Kevin's going to be a daddy!

pregnancy, part 1.

I felt a little funny within the first week, but since it was our first try I attempted to keep myself from reading too much into it. Every weird digestive moment, every clicking hip, every mild headache felt like they could be a sign, but I told myself, "Be realistic. Even if I'm pregnant already, which I probably am not, there is no way that I could tell. I'm at least a week out from even hypothetically maybe getting a positive test." It was a really long week.

Then came the day, neurotically counted out and perfectly timed for maximum pregnancy hormone x minimum  waiting anxiety. I took the test while Kevin was still sleeping, and watched the first line develop. Apparently it was in upside down, because the pregnant line showed up right away but the control line dallied. I'd tried a few times before to take tests where no lines ever showed up at all, and I got irritated at the stupid inefficient quality control system that let so many faulty products get through... then the control line faintly rose to the surface. For a moment I froze, calculating and trying to decide whether I was going to be cool about it.

Who cares about cool! I jumped back onto the bed and woke up my sleepy husband. "You're going to be a daddy," I told him with a big kiss. He hugged me. We hugged. It was freaking totally exciting. 

After daydreaming lazily for a bit about becoming parents, we trooped upstairs and shared the news with my parents. Dad immediately began to refer to my mother as "Grandma," whenever possible. Dad also tells me "Take care of my baby!" and pokes at my abdomen. A few months later when I started showing, dad came home from a business trip and got his first glimpse of the bump; mom says he cried a little. My mom has also been wonderful and supportive, helping me keep track of my responsibilities and encouraging me to make good health choices. 

A few days later, we were able to share the news with Kevin's parents in person, and with Pat and Kim who had their first daughter last Spring. They were naturally excited and we all agreed it will be fun to have the cousins fairly close together. We feel so blessed to have a baby with all the grandparents so close, and although Kevin's brothers' families will make less frequent visits, I think it will be an awesome opportunity to experience other cultures and learn about the world through all the aunts, uncles, and cousins spread far and wide. 

By our anniversary trip in mid-September, I could feel some definite changes and growth. We chose our midwife, Louisa Wales, asked our pertinent questions, and started working on our plans for the home-birth, sleeping arrangements, learning about infant diet, etc.. The nausea came in at six weeks and pretty much pummeled me until the end of the first trimester. Accordingly, I watched documentaries by the dozens. Now I know pretty much everything about sharks, tigers, China, food, coral reefs, pollution, and Ancient Egypt. Somehow, this will all come in handy. When my infant is crying, I will just tell it a story about Queen Nefertiti and the Texas-sized trash island in the Pacific. 

About the thirteenth week, the sickness slacked off significantly and I started working out occasionally, and seeing friends, as well as getting back into my swing of household responsibilities. My bedroom was an unholy mess and all my clothes smelled weird, so the long process of cleaning and organizing finally resumed. Shortly thereafter, I was able to take my mom, aunt, cousin, and grandmother with me to my appointment with Louisa, where we all were able to hear the heartbeat for the first time. It was, of course, magical. There was a certain something about greeting the first heartbeat with my whole matriarchy. Iris loved it, but was a little surprised that we weren't able to hear the baby crying. Usually, when she puts her ear to my stomach and listens for the baby, she tells me it's crying. I apparently have a pretty crabby/malcontent child in there. Iris promises to help me rock the new little cousin when he/she comes out, so hopefully that will make him/her feel better.

Just a few weeks ago, I finally started getting those conclusive little wiggles, like a caterpillar schlepping around in my uterus and occasionally throwing a mini-disco. Somehow wiggles make the first trimester all worth it. Some days I love being pregnant, and some days I'm kind of done, but it's been a huge learning process and we can't hardly wait to meet that little caterpillar kid. 

University District Campus, Mars Hill

Mars Hill acquires University Baptist Church building in the University District

The House Above the School

Last night I dreamed:

I was talking to one of my old coworkers from the school in Seattle, and she had been renting a room in a house that was really a school also. She had a bedroom off the hallway, and then the rest of the main level of the house was taken up by school uses. She told me that the whole house was for sale, and she was moving to the midwest somewhere. I was curious about it and went downstairs to a weird cellar area with Kevin and a banker, and we found out that the house was actually selling really cheap, and it turned out that we had enough money in our checking account to buy it right then. We were super excited, and Kevin ran up to look in the window by the door for a visa sticker, so we would know if we should write a check or use the debit card. 

After we had completed the transaction, I sat upstairs and talked to my coworker again. She told me about her plans to move, and about her last vacation, and I told her about the girl who had stayed in the house and been her substitute at the school while she was gone. We reminisced about how strange it was that all these people we knew had already lived there, but that I was going to live in the house now. She got busy with something in the classroom area and I peeked into her room to see what it was like.

Standing in the hallway, I noticed that there were stairs leading up to a top story. I remembered seeing an upstairs window from the street, but I had never been up there for work. So I started up the stairs and when I got to the top, I was amazed. A long, wide hallway of dark wood stretched ahead of me, and natural light flooded in from several rooms off the hall. I walked along, looking into each one, and found beautifully papered bedrooms and offices, some with people in them gathering up their things to leave. The house was sold as is, so I knew all of the furniture would be staying in the rooms. I felt like hyperventilating as I realized that I had already bought the house and all this space came with it. It seemed so strange that such a large, well appointed level stood above the really quite average, slightly grimy ground floor. Finally I came into a room at the end of the hall, and I knew it would be my bedroom. It had green brocade on the walls and a bed in the middle of the room had been crafted to look like a giant birds nest.

I came out the room, and an older woman who appeared to be some kind of district administrator asked me some questions. I thought about using the extra bedrooms upstairs as special studios for the school. The woman explained to me that the tower on the edge of the house was condemned and very unsafe. We stood at a window that looked over the roof toward the tower; it was accessible only by a frail South American-looking suspension bridge. I assured her we would be very careful, and climbed out the window to cross the roof toward the bridge. Kevin and a few other friends climbed out behind me. 

As we approached the bridge and discussed the best way to salvage the tower, I woke up.

Mikey Graduates

Yesterday Mike brought over his diploma! Yay! We are so happy he's finally done with highschool, on time and ready to go. Today we'll be talking about his plans for what to do next. He's working on a deal to move in with a friend this month so hopefully that will go really well for him. Also you should make sure to look up his band, Starfish Rescue Team. They are on myspace: http://www.myspace.com/starfishrescueteam
You can just ignore anything on the page that offends you. The music is pretty fun, but the words don't make any sense. The boys like it like that, apparently. I hope you will enjoy it.

Thelar Wetlands

In college, I had a class called Local Flora which was cool because instead of five hours of class time plus homework, we had two hours of class time plus frequent field trips to nature preserves and hiking trails in the area. While the class left something to be desired, some of the trips were great exposure to really spectacular Pacific North West landscapes. One we visited was the Thelar Wetlands just west of Belfair, which is a gorgeous natural area in a marshy tide flat area off the Hood Canal.

Yesterday, Kevin and I packed up Iris and some home made bread to trek out there on a "Photographer Trip." Iris was really ready to get some time out of the house, since Mommy had been sick for a few days and school let out for the summer last week. She brought along her zippy Crayola digital camera, and we sang "Over In The Meadow" on the car trip out. 

Our first discovery after getting through the beautiful woodland walk was an educational center with great native plantings gardens, a small amphitheater, and a suspended skeleton. Iris noticed the animal didn't have any legs and concluded "It's a swimming dinosaur." The whale paintings decorating the nearby area would not dissuade her!

A few steps down the path, I took this shot. It looks like something out of pioneer days between Kevin's Irish hat and the untouched landscape beyond. Don't look too close; you might see the plastic water bottle in his hand.

Iris and I set off, both taking tons of pictures and talking about the plants and animals we saw. Although the weather had started out yucky that day, clouds burned off about noon and by the time we were out of the shade it was actually pretty warm. As the sun hit the ground though, the warm air triggered a heavy wind. When we were all the way out in the open, the noise of the tall grasses blowing around us were too loud to talk over. We enjoyed that part of our walk in quiet.

Our path was elevated above the marsh with pipes placed below us to help water flow in and out. Even in  the woods, there were wooden promenades to protect the delicate ecosystem from curious feet. It also helped protect our curious feet from the pools scattered through the meadowscape.

There were lots of birds out. We saw swallows beating into the wind, seagulls plowing toward the water, and eagles far overhead. This mother led her ducklings through the marsh beside our path; they must have been hungry because they hardly looked up from the green weeds below the water. 

The photo below was one of my favorites, because it represents the image I remembered most from my first visit to the wetlands. These narrow secret forest tunnels were such vibrant places, and in the bend of a v shaped one, there was a perfect little bench for our picnic. It was good timing too, because Iris was hitting low blood sugar depression mode. She dragged her feet, stared at the ground, and asked if we were almost back to the car. After we ate, however, she popped up, waved her arms, and yelled, "Let's go guys! Where can we go next!?!?!" 

I was excited to catch this Red-Winged Blackbird as we retraced our path toward the education center. I had been trying to photograph how many birds there were, but it was hard to see them in the cattails and the distinctive shoulder coloration was invisible. How impressive that my little camera was able to catch this so clearly, although of course I hardly had time to aim it.

All in all it was a beautiful trip and we left feeling invigorated and so appreciative of the area we call home. It's so important to make time for these natural world expeditions, to connect with God and nature. We talk lots about protecting the environment and stewarding the earth, but it's easy to lose touch with the reality of creation. Especially with children, how can we expect each other to act as stewards when we spend all our time in synthetic and built environments? We felt pretty blessed to be able to share this wilderness with Iris and of course to renew ourselves and our vision of the kingdom.

The Ongoing Saga

Last week, Kevin's job situation started looking up, and there have been a few bites, including one guy who had quite a bit of work lined up. Although that guy's been a little challenging to get a hold of this week, Kevin has applied for a business license and is setting up to take that job and any others that come our way. He even has fancy business cards with old schooners and yawls on them, and they say "Kevin R. Connally, Shipwright." That's pretty sweet.

Mostly, we just keep on keeping on for now. We've discussed a longer term stay with my parents than we had originally planned on: things have been going really well with all of us here, and we've been really content with the set up, fluid though it may be. They agreed that it's been good for everyone so far, so we'll revisit some of the teamwork planning to tighten it up, but it looks like we may be here a while. My one regret with that plan is leaving my gorgeous franciscan ware in storage. Other than that, we're both really excited and thankful that my family has been so generous with their space and resources.

Also, we're coming up on the two month mark of being uncle and aunt to Ayden, who lives in Washington D.C. with Pat and Kim. You can see some super cute pictures at http://achangeofwashingtons.blogspot.com/2010/05/aydans-first-month-of-life_11.html . Our favorite is her onion shirt (or onesie, it's hard to tell), from Walla Walla. All her stuffed animals are the same size as her body. We're excited to meet her this summer when that branch of Connally's makes an epic pilgrimage back to the North West.

That's that for now. Hopefully we'll have some exciting boat pictures from Kevin before too long!

40 year Anniversary of Bremerton-Kure Sistership

Monica and I met up to get ready before the event dinner celebrating 40 years of sistership between Bremerton and Kure, Japan. 38 delegates represented the City of Kure, where we stayed for the summer of 2005. We were excited to meet others involved in the program, and of course had a great time chatting with Nikki, who we worked with before leaving on language, ettiquette, and managing our iternerary. She introduced us to the students who went last year, and we sat with them as well as some ladies on an event board.

Having been on the receiving end of a lot of cultural demonstrations while we had been in Japan, it was interesting to see what Bremerton chose to show these delegates on our side of the water. The Kure group also had a few performances of their own, including two traditional performance dances, a presentation of three puppets, and a group dance called "The Coal Miner's Dance," which is basically the Japanese version of a kind of cha-cha macarena line-dance.

Leading up to the event I found myself reflecting on that experience all over again. Since my travel to Japan had been such a formative and important experience for me, I found myself wondering how I could give back to the wonderful sistership program, which sends three students to Japan and houses three Japanese students every year. I also felt pretty intrigued about the possibility of going back to Kure on a shorter term trip, like the adult delegations that rotate every four years.

The above is basically a simple photo montage of the event itself, hopefully capturing some of the cameraderie that was shared between the Japanese group, many participants and supporters in Bremerton, and the other interested parties that all turned up to support the 40 year sistership between Bremerton and Kure.

Port Townsend Trip

Yesterday Kevin and I took an impromptu trip, joining my family heading north to Port Townsend for Matt's soccer game. Since he's not playing on the team that went, Matt didn't mind that we took a walk and explored during the game. Kevin and I first grabbed coffee at "Better Life Through Coffee," a neat shop right on the water that serves coffee with Dunganess Valley Whole Raw milk, like we keep at home. They had a great ambiance and the entertainment offered was right up our alley- we need to check out Wise Traditions magazine, which we perused while in there. Kevin took a call from Lavengro people about a training this weekend, and otherwise we were uninterupted for a little spontaneous date.

After that we walked through the Wooden Boat construction center where they have all kinds of great public education programs and community-stregthening resources. We had seen the center the first time at the Wooden Boat Festival 2009 during our anniversary trip, and it was nice to see how it had continued to develop since then. While there, we strolled down into the docks and checked out who was tied up- spotted the Pliades, among others.

Finally we got up the energy to hike up Washington into the neighborhoods above, where we visited a wonderful park I remember from my childhood on the penninsula. Of course we also just oogled the beautiful victorian architecture and community. While we were up there we chatted about how much easier our transition goals, lifestyle choices, etc. would be in that town, but agreed that the town wouldn't ever need us as much as Bremerton may. As much as we allow ourselves to daydream about a giant victorian over the port, we're committed to Bremerton for good! Even so, I look forward to our second anniversary this year and another trip up to the Boat Festival!

Iris and Adele Tea Party

Today Iris stopped in for a few hours in the afternoon. We wrote some letters, one to her friend Lauren and one to Nana and Papa. We also had a nice outside tea party and Iris got on her inner photographer. It was awesome! She's actually got a pretty good eye for centering an object, getting a little balance going on in the photo, and today she was trying out the difference between standing up close and standing far away, seeing the difference in size and perspective.

Earlier I was working on a website I put together, to organize our focus on resilience and transition-related stuff. It's going pretty good but I'm not sure what to include next. You can check it out at http://sites.google.com/site/kitsapfarm/home . If you think of anything I should add, or have questions about the project, send me a note either in a comment here or to my email: melody.adele@gmail.com . Thanks for reading today!

Easter at the Stouts

Pictures are in from our Easter this year. Lots of friends from Keyport, and a few others including Kevin's parents Connie and Rory, gathered at the Stouts' home for feasting and a great egg hunt for the kids. Iris and Ariana played hard with Rachel and some big kids outside, while ladies passed around Nathan and chatted in the relaxed dining room area. Meanwhile, since we had so many guitar players and other instrumentalists, a band was formed around a coffee table, playing some hymns and worship music.

This collage was another experiment on Picasa- it likes to post directly to a blog, so I hope you enjoy collages! I'm a little addicted to the color dropper for the back ground.

In Memory of our Seattle Apartment

In the process of learning a few techniques on my computer, I ended up making this collage from photos I took shortly before we packed everything up to head over to Bremerton. It's sort of sentimental to me, and as I review the pictures and just the way the light seemed to hit our life, I realize what a blessing it was to spend the first year of our marriage in that place. It also makes me a little forward nostalgic... looking ahead to the time when we are able to set up another life in another place. It will be funny to get all those old things out of the storage unit and produce a brand new home from them.

180*

Since our last post, we've had a lot of changes. Probably the most impactful was our decision to forego Japan, as the day drew closer to make a final commitment. People have been kind of confused about how it happened, but it went quite smoothly between us, actually. For a long time it had just been an assumed agenda item for me, but we decided to seriously look at where we were and how we were going forward. Once we put the trip in light of our long term goals, as they have distilled in the last few years, it seemed like a kind of peculiar detour in some ways. After praying over it for several weeks we agreed that, though God would have blessed either route, we felt that what we have been learning about eachother and about life was pushing us a new direction from where we had been when we started the application process. It was a much more direct route to plan on staying in the states, and though we missed some opportunities I really looked forward to, we both have a lot of peace about the decision.

Straightening our road by eliminating the Pacific however did not exactly equal short! Since our lease came up when we were planning to leave to Japan anyway, we agreed to move back to Bremerton to set up house near my family. With my family, actually, for the time being. Statistically, the multi-generational household is really in right now, and for us it means a little extra stability to be saving while Kevin looks for work. While we look forward to house shopping and starting a family, it's been a huge blessing to have the old Nipsic house open to us. It's been surprisingly nice to gain a little domestic expertise from my mom (which I necessarily rejected as a highschooler). Of course it's great to just all be together and reconnecting.

In the process of moving, we got sad news that my great grandmother in Luisiana had passed away. In spite of the loss, we were happy to travel with so much of my family to join Nana in Ruston, where we were able to help with the funeral and spend some time with my great aunt, and also my great uncle whom I had never met before. We refreshed our sign language to communicate and enjoyed a Mardi Gras trip to Natchitoches (say Nack-a-dish), the oldest town in the Luisiana Purchase.

While Kevin keeps up the job search, I've been helping my dad with a number of tasks relating to Springtides Corporation, especially his upcoming publishing project. He launched his book, Your Ultimate Sales Force, late last year with a gala event, and now we're working on another project relating to the BizBuilders network. As usual, I really enjoy working with him and getting to spend a little extra time with my busy daddy.

So, Bremerton! We're looking forward to putting down roots and all that means, although it's skipping a few years ahead of where we thought we'd be. The community of Manette, where we live, is a pretty good place to keep playing with the Transition concept. We're also plugging back into Keyport where my family has gone since they moved to Kitsap County, and we're excited to see how new relationships unfold. We're also very eager to keep in touch with the close friends we left behind in Seattle, especially with the wonderful kind of visits we've had lately with Jon and Rachel (who are getting married this summer) and Elizabeth and Jason, among others.

That's a fair summary of the interlude. Keep in touch!