Am I lucid?

Okay, so I have finally finished breakfast. Right now that involves feeding myself, then feeding Rachel, then the dog, and finally Grandpa. The breakfast routine usually lasts about 1 1/2 hours or so. It's actually quite interesting. After 1 1/2 weeks here I have a real routine.

Well, I guess we've been bad about posting pictures and blogging regularly. I'm sure there's a lot we could put in and forget to write about. Rachel keeps us really busy. Jeff's schedule keeps him at school longer than we're used to, so he only gets to see Rachel for a couple hours each day. It's crazy how time flys! It's hard to believe I'm already in my 3rd trimester and with soccer season coming up, March will be here before I know it.

We are looking forward to staying in our own home soon, even if it is only for a few nights before we're on the road again and living out of another suitcase. Christmas is going to be crazy, but hopefully we'll enjoy it and not get stressed out by it.

Since we live in Texas, schools like to call an ice day on days where the roads aren't very icy. Tuesday was one of those days. Jeff was able to stay home from school and spend the day with us. We took turns being at home so we could do some Christmas shopping for each other.

Thanksgiving went well and we ate too much. We had a block party for our neighbors and had a wonderful time. It was a small turn out, but for the first year, we're happy with how things went. I made WAY too much food, but I was able to return some of the extra that I bought. That week was very stressful because it was our first week at Jeff's parents and I got sick on Tuesday, so I wasn't able to do anything to prepare for the party that day. I did TONS of cooking on Wednesday and Thursday, so there were a lot of dishes. Thankfully, the family who came to watch Grandpa for us during the evening did ALL the dishes for me!! I am VERY thankful, because I think I would still be doing them if they hadn't done them. I think that's all the excitement going on around here. I hope everyone is done with their Christmas shopping, or at least almost done, and getting ready to have a few days off next week. Enjoy your Christmas!

Long-Lasting Silence

Okay, so we're really bad about posting on our blog. I don't think either of us are great writers, so coming up with something to say usually takes some effort. Rachel is a handful. She walks/runs everywhere and talks all day long, but most of it is unintelligible, so we'll just have to keep guessing about what she's saying. We've been fairly busy, but it's mostly busyness preparing for the upcoming busyness of the holiday season. We have house-sitting, parties, soccer practice, Thanksgiving, teaching Sunday School, Bible study, and probably a few other things going on. We are actually hosting a couple of parties, so we have some added responsibility on our end. In anticipation of these many things (of which we are very happy to be doing), we have begun our Christmasing early. I know for many people it drives them crazy when homeowners and retailers put out Christmas decorations the day after Halloween. Well, we weren't quite that early, but we did put the tree up almost 2 weeks ago, and some of the house lights are already finished. We will be adding to them in the next week, so for all intents and purposes we are ready for Christmas! I have even been really good with our resources and have gifts for SEVERAL family members already. This feat has NEVER occurred before, and may never happen again, so I am relishing the moment.

Please excuse the blurryness. I will take another picture and might replace it, but for now here is the tree. Now if I can only get on top of the gift wrapping process and figure out whether or not my 1 year old will completely rip into them once they are placed under the tree, we will be doing even better. I think we are starting to count down the days we have to finish all of the things we need to accomplish before we start house-sitting. Time is going by really fast, which I am anticipating this to be a good thing, because I'd like to be able to hold Rachel again, and have this little baby kicking at blankets and toys instead of my stomach. Have a fun-filled weekend before Thanksgiving.

Lavish Celebrations!!

SHE IS 1 YEAR OLD!!!!

We had lots of fun at her birthday party. This is probably the messiest face we got of her eating her cake. We also had fruit which she preferred over the cake! She refused to walk for our guests. We are sorry about that but thought we would share a video of her walking a few days before her party.

Here are just a few pictures over the last few weeks.

Helping Daddy open presents at his birthday

Getting into the fridge

Opening presents

She loved her own chair and the cool Veggie Tales CD from Uncle Drew, Aunt Jill, and Aunt Megan! Thanks!!

Rachel with Great Grandpa Lehmann

One more video

LEAPIN' LIZARDS!!

Ok, well, we don't exactly have any leaping lizards around the house, but Jeff did find a little gecko the other day. So, what we do have is a WALKING baby!!! Well, she's not exactly a baby anymore and we're not sure she likes the idea of walking, but yesterday she took not 1, not 2, but 3 steps by herself!!! We are so ecstatic. We did get her this great walking toy that she went crazy over from the moment she tried it. She's getting better at turning it around herself, or she just walks around to the front and pushes it backwards.

Our child is one that tries something once, doesn't necessarily think it's great and then waits another month or 3 to do it again. We couldn't for the life of us make Rachel roll over. She did it a few times when almost forced, and then didn't do it again until she was crawling, because she would want off her back to go crawl. She is now a tummy sleeper despite the fact that we put her in bed on her back.

My (Teri) parents celebrated Labor Day with us. Rachel had a lot of fun playing inside and out.

Rockwall had its homecoming last weekend and Jeff was in the parade so Rachel and I went to watch the excitement!

Wednesday was also Jeff's birthday! Happy belated-Birthday! We opened presents, had a nice breakfast, and spent the rest of the day at the State Fair out on a date without Rachel. It was nice and enjoyable.

Learning Curve

School has started out well for Jeff, who only teaches 5 classes this year because he'll be coaching soccer. The soccer coaches made their first cuts on Friday to decrease the number of students in the class for the fall, but they will also be having open tryouts in December for those who aren't in the class or play other sports.

Growth can be a tricky thing. For children it's a necessary thing for their body to catch up to the size of their head and to allow greater stability to walk/run/play. It can also cause great pains when your bones decide to grow too fast. Well, in the case of Jeff's school, they are growing and doing construction, which is causing some pain and suffering. The athletic department is adding new locker rooms and storage closets, so all the equipment has been moved around quite a bit since before school started. The most recent move has been because the stuff was in a football storage closet and they were putting in new shelves, so all the stuff had to get moved yet again and they were only given a days notice. In a similar way, growth in our spiritual life can cause painful memories and realizations of our heart's motivation to be brought to mind so that we might cleanse ourselves and become more Christ-like. On the other side of dealing with spiritual issues there is great joy in living for God each and every day like we should.




On a personal note, getting back into a normal routine has been a two week process. We've also had some sniffly noses and no rain around here thanks to Gustav. Surely normal life will one day come back, or appear for the first time.

Lackadaisical Living

Okay, so it's been a while since our last post. We've been trying to enjoy each other's company before the dreaded day of August 18th came around and Jeff had to get back to real life. We've been around, but not really doing much. Well, I guess we have had our eyes glued to our makeshift television for as many hours of the Olympics that we can get our hands on! Monday, the 25th, will be a sad, sad day. Jeff sees his new kids for the first time, our sister is leaving for a land far, far away, and I will be home all alone, but with Rachel of course.

I must say, YEAH, the USA has won many medals, and May-Treanor-Walsh RULE! Okay, so we really like volleyball in our house and it's totally awesome to watch people moving around that fast.

Well, Jeff has taken the Assistant Soccer Coach position and for some reason I thought it wouldn't effect our lives that much until after school practice started. It seems that I was wrong. Jeff had 2 weeks of soccer camp this summer, 2 days of inservice for coaches, 2 days of working with the other coach on various aspects of the year, he'll be spending most of his Friday at school working on inventory, and there's a Meet the Jackets night on Saturday that he must attend. Let's not forget the other Jackets night on September 2nd, but that's still 11 days away! I'm not sure the stipend he's getting paid to be in this position will help our budget much, and the number of hours that will be put in since he took the job will be quite minuscule. I suppose the money in all of this wasn't really the point, but rather the impact he will hopefully have on the coaches and players he will come into contact with that he might not get to build a relationship with otherwise. We will be praying for Jeff and those people for much of the year.

YEAH RAIN!!!

Longings...

Since some of you may not know, I have a brother who died 2 weeks after his 18th birthday. He had cancer and went through many things a teenage boy should never have to deal with. I love him dearly.


So...the 5th anniversary of his death is on Sunday and it hit me like a brick this morning. You know when you've lost someone close important dates tend to make you cry a lot? Well, in our family, it's not usually the day that's so bad, but the day before is the worst. I realize I'm a few days early, but knowing me, it probably won't cross my mind on Sunday, so I'll cry today instead. I also realized that my parents are driving part of the way to New Orleans for a cruise on Sunday and I thought it was rather fitting. I don't know if they planned it that way or not, but I'm glad they are finally going on a cruise. Hopefully this isn't morbid, but I've seen 2 people die in my life. It's not a fun thing to be around, and I think the hospice/ICU nurses are just amazing people. They have to be able to deal with so much in order to help their patients and the respective families when they are dying. We had a wonderful nurse who completely reeked of smoke and David told her she should leave because he couldn't handle her smell. After that, she tried very hard to quit smoking, but I've never heard if she was successful. I hope she was for many reasons.




On a less morbid note, Jeff and I went to Shreveport and managed to not come home broke! We didn't even gamble. We did go to the casino, but it was so smoke-filled that we didn't stay very long. Our hotel was pretty nice, despite a lingering smell of smoke. I think I've decided that when you stay in a casino hotel, that the rooms will invariably be smoking rooms. We probably should have at least asked if they had any no smoking rooms. Well, in any case, we stayed on the 20th floor, shopped a little, saw a movie, and just hung out. We think Rachel enjoyed herself with Nana and Papa too.

Partial view from the room...




If for some reason you've read the blog and see me on Sunday, I would please ask that you not mention David, because I do have to teach Sunday School. I'd rather not have to answer questions about why I'm crying from several 6 year olds. I appreciate your candor in this matter.

Luxurious Relaxation

We are so excited about our upcoming trip. We haven't left Rachel for more than a few hours at a time since she was born, so we are getting to take some leisure time for ourselves and leaving Rachel with her grandparents!! Yea!! We thought it might be cool to stay in Shreveport, even though we don't gamble, just to say we've been to/seen a casino. We'll fill you in on some of the details when we come back, like was it worth the trip, and are casinos all they're cracked up to be.

Rachel is one amazing baby. Of course I'm a little biased, but we're so thankful for her every day. She pulls up on everything and tries to climb, but we don't have anything in the house conducive to climbing upwards, so she hasn't been very successful. She can climb stairs when we visit friends/family who have them in the house, so beware. We also love that she is able to walk along all of the furniture. We're one step closer to having her walking! I would guess that if you're a parent, that at least one person has told you that it seems like you can't wait until they can walk and talk and once they can do that you would like for the to just sit down and be quiet. We've heard that a few times, and I'm sure there will be times when I will want her to be still, but it seems like it would be so much easier to help my child if she could tell me what she wants rather than just crying, or throwing a fit.

Well, it's hard to believe it's already the middle of July. I will be so sad when Jeff has to go back to work. I hope everyone has been enjoying their summer. We hope to get some new pictures up soon.

Large Mouth Bass

So in the past 2 weekends we've been to 2 different family reunions. Of course they have been with my (Teri) side of the family. Jeff has met many random people that he didn't know, we stretched Rachel to stay awake for longer periods of time, and had a little fun in the meantime. Last weekend we met the Hollowells in Paris, Texas that is. We played some games ate some good food, and went swimming at the hotel. This weekend we spent time in Athens, again Texas that is, for the Wilson family reunion. We spent some time with our Mamaw and her family. Jeff and my dad got to fish twice and we shot off some of Jeff's fireworks. It will be nice to not have as many explosives around the house! HA! We do have some proof of the fishing expedition, as seen below.

We have also started having dinners for some of our friends on Wednesday nights and we had fun this past week. We borrowed the idea from some friends at church (thanks Nobles and Happy Birthday tomorrow Justin!!) and we like having people come visit us. We are excited about this week since we're having Mexican food. We hope lots of people come and share with us! Hope this finds everyone doing well in this summer heat!

Lopsided Emotions Anyone?

Has anyone ever had one of those days where you just wish you didn't have to worry about anything? Today wasn't too bad until I had been gone all day, hadn't had a chance to go to the grocery store for a last minute item for dinner, the grocery store took 1 1/2 hours (we went to 2), and it seemed like nothing was going right. I had a very sad day, where in the beginning where I got upset and had this puppy dog/child voice and really wanted things to start going my way. Then all I could do was cry. I think once in a while everyone needs to have a good cry, but today was rather sad, because I wanted to buy some really good pasta and with my coupons it would have been free and instead we bought about $4 worth and I apparantly wasn't aware we bought it. $4 you say? Well, we've been out of town for a while and money gets spent more and we drove more than 2,000 miles, and I happened to look at the budget yesterday, so I kind of was on edge. Don't get me wrong, we have more than enough money in the bank, but I guess I just had an emotional day. I hope you have a much better.....


WAIT!

Maybe I should just be glad. I am very thankful for all the things I have, a home, husband, child, food on my table, hot water, toothbrush, shampoo, and many other things. I even got to see my aunt who just moved back to the states from Kuwait (Hi Aunt Grace), my mom (Hi Mom), and an adopted family member (Hi Eva Lee). We also did some shopping for redecorating and it was so much fun! I do realize that lots of people in the world have a much more difficult time in living day to day than I do, but I do think that even if we are well off, we have a tendency to get down about things. Now that I've shared my boo hoo story...I hope everyone enjoys their weekend!! Happy Birthday to Holly on Saturday!!!

Little Yeds

by Teri

Our craziness of never being stationary for the next 20+ years has begun. Rachel is crawling everywhere and wants to get into anything that belongs to Mommy and Daddy. We have had some whirlwind couple of weeks. In the last 2 weeks we have been to and from Illinois visiting Jeff's extended family and were accompanied on the trip by Grandma Lehmann and Aunt Megan. We had our share of fun and even left her with a non-family member babysitter for the first time. Amazingly, we weren't very apprehensive. Of course when you realize how small the world really is, it's easy to leave your child(ren) with a stranger who's a friend of family friends, even if you're 1,500 miles from home!!

On a busy note, Rachel has learned to pull up. Not only to her knees, but all the way to standing. I turned my back earlier today and turned back around to find her like this.....

Well, the picture was actually of the second time she stood up on the bookcase. At some point during the day she also pulled up to hold onto the coffee table. She also decided to stand up in her crib this evening when we put her to bed so she cried for a while and we went to check on her thinking she might be hot (since our A/C doesn't work!!), but instead we found her standing there, so we promptly moved her crib down as low as it can go.

Since Rachel is a Lehmann, she has to learn to be a good traveler and we certainly put her to the test over the last 9 days. She met all kinds of new people and slept in strange places and did it with a mostly happy attitude. She's been a trooper.

On a side note, the adults also had fun on the trip to Illinois. We saw some cool clouds, I tried to take some cool pictures (though quite unsuccessfully), we made strawberry rhubarb jam(picture below for those who don't know what rhubarb is) , went to Jeff's cousin's wedding (isn't she beautiful?).....

We also ran across this RV that we had passed sometime before we stopped for lunch. He had a little car trouble so we managed to pass him again.

Well, I'm sure there's more excitement in our lives, but we'll post another update soon! Welcome to summer!!!

The Lehmanns

Leaps and Bounds

Okay, so our daughter is just as cute as can be. She is learning to crawl, but doesn't move her arms in coordination with being on her knees. She's still moving slow, but we're okay with that. Hopefully we will be able to successfully upload the video, but otherwise, we will post it on Facebook. It's completely amazing that when you have children, most of the stories that get told are about your children. Of course I'm sure this is multiplied for me because I'm at home with her all the time.

We've had lots of people tell us how strong Rachel is over the past few months. I'm sincerely hoping that it's only physical strength and not also a strong will. It's hard enough raising a daughter in today's society, but I don't know if I can handle little Me. Having people tell me of Rachel's strength also brings up the conversations about how much of a super athlete she's going to be. Since Jeff is tall, and coordination runs in the family, she's destined to go pro in something other than business! :) She's got her choice of sports between 2 families of diverse athletes, such as (and in order of preference, though I'm not sure who's preference) : 1)soccer 2)volleyball 3)softball 4)swimming 5)basketball 6)track/cross country 7)tennis

But on a serious note, we will be proud of Rachel and love her no matter what she becomes or what she's good at. The super athlete idea is somewhat of a joke in the house because we've taken pictures of her working out and she plays a lot with Jeff's soccer ball. Hopefully everyone is having a good week and geared up for Memorial Day weekend! Go Air Force!

Love, Life, and Living

Wow! What a year! I've never written a blog before, but I'm going to try. We are enjoying our 7 month old daughter who makes us laugh every day. We have been keeping up with Rachel's growth and pictures on a baby website, but ran out of room there so decided to start up here also. She's so wonderful and has been a huge blessing in our lives. We give thanks to God every day for the blessing He's given to us.


On a note outside of Rachel...I've been attempting to teach my sister-in-law vocabulary and helping her to prepare for the SAT. Well, my attempts are succeeding, but I'm not learning as much as I was hoping to. It's actually quite fun. I get to make up a crossword puzzle and quiz each week, require her to memorize these words, and I don't even remember a large number of them. She's doing a wonderful job! Attawaytogo Meds! Even though I'm not quite up to par in my vocabulary, we have had a few laughs over some of the answer choices published in the SAT Prep book. Well, I guess that's all for now! Have a very Fun Friday!

Teri :)