We have a 6 year old!

We have a 6 year old!

At the beginning of February, C had a birthday. This girl has had a monumental year with her homeschooling, traveling and winning the race for the number of growth spurts in one year. She has become a fantastic reader and artist. She also names all of her stuffed animals Mary.  

This girl loves to make people laugh, jump rope, win races, and take of her pants the second she walks in the door. She is an incredible big sister and brings life to our days. When we were in Thailand last month we got to pet giraffes and eat cake with lots of friends. Giraffes and friends is about all this girl needs in a day. 

She is always quick to serve others, see people's needs, comfort her friends, and keep us laughing. I love this girl and thank the Lord daily for Him giving her to us. We love you baby girl! Happy Birthday!

How the heck did you have the time to write a book?

*I promise this will not become a book blog. Just like it isn't a Mommy, China, cooking, homeschool or family blog. I will remain content in the "random" blog category because I hate labels. Clearly. But this week I'll do a few posts and giveaways to get the book thing rolling. Then more stories about enemas in starbucks and Chris Farley in spandex.



So, I've been asked more than a few times, "How the heck did you have time to write a book?"I jotted down a few things that I thought of while taking a bath.

1. It was my sanity. I've discovered about myself that I need a side story to my daily grind. I need to have a creative something that I can work on and donate some brain cells to.

2. I read a great book by Anne Lamott called "Bird by Bird." She emphasizes the value of writing a little each day. So, I did just that. (I love this book except that one entire chapter uses a certain cuss word to describe her first draft. I almost recommended to a mom that her aspiring novelist daughter read it until I remembered this particular chapter. I don't want to be the person guilty of introducing this English word to her poor daughter. I'll leave that to Youtube.)

Each morning, I'd find an hour or two and write. My routine was coffee, my porch, Sara Groves and the background noise of chanting grandpas doing tai qi.


3. I am passionate about the topic. When you are deeply convicted in something, it's amazing how the time seems to find itself. If I truly believed in dying my wonky gray hairs that have taken up a front row seat along my temple, you better know I'd find the time to do that.

I desperately want people to understand what it means to accept a calling to be overseas. I want them to laugh both at us and with us as we expose our foreignness in every country we land in. I want to remind people that you don't have to be afraid if you truly believe that God is that big.

So when you believe those things, you redeem the time in other places so that there is space to write.

And...I got rid of clothes so that I didn't have much laundry. That helped too.

4. Lastly, my loving husband looked at me as I started writing and said, "If you start this, you must finish it." I'm an ENFP, which means I love to brainstorm and start projects. What I don't love is finishing them. I just kinda close my eyes and hope someone more talented and organized comes along to help me finish the task. As a child, I tried to hand copy the book "Wizard of Oz," and make a functioning trash can out of tooth picks. You can now see why my husband threatened encouraged me to not start unless I would finish.

If there is something you feel called to do, but can't for the life of you figure out how to make that happen, my advice would be pray and then get creative. If God is behind it, things will work themselves out as you go along. I'm thankful and humbled that He'd allow someone who can't even use a comma properly to write a book like this.

The Long Hair Debacle

I first posted this on Dec. 6, 2010. I just had this exact conversation again yesterday with two friends over Skype. In their honor, I give you this:







Hubs and I have an ongoing "discussion" about girls and their hair length. Men across the board want women to have long hair. I think they have this fantasy that if our hair is long that we will be morphed into some slinky super model that spritzes herself each morning in coco butter. And then we will walk out the door covered in glittering in the morning sun. And then we will frolic over, lay on a log, and dream of writing prose.

I'm usually only glittering because of the sweat that has formed on my overgrown eye brows as I lug my babies to the grocery store in the summer. And the hair that he loves so much...ya, it's tucked into a nice half pony tail. A half pony tail because it feels a tad bit like I actually did my hair that morning. And because full pony tails make me feel like a cheerleader. If I'm draped over a log, it's because my kid has thrown his shoe from the stroller and I'm trying desperately to find it and to save myself another trip to the store to buy the third pair this season.





If I thought I was going to be a cute as Sinead O'Connor in this above picture, I'd shave my hair all off. Seriously, look at that specimen of femininity. But I'd look like a bull dog. Or a party balloon. Either way, my husband would shackle me to the closet until it all grew back if I decided to pull off a a hair cut like that.

But I'm not gonna say I'm not tempted to cut it all off sometimes.




And I am training him to understand that when you get older, you just shouldn't have long hair. Unless you are a librarian or a yoga instructor living in Portland. It just shouldn't be. Like Chris Farley in Spandex.

"Redefining Home" Giveaway

My friends over at Getting Through the Day are holding my first "Redefining Home"giveaway! Put the laundry down and head over there. There are several ways to win, so yes, you could actually win this. 

It ends on Monday morning, so seriously, stop folding the sweater and walk over to your computer.

Redefining Home: Squatty Potties, Split Pants, and Other Things that Divide my World

Well, the book is officially out! It just got uploaded to Amazon and Barnes and Noble this week. The Kindle versions will take another week or two. I'm going to have a giveaway once the Kindle version is uploaded. In case you missed the summary, here it is.

I've decided to give you a sneak peek at the Table of Contents too:

Who we are

Our American Culture Shock

Moving in with Uncle Sam

Transition and Moist: Two Words I Hate

Letting the Dust Settle

Squatty Potties and Other Realities

Family Ties

Rescuing the Holidays

Your Day Tomorrow

In the next week, I'm also going to include a "How the heck did you have time to write a book" blog. 


I've set up Twitter and a FB page if you want to follow along:


Twitter: @carrieahudson


FB Page: Carrie Anne Hudson

Poem for my Double Wide

Stroller oh stroller 

You time has arrived

To pack up your wheels

And yell "I survived!"

From the Great Wall to Thailand

You've been many places

Plodded through puddles, 

And lugged dirty faces. 

I have to admit

I'm not all that sad

To put you away

And not make others mad,

When I clip stranger's heels

And splash on their skirts.

Carrying you through markets

Until our spleens hurt. 

Stroller oh Stroller

You've been a good friend.

But your time is over

The good times must end.

Your wheels are all wanky

Your fabric all torn. 

But a new family will come

New babies soon born. 

So keep on movin'

Crusty milk stains and all

You've run your race strong, 

So stand proud and stand tall.

Guest Blogging: We are Grafted In

I had the privilege of guest blogging over at We are Grafted In. This site is chalk full of resources, encouragement, challenges and small pep rallies for all people interested in adoption. I know they have reached into the lives of many to remind people that adoption is important because of God's fingerprints are over every step. He adopts His children, Jesus was adopted by Joseph, we are adopted into a royal priesthood.

Check out the post and then stay awhile. It will be worth your time.

My Book is Coming Soon!

My book is set to come out soon on Kindle and shortly after that in a hard copy. I figured it was about time to share what it's actually about. It's called:





Redefining Home
Squatty Potties, Split Pants, and Other Things that Divide my World






I've had been wanting to write for a long time, but all of my brain cells were being used birthing children and staying awake past 8 pm. Now that I have packed away the diaper bags and sleep in one continuous block of time, I decided to write. Here's the summary on the back of the book:




My first attempt at speaking Chinese resulted in my telling a street vendor that I wanted to buy a daughter instead of milk. It was at that point that any semblance of self-respect was swept into the well-filled gutters of my new culture. Redefining Home follows our struggle as comfortable Americans moving into the chaotic streets of urban China. From the early morning cadence of funeral drums to being accosted by an 80-year old man armed with a toothless grin, China has become home in many ways. As outsiders, we get to take in the culture with the naivety of a child while trying to avoid the cynicism of a middle-aged bowler. After several years, we returned to the States for a brief time only to discover that it no longer felt like home. Having conversations about intestinal parasites or my fascination with American gas stations was not a great way to fit back into the lives of our friends. We quickly realized that we had changed...as had the people around us. Flying across the ocean to return home to China reminded us that it's the space in between the two cultures that defines our family. 


The book chronicles how as a family we find ourselves "Redefining Home," and as followers of Christ, how we have become strangers and aliens in this world. Both take a re-calibration of our identity. 


Over the next few weeks, I'll be posting a few short excerpts from the book and a few giveaways here and there. So check back and I'll promise not to talk about my children's and their mom's obsession with potty humor.

Creative Journaling

I wanted to share a way that I get through the mundane walls of journaling. In my mind, all the writing prompts will spur my children onto Maya Angelou level of prose. For now, I'm just trying to get my son to delete the word "poop" and every other unmentionable body part from his writing. Baby steps. Very small baby steps. I had exhausted all the writing prompts my pion brain could muster up. I had also borrowed every prompt I could find appropriate from the world wide web. 

When we were in the States last year, I picked up these from Dover Books:

These babies have revolutionized our journaling time. I want my kids to write everyday. This writing will not be corrected for grammar or handwriting. I only remind them that every form of the word "rear end" or "passing gas" may not be included. Besides that, the world's their oyster. Each day they will either draw a picture or write a short story to go along with the picture. I have some other journaling activities that we do, but this is by far my children's favorite. Each book has a theme. The one my kid's are doing now is called "Things that Go." Each page with have a prompt. The one my daughter did on the right starts like this:

"Mrs. Morgan is about to enter her house. People say it is haunted. Draw what you think it looks like."

They have lots of different theme like creepy creatures, animals, fantasy, etc. 

I would love to hear from others on how they make daily journaling interesting. And if you want to include your favorite synonym for "passing gas," I will promise to pass them along to my boys. You will forever be their favorite person in the entire world. 

Pumpkin Pie, Candles and Tuna Mac'n Cheese

I am having a slightly prolonged food crush on pumpkin. From the day my mom decided that pumpkin pie was an acceptable post-Thanksgiving breakfast, I've been smitten with this frumpy vegetable/fruit creation.

I'm not so much going to make pumpkin tuna mac'n cheese. I mean, let's not go crazy now. If I'm eating pumpkin, it's because the poor thing has been beaten, mashed, and slathered in sugar. Or it's gooey syrup is hijacking my innocent latte in the fall.

Because I was avoiding unpacking, repacking and looking at the cheese induced ring of comfort that now sits above my waistline, I decided to make a pumpkin pie.

For.the.love.

Here's the allrecipe.com recipe:

I even made the pie crust out of these graham cracker cousins that we call "wheat digestive crackers." Marketing fail on the name, but when you add sugar and butter even wheat digestive crackers will taste good. But then again...so would cardboard. 

• 
  

• 1 (15 ounce) can pumpkin
• 1 (14 ounce) can EAGLE BRAND® Sweetened Condensed Milk
• 2 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 (9 inch) unbaked pie crust
• 
  

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Whisk pumpkin, sweetened condensed milk, eggs, spices and salt in medium bowl until smooth. Pour into crust. Bake 15 minutes.
2. Reduce oven temperature to 350 degrees F and continue baking 35 to 40 minutes or until knife inserted 1 inch from crust comes out clean. Cool. Garnish as desired. Store leftovers covered in refrigerator.

I purposely ate a small dinner so that I could have more than one piece of pie after the kids went to bed. Pathetic...yes. As I was eating, I decided to burn one of my new candles. It was of course a pumpkin spice candle. I ordered these from a company called Johnston Farm Candle Company and I'm in love. I burned the mulled cider today during homeschool and I swear it made me a better teacher. They are hand-poured candles and they smell amazing. They even come with a short wick, so that you don't singe your eyebrows when forgetting to cut a new candle wick. I mean, who would do that anyway?! Certainly not me. 

While I realize that pumpkin is supposed to be a seasonal thing, I've decided to rise up and buck the system. My pumpkin candles, pumpkin pie, and pumpkin lattes will be here all summer long.

Commitment Issues

I'm finishing up my final edits on my book and then I'll be done. As I sit here at Buddy's Internet in Thailand, I feel uneasy at the finality of writing a book. The nauseated feeling might also be related to the skinny guy near me that is wearing pumas and looking at inappropriate pictures at a public internet bar.

But let's pretend my uneasiness is based in my inability to commit to permanency. Those of you close to me are going to roll your eyes because you've heard this diatribe a few hundred times. It makes me nervous to have something out in black and white. Something out there that sits on it's own and doesn't give me a forum to sit over coffee and explain myself.

I'm going to wrap things up today and then the publishers will finish their part. The book should be ready in a couple of weeks. I'm going to post soon on what the premise is.

For now I'm trying to forget that my 10-year old daughter just used the "F" word in public because she read it on a wall. Between explaining transvestites and English curse words this has been a very cultural week.

If you want to follow along, I've set up an author fb page under "Carrie Anne Hudson"or on Twitter at @carrieahudson.

There ya go.