A little less naked.

You may remember this lovely shot of our guest room from a week or so ago:

Now the naked window and blah walls are jazzed up a bit by the curtains that I made (with Leah's help, of course)! Eric put up the rod that has been hanging out in our storage area for too long and voila!

It's a bit hard to tell, but the stripes on the curtains are similar to those on bed skirt and top sheet, which we found at the Goodwill some time ago, and the colors match the duvet (an Ikea cover over a Goodwill comforter) really well.

We are not decorators by nature, but I sure like to have a bit of color here and there. I still harbor hopes that someday we can organize ourselves enough to get some paint on the walls. And that I am not beyond learning to develop something remotely resembling style. Still likely a long way off, but probably not impossible.

Farewell, friends

Ron and Cathy are off to New York City for some new churchy adventures. We're so grateful that we've gotten to know them over these past few years (they arrived in Oregon just before we did) and they have been wonderful friends as well as really great colleagues. They have showed up for many, many Hispanic ministry gatherings, they have supported us during difficult times in life and in ministry and we've celebrated lots of holidays with them, as we are all far away from family. So it seemed appropriate to head to their place for a Mothers Day dinner. We'd all talked with our mothers and they had talked with their kids, including a skype conversation with their daughter, Meg, who lives in Argentina and is almost exactly my age, and though I don't often think about the fact that Ron and Cathy are much older than we are, I reflected on how neat it is to have good friends that are close to the age of our parents. In many ways, we are equals, but they are also wisdom-keepers for us...people with so much experience and many, many good stories!

The rain was giving way to sunshine that afternoon, and we enjoyed taking the back roads to their place. I sure love the western Oregon countryside.

As usual, they fed us well and we talked around the table until it was late, then they sent us home with leftovers and some (more) goodies from their recent garage sale.

This first attempt makes me giggle. Hmm...maybe perching the camera on a pile of bubble wrap isn't the best option.

We're not saying our final good-byes yet, as they'll be coming over at least twice more, but I am already sad. But maybe now we'll finally have enough reasons to go to New York City -- I've never been!

Un baby shower

The first time I asked a Spanish-speaking friend how to say "baby shower" in Spanish, she simply replied, "Un baby shower." And last week, I got to experience un baby shower. My friends and neighbors, Matilde and Lupe, gathered these wonderful women and their kiddos without my knowing and then invited me to stop by their "meeting." Surprise!!

We had a wonderful time playing silly games and visiting and eating tostadas followed by a homemade tres leches cake and some baby shower flan...mmmm......

Their sweet and generous gifts made my heart grateful and, though I feel a little strange being the center of attention, I couldn't help but smile with each tiny little cap or onesie or package of wipes I held up.

Though we may be accustomed at showers to opening each gift, announcing the giver, and ensuring that someone writes that name on a thank-you note list, not everyone does it that way! The tradition of these party people is that the recipient holds each package and, before opening it, guesses who gave it. If she guesses correctly, she gets to make a mark on the giver's face with some sort of make-up. If she guesses incorrectly, the giver is revealed and that person gets to make a mark on the recipient's face. And that's why I look like the Joker here. I was clearly not a very good guesser.

I am so very grateful that our little one will be born into this wonderful community of women and, as you may guess from this picture, will join a few other little ones who will likely be born within a month on either side. I know that I am loved, but being on the receiving end of such generous, surprising acts of love are so special.

Curtains!

Leah and Freya showed up at our door Saturday morning, extra straight pins, a rotary cutter, and two hot cups of caramel apple spice (yum!) in hand, for a day of sewing.

This fabric isn't my all-time favorite, but it matches the hodge-podge of colors in the guest room bedding and it was cheap! I picked it up at Ikea a long time ago--it may have actually been our trip to Ikea two years ago where we received the phone call that Freya had been born that morning!--and have been planning to make guest room curtains ever since. Here's the sad, naked window that has greeted our visitors over the past two and a half years:

In my phone conversation with my ministry coach a few weeks back, I mentioned the curtains as one project I'd like to complete before this baby comes, and she suggested making a date to do it. So I asked Leah, who has made simple, beautiful curtains for her whole house, if she'd help me and we put it on the calendar for a day that Eric would be off playing golf. Mat was going to hang out with Freya that day, but he was invited to help dig a ditch, which I'm sure was loads of fun, and Freya came along to help.

Here I am using the rotary fabric cutter like a pro:

We only had to pull out the sewing machine manual a few times (there are so many dials and buttons on that thing and winding the bobbin always mystifies me) but we did it! After a few hours, some cheese sticks, many measurements and scribbled math, breaks to eat yogurt and granola and crawl around like farm animals on the floor, one failed nap attempt and lots of oldies but goodies on the Raffi pandora station, we had two curtain panels!

Now I just need to get the rods (which have also been gathering dust in storage) mounted so I can hang these babies! I think having a new little Conklin around this summer will be the main draw for potential visitors, but having a more hospitable space to offer won't hurt. If you'd like to see these curtains in person, please come visit!

Din-din

While Eric was playing in a three-day golf tournament organized by our friend, Bobby (which Eric won, by the way, earning him an awful, ginormous, yellow Hawaiian shirt), I went to Maria and Andy's for the monthly dinner that they have with Mat and Leah and whomever else is around.

After some incredible paella and lots of conversation around the table, we decided to take our full bellies out into the drizzly evening and walk them down the half mile or so to the aptly named Divine Frozen Yogurt for some dessert. It may or may not have been my second visit to a self-serve yogurt place within a week.

Freya loves her umbrella!

This stuff is soooo good.

Later in the evening, Maria decided that Freya needed to experience having her toenails painted for the first time.

Hanging out with these guys makes me happy.

May Day

It was a gorgeous day to march for immigrant and worker rights!







Only problem with being super pregnant during this march: not enough public restrooms!

A much-needed stop for self-serve frozen yogurt. Fill your own cup and add your own toppings? Dangerous. And delicious.

Enjoying a bit more of the nice afternoon along the Willamette before hopping on the MAX again.

Project: Simplify -- The Garage

If you were counting (you probably weren't) my posts about the 5-week organizing challenge, Project: Simplify, from Simplemom.net, you may have noticed that I stopped after only 4 weeks. The final week was a choose-your-own-mess hotspot, but I never chose one. I looked at my ridiculously full calendar and I looked around the house and I said, "good enough for now" and put it aside for a week (or 4). And then a full day off and a bit of sunshine came our way and Eric decided that it was time to attack a space that, I'm a tad embarrassed to admit, has never been cleaned or organized since we moved in almost three years ago. The garage.

Here are a few before pictures:


What you can't see in these pictures are the millions of strands of cobwebs and spider webs that connected every window corner and every shelf edge to every piece of sporting equipment or yard tool that hasn't been used in a few months. Yuck!

Part of Eric's motivation came from the acquisition of a new-to-us shop vac that he found at Ron and Cathy's yard sale.

And now...

Not a cobweb in sight!

Yay!

But we couldn't drive our trusty, dusty little Kia Spectra, Silvie, into that nice clean garage looking the way she was looking, so Eric decided to give her a good wash and even vacuum out the inside. Isn't she shiny?

Pulling this clean car into a clean garage makes coming home that much sweeter.

Easter sweetness

A few shots from Easter weekend that make me happy...

Decorating eggs with Leah, Joannah and Freya:

The ones that Freya did not joyfully smash into the table:

Wish we could have seen this lovely bunny in person, but this shot of Sadie sent from Scott and Hilary in Chicago made us smile:

Happy Easter!