Lunch Break Rundown

I haven't blogged much lately, so I thought I'd take a few minutes while I eat lunch to give a quick rundown of what we've been up to lately.

• I crossed August off the calendar yesterday and had a mini nervous breakdown. The year is two-thirds over, my baby is rapidly approaching one year old, and while I didn't mind turning 31 in July, I'm suddenly feeling like life is just racing by. I'm recognizing my own mortality, or something.
• Claire is ten months old as of Sept. 1, and marked the occasion by starting to walk with the help of the little push-cart Kate used as she was learning to walk. Claire also pushes chairs around the kitchen for support. Those first unassisted steps probably aren't too far off!

• We got back from our beach vacation three-and-a-half months ago, and we're still pining away for it. Matt and I have always loved city-vacations and never considered ourselves beach people, but it just really hit the spot. 
• Kate mentions "our becation" every time we're buying yogurt at the grocery because we usually buy Kroger-brand yogurt, but since we stocked our condo kitchen at a Winn-Dixie, we bought Yoplait, or as Kate calls it, "the upside-down yogurt" (the base of the cup being wider than the mouth). She points out the difference every time.
• We had some good family fun times in August, going to the Williamson County Fair when my dad was in town a few weeks ago. There was a great interactive farm experience for kids, where they collected pretend produce, wool, milk, fish, and other farm products in a basket at all the different stations, then "sold" it at a farmer's market for a pretend dollar that they could "spend" on a treat at the end. So cute, and very educational—especially since we had just gone to the Nashville farmer's market a few weeks before. 

  

• We also went to the Treehouses exhibit at Cheekwood (a historic home and botanical garden in Nashville). They were very creative and fun to walk through. Each was inspired by a book. Our favorite was The Rainbow Fish, covered with CD and DVD "scales"! 

  

• I've been making these collage images on PicMonkey.com, a free photoediting site I discovered after Picnik shut down. I use it all the time, especially for work, since I don't have Photoshop here. (The funky sizing in the upper left of my fair collage is due to the image, not PicMonkey.)
• I get a lot of review copies of Christian books. Some get reviewed on Ministry Matters, and some I read myself. A couple I'm really excited about lately are Embracing Obscurity, an anonymously-written counterpoint to our cultural obsession with celebrity and self-promotion, and The Fantasy Fallacy, billed as a Christian response to the Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon but really more focused on the psychology behind our sexual thoughts. Quite fascinating. 
• My parents came to visit for Labor Day weekend. My dad helped Matt and his dad with the building of our new swingset, and my mom and I watched Steel Magnolias. I always cry when Shelby cries in the beauty shop and when Sally Field cries in the cemetery. Last week, I caught Stepmom on TV and bawled over and over again. Kate kept putting her hands on either side of my face and saying, "don't cry, Mommy!" I was a wreck. I think it's that mortality thing again.
• Speaking of which, I got a call from a colleague earlier today who said a 31-year-old Jessica Kelley (with the "EY") just came up on her prayer concerns list and she wanted to check if it was me. The poor girl is having open-heart surgery today! It's not me; I'm alive and well, just going a little crazy!