New and Old

Would you like to see my new blog...check out:

http://landlive27.blogspot.com/

Happy New Year!

New blog site

I have spent the last couple of hours working on the new blog. I am pretty excited, even though I realize through my absence I have lost what little readership (slight chuckle) I had in the past. But seriously, I am going to make this thing work.

Three things

In the spirit of blogging more often here are a few quick things I wanted to share:

1. I am working on the new site. I think I have a name picked out, which has turned out to be a much more involved process than I expected. What blog name represents me at this moment...hhhmmm....or should I just go with something totally random? Also, I am really frustrated with the lack of blogging providers on the web. I did not want to go with Goggle, nothing against Goggle, it is just that I wanted more from my blogging provider. Turns out you have to know more about computers to get more out of your blog. Goggle definitely holds the power over the computer semi-literate.

2. I found this recipe on allrecipes.com, my official go to site for all things cooking, and have made it twice in the last week. The first time I followed the recipe exactly and it was out of this world. The second time (a mere three days later) I used blue cheese instead of fete, because that is what I had, and added some chopped cherry tomatoes. It was so very, very good. I would make it again tonight if I had thawed chicken, but in a stroke of good fortune I found some lost steaks in the back of the freezer!

Feta Chicken Salad

INGREDIENTS (Nutrition)

• 3 cups diced cooked chicken
• 2 large stalks celery, diced
• 1 red bell pepper, seeded and diced
• 1/2 red onion, diced
• 6 tablespoons mayonnaise
• 6 tablespoons sour cream
• 1 (4 ounce) package feta cheese, crumbled
• 2 teaspoons dried dill weed
• 1 pinch salt and pepper to taste

DIRECTIONS

1. In a serving bowl, mix together the chicken, celery, and red onion. In a separate bowl, stir together the mayonnaise, sour cream, feta cheese, and dill. Pour over the chicken mixture, and stir to blend. Taste, and season with salt and pepper as needed. Serve immediately, or refrigerate until serving.

3. I am comfortably wearing clothes that were not-so-comfortable last week, and I am not-so-comfortably wearing clothes I could only look at two weeks ago. GO MAKER'S DIET!!

My Place in the World Wide Web

I really like blogging. Which I know you cannot tell from the frequency of my post, but really I like it a lot. I have tons of ideas that I want to share on my blog, I even write them down, and save the pieces of paper, or lose them or something, but more effort is made on the part of this blog than is evident on it's pages.

My problem (one of) is that I am really stuck on the name of the blog, and the meaning that goes along with it. I started this blog as a consolation to span the miles for my mother and the rest of my family in Texas when I lived in Californian and found myself suddenly pregnant. Hence the From 2000 Miles Away title. For some crazy reason God found it fit to remove us from paradise and plant us in Texas. When that happened I was reeeaaally bitter and so I decided to keep the name but in MY mind I knew that it meant I was 2000 miles away from where I thought I was supposed to be, wanted to be, was meant to be. For a very long time every fiber of my being wanted to be 2000 miles from Texas, but alas, it was not in the cards.

Over the last 12 months God has gently but firmly guided me through that bitterness to a place of contentment, GLORY HALLELUJAH. Can I say that again, do you know what a huge answer to prayer and great joy it is that I can say I am content to be here, because it is where God has us and I do not want to be anywhere that is outside of where He wants us. I wish you knew how huge that was, that I can say that, and mean it, and walk in peace. I still miss Tahoe, and everything that it was for us, and my heart longs to be close to those people and places mean so much to me. However, I know without a shadow of a doubt that my family is where we are supposed to be for whatever reason, to the glory of God, until He moves us again...or does not, only He knows. So the problem with the name of the blog is that for me it symbolizes two periods of time in my life that were full of happiness and hiking and bitterness and pouting, and I just want to be done with all of that. We are here, that is good, lets move on.

Like I said, I really like to blog, and I plan on making more time and honing my skills in the art. There are so many blogs that I read and they are a daily blessing in my life. I want to be that in a small way to others who visit my blog and read what I have to say. I want to write about being a mom, and a wife, and a Christian, and a member of this community, a person on this planet interacting with the land and influencing the lives of the people I am directly in contact with and those that I will never meet. I want to share how we are growing and changing and living. God has been so very active in our life, always, but I am becoming increasingly aware of what He is up to and I want to share that with everyone really, but here is a good place to start.

I am working on a new home for this project, one that leaves bitterness and joy behind to embrace a new future. I will let you know what the new name is, and where to find me in a little bit. I am so excited!!

Sadness

Tonight we said goodbye to Joshua, soccer extraordinaire, a wonderful uncle to Camille, my little brother. I remember waking up in the middle of the night and counting the minutes between contractions with my mom, in great expectation of Joshua's entrance into the world. Despite his constant battle between who he should be and who he wants to be he is really one of the coolest people I know. I consider it one of the great blessings of my life that I have gotten to share this little bit of time with him while we lived in Temple. He is headed of to new and great adventures. I hope college is as kind and wonderful to him as it was to me. I hope that he finds friends that become like family, that challenge him to be a better, stronger, larger person. I hope that he stays safe, and makes good decisions. I hope that his bad decisions mold him, that he finds God, and loses Him, and finds Him again. I hope that he decides that he does not have to be so cool, because he is blessed by being different, no matter how hard he tries to fight it, and that, coming from me, is a great compliment.

My grandmother has had progressive dementia for the past...ten years? Has it been ten years? She is really sick right now, we do not even know how sick, nor do we want to know. Her dementia has progressed to the point where she cannot talk, or walk, or eat, or move. I work with this all the time, so I try to think about it clinically, but I cannot. It is really hard. I have not seen her more than a handful of times since I moved back to Texas and I grieve about that often. I live in her house, and drive her car, and I cannot make myself go see her. Because why? Why go see her, and why not? My mom says this, her dementia, may be mercy, who knows? She is at peace and has been this whole time, and a woman of faith, God take her now and ease our suffering.

Some things in life are sad, and some are new beginnings, and some are mercy in disguise. It all depends on your perspective.

Growing

As I write this I am currently enjoying the effects of a nasty stomach virus that has spent the last month making this Erdman household quite miserable. I am the last to fall, and am hoping that it clears up quickly since I am planning on boarding a plane to Tahoe in 48 hours. The virus started with Camille and quickly moved to Matt, for them it lasted weeks, but then they have very immature and compromised immune systems, respectively.

Camille is finally better, but during the time that she was sick I started giving her big people food, anything that she would eat, I would give her because she was refusing her bottle and baby food. Now that she is healthy, she has become the smallest bottomless pit known to man. This is a big change for her, since she has had a tiny appetite since birth.

Seriously, I think I could feed her every minute of her waking hours and she would gladly eat it up. The kid has some weird taste, which definitely comes from her daddy. So far she has eaten all sorts of raw veggies and fruit including green peppers, raw yellow squash (from our garden!) and cucumbers (also from our garden!), but tomatoes are her favorite. She also loves kiefer and sour crout. The only thing she will not eat is apples, give that baby fermented cabbage any day, but NOT apples. Today I weighed her and she has put on three pounds in the last two weeks.

Yesterday I realized that my baby is only a few weeks from her 1st birthday. That thought took me by total surprise, it is a huge milestone and it seems to have swept up on us in a blink of an eye. Life seems so normal with her as a part of it, but this time last year I could not even imagine what one does day in and day out with a real live baby. Matt always tried to assure me that we would just take her home and keep her alive one day at a time. For some reason those weird words were comforting at the time. Parenting turned out to be much harder, more enjoyable, and dare I say natural than I ever thought possible. Okay, enough of that until a later date, I still have six weeks to reflect on this before the big day.

Camille is not the only thing growing in our life....at last...pictures of the garden!!!

I never knew how enjoyable it could be to grow your own food. It has also made me so much more aware of how what is put in the soil is what you put in your body. Especially things like potatoes, carrots, and onions. After this garden experience I do not think I will ever buy another non-organic root vegetable. We have been picking about thirty pounds (no seriously, we planted way too much) of squash out of the garden every other day. Yesterday we sampled our first cucumber, and the vine is bursting with the little guys just waiting to be transformed into pickles. I also jumped the gun and picked one of the acorn squash, just because it was so beautiful, and I could not wait another minute to have it in my hands. Both the Caffeys and the Erdmans are going to be out of town at the same time, so I am trying to find people to pick the garden and enjoy its wealth while we are gone. I almost feel like it is a beloved pet we are leaving behind.

Learning Experience

I had a significant learning experience regarding how to run a great triathlon...rule #1: GET REGISTERED! I thought I had registered for the Capital of Texas Triathlon in Austin a month in advance, however, my payment did not go through. I knew this, but for some reason I just was not concerned. I tried to get back on several times to make the payment, but I could never get it to complete, it would show up as debited in my bank account and then immediately be refunded. About a week before the race date (May 25) I got a call from the race coordinator, saying that they had been having trouble with the website not taking payments from credit cards whose home address was different from their billing address, which applied to me. He assured that he would get it straightened out and that I would be able to run. That was Monday, on Wednesday I got an email saying that my division was already full, and that I was out of luck. Major, MAJOR bummer! I had been training for that race really hard, harder than I have ever worked toward any physical goal, and I felt ready. So to be told so close to 'game time' that I was not going to be able to participate because of a website glitch was pretty frustrating. I know there are lots of other races, and I am planning on doing one later in July, but it took me a while to get over the poor-mes. So, now I am back training, which is still fun, and I am looking forward to being even stronger and more ready than I would have been last Monday. Here is the website for the race I am planning to run, the travel is a bit less convenient than Austin, but it still looks like a good time.

http://www.playtri.com/festival.php

Just for fun here are some new pictures of the cutest baldie-girl in Texas.