My Eight Month Old

The Livster is officially eight months old. She's crawling around like a speed demon. She can get from one end of the house to the other in the blink of an eye. She's pulling herself up and even trying to stand on her own. She's not strong enough for that yet but she doesn't care. She tries anyway.

She is a major copycat. It's pretty much the cutest thing in the world. My favorite is if you pucker your lips and make a kissing sound, she will do it right back. Same with clicking your tongue and spitting. I love it.

She can clap and wave, which is also totally adorable. I can already tell she has a sense of humor and is going to be a total drama queen.

Here she is on Halloween with her handsome dad. You'll notice she's not in a costume. I hate Halloween, so sue me.

James has a love-hate relationship with her these days. It probably started around the time she started crawling and trying to take all his toys.

This isn't the best photo, but captures her personality perfectly. If she's awake and fed she's usually quite happy.

She's pretty much a total doll these days, except for one minor detail . . . she still doesn't understand that going to bed at night means you're supposed to sleep until morning! She does about three to four hour increments all night long. Ahhh! When will the torture end!? I keep hoping one night it'll just click, but no such luck just yet. Until then, if I'm cranky or totally anti-social, you'll know why. Not getting enough sleep sure takes a lot out of me.

Ch-ch-ch-Changes!

My twin sister got married last month. I don't think I've ever been happier for anyone in my life. The day was picture perfect. Andrea was radiantly beautiful. The ceremony was insightfully beautiful. The day as a whole was magnificently beautiful. The only sad thing is that she's no longer my closest relative (even though D.C. is not that close to begin with). Seattle is too far away. I don't have any pictures of the occasion yet but I will be posting them as soon as I get some.

Weddings aren't over in our family though. Two of Brian's sisters just got engaged. Holy moly. 

Being home with family is awesome. It makes coming back to being on our own feel that much more lonely and isolating though (except today when we were surrounded by thousands of Tennesseans at the UT football game) . . .

I voted this past week. It felt great. I'm terrified of Election Night though. I know even if there is a change in office, the economy isn't going to all of a sudden start booming again, though I sure wish it would.

The dang economy is making the harrowing ordeal of finding a job even more stressful. Every time we add a new city to our list it gets shut down faster than I can blink. So we're basically back at square one. Again.

Costco opens in Knoxville next week. Brian is probably more excited about this than I am since he's in pizza heaven there. The Trader Joe's that opened here last month was a big deal for me though. I love that place.

Oh, here's a fun change. In the next few days or weeks (somewhat tentative at the moment), I am going to start a new little venture in the food blogging world. I'm going to be taking over a real deal food blog called "Just Cook Already" (www.just-cook-already.com). It started several years ago by an old roommate of my younger sister. In a very random way, I was selected to manage it for the time being while the owner takes a break for awhile. Since I cook all the time anyway, I am hoping I don't end up being in way over my head. I'm excited about it. Check it out if you're a food blog kind of person.

My little boy will be three in 27 days. He'll move over to Sunbeams in Primary in January. I am kind of worried about how he'll do. Unless he has the iPad on his lap, he's not known for his skills at sitting still or being calm. Many people have told me that age three is way harder than age two. I'm already starting to see what they mean. Yikes.

My baby girl is crawling. And trying to stand. All at once. It terrifies me. But she's the cutest.

Seriously, look at the face. It's irresistible.

Let's see, what other changes can I mention? My brother moved from Sweden to Israel. Crazy. I vow to go see him sometime in the next couple years so if anyone wants to donate to the "Tel Aviv or Bust!" fund, just let me know.

The weather is changing quite a bit here. We went from the 80s to the 50s in no time flat. The leaves are gorgeous though. Tomorrow after church we're going to take one last drive in the hills to see the fall leaves in all their Smoky Mountain splendor. This is my favorite time of year and it never lasts long enough.

Technolgy Stinks

We have five laptops under our roof. Five. But not a single one of them is reliable.

One is my Sony Vaio (don't ever buy one) from my college days. It's so old it doesn't even have Internet capabilities on it other than dial-up. Why we keep carting it around from place to place is beyond me. But one day James may look at it the same way I looked at my mom's old typewriter and think it's awesome.

Another is almost just as old but won't even turn on anymore, but I can't bring myself to get rid of it because it has pictures on it I want and I know that some day I will be able to afford to pay someone to get them off of there for me.

Then we have the two trusty Dells that seem like they should have died months ago but just keep on ticking, albeit incredibly slowly. I finally got one of them to resume printing capabilities the other day and that was an awesome miracle.

Finally, this here MacBook I am currently typing on has saved me during this past year. Many thanks to my dear sister for loaning it to me when she be came aware of our overly desperate situation. Because of it, I've been able to continue my terrible habit of online browsing/shopping/etc. But I've also been able to blog, Skype, email and upload pictures of my cute kids like nobody's business.

I should have known something was coming down when the cord on the computer (I know there's a more technical name for it) stopped working and I resorted to buying a cheap one off of ebay instead of the $200 version from the Apple store.

Things have only gone downhill since then. When we returned from our trip to Utah/Idaho a few days ago, I realized the battery had completely gone kaput on me. No warning at all. I thought Macs were supposed to be superior to Dells in every way, but at least my Dell warned me when its battery started dying (i.e. "Your battery is reaching the end of its usable life" every time I turned the computer on). 

To top it off, about once an hour the screen will go black, kinda like someone just pulled the plug. I'll still be able to see a vague outline of the applications I had running but I won't be able to view them well enough to do anything about it. Truth be told, it gives me the creeps every time it happens.

Dear me.

So what's a girl to do? I'm hoping this dear MacBook will at least hold out until March or April when we get what will hopefully be a huge tax return.

Until then, blog posts may be scarce, email may be limited, and Facebook is probably going to become nonexistent.

I guess that's not such a bad thing.

Miracles, book review

Since we've been out of town so much (which I will write about another day), I am way behind on these book reviews. I hope Bethany House Publishers doesn't hold it against me, because it has been an enjoyable experience. I've got two more books slated for review over this next week. For now, here's the first.

Miracles: A Journalist Looks at Modern Day Experiences of God's Power (Paperback) by Tim Stafford.

Disclaimer: I received a review copy of this book by Bethany House Publishers.

I have to start off by saying that I am a Christian who believes in miracles. I requested to review this book because of that. This book started off on a good note. I immediately read through several chapters in no time flat. Somewhere in the middle though, I got lost and struggled to continue. The author used the same one example of a miracle so many times that I was beginning to wonder whether or not he did any research at all for this book. It was overkill. In addition, the premise of the book was completely lost on me. I didn't feel like Stafford offered any wisdom or insight to the role miracles should play in the reader's faith, nor did he answer the questions "Should we expect miracles?" and "How active is God in the world today?" The latter of which was too broad to even ask in a book specifically about miracles. Overall, for a book about miracles, I was left completely uninspired.