Rachel Callahan

Consider yourself carded.

Posted on Posted by Rachel Callahan Categories I would NEVER take too many pictures. . ., Newsflash

To All Who are Concerned:

Please do not be distraught over the lack of Christmas Card from our family. It is simply just one thing that I have yet to allow myself to take on the pressure of, and so I haven’t.

I have, however, compiled all of the Christmas Label pictures into a collage, as I did last year.

And that, I will now share with you, from the depths of my heart and blog, if not from the depths of my roll of stamps and printer ink.

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If you were wanting a comparison, here’s last year’s card:

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Merry Christmas!

A Christmas Story

Posted on Posted by Rachel Callahan Categories A Day in the Life, The Blissfulness of Life, Toddlers: The Experience

Last night at small group, we did our “Christmas night”, which always consists of studying something related to, well, obviously the Christmas story.

However, this year, Greg had the great idea of doing the Christmas story for the kids before they went to bed. Then Lydia took that idea and made it brilliant by gathering scraps of material and letting them dress up and act it out.

So, without further ado, I will introduce you to the cast:

Claire made a perfect little Mary. . . and even though we had multiple baby boys to choose from to be Jesus, someone wisely chose a baby doll for the role.
Benjamin and Nathaniel played Shepherds with the help of some Hallmark sheep to add to their authenticity:
AJ was Wise “Man” #1. . .
Abby was Wise “man” #2. . .
And Ali got the role as Wise “Man” #3 (which, by the way, is a MUCH better role than I got in the one Christmas Story play I was in as a child. I was either the Donkey or the Cow, I can’t remember which. I just remember the huge, stuffed, brown costume).. . . and Brooks was Gabriel:
Who knew we had such a shortage of men until we assigned these roles? Good thing Radford and Zechariah are growing up fast – we need them!

So. After getting everyone dressed, we handed out props. The Wise Men received their presents:
. . .and inspected them thoroughly.
You know, it’s wise to make sure that gifts are safe that you’re going to give a King. No bombs, poison, etc.

They also had wise conversations. . .
But then it was time to start the play!!!

As the narrator (Lydia) read, Gabriel came out and proclaimed the good news to the shepherds (and one wise man who was a bit early in her arrival):
As Gabriel left, the shepherds were SORE AFRAID (however, the wise man, being wise, was quite calm about the whole affair):
The shepherds immediately went to find Baby Jesus. . .
. . . and bowed down to worship Him. . . or at least one Shepherd did. The other one was having a discussion with the early-arriving Wise Man about what was a better gift: a stuffed sheep from Hallmark or Myrrh?
The wise men anxiously “listened” to the story, waiting for their cue to arrive on the scene. . .
And they proudly presented their gifts to Baby Jesus:. . .despite the fact that even wise men have wardrobe malfunctions.
Or maybe I should say, despite the fact that wise men especially have wardrobe malfunctions.
After the play, everyone got a turn to pray and thank Jesus for coming:And AJ’s little prayer hands during her turn were just precious.
And one more picture of (almost) all of the cast:
Encore!! Encore!!

Brown Milk

Posted on Posted by Rachel Callahan Categories Deception: A Parent's Best Friend, Utter Silliness

I had a random realization that I am getting hardly any calcium. Mainly because I’m not a big milk fan. I’ll go through spurts of liking it okay, but on the whole, it’s not my favorite.

However, I do love some chocolate milk. I just usually tell myself that it’s too fattening for regular consumption. However, since I need the calcium, and I got 1%, I justified that the benefits outweighed the calories.

I had decided that I wasn’t going to let Ali try my milk, because she DOES drink milk very well, and I didn’t want to “ruin” it by introducing her to a much yummier form of milk.

I didn’t know how I was going to address it with her (certainly not by calling it “chocolate” milk), but she thankfully took care of that for me.

Yesterday morning, I got our breakfast together, then poured her milk and my milk. I got to the table, and she pointed at my milk and said, “Mommy’s BROWN milk”, with an air of disgust.

Yesssss. This is going to be easier than I thought.

So I agreed and said, “Yes, this is Mommy’s brown milk. Here’s Ali’s white milk!”, and she was perfectly satisfied.

Last night, she asked Chris to get her some more milk. He went into the fridge to get it, and said “Wow, SOMEBODY’S been getting a treat!!”

In slow motion from the other room, I scrambled to get the words out, “DON’T SAY THE “C” WORD!!!!”

Chris: “Oh. This is YOUR milk??”

Ali: “Mommy’s BROWN milk.”

Another blown cover averted.

Thankful Thursday

Posted on Posted by Rachel Callahan Categories Thankful Thursday
Thankful Thursday is a weekly column where I post what I am thankful about that week, and you have the opportunity (via your blog linked into this post OR via a comment on this blog) to share your thankful thought for the week.

I have a guest Thankful Thursday writer this week!! My good friend Gina, whom I shared my graduation attendance adventures about on Saturday, is writing a very special Thankful Thursday post today:

This week, I’m very thankful for the work that God has done in my life over the last several years. I’ve had to depend on him to get through school. I thought I’d never make it to the point where I’d get my degree. This weekend though, I got got to graduate. I’m so thrilled! All the work and long nights of studying have finally paid off. I couldn’t have done it though without depending on God to get me through the tough times.

He was there when I was failing miserably at life and school after my grandmothers death. I’m so thankful that he allowed me to meet wonderful people that showed me how to depend on Him, and how to deal with the grief that I was facing. After I was able to deal with and get past the grief, I had to depend on Him to help me get through school. It was so hard there for several years after my grandmother passed away, and I thought I’d never get back to the point where I felt that I could get through school.

It took a long time for me to feel better about school after I’d let things get so out of hand. It took me longer than I ever would have imagined to finish school, but I finally did. I couldn’t have done it without God’s help. So I’m very thankful to God for helping me complete school. I graduated Saturday. I’m super thrilled. :)

I have watched Gina rise to the occasion of facing the challenges in her life and overcoming them. It has not been easy. Gina’s mother had a head injury before Gina was born, so Gina’s grandmother practically raised her AND cared for Gina’s mother. After her Grandmother’s death, Gina was left with the loss of her closest friend and the responsibility of caring for her mother. She has done an admirable job of this, and has managed to finish school while working full time. I am so proud of her, and am also so thankful for what God has done through her!
Gina blogs at Storms and Sunshine Amongst Life’s Uncertainties.

OK – your turn!! What are you thankful for today? Leave it in a comment, or if you have a blog, write a post on your blog and link it in with Mr. Linky (at the bottom of this post), and you can have the pleasure of welcoming my wonderful readers to your site!

To use Mr. Linky to link to your blog, just type in your name in the first slot, then copy and paste the URL of your blog post in the second one and click “Enter” – then there will be a link to your post from my blog! ***be sure to put the link to your actual “Thankful Thursday” post – not just your main blog URL.***

My Husband Has a Crush.

Posted on Posted by Rachel Callahan Categories Quirky quirky quirkiness, The Magical Perfume, Utter Silliness

We went Christmas shopping on Sunday as a family. We had pretty much finished buying for everyone else, but we hadn’t finished shopping for each other. Being that we are pretty practical people, we typically do this in a very unromantic style of shopping together.

So we went into Sephora because I told Chris that one of the things I had been thinking about getting was a new perfume, because I hadn’t worn any in forever.

I hate perfume shopping, because your nose is completely fried after smelling the fifth scent.

However, Sephora has these little containers of coffee beans that you smell to “rejuvenate” your smell buds, or smell receptors, or whatever they’re called. But I don’t think they helped.

Anyway, as we’re walking around smelling perfumes and trying to keep Ali from breaking any bottles and dumping the contents over her head, Chris mentions that there is this particular perfume that he will smell five or six times a year from a girl walking by him that just gives him the warm fuzzies.

He has a major crush.

So naturally, I must find this perfume that my husband gets tinglies from. So we set off in search of this mysterious aroma. A girl came over to help us, and Chris very hilariously tried to “explain” the smell to her, using completely unintelligible analogies such as musical pitches and weight.

We left the store unsuccessfully and quietly after Ali dumped out a whole container of the little sample papers (which I DID pick up, of course).

Since he catches a whiff of his crush aroma 5 or 6 times a year, he decided that it must be a pretty popular fragrance, so he did a search on the internet for the top 25 fragrances. Then, on Monday during his lunch break, he proceeded to Belk, with list in hand.

Apparently he had two girls helping him (impressed that he was so intent on buying his wife a fragrance). He even got a whole chemistry lesson from one of them. He informed me when he got home that men typically like perfumes with musk in them. He thought this sounded like something you would use to attract animals you were trying to hunt, like deer pee.

So women, if your husband is a hunter, just go blot on some of that deer pee for your next special date.

However, he still had no luck.

After discussing the ages of the girls on whom he had smelled this delightful fragrance (yes, his crush is so intense that he actually remembered the complete strangers that were wearing it), we decided that the next course of action should be a visit to Bath and Body Works. According to him, they tended to be in the 18-25 year old category, so it makes sense that they might wear less expensive fragrances.

Which is fine with me, because “real” perfumes usually have too strong of an overtone for my tastes.

So, he tried that yesterday.

Still no luck yet, but he thinks he’s getting closer. And now that he’s started this search, he’s pretty determined to make me into his dream smell.

Hopefully we will find this magical smell before Christmas.

Dinnertime Conversations

Posted on Posted by Rachel Callahan Categories Quirky quirky quirkiness, Utter Silliness

There have always been a couple of conversations that come up at our family dinners that probably shouldn’t. I don’t know why, but they just do.

For instance, when MY family gets together for dinner, whether it is a holiday or not, the conversation ALWAYS ends up at poop somewhere during the meal. And if it is a really special dinner, maybe puke will come up also. Of course, both became even more frequent once we had babies to provide more fodder for the conversation topic.

And at Chris’ family, from the time that Chris and I were dating, at every Christmas dinner someone would always nonchalantly say, “Did you know that Cinnamon is an aphrodisiac?”. It was always someone different from year to year, including Chris’ 80+ year old Grandma one time.

And I seemed to be the only one that noticed the annual recurrence of this question. It was somewhat twilight-zone-ish: Someone would bring it up, and then I would try to convince them that we talked about this very same thing last Christmas, and they would look at me with blank stares.

Come to think of it, maybe the joke was on me.

So now you know what conversations I have to look forward to next week (and what conversations YOU have to look forward to if you’re visiting our family – ahem, Leanna). Are our families the only ones with weird dinnertime conversations?

Her Facial Recognition Software is Developing Well

Posted on Posted by Rachel Callahan Categories Toddlers: The Experience, Utter Silliness

Ali has recently begun to point out people that look like people that she knows. Such as if she sees someone with straight red hair, she always points and excitedly says, “Kristin!!”, who is her favorite church nursery worker. Or if she sees someone with straight blonde hair, she says, “Amy!!”, one of my lifegroup girls.

I can almost always figure out how she is coming to her conclusion. A blonde toddler = Donovan; a blonde little boy = Isaac, A man with a beard could be Daddy or Pop, depending on their age, and on and on. . . but she can always see someone in everyone.

However, she had one today that cracked me up. Now I’m not going to dig myself into a hole and say that I don’t see any similarities, but regardless of similarities or lack of similarities, I’m pretty sure that ANY man would be happy with this comparison. She saw a magazine cover at the bookstore, and immediately decided and was VERY INSISTENT that the person on the front cover was one of her buddies at work, Kirk:

Hmm. . . is it the smile? At any rate, I think that Kirk can rest assured that Ali likes him. . .

If you want to put your order in for your “look-alike”, let me know who you’d like it to be, and I’ll try to subconsciously plant it in Ali’s mind so as to give you a Tom Cruise sized ego boost.

Jingle Bell Rock

Posted on Posted by Rachel Callahan Categories A Day in the Life, I would NEVER take too many pictures. . ., The Blissfulness of Life

Despite everything else going on in our lives right now, we are working fervently to make the Christmas season magical and special for Ali. And so far, she absolutely adores it. So much so that were it not for her birthday two weeks after Christmas, I would worry that she would go into a Post Christmas Depression much, much worse than her Post Thanksgiving Trauma.

So we have had a busy week of many Christmas activities. Lest you think that we are the only ones in the Christmas Spirit, we saw this lady in Sears today:
As best as I can tell, that is a hairnet made out of Christmas bows. It was. . . wow. By the way, is it insensitive that I take pictures of complete strangers and share them with you?

But besides that, here is a tour de Callahan Christmas week:

Amanda came over to kickstart me into wrapping presents. I made labels, as is tradition. Everyone got a unique picture of Ali on their label:
And although Ali was more understanding that I thought she would be about the whole present-wrapping thing, Oreo was just about as un-understanding as always:
But I managed to get about a third of the presents wrapped in three and a half hours (sigh. So much more to do). Here’s what they look like so far:
Then on Thursday, AJ and Ashley came over and we made Christmas cards with one of the girl’s favorite toys: Shapes. I got a set of Snowman shapes, glittery letters, and backing. The table started out looking like this:
And ended up being so chaotic that it never even crossed my mind to get a picture of it before we frantically cleaned it up. And you know how over-photographical I am. It was THAT bad.

Anyway, the girls had MUCH fun, and we managed to get several cards made. Unfortunately, though, Ali got very attached to her cards and was quite insistent on NOT giving Daddy his card when he came home. “Ali hold it!! Ali hold it!!”

I tried to use it as an opportunity to talk with her about how we give gifts to other people at Christmas because Jesus was given to us, but not surprisingly, it didn’t budge her almost-two-year-old-resolve.

But here’s the picture of Daddy’s Ali’s card:
My favorite card was the last one. It was the last one because she was done with cards. She wanted to spread all of the shapes (pictured previously in nice neat piles) all over the table. No more with sticking them on the cards. Anyway, I was trying to bribe her to finish up Gramamma and Pop’s card by putting their bird on there, so I said “OK – you can have these shapes if you will put the bird on there!”. She took the bird, stuck it on the card haughtily and quickly, and dove into the piles that I was trying to keep her from.

And so, the bird is divebombing Gramamma quite determinedly:
I can’t show you the rest of the cards because she hasn’t given them out yet. Here’s hoping that she will give them out.

But here is AJ proudly looking at one of her cards, but smartly keeping it from the camera shot so as not to ruin any surprises:
And Ali holding Gramamma and Pop’s violent-Cardinal card:
On to more festivities. Ali is a COMPLETE and utter Christmas Light Junkie. If we are out in the car past dark, there is a steady stream of “SeeMoreKissmasLights SeeMoreKissmasLights SeeMoreKissmasLights SeeMoreKissmasLights SeeMoreKissmasLights” coming from the backseat. If we see a house with Christmas lights, the silence lasts about half a second – we have not even passed the house – before the stream starts again.

So we took her to Zoolight Safari – to Christmas light heaven.
We went with the Blevins’ and Andrews’ Mothers and Children (the Daddies were out of town), so we had three Mommies, eight children, one female family friend, and one Daddy. Chris commented that we looked like a happy “little” Mormon family.

Here are the four oldest kiddos having the time of their lives:
And the next two kiddos “staying warm”. At least that’s the line that Nathaniel tried on Ali when he went in for the hug and kiss.
Of course, they were just as taken with the dark fish tank as with the lights:
It was quite beautiful, and we may go back again! Hopefully when it is WARMER.
I’m sure we’ll have more festivities and adventures this week, so I’ll keep you posted! And don’t forget to weigh in on my anonymous stranger pictures: insensitive or fun?? Or both? :D

A Visit to Ye Olde Alma Mater. . . and other adventures along the way.

Posted on Posted by Rachel Callahan Categories I'm a Glutton for Adventure, Newsflash, Utter Silliness

I went to Gina’s graduation at UAB today. Parking was nuts – I had to park several blocks away. But, had I not, I would have never known that Snoop Dogg (sp?) Had a family member graduating from UAB! I walked in with him and his family:
I wish I had a better picture so that you could truly experience the full glory of his full length fur coat AND fur pants that went with his white top had so well. But, Chris told me to be very careful going downtown alone, and I figured that it wouldn’t fit into that “very careful” parameter to walk up to him and say, “Excuse me sir, but you look just like the violent, pot-smoking, womanizing rap star know as Snoop Dogg. Would you mind if I took your picture so that I can post it on my blog?”.

No, that would never do. So I just hurried on in front of him, then took a picture with my zoom from waaaay at the top of the stairs of Bartow Arena.

So once I got inside, I was sitting there reminiscing. It was five years ago today that it was my turn to graduate, getting the same good ole’ accounting degree that Gina was receiving. FIVE YEARS. Wow, I’m old.

Anyway, this especially reminded me of my graduation:
I remember looking up and seeing all of those balloons. It doesn’t matter if it’s Kindergarten graduation or Ph.D graduation, balloons are always exciting!!

So after much searching and photographing the wrong girl a couple of times, I finally found Gina with my handy 15x zoom:
Since I had a good angle to take pictures for her, I thought I’d get a few. However, she always looked unhappy to be there. . . . . . or ticked at the world. . . oh yeah . . . and I didn’t feel bad when I got bored and sleepy, because she was doing that in half my pictures too. Here it comes. . .
Full blown yawn, even while clapping!
OK. So enough of making fun of Gina. I really am super, super proud of her – she worked very hard for this!

More reminiscing. All of the deans in their fancy dresses:
Oh and the program. After Gina walked through, I spent the rest of the individual graduate announcements perusing it. Especially the names of the thesises. Theses? Thesi? Whatever the plural of Thesis is. Obviously I never got to the level of college where I had the opportunity to use the plural of the term “Thesis”.

So 99.999% of them were completely unintelligible titles, with even more unintelligible subtitles. Such as:

Carbon Nanotube/Epoxy Nanocomposites: Effect of Interfacial Chemistry and Processing On Molecular Mobility, Cure Behavior, Morphology and Properties.

TRP-ing Down a TRK: A New Role for Transient Receptor Potential Channels as Novel Mediators of Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor Actions at both Sides of the Excitatory Synapse.

The Developmental Functions of BDNF and MeCP2 in Dendritic and Synaptic Structure.

Role of the gM/gN Glycoprotein Complex in the Final Assembly and Egress of the Human Cytomegalovirus (HCMV).

Ok. Got the point?

But then, thankfully, I got the Frankie Michelle Bradley’s thesis:

Picking up Rocks.

That’s right. No subtitle, no unintelligible words. Nothing. I love it!

And Jacob David Melvin went a step further with the short thesis naming idea:

Heroes.

I am sure that Mr. Melvin’s Thesis was quite as deserving as all of the rest of them, but the title sounds like it could be the title of a first grade paper as well! Which makes me like it. Simplicity is completely underrated in the thesis naming world.

Oh yeah, and if you were curious as to what the balloons looked like when being released, I will leave you with these exciting pictures. Exciting, I daresay, even for the author of the thesis Expression and Function of Aquaporins in Malignant and Non-Malignant Astrocytes: