I had some *deep* thoughts about our experience in the Old Order Mennonite communities this time around, and I want to share them with you, and I will...but today I'm going to talk about road tripping Christmas and barf? Because I need to maintain my status as an oversharing momblogger who keeps it realz.

In California we lived so far from our families that roadtrips with babies just didn't happen. We blissfully flew with a lap child (ha!). But now we live in Texas which is kind of closer to things, so we took the cheaper evil of the highway over navigating airports and flight times and rental cars. We did our big driving push - Texas to Tennessee - in one day. We packed up the day before and drove out at 4am. Both the kiddos transferred into their early morning car seats pretty seamlessly, and we had ourselves a sweet roadtrip sunrise with some truckstop coffee.

   

The kids woke up in Baton Rouge, and we ate cajun powdered sugar for breakfast. We were riding high. I think we even high-fived each other. Ironically of course. For lunch, we picnicked in the sketchiest of sketchy playgrounds somewhere in Alabama.

Things went pretty well till the last couple hours of dark driving in the rain. We finally made it to Chattanooga and were desperately trying to find a fast food restaurant with a playscape. In the haze of the city lights, their colors distorting on the wet windshield, for over an hour we navigated first to a Chic-Fil-A which ended up being in a food court and then another that was in a hospital and then to a "kid friendly" taco place that was closed and elicited some rather saucy verbiage from the husband. Finally we landed at this grungy, deserted fried chicken place where we literally let our overtired underexercised offspring walk around the whole restaurant. In general we're zealous "Sit Down And Eat Your Food" types, but at this point we were channeling a lot more zombie than parent, and watched pretty disinterestedly as Lucy Juney wandered into the bar and flirted with anyone who smiled at her.

The next morning we found out that Chattanooga was much more quaint and much less circle-of-hellish than our first impression led us to believe, and we had some hipster coffee before heading to the land of hot hot woodburning stoves and cold cold leaky outhouses.

We brought our own sniffles to the Mennonites this time, which was kind of nice since it made me less concerned about all the snotty noses in these vastly child-heavy communities. But two days in and Lucy June was looking greenish. We arrived at one of Jacob's cousins and for the first five minutes I tried to calm my super fussy baby and make excuses for her, but then she vomited all over the floor. The wife quickly got a bowl for me, and even though Lucy June threw up about four more times over the next few minutes, I caught none of it.

An hour later she was ripe and ready to eat again, so I fed her with all my fingers crossed, while Jake played with his cousins' pet raccoon and Jacob talked with the menfolk about trotlines, horses, and weather.

When we visit the Mennonites, we eat a lot. Virtually every meal is at a different relative's house and each one involves SO MUCH FOOD. Mennonite food is very Cracker Barrel - gravy on pancakes, creamed corn, mashed potatoes - plus semi-unrecognizable things with names like "Scrapple." And each meal has some kind of dessert. Many of Jacob's cousins asked me how I lost baby weight. I told them I didn't usually eat cheesecake after breakfast.

  

The last afternoon in the community, I was doubled over in Jacob's Aunt's house suffering through the stomach bug Lucy June bequeathed me. As I tossed my breakfast cheesecake into a chamber pot, I devised this little formula:

Mennonite In-Laws + Stomach Virus + Outhouse + Winter 

=  

How Much I Love My Husband

Soon with our sniffles and our stomach bug - and a trunk full of winter squash, canned soups, fresh milk, homemade bread and butter, and a gallon of muscadine juice -  we left Kentucky headed for my sister in law's house in St. Louis where we planned to Christmas. I didn't feel great about bringing all our diseases into her house, except her kids had Hand, Foot, and Mouth, so we just embraced our germy holiday.

I like to see Jacob around his family. I see parts of him that I don't see anywhere else, and I know it does his little extroverted heart so much good to spend time with them. We played a lot of Dominion and ate a lot of gourmet chocolate and drank lots of wine and martinis.

The stomach bug floated around the house and finally landed back with Lucy June on Christmas morning. The kids woke us up at 5:30 on Christmas morning, and shortly thereafter I found myself in the bathroom cleaning vomit (etc.) off me and my daughter and the floor - because we were covered in vomit (etc.) 

I realized at some point I was living my parenting nightmare: those horror stories you read on blogs when the whole family is sick for a week. I was living it. On Christmas. And as awful awful awful as it had always sounded, it wasn't as bad as I'd expected. It was just...life. And time got us through it.

Now the long roadtrip is over and we're home again in Houston. We'd planned to get home a day sooner, but on our drive home from St Louis, we took a right in Texarkana so we could wish my family a Happy Christmas in Fredericksburg before finally landing in Houston.

Back in Fredericksburg, my brother has strep throat or something, and now my mother is texting me "Flu! Flu! Flu!" and I think have chills and according to our meat thermometer I'm running a temp of 108. So. . .

I think Tootie and Mr. Neely say it best:

I hope your Christmastide is merry and bright. (Illness aside) ours has been quite quite lovely.

Easter 2014 + a Link Up

Saturday afternoon found us breaking out the turmeric and boiling down the blueberries to dye some eggs. They weren't quite as cool as last year's because I was too lazy to go buy a beet, but they did the job.



We had some multigenerational cookin in the kitchen.



And though my sausage and egg casserole was decadent and delicious, the real hit of the day was the swing Jacob made.

We got some quality time and kodak moments with



our neighbor Frankie.



Jake played most of the morning in Frankie's yard but eventually got interested in our party.



The toddler seemed to like the egg hunt





and the baby was generally content to be held the livelong day.

Our Easter was bright and filled with family and sangria.

And I'll go ahead and seize the momentum of this blog post to Answer Me This with Kendra. This week's preguntas:

1. What did your famly wear to Mass on Easter Sunday.

See above for various glimpses of our Easter finery. I'm very bad at getting any type of formal shots together. I'm much more of a candid photo over a formal photo kind of a girl, but I also recognize that photos of the entire family just don't happen naturally, so I think I'm going to have to start orchestrating them.

2. Easter bunny: thumbs up or thumbs down?

I'm going to give a very apathetic thumbs down on this one. The Easter bunny didn't really play a part of my childhood, maybe this deprived me of magical moments and rich memories, but...oh well...I didn't even mention him (her?) all day.

3. Do you prefer to celebrate holidays at your own house or someone else's house.

We hosted Easter for my family here in Houston. It was my first experience hosting my mother for a holiday. I didn't really think about it at the time, but I suppose that's kind of monumental right?

We are still traveling for holidays generally. I expect to host more and more holidays as the children get bigger in mass and quantity.

4. What's your favorite kind of candy?

I don't really like most candy enough to eat it. Except chocolate. But that habit is hard to sustain because as I get older my chocolate preferences are getting more and more expensive. Like THIS STUFF. Deli$h.

5. Do you like video games?

I can get addicted to video games very easily. I was in a Candy Crush hole last summer. Jacob would get so mad when he would find me playing it when we were packing for the move. Until he got sucked in himself. Then I started getting annoyed whenever I would find him playing it. Double standard much?

Video games were a source of SO MANY fights between my siblings and me growing up that I'm gonna say no, I don't like video games. We'll see how long I can keep them out of my house.

6. Do you speak another language?

Spanish and Italian.

My childhood nanny/housekeeper was Guatemalan, so we got a lot of "Vamanos!!! Zapatos!!!!" growing up.

I minored in Italian, studied abroad in Rome, and then lived in Italy after college. So my Italian is really good. Pour me too much vino rosso sometime and I'll let you hear it.

There you have it, friends. Sigh. I wish I blogged more. I miss it when I don't. But my six month old is clingy and teething and is entrenched in a lovely phase called "I won't sleep if I don't have two hands and one foot on your person, mom" and I can't juggle blogging under these circumstances...someday perhaps.

I'm dashing down this blog post while Jake is singing her some Raffi songs, but Baby Beluga is ending now and my post as two parts mother and one party baby-perch is calling. 

Buon Natale

I have some pictures that didn't make it onto our Christmas card for you! Enjoy!

Baby Jake's Favorite (Impressed with his fine motor skills.)

Papa Jacob's Favorite (Impressed with his photography skills.)

My Favorite (Impressed with my baby making skills.)

 

Only one question for you on this blessed day: are you wearing your Christmas socks?

Happy Last Sunday of Advent!

I asked Jacob how he liked my Christmas decor. He said if we lived in the bayou we could keep it up year round.