So this is what it looked like...

...except it was moving. Just found this online.

Oh My Gosh--I Ate Sushi in Japan...

Y'all,*

First, and foremost, sushi in Nippon is like 100 time better than sushi in the states. I suppose that might go without saying, but I just wanted to reiterate...I am spoiled for life in the sushi department, now that I've had it here, in Japan.

Second: Last night J and I went on a date. Perhaps the first real date since Lils-a-belle was born. Though short, it was heavenly to spend time alone with my love. We went to a sushi restaurant here in Oyumino and ate all manner of lovely raw fishies. Here, you sit at a bar type table on a stool. The bar surrounds the sushi chef and there is a conveyor belt that goes all the way around the bar. On the conveyor belt are little plates with different types of sushi on them, just raw fish on rice, ebi (shrimp), ika (eel, yum, my fav.), maguro (tuna), tako (octopus) and lots more of which I don't know the names. And in the midst of a it all, is a lovely centerpiece...a tank filled with a school of large swimming fish. A lovely sight to see. Ah, the Japanese, always so keen to find beauty in the simple, organic nature of the things around us. So we're taking plates off the belt and eating away when the chef asks Jonathan, "Do you want to try the Aji?" Jonathan says, "Sure." The chef says, "It might twitch a little...is that okay?" Jonathan, of course, says, "Sure." So he turns around, grabs a net, throws it into the tank and pulls out a fish. 10 flat seconds later there was a fish missing the lower half of its body on a plate with a skewer through its little body so that it made an s-shape. Two lovely, ULTRA-fresh pieces of raw fish sat on top of two little piles of rice. And (I kid you not) the fish looked at me and fluttered its fins and opened and closed its mouth for about 10 minutes. Jonathan and I looked at each other, picked up our respective pieces of aji with our hashi and ate some of the most delcious, fresh fish I've ever tasted, but then, it should have been fresh. It was basically still alive.

* I am beyond sorry that I didn't bring my camera to capture this momentous adventure. Alas, we can't find the camera at present. Pray that it makes an appearance soon! Only 1 week left to document our trip here...

A Month in the Life

To say the the past month of our lives has been hard would be an understatement. And yet, to say that it has been hard would be an overstatement too. To say it has been anything less than wonderful and filled with blessings would be a lie. But I wax melodramatic and so I'll stop. Here's the run-down, pictures to follow:

Friday September 18: Leave for Atl! Stay with Joel and MS, see a sweet concert in their yard. Annie enjoys matching outfits with Uncle Joel (Go Wahoo's!) This is the one stop we make where we don't all share a room. Praise the LORD.
Saturday Sept 19: Buy a sweet double jogging stroller on craigslist. Merry early Christmas to the Iversons, Love, The McDougalls
Sunday Sept 20: Worship at Atl Westside and hear Walter preach about sex. seriously.
Monday Sept 21-
Friday Sept 25: Interview & Orientation with MTW. We are officially APPROVED! We also got to hang out a lot with our sweet team (lot the Gentinos and Goodriches!), the ones who will be joining us in India, who we'll share bread with, life with, tears with, laughter with, but again...waxing...stopping.
Sidenote: Annie HATED I&O and cried most of the day at the top of her lungs (for five days, from 9-6.) It was painful. Lesson number one in being an MK. Learn to be flexible. That doesn't mean, though, that it didn't break mommy's heart. I'll remember it until I die and I will always feel guilty. Also, we all shared a hotel room. All four of us. All of us. One room. It was hard.
Friday Sept 25-: Drive from Atl to Boone, NC--ended up being about a 7 hour trip in rain and fog with screaming children. We arrived late Friday night to share a bedroom at the mountain house. We shared the mountain house with 6 more Iverson siblings, five spouses, and seven (soon to be eight) grandchildren.
Sunday Sept 27: Iverson family departs, thus we no longer share a room.
Monday Sept 28: Jonathan takes our car back to Atl for an India partnership meeting.
Tuesday Sept 29: Joanthan returns late Tuesday night.
Wednesday Sept 30: We have a family day
Thursday Oct 1: We drive to VA. One of the most gorgeous scenic drives I've ever enjoyed in America. It was a beautiful, clear fall day and a beautiful drive through the country
Leave children (including a fearful, clingly, stressed-out Annie with Jonathan's grandparents who are also babysitting Annie and Lily's cousins, more or less the same ages give or take a few months. Annie hates it. Lily screams almost the whole time. Jonathan and I get to enjoy the U2 concert at UVA. sweet. And we're all back in the same bedroom.
-Tuesday Oct 6: After lots of perfect weather, sweet time with friends (Alison, Larry, Matt, etc) and family (Grandma, Grandpa, Matt & Carly, Liam and Hudson, Joel, MS, Uncle Mark, Aunt Marth and Uncle Ian and Gi-Gi!!) we leave VA for NC.
Tuesday night: Spend the night Charlotte with the Waters. See Pryor! Get the scoop on Jamie! leave the next morning for Savannah
Wednesday Oct 7: Stop in Hilton head to see the Worthingtons (love the Worthingtons)
Eat dinner Tuesday night with the Johnsons and a couple in their church, the wife is from India (she hates it) and she and her husband just visited this summer (he hates it too, now).
Thursday Oct 8: Finally return home

Whew

Thursday and Friday Oct 8 & 9: recover
Saturday and Sunday Oct 10 & 11: Semi-normal life
Monday October 12: Sara Beth gives birth to BABY GLO[ria]!!, but Baby Martha was sick and I held her all morning so Tuesday night I got sick and lay on the couch for three days while Jonathan took care of our children and me. I bet that was fun for hime.
Saturday October 17: Finally feel like a human again. Do laundry, change sheets, eat meals, hold my children, post a blog about that past month of insanity!

So that brings us up to date. Thanks for reading, and if you didn't, well, then, I'm not writing to you. I just want my children to be able to look back and know what happened to the missing month of their lives. As I said, pictures will follow. Until then, so long and goodnight.

Lily Rolls!

Lily is 2 1/2 months old, and today she rolled over! Major milestone, Lils...nice work. She was lying on her little jungle gym mat, staring at her favorite bird, when she started scooting. Scooting soon became a side-lie and all of a sudden she had flipped herself over from her back to her tummy! She so startled herself by doing so, that she flipped over again in a matter of seconds onto her back again and burst immediately into tears. It was sad. And exciting. And she was scared. And it was more than this little 2 1/2 month old could handle in less than five seconds. But it sure made me proud. Way to go Lils!

Mother's Little Helper

I never dreamed this day would come, but in truth, on this day, Monday, September 14, 2009, Annie Pie Squiff Iverson was a whole lot more helpful to her mamma than in the way.

Praise THE LORD! (or PTL as we say in our humble home).
Here are a few of the many ways Annie helped today:

1. She helped me do laundry by pushing all of the wet cloths I threw onto the dryer door into the dryer and then closing the door when we were all finished.
2. She put away all her toys when I asked her to do so.
3. She threw all the soiled dipes in the diaper basket (except the poops, I did the poops, of which there were many.)
   
4. She found all the cloth napkins among the other dish towels and rags and picked them out so that I could fold them together
5. She helped me make dinner, and an apple pie.

"Mother's Little Helper"
(y'all, this was my apron when I was little!)

Feet

Because I love them (it's weird, I know), and because these are particularly cute and beautiful, and because they belong to my girls, this post FEETures...well...you know.

p.s. No, both of my children did not break both of their legs...they're wearing babylegs! :)

Lily in the Water

Lily takes her bath.
This post is merely to document the fact that we do, (we promise, we do!) bathe Lily on a somewhat regular basis. But not that regular. Because seriously, she's just not that dirty!

Woolies

Once upon a time, my friend Jen, who is really creative, took some adorable pictures of her precious boys in their matching aristocrat wool diaper covers.

Jen has a real eye for beautiful things, a wicked awesome camera, extra cute kids, and the ability to keep her aristocrat covers in pristine, unpilled, extra clean condition. The lighting in her pictures was perfect. The boys were edible. Since seeing her cute post on her blog, I've wanted to copy it, but the best I could do was Annie in a Disana and Lily in an Aristocrat on the couch in mid-afternoon lighting on a pretty blanket that didn't cover the whole background. And while my subjects weren't the problem, somehow, my photo shoot of the girls didn't turn out quite as ethereally beautiful.
Sigh.
Such is my life.
But I'm okay with that.
And gosh I think my kids are cute, so I guess they sort of redeem the whole failed experiment.

Annie? Lily? If you're reading this one day, know that I love you and I tried really hard to make the surroundings as cute as y'all, but you make it kind of hard since you're both so gosh darn enchanting! Dadgummit!

Love you two!

Easy Like Sunday Morning

In a tribute to the fleeting days of summer, the last weekend before Labor day and the final hour for wearing white shoes, Annie and Lils donned their seer sucker in shades of pink and green this Sunday. Daddy looked as handsome as ever in his pink button down (LOVE my honey in a pink shirt) and khaki trousers. Mommy tried her darndest to look Springy and cute too, but alas, as is typical in our little household of four, Mommy is usually the least of these when it comes to cuteness. Sigh. I am humbled. Moving on.

Daddy & Annie sport their pink.
Don't they favor each other?

Some Cousin Cuteness in the mix,
My hand to the right, protecting and supporting Lils-A-Belle

Here's our little family of four.
This is now one of four photos we have all together since Lily's birth. Sheesh.

Last one, all looking at the camera! Quite a feat for our family.

Bring on the Autumn Chill! My favorite season every year, and I've been forced to spend the past three of them in ORLANDO! bleh. However, we'll be doing some traveling this fall and I plan on taking lots of pictures of the flora, maybe some fauna and for sure the places we go.

Shaving with Daddy