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The past few weeks Joshua has picked up some HILARIOUS qualities. It only seemed fair to share them with the world...

First, he learned how to move his eyebrows up and down.

In this next one, there's a mirror to my left and you can see Joshua hamming it up! He also recently learned how to look through his legs (so everything's upside down) and does it all the time now!

And I guess he doesn't do anything particularly funny in this next video, but it's a pretty good glimpse into how he acts normally. Which I still think is pretty funny. His new favorite food is bananas (which he hated for the first 10 months that I tried to feed it to him!) as you'll see... :)

on (kind of) missing winter

I never thought I would say this... but the other night, I started to miss winter.

Well, sort of. Let me back up.

Tuesday night, Brett and I were able to have a “Date Night In” and enjoy a live performance by one of our favorite musicians. I know that sounds like Andrew Peterson performed a private house show for us, and as cool as that would be, that’s not what happened. Instead, AP live-streamed a performance. So, thanks to technology, we were able to watch from our living room as AP and his family performed in their living room. So cool.

It was an especially moving performance as it was an Easter show and many of the songs had themes of resurrection… and it got me thinking about spring. (To be more specific, the last line of "Invisible God" was the catalyst, for the other AP fans out there). I started thinking about how spring is kind of an annual reminder of God’s power over death.

I think winter is pretty awful. Sure, there are some nice parts (I do enjoy looking at snow from the inside of a warm house, preferably next to a fireplace and holding a mug of hot chocolate), but mostly I think it’s awful. Things start to die – grass, flowers, insects. It’s cold – so cold that you hardly want to leave your house. And it’s dark all the time; it’s easy to forget what the sun even looks like. And that lack of sunshine (i.e. lack of Vitamin D), can mess with your emotions. It can make you lose hope that you will ever again see the sun. That winter will never end. Maybe it’s all just hopeless.

And then.

The snow begins to melt. You see a small patch of grass begin to peak through. Sure, the grass is dead but you remember that it’s there! You remember that it can grow. And then it does! Maybe you see a flower bud on a tree. And you hear some birds singing. Spring. The sun returns, even just for a short time during the day. But it’s welcome. It’s bright. It starts to warm up. You spend time outside and the fresh air reminds you that you’re alive. That things are alive again.

It’s a beautiful picture of the resurrection. A reminder that Jesus was once dead and now is alive. A reminder that Christians will die, but will come alive again. A reminder that God has conquered death. How sweet that we get to celebrate Easter as life is springing up all around us!

Every year, without fail, even years with particularly long winters… spring returns. Every year, without fail, God reminds us that He is powerful. He is in control. And He can resurrect us, if we choose Him.

But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. -Romans 8:10-11

This makes me miss winter. Not because I think winter is awesome, but because winter makes spring that much more magical.

Our Lord has written the promise of resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf of springtime. -Martin Luther

some recent photos

I realized I've been kind of quiet on the blog the past few weeks, so I thought I'd post a few recent pictures of Joshua...

I poked a few holes in the top of a coffee container (which I apparently didn't even clean out very well... it still smells of coffee) and found some pipe cleaners in the dollar section of the grocery store. Voila! A new toy for Joshua.

He really likes to make faces at us, and expects us to imitate him. This is one of his favorites. He's also learned how to move his eyebrows up and down, which is hilarious. (And yet to be captured on camera!)

I LOVE when I find him in the other room looking at his books by himself. :)

We've been drinking a lot of smoothies lately. Joshua really likes the taste of them... but hasn't quite figured out the mechanics. :)

visitors: brett's parents

Before we moved and when we had just gotten here, people would mention to us that living so far from family could end up being really good for your relationships with them. They said that while you may see your family less frequently than if you lived closer, you end up spending more quality time with them. I don't think I really believed them. :) But it seems to be coming true for us so far! Back in the States, we lived close enough to family that we didn't need to spend extended time at each other's homes. We'd usually pop in for the day (or even just a meal) with my family, and we'd spend a long weekend here and there at Brett's parents' house. However, in the past seven months since we moved to Cayman, we've had family visit for several days, a week, and, just recently, Brett's parents came for almost two weeks. And it's been so much fun!

The obligatory "watching for ____'s plane at the airport!" picture. :)

It definitely seems as though we've been getting a lot more quality time with our parents while they visit. Maybe it's because we know that time together is less frequent and therefore more precious... or maybe it's because we're eating meals together for several days in a row (and there's just something about sharing a meal together, right?)... or maybe it's because we don't have as many things/people fighting for our attention. 

Showing Grandpa the fountains at Camana Bay.

I don't know what it is, but I'm thankful that it's happening. One of the hardest things to consider when we were deciding about moving to Cayman was the distance from family. We were already spoiled in that we were within a few hours of our immediate families... and having a baby just seemed to increase our desire to be near to family. We couldn't bear the thought of Joshua not having the same kind of relationship with his grandparents that we had growing up with ours. We wanted him to spend lots of time with his cousins and make memories together. It was heartbreaking, actually. 

But... we felt that God wanted us to move. We were excited for Brett to be in Pastoral Ministry, we were excited about what God was doing at Sunrise Community Church and wanted to be a part of that, and, ultimately, we wanted to be obedient to God. We remembered Jesus' words in Matthew 19:29, "And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name's sake, will receive a hundredfold, and will inherit eternal life." 

So we moved... trusting that God would take care of us and praying that this move would be good for our family, in many ways.

Showing Grandma his favorite thing about our backyard...

...the lizards!

So seeing Joshua recognize and know his grandparents even after months of Skype-only interaction, watching his relationship with them grow even over a few days, and being able to spend un-hurried time with our parents... praise God. I am just so thankful. 

LOVED being chased by Grandpa!

Brett's parents visited in February, and we got to see prayers being answered before our eyes. :) Joshua recognized Grandma and Grandpa almost immediately (thank God for video chatting!) and was comfortable with them right away. He even stayed with them overnight while Brett and I had a quick getaway. (It was the first time I was away from Joshua for a night, and the first time Joshua has been put to bed by anyone other than Brett or I!) It was almost as if the distance had no effect!

At the Botanic Park with Grandma and Grandpa...
Little man on a mission.

So so thankful for this new home of ours, for our families coming to visit us, and for God answering our prayers. I can't wait to see how Joshua's relationships with his aunts, uncles, and cousins grow while we visit them this summer! :)

baby sign language

We've been teaching Joshua a tiny bit of sign language to help us communicate with each other until he learns to talk. I tried teaching him when he was around eight to ten months old, with absolutely no success. :) But since he's turned one, he has been able to pick it up so quickly! He can sign "more" (which sometimes functions as "want" or "again"), "all done", and can understand "water" (but doesn't sign it yet). I'd been thinking of teaching him something to communicate that he wanted help with something, such as the sign for "please". Today seemed like the perfect opportunity, since he kept asking me to open something for him (a container in which he was dropping magnets). He figured it out in no time.... and it might be the most adorable thing I've ever seen. :)

favorite places: rum point (and starfish point)

When Brett and I vacationed in Cayman in 2011 (having absolutely NO idea we would end up living here less than three years later), we did a lot of the "tourist-y" things on island. Because we were tourists, obviously. We took a tour of Stingray City, lounged on Seven Mile Beach, saw the Blue Iguanas at the Botanic Park, and spent a day at Rum Point. 

Rum Point was, by far, one of my favorite beaches from our visit. I spent the afternoon sitting in the shade, in a hammock, reading a book. My ideal vacation. :)

When we moved here in August of 2012, we'd mentioned taking an afternoon at Rum Point on a day off... and we didn't get around to it until just a few weeks ago!

We made a short de-tour on the way to a beach called Starfish Point which, you can probably guess, is a great place to see starfish. We hadn't been there before, but many people had mentioned it to us. And it was beautiful.

We actually didn't see too many starfish (although, I guess that's relative since I definitely saw more starfish than I have ever seen in my life prior to that day, so...) since we didn't wade out too far. But there were some people paddle-boarding that kept yelling "There's one! There's another! Look, here's one!" so I imagine there were a bunch out in the slightly deeper water.

Then we finally made our way over to Rum Point. It was close to 3:30pm by this point (since we waited until Joshua woke up from his nap to drive over, plus the stop at Starfish Point) so many people had cleared out. We found some lawn chairs in a nice shady spot and prepared to chase Joshua anywhere his little legs carry him (since that's his default activity at the beach... or anywhere, for that matter). And we definitely did a lot of chasing (to be fair, Brett did most of the chasing), but he was quite content for a little while playing with his toys right at the foot of my chair.

Then his attention turned to covering Daddy with sand.

Brett returned the favor, by burying Joshua up to his knees. :)

We also spent a lot of time in the water. This beach is really nice since it's shallow for quite a distance, so Joshua could walk around. He took a few spills and got a mouthful of salt water once or twice, but he still loved it!

We only stayed for an hour or so (I guess that happens when you don't get there until 3:30!) but it was such a relaxing afternoon. I have since learned that there is a "resident barracuda" that lives under the pier, so maybe I won't be so relaxed next time.

photo tour: guest room

It's been awhile since I've given you a photo tour of one of the rooms in our house. In fact, I've only given you a tour of one room... and that was almost four months ago! To be honest, I had been putting off any more photo tour posts until I had "finished" another room. I wanted to be done re-arranging furniture, hanging and re-hanging art on the walls, etc. Like I mentioned in the first (only) photo tour post, it's hard to make a fully-furnished rental feel like ours but I was going to try. And it's been harder than I thought! So I kept putting it off and putting it off... but I realized that the point of these photo tour posts (and this blog in general) is to give our friends and family back in the US a glimpse into what our normal, day-to-day life is like... and I guess that includes our un-"finished" home. :)

So... I'm going to take a deep breath, swallow my pride, and start posting pictures of our not-Pinteresty-enough-for-the-internet home for all of the internet the seven readers of this blog to see. 

We found our house on ecayTrade, which is a Craigslist-type site for the islands. When I first saw the ad, it looked way too good to be true: three bedrooms + an office, for the same price as many of the two bedroom places we had seen! And with Brett working from home, we were hoping to find something with an office. I figured there must be something glaringly wrong with it, such as no air conditioning or just really dumpy inside... but we had a friend check it out for us and she said it was great! (And it is!)

We feel so blessed to have so much space. I especially love being able to have a dedicated guest room so that we can host visitors. My mom stayed with us in January and we have Brett's parents here with us right now. It is really fun to have people stay with us in our home since we get to see so much more of them. (And Joshua loves the extra attention, too!) 

Here's a quick tour of the guest bedroom, which is on the first floor.

It kind of doubles as Joshua's "play room" a lot of days. One of my great fears about having kids was that their toys would slowly take over our home... and it's slowly coming true. So in the guest room we keep all of his books and the overflow of toys from the living room. 

The kid LOVES books. Sometimes he'll sit with me and read for 45 minutes! Often, it's the same book over and over and over again, but I'm just glad he's interested in reading. :) 

Which, I guess, shouldn't be a surprise considering how much his dad likes books. We keep Brett's overflow of books in the guest room, too. (Technically, this is his "Biography and Fiction" section... so if you come visit, you can feel free to browse the "library" in your very own room!)

This is also the part of the room that most screams "UNFINISHED!" to me... the empty white wall. One of the trickiest parts of decorating this house is that the outside walls are concrete... so it's a HUGE pain to try and hang anything on them. What I've been doing in the rest of the house is just using the nails/screws that are already in the wall - so just swapping out something they had hanging on the wall for something I brought/made. But this wall didn't have anything on it... and it has stumped me.

Here's a view from the other side of the room (I think the reflection in the mirror helps to give perspective, but the doorway out of the room is to the right of this picture.)

The room has a full bathroom connected to it, so does that mean I can call it a guest "suite"?

So that's a quick look at my very un-decorated guest room. It might not be the prettiest, but it's still functional... so come visit us! Maybe I'll rope you into helping me decorate. :)

the whole30

This is one of the rare posts on this blog that has almost nothing to do with Joshua, but we figured some of you might be getting sick of all the Joshua pictures. (Just kidding, who could possibly get sick of pictures of that kid??) 

Brett and I recently completed a 30-day diet/challenge, called the Whole30. For those who are unfamiliar, it's 30 days of no added sugar, no dairy, no grains, no legumes, no white potatoes, no alcohol, no processed foods. (See? I said "diet/challenge" for a reason!) I had been thinking about it for a few months, and ultimately decided to do it for a few reasons - I finished breastfeeding Joshua in December, and was looking for a way to get rid of the rest of my pregnancy weight; I wanted to work on some healthier eating habits; and ultimately, I wanted to get rid of (or significantly reduce) my sugar cravings. And Brett kindly went along with it so I'd have some extra accountability.

It was definitely a challenging experience. I spent a lot more time making dinner than usual (I couldn't have any "easy" nights of pasta, pizza, or take-out) and our grocery bill skyrocketed. But overall, we're glad we did it! I think it's something I might do once a year. (Brett is not sold on that idea.) I thought I'd share some of our favorite meals from the Whole30... all of which are now in "regular diet" rotation. :)

1. Pork Chili (adapted from It Starts With Food)
Ingredients:
2-3 tbsp. olive oil
1 onion, diced
2 green peppers, diced
1 lb. ground pork
1 can diced tomatoes
1 tsp. cumin
2 tsp. chili powder
1/2 tsp. smoked paprika

Directions:
Saute onions and bell peppers in olive oil until softened. Add ground pork; drain excess fat after cooked through. Add diced tomatoes and spices; simmer 10-15 minutes. Serve over bed of raw baby spinach, with diced avocado on top. 

2. Chicken Sausage, Cauliflower Rice, and Roasted Brussels Sprouts
Ingredients:
4 chicken sausages (Note: If you are doing the Whole30, make sure to find one that is compliant. We found this Chicken & Apple sausage at our local grocery store which we LOVED.)
1 onion, diced
1 head cauliflower
1 lb. brussels sprouts, trimmed and halved
coconut oil, olive oil,
salt, pepper, garlic powder (to taste)

Directions:
Heat oven to 425°. Toss brussels sprouts with 1-2 tbsp. olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic powder. Spread onto baking sheet and place them in the oven for about 25 minutes, shaking the pan halfway through.
Meanwhile, make the cauliflower rice. Start by chopping a cauliflower into similar-sized chunks. Dump them into a food processor and pulse until it resembles rice. Satue the onion in coconut oil until softened. Add the cauliflower, stir, and then simmer, covered, for about 10 minutes.
Heat the chicken sausage. (We usually dice it up and heat it in a pan for a few minutes, since it's already cooked).
Serve sausage over cauliflower rice, with brussels sprouts on the side.

3. Slow Cooker Pulled Pork with No Sugar Added BBQ Sauce
Unfortunately, I can't describe this recipe as quick or easy, but it is delicious! Find the recipe here.

Just typing this up has made me hungry! Hope you enjoy them!

playing outside in the "winter"

Now that the weather has gotten cooler (yes I know… most of you hate me for that comment), we have packed up the baby pool that used to sit on the back deck. (Okay, by “packed up” I guess I really mean “threw it on top of the never-used-and-super-gross sandbox next to our deck to collect dirt and rain water.”) Joshua still loves being outside, and we love being able to “confine” him to a small space so we aren’t constantly chasing him, so we’re still out on the deck quite often. And to be fair, since he recently learned to walk, he probably wouldn’t want to be sitting in a pool for very long anyway.

He brings us his shoes as
his way of asking to go play outside. :)

For Christmas we gave Joshua a toy lawn-mower that he can push around.

We keep that on the deck along with some balls and sand toys (mostly just to keep those out of the house, but he plays with them anyway). He likes to push the lawn-mower back and forth, and he loves to carry the ball to the side of the deck and throw it in the grass. And then watch us have to fetch it.

But mostly, he likes to look at, chase, and try to catch the little lizards that are back there. 

I’m showing my ignorance of reptiles here, since I don’t know what kind of lizards they actually are. I usually default to calling them geckos, but that’s just because they’re small. Whatever they’re called, Joshua loves them. Once he spots one on the deck or the side of the house, he’ll just stand there and point at it for a few minutes. Sometimes he’ll creep closer and try to touch it. Of course, the lizards always scurry away before he can reach them… I’m not sure what he’d even do if he caught one.

On another note regarding our backyard wildlife, a few Cayman parrots were hanging out in one of our trees for a few weeks. They hid themselves pretty well, but we tried to get a few pictures. Can you spot them? (There are two.)

It’s like an “I Spy” game. Brett looked them up online and apparently this sub-species of parrot is only found on the island of Grand Cayman! So it was fun to see them up close a few times.

visitors: my mom

My mom recently came to visit for a week - her first time in Cayman. It was so, so wonderful to have her here to see our new home and to get some quality time with Joshua. He warmed up to her very quickly - we were worried that he might not recognize her and would treat her as a "stranger" for the first few days, but even by the next morning they were best buds! I guess all those Skype calls and Google Hangouts have really helped him know her. :)

Brett, Joshua, and I got to the airport a little early so we could watch my mom's plane land. The Grand Cayman airport has a small deck above the airport which overlooks the runway and the pathway the travelers will walk to the airport. We also thought Joshua would like getting to see so many airplanes... and boy, were we right.

The plane he's pointing at is the one my mom flew in on.

And here she is!

Mostly, Mom just hung out with us while we did normal things - I think we even ended up at three different grocery stores throughout the course of the week! - but we did take her to do some tourist-y things.

At the Observation Tower at Camana Bay...

Standing under a palm tree in January... (When I asked her what she was excited to do while we were here, her first response after "hang out with Joshua" was "take a picture of me under a palm tree in January"... check!)

And here she is making progress on that first thing on her checklist...

We went to Spott's Beach... we didn't swim, but even just standing on the pier we could see several turtles.

And Joshua had a blast walking around in the sand.

Is there anything cuter than baby footprints in the sand??

We also visited the Turtle Farm (that was the third item on her list). No, Joshua didn't hold any turtles... but he liked seeing Brett pick them up!

We also visited the Botanic Park.

We bribed Joshua with snacks to behave while we were there. That's good parenting, right?

The Botanic Park is home to the Blue Iguana. Since it's endangered, there's a Recovery Program centered at the park. One wandered over to us and got very friendly.

Thanks for visiting us, Grandma! Come back and visit soon. :)