memorial day weekend pictures

we took the boat out on the lake and we got caught in this storm:

it came up very suddenly, before we could get back to the marina. so we stopped under the a bridge and idled under it. it was an effort to keep the boat under the bridge and not swept out into the wind - it was storming extremely hard, including lightening and hail. it is not an experience i'd soon like to revisit, but it passed quickly and the sun came back out. we did stay a little closer to the marina after that, however.

at the farm, Princess swam in the pond some. here J is pointing out some frog eggs:

Princess autumn had a blast swimming around. unlike previous years, she took right to the water and started paddling around. J's excited to teach her to swim.

Princess also did a lot of fishing. i think it's her new favorite hobby:

(here she found a creepy stick):

she caught not just one, but two striped bass:

she wanted us to fillet them for dinner immediately. they were pretty small, though, so J convinced her to put them back.

the blueberries are very pretty this year, and after last year's late frost (which destroyed much of a beautiful crop), i know amber is ready for a big harvest:

the berries will be ripe in a couple of weeks. i can't wait.

crazy busy

so, i've been crazy busy lately, what with Princess getting out of school for the summer (we have her full-time the first half of the summer). plus, J is taking THREE classes this summer since he's going to be backing off on his courseload for the fall semester. AND we're trying to get the house ready for the baby, so everything is kind of in a transitional phase as we try to find space for all the things that used to occupy the guest bedroom/office. it's quickly becoming apparent that we've outgrown what used to be a very small but appropriately sized house for our little family - we really need an office to store my cds and his dvds (voluminous), my books (even more voluminous), and the computer desk.

as ya'll know, i HATE clutter, so the current state of the house is about enough to drive me batty. in the mean time, the baby will have to ignore the media storage racks in her nursery, the dining room will do double-duty with the table and the computer desk, and J will have to continue to ignore my overflowing bookshelf in the living room.

i try to simplify, simplify, but it's so hard. i can apply that rule to virtually every area of my life, but when it comes to books and cds, i absolutely hoard them and can't bear to part with one. as a result, i can't very well begrudge jake his dvd collection, so we'll all just have to live amongst the chaos. for now.

as for the baby, we think we have a name. in fact, we have a couple of names. we've decided to keep them a secret for now, and we'll wait to meet her in person in the fall and decide which name fits her best. we're not intentionally trying to make the name thing a Big Deal, but it's such a personal decision that we've decided to keep it between us so that we're sure we've picked a name because we love it, and not because of how other people feel.

i mean, i've gotten a shocking number of blatantly negative reactions when i've told people what we're considering. it's not like these names are just off the wall crazy. we're not going to name her moon unit zappa or lemongrass, nor are we going to name her something uber common and overused. i suppose you're not obligated to respond to our picks with an overwhelming "ooooooh how cuuuuute!" but to immediately point out all the faults in a name is just obnoxious and makes me want to smite you. it's not like we haven't put a TON of thought into this - YES i know kids are mean and YES we've already thought about every conceivable way that the name could be twisted around. no name is immune, but thank you for pointing out all the problems and expressing your distate. if she were already born, there's no WAY you'd say that crap to my face.

umm, what else is going on? i guess for those of you who are interested in the obstetrical aspect of my life, i had my blood-glucose test performed yesterday. i had to fast all morning and then go over to the hospital and drink a big glass of what was essentially a melted orange popsicle. yuck. then i got to sit around an hour waiting for the sugar to hit my bloodstream and my insulin to spike, and then they drew my blood to check my levels. i'll find out at my next appointment whether the results indicate that i'm becoming gestationally diabetic, but i kind of doubt it (this was a routine test that they administer to everyone - i have no symptoms of anything). the fasting-followed-by-intense-intake-of-sugar made me feel pretty shaky, so J took me to lunch afterward and all was forgotten.

on monday i have to go get my rhogam shot because i am blood type A- and J is something positive, so it's something about if the baby is positive like jake then my body would create antibodies against the baby's blood, which won't impact this pregnancy but would make my body reject the next one. or something. all i know is i have to get shots. but no big deal, because i get allergy shots all the time and i'm not squeamish.

june 16 we're going to get one of those cool 3d ultrasounds done where you get to see the baby's face and they take a video. so that'll be cool. i'll upload the video if i can figure it out. the odds are approximately 34% that i'll be successful in that endeavor, so don't hold your breath.

aaaaaaaand we went to the lake for memorial day, so i'll post pictures of that next.

hopefully this will tide ya'll over for a minute. :)

25 weeks

memorial day weekend at the lake:

more pictures later. i SWEAR.

dude, what did i freaking tell you??

AP Article: Court: Texas wrongly seized sect children
Slate Article: Yearning for Evidence: The sad parallels between the Texas polygamy raid and Guantanamo.
Previous Blog: flds

SAN ANGELO, Texas - In a ruling that could torpedo the case against the West Texas polygamist sect, a state appeals court Thursday said authorities had no right to seize more than 440 children in a raid on the splinter group's ranch last month.

It was unclear how many children were affected by the ruling. The state took 464 children into custody in April, but Thursday's ruling directly applied to the children of 48 sect mothers represented by the Texas Rio Grande Legal Aide, said Cynthia Martinez of the agency. About 200 parents are involved in the polygamy case.

The Third Court of Appeals in Austin ruled that the state offered "legally and factually insufficient" grounds for the "extreme" measure of removing all children from the ranch, from babies to teenagers.

The state never provided evidence that the children were in any immediate danger, the only grounds in Texas law for taking children from their parents without court approval, the appeals court said.

It also failed to show evidence that more than five of the teenage girls were being sexually abused, and never alleged any sexual or physical abuse against the other children, the court said.
It was not immediately clear whether the children scattered across foster facilities statewide might soon be reunited with parents. The ruling gave Texas District Judge Barbara Walther 10 days to vacate her custody order, and the state could appeal.

***

The appeals court said the state was wrong to consider the entire ranch as an individual household and that the state could not take all the children from a community on the notion that some parents in the community might be abusers.

"The existence of the FLDS belief system as described by the department's witnesses, by itself, does not put children of FLDS parents in physical danger," the court said in its ruling.

The court said that although five girls had become pregnant at age 15 or 16, the state gave no evidence about the circumstances of the pregnancies. It noted that minors as young as 16 can wed in Texas with parental consent, and even younger children can marry if a court approves it.

absence makes the heart grow fonder

or at least i hope so. i have no excuse for my lack of blogging lately. it was going so well - regular posts, a variety of topics - and then *poof!* i got uber-busy and it just fell by the wayside.

i'm going to try to do better. i promise. more later.

22 weeks

my five-foot-two-ish-ness is showing.

also, a reminder why oklahoma living isn't so bad:

on the way home from a hearing last week i stopped here and bought some homemade raspberry jam (already halfway gone), a jar of spicy pickled okra (definitely already gone), tomatoes, and a big fat hanging strawberry plant that they had hanging out back.

la langosta

i remember back in the early or mid-90s i was in cancun with my parents, when the flea markets were still held under fabric tents and there were no loud clubs or prada stores. my parents had been there the year before and they'd decided to take erin and me down. we went to this local restaurant far from the beaches and resorts, down in the city of cancun. it was humid and breezy and there was no air conditioning, but it didn't really matter.

there was a table of people across from us taking shots, the waiters would pour the warm tequila down their throats and then squeeze their cheeks and shake their heads back and forth. erin and I didn't know what to think, but my parents were laughing about it so we took our cues from them and giggled. my dad would throw his sunburned cheeks back and laugh with the same deep laugh that i'd hear coming from the living room in the evenings at home when he was watching david letterman after erin and i went to bed.

i ordered this gigantic lobster, it came whole and it was the biggest lobster i'd ever seen, i had no clue how to eat it. the waiters kept calling me la rubia, and the people in the flea markets would reach out to touch my hair. it embarrassed me somehow that i could understand what they were saying with my middle-school spanish, as if i was intruding by knowing. It's because they've never seen blonde hair like yours, my mom whispered to me. It's like gold in the sun.

we stood on the sidewalk outside the restaurant afterward in the twilight and smelled the sea and the cooling pavement as my dad negotiated the cab fare. we piled into the cab and he said, Remember this. That was the freshest lobster you'll ever eat. the next night i bought a tiny turquoise and opal ring in the flea markets that would miraculously survive the fire and come back to me.

we tried to go back the next time we were in cancun, but couldn't find the restaurant.