Hi Friends–I’m leaving this blog behind as somehow images have ceased to work, and I really want to be able to upload pictures here pretty soon! Please update your links and follow me to http://cityjennie.wordpress.com
Christmas is over but winter has just now begun. And we have less than 6 weeks left until our little Addelane arrives! I have huge running lists in my head and in the back of my planner of all the items to buy and tasks to complete. Its unbelievable that at one point in time I thought this pregnancy would never end, and now I’m a bit sad that it’s almost over. I’ve had her all to myself all these months, but once she’s here she’ll be everyone’s from now on and not just mine anymore! I might be a little on the selfish side here.
We had such a great Christmas season completely with a long visit in the Dallas-Oklahoma area. Daniel got to work a few days in Norman which let us stay away for over 2 weeks. This first week back has been a bit of a shock after such a long vacation–back to cooking and cleaning after being waited on for 2 weeks! We’re missing our old home but already experiencing the re-binding of our hearts to this our new home. I have to say, New York has the best of everything, but where’s the Panera already?!
This weekend started out on a bad note with Daniel exhibiting some fierce cold symptoms. So I played nurse today which basically just meant that I watched TV with him the entire day and kept track of when he could have more medicine. I decided this afternoon to make some chicken noodle soup and in the process of chopping an onion with my brand new super-sharp knife, sliced my finger open really good. I have horrible knife skills. It would not stop bleeding for hours, and I didn’t know whether to go to the ER or not. Anna told me to email her a picture so she could evaluate, but it wouldn’t stop bleeding long enough for me to get a shot of the actual cut. So I just put pressure on it and elevated it and it finally stopped bleeding to the point where I could bandage it. I got the bandage on just in time to see my poor, sick husband crawling from our bed to the toilet where he threw up. I hate it when he’s sick because of course there’s nothing really to be done for him except hand him Kleenex and a cup of water. I think he’s finally getting some relief because I just went in to check on him and he was asleep. So he and I are quite the pair tonight. I have Cloroxed every surface I can think of since getting sick is not on my list of things to be done before the baby arrives.
Tonight is my students’ Christmas Pageant, and they are SO ready! I can’t believe how beautiful they sound, and they just look angelic while they play. I hope that when tonight is over, they will also think that all their hard work was worth it because I absolutely do. I’ve realized more this year that I am teaching violin half the time and the other half of the time is spent teaching…maturity. Their growing process in both areas is a privilege to see.
Tomorrow is Oklahoma day! We aren’t leaving NYC until late afternoon, which initially disappointed me, but now I see as a huge blessing because there is so much to get done tonight and tomorrow before we go! I am conducting interviews for another strings teacher at school, and I have two to do in the morning. Laundry needs to get done, because I do not have such a sizable wardrobe as I used to! Maternity clothes are not that fun to buy. I did buy myself a Christmas dress today, though! Yes, it is black. What can I say? Black is a good color for me, it’s slimming, I still think of clothing in terms of orchestral usefulness, and I’m a New Yorker.
Daniel and I spent Tuesday night viewing the store windows on 5th Ave and the tree at Rockefeller Center and finished off the night with some hot chocolate, or eggnog latte in Daniel’s case (yuck), at Starbucks. Saks had their snowflake lights timed to Carol of the Bell, Cartier’s huge red bow in lights gave the whole street a glow, and Bergdorf’s did their windows with the original sets from The Fantastic Mr. Fox. I wish pictures were working on my site, but I’m sure better pictures of the Rock tree exist than the ones I took; but it was spectacular, and I think I could have stared at the tree with the ice skaters on the rink below for hours. I have some “I hate New York” moments occasionally like when I’ve been waiting for a train for 20 minutes or when it’s pouring rain and the first step toward getting anywhere is by walking. BUT, I have far more “I love New York” moments like when I step outside my school after a long day and get to look down Park Avenue and see Christmas lights on all the trees for blocks! Every street is a celebration of Christmas!
My students are finally getting nervous about their upcoming Christmas Pageant performance. I am spending lots of time consoling stressed out students, teaching extra lessons, and dealing with parent calls ranging from the very respectful to the downright antagonistic. I was blindsided today with a call from a parent with outrageous claims citing situations that were clearly taken so far out of context that I could hardly piece them back together in order to explain reality. I have given a lot of effort in my relationships with people not to have an attitude of defensiveness; I try to let hurtful comments go the minute they are received and not even allow myself the chance to be offended. I think I learned another lesson along those same lines today through the conversation with this mom: not to rush to my children’s defense in situations involving an adult. There have been several situations this year where children have told their parents things I have supposedly said that contained nothing but a shred of the actual encounter. Most of the time, I believe these were competely inadvertent on the part of the child, but the parents look so foolish confronting me about something their 7-yr old said I said. I love teaching, but it’s this part of it that leaves me mentally and emotionally exhausted because I often don’t know how to interact with these particular students anymore; do I continue teaching as I was and risk another call or those students dropping the program or do I distance myself from those students and risk having them tell their parents I am disinterested and still have them quit? Lord, please give me wisdom.
My girlfriends threw me a lovely baby shower on Saturday. It’s wonderful and strange to have bottles and cloth diapers and little baby hangers in the house! I am amazed at how well we have been taken care of through our community here. A friend of mine said recently, “God was a genius when he created his family,” and it’s so true! The Body of Christ has been the greatest gift in our lives. Our baby is being born into a close group of friends who cannot wait to meet her and stand by us as we transition into this new part of our life and marriage.
I like being frugal and somewhat of a bargain hunter, so naturally, New York prices on just about everything make me crazy. I’ve mostly just gotten over it, but then my friend told me about this mail order site she found, and I am in love! It’s Alice.com, and it has everything from cereal to cleaning supplies and toiletries with great prices, great sales, and free shipping. I’ve ordered twice so far, and because I’m sort of a nerd, I made Daniel go with me to the drugstore where we usually get all that stuff and compare our Alice.com invoices with the prices we usually pay. My total from Alice.com was $97.40 and if we had purchased it all at locally, it would have been $198.76. Although it has been a long time since I shopped for household necessities at Walmart, I would venture to say that on some items Alice.com prices are better. 18 oz boxes of brand name cereal for $2.79! And guess what? They have diapers too!
Our Thanksgiving was wonderful; we spent the morning lounging around our apartment eating a delicious breakfast of raspberry coffeecake, fruit, orange juice, and hot chocolate:
Then we went loaded up everything I had prepared the day before and headed across town to some super cool friends’ apartment to eat! Our plates were completely loaded, and after we ate, we sat on the couch and watched about 5 episodes of Cake Boss before we could fathom eating the chocolate pecan pie Daniel and I ordered from our bakery.
And today is another Monday, the first of three before we head out for our holiday travel! Christmastime in New York is stunning, and my heart swells as I walk to school and see all the lit trees on Park Avenue and the festive store displays. But there’s no place like home for the holidays! I’m looking forward to so much: seeing Anna for the first time since early July!, Panera’s hazelnut coffee and bagels, being with Daniel’s whole family in their big house on Christmas for the first time ever, road-tripping to and from our in-laws’ houses with Anna and David, making chocolate-covered pretzels with Chloe, playing Rock Band at the Kenworthys’, shopping in the pre-Christmas and post-Christmas “madness” (won’t be anywhere near as bad as New York shopping on any given day), picking out baby bedding fabric, and a million other things. Things our beloved New York just can’t offer even on its best day. 
I found out this week that a person in my parents’ close circle of friends was caught in sexual sin, and due to the way he was caught and his prominence in various ministry settings, has found himself in a very publicly humiliating place in his life. I won’t give details as to the situation, mostly because I do not know many details but also because I know his family is special to my parents and siblings, and perhaps enough has been said and written about the actual event. I give this background just to serve as a context for my limited thoughts this week.
I believe that above all, it is for this man’s good and God’s glory that he was found out. Secret acts of sexual sin are dangerous, despicable, and soul-destroying, and because they can remain secret indefinitely, they do their damage quietly. No one knows what’s going on, anything can be glossed over and hidden, embarrassment prevents accountability and confession, and the secrets take over entire lives. But as unspeakably painful as this man’s walk will be for him and his innocent family and anyone who chooses to stand by them, he has the chance if he’ll take it to repent and recover from what I am just assuming has been a long journey of battles and defeat.
For all of us, our walks with God are precarious. Not that God will ever let us go, but that no matter how long we have professed Jesus as Lord and walked in righteousness, we are all just one step away from turning on to a path that eventually leads someplace horrible. It’s like longevity in the Christian faith just means that we’re more prone to hypocrisy!
Christians are all lumped into the category of “Hypocrites” when something like this shows up in the church–like when Ted Haggard was exposed in all the awfulness of his sin–but the truth is that we already were hypocrites. And so is everyone else. We all judge ourselves by our intentions and other people by their behavior. That’s hypocrisy. We all hold noble beliefs and ideals we don’t have the strength to live out. Hypocrisy. But we can take our hypocrisy to Jesus and under His grace, we can be free because Jesus doesn’t measure us by how closely our good intentions match up to the reality of our lives.
Grace is something we draw on countless times a day in big and small ways. But to accept grace for ourselves and not extend it to others indicates an improper understanding of it. God will extend grace to this dear, fallen man, but he will not experience it fully except through the church. The church is designed for just this kind of thing! Church discipline is grace in action, and I pray he will submit himself to their welcoming arms and the tough road of grace ahead.
Daniel met a friend for breakfast at our favorite bakery and stopped back by home before going into work to drop off a pumpkin muffin for me. The day can start now. Yesterday was a marathon and today will be one too. We volunteered with our church last night at the Ronald McDonald House where families of very ill children can stay while their kids are getting treatment away from home. Most of the children we saw were clearly cancer patients, and these parents were barely holding it together. The Ronald McDonald House does not provide any meals, so once a month our church puts on a dinner and evening activities for the kids. We helped the kids with some coloring sheets and basically felt helpless. It’s hard to remember that the point of service is not so we can come away feeling fulfilled, but to just offer ourselves continually without expecting a reward.
Daniel is headed to Oklahoma tomorrow for a friends and football weekend. I’m very happy he gets to go as I know the times when he can just head out for the weekend are quickly coming to a close. So I’ll miss him, but 2 of my sweetest girlfriends are taking me on a baby registering trip Saturday, which completely overwhelms me, but I am beyond excited about it too. So many decisions! This baby thing is coming fast. I am just at the beginning of my 6th month and am not sleeping hardly at all because it’s uncomfortable to sleep on my side, impossible to sleep on my stomach, and the baby kicks nonstop when I’m on my back-not painfully, but just not good for trying to sleep. But, I know whatever discomfort I’m in right now will pale in comparison to those last few weeks before she comes. Last year I taught most of my violin classes on the sixth floor of our building while construction on the second-floor music room was underweigh. The students aren’t allowed on the elevators, so I would have to lead my group of 20 students up all 6 floors, all the while listening to their moans and groans at how tired they were, but it never phased me at all. As I climbed the 2 flights to our lovely new music room yesterday astonished at how winded I was by it, I was suddenly extremely grateful to have not had to see the sixth floor this year!
The end of the year comes so fast! The holidays have begun since I include my now two-days past birthday as the official start of the holiday season, and now we’re just waiting for Thanksgiving, since I do not include Halloween in the list of holidays. I really dislike Halloween and always have–every year living in Oklahoma, Anna and I would scoff at the huge stores or mall boutiques that would spring up and sell costumes and creepy yard decorations, then shut down November 1st and be an empty building the rest of the year, or worse, convert to a fiber-optic Christmas tree store! How weird are those things?!
We’re just fresh off of some family visits which were wonderful: we got to host Daniel’s mom and Patrick and my mom and Katie all within the span of a week! Great times. Patrick had never been to New York, so for the short time that they were here, we got to show him a few of the sights, mainly Time Square, and basically just wear out their feet walking up and down Manhattan. My mom and Katie had come last year at this same time, so we skipped the packed out, see-the-whole-city agenda and instead sat at bakeries, went out to eat, saw Mary Poppins (stunning!), shopped, and discovered a small museum. Now the weeks until we are together with our families surrounding Christmas is just weeks away, and the time will go by quickly. Thanks for visiting, fam!
It is a really gloomy day here, and while I have nothing against staying at home every day regardless of the weather, when it’s foggy and rainy, I launch into baking-nesting-cleaning mode. So at the moment I have my ingredients set out for a roasted corn chowder that I will be inventing in my crockpot, pie crust chilling as a start to the intense apple usage that needs to begin, a chair pulled up next to the high shelf in my closet so I can reorganize it, and the laundry sorted! It’s a great day for such things.
School has started, thank heavens. My new students are so precious, and they make last year’s second graders seem so tall and mature now. Perhaps I just have the second-year students well trained, but these new kids are babies. They do not listen, they ask me a million questions I’ve already answered, and they think their instruments are toys. But, they are completely excited about playing and compete with each other to come up with the best answers to my questions. It’s quite humorous to me. Here are my favorite quotes of the week.
“Orchestra is when we all play together and the composer moves his hands to tell us how fast to play.”
“Mrs. Kenworthy, did you know that if you ever touch the bow hair with your fingers, it will stop working?”
“Mrs. Kenworthy, guess what- today is our birthday! We’re triplets so we’re all turning the same age.”
“We cannot all play different speeds, so someone has to be in charge.”
I think they’re all going to do just fine, even the sweet little boy who started crying when I measured him for a violin. Apparently he got duped into playing the violin, and he kept telling his mom through his tears, “I said I wanted to play the drums.”
Scott’s been here a couple weeks now, and I haven’t been alone with my thoughts in days! Since he’s job-hunting and I am still waiting for my job to resume, we’re always together either hitting the pavement in search of a job or sitting at various cafes to fight the boredom of being in the apartment for another hour. I always pin very high hopes of endless fun on Saturdays, and this past Saturday completely disappointed. First of all, it rained. I have always hated rain. Several times in college, I would wake up to rain and decide I didn’t need to go to class that day. Once, I was on my way to Economics from Music Theory when it started pouring. I didn’t have my umbrella, and I got soaked immediately. So I went back my room and didn’t leave again the rest of the day. Rainy days are for staying inside. So, Saturday…it rained the whole day, and although we did venture out in the morning for a birthday party some friends threw for their 1-yr old, most of the day was spent in complete boredom indoors. There was nothing on TV, little food in the house, no cleaning or laundry to be done, and nothing to talk about. I would think of something to do, then walk to the window to check the rain intensity and quickly decide there was nothing that needed to be done that badly. We finally settled on ordering pizza and a movie-on-demand. We don’t generally like “New York style” pizza, but we had a recommendation from a friend for a place we hadn’t tried, so we ordered up a large pie, and it was awful. The worst piece of pizza ever. We threw it all away except for the three pieces we sort of nibbled at. But at least we had our movie to look forward to! No, that too was a bust. How we picked such a terrible movie, I have no idea because we were very discriminating in what kind of movie we wanted to watch. I Love You, Man was not a pleasant viewing experience, and although there were some funny moments, it was overall not worth the time. We felt completely defeated that we’ve lived in New York a year and a half and ended up with bad pizza–this should not still be happening to us! I hate to say it, but I think it’s back to Papa John’s for us.
Saturday: fail.
Thankfully, Sunday was an entirely different story with beautiful weather, a full day of activities, an awesome church service, and some Qdoba Mexican food–an equally lame, but foolproof dinner.