Living with "A Pair of Ducks"

Greetings from sunny Colorado!  We made it!  My family and I are out here for a month of missionary preparation and training at MTI.  We are learning about phonetics (read twisting our mouth in goofy positions), cross cultural issues, and how to stay emotionally/spiritually health as missionaries.  Our girls are also being taught some of the same concepts, but at a much simpler level.

One of the things we learned this week was about a yellow ducky named "Yay Duck".  Yay Duck has everything good and exciting happening to him.  Some Yea Ducks for our family is getting to go to France, traveling, and making new friends. 

But there is another duck.  This duck is not so much fun.  His name is "Yuck Duck".  He has been through a lot.  Some of our family's Yuck Ducks are moving, saying goodbye to dear friends, and missing our church family.

We have some really awesome Yay Ducks and some really hard Yuck Ducks.  Yay Duck and Yuck Duck always swim together.  They are inseparable. Where one is you will find the other. Together they make a "pair of ducks" or a paradox (Yes, I know.  It's cute and punny, and there was a lot of groaning when the teacher said it.).  But it is true.  We are living with a "a pair of ducks".  We have good, we have bad.

So here is our "Pair of Ducks" update.

Hannah's Yea Ducks

• She loves her "school".
• Her teacher's name is Hannah too.
• She is making some wonderful friends, and she has told me that she is good at making friends and wants to make some more.
• She is learning how to express her emotions by talking through them.

Yuck Ducks

• She feels nervous when meeting new people and trying to make friends.
• She misses her doggie, Chai girl.

Amelia's Yea Ducks

• She is potty trained!  And now she has her first set of big girl undies, complete with cartoon characters.
• Since she is potty trained, she was graduated from the 1 year old's classroom to the 2-3 year old classroom.  (They have cooler toys and crafts.)

Yuck Ducks

• She is teething and not sleeping well and cranky.  She also knows what she wants, but cannot always communicate that to us, and then gets crankier. 
• She misses mommy and daddy.  This is the first time where she's spent the majority of her day away from us and it is hard on all of us.

Jen's Yea Ducks

• We get to live in one place for a month!
• I am gaining perspective on my children and getting to see them through a different lens (This also counts towards a Yuck Duck).
• I am learning amazing tools, like how to twist my mouth and tongue to make sounds not found in English, to help with my language learning process.
• I am meeting and connecting with other missionaries.

Yuck Ducks

• I miss my home, my family, my friends, and my church.
• I miss a quiet rhythm.  (We eat all our meals in a dining hall together, which is very noisy and over stimulating.)
• I know that more hard goodbyes are coming up and that each month that passes takes us closer to saying goodbye to loved ones for three years.

These are the "pair of ducks" that we are living with right now.  There are many Yay Ducks and many Yuck Ducks.  And it is okay.  They go together and it is okay to feel both.  So Dear Reader, if you could pray for us about our Yuck Ducks and rejoice with us about our Yay Ducks, we would be so blessed.

I know that I am not alone in this, so what are your Yay Ducks and your Yuck Ducks today?  How can I rejoice with you and pray with you?

Creative Endeavors: Our YouTube channel

Sam started a YouTube channel.  He is editing a lot of little family videos into short stories.  We are both taking turns filming and then he works at putting them together editing the sound and lighting.  So far we are focusing on two different types of videos, family videos and videos of fun activities that we find on Pinterest.  The family videos such as "Mushy Peas" where big sister Hannah feeds Amelia her first solid foods and Pinterest videos  such as "Cool Cornstarch" where we make bouncy balls out of cornstarch.  Watch, like, and subscribe.

Almost Famous

Last month Hannah, Amelia, and I made the trek into town to attend Story Time at the Wellsboro Green Free Library.  Story Time is something that we look forward to all week.  Its a chance to restock our pre-bed/nap time books, get out of the house, play with other children, and socialize with  other moms.  This week was a bit different.

Sara, from the Wellsboro Home Page, an online local news group that seeks to highlight the positive news in our community.  Sara explained that they were doing a piece on Story Time and asked permission to us footage of us.  I agreed, very thankful that everyone had clean faces and semi-brushed hair!

Video of Us at Story Time

February in Photos: Part 1

February has been a cold month for us here in PA.  A few mornings ago my thermometer registered -20!  Brr!  I love end of the month reviews.  Here is what we were up to in February.

Hannah being cute

Amelia loves her tongue!

Our suit at the retreat we attended.

This is seriously bigger then some of the apartments I've lived in!

Amelia had a fun time with the mirrors and pretending to be an only child for the weekend.

That preacher went a long time, again.

All Babies and Dollies tucked in for the night.

Ready for sweet dreams.

After weeks of snow limiting our outside play, cabin fever has set in.  What's a mom of two to do?  Head to Pinterest of course!

I introduced Hannah to the wonders of Pinterest.  We looked up a few things, and settled on making Bouncy Balls.  I had no idea that you could make such things, and out of so few ingredients.  We both enjoyed the process.

It wasn't too messy and the process was easy.  The first batch I added a bit too much corn starch, but other then that things went smoothly. Next time I will look up recipes for "gack", which is a slimier version of what we made. Hannah kept trying to treat the "balls" like play dough and had more fun breaking them into small pieces then smoothing it into an actual ball.  

Mushy Peas Please: How Daniel Tiger Helped Us Choose Amelia's First Food

Daniel Tiger became a big brother a few months after Hannah became a big sister.  His mom had the baby in one episode and by the next baby Margaret was eating solid foods.  Mushy peas to be exact.  (No wonder Hannah was a bit confused why her baby sister had to wait so long to start solid foods. ) In honor of Hannah and her love of Daniel Tiger, Amelia's first food was mushy peas.  Hannah helped to make it for her and gave Amelia her first real taste of food.  Daddy Man made a edited their adventure into a short video (Check it out).

Hannah working the food processor

Amelia's not so sure

Hmm...

What is this?

Amelia has yet to be convinced that mushy peas are the bees knees of food.

Hannah, on the other hand, LOVES eating her sister's food!

Hinge Moments

Jon Acuff writes (in his book Quitter) about "hinge moments" in our lives that change our direction.  My first hinge moment occurred back in the sixth grade when Raymond Degorge stopped me in the hall on a cold winter day and confronted me.

Raymond was a hulking sixth grader.  He was not one of the popular ones nor was he on the same educational track as I was.  He also was not an overly morale teenage boy.  But he confronted me on how I was dressing.  That day I had on shorts with stocking.  (I know, I know, but this was the nineties and apparently that was the style of the moment.)

I don't remember his exact words, but he told me that I was not like the other girls and I needed to stop trying to act like them.  I remembering feeling a tad bit embarrassed, and a whole lot convicted. But his words took root and impacted me.  I stopped trying to dress like the other girls.

Over the years I would go back to his words and I would remember.  I don't need to try to make myself like what I think others are like.  I need to be who I was
created to be.

Fast forward to 2014 to a conversation with my hubby where he lamented the fact that we did not have a way to play together.   We began listening to the podcast "Ear Biscuits" by Rhett & Link where they interview interesting people from Youtube.  As we listened we learned about the creative process of others and how they made their dreams into reality.

We started kicking around ways that we could work together creatively. Enter my new hinge moment.  He decided to start making youtube videos and I decided to start a blog. So check us out.

What's a hinge moment in your life?