holy christmas tree batman!

now that we are officially home owners it is time for brett and i to start creating our own family traditions. we decided to start by cutting down our own christmas tree after thanksgiving. b/c we are not huge advocates of cutting down precious oxygen-giving trees we have, in the past, always had a potted tree, the same one for three years. but my dear friend (truly my dearest) katy h. killed our potted tree while we were away in Africa. a little water goes a long way my friend...a little dab will do ya'. no hard feelings.

but b/c of our sad loss and our (or my) dutch genes unwilling to spend $30 on a tree at meijer, this year we had to somehow find a tree that didn't cost money and that we wouldn't feel guilty about cutting down. my dad had the perfect solution. he invited us over to his house to tromp through his woods to find ourselves the perfect tree. You see, in the back there is a power line under which the trees need to be kept clear. So, since they would have to be cut down eventually and the fact that my father does not charge, brett and i decided that this was definately the place to find our tannenbaum.

It was a perfect day-sunny and crisp. bundled in our winter's finest, me in big blue and brett in his recycled bottle hat, we stomped through the woods waiting for that certain tree to whisper its piney secrets to us. 'i'm the best,' 'pick me,' 'i will bring you christmas joy,' 'i would never dream of burning down your new house!' we picked that one. he's a beaut.


and apparently he was able to continue growing on our trip home. once we got him inside we realized how big he actually was! he literally filled our ENTIRE living room with his prickly green spikes. his top bent against the ceiling! it was us against him. luckily we had a handsaw so we won the battle quite easily. we chopped a good two and half feet off the bottom reducing his span from about 7 feet down to about 5. now he stands in all of his decorated glory in the corner of our room...only slightly blocking our view of "LOST."

as for decorations, we went with what we had...golf and skiis. you see, brett's family has been preparing him for marriage since he was a wee tot by giving him an ornament a year, golf and ski ornaments. it's funny how you can be branded for the rest of your life just by saying that you like something when you are young. granted brett loves golf and skiing...but golf and skiing does not make the man...maybe 75% of the man, but still he does like other things, like chocolate. hopefully that trend will catch on this christmas...anyway, thank you nelsons for helping us to decorate our first tree. i was able to contribute a few ornaments too. some colourful balls i bought at target and a few crocheted snowflakes lovingly made by my grandma schipper. these are my favorites. she doesn't remember how to make those ornaments anymore, but by looking at them i am able to remember her small soft hands working away. those same hands used to make me slippers too.

we didn't have a lot of lights for the tree...but enough. in the evening he provides just enough light to be romantic. wie treu sind deine Blätter! -SN

it's over?

thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday. forget the gifts of christmas, screw the easter eggs (i was never allowed to participate anyway), and for heaven's sake get those small chinese children out of those firework making factories! thanksgiving is definately where it's at.

every thanksgiving my family gathers around a couple tables full of gourmet salads, grilled turkey, ham, mashed potatoes with no gravy b/c nobody ever remember to make it and pumkin pies. we delight in each others company, laugh, and one year we even cried b/c my grandpa had recently lost the good fight to cancer.

when this wonderful man we so lovingly called "grandpa hooks" was still alive we would take a thanksgiving day trip to meet my cousins living in New York half-way for an early Christmas celebration. my grandpa started the tradition and he always picked the spot. we did this for years, meeting in such wonderful cities like Clevland, Columbus, and other hot-spots in Ohio (woo hoo!). one year we went to Toronto. These were always great weekends. They saw the coming and going of cousins, the introduction of spouses, and even the birth of new babies.

Here are a few of my favorite Thanksgiving weekend memories:

Cleveland: the city lighting ceremony complete with holiday parade staring Drew Carey. That's right everyone, DREW CAREY. He's right you know, Cleveland Rocks!
During that parade they set off fireworks that skimmed our heads. Someone needed a little more safety training...

Also Cleveland: Is there anything more cool than the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame? Doubtful. Though my uncle Jim beat my four hours of rockin', my family was just about to send out a search and rescue crew to sniff me out with their dogs. Apparently I had strayed from the group and they thought I was lost. Where else to look but in that museum? duh.

Somewhere in Canada: I had just turned 18 that year, legal drinking age in Canada. Because I was SOOOOOOOO cool, I lured my cousin Nathan out to try to find a bar that wouldn't card him. It didn't take much convincing him, but I think our parents outsmarted us...there were no bars within miles of our hotel.

Toronto: Laser Tag in the Needle. I won't mention any names, but one of the newest members of our family at that time let out a whopper. He literally cleared the room of other taggers and left me and my sister gasping for air. luckily we survived only to get our asses kicked by shawn. of course.

Columbus: The family caravan pulled up to the hotel which was surrounded by XXX. We never saw any of said XXXers b/c our parents had us all back in the car with our eyes covered faster than you can even say porn.

Grand Rapids: For some reason we didn't go anywhere this certain year but all of the cousins were in GR together anyway. We all met at Craig's Cruisers and faked a birthday just so that we could get a special room, pizzas, a cake, ten tokens, and two free go-cart rides. We are all college age at this time mind-you. The evening ended with a harsh "warning" from the 16 year-old go-cart operator to "slow down" and "stop crashing into other people!"

Somewhere in middle America: The Wheels Inn. A brilliant combination of casino, bowling alley, indoor water-park with arcade. The place was nuts, swarming with the pounding of about a bazillion small childrens' feet at all hours of the day, the ding ding ding of machines, and the screams of those daring the pool and waterslide. we didn't use many of the facilites there out of fear of hearing loss, but we did manage to have one awesome game of walleyball. At the dirty bingo gift exchange that year I won a James Taylor cd. That's right...James Taylor.

We don't take those thanksgiving trips anymore. there are too many small children involved and some of the cousins have since moved out west leaving the rest of us to drool in their wake. the man who organized the trips has since past on to better things. and you can only go to cleveland so many times before it stops rockin'.
-SN

i'm an energy saving freak

ok, i've just found out that i have some freakish qualities. maybe i've had these qualities for awhile, or for a lifetime, but i've been oblivious until now. brett and i moved into our new house on saturday (!). it's weird. i'm still afraid to hang pictures on the wall for fear that the landlord might take away my deposit. only, i am the landlord and i usually don't withold many things from myself.

so anyway, since moving in i have found that i am tirelessly trying to find ways to save energy in the house. there are the obvious things such as turning off lights and keeping the heat down to a cool 63-64 degrees, only when we're home. but, then there are these freakish ways that i think are starting to scare brett. for example, the refrigerator that was left in the house is probably 100 years old. there is a reason the people left it behind. the seal is not doing its job. Parts of the seal are loose and releasing cold air. to me, this is an efficiency nightmare! i want to buy a new fridge...but brett says we can't. so...i just stuff a small kleenex where the seal is loose hoping that helps the problem. so, every time you open the door the kleenex falls to the floor. thinking about this now, sitting here, makes me laugh. like, what good is a kleenex going to do? yet, somehow i know that i won't stop putting the kleenex there. and that's not all i do. i've also hung a large blanket in front of a door in our upstairs hall. i love the door. it's old, wooden, and has a nice single paned window. that's the efficiency problem. the area around the door is so cold and drafty. thus the big blanket. i personally believe that this has helped the draft problem immensely, better than a kleenex i'm sure...but still, perhaps a little bit freakish.

i've only been in the house a total of three days. i'm sure that there will be more kleenexes to stuff somewhere. i'm slowly sniffing out all of the drafts...or at least walking past them. feel free to stop by sometime. there will always be a kleenex handy for YOU.

remembering what i promised

before i got married many people had marital advice that, quite frankly, i found kind of offensive. people would take me aside, sit me down, look me straight in the eyes, sigh and say "the first year is always the hardest." now, the first year of marriage may be difficult, yes, but to say that to someone who is anxiously awaiting to walk, blushing down an aisle to make promises under the smiling eyes of God, is just not nice.

brett and i have just celebrated a year of wedded bliss, yes that's right, bliss. some of you may be thinking, "oh yeah right, she's totally just saying that because the whole world can read this." but i'm not. i WOULD be a liar if I were to say it was an easy year of bliss or that we never argued over dishes, trash, money, and feelings. but with each argument, with each tear, and with every frusteration i learned a little bit more about the man i vowed solemnly to "have and to hold from this day forward, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until we are parted by death"

in just a year we have already had to make good on these promises:

"to have and to hold from this day forward."

brett holds me tight after I've had a long, frusterating day of work. He lets me cry into his sweater when I get a bad grade at school. And he hold my hands when I feel like all my friends live across the country, which they do.

"for better or worse"

before we went to africa brett quit his full-time job. God has graciously provided him with steady work since we've been back, but his "job" is still up in the air. for better or worse i will be there to support him, help him write cover letters, iron his shirt, and remind him to keep thinking outside of the box because that is the way that he was created to be. for better or for worse...either way it doesn't really matter to me.

"for richer or poorer"

we just bought a house. enough said.

"in sickness and in health"

i once buried brett's puke in africa outside of our latrine. brett makes me tea when i've got the chills, which is pretty much every day from November to May. and in health, there is no one i'd rather spend time with. on our anniversary we kayaked for 3 1/2 hours.

"to love and to cherish"

on my birthday last year brett made me a gift. it's a small drafting table with a backlight shining through the silhouette shadow of my favorite picture we self-timed in chicago a few christmases past. he loved me enough to make it and i cherish it with all of my heart.

"until death do us part"

to all of those people with their warnings...this is all I have to say to you.

sara NEEDS

i saw this idea on somebody else's blog and thought it was really funny. to play you just type your name into google with "needs" behind it. the first ten things that pop up...are what you "need." here's mine:

1. Sara needs a loving playful home.
2. Sara needs to succeed.
3. Sara needs YOUR VOTE!
4. Sara needs a job.
5. Sara needs a cold shower (how true)
6. Sara needs access to both projects Foo and Bar. (wha'? huh?)
7. Sara needs YOU.
8. Sara needs a little time with Michael to help him feel comfortable.
9. Sara needs to set goals and away she goes.
10. Sara needs "Sara time" (amen internet person...amen.)

see? wasn't that fun? --sn

**here's a couple more i spotted...Sara needs a Caesarean Section.

And last, but surely not least, Sara needs to begin gathering the
signatures that will make her a candidate for the Democratic nomination.

a good cry

in the past few years i have become a crier. before that time i didn't cry that often. not that i had a problem with it, i just didn't do it with very with much frequency. now i cry all of the time. i cry when i read the BBC news. i cry in church when jeffrey plays his violin and closes his eyes to see the sheet music that God has provided for him in his head. i cry when i'm stressed and i cry when i'm sad and angry. i cry out of frustration and i cry when i feel lonely. sometimes i cry when i laugh really hard. and i often cry when i pray because the thought of God's grace overwhelms me. it overwhelms me.

the other day i had a good cry. this won't make any sense to anyone who reads this. but for me, it was important and worth writing down for my own memory. i transfered brett's slideshow from his evil computer to his video camera. it was the most stressful transfer you could ever imagine involving a night with no sleep, numerous frusterating crashes, freezes and errors, and the stress of knowing that it was supposed to be up on a screen in front of about 600 people later that day. i offered to do it b/c brett had to go to work. if it didn't transfer for me, then it wasn't going to be seen by anyone. so, b/c i have this bad habit of taking on everyone else's responsibility I felt sick with worry that it wasn't going to work and that many people were going to be let down. luckily it successfully started to transfer after a few different attempts (and careful over the phone instructions from brett). i made sure to watch the whole slideshow tranfer to watch for any mistakes in the encoding. it was a beautiful slideshow with pictures of snot-nosed little kids on swings, people painting fences, kids receiving awards, community center type pictures. and these were the words being sung as each picture faded up onto the screen before me:

"i see the lord, seated on the throne, exalted. and the train of his robe fills the temple with glory. and the whole earth is filled. and the whole earth is filled. and the whole earth is filled with his glory."

suddenly the stress of weeks of school, work, marriage, and a whole night of not sleeping b/c of slideshow worry came flooding out of my eyes in wave after wave of understanding that no matter what the lord is seated on his throne, exalted. i understood that he's exalted in the smiles of those snot-nosed kids laughing on the swings. he's exalted in the hands that paint fences. he's exalted in community. but, he's not exalted in my constant worry and perfectionism. i mean, doesn't God even "mock" our worries? he says something like, "why do you keep worrying about stuff? check out those birds over there! they're not worried..." worrying is kind of like having less than a bird brain. so, with that understanding the slideshow of my own life started its transfer through my memory. did you know that i've been to 20 different countries? twenty. i've seen a lot. i've seen God on his throne. and i know that the whole earth is filled with his glory, in areas of extreme poverty and in areas of sickening wealth, God's glory abounds. how is it that i can so easily forget this truth? how could i have allowed my silly worries to blind me to what i've seen and where i've been and what i've lived? all of that, clouded by my own self-pity and worrying. as this slideshow did it's thing i was overwhelmed by the grace and glory of this God who lets me ride on the tail of his robe. i cried a good long cry. -SN