Introducing Iver Caroline Hunt, 8 lbs., 3 ounces, 20 inches long.

Born Wednesday, Dec. 2 at 6:12 p.m.

We’re so happy. And tired. And happy.

We’re all getting to know one another. She’s a fresh baked little bird, with a full head of dark brown hair, a set of to-die-for dimples and lots of wiggles.  Pat and I are taking a crash course in true sleep deprivation and new parenthood. Surprises: Everything looks brighter! Tastes better! Is more interesting!

The other night, Pat and I fell into a fit of uncontrollable laughter for 10 minutes over a poopy diaper. I caught myself there, in the middle of the night in the dark, laughing until it hurt, and I thought WOW. Oh, wow!

We’re so excited! xoxoxoxo

Angie, Pat and Iver

©2010 angie newsome. All Rights Reserved.

A note, before we start: It occurred to me in the middle of the night last night that it’s a little more than slightly insane to publicly pledge to do this advent calendar/daily holiday celebration stuff when one is 37 weeks pregnant. So, if I disappear from here, you’ll know why, right? Because 1) Have a Baby and 2) Recover From Having Baby pretty much preempts every single bit of holiday spirit I could eek out within the next 24 days. OK? OK!

And another note: Sorry for the delay here. I got stuck dealing with car/truck problems (flat tires! broke coils! hooray!) most of the day, after taking a trip to the vet. Ugh. Happy holidays, neighborhood mechanic and overpriced veterinarian!

Now, onto the task at hand: Day 1 of our 2009 advent celebration! Let’s play!

Holiday memory: When I was a kid, our family kept the board games — along with coats and the vacuum cleaner and dusting rags — in the hallway closet of our creaky old house. On winter nights, my mom, sister and I used to go to the hallway and pull out the round tin of Chinese Checkers. Did you have those, too? The marbles swished around inside the tin, and we’d pull it open and dump out the reds and yellows and whites and greens and blues and put them on the corresponding color of the six-point star. Then we’d play. For hours. I loved it, and wish I still had that tin Chinese Checkers game.

I searched around today to find a replacement, but no luck, really. Luckily, the Internet always pulls through! Thank you, and goodnight!

But if you’re looking for more strictly holiday-themed games, how about Santa? He’s always fun. And these games are some of the best ones I’ve found recently:

• Santa Balls 2 (Your typical ball destruction game. Turn off the truly annoying music, but miss the crass Santa sayings. Your choice.)
• Kill Santa (WARNING: Not safe for work. You are killing Santa, after all. After some provocation, *ahem.*)
• Sling Shot Santa (Hilarious. To me.)
• Fat Santa (Oh, no. I feel the same about brussel sprouts.) And,
• Find Santa (Like Waldo, only better.)

Did you play games when you were a kid? If so, what kind, and have you found any fun winter/holiday online games you’d like to share, too?

©2010 angie newsome. All Rights Reserved.

Now that Thanksgiving festivities are over, I can declare my undying *LOVE* for this time of year. The lights! The trees! Vince Guaraldi! The gift-giving (and, OK, gift-getting, too. But after my mom gave me an Epilady one teenage Christmas, I don’t hold my breath anymore)! Christmas cookies! Oh, holy Christmas cookie!

So I’ve been on the lookout for some awesome ways to celebrate this momentous (for us) holiday season. Advent calendars are so awesome, especially the ones Leslie Harpold used to post online, which were filled with fun flash games and memories and things to do. She’s gone now (and unfortunately, it appears her calendars aren’t online anymore, but you can read about them some here), but they were amazing and really rekindled my love for small daily celebrations.

Today, I found another inspiration, this time by Jean at The Artful Parent. Hers are mainly — though not only — child- and family-focused daily activities, and they got me thinking. How am I going to celebrate this year? I’ve been so wrapped up in baby preparations and work that December has completely snuck up on me. But, with a grateful thanks to Leslie and Jean, I’ve decided that I’m at least going to attempt my own advent celebrations.

I’m going to aim to document it here, too. Time to get started! Want to play along?

©2010 angie newsome. All Rights Reserved.

I’ve thought a lot about what to say about her, but I get all choked up about it and can’t seem to put a sentence together that can really say how much I love her and how much she means to me. Her name is Ruby Byrd Whitson. She grew up in what are now empty woods behind a church that sits on a grassy knoll not far from the house she and Willard raised five kids in, including my mother, Willa, who was the oldest. She is funny and kind and tells great stories and always holds my hand for hours on end when I visit. She quilted and sewed all the time when I was a kid and would visit for weeks every summer. She filled her time crocheting and reading until last year when her eyesight started going bad. She moved several years ago to a nursing home because it’s so difficult, no, nearly impossible, to find people to care for older people in their homes in Mitchell County. She doesn’t need round-the-clock nursing care, just someone to cook food every once in a while and to be there to make sure she doesn’t fall. My Aunt Ginger and Aunt Peggy visit her all the time, even though they live in Indiana and Georgia now.

Today, we’re meeting my sister, who is driving up the mountain with her seven-year-old daughter. My sister is also nearly about to give birth to a son they plan to name Whitson after my mom and Ruby and Willard. So, this day feels so big to me and the importance isn’t lost but I haven’t yet processed it or thought about what it all means. Grandmama’s made it to 100 — and hopefully well beyond — when my grandfather, mother and father didn’t. And today I plan to tell her how thankful I am to spend this day with her, how thankful I am that she’s been in my life. Today, I’ll sit beside her and hold her hand.

©2010 angie newsome. All Rights Reserved.

I love pressed-tin ceilings.

I love cinnamon rolls, especially these from West End Bakery. The woman who makes them has to be made of magic.

I love sharpening the yellow pencils I bought, 24 for a dollar, at the Family Dollar, but I also really love finding eraser- and lead-less pencils abandoned on the sidewalk.

I love huge neon signs, especially giant ones stuck to the side of buildings.

©2010 angie newsome. All Rights Reserved.

I love dripping wet hair.

I love this song. I could live in it.

I love the wind, especially when it makes my friend’s ears flop.

I love messages written in dirt.

I love uncovering surprises.

©2010 angie newsome. All Rights Reserved.

I love trips down roads bordered by rusty, abandoned signs.

I love cold nights and the big teeth on a fuzzy camel named June.

I love that Penny, or Wayne, made a declaration of love on this bridge in Banner Elk.

I love, oh how I love, my New Balances. (Relatedly, I’ve very sad that footwear designers can never seem to leave well enough alone and changed the design on the new models. I will most likely be loving these for the next 25 years.)

I love that I can still look up into the branches of these old-growth hemlocks in Cataloochee. How I wish someone could save them.

These are just the start. Oh, I have so many more to share with you this week. But, if you get a chance and are struck by inspiration, let me know what you’re loving, too!

©2010 angie newsome. All Rights Reserved.

When I was in high school, my dad, sister and I spent a lot of time volunteering. We worked at a camp for the developmentally disabled, taking groups of teenagers and adults on summertime field trips like horseback riding and swimming. (I even got a black eye in the pool one day when another volunteer tossed a kid onto my head. Ouch!) One of the reasons I chose to go to Warren Wilson College was because of its emphasis on community service, and as a junior and senior, I worked in the college’s Service Learning Office designing and editing a national journal about why and how colleges and students should incorporate community service into their academic programs.

After a hiatus of sorts — family and work responsibilities can overwhelm at times — I find myself compelled, again, to be more involved. President Obama’s call to service was and is such a moving message to me that it’s inspiring me, again, to find more ways to contribute to my own community.

One of the best places I’ve volunteered with so far has been at the Asheville-based MANNA Food Bank. While I’m a deep believer in organizing for real, systematic change in the community, I also believe in meeting people’s needs now, particularly for basic needs such as housing and food. Consider this:

• There are more than 35 million people who are hungry in the United States. Nearly 40 percent of these people are children, and 10 percent are elderly.
• The numbers of people living in poverty in the 18 western counties range from nearly 10 percent to 20 percent of the population.
• The numbers of hungry people in Western North Carolina are twice the national rate, which is one in 12. That means one in every six people living in Western North Carolinian is hungry. I know there are people in my neighborhood who use local organizations to get help. There are probably some in your neighborhood, too.

Last week, Pat and I volunteered at MANNA to sort apples and make packages of food for elementary school kids to take home over the weekends. These tiny, back-pack sized packages of canned vegetables and spaghetti and meatballs go home with children who receive free or low-cost lunches at school — nationally, 30.5 million children received these lunches every day in 2007.

While we volunteered, we learned, as has been reported locally, that even though food donations have remained steady at the food bank, demand has really spiked across the region, leaving MANNA’s food resources stretched. It’s worth noting here that Charity Navigator, an organization that serves as a consumer watchdog on charities, gives MANNA only two of four possible stars (four being the best), mainly — from what I can tell — because growth in both revenues and expenses have decreased and their working capital ratio is also very, very small.

There are many root causes for hunger — low wages, unemployment, poverty. These need long-term — and sometimes political — solutions. In the meantime, I want to help make sure my neighbors have enough food to eat and that kids have enough food to eat over the weekends, when they aren’t at school and can’t get lunch there. If you want to help, too, there are lots of volunteer opportunities directly through MANNA, or you can sign on with Hands On Asheville-Buncombe, which offers volunteer opportunities in a wide variety of areas — from working on hunger to the environment. Statewide, the North Carolina Hunger Forum is working to cut hunger in half by 2015. There’s also a Raleigh-based group, Stop Hunger Now, dedicated to stopping hunger internationally, and Feeding America can give you some places to start helping other locations.

There are hundreds of hunger-fighting organizations across the country, so if you’re thinking of donating donate money to these or any other organization, take a little time to do your homework first. Look at nonprofit researchers GuideStar or Charity Navigator and check with a consumer protection agency (like the Better Business Bureau’s Wise Giving Alliance) to make sure you’re informed about what your money will do. Ask around and see what works for you, what your neighbors or colleagues recommend. 

Either way, now is the time to help. Part of my goals for the year include volunteering at least 40 hours. I’ll let you know where and how that works out. But, I’d like to know about you, too. Did Obama’s call to service move you to action? What are you doing and/or planning to do to make your community a better place for everyone?

©2010 angie newsome. All Rights Reserved.

A satellite image of yesterday’s inauguration, taken by the GeoEye-1 satellite. To the right is the blue-roofed Capitol building and the tiny brown clusters are the more than a million people who gathered at the National Mall. Download your own high-res version: Photo courtesy of GeoEye.

These are the times when I wish I could paint the world with words, spout imagery rooted in beauty and love and inspiration and meaning more than the combination of vowels and consonants and dashes and periods. I wish I could say how I felt yesterday as I sat glued to the TV and radio and Internet to see our country’s fate change, its history honored, its future become hopeful. Hope: What an amazing word! What a hard-won delicacy I want to savor. What a precious, precious thing to have suddenly, like a big, deep breath that fills your ribcage with undying optimism. Truly, amazing.

©2010 angie newsome. All Rights Reserved.

Sometime last year I bought myself a little plastic camera, a leaky light raft of a camera that from the very start made no promise of perfection. But it was perfect for me, I thought, because I can teach myself a lesson on letting go. I have a wicked addiction to perfectionism that I war with. Sometimes it’s bloody, bloody, this endless fight to resist trying to be perfect all the time. And of course I’m not, so part of the battle is admitting it. Here, Internet! I admit it!

So this film is the first of my perfectly imperfect experiment. It had been tumbling around in my car for a couple of weeks after I decided it was about time to see what happened. Not that it was any big thing. I was just preoccupied with other things. And these are what I found, these hidden gems in the roll. Gems to me, anyway. Rough and tumble, blurry and imperfect. 

©2010 angie newsome. All Rights Reserved.