New Years Eve when you are only "Still Relatively Young"

When I turned 27 a few years ago, my dad declared that I was "still relatively young," a nice way of saying not-really-all-that-young-anymore. Now I am approaching 29, and I am not sure even that label still applies!! Example: yesterday was New Year's Eve. We've just had a new family move to our city to join in what we are doing here, so we decided to have a very casual get together of a few families who live nearby to welcome them. They have 4 kids, so we did an afternoon/early evening thing so their kids could meet and play with all the other kids. The menu was raw veggies with ranch dip, pizza and cupcakes. Yummy, but clearly a meal planned with kids and not adults in mind! The party lasted from 4:30 to 7. Afterwards, we all got babysitters and planned for the grown-ups to go to a Guitar Hero competition/party at a coffee house owned by some friends of ours. Well, on the way home to put Sarah to bed David started getting a headache and because of the holiday we had a hard time getting a cab . . . so we ended up cancelling with the sitter and just staying home. We put in a movie, and were in bed by 9:30 p.m. on NEW YEARS EVE!!! I am pretty sure what I just described thoroughly disqualifies me from the "still relatively young" category!!

Phone Troubles

It all started a few days before Christmas when Sarah caught the Christmas Stomach Bug of 2009. We were coming home from a Christmas party, when Sarah got sick all over herself, myself and the van. So when we got home, I threw all our clothes in the washing machine immediately . . . not realizing my cell phone was in the pocket of my jacket! Needless to say when that load was done, so was my phone!
I was without a phone for a few days because David decided to take the opportunity of my Christmas phonelessness to buy me a new one as my Christmas present!! After much research, he ended up getting me a Nokia 5800 which I LOVE, and which is also my birthday present because we usually don't spend nearly that much on gifts for each other. So once my phone arrived, all I had to do was go to the phone company and try to get my old number back . . .
I started at the little one-man branch office a 5 minute walk from our apartment. The girl who works there is always really friendly and helpful, but unfortunately you have to go to the main office downtown in order to get your number back. So I head downtown . . .
When I get to the right area of town, I see a building with a gigantic sign with the name of our phone company on it. I walk in, and there are about 10 employees working about 10 different service lines. This must be the main office, right? I get in line . . . I get to the front of the line . . . "No, you have to go to our MAIN office! Just keep going down the street . . ."
So, I leave that building, go out and turn right, walk about a block. Here is a building with another gigantic sign, AND the name of our phone company written repeatedly encircling the building. I enter and go up the stairs and see the entire 2nd floor is occupied by the phone company for customer service. Once again I get in line, and once again I am told, "No, you have to go to our MAIN office! Leave this building, turn right, walk down the street and you will see it."
By now I am getting pretty frustrated. I leave, turn right, and start walking having no idea where I am going. Finally, I look up and see a 30 story sky-scraper with the name of our phone company written at the top . . .
Sure enough, THAT was where the main office was located. Unfortunately, I arrive and get in a long line. An employee approaches me to see what service I need and I explain my situation. He asks if I know my password, and I say no . . . "Well," he says, "If you don't know your password, you will have to pay 500 yuan (about $70) in pre-paid phone service to guarantee that you are not stealing someone else's phone number in order to get your old number back." It only costs 100 yuan to get a whole new number, so I tell him I decided to do that instead. He directs me to a different area, where there are about 100 people milling around with numbers in their hands. An employee approaces me and I tell her I want to get a new phone number, she apologizes and says the current wait is about an hour and a half!! I have Sarah with me on my back and there is no where to sit in the waiting area. And I happen to know I can get a new phone number easily from the little branch office right in my neighborhood . . . so it's home we head.
I enter our little branch office and the girl immediately asks if I was able to get my number back. I explain that I couldn't since I didn't know my password. "Oh! I could have told you your password! I have it right here on my computer!" she says. I told her that I didn't want to go all the way back downtown, but just wanted to buy a new number. It takes about 30 seconds, and she smilingly hands me a card with my new number. I head home with a working phone and number, despite all the unnecessary trouble it took to get it!

Sarah's Christmas Loot

Sarah is really enjoying all the new toys she got for Christmas. We were really pleased; Sarah got a few books, several puppets, a toy piano, a stuffed cow, a pull-along wooden dinosaur, and a baby doll--just the right amount of new things for her without going overboard!! Here she is enjoying her loot:


This is a great photo of Sarah's new skill: standing on her own!!!
And, finally, the cutest thing Sarah is doing with her new Christmas toys--she can give the bottle to her baby doll. So adorable!!!

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas from the Deans! Its been a week of ups and downs--the downs mostly due to the stomach flu which is making its rounds through our family (and all the other families in our city), but here's basically some highlights:

Sunday, Dec. 20-- church in the morning (where we took the great family photo seen above!); shopping for David's gift in the afternoon; in the evening the handle on the door to Sarah's room stops working (it had been sticking for several weeks) so her door is stuck shut. Unfortunately, she'd just soiled her diaper and clothes, and all her clean diapers and clothes (not to mention her bed--it was bedtime) are inside her room. So I go track down the maintenance guy for our apartment complex, who graciously came back to work from his home and dismantled the handle so we could open her door. Whew. Sarah gets to bed about 2 hours late, we are all exhausted.

Monday, Dec. 21--language class in the morning; in the afternoon there is a Christmas party and cookie exchange for all the women in our city. The hosts live about an hour away from us, so we head out around 1 p.m. to make it to the 2-4 p.m. party. The party was wonderful, Sarah came with. About halfway through the ride home, Sarah threw up all over herself and me. Not spit up, threw up. She threw up two more times till we were both saturated over the next half hour till we made it home. Evening spent comforting poor Sarah (she's actually quite the sweet cuddler when she is sick!), and doing several loads of laundry. My cell phone is accidentally washed in the pocket of my vomit-soaked jacket. Sigh.

Tuesday, Dec. 22--Sarah still sick, day is spent taking care of her.

Wednesday, Dec. 23--Sarah doing a little better, we leave her with our helper and head out to finish Christmas shopping; language class in the afternoon, shopped for groceries for Christmas Eve dinner in the evening.

Thursday, Dec. 24--I cooked, David did last-minute shopping; wonderful Christmas Eve dinner with friends in the evening!!

Friday, Dec. 25--I wake up with the stomach thing; David and Sarah go to Christmas brunch with friends while I rest at home, we finally open gifts around 5 p.m. when I start feeling better. We try to order delivery for dinner, but are told that it is too busy because of Christmas and no one is available to deliver our food. I have cereal for dinner, David has left-overs.

Sat/Sun, Dec. 26-27--I am slowly recovering, while now it seems David has succumbed to the bug. Sigh. However, despite all this, I feel like the Lord sustained us with some wonderful fun Christmas things throughout the week!! Sarah loves all her new toys (another post on that coming tomorrow), and in between all the illness our family had some great time relaxing together at home, which is what we love to do!! Yes, we have a wonderful Savior who sustains us always and can truly bring joy even in circumstances we would never in a million years design for ourselves (like the Christmas Stomach Bug of 2009)!! Merry Christmas to you all.

Sarah Loves

Ten-month-old Sarah is certainly developing some opinions about things! She dislikes Mommy or Daddy walking out of the room, going down for naps, peas or sweet potatoes without anything else mixed in, and waiting while Mom or Dad makes up her bottle. What are some of the things Sarah likes, you ask? Here is a short list of just a few of her loves:

Pajama time with Daddy:
When you put things on her head:
Pulling things off her head:
Playing video games with Daddy:
Stealing Dad's video game controller:
Riding on Dad's shoulders:
Pulling Dad's hair while riding on Dad's shoulders:
Don't worry, she likes me to! She likes when I get down on all fours and pretend to chase her crawling across the room, she likes when I tickle her, she likes when we do our "secret language" conversations, she loves to sit on my lap and read books, and she especially loves to cuddle up with me when she is sleepy. I just don't have photos of these things because I take all the pictures around the house. No matter, we are still making some sweet, sweet memories.

Christmas Decorating

Last year David and I used these beautiful white lights to decorate our Christmas tree. Unfortunately, in addition to being beautiful, they were also a tad dangerous. They set our tree on fire (small, small fires. Mostly smoke.) 3-4 times. So, we decided before we could decorate this year we needed to get some safer lights. So, after two trips to different stores in order to buy enough strands of lights to light our tree, we got down to business! First, we assembled the tree.
Yes, I said, assembled. This tree is faux, through and through. Some of our friends go to great lengths to get real trees here, but as there are no tree lots, this usually requires going out into the wilderness to find a fir/pine tree of some sort and cut it down. Lets face it, David and I are just not that outdoorsy. So faux we go.
Next, we light the tree. Sarah's interest begins to be peaked.

After that, we got out the decorations. Sarah enjoyed inspecting each one before they got put on the tree.
The final result. I can never get a good picture of our tree because of the back-lighting during the day, and because the Christmas lights make our photos blurry in the evening.
Trust us though, it looks pretty good. Sarah was impressed with the final product.

We were worried that she would be constantly drawn to the tree, wanting to pull the decorations off and all that. Thankfully, there are still plenty of things to distract her from the tree in our living room. Like her favorite, our laptops. Boy does she love our laptops.
We had a great time decorating! Hope you all are enjoying the Christmas season as well!

Music

Ever since I was around 8 years old and got my first Sandy Patti, Paula Abdul and Janet Jackson tapes (don't judge! I was EIGHT!), I have loved music. In high school and college I spent a lot of time trying to discover good "new" music that no one else knew about and introduce it to my friends. Since graduating and moving overseas, I have sadly fallen way behind the times in this area. I say sadly not because I am worried that this makes me less "cool" (OK, not primarily because it makes me less cool . . . ), but because its just something about the way God created me; the way my heart can connect with a new song, the melody or the lyrics . . . and the fact that I simply don't get to have experiences like that very often anymore.

Maybe you are getting older and less "cool" and feel the same way. If so, I want to introduce you to someone who this fall has given me back some of those great music experiences.

As many of you know, Josh is my brother-in-law. Big perks to having a musician in the family--in this case, simply the exposure to some great music. Josh spent the last year developing a series of 4 CDs, ending with a Christmas album that just came out called For a Day. The suite of CDs called Villages captures the idea of our need for connection with one another. The Villages Suite culminates with For a Day, an album where Josh spent one day collaborating with different artists for each song. He has a variety of Christmas specials online with several CDs and t-shirt combinations. You can purchase them through his online store at http://joshrosenthal.bigcartel.com. He gave me a special promotional code for my friends and blog readers to get an extra 10% off. At checkout use MARIANNE to get the discount. (I get my own promotional code!!!) This would be a great Christmas gift or stocking stuffer idea.

You can also listen to some of his songs at http://www.myspace.com/joshrosenthal , and all of his albums are available at Itunes as well. Sadly my promotional code doesn't work at Itunes.

For those of you who just want to dip your toe in the musical lake that is Josh Rosenthal (hehehehe) here are my download suggestions:

"Inside Asleep" (from Even the Strongest Hero)

"Amy, Please" "No More Lies" "You Followed Me" and "Take it Away" (all from "Lonely Together"--sorry I couldn't pick just one off this album; the whole thing is SO good!)

"Down to the River to Pray" (from Overture)

"Do You Hear" (from For a Day)

So, go! Download! Order and get a discount! Most of all, enjoy some good music which I love!