First, you pick.

Taste.

Sanitize.

Honey, non-sugar added Pectin and Lemon juice

Boil, Simmer, Can

Enjoy.

Recipe found here.

(Blackberries were tart and the recipe made jam more tart than I’m used to, but now that I’ve tasted and seen… I’ll stick with it – can’t wait til next season!)

“How is it, being pregnant?”

Not great, really.

I am immensely grateful to be pregnant. I don’t take it for granted, really I don’t. I am very aware that a million things can go wrong and that my body is working hard to grow another human being and that part of that means I feel sort of wretched for nine months, with the exception of a month or two in that beautiful second trimester.

But here I am at the end of my first trimester and I’m just about done eating meat every morning. MEAT! I actually don’t crave it this time, not like with the first two. I just know I need it. I will throw up until I eat meat and this is just the way it works. Peanut butter, cheese, yogurt and other kinds of protein do nothing for me. It has to be meat and it’s better if it’s not poultry. Which means for several weeks I’ve been eating enough sausage to feed a butcher’s family.

All without coffee.

Hi, my name is Annie. Have we met? I like coffee.

One of the very worst parts of pregnancy for me is the coffee aversion. I can’t walk into a coffee shop without holding my nose and thinking happy thoughts about bacon and french fries. My last two pregnancies, the aversion lasted just past the first trimester and so there is of course light at the end of the tunnel. And when my belly is huge and the barista asks if I want decaf, I will smile and say no thank you. Because docs orders say 1-2 cups a day are A-OK, thankyouverymuch.

Less annoying cravings:

- juice

- potatoes

- pasta

- bread

- all things carbs

Less annoying aversions:

- sweets (though less strong aversion this time around)

What are/were your cravings and aversions?

Always on a Monday. Always exactly what we needed.

……………………………..

You’re fighting me…

The rain splashes window glass in the Upper Room overlooking downtown Salem.

My eyes widen and I know the Father is speaking.

I have been fighting.

Imaging when we’ll go back, questioning the Sovereignty of God, wondering in my heart if this is what obedience looks like.

If this is obedience, shouldn’t we all be happy? The guilt for not living close to my family and for leaving dearest friends runs thick in the blood and pulses my veins so that obedience is nothing more than another series of questions and doubts.

You’re fighting me…

And suddenly it is very clear. Acting in obedience by packing boxes and shipping them overseas is one thing. Being present where I’ve been called is another. Allowing myself to rest and be here… this is what the Father asks.

………………………….

The rain is flooding and it’s his day off and he wants to do something fun. So we pile into our white van in rain coats and layers and drive to Portland, stopping at Starbucks for the hot drink and the iced one, because some things will never change. We drive through downtown and eat lunch at a McMenamin’s venue, one of our favorites. After cajun tots and warm food fill our bellies we head to OMSI, a science museum with fantastic exhibits for wee ones and old ones. For hours, we play.

At home we lounge in the living room, playing games with toddlers and snacking on potstickers. I remember a familiar scene, 2500 miles away in a smaller room with a big window. The air is warm and our feet are bare. The faces are the same.

This is us. I still have them. We wrestle and play games and make food and watch Friends and Disney movies and go on excursions and read books and drink coffee.

And the One who is Love lets me see it so that peace trickles in and I know it’s going to be ok. My white flag is offered to the One who Sends and for the first time, I begin to feel at home with our calling.

Entering my 13th week many of the symptoms have weakened but not disappeared.

We’re pregnant again!

We’re excited. Real excited. This pregnancy marks the first where I did not immediately shout an expletive after peeing on the stick. Look at me growing up! Instead, I just whispered, “thanks.”

I’m not quite as sick this time. Still sick, still awful, but not as bad. No weeping because I can’t stand the sight of the toilet bowl anymore. I’ve only puked twice in one day twice and that was because I didn’t eat dinner in time. My fingers are crossed for a y chromosome.

Our hearts are bursting with the hope of a new wee one to hold, love, nurture and raise. We are thankful.

Baby Groves Three is due with the blackberries. July 31, perfect Oregon.

I had lunch with my cousin Julie today. Over sandwiches and soup we talked over our twenties, how irreconcilable they feel. How dreams and ideals and plans get tossed up and thrown out or in and how vastly different people’s lives look in the decade of twenty. How our lives were once comprised of predictable school years and then an unleashing into real world.

2011 began with a painful church split at the church we were serving in Hawaii. I recently re-read some posts in 2007 when things started to get hard in ministry and how we were still starry-eyed and hopeful for health. Four years later the church split. We picked up the pieces of ourselves, said goodbye to the people we loved who shared life with us for almost five years and moved to the mainland. My brother got married and we celebrated their union with love and laughter, good wine and beer. In August I poured myself into picking blackberries and going to parks, determined to fall in love with our new home. We joined a new church community and have been blessed with healthy ministry. We painted the entire interior of a house and began moving our stuff in. Cold weather came and I began wearing slippers (not of the flip flop variety) in the house. I joined a mama group. I started a photography business. The girls fell in love with dinosaurs and trains and I became a stay-at-home-mama. JD began his position as a youth pastor, learning the ropes solo this time. We cut our first Christmas tree as a family.

Jesus began whispering gratitude in my heart and I daily search for it. I am glad I’m not working at a church right now. There is healing needed and questions unanswered.

I don’t really do resolutions. I’ve tried it, but usually I end up writing a list of things I don’t like about my life and then never change anything. But I have some hopes this year. Yearnings deep in the heart.

In 2o12 I hope to live well. The daily kind. I’m a dreamer and where this breaks down is in the day to day mundane. I hope for sweet sweet time with Jesus, for healing and hope in HIM. In some ways I still waiting for my arrival. Still a senior in college asking what I’m going to do with my life.

But this is my life. Messy, confusing, bewildering, beautiful and lovely. And maybe instead of searching for purpose and calling and what career I might have when the kids go to school, maybe I need to just be quiet. And still. And listen to the small voice and love my husband and kids and continue to find beauty in all of this life that He’s given.

Master Bedroom

Before: Dark, drab and brown.

After: Valspar lemon sorbet with Bistro White trim.

Our bedroom is still a disaster zone, but we LOVE the color. We bought white bedding and just ordered some white roman shudders for the window. We both wanted airy, peaceful and clean in our bedroom. Now just working on the clean part…

Master Bathroom

Before: odd textured gray paint that looked like an unfinished basement.

( (that’s auntie Vickie in the mirror – she was helping me paint )

After: Valspar Signature Nautical.

We wanted fun for our bathroom. Bright and fun. It’s still not decorated, but the color will be really fun to work with when we get around to it!

The Girls’ Bedroom

Before: White with wall paper strip in the middle of the room and above closet. I took the wallpaper off before taking the picture, but it was dated blue with zoo animals.

(notice trim is off-white… this is the trim that was all over the house)

After: Valspar Helio Prism with Bistro White trim

Obviously the three year old girl wanted a pink room. And with the bedding they had at the time (my gma’s making new bedding – can’t WAIT to see it!!), pink was the only common color. I had awful visions of pink glowing down the hallway and overpowering the bedroom, but we let the girl choose and we went with it. I looked for a shade of pink that wouldn’t be too dominant and wouldn’t create a pink glow. Specifically I wanted a light pink with a gray undertone. Found it! We all love it. Pink enough that the girls notice, soft enough that mom doesn’t get a headache walking down the hall. We’ve mostly got the girls’ room organized but still not decorated. We’re hoping to get a twin bed for El before we decorate.

Stay tuned for the kitchen/family room! The kitchen is the most drastically different!!!

Any suggestions out there?

In other news, we’re all into Christmas here in the Pacific Northwest. We’ve done it all so far – cutting the Christmas tree, greeting Santa at the Salem Carousel, making gingerbread houses, decorating the Christmas tree, freezing at the Christmas parade, driving through the Keizer lights with Claire’s “WOW!!! and HO HO HO” MCing our drive, and plowing through Christmas movies. I have a million pictures to post, but haven’t found the energy to import/edit/sort/upload. So stay tuned. Probably.

We are driving through the night Christmas Eve like Santa Claus to arrive in Bako Christmas morning-ish. SOOOOO excited!!!! Bonus? It’s ten degrees warmer and sunny in Bako. Mama’s stoked.

The islands have officially faded from my skin. I’m nearing transparent. Despite several sunny days here in OR, I still dread going outside. Yesterday I laid on the couch by our giant window like a jaundiced newborn, soaking up as much Vitamin D as the piece of giant glass could afford. This morning I forced myself to get the girls out early and hit the gym for a great workout. Beating those winter blues with baby steps.

Meanwhile, my parents are in Hawaii enjoying all of our favorite Hawaiian winter highlights. North Shore, beach, and some of our favorite people on the planet! Not at all jealous.

Despite all the biting cold, we’re enjoying the girls so much. They both think dinosaurs are the greatest thing since creation and much of our play time is spent roaring and pretending to be hatching dinosaur eggs. It’s awesome.

Speaking of… I finished writing this post with my girls like this:

I realize this post was very much a “hi we still exist and in a tiny nutshell this is how we’re doing,” but I had to get something down. Perhaps when I’m done fighting this bug I’ll liven the blog back up.

Until then, how do you spend winter days?

If I am cooking, something must go wrong. It is a law of physics written in some book I skimmed over my junior year of high school. I am 27 years old and have not outgrown this law. Just the other day, according to my menu for Tuesday, I prepared the easiest crockpot recipe on the entire planet. I grimaced through handling of raw chicken, dumped and poured ingredients of a Southwestern flavor and was juuuust about to call it a day when I realized our crockpot lid was not packed with the rest of the crockpot. Enter law. An entire crockpot of ingredients, one of them being raw chicken, and no lid. I immediately texted JD, Meredith (who gave me the recipe), my mother who is currently sunbathing on a beach on our island that I miss and Megan, who loves cooking eight trillion times more than I. JD responded quickest so he won: foil.

The foil worked fine, but I botched something else up because it did NOT taste like Meredith’s.

I think if I wanted to, I could start a blog and fill a book with every single cooking mishap I’ve ever had. Recall here and here.

I started this blog noting the day. On Thursdays the girls and I scramble into clothes and head to downtown Salem for the mama Bible Study I’m in. Twice a month, all the ladies meet together for worship, sometimes a speaker. I haven’t not cried once. And I’m really not that girl. It’s just that on Thursday morning? Everything is real. I have time to concentrate on just exactly where my life is  and where in all of it is Jesus.

And when I actually have this time?

My insides explode.

For two hours I get to acknowledge the pain before a loving God without stringing cheese or cleaning up the messes that never end. Sometimes I don’t even know the pain is there until I’m surrounded by women singing raw before God.

And then I grieve.

Homesick for Hawaii. Mourning loss of friendship. Missing close ones scattered far. Exposing insecurity buried. Acknowledging expectations gone unmet. Loneliness burning.

Everytime, Jesus is so sweet. Nothing in my life changes but I am held. And truth whispered that He is Good and He loves me and I am not forgotten.

There are boxes unpacked in two garages. Still. One entire room is unfinished and so we have our furniture stuffed in the other room. Our cabinets are naked. No doors or drawers to cover exposed dishes and cookware. I planned two playdates and a dinner this week and each one was rescheduled (which is fine and just happens sometimes). We have friends but not yet like the community we left.

I’ve been here before. Isn’t this part of moving? But I am impatient.

Except on Thursdays.

On Thursdays I have all the time in the world because for a few hours that leads to a few days, I actually believe that God is Enough and Sufficient and Good. And I am reminded that I am surrounded by big love in small hands and a handsome man and that He has given me good gifts.

In toddler chatter and big strong arms and date night workouts and tiny kisses and help from my mama-in-law and all those amazing messages in different tech forms from friends I love… in all of it I know God is the giver and the gifts are vast and I am blessed.

Before we even talk about it, JD usually designates a Christmas card gallery wall with the first cards that come in. It’s about to get festive in this here house that Kenn bought everyone, cuz the cards are coming.

Perhaps more than any other year of our married 5, we are so excited to send Christmas cards. We enjoy checking in with our UCLA buds, childhood friends, family and this year, our Hawaii ohana as well as new Oregon pals.

Our friend Meredith, who knows what to do with a camera, took some pictures of our family while we were visiting in Seattle. By the way. I’ve been to Seattle five times in my life. Every time I go, the sun shines bright and I’m fooled once again into believing that Seattle is actually sunny.

This year, I’m checking out Tiny Prints holiday cards. They’ve got some gems!

I’m torn between these:

Tiny Prints has a ton of styles and personalized options. Definitely check them out – you can go here:

Tiny Prints Holiday Cards

What are you doing for Christmas cards this year? And seriously. About our address. Email me at annecgroves[at]gmail[dot]com to get on the wall! *wink*

this post sponsored by Tiny Prints. Thanks!!

i’ve been without internet for quite sometime…. hence the blog nap.

we’re waking up sunday-ish.

see you next week!

p.s. the new house is awesome!!