Kris Noorman | the journal

It’s here! Spring is here! Not that the upcoming weather is any indication (winter weather reports for freezing rain, sleet, snow, etc.), but it’s official and that’s enough to make me smile. And with the change of season, I thought it was time for a little hairstyle change. I’ve been letting my hair grow for a few years now and the longer it gets the harder it is to do anything with it since it’s so fine and lifeless. I visited my friend Jen this weekend and her shoulder-length haircut was so cute that it motivated me to go for it. So I spent a couple hours this morning trimming it into a long bob thanks to videos on YouTube for a little guidance. It was a little scary cutting off all those inches, but it was time.

Happy Spring!

I used to blog all the time. Now I find that weeks go by so quickly and I haven’t touched WordPress. I blame it entirely on Facebook. Sometimes it’s just easier to type a few sentence status than to sit down and compose a full blog post. But I love my little blog and I know I’ve got friends and family and others out there who would like to read my blog more than once a month.

So here’s what’s been going on the past month:

• New York. Jake spent a week in February in NYC for a conference for work. (He took the photo above.) He had a great time, heard some awesome speakers, met lots of people, got to work for a day at the Harper Collins offices, and even went and stood outside the Today show on his last morning there and shook Ann Curry’s hand. We missed him, but I am so thankful that he gets to do things like this in his job. He loves his job so much! Praise God for that!

• Sickness. How many times is our little family (namely me and the kids) going to get sick. We’ve had the horrible flu, terrible coughs, sore throats so bad we lost our voices, terrible cough and sore throats again. It’s ridiculous. We are so ready for spring break! Maybe that will give us a little reprieve from all the germs spreading around at school.

• Snow days. February was a horrible month for snow days around here. We had 5. This is the point in winter when I start to gripe about how much I hate snow and Michigan winters and how I only like snow at Christmas time. If you’ve read my blog from the beginning, I’m sure you know to just ignore me by now and block this paragraph out.

• Baby Jack. My mom and I finally got to meet our dear friend Erinn’s baby boy Jack. He is too adorable for words. I took a bunch of pictures of him during our visit and will share some soon. Jack is such a little miracle. They waited patiently on the Lord through some rough times to get to the day that Jack finally arrived. He’s a wonderful blessing.

• The kids. Both are doing great. We had a little meltdown the other day, though. They were arguing about something and were just so loud that I could barely hear my own thoughts. I stepped in and told them that I didn’t want our day together to be full of yelling. I said that our time together is precious, it goes by so quickly and they are growing up so fast that I want to cherish each moment we have, but all the yelling was making me not want to be in the same room with them. Chloe dropped her head and got sweet sad little tears in her eyes and hugged me. I think I made my point. Well, at least until the next argument.

• Project Life. My friend Heidi gave me her original Project 365 album kit. It was Becky Higgins’ first kit that she sold through Creating Keepsakes, I believe, before she went out on her own and came up with Project Life as it is today. Heidi never used the kit and realized that she probably never would, so she passed it on to me. I am actually really loving doing it. It’s weird because once I started doing digital, I really didn’t think I would ever go back to printing out photos again unless they were in the form of a photobook. But this kit is a lot of fun and it’s forcing me to stop and think and document our daily life and get prints made. I’m not doing a photo a day, just documenting each week along with pictures from that week, not necessarily one-a-day. Thanks again, Heidi. I’ll show you the finished product at the end of the year.

So, there are some highlights of what’s happening around here lately. I’ve really just skimmed the surface. I’ve been doing a lot of soul searching and thinking and praying, but we’ll save the deeper stuff for another day.

A couple weeks ago, I tagged along with Chloe’s class on a field trip to Charlton Park. I had not been there since I was young when our class went there for the day, so it was fun to see it again along with my daughter and her friends.

Some history on Charlton Park can be found on their website HERE, but the gist of it is that Mr. Charlton collected thousands and thousands of things throughout his life and he donated the land the park sits on to Barry County to be used for the community. Eventually, a museum was built there in his honor and several historical buildings from the area were moved there and filled up with his vast collections to recreate what a small town would have been like in the 1800′s/early 1900′s. It’s pretty interesting and fun for kids to see what things were like and how things were done without electricity and all the other conveniences that we have today.

The class split up into groups and I helped with Chloe’s group. Our first stop on the tour was the Inn, which would have been a stagecoach stop back in the day. The kids helped in the kitchen first by chopping veggies for some soup, which they were served later for lunch, and churning butter.

We got a little tour of the inn, too, which really makes me thankful that we live in 2010 and not 1910. The main bedroom upstairs (the parents’ room) had a vent that ran through it so that the heat from the kitchen oven below could come up through and warm the room. The kids got to sleep in the room with the parents when they were babies, but when they reached a certain age, they moved into the big kids room, where there was no heat except for hot water bottles at the foot of their beds. Brrrrrr! We were also shown the way the beds were made then (bottom right picture below). The guide said there were two mattresses – one on the bottom for support, which was filled with things like hay, straw, leaves, etc. and the top one, which would have had things like cotton and fabric and anything else soft. They had to be cleaned regularly so they wouldn’t get bed bugs. The ropes that supported the mattresses had to be pulled tight often so they didn’t sag. This is where the saying “Sleep tight. Don’t let the bed bugs bite.” comes from. Very interesting.

After the Inn, we headed over to the old one-room school house. Girls sat on the right and boys sat on the left. The kids all got to pull out their slates and do a little math and spelling and write their names. It was cute.

Then we went out for “recess” and everybody got to try out some toys that the kids in those days would have played with. Chloe had fun trying to get the big ring rolling down the road. It was tricky, but she had it going several times.

After the teacher rang the bell, we headed over to another building where a man taught us how to make candles. That was interesting trying to get all the kids to dip their string in the wax then in the cool water then back in the wax again until there was enough wax on their string to make it a candle. We marched around and around the table dipping in the wax then in the water and around again. I got to make one, too. Chloe’s looks more like a fat carrot, but she was pretty proud of it.

After lunch, we got to wander around the town and check out all the buildings. It was a lot of fun. The other mom helping with the group played “I spy” with the kids and they had a blast with that. So many cool things in every building. Such a huge collection, Mr. Charlton had.

It was a really fun day and I had a great time getting to know some of the kids in Chloe’s class, too. They are all calling me “Mom” now, which is so sweet. My friends all used to call my mom that, too.

I am loving this fall. It’s been so beautiful around here. The leaves on the trees in our yard are just now changing and haven’t even begun to fall, which means we’ll be raking leaves well into November even after the city trucks come around for fall leaf cleanup. Mom said we should have a leaf raking party. That sounds like fun. Maybe with a little jumping in the leaves and some cider and donuts for all our hard work.

We went out to my parents farm last week and my mom took some family pictures for us. The colors were beautiful, the glow of the evening light was gorgeous and we got some nice shots. It’s been several years since our last family picture was taken, so it was time. We had a good time wandering around taking pictures by the fences and the barns and the field with the sun setting behind us. Just lovely. I positioned Jake and the kids, took a test shot to make sure my settings were good, handed the camera over to Mom, jumped into the shot and she snapped away. Worked out pretty well. I may share some of the pictures once I decide which one(s) to use for Christmas card or letter this year.

Zach and Chloe kept wanting to pose for me after our family pictures were done. Zach learned about the American Gothic painting at school and he wanted to recreate that with Chloe. She could barely keep a straight face. It was cute. Then they wanted to pose by the farm equipment and Zach wanted a silhouette shot with the sunset behind him, which turned out pretty cool.



Jake and Tim messed around for some photos, too. This one cracks me up. Silly boys!

Well … I performed surgery on my iMac yesterday with the help of a couple tutorials I found online and my computer made it through with a brand new 1Tb hard drive beating steadily in its chest.

I’m kind of proud of myself for doing the research, taking the thing apart without breaking anything or tearing any wires (not easy, let me tell you) and getting that new hard drive in there. I use my computer for everything in my business as well as just personal stuff, so I was antsy to get it done since I have a wedding coming up.

I have to say THANKS to the two sites that were the most help:
TwistedMac on YouTube
Jason Tomczak
I found them both doing searches on Google and YouTube. If I hadn’t come across these sites, I don’t think I would have had the confidence to do it. They were both very clear with their instructions. The only snag I came across was that the layout of my hard drive is slightly different than what Jason showed on his site. Yikes! I panicked for a minute, but thought it through and took a chance on a couple of screws that looked like the easiest option and they were the correct ones. Phew!

My computer is back up and running and I restored the entire thing using Mac’s wonderful Time Machine program, which is the greatest creation ever, in my opinion. If you have a Mac with Time Machine, go buy an external hard drive big enough to hold a backup of your entire computer and run this program ASAP. Now. Go do it! I’m not kidding! You won’t be sorry, especially if one day your hard drive decides it doesn’t feel like working anymore.

OK, that’s my advice for the day: BACK UP your important files!