2011 year in review

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to our wonderful friends and family! Here's a recap of some of the things God brought about in our lives in 2011.

In January we welcomed Yumi Yumoto to our family after Myoung Shim moved out last December. We have so enjoyed having her! She attends our house church with us and James has been teaching her to drive. She is a theater major and recently performed in OCCC's production of Romeo and Juliet. At the very end of last year we started a new business providing English-learning resources for international students. You can check out the website here: http://languageandculturalservices.com/ If you know of any internationals looking for tutoring services, please refer them to the site.

I also started working part time at a preschool near our house. It was perfect to get paid to watch toddlers sleep as the majority of the time I was there was their nap time. I worked there until the semester ended.

In February, James had a job change. He is still in real estate and still with Keller Williams, but is now working as the team leader/broker at KW's Northpoint office in OKC. We thankful for the way the office has welcomed and accepted both James and me as part of their family. Referrals of your friends and family who are looking to buy or sell are always appreciated. James will match them with one of his top real estate agents.

We also expanded our homestay by renting the duplex across the street from us in order to host male students as well as females. The guys slept/hung out/showered etc across the street, but would join us in our home for meals. Our Iranian friend Joshua and an American friend, Steven shared the place with the somewhat transient Saudi guys Mohammad, Hatem, Mubarak, and Rocky. (not all at the same, they came and went). We kept the place until September when we decided that we needed some time to adjust to caring for Catherine and being parents.

Kerry moved out in the spring and Kim finished the semester with us before taking a summer internship in Mississippi/Louisiana. With our homestay rooms available for the summer we had some Fulbright scholars contact us who were doing a 6 week orientation-type program at OU. And so we welcomed Nata from Ukraine, Samiha from Egypt, and Suci from Indonesia. Yumi returned home to Japan for a month and Kim's friend needed a transitional home so we also welcomed Sidi from China for a very short stay. Anyway, at any point in the summer we had about 4 girls and 2-3 guys. It was fun, but maybe a little more than we should have taken on at 8-9 months pregnant.

In July we celebrated our 3 year anniversary. Knowing it would be our last one sans child(ren), we decided to take a trip. We couldn't fly or go far, so we went to northwest Arkansas where we toured a cave, (James really wants to make sure I use the word spelunking), ate at a working grain mill, and enjoyed 3 different municipalities' fireworks shows from our hotel room :)

Our biggest news of the year is the arrival of Catherine Sue Judd! She was born at 7:07 am on August 13. She weighed 5 pounds, 4 ounces and was 18.5 inches long. She is now 4 months old, almost 12 pounds, 25 inches long, loves to be social, smile, laugh, wiggle and stand up, with some help, of course.

In September James's sister, Mettie, got married so we welcomed Sean Taylor to our family. He is a great addition. James's brother, Lee, has been married for more than 10 years, so it is fun for me to have someone else who is fairly new to the Judd family.

James officiated the wedding, I was a bridesmaid, and Catherine was the "flower baby." It was a great time for her to meet almost all of her extended family for the first time.

In November my mom and I went to CT to introduce Catherine to her Aunt Jana, Uncle Victor and cousin Jeremiah. I came home for a few days and Aunt Mettie and Uncle Sean came for a visit then helped drive me to NM to get better acquainted with Grandma and Grandpa Judd. We also got to see Uncle Lee, Aunt Traci, cousins Keilee and Jaylee, and Great Grandma Inalue. In a two week period Catherine and I had been in 8 states and seen everyone of her grandparents and aunts and uncles.

We spent Thanksgiving here in OKC with my parents and some former students and their friends. We had much to be thankful for this year! Thank you for being a part of it!

Birth story of Catherine Sue Judd

On Wednesday, August 10th we had our normal visit to the midwives. They made a comment about how with all the storms we were having that week, they were surprised that they hadn't had more births. I had no idea that storms tend to induce labor but I've since heard it has to do with barometric pressure. We were just happy that we had made it beyond 37 weeks so that we could do a home birth as planned. That night, it stormed again and I had pretty regular contractions the whole night. Sometime in the night the storm stopped, and almost immediately the contractions did as well.

We had 4 students living with us over the summer. One was scheduled to fly out on Friday. I woke up on Friday morning and somehow just knew it was going to be the day. I was having contractions but they were quite irregular and manageable. James went to work, but I called him to come home to take Nata to the airport. I wasn't in heavy labor, but I also didn't feel like driving to the airport. James came home to make the airport run and to wait for our daughter's arrival. He took this picture as he was pulling up. I had gone out to water the garden. He thought it was crazy that I was out, but again, I wasn't feeling that bad yet and I needed some kind of distraction.

We just hung out most of the day and tried to rest and prepare for what was ahead, although we had no idea what that would be. Our friend Elena who would be attending the birth arrived from Stillwater sometime late afternoon or evening.
My contractions were coming more regularly and becoming more difficult as the evening wore on. We called our doula, Crystal about 9 pm. Crystal came and suggested we call the midwives to see if they were ready to come yet. Yvonne, the midwife arrived about 10 and checked on me and baby. Things were progressing well, but she didn't think it was quite time for them yet. She suggested we try to get some rest. Midwife and doula went home. I really, really tried to follow that advice. I think James was able to nap some, but I was anxious and in pain so I couldn't sleep at all. It had also begun storming again so maybe she was waiting for the storm to assist her arrival. About 1:00 in the morning I had James call and everyone came back. It was really time now!
Here are Taryn and Yvonne, who attended the birth along with Crystal, our doula, Elena Barton, our friend, and my mom.


Because I had never had a baby before I didn't really know what to expect, although we tried to be as prepared as we could be. We had watched DVDs from the library, we read, and we had asked questions. We had talked through labor techniques with our doula and the midwives. We had a TENS machine, a birth ball, and other "tools" we had planned use. I didn't have some exact plan in my mind for how it would be, but I definitely didn't think I would just scream like a banshee to get through the contractions, which is what ended up happening. Seriously. I just screamed, moaned, hollered, and howled. I didn't utilize very many of the other things we had prepared. I just thought, "Well, the screaming seems to be working for me, so I'll just keep dong it." The funny thing is, all our students were upstairs and only the one directly above our room had any idea anything was going on.
Catherine Sue Judd, named after both grandmothers, (Mary Catherine and Nyla Sue) was born in our home at 7:07 am right at sunrise. :) She weighed 5 pounds, 4 ounces and was 18.5 inches long. Most of that length seemed to be her fingers and feet.
She was born "en caul" which means my water never broke so part of the sac was still draped around he at birth. En caul births are rare and carry a number of superstitions such as not being able to drown, having special insight or sixth sense, and others. Our midwives also said there is a superstition that girls born en caul will grow up to be midwives.
My mom was present for the end of labor and the birth and she cut the umbilical cord.

Here is our first moment with our daughter. Please excuse my hair :)

More than I remember the pain of the actual birth, I remember my throat hurting so bad from all the screaming. And my voice was hoarse. If it's true that babies recognize voices first, she probably had no clue who I was because I sounded like a man who had been a smoker for 20 years! I also remember my neck being sore from pulling a muscle in my neck.

Her debut after being cleaned and swaddled:

Our first family photo:

showers and baby Catherine's favorite things

Get together with OBU friends to celebrate Catherine's upcoming birth, Tate's upcoming birth, and Josiah being adopted into the Gett family. Baby shower. Thanks to everyone who came and made the day so special.

Natallia's handiwork: a baby carriage watermelon!

A mobile from dear friend Lee. She brought it back from Thailand when we went home for a visit over the summer.

I wanted to include this picture because I was proud of thriftiness. We got the changing table on craigslist for $30. I covered cardboard boxes with some canvas I found on clearance for $5. spray glue adhesive and spray paint to touch up the table made the grand total $42 :).

Cloth diapers. so far so good. Looking back, we shouldn't have gotten any newborn size since her legs were so so so very skinny they just wouldn't cinch tight enough. We have loved the regular size though, and especially love not having to run to the store for diapers all the time.

These two dresses were mine when I was a baby. I couldn't wait for her to get here and wear them. :)

Megan had these made for us. Perfect for homecomings!

Grandma Mary Caye made these out of family heirloom handkerchiefs.

And Grandma Mary Caye made this for Catherine too.

This quilt was given to me when I was a young child. It had been well-loved for almost 30 years and therefore needed a bit of a makeover.

So Mary Caye and I worked for about 2 days....

to make the crib bumpers and quilt!

pregnancy pics

March 13April 3. I'll see if James can fix the photo later. grrrrrr.

April 24

May 25

June 21

July 31

August 12. This picture was taken during early labor when we went to walk around the block.

Fall/Winter 2010

In August, we welcomed Kim from Vietnam, Myoung Shim from Korea, and Kerry from Taiwan to our family.

Labor Day in NM with James side of the family. Also meeting my now brother-in-law Sean Taylor for the first time.

We spent Thanksgiving in NM with James's family and since Jana and Victor were coming to OK for Christmas, we stayed here. We had such a great time on Christmas Eve getting to share the news with our family that we were expecting!

summer 2010

Mom has cancer, part two

Just when we thought things were getting better, the doctors discovered my mom had a brain tumor. She was having some side effects from the meds she has to take for 5 years following the breast cancer. They did an MRI just to rule out anything. It confirmed that she indeed had a tumor.

Thankfully, again, all praise to God, the surgery removed the tumor completely. The current status is that she has to get MRIs every few months, but she has even returned to work now. Praise be to God.

Thankfully, we only had one American student living with us that summer so I really was free to help her out as she needed.

If I remember correctly, I was also working with James at his office as his assistant. (which also clearly had a lot of flexibility). People cracked jokes about how they hoped we would survive living and working together. Of course there was some adjustment, but we did indeed survive. I'm really blessed to be in a marriage where I feel I can honestly say we are a really good team.

Hosting Students

In November of 2009 our house was mostly complete. We had designed the house with the idea of hosting international students in mind. So, I quit my job at GLC in order to stay home to cook and provide transportation for our students. Our first student moved in in mid-November and there have been very few days since then that we haven't had a student.

To date we have hosted 13 girls from 10 countries. (We also hosted some Saudi guys, but that comes later). We love it. Until the time that God takes us back overseas, we love having close, everyday contact with internationals without having to leave our house. We also like the financial benefits of having them here. win.win.

The 09-10 school year we spent with Elana from Taiwan, Ebru from Turkey, and Lucy from Korea. One of my favorite memories was the day we celebrated James and Elana's birthday, which just happens to be on the same day. James friend's came and Elana's friends/classmates came so we had a full house of too many countries to count. We played a game where a fact was read and guests had to guess if it applied to James, Elana, both or neither. hilarious!

Summer 2009

The next phases all overlap.

My mom has cancer, part one:

Part of my reason for leaving Catholic Charities was so that I would be free to take care of my mom as she had surgery and treatment for her breast cancer. Her surgery went well and she didn't need chemo, only radiation, which they actually didn't start for a while.

We bought 4 exterior walls to a house:

In the mean time, James and I had the opportunity to buy a "fixer-upper" house. By "fixer-upper" I mean it was a gutted, empty shell. James was in real estate full time now and therefore "self-employed" which meant we couldn't get financing for the house on his salary alone.

Awkward moments with old people:

I was blessed to find a job really quickly as the Social Services Director at Grace Living Center. It was also close enough to my parent's house (they were now living back in Oklahoma) that I could stop by during my lunch. That summer I didn't care for my mom like I thought I would, and she recovered better and more quickly than anyone could have imagined. The house, 2 1/2 years later, is still in a state of remodel, although it is completely liveable now. James and I still debate about whether or not buying the house was a mistake. However, I can tell you without a doubt that deciding to LIVE in the HOUSE while it was being constructed was a mistake. Somehow, our marriage survived months of having all our possessions covered in drywall dust, doing dishes in the bathtub, and not knowing where anything was.

Here are a few before and after pictures. Maybe some day I'll have the motivation to upload the entire before/after tour.

as it is now:

in process:
the day we bought it:

awkward moments with refugees: Nov 2007-May 2009

I was blessed to get a job in the Refugee Resettlement Department at Catholic Charities pretty quickly after my return from China in Sept 2007. My parents lived in CT at the time (they moved closer to my sister while I was living in China) so when I first returned to Oklahoma I lived with the generous, gracious, and amazing Scrivner family while I found a job and got settled. (THANKS AGAIN SCOTT AND LESLIE!)

My job title changed a few times, but my duties were basically always the same: helping refugees with all aspects of transitioning to America. Mostly this involved acquiring the donated goods to set up their apartments, picking them up the the airport, taking them to appointments for immunizations, doctors, school enrollment, and providing cultural orientation. The duties read quite differently on my resume. :)

I could host an entire blog with stories from this phase of life if they weren't protected by a confidentiality agreement. Most of the awkwardness came from taking folks who don't speak English to the doctor.

Like the time I had to take a male client to the urologist. And help him fill out the health history which asked many detailed questions about a part of his anatomy I didn't need that much information about.

Or the time I had to take 2 Iraqi Muslim ladies to the OBGYN. What's awkward about that, you ask? The fact that the only translator available was a man. He stood outside the exam room. The doctor or I would yell out questions/explanations to him in English and he would yell them back through the door in Arabic.

Everyday something funny happened. Either because of us not understanding them or them not understanding America or because of schools, doctors, or other service providers being ignorant. What made it really great was working with the other wonderful ladies there. During my tenure there my co-workers represented at least 6 or 7 countries, 3 major religions, and various denominations. Someone was always reading some interesting book or had just watched some great documentary or had just read some article...I learned from them and loved it. We ate lunch (on the days we actually had a lunch break) family style in the break room. We started most days with tea and catching up about the events/new arrivals/funny stories/etc. It was great.

I wish I would have been able to stay in the position longer. Although I've only mentioned the funny, light-hearted things, it was also gut-wrenchingly difficult to carry the weight of the real-life stories of my clients. abuse. torture. forced separation from loved ones. inability to return to their homeland. persecution. Not to mention all the statistics that state that no matter how well case managers and job developers do their job or how hard they work with them to get jobs and learn English and do everything "right," most first-generation refugees will never make it out of poverty. And the whole resettlement system at the federal, state, and even local organization level needs some serious re-vamping. Working tirelessly at something one cares deeply about but can't actually affect change in creates a kind of stress that is wearying and difficult to carry.

So I quit. My health wasn't good and working long days at an emotionally stressful job wasn't helping. Plus, my mom had just been diagnosed with cancer (see later most) so the plan was that I would be a little more free to care for her.

It's weird how something as seemingly insignificant as a job change can affect you so deeply. Leaving that job was something I had to grieve. I was fully invested in it and felt in many ways that it was my "dream job." And even though I left of my own volition, it still felt like it was something I loved being stripped away.

being sick: October 2008-Spring 2009

We moved quickly out of the honeymoon phase to a time frame we can now call "mononucleosis." James got sick first for a week or two. We took him to the doctor who prescribed some antibiotics and he got better. Then I got sick. Thinking I must have caught what he had, I to went to the doctor (at an urgent care clinic) who also prescribed antibiotics. I didn't get better. We went to our then primary care doctor who gave more antibiotics. I didn't get better.

A sidenote here is that James was working for a telecommunications company when we first married. Not long after we returned from our honeymoon, the company went out of business. At this point, we decided that he would pursue getting his real estate license. In the interim between the two careers, he worked briefly for a friend in Drumright, OK. He would drive a car load of Burmese guys there and back everyday.

I was feeling so poorly now, that everyday I would come home from work (see next post) and sleep until James got home at about 7:00. We would eat dinner and I would go back to sleep until the morning.

We went back to our primary doctor. a third round of antibiotics.

I don't remember the chronological order of all this now, but I remember are some point during this time we also went to visit James parents and I was taking a nap in an upstairs bedroom. I remember waking up from the nap and planning to go downstairs. Then next thing I remember is waking up a few feet from the bed on the floor. I had passed out. We returned from NM to make another trip to doctor, who has run some tests but still can't figure out what was going on. Because of the coughing and respiratory issues, she recommended I go to a lung specialist. And I got a 4th round of antibiotics.

Cutting to the chase, when we went to the lung specialist he was going to suggest that I take a battery of tests to determine if I had developed asthma, but first suggested we do a mono culture just to rule that out first. And that was the day I learned the reason I had felt terrible and been sleeping 12ish hours a day was because I had mono. a virus. Which explains why the 4 rounds of antibiotics did nothing. (and explains why we no longer see the doctor at the urgent care clinic or that primary care doctor)

I was relieved to have a diagnosis, but the treatment was "drink more water and get plenty of rest." My job at the time (see next post) was not restful. And, James was in real estate school/starting a new real estate career so me staying home wasn't an option at that point. So I worked 8, 9, or 10+ hour days and slept as much as I could until finally, sometime in the spring I started feeling better.

The funniest story I remember from this phase of life was after the visit to the lung specialist we had a follow-up visit with our current primary care doctor who advised us that I would just need to try to get more rest. James and I stopped by the grocery story on our way home and James insisted we buy lots of prepared/packaged meals so that I wouldn't have to cook until I was feeling better. I had blood drawn that day so I was feeling even more weak than normal. When it was time to wait in the long check out line, I helped myself to a bench not far from where James was checking out. As the cashier scanned our frozen meals. canned goods, and snack foods, she said, "You MUST be a bachelor." I'm sure on another day the comment would have gone unnoticed. But one that particular day, it spurred a stream of tears and incomprehensible words spoken through sobs that tried to communicate something to the effect of, "I'm just so tired and I don't feel well and now strangers think my husband is a bachelor because I can't even cook decent meals for him." It's a good thing I'm updating this blog years later so that I can laugh about it now :)

Honeymoon July 2008-St. Maarten

James had a "diving accident." He dove into the pool without putting his hands out first. His head was introduced to the pool bottom.

Leaving OKC...less than 24 hours married!