I laughed.

I was beyond exhausted, more than glowing from the humidity I was unused to, and not feeling in the least bit cute.

“No,” I had to answer Fairlight honestly.  Sometimes, if you caught me at just the right moment, with just the perfect cute maternity top on, I explained, I might feel cute.  But more often than not, I was tired, hot, and feeling as though my clothes did not fit right (but when it’s the third outfit of the morning, if it at least goes on, one finally has to give up).

I’m seven months pregnant with our second little one now.  In between pregnancies I spent all my time looking at those cute pregnant ladies and feeling those maternal longings to have a little one growing there beneath my heart again.  Nowadays I again look at those pregnant ladies and feel an instant bond—the waddle, the exhausted but glowing look we all share.

But when my sister-in-law Megan asked, “Do you still like being pregnant?” my answer was a resounding yes.  As precious as it is to hold a nursing babe in your arms, there’s nothing quite like the constant tapping of baby feet inside your belly.  Ruth Ann wasn’t very many months old before I was already missing having my baby always with me, right there inside me.  My answer to Megan was easy: I love being pregnant.  Even if I don’t often feel like a cute pregnant lady.

The problem is, I don’t think being pregnant is any excuse for being more frumpy than usual.  Even if comfy is a valid necessity.  It seems to me a husband will soon be less inclined to want more children if he considers the fact that he will once again have to look at a fat, frumpy wife for nine months or more!  There may not be much I can do about the fat part (though I can do my best to keep the fat in all the right “pregnant” places!), but I can work on dressing as cute as possible just for him (and the other people like Fairlight and my non-pregnant self who think pregnant ladies look cuter than they feel!).  Not to mention getting as much rest as I can so I don’t always look as exhausted as I feel!

This second time around, my maternity wardrobe has continued to slowly expand (no pun intended!).  There seems to be slightly more selection out there this time around.  But even Wal-mart seems to have bought into the notion that fewer women are having babies these days and thus only about half a rack of maternity clothes is necessary.  Not that I’ve bought maternity clothes at Wal-mart.  But I’ve been close to that desperate.  J.C. Penney has seemed to have the nicest selection, quality, and the best sales on new maternity clothes.  But I did just finally find a few shirts at Motherhood Maternity with a style and price I liked (and why did it take me so long to discover their “tummy sleeve”?—it keeps my pants up and makes sure everything “meets in the middle”!).

Truth be told, as usual, GoodWill has been my favorite maternity store of choice.  It’s just taken an awfully long time to gather maternity clothes that fit me—and that I like to wear!  There seemed to be a trend there for a while of making maternity shirts as short as regular shirts, just wider.  Now they are longer, but just as tight as every other teen girl’s shirt—showing off every extra curve that pregnancy gives one!  But it’s finally dawned on me that it would be the rare store I could walk into, even with unlimited resources, and find an entire regular wardrobe in one day.  So how did I expect to collect a “specialty” wardrobe of maternity clothes so quickly?  It’s only taken 18 months (and those few shirts I bought in between pregnancies—shh, don’t tell!) to collect the repertoire I have now.  Especially since, not being very pregnant in the summertime with Ruth, I’ve discovered this time around that some of those maternity shirts I found at GoodWill that first summer were not long enough to cover a seven month baby belly!

So take heart, first-time expectant moms.  You will spend most of the next nine months trying on at least three outfits each day and complaining that nothing fits like it did last week. You most likely won’t feel like you have any selection in your maternity wardrobe until you’ve shopped through at least the second or third pregnancy.  But being a happily expectant mom—who everyone else thinks is so cute—more than makes up for the lack of outfits to choose from.  And never forget that it doesn’t matter what we look like to the rest of the world—our husband’s eyes, our husband’s taste in maternity clothes is all that matters.  After all, I am his beauty—the woman he chose to be the mother of his children.  And I never want to make him regret that for a single moment.

Oh, and that part about being barefoot and pregnant?  Not recommended.  All that extra tummy weighs heavy on the feet.  It’s a much happier thing to be pregnant with Birkenstocks on your feet!

©2010 Young Ladies Christian Fellowship. All Rights Reserved.

The smallest and biggest members of the farm…

Poetry and tea under a star-filled sky…

Feeding the lambs

©2010 Young Ladies Christian Fellowship. All Rights Reserved.

Lanier and I are finally taking time from barn chores and tea parties to say hello! The past week has been truly delightful. Instead of attempting to describe how cathartic their menagerie of babies has been for me, I decided to share pictures. Every day plenty of time is spent cuddling with three painfully adorable kittens, playing with the dogs and cats, trying to charm the Gulf Coast lambs, and being charmed by the Nubian goats. And of course we are constantly talking–about writing, C.S. Lewis, books, poetry, and all things literary. Talking about God, life, relationships, and everything under the sun. On day eight of my visit we have yet to run out of things to discuss and I doubt we ever will.
For me, these idyllic days in the beautiful South have served as a special gift of grace. I’ve felt God’s loving touch on my heart as I have enjoyed His creation and fellowshipped with His people.

I will write and share more when I return home, if we do not get around to it before then. For now, I will leave you with a passage I read this morning in Isaiah 46:

I am God, and there is no other;
I am God, and there is none like me,
declaring the end from the beginning
and from ancient times things not yet done,
saying, ‘My counsel shall stand,
and I will accomplish all my purpose,’
calling a bird of prey from the east,
the man of my counsel from a far country.
I have spoken, and I will bring it to pass;
I have purposed, and I will do it.

Captions: Top left – Lanier with an armful of kittens. Their names are Aloysius, Balliol, and Giles. Can anyone guess what or who they are named after? Top right - Natalie holding Hermia, one of the six lambs. Bottom center – Lanier had the idea to wear gardenias in our hair to church on Sunday! One person thought we were sisters.

©2010 Young Ladies Christian Fellowship. All Rights Reserved.

©2010 Young Ladies Christian Fellowship. All Rights Reserved.

Lisa’s way with words gave me a fun perspective on the get-together–I thought you would enjoy reading it also. And I do believe I’ve discovered the perfect way to keep people from putting me or my world on a pedestal–all they have to do is come over to our house.

“They’re not from a different planet, Mama.”
– North and South, the BBC adaptation

The YLCF retreat was a fellowship of like-minded ladies. We all knew that going in, I think. Our differences struck me, though. Ranging from Colorado natives to a teacher from New York, and the Midwest towns and cities in between, there was plenty to compare. A few of the ladies attending (including Natalie – remember that, girls?) even lived in Japan for a while. So we enjoyed discovering how the same values applied in different lives, different families, at different places and to different interests. Some of us are writers. Some love to clean houses. Students, teachers, wives, mothers, sisters were there. There were seamstresses and dancers and photographers. I know we each came away encouraged and refreshed. God is at work so creatively in so many lives and locations. He is awesome.

I have to report that the YLCF gathering was most unexpectedly, but actually quite reasonably, quiet. Fifteen or so ladies variously occupied shared quiet conversations about lives, families, and God’s lessons for the year. For a while it felt like twenty questions or the game where a character’s name is on your back and you run around asking questions of everyone until you figure out who you are. By Friday evening, between some sort of synchronized driving by which we left Natalie’s gracious home in a caravan and arrived at the Christian bookstore independently and from different directions, and the frigid parking lot just outside the base, we hit our stride.

For me it was fascinating to observe the humanity of our online friends. Natalie is a real human being with everyday strengths and weaknesses. She is a transparent writer, and I appreciate when she shares her struggles and triumphs, her reflective journal entries. Seeing her in action was different, though. Her dogs bark at strangers. She looks different moving: laughing, walking, thinking – than in pictures.

Maybe you had to be there, but we all dissolved into laughter when Natalie was reasoning with the security guard at the gate of the Air Force base to let all of us girls stuffed into three cars onto base. I think he liked us, because he was very cooperative. But each car wasn’t really communicating with the others, so we were trying to guess what would happen next, what was going on – reading lips and hand gestures and then proceeding with trial and error.

Gretchen was mentioned often. We peppered Natalie with questions about the origins of YLCF, and how she and Gretchen met. I was most surprised to hear that they’ve only been in each other’s physical presence five or six times. Yet what friends they are to each other!

The weekend was about ladies fair, traipsing through bitter cold and token snow cover. Our experiment with blooming tea was successful. Our trips to the thrift store were totally girly. And most of us more or less stayed up in one little hotel room watching the four hour miniseries, North and South.

Saturday, my friend and I chased the sun home to Colorado, not ready to surrender the day and its memories. Even that night, at midnight finally home in Colorado, the pearly glow reflected off the day-old layer of snow welcoming me from my back yard. It was the after-glow, the still illuminating remnant of the light of a lovely day.

For he satisfieth the longing soul

and filleth the hungry soul with goodness.

- Psalms 107:9

- by Lisa (pictured above, on right)

Photos by Clara

©2010 Young Ladies Christian Fellowship. All Rights Reserved.

The girls arrived at my home that morning and we went to eat lunch at a little sandwich shop. While we were there Gretchen called, not realizing it was The Day for the get-together; she passed on hellos to all. We shivered and slipped across the parking lot to a thrift store full of books….and from there on to another shop where finds ranged from childhood favorite books to shoes.

©2010 Young Ladies Christian Fellowship. All Rights Reserved.

©2010 Young Ladies Christian Fellowship. All Rights Reserved.

©2010 Young Ladies Christian Fellowship. All Rights Reserved.

Our tentative schedule includes lunch on Friday, a visit to a huge Christian bookstore, a few hours “thrifting”, tea time and fellowship at the Klein home, making homemade pizza for Friday dinner, time to watch a “girly” movie, time for devotions and sharing…and more. I am so excited.

Two weeks from today….

©2010 Young Ladies Christian Fellowship. All Rights Reserved.

Katrina writes: “Tara and I have been friends for many years, but due to the distance between our homes, we have only been able to see each other at select times throughout each year. In September of 2006, we met up again at a mutual friend’s wedding, much to our delight!

“As we visited together about the things of the Lord and the latest ministry opportunities He had given us, we discovered a like-hearted passion for investing in the lives of young ladies. Having both experienced the tremendous blessing of Godly older role models during our teen years, we shared a similar burden to faithfully pass on the baton of encouragement to younger girls now facing the choices that come with growing up….

“An idea came to me that I now know was from the Lord. What if Tara and I could join forces and host some sort of retreat, conference, or weekend event for the young ladies we knew? The event could provide edifying messages, feminine skill-building opportunities, and an atmosphere for encouraging fellowship.“

Caption: Katelin, Tara, Katrina, and Kelly, the leaders of the Maiden’s Quest retreat for young ladies.

©2010 Young Ladies Christian Fellowship. All Rights Reserved.

Aspirin Mask

Aspirin has salicylic acid in it, which comes from trees, and is good for drying up any acne outbreaks you may have. It is commonly used in face care products. The best aspirin to use is the inexpensive, uncoated aspirin. Once you find some, you need to grind it into as fine a powder as possible. (Natalie: A mortar and pestle are perfect for this) I keep my crushed aspirin in a mini-tupperware type container in the bathroom so it’s handy. The aspirin is the dry portion of your mask.

Spoon a little of your powdered aspirin into a bowl. I never measure, but I guess for a whole face, I use about 3/4 to 1 tsp. of the powder. After you do it a few times, you will figure out just how much you need. For that amount of aspirin, mix in two drops of pure 100% aloe gel, one large drop of honey, and drop or two each of lavender and tea tree essential oils. Mix that together thoroughly with your spoon, and it’s all ready. You should wash your face with warm water before using any mask, because it helps your pores open up so the mask can work deeply. Leave your mask on for at least 15 minutes, and then rinse with warm water.

I wouldn’t do the mask more than two time a week for the first couple of weeks until your skin adjusts to it. Then you can work up to probably doing it every other day if you want. On the in-between days (especially at first when you’re only doing the mask a couple of times a week), you can do a plain honey mask. Do that by just smearing plain honey on your face (and stay away from any bears or insects!) after washing, and again, leave it on for 15 minutes or more. The honey really helps to calm your skin, reduce any redness/inflammation, and make you glow.

Natalie: Wal-Mart’s pharmacy will order lavender essential oil for you. Total cost: $3.50. We found 100% aloe vera gel at Target and a mortar and pestle at the local health food/nutrition store. If you can, get local honey from a beekeeper!

Conditioning Mixture

For hair, your aloe and honey are your best friends. I keep a plastic bowl in the bathroom, and I like to squirt my conditioner in the bowl, and then mix in some honey and aloe with it. I’d say I do about two parts conditioner to one part aloe and one part honey.

The honey and aloe are great humectants, which means they help your hair absorb moisture. About once a week, I like to do an apple cider vinegar rinse after shampooing (blondes should use white vinegar, as ACV has a tendency to darken light hair), and then use my conditioner mixture. I think the ACV really helps strip up any buildup that has accumulated on my hair shaft over the week, and then the super-charged conditioner mixture can really soak in.

©2010 Young Ladies Christian Fellowship. All Rights Reserved.

©2010 Young Ladies Christian Fellowship. All Rights Reserved.

“Why mind the fashion? Wear a big hat, and be comfortable!” ~Little Women

Incidentally, I’ve got a precious newborn baby in my arms today (I get her all day once a week until my wedding!) so thanks for your patience!
Edited May 2008

©2010 Young Ladies Christian Fellowship. All Rights Reserved.

And this is definitely a girl thing. Why do we do that?

©2010 Young Ladies Christian Fellowship. All Rights Reserved.

And this is definitely a girl thing. Why do we do that?

©2010 Young Ladies Christian Fellowship. All Rights Reserved.

©2010 Young Ladies Christian Fellowship. All Rights Reserved.

But for Valentine’s Day, my toes needed a touch that was extra-special. So in anticipation of my visit to Natalie’s, I packed the pink and red polish in my overnight bag, and added to our to-do list: “paint toenails.”

Today was finally the day in which we accomplished this important task. Carefully, we painted each toe alternately red or pink (the colors were Satin Berry and Cherry Slush, to be exact).

But that was only the first step. We sat back comfortably while our nails dried, and I taught Natalie the relaxing art of knitting. (You should see the cute scarf she is making!)

Then, carefully, ever so carefully, I painted a red heart on my pink big toe, and a pink heart on my red big toe. And despite Natalie’s ticklish feet, I accomplished the same feat on her toes.

Our feet were nearly freezing by the time our toenails had dried. So we quickly put our wool socks and slippers back on.

The snow on the ground outside will prevent us from wearing flip-flops for Valentine’s Day. But the knowledge will remain that underneath our warm socks and sturdy shoes are hidden the most cheery Valentine toes you’ve ever seen.

©2010 Young Ladies Christian Fellowship. All Rights Reserved.

Last night we finished “Wives and Daughters”, a movie I was heretofore unacquainted with, but found positively delightful.

This morning we opened the windows wide, to let in air that felt like spring.

We finally did some laundry, cleaned up the room a bit (“nesting”, Natalie’s mom calls it), and completed the all-important task of painting our toenails. I also appeased Natalie’s brother Sawyer by making him the cookies he’d been begging for ever since I was here last time. (The promise of said cookies is the only way we can get him to answer the phone when I call!)

Then we got out our yarn and knitting needles and I taught Natalie how to knit. (She catches on very quickly, and has found knitting to be therapeutic. In fact, I personally think she has become addicted. But she claims that she is addicted only to knitting with cute yarn.) I can’t wait to finish the scarf I’m currently working on, in order to begin with the new yarn I found at Natalie’s craft store. It’s such fun to find new brands of yarn from what we have at home! For after all, a girl can never have too many scarves.

We walked toward the stairs to go find out dinner, when we nearly fell over at the sight of… snow! Gone was the warm spring air of this morning. Snowflakes were falling at an alarming rate! Apparently the “late night snow flurries” came sooner than expected. But we didn’t mind the beautiful sight while it lasted.

The rest of the family was gone tonight, so with our assorted dinner of yogurt, enchiladas, sweet potatoes, chicken noodle soup, and stir fried peppers, we settled down on the couch for a fun old flick. We found Fred Astaire’s “You Were Never Lovelier” to be enjoyable, yet it could have been given the award for Scandalous Outfits of the Year for 1941! Though I wouldn’t recommend the movie, I did find a new favorite song: “I’m Old Fashioned” by Jerome Kern and Johnny Mercer.

I’m the type that they classify as quaint
I’m old fashioned
I love the moonlight
I love the old fashioned things
The sound of rain
Upon a window pane
The starry song that April sings
This year’s fancies
Are passing fancies
But sighing sighs holding hands
These my heart understands
I know I’m old fashioned
But I don’t mind it
That’s how I want to be
As long as you agree
To stay old fashioned with me

©2010 Young Ladies Christian Fellowship. All Rights Reserved.

It’s a good thing you can check three bags with Southwest, because I’ll sure fill my extra suitcase with the 66 books I bought today! Book shopping with Natalie is such fun. She has Sonlight’s list nearly memorized, and always spots their books that I don’t have. Then I find the old classics (including one from 1853 with lectures on the power and purpose of women!), and the books with quotations about love. And we both spot random favorites, passing them on to the other if we already own them. What fun!

In one thrift shop I fund a treasure trove of greeting cards, cute old-fashioned ones, and new ones too, for only ten cents each. I walked out the door with 71 more cards to send to the special people in my life, and laughed when I saw Hallmark across the way.

After a delicious Mexican dinner, we wandered through Barnes and Noble like it was heaven on earth. We didn’t buy any books (why, when we had already found old classics for 99 cents at GoodWill?), but I found a few Valentine cards that needed to be sent to my Valentine.

We came home and showed our purchases to Natalie’s mom with much delight. Then she read us Good Dog, Carl (one of my many finds today), so now we can go to sleep.

Tomorrow, we have some more fun stores to explore! The only problem is, my extra suitcase is already full.

P.S. On a technical note (once again), it appears the YLCF site is up and down intermittently tonight. I can get to it more often via ylcf.org than www.ylcf.org, but hopefully all systems will be go soon!

©2010 Young Ladies Christian Fellowship. All Rights Reserved.

I think this latest version of “Pride and Prejudice” is my favorite. There wasn’t as much time to develop the characters as the 6-hour BBC version, but the characters seemed more believable, the setting much more realistic, the costume more appropriate (and modest!).

Other highlights of yesterday included my introduction to waffle cut French fries (they are perfect with one lil’ packet of ketchup per fry), turning around numerous times in an effort to find a thrift shop we’d seen on dexonline.com (it was closed when we finally found it), finding Five Little Peppers Midway and two books by B.J. Hoff at the antique mall (for only $5 total!), and talking to my man on the phone (he’s better than Darcy and Bingley put together!).

Now after a day’s work (and frustration, especially with tech support reps) the YLCF site has been up and down and now it’s partially up again. We hope it will all be working perfectly again soon (it’s transferring to a new domain server and web host, and in the process we have to re-upload the entire site, a process which will probably take the poor ‘puter all night long). Meanwhile, we’re off to clean and shop the day away tomorrow!

©2010 Young Ladies Christian Fellowship. All Rights Reserved.