Joe Flacco is my brother’s wife’s father’s cousin.
Or in other words, Joey (as they call him) is my sister-in-law’s second cousin, once removed.
They all grew up in South Jersey together.
So that makes me related, right? 🙂
And, my sister-in-law will be here tonight.
So all you Ravens lovers out there just might want to come over and get her autograph.
(And no, just because I’m related to the Ravens’ star quarterback does not mean that I am a Ravens fan. See the proof here and here.)
We made it through the yard sale! We were up until 11:00 the night before getting all the last minute things priced.
Some of the stuff staged in the dining room the night before.
We were up at 6:00 Saturday morning and working by 6:30. People started arrving by 7:30, a half hour before we were supposed to open. And they just kept coming, hordes of them, until around 12:30 (a half hour after we were supposed to close).
We weren’t selling any furniture – we just used it to put stuff on. Julie – we had multiple offers for your chairs! 🙂
We sold far more than we had anticipated and ended up with just one car load to take to the Salvation Army. I refused to take any of it back inside so we put it directly in our car and Nik took it straight over.
Then we collapsed and wanted to go to bed 3 hours early!
All in all, we made around $350. A good day’s work! And it’s all in our travel fund for next summer. Hooray!
There’s a bunch more in the basement too.
Baltimore friends, feel free to join us on Saturday morning (the 17th), 8:00-noon. Our trash could be your treasure!
Too much to do. No time to blog. I just write the posts in my head all day. But they never get to come out.
Ellie is feeling much better. Thanks for praying for her.
I’ll be back next week with the yard sale recap.
Eric, Meggan, and the kids will be here Tuesday night!!
For instructions on how to make and use these cloth wipes, see this post!
As you may have noticed, I sew a lot of flannel blankets for babies. Thanks to the YoungLives blanket project, I’m completely out of flannel in big enough pieces to make blankets. But also thanks to that same project, I have TONS of flannel scraps. So when I found out that a friend from church was planning to use cloth diapers with her new baby, I knew the perfect present – cloth wipes! Three dozen of them!
Congratulations Florence and Nathan! We can’t wait to meet your new little boy!
Part 20 in a series about our trip to Alaska in late June through mid-July, 2011.
Although you may not have been able to tell so far in this series about our trip to Alaska, we spent lots of time with my family. It was so fun to have 10 of the cousins together! (We missed Kaitlyn!)
Matching rainbow dresses! (And no, we didn’t buy these purposefully – they were both presents from different people!)
during the Greek food extravaganza!
At Papa and Granny’s grave
At my cousin Brian’s house. There were three other little girls there, bringing the grand total of little girls under 2 in the house to six! Six! I wish we’d taken a picture of all six of them together.
Sweet baby Clara
Four little girls under the age of two. Who could resist dressing them alike?
Grandpa and Clara
Selah and Clara
Love, love, overflowing with love.
Ellie has been sick.
Since Wednesday.
With a stuffy nose that is sometimes really runny. And I think itchy eyes (because she rubs them a lot).
And a cough.
And when you have all of that, it’s hard to nurse and it’s hard to sleep and you just feel miserable. And you spend a lot of time in the bathroom with the shower on. And your mama uses up a lot of cloth wipes blowing your nose.
And so I’m tired, and she’s tired, and Nik’s tired, and we’re all really looking forward to those antibodies from my milk kicking in and to her getting better really soon.
Through all of this though, Ellie has been so good-natured. She coughs and coughs and coughs and she cries. But then she just gives us the squinty eyes as if to say, “I’m not really crying, I’m just complaining a little bit,” and then she goes back to being basically happy.
Granted, I haven’t gotten hardly anything done for four days and she wants to be held a lot.
But who wouldn’t like to just lie in their mother’s arms when they’re sick, anyway, right?
Especially today, I’ve felt like I’ve been given a glimpse of who Ellie might grow up to be – a person strong, determined, kind, and joyful despite circumstances.
I like this glimpse and I also feel the weight of faithfully helping her grow into this girl that God has created her to be.
Part 19 in a series about our trip to Alaska in late June through mid-July, 2011.
This is what they call a highway in Alaska (the Seward Highway to be precise).
It’s no I-95 but by Alaskan standards, it’s a “heavily-traveled” road.
Part 18 in a series about our trip to Alaska in late June through mid-July, 2011.
Go Ravens!
(Laura would like to make sure that everyone notices that Nik is the author of this post.)
Lately, Ellie has taken to giving us “squinty eyes” whenever she’s unhappy about something. This is not actual crying but rather, “Woe is me. You’re not doing what I want you to do. Let me pretend to be upset.”
For example,
“Mama, I’m mad at you because you walked away from me for two seconds.”
Or,
“I’m really mad at you now because you left the room.”
Who taught her how to do this? She is very deliberate as to when she uses the squinty eyes. I actually can usually predict when they’re going to come out.
Nik and I have so much fun with the squinty eyes. We have so much fun with this girl. We are so blessed.
Part 17 in a series about our trip to Alaska in late June through mid-July, 2011.
On our last Sunday of the trip, Eric, Dale, Drew and I were supposed to fly out to a river in southwest Alaska to go fishing. There was much anticipation and preparation before the trip but sadly the weather did not cooperate. We could have probably made it out there but may have gotten stuck there for longer than we wanted to. Also, that same day, two planes collided in mid-air in the mountain pass that we were going to fly through to get out there. Crazy!
Instead of the fishing trip we tried to go fishing in Anchorage. Unfortunately we didn’t have any luck fishing at Ship Creek.
In the evening, Dale, Drew, Noah, and I decided to go for a short flight in the vicinity of Anchorage.
It looked cloudy by the mountains but we decided to just have a look around and see how things went.
We took off out of Merrill Field and headed north just over the highway. As we headed out that way, the mountain tops got clearer. We saw Eklutna Lake and Pioneer Peak along the way. Eventually we ended up at the Knik Glacier.
As we turned the corner we headed toward a lake with icebergs being fed by another glacier.
Noah had a great time and especially enjoyed some of Drew’s extreme maneuvers that gave us great views of the glaciers below!
We saw some spectacular sights and even managed to find some sunshine on the mountains.
We cut through Girdwood to get over to the Turnagain Arm, getting a nice view of the top of the tram at Alyeska.
Many thanks to Drew for taking us on a great flight and thanks also to Dale for making it possible. When we landed and were driving back home, the whole experience felt like it had just been a dream.
Salmon and Souvlaki 