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.