Okay, friends... I'm making the switch!  My blog has been moved to...

www.jennfaulk.com

That should be easy to remember, right?  This is my last post on Xanga.  I started here when my sweet Ana was just eight weeks old.  Wow!  All of my posts have been moved, and I'll continue on at my new address.  I plan on keeping up with my Xanga subscriptions here and hope to hear from you on the new site...

We're back from Walt Disney World!  We left on Sunday afternoon after church, drove down to DFW, and caught a flight early, early Monday morning.  By Monday afternoon, we were in the Magic Kingdom, and we spent the next four days exploring every part of the four Disney parks...

(The girls DID get out of their strollers at different points of this trip.  I promise.)

Emma loved "It's a Small World" (just as many of you predicted she would), and Ana loved Dumbo.  And surprisingly enough, the same girls who are terrified of Chuck E. Cheese LOVED the characters and the princesses.  We even had to go back and meet some of the same characters three or four times at Ana's insistence...

For both your sanity and my own, I'll only post a couple of these character encounter pictures.  (No need to thank me.)  As you can see, Em wasn't afraid to get right on up in their faces and give them a big ol' "HELLO!"

Apart from a few hiccups that are to be expected with toddlers doing a full-scale, non-stop vacation of this magnitude, we were amazed by how smoothly the entire week went.  We totally recommend Walt Disney World to families with toddlers after watching our wee ones just get completely caught up in the excitement of nearly every moment.  They were absolutely thrilled, which absolutely thrilled us.  On the shuttle ride back to the airport Friday night, Ana watched the farewell video, turned to Wes, and said, loud enough for the whole bus to hear her, "We come back soon, Papa!"  Indeed.

We're getting back to our regularly scheduled lives now, which includes a mountain of really sweaty laundry (ick), regular work hours for Wes (ick), and serious potty training (ICK).  Ana remembered that she would be wearing panties post-Disney, and she greeted me this morning with a package of them in hand.  She still hasn't connected that panties mean using the potty on a regular basis, but I'm sure we'll figure it out after a couple of (hundred) accidents.  She's ready.  I'm ready.  It's time.

For those of you who want to see more vacation pictures, I've uploaded some onto Xanga.  For those of you who want to see more than that, I've uploaded some onto Facebook.  And for those of you who want to see even more... well, I can't imagine why you would want to see all 271 pictures that we took, but send me your email address and I'll send you the link.  Don't say I didn't warn you about how many there are!

Hope your weekend is going well...

Ana woke up with a high fever on Thursday.  Seeing as how we're just days away from the vacation and our girls' usual pattern with illness is to share it over two weeks, we felt it would be wise to get Emma as far away as possible from her sick sister.  My parents were able to come up, get her, and take her to Texas on Thursday evening.  Ana was quite distraught that Emmy was not in her crib on Friday morning, as you can well imagine, but she's since told me that, "Emmy in Texas.  Jesus in Oklahoma."  When I asked her to clarify why exactly Jesus has taken up residence in the Sooner State, she added, "He's alive, Mommy."  Alive and no doubt taking advantage of the low cost of living in the land that is grand!  (And, no, I have no idea what she's thinking.)

The good news is that after a feverish night on Thursday and a feverish morning on Friday, Ana is back to normal.  She's even eating right now, which she hasn't done in a couple of days.  (Except for the occasional helping of "chocolate bears," ie chocolate Teddy Grahams.)  The bad news is that Emma woke up yesterday afternoon in Texas with a fever.  You know, if she had woken up with a fever here, I'd be kicking myself for letting her stay around Ana and get sick.  But, as it is, I'm still kicking myself because she might as well be here with us if she was going to catch it anyway!  Sigh.  My mom called back last night to say that after Emma's dose of Tylenol, she had kept the fever down for well over six hours.  Maybe her experience with it will be shorter than Ana's and everyone will be well again in no time.  I sure hope so!  I'm going to call them this morning to check on her, just as soon as it's late enough that I think they'll all be awake.  (And, yes, I know how lucky I am that I can separate the girls when one of them shows signs of being sick.  This time by sending Em to Texas, last time by sending Em off with Coach and Nana while they were here on a visit.  Of course, both of those times Em still ended up sick, but it wasn't from a lack of trying to keep her well, you know?  We probably wouldn't have separated them this time had our vacation not been just a handful of days away, but I'm glad we had the option.  Thank you, Gram and Gramps!)

I think all of our bags are packed.  We're leaving on Sunday afternoon, going down to DFW, and flying out early, early Monday morning.  I can't even begin to tell you how ready we are for this trip.  Wes will be taking his cell phone, but he'll just be checking messages, not answering calls.  We're looking forward to a little bit of isolation and uninterrupted time as a family.  I sure do hope both girls are up to full speed again by the time we get there and hit the road running!

I have a church event this morning and plan on spending the rest of the day tending to Ana and straightening up so that we'll come home next week to a clean house.  Sounds exciting, huh? 

Better get to it.  See you after the vacation!

I was visited last night by three Anas.  (Actually, just one.  Three times, though.)  I honestly think she just wakes up, wanders out of her room, and comes to find us and see if it's almost morning.  It wasn't even close to morning any of the three times she visited us, so I took her back to her bed each time.  She finally fell asleep for good at about three in the morning.  We had to be up by six to get ready and be on the road in plenty of time for our zoo trip today, and believe it or not, three hours was more than enough sleep to get me through.... zzzzzz... oh!  I'm sorry!  Did I fall asleep at the computer?!

All four Faulks went to the OKC zoo to meet up with Marla and her family.  I love that even though Marla has written actual published books and speaks to large groups of women, she and her family were so down-to-earth and friendly.  Even after riding all the way from Ohio!  The weather today in OKC was just perfect, and all the animals were up and moving.  We did have some trouble finding the "furry" animals since I mistakenly took everyone through the amphibians, fish, reptiles, and birds first, but they were indeed there and were eventually located.  Ha!  We had such a great time and look forward to reading all about the Taviano Texas Tour in the near future. 

From there, we went to visit our church deacon who had been hospitalized over Easter weekend.  He had to have quadruple bypass surgery last night, so he was still in ICU, of course.  Wes went back to spend some time with him, which left me in the waiting room with the girls.  They were, as you might imagine, crazy monkeys after having spent the morning in strollers.  They ran and ran and jumped and jumped.  And got into everything they could get their hands on.  At one point, Ana actually licked the door of the ICU waiting room.  (She just can't keep her mouth off of clear, glass doors!  What's the thrill?  I don't get it.)  Both girls had dirty diapers while we were there, and rather than try and get them both down to a bathroom and actually have them STAY in the bathroom, I opted to discreetly change them right there in the waiting room.  I have no shame, people.  Or at least I didn't until Ana felt compelled to describe, out loud, the contents of her sister's diaper.  Oh, the horror!  I don't know how to explain to a potty-training toddler, who does in fact NEED to talk about these things in order to help the process along, that we don't talk about these things in polite company.

(This only made for a more ironic moment when the elderly couple sitting at the table next to us at lunch stopped on their way out to tell us how well behaved our girls are.  The wife said, "It's so wonderful to see such a young family eating together so nicely... and your babies are so polite!"  Yes, true enough... until someone passes gas or has a rumble in their tummy.  Then, all manners take a flying leap out the door!)

The Disney vacation countdown continues.  Ana watched me pack up the princess dresses the other day and kept looking back at the bag anxiously for hours afterward.  I couldn't figure out what was going on in her little head until she put on her pitiful face at bathtime and asked, "Mommy, when we going to Disney World?"  Bless her little heart -- she must have thought we were seconds away from walking out the door!  I'm taking care to explain myself better when it comes to this from now on!

Well, I need to get on up to the church.  Emma is quite hacked off with me right now, thanks to the fact that she had only an abbreviated nap on the drive back home this afternoon, so she's more than ready to trade me in for Mrs. Maggie.  Ana didn't sleep at all, which means that she will likely sleep through the night tonight.  Hallelujah!  I plan on catching up with my sleep as well... 

Busy Week...

At this time next week, our plane will be landing in Orlando, and we'll be within spitting distance of Mickey's House.  Okay, so probably not spitting distance.  But a whole lot closer than we are right now!  Ana is beyond thrilled.  Emma is beyond thrilled.  (Because Ana is, of course.)  Wes, underneath all of his exhaustion, is beyond thrilled.  And me?  I will be beyond thrilled as soon as I finish up all that needs to be done this week!

We had a crazy Easter weekend.  The girls and I surprised Wes with an early birthday present/Easter surprise -- his very own Wii.  He loves it!  And, surprisingly enough, so do I.  (I'm not usually a video game fan... but this is really easy to use.  Even Ana got in on a couple of bowling games!)  He was able to enjoy it for a while before he got some calls on Friday morning -- one about a church member who had just passed away, the other about a deacon who was in the hospital with chest pains.  Wes ended up spending the majority of Friday with both of these families, before we all went on to the Good Friday service.  (Wes's parents arrived in town about the time that he got the calls.  I'm glad they get to see the nutty pace of our lives firsthand every time they visit.  If it's not barfing toddlers, it's ministry-related madness!)  Then, there was a bit of a panic on Saturday when some grass fires popped up in the town next to ours.  Wes added another line to his resume -- church lawn water boy -- thanks to the panic.  I'm happy to report that neither the church nor or house burned down in the craziness and that we mercifully got a whole lot of rain on Saturday night/Sunday morning, which will hopefully end these grass fires!  The rain gave our church its first indoor sunrise service (ha!) and a rather chilly Easter morning and afternoon.  The girls were just lovely in their dresses... but in the craziness of this weekend, I didn't even get a picture of them.  By the time I realized that I hadn't snapped one, Emma had an explosive diaper while running around the choir loft after the service.  I'm entirely convinced that the carpet still smells faintly of poo today, despite all of my best efforts to scrub it down.  Anyway, after lunch, Wes and I went up to OKC to visit with the family awaiting open heart surgery, which was most definitely not part of their Easter plans.  That'll be happening today, at the exact same time that Wes will be doing the funeral for the other family.  I think he feels bad that he won't be able to be there for both, but there's only so much one guy can do.  Thankfully, Ana has gone back to sleeping in her bed all night (after a random string of nights where she tried to crawl into Em's crib with her, which was the source of much screaming from a justifiably freaked out Emmy, as you can imagine), so Wes has been able to get some rest.  This is helpful.

Our dogs left with Wes's parents this morning.  The dachshund ranch is preferable to the kennel, right?  Maybe not to Wes's parents, but we sure do appreciate the cost difference!  The girls and I are working on laundry and the first stages of packing.  Exciting! 

I'm still working on moving my blog over to Blogger.  I'm pretty sure I'm going to make the switch.  So, if you'd like to check it out early and read all about Em's last weeks in the womb (I've copied all of my posts up through July 2007 -- it's taking a while!), then go here.  Don't forget to bookmark it, or add it to blogs you're following, or post it as a favorite, or just go ahead and make it your home page (ha!), as I would HATE to lose readers in the switch.  I'll still be following your blogs here and commenting with my OkinawaAna name.    I'll let you know when I officially make the switch.  You know, after I finish copying and pasting two more years worth of posts. 

We've reached and passed a milestone on our mortgage.  Sure, we still own what seems like a small fortune to us, but the difference in numbers from our last payment to this payment makes paying it off actually look like a possibility.  Which is encouraging, as I'm sure you can imagine.  This all makes me wonder what it must feel like to be someone who can pay for a house in full on closing day.  I don't even want to think about the thousands of dollars they save themselves in doing so and how ironic it is that since they're so rich anyway, tens of thousands of dollars doesn't make much a difference to them and they might as well just take out a thirty year loan like the rest of us.  Right?  Sigh.  We're thankful for this milestone and the nearER future where we anticipate not having this mortgage albatross around our necks! 

We're going to the zoo on Wednesday to meet up with Marla as she completes the Oklahoma part of her Zoo tour!  She will be the very first blogging friend I've ever met in real life.  Believe it or not, y'all, we don't get many people through our little corner of Oklahoma.  (And as it is, OKC really isn't our little corner.  But it's within a two hour driving distance, so we're counting it as ours.)  I'm super excited!  We're also planning to go up to OKC to visit our deacon after his surgery.  Ana and Emma are pros now at hanging out in ICU waiting areas.  They can amuse themselves for hours if there's a vending machine with lots of buttons to push nearby.  Ha!

I plan on finishing up a book this week in between packing, laundry, cleaning, visits to OKC, church services, Wii workouts, etc.  Wes is posing some challenging questions at church lately, and I think he and I have been more challenged than anyone.  Confession time, y'all.  We're conservative to the point of conserving things that are extra-biblical.  For instance, we've always been super sensitive to the issue of alcohol consumption.  Is there anything wrong Biblically with alcohol?  Well, no.  Has our culture distorted this with excess and drunkenness?  Well, yes.  And in our previous way of thinking, this alone was enough to condemn all alcohol, even responsible amounts of alcohol, to the point of wrongly judging someone who chooses to have a margarita with dinner.  We.  Were.  Wrong.  And even as I say this, part of me is wanting to qualify what I mean because I don't want to drink, don't think my girls should ever drink (even when they're of legal age!), and can't bring myself to really say that it's OKAY because... well, because it's so deeply ingrained in me that it's not.  Wes calls this being a Recovering Pharisee.  Ha!  While I originally bristled at this unflattering label, I have to agree.  Yes, I'm a Recovering Pharisee.  There are several other instances in which this condition of ours has become increasingly evident, and we're being challenged as we try to reach our generation for Christ to really see what  the Bible says about what WE have always said as good, conservative, Southern Baptists.  We're not throwing the baby out with the bath water, and I sure don't agree with everything our more emergent/liberal brothers and sisters in Christ are teaching... BUT as we ask ourselves if our lives are counting for Christ or if we're just merely living a churchy existence of man-made rules and joyless extra-biblical prohibitions, we're convicted.  Wes is prying me out of my crusty comfort zone (ahhh!!!) by getting me to read some books from some broader thinking writers.  Not that broader thinking is always Biblical, but just because it isn't MY way of thinking doesn't mean that it unbiblical.  I think reading these books is a good thing for someone in my stage of recovery.  Ha!  I laugh about it, but we really have been convicted.  Yay for that!  If I ever stop being convicted, then I have likely grown insensitive to the Holy Spirit and have stopped growing in Christ.  And though this has been the case in recent years, it is not the case today.  Praise God!

Better get back to that laundry...