sockhandbigoldbelly

she's asks me a lot to put her socks on her hands... where she learned this, i dont know. she comes up and says 'sockie han'




this is an outfit i just thought was super cute. she wanted to wear my scarf.







aaaaand i didn't think it had officially hit huge ass belly stage, but as i can see from this picture... i was wrong.

*seth just saw this picture and said 'woa that looks really big, you dont look like that in real life' (and i'm wearing the same outfit.) so... i dont know. weird. we dont know how that happened.

30 - 31 weeks.


and two super cool pregnant myspace poses
which i think makes them even 'cooler'

killer or kitty?

so the other night we were going to bed and seth came in after going to the bathroom and said 'when i went past ara's room i could hear her snoring, so cute' .. i thought it was weird that he heard her that loud outside her room but i couldn't hear her through the monitor. i turned the monitor up but still didn't hear her. weird.... i went to the bathroom and as soon as i walked in i heard very loud breathing. 'shit' i thought 'there is a killer in my shower' ... (cause isn't that what everyone would think?) i slowly and very very quietly backed up, i've never actually been seriously scared that there was someone in my house, but i knew there was a man hiding in my shower. i went to our room and told seth he had to come with me very quietly, we went to the bathroom and the look on his face told me he KNEW it was coming from the shower too. it was NOT arabella, it wasn't me and it wasn't him. it was the killer. so bravely and kind of stupidly (cause how were we even planning on combating the killer once we saw him) seth opened the shower.

it was empty.

who was breathing so hard?

evidently, our toilet is alive, and is a very loud mouth breather.

thank God.

i asked seth how he was able to open it and what he thought was in there...

he thought it was going to be a kitty.

sooooo that must be the difference between us and why i get scared when i'm home alone and he doesn't...

i think a killer might break in, he thinks a kitty will.

bank on it

so we're switching banks.

literally EVERY person i know has told me to switch and its always been such a big hassle i've never done it, in 3 years!... but we're ready now. i'm pretty sure we know what one we're switching too, but id like to see if anyone really loves their bank and why...

just so no one tries to argue their case, we're leaving bank of america. satans bank.

please wont you be, my neighbor.

we have neighbors who have become our friends and tonight not only did she let me borrow a cup and half of flour and a tablespoon of baking powder, but since somehow my husband going to pick them up for me started her's on wanting brownies she ended up making brownies... and then showed up at our door with this



this is normally a super awesome thing for someone to do, but for someone to do this for a pregnant woman who had a sad day, its pretty much the best.

thanks erin.

water baby

we just finished playing outside... since we dont have a yard and we just have a small balcony there's not much for ara to do here, it is always like a billion degrees outside so we dont go out a whole lot either... but it was about 94 with a slightly cooler breeze about 1 hour ago so we went outside, i got arabella a bucket of water because as you all know i'm sure, she's obsessed with water... i thought she'd put her hands in it, maybe some toys....

7%- come on.

so i took this poll

Moms, when did you fall head-over-heels in love with your child?

It was love before first sight -- I fell in love during the pregnancy.

Right after seeing and holding my child for the first time.


Within the first few days after my child's arrival.

Within the first few weeks after my child's arrival.

Within the first few months after my child's arrival.

I have a strong bond with my child, but never got that "falling in love" feeling.

We're still working on bonding.

on babycenter.com

and my answer which was
Within the first few weeks after my child's arrival.

was only 7% of all the people who answered.
and MOST of the answers 46% and 26% were OF COURSE
It was love before first sight -- I fell in love during the pregnancy.
and

Right after seeing and holding my child for the first time.

i want to know if this is like first baby or what cause ...
i understand the right after seeing and holding it one, but the freaking 'it was love before first sight'.... come on. for real? you dont even know what you are talking about when you say you 'love' your baby before you ever have a child.

well i guess i really am made of stone.

rock a cow.

this is NOT her horse. this is her rock a cow. just ask her, you'll see.

nola chlo

on sunday we went to abc again.
and paid to get cups of water.

anyway, while we were in the service seth and i were talking (we had gotten there late so we didn't really know what was going on anyway) and i just felt this feeling of complete love for nola. like i knew her. now i feel like i can picture her, like my heart is longing to see her because she is the missing part of our lives. i've felt afraid of arabella not being my only girl but i just realized that although they are both girls they both fill totally different roles in our family. arabella started our family, she taught us so much about love by being our first experience of a love like this... and nola is completing our family, without her we are not complete. i love this feeling because i've just felt so crappy about being pregnant and so scared about having another baby and not wanting this, and all of a sudden i can't wait, i can't wait for my family to be complete and whole.

three

next wednesday is seth and my third anniversary and im writing about it now cause i feel all lovie about it now....

its weird because on one hand it feels like we've barely been married enough time to be two months away from being a 4 member family but on the other hand it feels like we've always been together... i'm sure part of it is normal but part of it is because we were together for so long before we got married. not dating, but together. i'm sure a lot of you know how seth and i came together, but i'm guessing many dont... so i thought i'd tell you.. lucky you.

seth and i met in 2001 right after i moved back up here from thousand oaks. he remembers meeting me at church, so if you're interested in that version... ask him. i remember meeting him at my high school. it was the last christian club of the school year, and i never had been and was not the type to be going but my friend carissa knew a guy who was speaking at it (turned out to be joel limpic, the brother of seth's now business partner. or maybe it actually was jeremy.. i dont know) anyway we got there late and missed it but carissa saw seth and said hi and introduced me, he was with steve anselm. we walked out and carissa was like 'isnt he cute?' and i was like 'sure' and she was like 'but he has this weird girlfriend he's had for like 4 years' and i was like 'oh bummer' thinking of him for her not me... i know we saw each other at church and stuff but the next time i remember seeing him was an evening service he was standing with jamie (which i didn't know at the time, but know now) and he had left over lasagna with him and i was like 'can i PLEASE have a bite of that?' and finally after lots of begging he let me have it and it was the best lasagna i thought i had ever had... again didnt know then, but know now that it was flo's lasagna! he had just had dinner at her house and then brought it to church... it was meant to be. after that its kind of a blur for a bit.... we somehow became really close, really fast... hanging out every single day. having josh perrish drive us everywhere because although i was 16 and he was 18 neither of us had a drivers license. we went to the same homegroup so we got to know each other there...

anyway it was perfect timing to be in each others lives, he had just gotten his heart broken by jamie, like BIG time and i was a complete mess. i had moved back with my mom because i had overdosed on tylenol pm and benedryl while living with my grandparents and as soon as i moved back i just started getting wasted and having sex and... then going to the burn service on sunday... smelling like alcohol. yikes. i had never known a guy i could trust, in walked seth, and it was so weird because he didn't have to do anything. i knew he would love me for the rest of my life and i knew i could trust him with anything. it wasn't romantic at all, it was just true real love for the first time. one night we went to uptown with danielle felger and amy stumph and probably other people too but somehow the subject of me liking seth came up and i said 'he's like my brother' and he was like 'why do i have to be like everyone's brother' and i was shocked...cause it had never even crossed my mind that we would like each other... i was crushin on luke so i was a little distracted...
we stayed friends, and we just ignored that comment... i wasn't really sure if it even meant that he liked me, i just forgot about it.

then me and luke went out. november 2001... this was our first trip down sucky relationship lane and it was fast.. only a month. while luke and i were together i went to mexico with a group of friends including seth and the whole time i treated him like crap, because i thought maybe he liked me and i didn't know what to do, it was dumb. we faught. i asked amy robinson, amy stumph, carissa and danielle what i should do and they asked me if i liked seth and i was like 'i dont think so, i just love him a lot' and then CLASSIC i love it amy robinson was like 'i think if you care more about what seth thinks, like if you get dressed and think 'seth would like this' and not luke, then you should break up with luke' and i just said 'oh' but inside i was thinking 'well of course i do that, but its not cause i like seth its just cause he's more important to me than anyone and he has good style'
so we came back from mexico....

luke didn't want me and seth to be friends, so i wrote seth a letter and told him we couldn't be friends. we were both heart broken and SUPER dramatic about it. awesome.

i went on a trip with luke's family to disneyland, our relationship was really awkward..i mean there was nothing to it, we didn't even talk, we just thought each other were cute and we kissed... that was it. he told me one night on that trip that he was 'falling in love with me more every day' we got home and he broke up with me... awwwwwwkward. i still liked him. i thought i loved him, please dont even ask me why. i dont think even God knows the answer to that one.

me and seth hung out after this and he was on vicodin. when seth is on vicodin he just gets really honest. ... and prior to this conversation seth and i had gotten in a kind of fight about abortion on the phone... that meant we had faught twice. we were sitting outside thomas odenwalds house. i was excited cause we could be close again so i said ' this means we can be best friends again' and he said 'no we can't. i thought you were the one, but things you've done lately have reminded me of jamie so i know you're not the right one.' and something about how we couldn't really be close either i was completely shocked that he had thought i was 'the one'.... i'm not sure exactly how it was immediately after this, the next thing i remember was that i thought i had a crush on seth, but he had just started liking bess! haha. i felt like i had to tell him i liked him because otherwise i would be weird around him... so at a show at slo nazarene i told him i had to tell him something, he knew what i was going to say and he even told me he did. so i said 'ok then i dont need to say it' and he was like 'i want to hear you say it' what a punk! so i did and the second i said it i knew it wasn't right and it was gone. i had liked him for like a week. after all this i realized that seth was just meant to be my very best friend and i knew that sooooooo many people were constantly coming to him with their problems and just taking from him. so literally one day i woke up and thought 'i'm going to be the best friend i possibly can to seth, and i dont care how he ever treats me' and that's what i did. he didn't remember my birthdays, he didn't really ask a lot about me but i didn't even care i knew he loved me and i felt like he deserved a really good friend that didn't expect anything in return from him. we continued on as best friends for a long time, always talked on the phone, i would spend the night at his parents house, we almost spent 24 hours a day 7 days a week together.

then... i started dating luke again. i know, what the hell? i had liked him throughout this whole time, i dated someone else named nick but i still thought i was in love with luke the whole time i was with nick and thats essentially why him and i broke up, twice.... so then luke and i became friends, real friends and would talk on the phone and hang out with seth, cameron, skye and danielle.... one night i remember us talking about 'dating' not us but just in general and i said 'i want to marry someone im best friends with for like 5 years' and he was like 'that's a long time' and i was like 'yea but if you didn't know you were going to marry them, it wouldn't seem like a long time'. the thought that seth was my best friend did not even cross my mind. this was 2003, towards the end of the summer. me and luke started dating at the end of august and at first it was good seth was also really close friends with luke so the three of us would hang out, i thought i was great... until luke told me that when we hung out he was the third wheel. he didn't want us to hang out anymore, and at this point luke and i thought we would probably get married, so i felt like it was more important to make luke feel ok. so seth and i tried to not really be friends... it didnt ever really happen. we went through phases of not talking a lot, but i'd always call him cause i couldn't live without him and he would be like 'its not fair to tell me we cant be friends and then call me' plus he wanted to respect luke even though he thought he was being lame. (in lukes defense seth and i were super weird best friends, holding hands, staying at his house, kissing on the cheek) but that's the only time i will defend him.

ok so anyway the next year 2004 i moved to florida. luke and i were sure at this point we were gonna get married. his mom tried to tell him i wasn't right for him and he got annoyed (but parents know)... if me and luke had an issue and i would tell my mom she would say 'what about seth' and i would get sooo mad.. seths parents thought i was gonna marry him the night they met me at his 19th birthday party, even luke's dad thought maybe me and seth should be together....

not me and seth.

we would randomly remind each other out loud that we would NEVER marry each other. just like 'i'm never gonna marry you you know' and the other would be like 'uh duh'. when i was in florida was the first time that actually marrying seth crossed my mind. we weren't allowed to talk and i just felt like i couldn't live without him, he felt the same... and i was just thinking about marrying luke and how i would be able to live my life without being close to seth... (i know, now its like HELLO freaking idiot) but we were a little slow. i called my friend tamika and told her how i was feeling she said 'have you ever thought that maybe you're supposed to be with seth?' and i just said 'no, i'll figure it out' and got off the phone, i was sitting by this little lake and i just had this weird feeling that was so real and it hit my heart like a ton of bricks and in my mind 'i'm supposed to marry seth' and i prayed. (seth hates this part) i prayed that god wouldn't make me marry seth.... and it was weird because it wasn't that seth wasn't more than what i could have ever wanted, cause he was, it was just that for whatever reason i wasn't in love with him and i was in love with luke, and i didn't want god to 'make' me fall in love with seth. what a weirdo.

i ignored it.

i moved back from florida and luke and i were great at first but the more i started to not really be ok with mercy church the more strained, obviously, our relationship became... he didn't understand that church isn't everything... i felt like if we were going to get married than our relationship was more important than 'church' not god, but church... so we broke up. it was probably the worst time of my life. i felt dead and alone. i didn't have close friends, i didnt have seth, i was confused about my church and luke was all of a sudden gone. i had to tell myself out loud 'get out of bed' every morning just so i would do it. i called seth after a little while. at first i was afraid to be friends with him because i wasnt sure if luke and i would get back together, but once i knew it didn't matter i was back to talking to seth every night.

it was the best.

this was december 2004.

seth was in seattle recording with jason, he came home in january and seeing him at the airport was the most amazing thing in the world. we hadn't seen each other in sooooooooooooooo long and we were free to hug and be best friends. the best.

we just hung out, a lot. and we started to flirt. weeeeeeird. then at the end of the day sometimes we would say things like 'i kinda liked you today' ....

once we knew we liked each other i wanted to kiss... but we both knew that when we did, it would be life changing.

we went on our first date on valentines day as friends with roger tompkins, margy, my friend erin (not one anyone of you knows now, yet ANOTHER erin), and jason. none of them spoke like a single word. so it was just seth and i talking the WHOLE time. haha. we went to vienni vai.

we kissed on february 20th 2005 and it was definitely life changing. i'm not a mushy person, and i'm not even very romantic, but that kiss felt like it made the world stop and lightening shot through our bodies... it was the end of the most amazing friendship and the beginning of the most beautiful life together at the same time.

the best part was that we kept thinking we were gonna shock all our friends when we told them but every time we told someone they would say 'yea, finally' uh hello???

from there we got engaged around june i think? i never remember what month it was.. haha... and then we got married september 3rd 2005....

i'm so thankful for seth, i can't even imagine life without him.. i can't believe i ever did live life without him. he has made me a better person in so many ways. the way he has loved me has healed me and changed me, has made my heart whole again. i know that there are so many people who wish for a love like we have and never find it and i am so grateful that for whatever reason we were able to find this. he really is a part of me, i'm not the 'soulmate' believing type, but there is no other way to describe what seth is to me... he is so much more than my husband, so much more than romance, he is the very best friend i have ever known and he has always shown me the truest love that anyone could since the day we met. i would not understand anything about love from God if i didn't know the love that seth has shown me. i never have to be afraid that we could be torn apart because even if romance left and one of us failed, our marriage is built on a mountain of friendship and a deep foundation of trust. i know who seth is inside and out, no matter how much he grows and changes he is so a part of me that that will never change.

and how funny that i married someone who was my best friend for 4 years without me knowing he was my husband, just like i wanted. ... minus one year :)

yankee

just a preview of what you have to look forward to on monday....

a baby woman.





a lil veg who likes to watch her shows from her box.



a muffin who loves the park.








a tiny gardener.



a fast runner baby





and a ridiculously cute little girl.









this one is my favorite of all.
seth told her to be careful with her umbrella.
from the look on her face,
i'd say she thinks he underestimates what a big girl she is.

'healthy milkshake'

seth and i have a new love.

we started making these 'milk shakes' that are just bananas, a little bit of cocoa, soy milk and ice and they are delicious....

THEN i discovered the super special treat milk shake.... which is still relatively healthy.... and low fat...


it makes about 2 big shakes:
chocolate syrup or powder to your liking
2 bananas
i think about a cup to a cup and a half of soy milk
as much ice you'd like. i like a lot cause i like it thick.
spoonful of peanut butter.

holy shit.

it takes like the most wonderful milk shake you've ever had, and theres not even ice cream in it!!! love it. especially because ice cream pretty much ALWAYS gives me a stomach ache, and i thought it was because of the amount i ate, but now i KNOW its because of the dairy... which i could get soy ice cream, but i dont like the taste when its plain ice cream and in the shake it doesn't matter now cause i dont even need ice cream! awesome.

try it, you'll love it.



* speaking of treats, seth laughed at me today because he heard me saying 'ara, i'm so proud of you. i love how you eat whatever i tell you you need to, that you eat all your healthy really good food before you have a treat like this apple' ... (cause she had just finished all her rice, beans and brown rice pasta in order to get the apple)
and he was like 'an apple?' that's a treat? and i was like 'well most of the time, i mean a super special treat is something crazy... but usually fruit is her treat.' haha i know i'm a dork... but i dont want her having so much sugar and i really was just feeling so proud of her because you always see kids refuse to eat stuff and saying they want something else and EVERY time she has tried this we stick to our guns and say 'nope. this first, then the apple' and EVERY time she finishes the good food and then all of us are so much more happy and proud of her when she gets to eat that apple, even her. what a good girl.

worship

this morning i've been listening to music on rhapsody.
at first it was just the usual, you know some good charlotte, smashing pumpkins, xtc, the sundays... and when i was listening to the sundays it reminded me of this super ridiculous amazing time of my life and i started to find music from those times. but the catch is that during these times i listened to nothing but the sundays, zwan, watashi wa and worship music. yikes. 'the times' were when i lived with a girl named skye. it was great... danielle felger was still here, all my best memories are when she lived here, cameron was always at my house cause he had a lil crush on my roommate, so was ryan ratslaff (random), seth and luke always hung out and we would all have pizza that skye made and ride our bikes downtown cause we lived 2 blocks away... we would watch movies and just always hang out. i worked at ahshe, i had just started. me and luke were not going out yet, so the shit haden't hit the fan. me and him and seth were all friends.

*i just have to say that right now arabella is just walking around the living room with her cell phone at her ear 'talking' and saying random names of people she loves like 'fo, kar' which is flo and karl.

anyway.... i started listening to matt redman and tim hughes, and this song called you said by the hillsong people... and as much as i hate what worship music is now, this music still makes me feel things. i mean its music, so thats normal... but i can remember the way i felt about God, and about Jesus... it was so real to me that Jesus was it, i didn't question it, i didn't wonder what else there was, i didn't care if i was wrong cause i was just happy where i was. i know deep in my heart that this is not what i want in life overall... but sometimes i wish i could go back to not wondering, to just believing something, it was so easy and carefree, i could have been completely ignorant thinking i knew it all but who cared cause i was pumped on church and tim hughes.... i just wanted people to get saved and ride bikes and be happy... yea i had no way to relate to anyone outside of san luis obispo, but i didnt need to... i was saved and my boyfriend was a worship leader. score. haha. but seriously, half of me is soooooooooooo thankful that i'm not just a sheep that follows never thinking for myself, that im not willing to just take the views that other people have settled on about God... but the other half wishes i could stop thinking about it and find security in something even though there's no way to know whether its true or not... just trust the people who were before me, the thousands of church members, the people who chose what to put in the bible, pastors. but i cant anymore. i dont even have it in me... the only way i will feel ok believing in God is if i find who he is to me, on my own... and i'm pretty sure this will take the rest of my life. i guess this is why everyone says ignorance is bliss. it is. as much as i hate watching hundreds and hundreds of people listen to one guy knowing that the majority of them will never question what he has told them, at the same time i wish i could sit there mindlessly and believe that would get me to where i wanted to go when i die.

i think its a natural part of growing up to realize that you dont have a true grasp on who the maker of the universe is even though you may have thought you did. to have the realization of just how small you are, but i know a lot of people dont ever go through that part, sometimes im jealous of that. its the same feeling i get about seth and i having fights... i know we talk and fight about things that some married people will never ever discuss and it would be so easy and nice to not talk about that stuff and sometimes i wish we were like that... but in reality i know that our relationship goes so much deeper than it would if we lived that way.

growing up is amazing, because you're not stupid anymore. but its super sucky at the same time.... cause life is all of a sudden crazy, everything that is important changes and the things that are important are more important that anything you ever thought was important before, its kind of a lot of pressure. i wish i still had that thing where whenever you feel pressure or stressed or like its all on you you can just say 'cast your cares upon jesus'... and you feel better cause you dont have responsibility anymore. haha. but really... now it sounds like the biggest cop out ever, but back then it was my stress release.

today i want to go back to 2003. i want to go to the burn service at the vets hall and hear luke lead worship, i want to walk to work downtown at 8 am and smell the coffee cake at lineas and know that san luis obispo is my town, i want to ride my bike with seth on a summer day and pass out fliers at farmers, i want to eat bbq pizza at the buchon house (even though i hate bbq pizza), i wanna hang out with cameron, i wanna lead worship at homegroup, i wanna believe everything luke or denise, or seth or cameron tells me...

on days like this i need to be with someone who understands those times, and since there are only a handful of those people, most of whom are gone or aren't close to me anymore that would normally be almost impossible, except that i married the one person who remembers it the most and misses it just as much i do. thank God.

and with that i will leave you with some images from those days...
thank god for friendster a freakin time capsule.