nose which was yucky green.  With no symptoms leading up to that, I decided to visit our new local ER.

Clearly she can put on a sad face when needed.  Is that not the most pitiful looking baby?

And she wasn’t impressed with the blood pressure cuff they were using on her.  However, we were in an out from the TriStar Spring Hill ER within an hour and was armed with prescriptions for broad spectrum antibiotics and anti-nausea meds just in case.  Later that afternoon, we got a dose of antibiotics in her and she was clearly feeling fine.

24 hours later and the difference was amazing.

A week and 1/2 later and the bite is gone but she still has a little bit of a dark circle under her eye.  Hopefully she’ll build up her immunity soon.

Mother’s Day 2013

Well.  Mother’s Day came and went and I don’t think I took a single photo.  It was a very great day/weekend, but I just didn’t document it like I should have.  I guess that’s what having a toddler in the house does to you.

I did have a productive weekend in that I got more of my spring cleaning done.  And since I’ve been on that kick, my very thoughtful daughter bought me gifts for Mother’s Day that were functional to that point.

I got a new laundry hamper for my closet.  I’ve always used the net kind that popped up and came with an old bed-in-a-bag.  Jenna was horrified and thought it was high time for a plastic hamper!

I also received a bathroom basket.  I have had the same one in the bathroom ever since we moved in and I guess she thought it was getting too small so I got a bigger one.    Steve wandered off and came back with new underwear.  I’m totally serious.  Functional.

But then I also got a gift certificate for the local nail salon which will be enough for a mani/pedi which it is past time for!  I did get to spend quite a bit of time with my fams and that was nice.  I did get at least on photo from the day.

He Is Risen!

I’ll be back soon with some posts about our Easter festivities.  But for today I just want to stop and contemplate what Easter really means.

It’s not about the Easter bunny, coloring eggs, big lunches, egg hunts or dressing up in new clothes, though all of those things can be a enjoyable part of your Easter tradition.

It is about the fact that Someone loved you (and me) so much, that He quite literally took a beating for us and ultimately laid down His life for us.

We would do well to ponder on the sacrifice more than on just Easter Sunday, but for this one day, let us give thanks for the greatest Gift mankind has ever received.

Chinese New Year Celebration

I’m sorely behind on this update, but I’ll try and get caught up.  We have an excellent group of folks in our local FCC group (families with children from China). We attended one dinner last year before we had Kylie, but we hadn’t been to anything since.  When we realized the CNY celebration was coming up, we definitely wanted to go.

There were tons of people there and Kylie enjoyed coloring while waiting to get our food.

Look at all the people!  There’s nothing like knowing everyone around you understands the make up of your family. 

We sat with a family with two teenaged daughters from China.  I think their girls were 16 and 18.  They adopted them both when they were just about a year old and getting to talk to them was wonderful.  They gave some good nuggets of wisdom like what age their girls started to really ask questions about their time in China and how to best balance the Chinese culture with the American one (don’t go too far either way and don’t push).  Also, I had, for the first time ever, someone come up and recognize Kylie from my blog!  Which I mean, come on, is pretty amazing because the room was FULL of Chinese children and Katie was under the table so not noticeable to just anyone passing by!  It was SO cool and honestly, I felt a little bit like a celebrity.    Shout out to her! (She knows who she is, but I don’t want to call out her name to protect her privacy).

Then they had several groups of children dance.  Steve and I videoed from our phones and this is my favorite because the music sounds so similar to what played in the toy we sent Kylie for her first birthday while she was still in China.

Little CNY Dancers

Several other groups of dancers performed as did a young man with a Chinese yo-yo.  All very interesting and great Chinese culture

Then the finale…

I’m telling you…the people who put this on were excellent!  I SO wish I could have experienced this in China.  I think seeing it there would have been unbelievably cool.

Chinese New Year

There were red envelopes with coins in them on the tables for the kids to put in the mouth…

Even though it was really loud, Kylie watched and enjoyed it all perched atop Steve’s shoulders.

It was a great evening and I’m so glad we went.  I can’t wait for next year when Kylie can really enjoy it.

Christmas!

OK, so hopefully this post will wrap up the Christmas posts and get me back on track. 

Christmas Eve, Rachel M. and I hosted, what has morphed from our families’ Christmas Eve celebration into a Christmas Eve open house of sorts.  I love love love to bake between Thanksgiving and Christmas, so I bake up a storm and Rachel typically contributes the savory finger foods (and some sweets too).  We invite anyone who doesn’t have anything to do on Christmas Eve.  We always think not many people will come, but it ends up being 6 or 7 families and just the right number.

Of course, we work around the awesome Christmas Eve service at the church. 

I’ll tell ya, the service is one I look forward to every year.  It’s not long and it’s all family, so I wasn’t sure how Kylie would do.  But as expected (since we went to the 2:00 service), she fell asleep and slept right through the best part…

It’s an awesome quiet time right before the mass chaos of Christmas.

Christmas Eve, we let Jenna open up one gift and traditionally, it’s always pajamas…usually Christmas themed.  This year, there was a little twist and it was a big hit!

Footies!  And to top off the excitement of the day, right before we left for service, Jenna comes in with this…

Good thing the tooth fairy and Santa know each other! 

Christmas morning, Jenna managed to sleep until about 7:30 or 7:45.  I woke up before her, of course, and got presentable.  When everyone was up, we traipsed downstairs.

This little scooter thing was Jenna’s gift to Kylie.  She saw it somewhere (on tv, online?) and paid for it herself.  It is like a 360 ride on toy and so it’s very easy to maneuver and Kylie LOVES it.

I love this but still haven’t found time to put photos in it.  In time though…in time.

Jenna took money and bought both of us stuff and she is getting really good at picking out thoughtful gifts.  For instance, because Steve volunteers at the gun range, she picked him out a Wii paintball game.  But the biggest “Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle” gift this year was for Jenna.

So Jenna reads the riddle (there were numbers underneath but for privacy, I cropped them out) and she’s trying to figure out what it means when the box starts vibrating.

Now before I catch heck about giving my 11 1/2 year old a cell phone, an iPhone no less, let me explain…this is my old iPhone 4 (part of our early Christmas to each other was that Steve and I upgraded to 5s) and because of our shared minutes plan, it only cost me $10 more to put Jenna on the plan AND I am under no contract and dropped our $30/month mifi, so still saved $20.  Anyway, we wanted to see how responsible she would be while we have little to lose and lots of control.  In this day of instant contact, I like being able to reach Jenna when she’s at a friend’s house or across the street/outside playing.  Anyway, it has been a good thing for us (the best way to get her to listen is threaten to take away the phone!) and the phone did come with a list of rules that she had to agree to before accepting the phone.

Anddddd…that’s her reading them.    But all in all, she’s been good with it and I loved her excitement.

Later in the afternoon, we went for the Taylor family Christmas and how wonderful it was!

My niece Alex and her family weren’t able to make it in town but this is the rest of the crew.  I love these folks.

After that, we went home and exchanged with the big kids which I always enjoyable.

This is Steve with his gift from Chase.  I can assure you, he didn’t smile like this for ANY gift I got him  Humph.

We bought Gage a Wii which was his big surprise.  He didn’t really get too excited over it here, but Micah says they play it all the time so I know he is glad to have it.

It was a good Christmas.  Not too chaotic…I wished the weather had been colder.  I’m a fan of white Christmases, but that definitely wasn’t in the cards this year.  Maybe next…

And that concludes the Taylor Family Christmas of 2012.  Thanks for hanging in there with me!