Aprovechar

If you’re new here and want to understand the title and purpose of my blog, you can read my first post by clicking here. You may also want to subscribe to my RSS feed so that you don’t miss further posts of interest to you. Thanks for visiting, and I hope you’ll stop by often! […]

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This weekend, we went to an organic tree farm in Los Gatos, about twenty minutes away from our home.  I’ve been to Christmas tree farms, but none as gorgeous as that place! Going to the farm was a wonderful break from our daily lives. I’ll add more pictures when we finish getting it decorated.  It […]

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When Dan and I made a firm decision to adopt our first child, we started the home study process immediately, in May.  Over the summer, during the crazy home study process, I began to make a mental to-do list for before our baby’s arrival.  Since we’d been in Silicon Valley only about eight months at […]

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Lately I have this crazy urge to write again . . . to be open and vulnerable.  Being open and vulnerable is an essential part of good first-person narrative.  It’s also one of the scariest things I’ve ever done.  Whenever I’ve written a particularly vulnerable blog post, it’s usually been at night, and I’ve usually […]

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In a move that could give you what I have termed ‘life whiplash,’ my husband’s company decided to shut down his lab. The employees got a week’s notice. (The company, did, however, provide nice severance to those who didn’t transfer.) My husband told me over text as he got the news during the surprise meeting. […]

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My favorite method for roasting potatoes and sweet potatoes came about because a South African friend told me how his mom made the best roasted potatoes around and under a chicken when she roasts a chicken.  He said the potatoes get very crispy on the outside but very fluffy inside.  I’ve roasted vegetables under a […]

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A few years ago, six months after we got married, my husband was hit by a speeding car when he was walking in a crosswalk.  It was surprising he lived, but he did, and over time, he has recovered about 90% from the accident.  In the days and weeks and years after the accident, people […]

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This is going to be one of my enormous posts. . . . I’m in a funk the last few days, and I’m desperately trying to both listen to what it means in my life and pull myself out of it. I recently returned from a trip to Wisconsin, where I went to teach and […]

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May I introduce to you Lily Louise Lilliputian Parrott Ashbrook? Lily is because that’s the name that stuck when we tried it out.  It was the name confirmed by everyone in PetCo. when we were picking up her basic supplies. Louise is for my recently deceased grandmother, whom I miss heartily, and who dearly loved […]

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While all was quiet on the blogging front, I moved. A long way. Last year was a hard year. My husband finished his Ph.D. We looked at a million options of where to live. Seriously, we considered everywhere from Berlin to Adelaide (South Australia) to Seattle. We also spent a good bit of our savings […]

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