Good News and Bad News:

Bad news first: I'm sick.... for the fifth time since August. This time it's a cold, and I'm on my feet now but the first day of it I was so sore I could hardly get out of bed. I'm living on fruit-vegetable juices and chewable C, so hopefully this one will be shorter. Although they're pretty understanding at work (pretty much everyone gets sick at first), it's been discouraging to be confined to bed all the time. I haven't been really able to make or keep many of my commitments or take very good care of our household, and it's hard for Kevin and I to enjoy life together, since I'm always exhausted and dead by the time I see him. I don't remember the last time we had a weekend without me sleeping as much as possible.
Speaking of weekends, another frustrating detail: Kevin's stand at the market has lost an employee a little earlier than expected, so he's working sundays for a few weeks to help out. Since we've been blessed to keep pretty stable financially in spite of our seemingly bad economic timing for starting out for Life, it's good that Kevin doesn't always have to work Sundays. But for the time being, it means that he'll be working three straight weeks without a break. He's usually really helpful and good about taking care of stuff I can't get to- especially since I'm sick all the time- and with all his energy going elsewhere, everything is sure get totally out of control.

The good news is: we became parents yesterday when 4 year old doctor Jacob delivered my three slightly illin', gender-non-specific children by cesarean section in the middle of the Unicorn Room at 11:32. The birthing was complicated by the fact that one of the children had migrated into my right leg, and both of my arms were broken. In spite of all this, Jacob triumphantly delivered the triplets, two of whom were three by twenty four inch pieces of wood, one whose name was Holly, and a potential fourth child. It was unclear. All this after reviving three other hospital staff, who collapsed suddenly from poison, with an innovative CPR technique involving tickling of the ribs- to stimulate the heart. All seven (or maybe eight) of us are indebted to Jacob for his technical skill.


Photos: Above- honeymoon outing and dining room at Mallard Cove. Below- Pie I made in November.

As many of you may have heard: Kevin's Christmas present from me was a beautiful little friend whose name is Ratty, after the river rat in Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows, which we started reading in preparation for the addition to our family. My friend Cindy, who stood in the middle of the bridesmaids at our wedding and who is starting her doctorate program to be a veterinarian in September this year, sweetly volunteered to take us to her favorite rat store in Burien. We picked her up slightly before Christmas (so that she could join us at the Connally family event in Tacoma), and she has been a lovely little friend ever since.
The idea was that Kevin wanted a dog so bad, he just couldn't possibly hold off until we get back from Japan, but obviously it would be rude to get a dog and then reject it, full aware ahead of time, only a year or so after bringing it in to our home. Besides, every door into our apartment building says: "No Dogs Allowed." However, Miss Ratty is strikingly doglike, more so than it would have been fair to expect. She loves to cuddle and comes when she's called. She licks fingers and sniffs everything. She's even potty-training! We love her very much, and take her with us everywhere we can. She's made trips to Jon's house, and just tonight I took her to Bartell's to rummage for some necessary items, and she cozied down in my sweater, chirping occasionally but always being perfectly well-behaved.
Her coloration is called aguti, which means it looks brown and is made up of red, blond, black, and brown. Like Kevin. Also like Kevin, her belly is white, which we love because it makes her look like a wild animal. She eats whatever we eat, and she loves to hunt around the room for her dinner.

Below are a few photos just because I thought they were cool.... One is a fancy breakfast set with the dishes aunt Tara gave us, and one shows some of the decorations we had up for Christmas. Oh, and Kevin eating that one breakfast.

Preschool!

To follow up Kevin's elaborate boatschool/market posting, I thought I'd tell a little and share about what I've been up to. While I'm still working at the Science Center ( PacificScienceCenter.org ) on weekends teaching birthday parties, my main activity has been at University Baptist Childrens' Center, an extended preschool two blocks from our home. I love the commute, and the work is pretty fabulous. I always tell people I just play on the floor with little kids, though it's a little more complicated than that. I work about 30 hours a week now, going in at either 9:00 am or 2:00 pm, and always leaving at six. From 3:00 on, I'm usually with one-year-olds, and then I have some closing tasks making sure the center is ready to open the next day. If it's a longer day, I often spend the morning with the Unicorns (the official name of the 4-5 year-old classroom), doing crafts and reading books. Every day, it seems like, the kids are a little bigger and saying crazier things. My friend Gus who just moved up to the Butterfly room for 2 year olds, is an ongoing stream of funny affection, "flirting," and always greeting me with excitement. A month or so ago, he expressed a lot of frustration that I was already married, and still always asks other teachers where I am... It's pretty cute. We like to play a lot of pretend, and the kids are always trying to feed me plastic ethnic food of various kinds, which of course is always delicious.
It's been pretty wet and cold since we got back from the break, so most of our play is inside lately. Since the preschool is housed in a large brick church, there is a pretty nifty fellowship-hall type room which the kids call Social Hall, or Shoshal-all, depending on how old they are. On some days we are able to set up an indoor climbing structure with a slide and a few levels to play with:
A while ago I took the remainders of the bubble tubes from our wedding; the kids LOVE to have their own little tubes of bubbles, and some of the one-year-olds have amazing fine motor coordination, very carefully pulling the wands in and out of the tubes and blowing a good stream of bubbles. Others are less curious about the process and more interested in the taste.

Toward the end of the day, I often have an hour or two with five or six kids and another teacher, Whitney. She has always been sort of the school fixture for art-learning and designed the art-studio on our main level. So we have fun together, pulling off the kids' shirts and setting them free with tempura, chalk, bingo-dabbers, pastels, and every color of paper. It's pretty incredible what they come up with sometimes, and I'm always bringing home scraps of things we played with to make books with later. My book-making stack is about to eat the couch. Needless to say, I'm really enjoying my work. Kevin asked the other day if I was happy with it and if it was fulfilling. I only thought a minute before answering, "Definitely!" I'm learning so much about children and parenting- while it does make me really look forward to having our own kids and being able to make all of the important developmental decisions with them and work with them, I am really happy to just be getting training and practice that is so tangibly relevant to what we want to do with our lives.

As an amendment to a previous post: it came to my attention that my reference to angora rabbits, etc., in the middle of the paragraph about Daddy's book Could be interpreted as a complaint about it being boring. Let me assure the public: that was not at all what I meant. Since the book was about business (and I'm thinking particularly about a chapter that focused a lot on home business), and the people that you do business, upkeep of that community, etc., I meant rather that it helped me think about the business of raising angora rabbits for making angora yarns, which Kevin and I have played with the idea of lately, and the people on Vashon Island who would be our immediate business community when/if we manage to move there. Sorry for not drawing that connection very well. Yeah. So I need to get the web address for the site where you can check out the book. It's still in pre-sale, but I sent the manuscript out this morning after a little trouble getting it off my computer, and it should come out soon here! Shannon, the contributing editor, asked about my "rates," and said she'd passed the information to a student with another proofreading need, so I made some up, and who knows? Maybe I'll do some more of that kind of thing in the future. I definitely enjoyed getting to take time reading Daddy's book closely, and if I were doing a good chunk of proofreading I'd be able to schedule quite a lot of reading. It could be fun.

Out for now- have a great long weekend!

So I'm at school again.

So I'm at school again, as some of you will have guessed from the title. As you may also have guessed, this is Kevin writing, not Adele (in the future, italics means I'm writing). What you may not have guessed is that I'm wearing flannel right now. Actually, you probably guessed that too. Speaking of which, I pretty much love my school because at any given time, fully three quarters of the student body is wearing plaid.
So last quarter was my first spent in the boat shop, after having an introductory quarter of basic wood working instruction. First quarter boat students take "Lofting," the process by which scaled boat plans are drawn out full size, typically in the loft over the workshop, hence the name. However, I think we only spent a week and a half lofting, the rest was spent on various projects, like the one you see above. The second loft we did (there were two altogether, a seven foot dinghy and a 21 foot sloop) was actually lofted at 1/3 the size so it would fit on our tables, and then we built a forward deck section from that drawing, complete with deck beams, stringers, covering boards, and decking (port side running straight, bow to stern, starboard curved, along the sheer line. This bit was wretched. Steam bending wood is NOT a fun thing to do). This project took up half the time we spent in the loft.
Being in the wooden boat shop was a good experience. For one thing, every day at school, you look out over almost a dozen beautiful boats, all being slowly worked on. Some have been there twenty years. The interesting projects get finished up quick, but this one boat the "Eel," is just a pain to work on, so only the ambitious go near it. Apparently the fellow working on it this quarter is determined to finish it. Having the boats so close to peruse at you leisure teaches you a lot that you wouldn't really pick up elsewhere; about beauty in design, fairness, the importance of an elegant sheerline, even how the choice of wood affects the craft itself, both aesthetically and structurally. Every Monday we have "walk around," where we "walk around" and look at the boats being worked on, and whomever is doing the work talks about what they've been doing, the techniques they've used, and what's been particularly instructive and/or frustrating. The two often go arm in arm.

To the left you'll see two canoes hung up on some shelves. These are the boats are I hope to work on when I get to the wooden boat shop. Mostly the top one, but really either would be fine. I just think the top one would be easier to finish in the time given.
I am currently in the fiberglass boat shop, building a small flat bottom rowboat. I thought I wouldn't like fiberglass at all. But really it's not so bad. I hope I never have to work with it again, but I think I'll be able to get through two quarters of it. I've only had one week so far, but it's been good. Gordon, the instructor, is a good teacher. He's been doing it for 18 years, and before that he was working on the shores of Lake Washington. He still does in the summers.
I think that's all, as far as school is concerned, and there are more pictures of the boat shop below. But now a word about work. I work at the Pike Place Market, selling fruit and chili ristras (Colorful garlands of chili peppers. In Santa Fe, which is apparently famous for them, they only ever have red ones. In Washington, we grow all kinds of chilies and all kinds of colors, and put them together into delicious works of art. Evidently our chili fields are the best kept secret Washington has.). I work on Friday and Saturday, since I'm at school Monday through Thursday, from eight to six. This used to be seven to six, but the winter changed things. For those of you still reading, I'm really sorry this is so long, but I promise there are people who are legitimately interested. It's a pretty good job, the Market is one of the chillest places I know, work is steady and pays well enough. The people are great, both from work or other stand and shops, and they all give you a discount, so shopping is a breeze. Between taking home free produce from work and knowing everyone else, we get really good groceries for significantly less, the whole time supporting local business. YES! That's about it though, work isn't really what I'd call interesting; a trained monkey could do it. Actually, that would probably bring in more customers. I'm kind of surprised we haven't yet. That's the update so far, I'll write soon on what's going on churchwise, but most people ask about school and work before church, so I figured I'd write in this order. Toodles.












































These pictures are all of the market when it snowed (which was one of the most marvelous things you could imagine, next time it snows, you're all coming down, right?) or the boat shop. I reckon you can figure out which is which.

Back Up

Today I'm going to leave the house for the first time since Wednesday. I already ate (and kept down) a full meal for the first time since sometime Tuesday. Wednesday night I came down with a pretty monstrous flu, probably from some little kids, and on Saturday when I finally was stable enough to have any plans, I went down around noon with a migraine, which was super exciting. This whole time Kevin's been just a stellar and amazing husband, running to the store for poweraide and saltines, reading to me, and generally taking fabulous care of me. I'm so proud of him.

On the upside, I finished proofreading the book my dad compiled from 12 different authors about business and networking. 450 pages! Man. It was fun to see what he's been working on and it was almost like having visitors while I was sick. While I read it, I dreamed about my angora rabbit farm and the people on Vashon Island that Kevin and I want to meet when we get back from Japan and he sets up his woodshop. Anyway, the book will come out sometime in the next couple months; I need to do one other short piece of it that isn't ready for me yet, before it's sent to Michael Norton of the Ziglar Corporation to receive a foreward, and then it can go to a print-setter. Daddy says only he, I, and the contributing editor Shannon Evans have read the full text so far.

Lastly: HAPPY BIRTHDAY IRIS. I LOVE YOU, YOU LITTLE CRAZY HEAD. When you get home I'm going to come help you set up your toys in your new room and then you can come have a sleep-over with me and Kevin. I'm so excited to see you and I miss you every day.

In honor of Iris-

Welcome to our Blog

Hello, everybody! We've had a lot of requests for somewhere to look at pictures from the wedding on September 6th, as well as general information about what's going on with us, so Kevin and I decided to put some things on-line and make ourselves available to you. I also wanted to let you all know that we care about you a ton, and we're following several blogs and sites of other friends and family, so if you have a blog, please mention it in a comment so we can see what's up with you too.

I have a plan for a few different posts, staggered out so as not to overwhelm anyone, so look for those in the coming weeks. For today, I just wanted to throw a few of the wedding pictures up, as well as the video above (I have a few other short videos, courtesy of our neighbors the Betzes, if anyone's interested), to let everyone know what we're working on.

Love you lots; A. and K.