About Me

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I'm Beth. I'm married to my best friend, and he's pretty awesome. We have two equally awesome kids, Gavin and Sophie.

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Night digs and deeper thoughts...

Hm lets see. Not too much new stuff going on. Last week Ernie and I had our first experience digging razors clams at night! We love going clam digging and always mark the clam tides on our calendar. :) But we have always made it out there in the early morning, or afternoon. This time though, the clam tide was at 7 pm, and of course in January here in the lovely Pacific Northwest, its pitch black by that time! We took lanterns and our usual clam digging guns and clothes, and headed to the ocean. We dropped Sophie off with Grandma on the way. Sophie loves the ocean, and clam digging...however, she also loves to run straight for the waves and that would be a complete disaster if we took her in the darkness. Its hard enough to keep track of her when its daylight out there. It was nice to go just the two of us! It was sort of like a date...a wet, freezing, windy, dark date. I'm used to it being really cold when we go to the ocean. I wear my boots, and I dress really warm. However, its a little different when its night, and raining, and the wind is blowing the rain at you. After about an hour, my jeans were so entirely soaked they were dripping. Luckily, I was so cold my legs were numb, so I couldn't really feel it. Our hair was soaking and water was dripping off our noses. But its all part of the experience, so I didn't really mind. What is *not* part of the experience, in my mind, though, is not getting any clams. It was so wet that the sand was just muck. We'd pull it out with our guns and the holes would immediately fill back up. After a few hours of this, my wool socks inside my boots were soaked. Every step I took was a slosh. I can deal with all that, and pretty happily, when we're pulling up clams and we have fried clams and clam chowder to look forward to. When we're getting skunked, though, everything seems colder, wetter...the hours are longer...Finally, after 7 1/2 days out on the beach (well, a few hours, but like I said, it seems longer), we made it back to the truck -- luckily, we had thought to leave our battery powered lantern on the dash, otherwise I have no idea how we would have found it. I changed right there in the front seat. I was so soaked, I didn't care. And what we had to show for it was....three clams. Usually, with just the two of us, we will come back with 30 clams. That's a limit for each of us. You can't even do anything with three! So what we really had, was a long trip to collect crab bait. :) We also stuck really well to our diet by taking our freezing selves to Burger King for dinner. Whoops! Oh well. I guess we can't be as lucky every time as we usually are. And we had never been out at night before. At least its another life experience, right? I was pretty nervous about the ocean with how dark it was. I'm pretty scared of water that I can't see through down to the bottom. I can deal quite well with the ocean when we're there during the day. I can watch the tide, and position myself so I don't feel like I'm going to get swept out to sea. At night though, I felt pretty lost. A few times I felt a little panicky. I could hear the waves roaring, but I couldn't see them. I could see everyone's lanterns (a pretty city out there on the beach) but I didn't know how close they were to the water. I didn't know if I was walking in a straight line, or if I was angled, walking myself closer and closer to doom with every step! For this reason, I kept getting farther from Ernie. I felt like he was too close to the surf for my liking. I kept walking up towards what I felt were the cars. And he kept calling me back. I was too scared to go back. I told him I couldn't see the ocean. I didn't want to be so close because I didn't know what was going to happen. He told me he was watching the tide for me. He said he'd protect me, but I needed to stay closer to him for him to be able to keep me the safest. It reminded me that we need to be like that with God. We can get scared of situations and try to handle it ourselves. But all we need to do is realize that God can see the situation better than us. We just need to draw closer to Him and he will keep us safe. :)

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Hooray for my big girl!

Its a landmark week in the Dye house...we are pacifier free! If you know Sophie, you know what a huge milestone that is. Since she was a newborn, she had more pain than a normal baby. People told us "all babies cry", but this was different. It turned out she had reflux, and she had what we called her "pterodactyl cry". ;) And she did it for a good portion of every day and night. Medication helped, and what really helped comfort her (and save our sanity) was her pacifier. I honestly think that thing kept me out of the psych ward. It soothed her like nothing else could, and so for that I am perfectly fine that she was so attached to it. However, she's 2 and a half now, so I have been sick of that thing for several months! And she has held onto it quite stubbornly (which is completely unsurprising, given who her stubborn parents are). I found something that works...a sticker chart. Apparently something Sophie loves more than her pacifier is her Elmo stickers, so for every day she didn't have her pacifier, she got a sticker. And for every night she went to bed without it, she got another sticker. She was very excited to get to put each new sticker on the chart, and she has shown *everyone* who has come into our house her chart. :) So I am SO happy and relieved to say that after a week, I think the pacifier is gone for good! Hooray for our big girl. Now, if the stickers could just convince her to potty train...

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Best Motivation ever!

So I did the shred today. As anyone who's done it...or any Jillian Michael's work out, for that matter...its hard. Today, it was pretty brutal. I'm sick, so I was hacking and wheezing the whole time. Really, I wanted to stop. However, when I put the DVD in, Sophie got so excited about "essercise"! At this point she was wearing Hello Kitty socks and a pull-up. She started swinging her arms around and hoping up and down, then informed me she needed to go "get some shoesies on". She came back in her black patent tap shoes, so at that point, she was ready to work out. She did the entire work out with me..and when I say that, I of course mean a 2 1/2 year old interpretation of it (which looks super cute, and way more fun). At one point, she stopped bouncing around and said "why you sweatin' mama?" I told her "because its so HARD!" she said "oh no mama, its not too hard, you can do it!" Best motivation ever!! What a cutie pie. She had such a concerned look on her face. I asked her if she could do it, and her response was "oh, sure! Of course I can!" Which was just great. I didn't have the urge to quit anymore! And I want her to keep having that mindset of of course I can! I want her to get that from me! If I keep at it, and don't quit, she's going to believe that much more in herself too. So, as I said, best motivation I could ever think of. Thanks baby girl! :)

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