Hey friends,
It’s the last day of World Landscape Architecture Month, and to offer up my two cents about the profession I love, I’m sharing this recent episode of Women’s Work with host Tsh Oxenreider.
Remember four years ago when we thought we’d try a new family tradition? Lucie was a tiny little two-month old, and we went hunting for a wild Christmas tree in Mount Hood National Forest.
I don’t want to be too confident, but I’d say we found the recipe for our new version of holiday cheer. Though, spoken as an ever-learning parent, I’d also say check in next year to see how it actually pans out…with a toddler.
– Bethany, 2013
We made it twice with the ritual [2013 and 2014], then bagged it the next two years in favor of easier pickings at my family’s Christmas tree farm (when I was pregnant with Marion [2015] and then juggling two under three [2016]).
This year with the girls a little older (and with a borrowed pickup from my parents!), we decided to trek to the mountain again. Continue Reading…
Inspirations, Musings, Tidbits About Us
Come Say Hello! Drink Wine, Support Women’s Education
July 14, 2017Hello, Oregon friends! (And Southwest Washington friends…and really, any friend game to hop a plane and spend a half hour+ driving south from Portland to come and join the fun.)
Next Tuesday night, I’ll be speaking (!! — come listen and help me not be so nervous) along with D.L. Mayfield. We’re helping build a scholarship fund for local high school girls pursuing higher education. Come participate in a worthy fundraiser, sip Pacific Northwest wines, and hang out with other big-hearted people. Let’s make the world better together. ♡
I’ve been combing through stories and reflections in preparation for sharing a bit about my travels and the impacts they’ve had on me…and I found myself down a rabbit hole of old photos. Continue Reading…
Two months of illness in our house, a midwest funeral following the Cubs win, work projects piling high and time together running low…
Our family needed to run away, and we did.
(Heads up: get that scrolling finger ready. This post is 99% pictures, pictures, pictures.)
“Some sports are bigger than sports.” And that was true tonight. My Grandpa, a lifelong Cubs fan from Wisconsin, is on hospice at home. Since about game three of this World Series he has been too sick to watch, but my mom has been giving home the play by play at his bedside. I love you Grandpa. This was for you.
CUBS WIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
-Ted Continue Reading…
Ten years.
Time flies.
Twenty-two and twenty-four, we said absolutely yes. Come hell or high water.
Now thirty-somethings with two lovely little girls, ticket stubs from a trip around the world, friends on every continent, and more than enough memories to fuel our dreams, we celebrated and toasted and flipped through the photos. Continue Reading…
two(miniOregonians)
Lucie bumped, cuddled, elbowed, and queried my rounding belly for the better part of last summer, fall, and winter. She grew herself through tiny tot stages, adjusting and growing and trying to understand. We started reading I’m a Big Sister* shortly after her second birthday in September, watched “circle tub” water birth videos in the new year, and practicing giving her own little baby a bath during the weeks before my due date.
I credit her with so much.
Trying at two to comprehend the foreign notion of big sister and what such a life change entails.
Since I’d never had a baby sister of my own, I wished so much to watch the two of them meet and see her heart expand.
How special for Ted and me to welcome little Marion on a Friday afternoon and then have my parents bring Lucie to the birth center just a few hours later to meet her little sister for the very first time. There’s never any telling how something like that might go, but I had my hopes…and a camera lined up just in case…
Continue Reading…
BabyOregonian, Musings, Short and Sweet and Scattershot, Tidbits About Us
Mama Said: Wit + Wisdom
May 8, 2016Last spring, my friend Tiffiney from Wild Child Travels wrote to me asking if I’d contribute to a collection of short stories about motherhood. Something distinctly *not* “What to Expect When You’re Expecting.” Something candid and truthful and maybe raw with a little humor for perspective.
Of course I said yes, and then agonized over what to write.
My piece, “Spill It” (ironically submitted just a few weeks after Mother’s Day, while I was pregnant with Marion but didn’t yet know), delves into my personal story of breastfeeding difficulties with Lucie. Not something I’d probably splash across my blog…but a story to share with the right kind of audience. I’m honored to be included alongside all sorts of moms from all walks of life.
A year later, here I am with not one but *two* little girls, and the Mama Said: Wit + Wisdom for Mothers anthology is hot off the press and available for just under ten bucks.
~ Happy Mother’s Day ~
P.S. Sweet little hours-old Lucie is pictured on the front cover, and more pictures of us are peppered through the pages of Mama Said. This reminds me (well, not that I forgot, just that I haven’t had time yet), that I hope soon to get my act together and publish the new posts of hours-old and days-old Marion photos by the talented Erin Tole.
Hang tight…they’re in the queue. [Update: they’re here!]
xx
Bethany
BabyOregonian, Musings, Tidbits About Us
Dead Woman’s Pass: The Long and the Short of Labor
April 1, 2016Today: I’m choosing between a shower and a blog post. (Not what you wanted to know, probably.)
In my defense, many of my previous adventures in life necessitated the foregoing of showers, and I was always glad for the stories I lived to tell afterward.
Backpacking in the Cascade Range, for example. Or trekking along a certain busy South American route* where showers were available but, uh, less than desirable. (Give me changing diapers any day over dealing with those latrines.)
But anyway. The nitty gritty of unpolished living is something that we’re all familiar with, yeah? So, I invoke you to recall your own unshowered, perhaps sleep deprived days (and nights), and you’ll have a pretty good guess about how I’m getting on right about now.
I haven’t introduced you to my sweet new girl because, well, I’ve been living with my sweet new girl, and life often gets entirely in the way of writing about life.
But here I am today, trying.
Flashback to where we were on February 3rd (my birthday): waiting. The day before a due date.
Since early last summer, today’s hovered on my mental calendar as an exciting unknown: February 3rd. My 32nd birthday, and the day before my baby’s due date. Celebrations were in order, of course, but would they be for a girl in her third decade or a baby in her first days?
Would we be a family of three or a family of four?
Knowing there’s little use making concrete plans during such an up-in-the-air season, I didn’t really anticipate what today would look like until it arrived…but now that it’s hours from over, I can happily go on record saying it was just about perfect.
No baby (yet), but so very many favorite things from this life I love.