I needed a day like today…a mix of relaxing, spending time with Brett and Elanor, getting outside, and doing fun things with other people.

I’m hoping to post more soon. Things have been a little crazy around our house, with our recent trip to Portland and our subsequent readjustment to life at home. Plus my Flickr pro account expired and I’m lame and haven’t wanted to spend the $25 to renew it, so I haven’t been able to upload pics in a while, or I’d just do a photo post. How’s *that* for a lame excuse?

Anyway, that’s about it. Nothing earth-shattering to report, just life as usual around here.

This is my mom’s recipe, and I have no idea where she got it. She’s always made it at Christmas, and up until we moved to Maine and I made it for myself, I never liked it because my mom always puts nuts in hers. (I hate nuts in baked goods.) But after we moved, it was cold, I was lonely, and I wanted to bake it, so she emailed me the recipe and it’s been a staple for us during the winter ever since.

It is by no means healthy (the amount of sugar and oil make me cringe every time, although I have replaced some of the oil with applesauce with no noticeable change in taste) but it’s really, really good, especially when it’s still a little warm from the oven.

Enjoy, and let me know if you make it!

~~~~~~~~~

Apple Pound Cake

• 3 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 1/2 cups vegetable oil
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 2 cups sugar
• 3 eggs
• 2 cups peeled, cored, chopped apple
• 1/2 cup raisins (optional)
• 1 cup chopped pecans or walnuts (optional)

Preheat oven to 325. Combine dry ingredients. Beat oil, sugar, and vanilla until well blended. Add eggs. Add dry ingredients to sugar mixture in three parts, beating well after each addition. Stir in apple, and, if using, nuts and raisins.

Spoon into a well-greased and floured 10-inch tube pan. Bake for approximately 1 hour and 15 minutes or until done; test for doneness by inserting a clean knife into the center area. If it comes out clean, the cake is done.

Cool in pan, remove to cake plate.

*My notes: It’s really easy to overcook this cake, and part of the beauty of this cake is in the way the top crust gets when it’s perfectly done, so you don’t want to burn it. I usually set the timer for 50 minutes and then check it every 5 minutes from that point; that way I won’t let it go too long and risk overcooking it. And, for what it’s worth, I always put raisins in mine instead of the nuts, although my mom considers adding raisins and omitting nuts to be a sacrilege.

• Writing: A post manifesto piece about our child rearing ideas. It’s gotten really, really long. It may wind up being a series of posts, actually, but, then, that would be great if I do NaBloPoMo again. So keep your eyes peeled for that. No promises on when I’ll have it done, but I’m hoping in the next few weeks. It’s morphing into something way bigger than what I intended it to be, so I’m just going to let it lead for a while and see where it takes me.
• Reading: Some more of the books from my childhood that my mom brought me when she visited. Two of my favorites were in the box she brought: “Nickel-Plated Beauty” and “Hail Columbia” by Patricia Beatty. They take place in the Astoria area around the turn of the century and they are funny, heartfelt books. I love them just as much now as I did when I was younger.
• Cooking: Not much. I have been a very lazy cook lately. I did make two apple pies last week, which was fun, but other than that, I’ve been mighty negligent on the cooking front. It’s getting close to being soup weather here, though, which should help. I always feel more inspired to cook when it’s cold outside.
• Looking for: Some more work I can do from home. I am not super eager to do this, as I don’t want a repeat of how stressful it was for me in Seattle when I was working from home, but our budget needs to be expanded so I am looking and praying God will provide the right thing at the right time.
• Thankful for: Our home here and the friends we’re making. I still just love our apartment, and I’m really enjoying getting to know on a deeper level some of the people I’ve met. (I’m looking at you, Emily, Emily, Laura, and Sarah.)
• Loving: Elanor’s increasing verbal ability. It’s astonishing to me! She says something new every day, and I love it. She’s getting to be such a kid! And yet, at the same time, she’s still such a baby. What a fun and exhausting challenging stage this is!
• Anticipating: That Brett and I are going to be an aunt and uncle again! Brett’s sister Amy and her husband Seth are expecting in March. We’re thrilled, and we can’t wait to meet the little he/she!
• Learning: More and more about myself every day, as I work through the things I’m writing about in the piece about our child rearing philosophy, as I realize that I have long had issues with anxiety, as I continue to learn about how Brett and I function as a couple, and as I learn to trust in God’s provision.

Anyway, that’s us these days. Nothing terribly exciting, really. The weeks have their ups and their downs, but for the most part, life is good: full of good food, new friends, good coffee, a comfortable home in an awesome city, and a great husband and kid. I can’t really ask for anything more than that.

Now, though. Wow. Every day is a challenge, it seems, a huge one, and I struggle some days to just keep my head above water in terms of making sure we are fed and clothed (although for Elanor these days, that often means wearing only pants, as shirts seem to have become a uniquely painful form of torture overnight) and that we are both relatively physically unscathed by the end of the day.

Other days are better, but I still find myself not blogging on those days because I’m just worn out from chasing a very spirited 30-pound toddler who likes to climb everything.

I don’t want to complain too much about it here, partly because I know that I have a tendency to go overboard with the whining if I let myself, and partly because I know the choices we’ve made in terms of how we’re parenting Elanor are a little different than many of my friends, and I don’t want to start that discussion in this forum, at least not yet. So I’ve been quiet for a while.

And then once I’m in a quiet cycle, it’s like anything else: not posting becomes habit, and it’s harder and harder to break that habit. And then Brett notices that I haven’t posted in a while and he starts bugging me about posting, and that makes me even less inclined to post…and it’s basically a vicious cycle that means it’s weeks between posts.

But okay! Enough justifications about why I didn’t blog for several weeks.

I HAVE NEWS! Exciting news! (NO, I AM NOT PREGNANT.)

To me, it’s more exciting than that, at least for the time being.

WE GOT A CAR!

Woo-hoo! My mom has been jokingly talking for years about how she may just get up one day and go buy a new car to replace her ’98 Acura, and when she did, she’d give that car to us. And then, a few weeks ago, out of the blue, at 9:30 on a Saturday night, I got a text from my sister: “You are now the owner of a ’98 Acura!”

Turns out my mom really did just get up and decide she was going to go look at cars, and she bought one. She had a visit here planned at the end of September, so she just drove the car down instead of flying. So for about 10 days now, I’ve had a car again.

I’m really excited about it. When we made the decision at the beginning of the year that we were going to try to get a car, it was very, very hard for me to reverse that thinking as things at Brett’s old job went south and it became apparent that adding any monthly expenses to our budget was a bad idea. I struggled a lot with having to get myself back into the no-car mindset. And then we moved here, and it was easier for a while, but it started to get hard again, especially as Elanor became impossible, er, difficult, to take on the bus or to confine to a stroller.

I won’t lie; despite how excited I am, I’ve felt a little guilty about actually using the car. We were on our way to a playgroup this week and I saw a mom waiting for the bus with a toddler in her arms, and I felt like if she could take the bus with her kid, I should be, too. I can’t become too reliant on the car; I need to keep riding my bike and I need to stay active. I feel good right now, healthy, fit, etc, and I don’t want to lose that.

Other than the car, we’ve had a very busy (but fun!) month filled with lots of friends and family in town. I’ll leave you with some pics from those visits, and a promise that I’ll try to blog more frequently in the next few weeks.

First up, our friends Josh and Crystal came to visit. We went on a bike ride through Golden Gate Park and out to the beach with them, which was one of the best parts of their visit.

Then, our friend Bree came to visit. She and Elanor had a fun time playing together.

We also took a trip to Sacramento for a moped rally. My friend Emily and I spent most of the weekend watching babies sleep, or trying to get them to sleep, or nursing babies. I think our total time spent at the actual rally totals around an hour. Haha. Times have changed.

Then, when we arrived home from Sacramento, my dad and stepmom were waiting for us. We had a fun visit with them, too!

Finally, we had my mom’s visit, which was wonderful, too. I haven’t gotten those pictures off the camera yet, but when I do I’ll post some here…soon!

My love of books has been with me for as long as I can remember. Some of my earliest memories have to do with reading, at first picture books, and later chapter books.

When my sister was born, my parents gave me a Sesame Street book called The Case of the Missing Duckie. I loved that book. The images in it still stick in my head even today…the part where Cookie Monster is frosting a cake (messily!) was my favorite page and I used to look at it for what seemed like hours.

When I was probably 5 or 6, I remember being extremely angry with my sister for something she’d done. So what did I do? I went to our room and shut myself in and just read and read until I felt better. (I specifically remember reading The Cat in the Hat that day.)

The first chapter book I ever read was Ramona the Brave, when I was in Mrs. Lowry’s first grade class. Oh, I loved that book. I loved Ramona’s spunk, and I loved that it was set in the town where I lived. I always wanted to go to Klickitat Street, but I never did. Maybe next time I’m in Portland I’ll do that — or maybe I’ll wait a few more years, until Elanor has read the Ramona books, too, and take her along.

My parents used to read to us: the Super Fudge books by Judy Blume, The Hobbit, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. (We still joke about the I-thought-you-saids.) My dad’s parents lived in Oklahoma, and we’d drive out there every couple of years. This was way, way pre-built-in-DVD-player days, so my parents would switch off driving and reading to us to help pass the time.

I loved the Emily books by L.M. Montgomery. The Mandie mystery books. (My friend Sarah Evans and I had a pact that we would keep reading the Mandie books until Mandie finally married Joe. This pact seemed VERY SERIOUS AND IMPORTANT to our, like, eight-year-old selves.) (I have no idea if Mandie finally married Joe.) (I should Google that.)

As I got older, I read everything I could get my hands on. I know my mom was often challenged by my desire to read things above my maturity level – Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume comes to mind. So I started reading Christian fiction. Some of it was really good, and some of it was really bad. I loved Janette Oke’s books during late elementary school. My friend Elise Bradley and I would act out the book Roses for Mama with our dolls, and the Canadian West series touched me deeply. I loved her books so much when I was little that I wrote to Janette Oke when I was in elementary school, and she wrote me back! My mom has the letter somewhere; I should get it from her.

I read a Christan young adult series called the Jennifer books. I was captivated by one of the books, wherein Jennifer’s family moves from one state to another. The author’s description of the newness of a new place, the way it feels to get used to sleeping in a new room, to how to find the grocery store, to becoming accustomed to seeing your things a new house — all of that has stuck with me and I’ve thought of it often during our many moves throughout the years.

I made one of my dear friends (actually, the one through whom I found out about Happy Week!) in the church library. Annie and I would meet up in the library, where Mrs. … Oh, no, I can’t remember her name! What was it?! Now I’m going to have to call my mom and ask her. Annie, you know who I’m thinking of. Do you remember? Mrs…augh! It’s on the tip of my tongue. As soon as I hit publish it’s gonna come to mind. Anyway, the church library lady would introduce us to new books, and she took Annie and me under her wing. We’d meet there between services in Junior High and into High School and compare books, talk, and giggle together.

While I was in college, I didn’t have much time to read for pleasure, although that was when I discovered my love for Lord of the Rings. My mom had tried to get me to read it for years but I had never wanted to before. Then, one day in college, my roommate Claire was reading it and she left The Fellowship of the Ring sitting around. I picked it up and I was hooked; I couldn’t put it down. Since then, I’ve read it probably at least eight times in full, and have read portions of it at least three times beyond that.

My time working full-time in Seattle before we had Elanor was full of books. I don’t even remember what I read; I just know that with my 45-minute-long bus commute, I would average three books a week. I read everything I could get my hands on at the library. I read some non-fiction during this era, specifically about food: The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan, Anthony Bourdain’s books, Ruth Reichl’s books, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver.

Since I quit my job almost a year ago to stay home with Elanor, I don’t get to read a whole lot. Maybe one or two books a month. I miss reading, desperately. I miss getting lost in a really great story. I miss spending hours in bed, reading in my pajamas until 2 p.m. on the weekend because I just have to finish one more chapter.

I know; I know. It’s a stage of life. I’ll be able to read again someday. But sometimes I just ache to curl up with a good book, one that doesn’t talk about toddler sleep habits or nursing or…yeah.

That brings me to my point. Before we moved, my mom brought me three boxes from her garage, boxes full of books. My books. Oh, looking through those boxes was like rediscovering my old friends! Better yet, I’ve been able to carve out some time to sit and re-read some of my favorites lately: The Case of the Missing Duckie, my scribbled-in copies of The Cat in the Hat and The Cat in the Hat Comes Back, the Emily books, the Cherry Ames books, and some random, one-off books that captivated me when I was a girl. They still do captivate me, and I’m so glad I still like them. So many things from childhood are not as wonderful as we remember them to be, but these books have not lost their thrill for me.

I’m so happy to have these treasures here so that I can re-visit my childhood and, someday soon, share them with Elanor. I hope there will be a day not too many years from now when we both just want to curl up on the couch with a good book. Books in general make me happy, but seeing these books and having them in my home to re-read and to someday share with Elanor makes me really happy.

Most of all, I’m really, really happy. Since our plane landed yesterday and Brett picked up his mom and Elanor and me at the airport, I have felt like I’ve had a permanent grin on my face that I just can’t seem to wipe off. I’m so glad to be here, and so glad to be with Brett again. I know 10 days apart really isn’t very long, but it felt like forever. I guess there’s nothing like a little absence to make the heart grow fonder. Or…something. (Sorry. I know; that was really cheesy.)

Yes. So. I’m writing this from our new bedroom in San Francisco. The windows are open, and I’m feeling the fresh, cool breeze off the ocean as I’m typing. Brett’s out at a concert tonight (our friend Kevin’s band is in town from Seattle) so I’ve just been organizing and unpacking and trying to arrange my Fiestaware in the beautiful glass-front cabinets in our dining room area, and, now, catching up with the online world.

I’ve got to admit it feels pretty weird to be sitting here without any at-home work hanging over my head. I felt similarly after I graduated from college; I would have a vague sense of guilt any time I was just hanging out that previously would have been spent doing homework when I was still in school. Throughout the time we were in Portland over the past couple of weeks, and now as well, I’ve felt a little bit like I don’t know what to do with myself when Elanor’s been asleep and have felt vaguely guilty for just sitting. I’ve done some knitting (I’ll have to share about that in another post!), watched a movie and a few TV shows, and hung out with our families. It’s been really nice!

That said, now that I’m here, I’m going to have to find a job sooner or later (which, oddly enough, I’m looking forward to doing…hey, working is a way to meet people and to guarantee getting out of the house by myself every now and then) but for now life feels like a vacation even though I’ve been going non-stop for almost a month, just because I don’t have to work every time Elanor falls asleep.

It’s a little surreal that THIS is now home; that we live here now, in this wonderful apartment, in this city. I’m looking forward to getting through the first little adjustment period of settling into our house and getting things put away. I want to be able to explore the city a little more, and, eventually, to find a routine that works for Brett and Elanor and me.

Anyway, like I mentioned, Brett’s mom came down with Elanor and me from Portland, which has already been a huge help. With another pair of hands, I can work so much more quickly at getting things organized and put away. Basically, there’s someone to get Cheez-its or water or whatever for Elanor so I can, like, figure out where I am going to put all my pots and pans, you know? That kind of help is invaluable, not to mention having someone to hang out with and talk to while Brett’s working. Having her here is already making this transition a lot easier.

Everything is still pretty unorganized in our apartment, although Brett did get a lot done while he was here by himself: he got the living room all cozy and feeling like home and all of our books unpacked, as well as our bed set up, and the futon put together, and a lot of Elanor’s toys unpacked. I’ll try to post a few pics of my favorite parts of the apartment once there’s some semblance of order. I’m hoping to get our bedroom dealt with tomorrow (ugh, I hate unpacking boxes of clothes…hanging everything up feels like a ginormous chore to me) and doing that and moving out all the empty boxes will help with a lot of the clutter in the rest of the apartment.

I’m still working on kitchen organization. Priscilla and I stood in the kitchen for a good while during Elanor’s nap today, trying to think through the best and most logical places for everything. After making dinner in there tonight, there are some quirks about the kitchen and the way I have it organized that I’m not thrilled about but I think it will be fine once everything is put away and I’ve found a groove. It’s always a little weird to adjust the muscle memory that tells you to reach this way for a knife and that for the olive oil. I hope that adjustment goes quickly; I hate feeling inefficient in the kitchen, and walking back and forth across it about seven extra times while I was making dinner definitely made me feel that way.

Bottom line, everything about this move has been so easy thus far. Getting our house packed and loaded into a truck and cleaned was far easier than we expected, and Brett’s trip from Seattle to San Francisco was smooth sailing. Things with Brett’s new job are good, the apartment is fantastic, everything went smoothly with my time in Portland and my trip to Seattle for my doctor’s appointments, our flight down here was perfect because Elanor slept the entire way and I got to read and eat M&Ms instead of wrestle a screaming toddler, and I even got the internet and wireless set up this morning without a hitch. I feel a little like I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop and for everything to go south, but maybe everything has just fallen into place so perfectly because this is where God wants us to be and what he wants us to be doing.

Our fantastic and stress-free 2009 seems to have finally, finally begun, and all I can say is that it’s about time!

How have things been for the past, oh, almost two months? Yikes! Two months! That’s longer than I thought it would be between posts, but, you know, oh well. Gotta remember that whole “no stressing out” thing, right?

Really, things have been fine at our house. Busy, stressful at times, but fine. Let’s see if I can sum up in a quick and not boring way.

Since my last post, we’ve done quite a bit of traveling. Brett’s traveled for work to L.A., Iowa, and Norway. (Yay for frequent flier miles!) Brett’s mom was here while he was in L.A. and Iowa, and my mom came while he was in Norway. Both visits were quite fun!

As a family, we’ve been to Portland for the United States Barista Championship and to the Oregon Coast, where we are now. We head home tomorrow, which will be nice since we’ve been gone for 10 days, but I have to admit that I’m loving the lazy beach lifestyle, and am not too eager to resume the quick pace of normal life.

Really, nothing else too exciting has happened. Brett did great in the barista competition last weekend, placing in the semi-finals, and as it was in Portland, our families watched Elanor so I could participate in the fun. And it was fun! I got to eat amazing food, drink great wine, and hang out with fun people. I even got to stay out too late at a party after drinking a little too much, which I haven’t done in over two years.

Elanor is more funny and amazing every day. We’ve been trying to transition her into a crib for at least part of the night, since she’s so big that sleeping with her is getting to be a challenge. She inherited her papa’s and her Auntie Rachel’s propensity to thrash around violently in her sleep, which means Mama and Papa don’t sleep much as a result. The transition is going okay; some nights she’ll stay in the crib almost all night, and others only a few hours. But that’s okay with me. I’m not looking for an instant change — gradual is fine.

She’s walking EVERYWHERE, babbling up a storm, signing really well, and looking more and more like her papa every day — I guess I should save some of this for her monthly letter, which I should post in the next few days. Maybe I can write it in the car on the way back to Seattle tomorrow.

We are waiting to hear about some things that could mean some really good but somewhat big changes for us. We’ve come to terms with the fact that change is going to happen in the semi-near future, and being the impatient person that I am, now that I’ve made that decision and am anticipating change, I want the change to happen RIGHT NOW! But that’s not how life works, especially not in this instance, so I am trying to trust God and be patient.

We don’t have a car yet; we are kind of waiting to see how these changes pan out before we take on any more expenses. And that’s okay for now. I do want one in the somewhat near-ish future, but I think it’s more prudent financially to wait right now, so that’s what we’re doing.

I’ll leave you with some pictures from the past few months. I don’t have a ton; Brett took the camera with him on his travels. I’ll save the most recent ones for her 14-months-old post, I think, but here are some from the previous month.

February 4th, swinging at the park

February 6th, watching a movie with Papa

February 7th, being an adorable imp at Fiore

January 25th, Brett making coffee with his co-worker Louie while on the fourth machine at the WRBC when he was in L.A.

So, I will be back sooner than almost two months, I am sure. Hopefully within the next few days, actually. I have Elanor’s 14-months-old post to do, and finally, Brett is ready to do his post about making a french press, which was requested by Annie. (Yay!) We’ve also been making some amazing food lately that I want to tell you about, and I want to share some projects that my friend Rosanna and I are excited to work on.

The bottom line is that there’s a lot going on with us: none of it terribly thrilling, most of it good. I promise, another post about everything is coming soon!

I am sorry I flaked on doing week two of the meal plan, but I’m working on it and will get it up — hopefully — later tonight or tomorrow. We’ve been eating whatever boring things we have around our house or eating out since we’ve been so busy and tired. I’m making something really yummy tonight, though, which I’ll post in the meal plan for this week.

Okay, I have some work to do now, and then we’re going to eat dinner, and then I’ll try to post something. I hope. But the need for sleep may win, depending on how long my work takes.

My pregnancy with Elanor and her birth was the first hard/good thing to happen. She is amazing, and wonderful, and definitely one of the highlights of the year: the ultimate good thing. But my pregnancy with her really took a toll on my body, and her birth was long and difficult and painful and not at all the birth I had wanted or envisioned. Still, the good that came out of her birth was so wonderful; knowing her and having her as our daughter is a joy.

The second such event was my heart incident in May. Obviously, the bad part is that it happened in the first place and the good part is that I’m alive. The difficult parts of that event, though, are still echoing through our lives. (That’s another post in and of itself. It’s nothing catastrophic, just new doctors with new theories and new tests to run, following which I may have a new diagnosis. But all of that is waiting on some insurance logistics to get straightened out so it will be well into the new year before I have anything to report on this front.) The fact that I came so very close to death is something that is hard to shake, especially for my mom, I think, and for Brett, too, although he’s somewhat reluctant to admit it.

The third bad/good event happened on Christmas Eve.

As I’ve said, it’s been snowy here in the Northwest for the past couple of weeks. (It’s actually melted now, but only as of yesterday.) Anyway, that much snow is unheard of for this area of the country (I think we had about 12 inches here!), and what’s even more shocking is that it stuck around for two weeks. Generally, the temperatures rise and the rain typically melts it within 24 hours.

The roads have been pretty icky in the city, but they’ve been totally managable. I mean, hey, like I have said before, we know how to drive in snow. So despite our parents’ protests to not come down for Christmas if the roads were bad, we loaded up our friend Robbie’s Jeep, turned on the four-wheel-drive, and left our house about 8:30 a.m. on Christmas Eve, ready to get to Portland and start celebrating with our families.

We were borrowing Robbie’s Jeep because he went out of town for the holiday, and since we don’t have a car, he offered to let us use it to get to see our families in Portland to save the $200 on the rental car if we’d drive him to the airport before we left town.

So, we dropped him at the airport and we were driving down I-5 and were just south of Olympia. The pavement, up to this point, had just been bare and wet, nothing bad at all. I had just taken a break from writing a year-in-review blog post to call my mom to try to firm up our plans for later in the day. The two of us were chatting, and I had just updated her about where we were, how the roads were, and when we thought we’d arrive when all of the sudden there was some slush on the road, in the left lane, where we were traveling. Brett had only been going about 50, and he immediately slowed down. We slid a little, he slowed down some more. He put his blinker on to get into the right lane, going maybe 40 or 45 at this point, and started to get over.

The tires must have hit the snow just exactly wrong, and we started to slide sideways, then the back of the car came around and we started to spin in a circle in the left lane of the interstate.

The back of the car hit the median, bounced us off, and rolled us over.

We landed tires down, facing backwards in the lane we’d just been traveling in. Brett and I both thought at that moment that we’d jumped the median but thank God we hadn’t. We also didn’t hit any cars and no one hit us — a huge miracle.

Elanor had been asleep and she was, obviously, woken up by the screaming and crashing. Brett was able to turn right around and get her out and she calmed down and seemed fine once she was in our arms.

I somehow managed to hold onto the phone the entire time, even as Brett and I screamed and we rolled. My poor mom heard the whole thing happen and was terrified. As soon as we landed I told her, “We’re fine, we’re all fine, I have to go,” and hung up because I needed to take Elanor from Brett. She, of course, was freaked out, and I felt bad just hanging up, but I had to help Elanor more than I needed to reassure my mom.

Thankfully, an off-duty firefighter was a few cars back so he stopped and was able to help us right away, before the state patrol and firefighters and paramedics arrived. Having him there was wonderful and very reassuring. We needed someone to take charge and tell us what to do; the four minutes or so until the emergency personnel arrived seemed long enough with someone there. It would have seemed like an eternity if he hadn’t been. So, to Steve from the Black Lake Fire Department: thank you.

The paramedics said it really didn’t seem like we needed to go to the ER, and having had our fill of ambulance rides for the year since we took several around the time of my heart incident, we agreed with them. At that point we just wanted to get to our families and did not want to spend hours and hours in the ER on Christmas Eve. Brett and I are sore, obviously, but other than that, all we came away with was a few bumps and bruises (my laptop was closed in my lap and hit me in the head; I’ve got a nice bruise from that) and I have a small cut on my cheek from the glass from the windshield.

The state patrol had us drive the car off the freeway, even, which is something of a miracle: even though it’s completely totaled we are okay, were able to walk away, and could drive it off the interstate. My laptop is fine, although the case is scratched, my glasses didn’t break, our camera had been sitting in the back seat and it was fine, too. Even the French press we had in the back for Rachel for Christmas didn’t break. (I was shocked it was in one piece when she opened it!)

After we got off the highway and the car was towed away, we wound up renting a car and continuing on our trip since we were already nearly halfway there and we’d have to drive at least an hour and a half to get home anyway. Before we left Olympia, we stopped at Target and I bought a new carseat for Elanor (the same one, since it seemed to work so well before — the Graco ComfortSport).

We talked to Robbie, the owner of the car, when we were still sitting on the highway. Obviously, we feel awful about it, but there was truly nothing Brett could have done differently. He wasn’t being reckless, and was driving at a safe speed given what the conditions were.

Anyway, the whole thing was terrifying and not a fun way to spend Christmas Eve but we are all okay and we are so thankful for that, and so glad, too, that we were able to be with our families to celebrate. Once we were able to forget about how awful the accident was, we had an awesome time and are so glad we made it to Portland after all.

The bottom line is that we are just so thankful that we’re all okay. We keep jokingly saying to each other that we can only cheat death so many times in one year. It’s been quite a year, and these are only the life-threatening events. I left out all the hard but not life-threatening things: going back to work in April after my maternity leave was over and then that month where I worked full-time, Brett traveling so much this fall, being on a really tight budget, Brett and I enduring some challenges in our relationship with each other, a rodent infestation in our house (yeah, that was really fun…not) — I could go on, but I’ll stop right there. It’s just been hard, and 2006 and 2007 were that way, too: Brett being jobless, having a miscarriage, then being pregnant and so sick and miserable.

We are so ready for a change from that pattern. We both hope, along with our families, that 2009 holds nothing but routine, boring, normal life for us, or at least that the only big events are thoroughly good ones. We are tired of having these brushes with death; although we’re grateful to have been able to walk away from all of them with everything intact, we’d much prefer avoiding them altogether.

I’ll post something about our actual Christmas soon, probably mostly pictures since I took about a jillion of them. It was a very fun time; we felt very loved and blessed by our families, and so grateful to be with them on the holiday. Elanor had a great time, too, and I’m happy that we spent her first Christmas with all of our loved ones — even if getting there was not a fun experience.

It was a great trip in a lot of ways. Christmas itself was wonderful; we had a lovely time with our families and feel very spoiled and blessed and loved.

The drive down, however, was not so great, but it’s too late now to write about it so I’ll try to get it written in the next few days. It’s quite the story.

Anyway, I’m here; I just didn’t get time in front of a computer while we were down in Portland, so I didn’t get to blog. But I promise there’s lots of posts in the works for the next week or so.

Merry (belated) Christmas to everyone, and a very happy New Year as well, although I hope to post again before then.