Friday, April 17, 2015

Our Family in 2015

To anyone who happens to see this, it's been a while! Here is our family Easter 2015.



In November 2012, we welcomed our daughter Samantha into the world:



Sammy on her 2nd birthday, Nov 2014




In February of this year, we welcomed our 2nd son, Augustine.


Here is Charlie, who will be 5 years old in June. It's really hard to get a good picture of him standing still. :-) Where has the time gone??

Silly partners in crime!

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Charlie Walking!

Just watch the cuteness, and please don't mind the messy house!
p.s. the video that pops up as "up next" is not mine- and very strange... Just a warning if you happen to click on it!

Monday, July 11, 2011

"I'm Back"? Really?

Three months have now gone by since I wrote that last, horribly and deceptively titled post.  Clearly, as my readers have noticed, I was not back.  And I very sincerely apologize for that.  To be honest, I don't know if I'm back now either.  I don't know if I'm really up to keeping up with a blog on my own, as the length of time between my last post and now has shown.  I feel like a bit of a failure, especially since I had been so excited to start this blog at the beginning of the year.  Every week that passed without a new entry made it easier not to think about it the next week either, and the blog slipped further and further back in my mind.  Every so often, something would jog my memory about it, and a couple of times I sat down to write but only got a sentence or two down before I would give up, feeling a little sad.  I only somewhat know why.

Part of the problem at first was my sadness over losing my Grandma.  Another thing is a part-time job I now do from home, working as a contracted editor and proofreader for an online, um.. editing and proofreading company. :-)  Since I'm trying to do what I can to help support Daniel in supporting our family, whenever I have a free moment I log in to see what orders I can pick up.  My free minutes are also dwindling as a result of the time I now spend chasing after an increasingly on-the-move one-year-old boy in an attempt to keep him out of as much trouble as possible.

Yes, Charlie turned one on June 16th!  I can't believe how fast he is growing up.  He started crawling in March or April (I would have to get out his baby book to check...), and between that and cruising around the furniture he was all over the place in our little house.  Just a few days after his birthday he started taking steps away from whatever he was holding onto, and now despite frequent falls onto his diapered behind, he is constantly practicing his walking.  So, in addition to keeping him out of the recycling, the refrigerator, and the drawers that hold the sandwich bags and plastic wrap, I am also spending a lot of time just watching in sheer delight as my little boy toddles back and forth across the floor.  He gets more sure of himself by the day, and I know it won't be long before I will be running after him.

Daniel and I celebrated our second anniversary (wow!) two months ago.  Time has really flown.  My sister Rose babysat while we went out to dinner lunch (I almost forgot!).  We did lunch so that we could afford to go to a nicer restaurant than we otherwise would have.  It was delicious, and since it was our anniversary we got free dessert!  Actually, the deal was that you get to choose ONE dessert to share.  But the waitress brought out a whole tray with all of their dessert options on display... how in the world were we supposed to choose just one?  So, we each chose one, and only one of them was free, but that was alright.  My crème brûlée was utterly delectable. :-)  Unfortunately, I've been dreaming about the chocolate mousse that was placed beside it on the tray ever since.

This Saturday we will be going on our first family vacation, and for Daniel and I it will be the first we've had since our honeymoon-- last year, Daniel took his vacation time to be home for a couple of weeks when Charlie was born.  We're going to Ocean City, MD, to stay with Daniel's parents in the oceanfront condo they rent every year.  We are very excited, because we REALLY could use a vacation.  I just hope it's not too much work with a toddler in tow.  I can't wait for Charlie to see the ocean for the first time, and play in the sand!

I will try to provide some more updates on our lives when we get back from our week-long trip.  In the meantime, here are some of our recent pictures for you to enjoy! :-)  They seem to have uploaded out of order, and I don't have time to fix it or write captions right now, but maybe I will come back to that later this week.



















Thursday, April 7, 2011

I'm back!

Here we are, and well over a month has passed since I wrote my last entry.  So much for my promise of once a week… To those of you who are reading this, thank you for not giving up on me!  I actually have started “writing” blog entries in my head so many times over the past month, usually while riding in the car or while nursing Charlie or rocking him to sleep.  Only once did one of those beginnings make it into typed form, and that one I never posted because I hadn’t quite finished it when I went to bed.  That was March 20th, and late that night I got the news that my grandma had passed away.  For about a week I had no desire at all to finish writing the entry I had started, and once I thought about it again it seemed irrelevant.

I do, however, have a few topic ideas up my sleeve—so we’ll see whether I can follow through this spring and keep up with a blog that I’m not being held accountable for like I was for my old one.

Anyway, I’ll go ahead and post this now before I am pulled away from the computer and never come back to finish it.  I will do my best to update again within a week!  Here is a photo taken at my wedding reception of Daniel and me with my Grandma Arlyn and Pop-pop Paul, now almost two years ago; and also one of Grandma holding Charlie soon after he was born last summer.  Eternal rest grant unto her, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon her. May the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.


Arlyn Louise Baumgarten
September 15, 1937 - March 20, 2011


Thursday, February 17, 2011

Facing the Inevitable

When you’re 24 years old and all four of your grandparents are still living, you understand that the inevitable is probably not too far in the future. But it still sucks when the inevitable finally comes knocking at your door.

I apologize in advance that this entry may seem depressing, but this has been a bit of a rough week or so for me.  About a week and a half ago I found out that my grandmother’s cancer (which was discovered in her spine and her pelvis a year ago, five years after her breast cancer treatment was apparently successful) had now spread to her organs.  Her oncologist told my grandfather that she had four to six months left to live.  We already knew that she wasn’t doing well, so although it was tough to hear a timeline it wasn’t a huge shock. A few days ago, though, the hospice nurse that is now coming to their house on certain days told my grandfather that based on what the oncologist told her, her guess is that it’s going to be weeks, not months.

The last time Daniel and I had been to visit was about a month ago, and a couple of weeks later she was taken to the hospital because she had bleeding in her stomach.  We originally heard it was ulcers, but there are actually tumors that have come through the wall of her stomach.  She is still slowly bleeding, and they’re not doing any more blood transfusions. It could become a major bleed at any time.  So, Daniel, Charlie, my sister Marie, and I went to visit yesterday.  It was the first time we had seen her since her last hospital trip, and she looks worse than ever (not surprising).

My grandma has always been a very “robust” woman, to say the least—in body, temperament, and voice.  Although over the last year she had already lost a lot of weight and gotten more tired, until yesterday I had never seen her so quiet.  It was hard for her to move and breathe, she’s hooked up to oxygen, and the few times she chimed into the conversation she was hard to hear because she was so quiet.  My Grandma has never, ever, been quiet.

To say the least, I’m having a pretty hard time.  I’ve never lost anyone so close to me before—the closest was my Pappy, my Grandma’s dad, when I was 11.  I was pretty close to him, but he lived in Florida and I didn’t get to see him very often.  His wife, my Grammy, my Grandma’s mother, died just last year, two days after Charlie (her great-great-grandson) was born and two months shy of 100 years old.  I hadn’t seen her in about 10 years, though, and she wouldn’t have known who I was if I did.  Now less than a year later, her daughter is dying at just 74.  And I hate it.

I have images running through my mind constantly of Grandma, so many various memories that I have of her from my whole life, and all so sharply contrasted with the one of her yesterday, so small and quiet and weak.  I can’t reconcile it in my mind.

So, like I said, I’m having a hard time with this.  I also am finding that I find it really difficult to talk about it; Daniel is being very patient and understanding, though.  He has already lost three of his grandparents, although only one that he can remember.  I’m so glad I have him.

One bittersweet aspect of this whole thing for me is my grandfather (my Pop-pop).  He takes such good care of my Grandma.  He is really amazing, and it is heartwarming to see even though it is sad.  It makes me think about the future, about the later times of marriage for Daniel and me.  I hope that if I ever need to, I will be able to take such good, loving care of my spouse like my Pop-pop does.

Anyway, please pray for my family—I really appreciate it.  
Again, I’m sorry for the sad entry.

Friday, February 4, 2011

One Little Thing

Someone should invent some kind of device for holding a baby securely on one’s lap while sitting.  In other words, a baby carrier of sorts that isn’t actually meant for carrying your baby around—just something so that you can sit in a chair, on a stool, etc. with your baby on your lap and your hands free to use a keyboard and mouse or to eat dinner.  A couple of months ago, I was sure that I had happened across this very item on some baby gear blog-type website.  I forgot to save the link, though, and when I thought to go back and look for it, the thing was nowhere to be found.  It was made of fabric and had a kind of harness that could be strapped to either a chair (to use in place of a high chair at a restaurant, for example) or to a parent.  I have tried searching for it other places with no luck.  Does anyone out there have any idea what I am talking about?  I am beginning to feel as though the whole thing was a dream and that no such thing exists.  Anyway, my point is that if it does not, someone should invent it.

If I had such a thing, I would have been able to write this blog entry much earlier in the day.  Charlie has been very clingy this morning, making it very difficult to type.  I must admit, though, that my skill at one-handed typing has definitely improved in the last seven months.  This, however, is not what I had intended this entry to be about.  This is going to be another of my song-lyric inspired entries (those of you who have followed me for a while may remember that I have done this several times).  Have all of you country-listeners heard Darius Rucker’s new song “This”?  

This song has been stuck in my head a lot lately, and not only because it’s played on the radio a lot.  My sister Rose is in the process of applying to/visiting colleges and will need to make a choice as to what college she will attend as a freshman next year, which reminds me of my college decision process.  There were three schools to which I planned on applying, and only two applications ended up being put in the mail.  The school that I ended up going to was the one that was my parents’ first choice for me; my first choice initially was another. 

Both were Catholic schools, with close to the same tuition costs, and I was offered virtually the same amount of scholarship money to each.  In the end I made my decision not because I felt that one school was any better than the other, but because I could just “see” myself at one of them and not the other.  I just had a feeling.  Was that God nudging me in a certain direction?  I believe so. 

“And it’s crazy to think that one little thing could have changed all of this,” Darius Rucker sings.  If I had gone with my initial first choice, I would never have met Daniel (not to mention the other friends that I can’t imagine not being a part of my life).  Perhaps a college decision really isn't a “little” thing, but if a certain priest from the school I ended up attending had not occasionally said mass at my parish, my parents may never have encouraged me to apply to that school in the first place.  That’s a “little” thing, at least as far as it concerns me and my life.  A little thing that could have changed everything. 

No Daniel, no Charlie, no life as I know it.  Plus, I’m the type of person that enjoys sitting down and thinking of every little thing that would be different in cases like this, in both my life and in other people’s lives.  It’s really incredible to examine the fabric of God’s plan for all of His children and the way every element is woven together in His outside-of-time, all-knowing way.  I love looking for His hand in it all; and even when it’s hard to see, He is always there, knowing what is best for us, leading us, and ultimately knowing the way we will choose to exercise our free will and planning accordingly.  Awesome!

So for those of you making big life decisions right now, like my sister: no pressure.
;-) 

Thursday, January 27, 2011

All the Days

Welcome to my new blog!  I thought that I would start out with a quick entry about the title I chose, “All the Days.”  Daniel teased me just a little and called me “cute” when he saw it, so I hope that none of you think it’s silly.  I sat down with a pad of paper and pen and brainstormed for a while to come up with a name, and this was the only one that sounded good to me. 

Since my last blog was about the beginning, the setting of the stage, this one will account for what happens after the beginning.  At the very beginning of our married life, Daniel and I vowed to love each other “all the days of our lives.”  What we’re living now is all those days.

Now, this name does not mean that I will be blogging every day, because I’m sure that I won’t.  My goal is once a week, just like my last blog.  You should expect, though, that occasionally there may be more than one in a given week, and occasionally a week may be skipped.  You can also expect to see more pictures in this blog than in my last, and you can hopefully expect to see more responses to any comments.  I will try my best!

Thanks for clicking through to my new blog—I’m looking forward to this next chapter!

God bless!
-         - Sarah