She gets glasses

Well, 3D glasses at least but now we know if she ever does need real glasses they'll look cuter than ever!

And a couple just for fun...

Yup - still has the "Joella factor" if she gets mad about something.

...a new creation: the OLD has GONE, the NEW has COME!

~2 Corinthians 5:17 ~
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!

Pretty self-explanatory... Initially I thought I'd trim a few inches off since my hair was getting TOO LONG. Almost hazardous when it came to changing dirty diapers. No, it's not the "mom cut" - I figured I might as well donate most of it instead of letting half of it go to waste. Just hair - it'll grow! Even better, turns out I really like it!

Ok, not trying to turn a verse into something that it wasn't meant to be but God has totally flipped me around this year and showed how how blessed I am. I feel like a different person than the girl who started this deployment. Good changes I think -- Hopefully Matt recognizes this wifey when he gets home in a couple months!

p.s. for those of you who are wondering, I DID run this by Matt prior to the cut. Good news - he likes it too!

My trip to the ER - nicest staff ever

I had some kind of weird stomach thing yesterday. Long story short, I couldn't stay ahead of it by pushing fluids & I got hives from whatever meds urgent care gave me. Ended up getting an IV in the ER last night so I'm mostly just taking it easy today...

Coolest part of the night was the staff. I have never been so impressed by an entire team of nurses / doctors in a hospital setting before. Unfortunately it took them 6 times to get my IV in, but guess who did it successfully? A RETIRED FLIGHT MEDIC! I personally thought that was pretty neat :) That's basically the reason for this post. They must have some well-trained guys in the military... (wink wink)

Drum Roll Please - Introducing...!

Introducing Emerging Eden: Modern Inspiration for Wholesome Living!!! This is a joint blog one of my best friends, Chelsa (who I've mentioned often), and I are working on. A little about her...


Check our blog out to learn more about us and our goals for this blog. In short, it's a place for us to share info that we find as we learn about it. We know that a lot of our friends & family want to check our personal blog for pictures of the little ones, and not necessarily hear more about fair trade, organic food, or Norwex (although no promises that those topics won't come up again)!

Keep in mind that we are just getting things rolling, so there will be lots of changes to come. We figured why keep people waiting on us to get it "just right?" It's never going to be perfect -- always a work in progress (just like us) so read along as we figure things out :)

Really?

Really it was THIS warm today...? Crazy!These pics are mostly for Matt. I've been a bit distracted from documenting day to day life for him lately...

Simplify this weekend

Last weekend I headed to the Natural Living Expo in Des Moines to check out all the cool companies there. I convinced a few awesome friends to go along and probably stayed way too long talking to about everyone there... (Thanks for your patience, ladies!)

THIS weekend I'll be running my own Norwex booth at the 2011 Child & Baby Expo of Iowa.

Sullivan Brothers Convention Center, Downtown Waterloo
Saturday, April 9th: 10am - 5pm

If you are in the area, I would love to see you. At my Moms' Morning Out group today, we talked about simplifying things. One of the things I love about Norwex products is that they do just that - simplify. We also talked about how less is more and how cluttered our lives can get. On that note, I hate to tell you to go out and buy more stuff, so no pressure whatsoever - just stop by to say hi and check out the other neat companies in the area :)

Tent Living [Part 2]

Welcome back! This is part two of where I've lived since coming to Afghanistan. Originally this was all going to be one post, but the more I thought about all of the quirks with the locally built tents, the more I knew it would need to be a separate post.

When I left off last time I told you about the tents that were built for us as part of the "Afghan First" initiative. I'm excited to get to tell you a bit more about these tents and why they were such a bad solution. At first glance they don't look too bad, I guess. Here's a view from the outside:

A few notes:

1. Watch your head going in and out. That door frame is about 5'5" tall. I was bleeding after several encounters.
2. What's with the death-stakes holding the tent up? In the middle of the night, when you trip on a stake, the thought that goes through your head is not "I better catch myself or I'll hit the ground hard," but rather something along the lines of "This is it. I'm going to impale myself on the next stake, it's going to puncture my lung and I'm going to be laying there, unable to call for help, bleeding out on the gravel of Afghanistan."
3. Can these things possibly be waterproof? The answer, we would soon find out, was a resounding "No."

At first they weren't too bad, though. We had a TON of space and with the moderate temperatures of fall the HVAC system kept up nicely. We were even able to hang rings from the center support, a great way to practice our muscle-ups!

Over time, though, things started happening. Pieces started falling off:

The tent also started breaking/ripping/tearing when helicopters would fly overhead. Granted, this is more of an issue with the German pilots flying too low, but these tents were built for the military which has..you guessed it..a lot of helicopters.

Not too much later the weather turned cold. These tents each had one heater that was not designed to withstand Afghan winters. Many nights the temperatures outside would drop to -5C (about 20F). Inside the tents the temperature stayed at a warm and cozy +5C (about 42F). That's a cold tent to sleep in!

Not long after that we started getting into the rainy season. The tents leaked. Badly. One such night my tent-mates and I became overly dramatic as we surveyed the damage (and came up with our own methods to mitigate the effects):

It wasn't long after the rain came, along with a little bit warmer weather, that black mold started growing inside the tents:

Thankfully we were able to move out before the snow collapsed them!

And now, after moving several times and enduring an Afghan-winter in an Afghan-tent with Afghan-mold, we live in much better conditions than I ever would have expected over here.

Our current setup is warm if we want it to be, cold if we want it to be, always dry, and we have plenty of space. I even have a real bed and space for a desk underneath. Can you believe it? It really is a good setup. Hopefully we stay put for the rest of the deployment!

Expo THIS Weekend!

I’m headed to the Natural Living Expo this weekend in Des Moines. Check it out if you are in the area! Lots of cool eco-friendly things and some fair trade products as well. I'm especially excited that one of my friends will be selling Malia Designs products there. All her proceeds are donated to Pearl Alliance to help at risk kids and women surviving from human trafficking / the sex trade.

Saturday, April 2: 10:00 - 6:00 / Sunday, April 3: 11:00 - 4:00

Polk County Convention Complex, 501 Grand Avenue

Des Moines, IA 50309

If you like any of the Malia Designs but can't make it to the expo, I have some products available also. I love getting the word out that we can help make a difference in social entrepreneurship with the power of our purchases :)

If you see me around, ask me about my bag (above)... one of my new favorite things. You'll find that I'll be thrilled to tell you all about it!

p.s. "Tent Living Part 2" coming soon!!!