sarah's blog

I turned 29 recently, and though the day itself was pretty forgettable (save a delicious lunch at Meat and Bread with my other half and our littles, left) and the babies absolutely did not get the memo that they should cut me any slack, overall it was a good last birthday of my 20s.

John gave me a gift certificate to the Dirty Apron cooking school for a class of my choice. Months ago when we first looked at our apartment and walked down the streets of the neighborhood we walked by the school and it’s restaurant and commented on what fun it would be to take a class. Of course he remembered and now I get to choose to learn a little about French cooking, West Coast cooking, proper knife skills, etc. – and enjoy the amazing meal we’ll make. Of course a perk of this gift is that it means 4 hours of peaceful focus on something other than bottles, naps and diapers!

So 29. Maybe a bigger deal if I had the time to sit and think on it. But 28 was a busy, crazy year and 29 will likely be the same. Besides the year I got married, and maybe even including that, this may be the year of most change in my life. I don’t even have to explain beyond saying on my 28th birthday I didn’t have twins and on my 29th I did. That is all.

I have had enough time to reflect on making a couple small birthday resolutions for myself that I’d like to work on in my last year of my twenties. Nothing major really, a couple personal things I’d like to be different when I turn 30. Because of the events of this last year I haven’t had much time to focus on myself (hopefully that doesn’t sound like I think it might) and have started to feel a bit like a stereotype of a new mom: never do my hair, don’t like the way I look in anything, spend my time making sure my babies eat well and get physical activity whether I ever do or not.

So I’ve made some resolutions to help me break out of this funk, learn how to incorporate “regular girlie stuff” back into the life of a mom of twins and generally go into my 30s feeling like a yummy mummy and not a cliche.

And they are…

• Drink more water. A lot more. For my skin, for weight loss, for general youthfulness that will stick with me into my 30s.
• Take better care of my skin. It’s changed since having kids and for the first time since high school I think about how I don’t like it. So I’ve invested in better products, taken more time on it (and let that baby laundry pile up, oh well) and plan to start getting facials on a regular basis.
• Work out. Ya, like just do it. Because I don’t, ever. I’ve set some measurable goals with John and he’s committed to taking care of the babies for chunks of time that I can go to classes at the gym. My goal is to be in better shape when I turn 30 than I was before I had kids.

Ya, my goals are all personal and a little simple and maybe a bit, I don’t know, vain. But the thing is I don’t want to stay in the First Year Mom fog forever and when my kids are old enough to watch me I want them to see a person who is healthy, confident and happy in their own skin. I want to be so pumped to be 30 I’m counting down the days.

Let’s go 29, we got work to do.

Today is our Aunt Charity’s birthday. So we did our best to send her a message but it was close to nap time and we couldn’t really get it together. It’s the thought that counts.

And also that we didn’t completely eat the signs.

Soren and Marlow will be 5 months old on Friday but who knows what they’ll decide to do on that day, maybe poop through 4 outfits or something, so I thought I’d better take this moment of peace to post in advance. In case of poop.

It’s been a pretty crazy 5 months, not ones I plan to repeat. But having these little toothless grinners in our lives has been the silver lining on a pretty hard season. Most days I’m just glad we’ve gotten through the early stages and survived to the point that we have, but when I look back at pictures I’m reminded of the first days and weeks and I do miss them.

To celebrate their 5 month birthday Big Boy Soren and Miss M will be sticking their little toe in the waters of rice cereal. I’ll be sure to have J ready with the camera to catch any special reactions to their first taste of grown-up food.

Can’t believe you guys are 5 months already… and sleeping well most nights, sitting up in your bumbo chairs and laughing at my really good jokes. You both clearly have a lot to say and we love that you’re trying so hard to get your points across. I can only imagine in 5 more months all that you will bring to our family. Thanks for teaching us so much about ourselves – our selfishness, our laziness, our silly need for sleep – hopefully by the time you’re old enough to know us better we’ll be pretty good parents.

I have some pretty cool kids.

Charity:water is doing it again this year, their forth annual September Campaign, a tradition since their founder first gave up his birthday four years ago. This year they are doing a live well drill at 4:30pm EST, the first of their committed efforts for the Bayaka people of the Central African Republic.

I’m still raising money for my birthday, I’ve got 23 days left and we’ve raised $131 of my $280 goal. I’d love to see our goal reached, but in the mean time, check out this video about the well that will be drilled in a matter of hours, and the people whose lives it will change.

charity: water 2010 September Campaign: Clean Water for the Bayaka from charity: water on Vimeo.

If you’d like to donate to something like this, you can give through my birthday campaign here. 100% of our donations will go towards a well, very likely drilled for the Bayaka people of C.A.R.

Watch the live drill at 4:30pm EST

Our nephew turns one year old tomorrow and we got to celebrate at his first birthday party yesterday. We went to the park with friends, games, gifts, delicious treats and of course, the birthday boy.

It doesn’t feel like a year ago that I posted about our first nephew, the first grandchild, being born. We’re so blessed to live near family so we can be part of his life, this year and hopefully for years to come. Both John and I are really glad our kids will have at least one cousin close in age – and proximity – since neither of us did.

It would be great if we were able to keep living near them so our kiddos could have the cousin relationship we both missed out on, but that we see our own cousins who are close in age have with each other.

All that can seem far away, but as fast as this year passed, our own birthday party planning will no doubt sneak up on us sooner than we realize.

Happy birthday Cole.

Click on the pictures to see them full-size

Auntie Sarah, you're early, I'm not dressed!

Tell me you remembered my gift?!

Uncle John picked out the 'Plenty of Fish in the C' onesie from threadless.com just for me.

Blowing out candles is hard.

First Auntie Sarah's baby shower, now this. Mom is a party decorating pro.

Enough with the clothes, on to the toys.

Uncle John finally arrived!

Time to take a moment and soak up my big day.

I turned 28 on Thursday. As you know from years past, it is becoming an annual tradition for John to be away at training the whole week of my birthday. This year he was again across town in a dorm room with a pile of people but was able to come home on Wednesday night, beautiful flowers in hand, so he could wake up and say happy birthday to me on The Day. Coming in a close second was an early morning text from my mommy!

Last week my in-laws were here and we went out to dinner as an early celebration – I picked Swiss Chalet. My family knows what I’m talkin about. Then we had ice cream cake. I saved the cards I got in the mail to open on my birthday, so thanks Grandma H and Grandma and Grandpa B.

It wasn’t as bad to have John away this year because circumstances aligned to make Thursday an incredibly busy day with work and I ended up having to go in to the office to pick up packages and to do a million last minute things for the this conference I am helping to organize. All this kept me nice and distracted from the fact that my birthday was whizzing by.

But then some people in the office found out it was my birthday and ran out and got a cake and my sister-in-law, brother-in-law and nephew stopped by with desserts. I was starting to feel quite spoiled on a day that is considered to be postponed and will likely be celebrated again when the dust of conferences settles.

All in all it was a very full day and a very good one. I wouldn’t say relaxing, but productive, which can have a similar affect. Not much time to reflect on another year gone by, maybe in August I can think like that!

Hey, if you’re interested, I did a charity: water campaign for my birthday like I did at Christmas, just an opportunity to give a gift to someone who really needs it instead of me who has too much stuff in my house already. The campaign is still open for awhile longer so please consider helping me reach my goal of $280, clean water for 14 people. You’ve heard me go on and on about charity: water before but they’re good people, and 100% of your donation will go directly to the projects.

And don’t feel bad for me not getting gifts. My husband is buying me an iPhone 4.

Our friends’ baby boy recently turned one month old.

We were lucky enough to visit him at the hospital the night he was born and to watch him grow so much over this past month. It makes me feel old when I see myself becoming invested in kids and watching them grow over months and years. I understand more now (more…)

Jan came for supper and then Adrianne and Gordie joined us for ice cream cake to celebrate Adrianne’s birthday. We had tea and ate cake and just chilled. Mostly we talked about all the various workout routines we had each tried/are doing/were doing/plan to be doing… which is funny since the main point of our gathering was to eat fudgy ice cream with Skor candy bar on top.

But that conversation did get me thinking, the end of the summer is the perfect transition time to bring working out back into my life. I’m notorious for not sticking with it so I think the key will be starting slow so I don’t burn out and having variety so I don’t get bored. John downloaded Hip Hop Abs for me so I can start with that. Man, I hate working out, but I’m not 16 anymore… my body doesn’t just stay fit on its own!

More on that later, here’s the pics of our family dessert/workout guilt night.

I forgot to share my cooking joy with everyone a couple weeks ago. John told me on my birthday back in July that he was buying me a KitchenAid mixer. He had found one on Craig’s List that was in great shape and a fraction of the price for a new one.

It ended up taking another 2 weeks before we connected with the seller and went to their house to pick it up. I had to wait a month but it was worth it, I’m finally the proud owner of the sweetest mixer on the market.

As a bonus it turned out the seller goes to our church. Small world (but big church, hence why we had no idea).

Today was my birthday. I feel like it went by pretty fast but it was actually a great birthday, for no extraordinary reason but more because it was just, happy.

I should back the story up and say that since John joined Campus Min it is a fact of our lives that he will never be home for my birthday. It sadly falls in the middle of a mandatory Campus training time for which one must have a copy of their own obituary to be excused. This is a sad thing not to have John home but for the last two years it has worked somewhat in my favor. You see everyone feels sorry for me when they hear I will be home alone and they all join forces to make it up to me. And John feels worst of all so he usually tries to celebrate me before and after the day.

That’s the background of why my birthday started last night and went all day today. John was able to get away from the training time last night and come home to take me out to Cactus Club for dinner and drinks. Then we relaxed at home and he said I could choose our activity and I decided I wanted to play Tiger Woods on the Xbox. We haven’t played video games together in so long and plus it was my birthday so he let me cheat by moving his controller when he was trying to swing. I still lost.

So hanging out with John was fun but he was gone by 7am, back to captivity. I had to work at home in the morning so I could go to a doctor’s appointment (not a bad thing, everyone there knows your personal info so they were wishing me happy birthday all over the place).

Then at work in the afternoon I got lots of “happy birthdays” from everyone. Tomorrow I get my birthday cake at work too. (Dairy Queen ice cream cake with the gel icing!!) After work my sister-in-law picked me up and we went for Starbucks and some shopping for baby clothes for her and then supper. We had a little cheesecake at the end and called it a day. Now I am all cozy on the couch because they let me sleep over. I told you I get the royal treatment.

I don’t think I have any great revelations about getting older this year. I didn’t have any thoughts of what I planned to be doing at this age or where I saw myself by now. 27 seems similar to 26, though it has much more of an almost 30 ring to it than I’d like. It was reassuring when my doctor remarked, “I mean, you’re only 27, you’re young.” Thanks Dr. H.

So thanks to everyone who wished me a happy birthday with phone calls, texts, Facebook wall messages, skypes, cards and gifts. Thanks to Mom, Dad and Charity who sent early gifts and cards which I love. The jacket you gave my is beautiful, sis, it’s too warm now but I can’t wait to wear it to work in the fall. Thanks to everyone who made my day special by making me feel valued.

It’s a good time for me to be reminded that I do have people in my life who care about me. It’s sort of become a joke based on truth that I don’t like most people. Selectively sociable the personality tests call it. You won’t notice it at first introductions because I learned to adapt and find common ground in any conversation at a young age, but I can count my real friends on one hand.

The reality of our lifestyle the last few years (and probably, for me, for many years before that) has caused me to be cautious about putting down roots. I never expect it to be long before we move on, they move on or both. There are so few people who’s presence can be counted on for years to come but as I look at my life, one year older, is this how I want to it to be in 27 more years? I wonder, will I still find it hard to put down roots and invest in people at 52?

Maybe that was a revelation after all. Happy birthday to me.