Recent Times in Pictures (First Installment)

There are a lot of things I have wanted to blog about in the last 4 of 5 months that I just never got around to. So I will start the new year out by being a little more...bloggy. :) I'm kinda gonna start my way near the end and work my way back. First off...

The 4th Annual Sister Day took place on November 6th. We took it up a notch since this Sister Day was the first ever to fall on a Saturday. We included Friday night in order to celebrate Sister Day Eve and we drove down to Santa Barbara and stayed in a Bed and Breakfast!

The entry to our room. It included a little porch with a table and two chairs and a jacuzzi. :) The room was really cute inside, but sadly I deleted most of those pics on accident. :( Well, sad for me...not for you.

Our yummy breakfast!

Sister Day always involves presents. These were mine from Emily. The book is a huge decorating book!

Em also got me this...

because of this...

Cruisin' down State Street. While listening to Boston of course!

We had always wanted to rent one of those two people bikes. A surrey. Let me tell you, those things are a lot of work!

It was a beautiful day for the most part.

Lunch. This pasta had chunks of brie cheese in it! So good!

What's a sister day without taking nerdy pictures of each other?

Santa Barbara pier.

And Santa Barbara ice cream!

And a beautiful Santa Barbara sunset. A perfect way to end Sister Day.

In December, Jeremy invited Em and I to tag along with him and Karli to New York! Amanda would not be Amanda if she turned down an offer like that! My Aunt Donna had enough frequent flyer miles for us all to go for free!

Here are Jeremy and Karli in front of the famous Rockefeller Christmas tree!

Em and I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to wear our hats, scarves and winter coats.

Times Square a couple weeks before the craziness!

I REALLY wanted to skate on that ice. But you should have seen the line...

I have a few favorite New York moments. One was eating at Carnegie Deli. Em and I ate there before seeing Mary Poppins on Broadway. It's so popular and packed that you have to squeeze at tables with other people. We sat with this older couple, a subway conductor and his wife, and we talked to them the whole time! They were so sweet. :) The subway conductor came to New York from Puerto Rico. And we had just seen West Side Story the night before. It fit perfectly.

We all ate at Cafe Metro two mornings while we were there. Including the morning that Em and I were supposed to leave. Unfortunately we didn't know that we were supposed to be flying on a plane while we were downing those pancakes and pieces of french toast. But that's another story...

The Guggenheim! So Jeremy and Karli did their thing while Emily and I did ours most of the time. We really liked hanging out here.

And we loved spending time in my favorite place in New York, Central Park! This is the view from Belvedere Castle.

Ice! I don't think I had ever seen a lake frozen over before.

Inside of the Guggenheim.

Washington Square. At NYU. I had always wanted to see this after seeing it in tons of movies.

Gray's Papaya. We had also heard of these amazing hot dogs from a movie. The movie didn't lie. They were scrumptious. Sauerkraut on a hot dog just works.

The price did too. Only $1.50 each. Our cheapest meal in New York.



I had always wanted to take a picture like this. Walking down a crowded street with all those heads!



And what's a trip to New York without visiting Tiffany's? Especially when Em had never been. I like the Christmas flair.

Well, we didn't have snow in New York, but guess where we did?! Sunny Southern California! Santa Clarita to be exact! Granted it wasn't much, but I know many friends who made miniature snowmen in their yards and threw real snowballs. I was home alone taking Christmas decorations down from the window and all of a sudden, I thought, that doesn't look like normal rain! Then I started freaking out and running around the house yelling, "It's Snowing! It's SNOWING!!!" The dogs must have thought I was crazy...

I didn't mind getting me or my camera a little wet.

Second installment coming soon....

"Colitiscope" as Lainey Calls It

It's time to just lay it all out there, since most people know I have ulcerative colitis anyway. Although this post isn't to say, woe is me. Many people have diseases far far worse. I literally have nothing to complain about. But I thought I did for awhile.
Am I the only one to ever get a bit cocky and think...I could handle that person's trial? Or, sometimes I even pray for trials but I usually have specific ones in mind. I tend to romanticize even trials. Then God, in His perfect "knows-you-way-more-intimately-than-you-even-know-yourself" kinda way, sovereignly allows a tailor made trial into your life, and you think, that's not the kind I meant when I asked for one!
Well, just shy of a year ago, about six months after my dad died...I started getting some unnerving symptoms. I definitely won't go into any detail on here. For any of you science nerds...like me...you can look it up on Google if you really feel the need.
For some reason, it really freaked me out. Particularly the procedure I had to undergo to get diagnosed. It took about three hours max to gain the right perspective after my dad died. God was so gracious and calmed my heart quickly with His peace beyond understanding. But this...for some reason it took longer...weeks if not months. And it seemed like such a smaller trial in comparison written down on paper. I found myself questioning and doubting more than trusting. I hadn't heard of this disease before...I didn't know anyone who had it. The famous "why me?" question reared it's warty head. That sounds gross but isn't doubting God gross? Finally after His grace alone, He confronted me in His Word, maybe through a sermon, I'm not sure...but He showed me my sin. And the symptoms went away as it went into a kind of remission and I gained back all the weight AND THEN SOME that I lost when I was first diagnosed and not sure what I should be eating. The G.I. doc put me on some medicine to take indefinitely and said that it is effective in 70 to 90 percent of patients. He said that diet has nothing to do with it and I could pretty much eat whatever I wanted and to stay away from foods that bothered me.
Well...eating whatever I wanted quickly turned to gluttony. That doesn't always mean you become fat, but who knows if I continued to eat every single dessert that was on the Customer Service table!
And soon I found myself in a flare up worse than ever that lasted for two months, the medicine wasn't doing a thing and I wound up in the hospital with swollen legs so much so that I couldn't walk. At least not without extreme pain. Right before that my ankle's were taking turns swelling up. The first time I went in they said I had sprained my ankle even though I hadn't remembered hurting it in any way.
All this to show God's crazy amazing faithfulness to a selfish brat like me!
A couple weeks before I had gone into the hospital I had found a diet...or a way of eating online. I had typed in "colitis and diet" in the Google browser and you know how those ads pop up at the top? Right above the actual articles and websites that you are actually looking for? Well, the first ad must have sounded good because I never click on those, but I did this time. And sure enough, it sounded REALLY gimmicky. "Pain free in one day!" "Great taste, no pain!" The woman behind it, Sherry Brescia, had a four day menu available as a PDF that you could download for free. Then if you found it worked for you, you could purchase her book for about 40 bucks. Yeah. Right.
I downloaded it anyway, but pretty much ignored it.
Well, when my legs started swelling up again on Christmas night and I had to miss church the next morning with no hope of seeing a doctor on the holiday weekend, I thought I would try anything. I thought I would stick very closely to the diet and see how it went. (Also, on a side note, I had recently seen my new general practitioner and she said that she has lots of patients with colitis who all swear by diets and she herself believes its legitimate. Kinda makes sense!)
I noticed a HUGE difference in how I felt the very first day. After two days I had hardly any symptoms but was majorly wanting sugar, so I ate a truffle at my Grandma's house and had symptoms immediately. Hm. So I went back onto the strict diet. Now this was during the holiday season people. I was grumpy, to say the least. Not trusting God again. It took a few days for me to realize my sinful attitude and repent of it. Then I just was so excited because this thing was working!
And it still is! Seriously no more symptoms! It's almost unbelievable! The gist of the diet is that it's about combining foods. Eating starches and proteins separately. Sherry and others who promote food combining say that starches require an alkaline enzyme in our bodies to digest while proteins require an acidic enzyme. As you learn in Biology class, alkalines and acids neutralize each other. Well, apparently the same thing happens in your body when the two enzymes mix, and then the digestion process is massively slowed down. Which causes problems. Especially in certain people like me. So most desserts are out because they are poorly combined in themselves. Flour and sugar with eggs and milk. I have to eat fruit completely by itself. I can pretty much eat most vegetables with anything. And peanut butter and honey have become my new desserts. :) It's really not that bad, and it is so worth it to feel this great.
I am so thankful that God allowed me to find that site! And that He answers prayer. I knew I wasn't having self control in the food area and I was praying that He would change me. Well, I was stubborn and while there may be other reasons why I was allowed to undergo this small trial, I know He has taught me so much through it. Why is He so kind to me??? I'm a blockhead!

Well, if you read this far, thanks! Always trust our loving God and turn to Him FIRST in your trials!

Lori and Lukas Lockets

Oh my goodness. This is the coolest idea ever! Lori gave me one of her lockets when her son Tommy graduated from Kindergarten, and I LOVE it! I wear it every chance I get. (I'll add a pic of mine on here later.)
Well now, Lori is making some with Lukas' pictures in them. They are fun and old-fashiony looking. Right now Lukas is offering one as a little prize on his site. If you fill out an entry form, just say I referred you please. :)

Back in the Old Days...

On a rare occasion, some member of my family will come across a group of old photos. I'm talking ancient. Okay, not ancient. Just ones of my mom or dad when they were younger. Tuesday night was one of those occasions. My mom was ransacking a drawer in the garage for some material (she's teaching Dany how to make a quilt, one of those skills one must acquire as a new mother apparently), and she came across some photos of her and my Aunt Donna when they were in college.
Oh the joy!
Some may be a tad embarrasing, but overall, I think my mom and Aunt are gorgeous in these, and what style! I hope my kids look back on my photos someday and are fooled into thinking that I am as chic as I think my mom was. :)
What I love just as much, if not more, are the stories that go along with some of these.
For instance, the character below is named Gordon. He was my mom's lab partner in college. My mom made Gordon cry. They had to do a series of experiments with baby chickens and Gordon had to snip off all of the chicken's heads near the end of the experiments because none of the girls wanted to do it. Snipping off all those chicken heads did not phase Gordon one bit. However, when my mom mixed the wrong reactants and ruined the results of all their work, that was what released the floods from poor Gordy's tear ducts.

The "young man" in the next picture is Virgil. Yes, that's right, I said Virgil. He had nothing to do with my mom; he was all about Aunt Donna. Aunt Donna never made Virgil cry. She made my Grandma Shaw cry. Because she rejected Virgil. Aunt Donna was just not into Virgil, but my Grandma thought he was an angel. Virgil asked Aunt Donna to the prom long before anyone else had the chance and I think she resented him for that. Yep, life was pretty miserable in the Shaw household for awhile after that. My mom promised to never do to me what Grandma Shaw did to Aunt Donna. She didn't exactly keep her promise, but that's another story and not for another time.

There aren't any stories to go along with the next group of photos. I mean, really, they speak for themselves. The first one is of my Aunt Donna, a few years after the Virgil days.

The next one is of my Grandma Shaw with my mom's cousin, Leonard. I think my Grandma was beautiful. You can't see her dimples in this shot, but I'm sure she lit up a room with her smile.

The following three are of my mom. I love her short haircut, but I could never pull it off. And I adore her coat and hat in the last photo. If only it snowed in California...



The cute little puppy in the next three photos is Puff. Puff once had puppies with a dog specifically "chosen" for her. Only during the waiting period, the dog next door also spent some time with Puff. The scruffy mutt dog, Dudeny (that's dude-knee) from next door. So when Puff gave birth, most of the puppies looked like the nice purebred dog, but one of them turned out like Dudeny.



My mom made the picture and the alligator below. Apparently, the alligator was a pajama holder. You could unzip his mouth and stuff in some pajamas. Both are so 70's. I love it.

These last two are of Puff and my mom. If I could be a professional photographer, this is the look I would want to give to my photos. A kinda retro, poloroid feel. I think the flowers in the first one are so sweet and fun. I want to grow some in my yard right now. And isn't my mom just too cute? Gotta love that 70's hairdo!

A Little News...

Well, the computers are down at work, so I thought I would use the time to update the blog that I have neglected for however many months.
Why would shut down computers impede my work to this extent you might ask? Don't I have a classroom full of kids to deal with? Nope. I have a new job. Customer Service at Grace to You. And I'm thoroughly enjoying it. :)
I do miss the little kiddos and their crazy stories and questions and interesting views on the world. But I am loving the short commute. I love talking to and helping people on the phones. And I love the people I work with! And I am so thankful to have a job. A full time job. With benefits. God is so faithful. :)
Next blog post I promise pictures and hopefully more interesting content...