Playing Catch-up

Well, I am going to try to catch up on some blogging. Our last few months in Tallahassee flew by. The beginning of November, Chloe and I spent a wonderful weekend in Panama City at the beach with Melanie, Sabrina, and Annie. I think Chloe wore them out :-). Chloe didn't really know what to think of the beach. She wasn't completely crazy about the sand. We had a great time together! I love spending time with the girls! Todd spent his weekend in Canada at a conference and he had an interview with Dartmouth while he was there.


We spent Thanksgiving with our dear friends, Jeff and Valerie and girls, Carlin and Janay and kiddos, and our new friends, Jared and Rebecca and their girls. We have gotten together with our friends for several years and have always had a great time. This year was no exception! We will really miss these get togethers.
Moving on to December.
In the midst of having a 14 month old running around the house and working full time, we were also packing up the apartment. That was fun. (NOT) December 11th, Todd's mom and dad came in for a week, then on Dec. 12, Todd graduated from FSU!!!!!! We are so proud of him.

Just a couple of days after graduation we had everything packed up in both vehicles, including the dogs, Chloe and the in-laws and we headed out for Oklahoma. Thanks to portable DVD players and Elmo's World the trip was uneventful. After we get to Oklahoma Chloe gets a cold and gives it to me so we have been pretty miserable for a few days. Hopefully we will be feeling better soon.
On the job hunt front, Todd has had interviews with Dartmouth, Valdosta State and University of South Carolina-Upstate. He won't hear anything else until sometime after the holidays.
Well that catches everyone up for now. I will blog about Christmas soon. Hope everyone has a great Christmas!!! Love you all.

Chloe is 1!!!!!!

It is a little late but Chloe is ONE! I just can't believe it. She is changing every day. She is walking now, talking like crazy, feeding herself, etc. She has such a wonderful sweet personality. Her face just lights up when ever daddy or I enter the room. It is so hard to believe that it has only been a year. We can't even remember her not being in our lives. As I look back over the past year, I have loved every single minute of it. I have even loved the sleepless nights, and lets be completely honest, we still have some sleepless nights :-). I would not trade one single minute of the past year. She has been such a blessing in our lives and it is so much fun to see the world through her eyes and to teach her things. I thank the Good Lord every day for bringing her into our lives and for giving us the privelege to raise her. I pray that she will grow up loving life and loving the Lord with all her heart. I pray she grows to be a strong Christian woman with a quiet and gentle spirit. I have thoroughly enjoyed the first year and look forward to each year to come.
I love you Chloe Elizabeth and you are so very special to Mommy and Daddy.

The Un-Amazing Race

We were traveling back from our exile from civilization--I mean our time in Oklahoma--and were near Brilliant, Alabama when Jenn and I started gazing at clouds (not a safe thing to do while driving) and seeing shapes:

"That one is a belly-flopping reindeer"
"That looks like an elephant"
"That looks like a belly-flopping elephant. There beside the belly-flopping reindeer."
"There's E.T."

Jenn then said (in a comment that is truly demonstrative of the power of branding on our culture): "There's the Travelocity gnome!"
I said, "Grab it! Oh, wait we're not on the Amazing Race. Maybe this is the un-Amazing Race."
Jenn responded, "Yeah, I would like to see some of those people travel with a baby and two dogs."

Where does the time go?????

I know this is the first of many, many times I will say this in my new life as a mommy but it is so very true. This little bundle of joy that we brought home 10 months ago is now a precious little girl, not baby, of immense personality. She is just changing everyday. She is so much fun to watch. I love seeing the world through her eyes. It is impossible to have a bad day when I see her face light up when I enter the room. She is slowly turning into a Papa's girl but she still loves to cuddle with Mama. God has blessed our lives so richly. Something that to me looked so bleak and heartbreaking, God has turned into something more than I could imagine. Here is just a short list of the things she is doing now.
1. Crawling all over the place.
2. Pulling to a standing position
3. Standing unassisted sometimes
4. Walking with the help of Mama or Papa
5. Eating, eating, eating. She loves finger foods
6. She has three teeth and a fourth on the way
7. She talks up a storm, her favorite words right now are bible and doggie. Go figure. She says mama and dada and poppy (my dad).
8. She recognizes and does the sign for eat, bottle, and more
9. Practically perfect in every way :-)

Things I Have Learned About Living in Oklahoma

1. All pickup trucks have trailer hitches. All of them. This can be painful to learn.

2. If your meat isn't smoked, you need to get out of the state, you un-American, Commie punk.

3. There are some places where you can go to Sunday morning worship wearing jeans, and it's okay. Even if you're preaching.

4. Sometimes the wind does not go "sweeping down the plain." Sometimes it hits you like a Mack truck.

5. Dry heat is not as sticky or clammy as wet heat, but 100 degrees is still hot.

6. Fiberglass boats and rocks do not mix.

7. Fireworks and dry grass do not mix.

8. There are some towns with populations that would fit in a row at Doak Campbell stadium.

9. It is possible to "kiss your butt goodbye" during a tornado warning.

10. There are some landfills that will take "drit." I haven't see what it is, but the sign said they take it.

11. There is someone in Webber's Fall, OK, who will babysit your kids, but you will need to supply "dippers." She'll change the "dippers," but you need to buy them.

12. Chicken "gizzards" or "chunks" is an acceptable meal.

13. You can be arrested in Arkansas for some acts connected with "debauchery."

14. There are several places to take concealed weapons license classes.

15. Daughters grow up really, really fast.

Only the lonely

Dissertation writing is hard work. I'm sure you knew that or at least guessed. Quite often it is difficult to get things written when you know you need to write but you have nothing to say. That has happened to me quite frequently. There have been several times when I have thought about giving up, but then I thought I am so close to being done that such a decision would be really foolish. The dissertation and comprehensive exams are important parts of academia. They provide a qualifier that someone with a Ph.D. has been judged by their mentors and their peers in the field to be of a certain level of expertise (unless you get your Ph.D. from a diploma mill--and it is sad that such places exist). It is also important that on the days that I get stuck that I remind myself how much I love teaching and how much I want to teach as my vocation. But writing the dissertation (or "paper" as my parents infuriatingly call it when they ask "are you done with your paper yet?") or taking comprehensive exams is such a separating experience. Obviously it separates you from your non-academic family members, both in terms of time and effort but than also the material you are trying to assimilate. Jenn could care less about how we should construct the colonial religous scape and how important Puritans should or should not be to that narrative--to be fair, I couldn't care less about the Medicare guidelines that consume her workday either. She is very supportive in other ways. Particularly when she asks, "Shouldn't you be writing instead of blogging?" But comps and the dissertation also separates you from your academic colleagues as well. So the end part of the academic qualification period can be a very lonely time--despite a system that stresses collegiality and the importance of scholarly engagement. It also becomes difficult in trying to explain what you are doing when people ask. "Oh, you are a graduate student?" "Yes, I'm working on my dissertation." "What are you doing it on?" "The importance of sentimental expressions of piety in evangelicalism and how prevalent such expressions are in evangelical religious practice." "I'm writing about Max Lucado." "Oh, I've read one of his books."

Plus out here in Oklahoma (read previous post), it is even lonelier. But at least I'm almost done. And I should probably get back to writing.

Chloe's First 4th of July

Happy 4th of July everyone. We took Chloe to her first fireworks show. I think the pictures will explain it all.
Before the fireworks started.

Fireworks


Here is Chloes reaction


She liked them better from the car. We think she really liked the colors just not the noise.

Chloe, 9 months, where has the time gone!!!

Chloe had her 9 month check up today. She is healthy as a horse and doing wonderful. No shots today so that was wonderful. She is now 23 lbs and 27 1/2 inches long. She is talking more every day. She has two teeth and one more on the way in. She is so very expressive and loving. She is starting to wave hi and bye. Here are a few pics.
Two little teeth

She loves to stand up in her crib.

This is an outfit that my mom made for me that I wore all the time. I love the fact that my daughter can wear it now.

SNAKE, In the office, thought you oughta know!!!!!!

Well more excitement on the Oklahoma front. My parents have what we have always referred to as the "outside rooms". They are three rooms out the back door. One is the laundry room and the other two were just junk rooms. They had concrete floors, they were finished rooms but just kind of yucky. Spiders in corners, that kind of thing. They weren't used alot so that is to be expected. Well, a few months ago mom decided she wanted to make them really nice and keep one as the laundry room, turn one into her office and one into an exercise room. They were still a work in progress when we got here. For the time being I was working in my mom's office which was also serving as the nursery. Tight quarters for all involved. A few weeks ago the office and exercise rooms were finished but not the laundry room. They decided to put the laundry room on hold and move mom and I out to the office and make the old office a nice nursery for Chloe and soon to be cousin, Isaac. Now remember, I had to get over my mindset of the nasty outside room and think of it as a nice, modern office. Yeah, right. I moved out there and had to endure a few spiders. I really, really hate spiders. Well, just about 4 days ago, I went out to work in the morning, minding my business, doing my work. I came back in for lunch and went back out about an hour later. My mom had told me she saw a lizard the other day in the laundry room. No fear there, I am only afraid of spiders, so I thought. I sat down at my desk, turned on my music and propped my feet up. Yes, I was really working. I see movement out of the corner of my eye, on the edge of my desk in the corner. I automatically think, oh that must be the lizard. I see a tongue stick out, then I see a TAIL, SLITHER OFF MY DESK. Holy toledo batman, THERE IS A SNAKE IN THE OFFICE ON MY DESK. I run screaming out of the office, my mom calls my dad, Todd tries to calm me down and Chloe is blissfully unaware of anything going on. The snake is killed and I move my stuff back into the house and am now sharing the dining room table with Todd. Oh how this wouldn't have happened in Tallahassee. :-) I may have spent most of my life in the country but I am a city girl.

Oklahoma. . . where the wind goes sweeping down the plain

Things I Like About Oklahoma
1) The world is quiet here.

2) There is like no one around. Seriously, we are on 53 acres. Space, space, and more space.

3) We can see the stars at night.

4) Braums! If you have never eaten there, you unfortunately do not what you are missing.

5) I've gotten a lot of work done.

6) I don't need to take the dogs out on a leash.

7) There is no traffic signal. Just a four-way stop. That should tell you what traffic is like.

8) Ricochet concert (They're the hardest working band in country music)

Things I Don't Like About Oklahoma
1) Did I mention there is no one around? We need to go 30 minutes to get anywhere. I mean Wal-mart is 30 minutes away. So is McDonald's. 30 minutes. Other stuff is an hour away.

2) Tornados and tornado warnings.

3) Snakes in the office.

4) Dirt roads. Cars are a mess.

5) No public libraries. Reading is fanudmantle. There are like three resale shops, however.

6) Did I mention tornados and tornado warnings?

7) All our good friends are back in Tallahassee.

If C. S. Lewis wrote Wall-E

Okay, so we're in Oklahoma for me to write me dissertation. Naturally then I have been watching movies and rereading the last four Harry Potter books (almost done with Deathly Hallows). Anyway, I have recently watched both Narnia: Prince Caspian and Wall-E. I had seen Prince Caspian in the theatre, but this was the first time I had seen Wall-E. In some sense (alright, just in my mind), there are similar messages in these movies. There is a strong theme of environmentalism, or at least there is in the book Prince Caspian. It is more muted in the movie, but it is still there to some extent. The message is obvious in Wall-E, however. The whole reason for Wall-E's existence is to clean up the mess that human beings have made so that the near-future humanity can return back to earth. What is more interesting for me, of course, is the religious undertones of both movies. Wall-E first. The film is about finding love but also finding redemption. The solution is very humanist, however. Human beings must take control of their own destinies to reclaim the earth. Humans have stewardship of maintaining the earth's health. They had abandoned it to go into space and allow someone to fulfill their responsibility, but in the end the humans aboard the Axiom (the ship they all fly around in) determine that they have to fulfill their duty. There is a quasi-religious duty humans have to "till the earth and keep it" (so to speak).

The religious themes are much more obvious in Prince Caspian (at least to a certain audience). Lewis offers a critique of both industrialization and urbanization, especially towards the end of the book--especially with the waking of the trees and the destruction of the bridge at Beruna. The Telmarines rely on machinery and technology and they are destroying the land of Narnia and marginalizing the animalistic creatures of Narnia. Aslan's waking of the trees is an encouragement to find religious fulfillment in nature and the power of nature. It is a Christian Romantic (think Emerson not Harlequin) view of the world, particularly in response to changes and violence of Europe in the mid-twentieth century. Tolkien has the same position in Lord of the Rings (think "Saruman has a mind of metal and wheels, he does not care for growing things").

So this gets me thinking about the new conservative Christian interest in the environment. Now there are plenty of conservative Christians who believe that Genesis gives the right to do what ever they want to the earth--"have dominion" (Gen. 1:28) meaning to rule earth however--but there are many who are starting to argue that God expects human beings to be stewards of the earth and not lords. I mean if you can get Pat Robertson and Al Sharpton to agree on something that is something worth noting. And I think, what kind of stance am I taking to the earth? Should I have a more Romantic view toward creation instead of my mind of metal and wheels? Why does Aslan sound like Qui-gon Jinn?

Anyway, this is what I'm thinking about instead of writing my dissertation (which is nearly done BTW--ha!). So everyone recycle your plastic and your paper for the good of the earth and perhaps your souls.

Oh, and Aslan and Wall-E might both be types of Christ-figures. Hmmmmm.

More Madness

The fun never stops!! My parents have a van that we have been using while we are here. Three weeks ago we went out to dinner and to go shopping. All of us went. We were an hour from home. Yes her in the boondocks we have to travel an hour to go shopping and out to dinner. We were getting ready to leave and the van died. My dad tried to start it again and we were able to go about 4 miles in 30 minutes. It died about 8 times. We pull over in a parking lot and call AAA. They said it would be about 75 minutes and only 2 people could ride in the tow truck. My parents called a friend to come and get us. Well 3 hours later the tow truck showed up and we all got home about 11pm. The good news is that Chloe was wonderful. No meltdowns or anything. The van was in the shop for a week and we were able to pick it up on a Friday. The next day we decided to take it and go to Tulsa to the zoo. Tulsa is about an hour and a half away. This time it was just Todd, Chloe, and I. Well we had a great time at the zoo. We were just outside of Tulsa heading home when the van died. Well, we were able to get off the interstate to a McDonalds. We called my dad and we called AAA again and we managed to get home. The most recent update on the van is that it has been in the shop for two weeks now and they have no clue what is wrong with it.
Todd and I sat down the other day and decided when we wanted to head home. We picked a date in July and I decided to go ahead and reserve a van for us. This will end up being divine intervention that I tried to call early. :-). I called Avis, against my better judgement, and they are selling off their vans and don't know if they will replace them. I then called Enterprise and they would be willing to rent us a one way van for the base rate and a dollar a mile. Hello, NO. I then called National and they wanted $2700!!!!! I called Alamo and they won't rent to us because we don't have a major credit card. We only use debit. So we are STRANDED. Well after much consideration, we will be purchasing a minivan. I know, I know, it is against the Dave Ramsey plan but you got to do what you got to do.
On a really happy note, Chloe has two teeth coming in. She is starting to chew on the spoon. She is pulling herself up and tonight she took some steps, with me holding on of course.
On the dissertation front, Todd has finished his last chapter and turned it in and he has just finished the epilogue and is turning that in tomorrow. Woohoo.
Hope everyone is doing well. We miss everyone and are looking forward to getting back to civilization.

The worst road trip ever.....

So many crazy things happened on our trip to Oklahoma and I wanted to share them with friends and family, so I just decided to start a blog about our adventures over the summer. Here goes:
We had to rent a minivan to make the trip. It is impossible for two adults, two dogs, one baby and 3 months of STUFF to fit in our Saturn VUE. So we picked the van up on Wednesday. I had requested a Dodge Grand Caravan because we needed stow and go seats in the back in order to get all our junk in and we were only doing a one way rental so we couldn't take the seats out. We left Thursday morning with plans to be in Memphis around 6pm to stay with some friends. Now most of you don't know this but every time we go to Oklahoma we get stuck in crazy traffic in Dothan. It doesn't matter what time we get there it takes us about an hour to get out of Dothan. So imagine our surprise when we get through Dothan in about 30 minutes. Yeah. We should have known that trouble was just around the corner. We get to Montgomery and it is pouring down rain. We notice a massive amount of water in the ditches, then we notice stores with water up to the doors, then we notice traffic slowing to a crawl. We see people walking in water that is up almost to their knees. AND WE HAVE TO DRIVE THROUGH A FLOODED INTERSECTION. A MAJOR U.S. HIGHWAY FOR PETE'S SAKE. All that is going through my mind is "turn around don't drown". We turn the radio on and hear about mud slides in the area, schools evacuating because of flooding. It was crazy. We stop at a gas station on the other side of the flooding because my bladder was about to explode and the rain wasn't helping matters any :-). Well of course they didn't have a changing station. A huge pet peeve of mine. As I am walking back out to the car, I see this woman drive off with the gas hose still in her car. She rips it from the gas pump. I have heard about these things happening but never seen it. Well, she was going to keep driving. Someone yelled at her and she stopped and removed the hose and just dropped it on the ground and got back in her car. Management came out and had to stop her from leaving. It was CRAZY. Todd noticed that the front tires of the van are low so he decides to air them up. He then notices that he can't air them up because the thing where you air them up (i don't know the technical term) is broken off. So we decide to go to Burger King so I can change Chloe and we can have lunch and call Avis and get the car fixed. We go to Burger King and they don't have a changing table. Well by this time I am mad, so I changed her in the dining room on a table. Sorry if that grosses you out but come on, how difficult is it to put changing tables in bathrooms. But that is a whole nother blog :-). I called roadside assistance. They told me that I needed to call the local Avis and get another vehicle. They gave me the number and when I called them it was Budget not Avis. You don't even know your own companies phone number. Give me a break. Budget gave me the right number and I called for half an hour with no answer and no answering machine. We decided to just go to a mechanic and fix it ourselves. We get to a tire store and I try one more time to call Avis. I finally get ahold of someone and she tells me they don't have anymore vans. I have to say I was glad because I didn't want to have to unload the van and reload into another one. The woman told me we could go to Goodyear and get it fixed, they had a contract with them. I looked up and there was a Goodyear right across the street. Yeah. I told her I was right across from one and she asked where it was. Of course that isn't the one they have a contract with. It is clear across town. We head across town and Todd drops Chloe and I off at Walmart and he get the car fixed. So three hours and 30 minutes after arriving in Montgomery we are finally able to leave. In the midst of all that chaos, Todd gets a phone call from a school in Illinois that he had applied to. They were calling to set up a phone interview with him. Oh the timing!!!!! The rest of the day was uneventful, thank goodness. We made it to Memphis around 10pm. Of course, 45 minutes prior to that Chloe decides she has had enough and she melts down completely and screams until we get to our friends house.
We get to Oklahoma Friday afternoon. We get the van unloaded and relax. That evening it starts to storm. I get Chloe to sleep and am walking down the hall to put her in bed when my father gets a phone call from a fellow firefighter that a tornado has touched down just a few miles north of us and is heading towards us. Dad tells us to get in the hallway. Well, let me tell you I have grown up in tornado country but it is totally different when my little baby is involved. We sat in the hallway for a little while and thankfully the tornado changed directions and we were finally able to go to sleep.
What an eventful two days!!!!!
Well, the rest of the time has been pretty uneventful. Todd had his phone interview. We still haven't heard anything. We know they have narrowed it down to two people and Todd is one of the two. We hope to hear something soon. Todd has gotten 35 pages written in two weeks. That never would have happened back home. We miss everyone and hope all is well. I will keep you updated on the happenings and how quickly Chloe is changing. Talk to you soon.