Thursday, December 31, 2009

sending a little rainy day optimism your way....


this morning is beautiful and sunny as all mornings are after a good rain. the sun seems to shine a little brighter, the dew a little shinier, and the air much fresher. how appropriate that the last day of the year seems to offer so much hope in such a beautiful and final way. sometimes you can only see the beauty of a storm once it's over, the strength of a hug after a good cry, or the renewal of hope after your soul has been bruised and wrung. though i do not have the talent or wisdom to pull you out of your dark storm, i am here with a little shelter and a little light.

i'm wishing you many beautiful dewy mornings.

Sunday, December 20, 2009

new nephew :)

benjamin elliot eubank

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

simple pleasures...


...are enjoying yummy peppermint hot chocolate while at work, and streaming christmas music over the internet. (peppermint hot chocolate shown, christmas music not shown)


:D happy birthday to my momma too! love you! :D

Monday, December 7, 2009

drizzle & tinsel


we woke up this morning to the beautiful sound of rain. mondays don't seem so bad on rainy mornings. :)

you'd be surprised how warm our house gets with this little guy.

christmastime.

our little apartment tree still works fine. :)


Monday, November 23, 2009

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

one sittin' & one kickin'



i like to sit. i like to sit, put my feet up and maybe slouch a little. that's the best position for baby kicks. i'm addicted to baby kicks. that's why i sit.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

new church



today was the beginning of the final pouring of the foundation of our new church. it's going to be so beautiful! i left a little something to personalize the left top corner of the future chapel. :)

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

inns & outs

i was downtown today running some errands for work and i was surprised to see that the mission inn had already started decorating for the festival of lights. i suppose it is about that time, the festival starts november 27 and more than 3 million lights must be strung up by then. i'm excited to show my parents how beautiful downtown riverside is for the holidays. :)



jack in the boxes!


yesterday i spent a good amount of time on the front porch reading and enjoying the fresh air. its so nice not to smell wildfires anymore!

Monday, October 5, 2009

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

fresh & pudgy


today a fresh & easy opened a few blocks from our house and i am so excited! i love their heat & serve entrees and quick lunch items. mostly though i love their grapefruit juice, they actually leave in the pulp! i'm a great lover of pulp in my citrus juices and until now, i've never known grapefruit juice to be sold with pulp before. i know it's such a small thing, but i couldn't wait to stop by on my lunch break and get some. pregnant women are easy to please sometimes. sometimes. :) i'm looking forward to shop here soon with my wonderful mil, i'm sure she'd love it. hear that mil?! if anything, it's a great excuse to have you come visit again!



speaking of pregnancy, here's my personal POV of my feet. i can still see them. also, here are my new shoes i've been wearing every time i walk out the door for the last two weeks. no really, nearly every time. i watered my plants in these puppies today. anyway, i like them. they remind me of peonies.

Friday, September 25, 2009

oh boy (or girl!)



today i'm 11 weeks pregnant, and as you can probably guess, the bambino is about the size of a small lemon. i feel about the size of a small lemon tree but am surprisingly a pound lighter than i was at my doctor's appointment three weeks ago. it's probably all that throwing up i've been doing.... :)

we're pretty optimistic about this pregnancy, i've never been farther than five and a half weeks before. my doctor prescribed me daily shots of heparin which thins my blood enough for the baby to get all the nutrients and yummy chick-fil-a i've been consuming, (mmmmmmmm chick-fil-a!) on wednesday i was able to hear the heartbeat for the first time with the help of a midwife friend at church. it was just a beautiful and amazing thing to hear, especially since i never knew if i would ever hear one. it's truly something i will treasure all my life. it makes all the sickness and painful shots worth it. God has been so good to us!

Thursday, September 17, 2009

more of fall :)


martha stewart gave me a gift today. yay! i've been waiting for the october issue all summer!


i planted some mums for fall.


i don't remember what this is called :( but i really love it.


the color isn't so good on my camera phone, but this is more burgundy in real life.

the office premiers tonight! :)

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

yay!

'the office' starts next week! woot woot!

Sunday, August 30, 2009

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

i can feel it, see it & taste it.


even though the days are still averaging about 97 degrees, i can definitely notice the evenings getting cooler. school is starting. touches of halloween greet me in stores. high school football is around the corner. blossoms are fading. the nights are getting longer.

every mid-august i start to look for signs of autumn. i let myself think of hot apple cider, roasted pumpkin seeds and beautiful grey skies. autumn is my favorite season, i love everything about it. i love the smells, scarves and coats, the crunchy leaves, the promise of family gatherings and peppermint, hot chocolate with marsh mellows, and shades of reds, oranges and browns. i love love LOVE autumn! :)

i remember living on my own in my first apartment in seaside oregon, watching the rain drip off an evergreen out my living room window. the cool beachy fog clung to the hills as i watched joey's breath puff when we were outside. that first autumn on my own really made me appreciate how beautiful the season is. now i'm excited for my first fall season in my new house! i'm excited to light some pumpkin spice candles, decorate indoors and out, and carve some jack-o-lanterns.

as i type this, i'm sipping on some trader joe's spiced cider. :D easy fall prep tip: heat some spiced cider and some lemon and orange zest on the stove for some yummy hot apple cider. it makes your kitchen smell amazing too!

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

lil' bit of oregon



this is my little '96 suzuki esteem, i bought her when i was 19 years old while living in oregon. at the time, she was my largest purchase ever of $4,100!

i took this picture today after driving her for the first time in 8 months or so, (michael usually drives her to work when he's not riding his bike.) she's got squeaky upholstery and is starting to get that "old car" smell, but i've been missing oregon a lot lately and it was so nice to be reminded that i still have a little bit of oregon left. :)

i took this picture to show how dirty and forgotten she looked, but it actually makes her look cleaner than she really is. all that it shows is the cobweb on the bumper but she's actually pretty gross. so... use your imagination. :)

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

i think...

...2nd day spaghetti is tastier than fresh spaghetti.

Thursday, August 6, 2009

how you, bien?

i've been pleasantly busy since returning to the sweltering heat of southern california. i say sweltering, not blistering because it's been very humid and hot here the past week. i was listening to the radio today on my way to work and npr was reporting on the upcoming flu season. hmm yeah, i guess summer is about over for other parts of the country. we still have until mid-october before we see any turning leaves. (not soon enough!!!) still, one must remain optimistic; i heard el nino is going to push a lot of rain our way later this year. :)

i've started running in the mornings again. i run around the city park near our house, it has lots of shady trees and wild bunnies. very nice. i'm at two laps around the park now and i hope to push to three laps sometime next week. i got the inspiration to run again after examining my sweet chicago calves. there's just something about walking for five days around a beautiful city that brings out that muscle definition i've missed for so long.

michael starts school next week, so we've been putting his room together. he's in the journalism room now, (this is his first year teaching journalism) and hopefully this is his last room move for a long time. we've already hung his maps and salvador dali posters, he just needs to organize his office and create a student work wall. i'm back at working in the church two days a week and am unsure about subbing in the school district this year. i don't expect to get a lot of work because of the current budget, but we'll see...

i've also been planning my fall garden. most of my summer flowers are spent and my vegetable garden is slowing its production, but my peppers and tomatoes are still going strong and begging to be picked. i've decided to plant pumpkins this year, i have the perfect sunny corner for them. i've also decided on bachelor buttons, alyssums and pansies for the front flower beds. i'm going to try forget-me-nots also, but it may still be too hot. i've been neglecting my plants lately for the most part due to the green june beetle breeding season. they've infested my peach tree with their pheromones and erratic flying. i don't know about you, but i don't enjoy sharing the same yard as huge lusty beetles. so, while my flowers have paled in the heat, my weeds have been flourishing wonderfully!

Friday, July 31, 2009

chicago pictures




to view our chicago pictures, go to www.flickr.com/photos/jennylynnbaker & click on the chicago & mobile upload sets on the left of the screen.. :)

Friday, July 24, 2009

chicago


we leave tonight.

Friday, July 10, 2009

bounty!



roma & cherry. mmmmmmmm, juicy juiciness!

Thursday, July 9, 2009

and, so...

thanks to those who have been praying for michael and i. we're doing better. when we found out we were pregnant this time, we tried very hard to keep it a secret for as long as we could. we expected that something could go wrong again and were prepared for it. however, our secret didn't last very long (3 days!) due to the fact that my body loves to tell everyone (aka, my boobs get huge!) yeah... people caught on pretty quickly.

this now being our fourth miscarriage, we've finally gotten over the shock. that may sound a little jaded, but we've just accepted the fact of it. it's another part of life for us now, forever. we don't want pity and we don't feel picked on, we're counting our blessings and agree things could be a lot worse.

physically, this one is easier to deal with so far. i'm not in as much discomfort as before. last fall i took a blood test and was found positive for hyperhomocysteinemia, it's a blood clotting disease that cuts blood and nutrients to the baby and it's a common reason for miscarriage. i've been taking a baby aspirin everyday for several months and now we just have to figure out the dosage until we finally get it right. it actually is a good thing i was tested for the disease because i could be at risk for heart attacks and strokes later in life. if i hadn't had a miscarriage, i probably never would have known.

we're in good spirits and are actually planning a trip to chicago at the end of the month. it may sound like an odd thing to do and at an odd time, but who knows what next year may bring.

hopefully soon i will be tied down with a slobbery stinky baby without any time or money for myself. :)

Monday, July 6, 2009

Monday, June 29, 2009

romans 5:1-5

we read these verses during liturgy yesterday and i couldn't help but think of a friend of mine who got some very bad news the other day.

"brethren, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. through Him we have obtained access to this grace in which we rejoice in our hope of sharing the glory of God. more than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us."

love you. :(

Friday, June 19, 2009

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

another thing...

...i'm working on. my sister gave me one of her old sewing machines so i can finally start making those curtains i've been telling everyone about. i've decided to start with the kitchen window/pass through looking into the den (it used to be the old kitchen window, the den is actually an addition.) i'm in the process of weeding my old kitchen accessories out and adding more black & white for a more french/vintage feel. i'll post some more pictures later when i've hung the curtain, my kitchen isn't clean enough at the moment to share with the world. :)


Sunday, June 14, 2009

bathroom redo for under $200!

i apologize for not posting in two weeks, but i have a good excuse. :)





Thursday, May 28, 2009

teri's baby shower!

maria & lauren, having the time of their lives! (note: big smiles & hand on blushing cheek. also? sleeping baby phillip!)

by far the best baby shower game ever - the onesie design contest! (we lost, but here is our beautiful entry anyway. the apple took me forever to sew on!)

maria's handmade quilt was a big hit.

my target bought receiving blankets? not so much. :)


hannah waits patiently for dessert. i felt bad for eating such pretty tarts. :D

Friday, May 22, 2009

summer treat



green tea mochis, so perfect on a hot day!

Saturday, May 16, 2009

the vegetable of my labor!


i wanted to show you all my first harvested zucchini before i chopped it up for my salad. :) i now truly appreciate how nature works and constantly surprises. all i did was plant something, give it water and it grew and gave me a wonderful (and crunchable!) vegetable! seriously, how amazing is that?!? last saturday i attended a composting seminar (with maria and dionne, holla!) put on by our local water district and was amazed how efficient nature is at recycling itself. did you know that the inside of a compost heap can get as hot as 140 degrees? all by itself! amazing! i can't wait to garden completely organic and have my own compost bin. i dream of stuff like this now, weird.


here's a zucchini flower at full bloom.


hmm, i think i'm going to try to plan my garden a little better next season. i'm having a bit of a spacing issue here.


grapefruits, ripening in the sunshine. :)

i wanted to show everyone that i'm very talentless in begonias. wow, can you even tell that it's a begoina? if you're wondering what i'm talking about, its that sorry looking one on the right. hmm, my ivy's looking a little bleachy too.

oh and sorry about the low-grade cell phone photos. :)

Monday, May 11, 2009

craigslist ad to cockroach...

you: asleep in my medicine cabinet.

me: tired and preparing for bed.

you: surprised and annoyed, escaped behind the sink.

me: surprised and annoyed (& totally grossed out!) called for reinforcements from the den.

you: probably forgot all about our encounter.

me: wants revenge.

you: will think you totally made bank with a sweet smelling "roach-haus"

me: is going after your family next.

Thursday, May 7, 2009

just between you and me, and everyone else...

i'm a private person. i guess that's why lately i've only been posting pictures of my garden rather than sharing my feelings and/or fears. it's easier just to write post after post about the same harmless things. with that said, let's dive in shall we?

mother's day is this weekend and lately it's been hard not to think about my future as a mother. is there a future for me? have i really been diagnosed or am i going to get another brutal surprise? i feel so dishonest sometimes when people ask when we plan on getting pregnant again. (plan? i had a plan.) on the outside i shrug it off, pretend that everything is fine and hand out smiles like candy, (but really on the inside i'm a melting puddle of insecurity and doubt.)

i'm hoping this is where the optimism comes in... i know it's around here somewhere. :)

Friday, May 1, 2009

mayday!

i thought i'd post some updates on the veggie patch since i haven't posted any pictures since i planted them a month ago. :)


here's the zucchinis. unfortunately i don't have a before picture but they've really been growing like crazy. i might have to try and- whoa, wait a second... what's that...?


(cue extreme close up) a zucchini! already?! mmmm, i can almost smell that zucchini bread baking...


i've given the tomatoes their trellises and the cherries have already started a few vines.  nothing to eat yet though.  :(


our peaches are fuzzy and numerous.  i'm going to need a lot of recipes by july, any ideas???