Busy with projects

As of the end of May, pretty much all our activities are officially done, yet Carter's still in school through June 22nd, so I've been tackling some projects so we can focus on fun when Carter's out in 2 weeks.  The first project was to hire a company to tackle our lawn. It's overwhelming.  Before they came out to overseed  and aerate, we needed to remove "as much moss as possible."  For those of you not in the northwest, you may not understand. The average lawn in this area is anywhere from 20%-75% moss.

 So first, we try to rake it out with a garden rake.  I use every abdominal muscle I never knew I had. Then we heard from our new, very, very nice neighbors about a lawn mower thatching blade.  We rip the heck out of the grass with it.   Then I try killing it all with moss out and then raking out.  The lawn turns black.  The moss is a little easier to get out, unfortunately it all still needs to be raked out, it's so thick it's only killing the top layer, not the roots, which I need to pull up, and my iron rake is starting to fall apart.  So then I get on my hands and knees with a little hand rake thing and work for about 8-10 hours over 2-3 days and then the last possible appointment until fall came last Friday.  I gave up that morning after I mowed extra short. 

In 2-3 weeks we are supposed to see more grass, so Saturday, we tested the sprinklers to make sure our newly distributed seed could germinate.  Well, at least the grass sprinklers work. After we dug 2 out of the mossy carpet. The flower beds are another story.  Some are broken and spring like geysers, one hits the deck and no grass or flowers.  Some are hidden under the fabric I put down 2 summers ago to control weeds in the flower beds. So we focus on the grass and program the system to only water the grass.  I'll let you know how it ends up. 

In other news, we aren't sleeping a lot, I'm bringing an extra kid home from Carter's school most days and I'm taking a scrapbooking class online.  I also changed over my dresser to my closet and got rid of the dresser, went through all the kids' toys and have generally kept myself out of trouble by puttering.  Apparently I'm also keeping myself out of the fridge.  I got down to 159.5 the end of March, then went back up to 162, then 164 since then.  Now I'm back to 159.5.  Also helping is the fact that I only have a station wagon, so picking up another child forces me to walk to and from the school, I've also been adding on little errands to the walk, like taking back library books since Henri only naps in the car or stroller.

Valerie is also more interested in feeding herself than being fed purees.  She's also trying to stand and doesn't want to be set down (she can't pull up yet, only stay steady if you put her down on her straight lets and give her something (maybe a hand?) to hold on to.  Henri's also decided to start potty train himself.  This doesn't mean he's staying dry, just that he's insisting to use the toilet, esp if a big kid is around to use it too and then he actually pees (used to be he'd just stand there and pretend).  He's also wanting to wash his hands constantly as a result...

This weekend, we turned out for a Boy Scout rocket launch and Carter got to do the first one.  He was super excited.  Then I told them they could look around, but not touch, so Carter put his hands in his pocket as did his little shadow. It's fun to see how much Henri looks up to and admires Carter, even if it may annoy his older brother who's trying to do his own thing most of the time.

Valerie enjoyed her first McDonald's chicken nugget...

This morning my friend's daughter came over to help me out a bit, and Henri discovered the appeal of raspberries...

Valerie's favorite thing: water

Valerie loves the water. The highlight of her week is her swim lesson and she loves being in the tub as well. Esp when she gets it all to herself.



I even caught her trying to stand up in the tub tonight...

Bonus picture... Henri eating lunch... with his backpack...

Camping

Camping to Paul and I is kind of like Las Vegas.  We don't really enjoy it or seek it out, but every once in awhile, when we've finally gotten the smoke out of our clothing finally, we say, "Hey, other people enjoy camping and Las Vegas!  We should try it again!"

So I reserved a yurt based on my parents' recommendation for 2 nights. They were going all of Memorial Day weekend, but since Paul had to work and, as I mentioned before, we are not really sleeping outdoors people I thought Saturday and Sunday night would be plenty.  Plus, they were kind of pricy.  Think flea-bag hotel price. So we headed off to enjoy time with my parents, their neighbors and my brother and his friend.

I will start by saying I did enjoy that it was close if we needed something.  I also liked that there was no cell  service or wifi or cable as I needed to unplug for a weekend.  I liked sharing a lovely meal including preparations and cleanups with everyone.  I liked having extra hands around (I did actually get a nap!)  It was very pretty and quiet. I liked not feeling pulled to do any of my housework or ongoing projects (I actually finished 3 of my 5 books I had in progress at the start of the weekend).  I liked actually talking with people and playing games with enough adults to actually play a board game. So there were some good points.

So we got there and it was not raining, but cold.  There was a fire going every minute because my dad loves smoke and fire and my brother apparently lives for cooking over a fire and having no idea how long things will take to cook and the excitement of risking food poisening.  While they loved their fire, the rest of us alternately coughed and screamed, "my eyes, my eyes!" everytime the smoke came in our direction (which of course it constantly did) and we got to play an amusing game of musical canvas chairs trying to change our position with relation to the smoke.  Note that the first thing Paul and did upon arriving home was lather up trying to remove the smoke smell.  Paul got to go first while I settled the babies and I tell you the smell of Irish Spring never smelt so good to me. But I digress.

The adults took the boys geocaching and Henri loved pushing around his "motorcycle" wearing his "motorcycle hat" whether or not he was actually in the middle of the road riding.  We played lawn darts (well, weighted ones, no pokey ones) in a large, open field & cooked meals on a stove. I also found out my brother thought Paul was his age and not 2 years older than me.

Our yurt was quite nice. 200 square feet, 3 double beds, 2 with twin bunks on top, all new, vinyl 4 inch thick foam matresses (made me think of summer camp).  The best parts?  A radiator/heater that kept us toasty, power, lights and our own non-shared bathroom (across the way, but our key only opened our own shower/toilet/sink combo).

We snuggled in our beds.  Carter asked if we could stay 3 more nights.  Henri realized we were sleeping here and said, "I want my pillow pet and I want to get in the car and drive to my bed"  after 3 recitations of Bedtime for Teletubbies from memory, he finally fell asleep and slept all night. Carter watched Paul play a game and fell asleep next to him rather than on the top bunk he'd been so excited about.  Valerie woke up about 1:30 and couldn't go back to sleep (we'd brought a pack 'n' play), I suspect because we'd not brought a proper feeding chair and she was starving, so she laid next to me to nurse all night.  Well, Paul took one look at an exhausted wife on a slippery plastic mattress with a concrete floor and he decided it wouldn't be a bad idea to sleep on the other side of her to keep her from rolling off. 

I take a moment  here to explain that, like many parents of 3 small children we sometimes end up with 1-3 of them in our bed.  However, at home, we have a king size bed.  So Paul, Valerie and I on a double size bed was not quite the same.  Then Paul cranked up the heat because he'd been freezing, I slept with my arms above my head because there was no room for them next to me.  There were dogs howling and barking from 2:30-3:30 am, then at 4:30 the volunteer fire department alarm went off.  We awoke early because the skylight has no cover.

I took the babies down to the campsite my parents were at, Carter then happily bounded down about 30 minutes later, in his pajamas across the meadow separating the yurt village and camp sites and looked thrilled.  I took a short walk with Paul to check out the big posts coming out of the ground when he came down looking haggard about 30 minutes after that and said, "well, we'll just change x, y & z tonight so we'll be more comfortable."  He replied, "Um, I'm not sleeping there again tonight. I'm sleeping in my own bed."  Where is this man's sense of adventure?  (Maybe hidden in his common sense?)  I felt a little sad about it since we'd already paid for the second night, so I suggested we offer it to my brother and his friend and mentioned it to my mom who agreed, maybe Paul and I were better suited for civilization and that his friend would enjoy not freezing all night.  So we stayed all of the second day until we got the babies in pajamas and put them in the car.  My brother moved to the yurt, my parents kept Carter and Etienne in the trailer with them (the neighbors, not being able to reserve a spot had headed home after breakfast). 

The babies and Paul and I got in our packed car thinking happily about warm showers and beds. When Henri kicked Valerie in the head with shoes on and we got to hear her scream all the way home. She still didn't calm down until home when she finally passed out so Paul and I could watch a Netflix movie on the large screen and after it was over she was still screaming. I finally realized she was still starving, so I shoved peas and yogurt into her as fast as I could and put away the cooler items. 2am-8:30am this morning, we all slept the sleep of the dead.

Henri was quite happy to wake up this morning to his TV and microwaved milk, so maybe he's not a camping guy either.  He loves the outdoors, but doesn't seem quite ready to embrace the sleeping in it part....

A Musical Montage by Henri

Things I do to save sanity and money

So Friday was a dinner swap. I have one Monday night as well.  My Monday night is an established, once-a month, 10 family very well run swap that I've been doing regularily for, oh, maybe 6 months now?  Anyways, I like the idea of only cooking once a month, so I'm trying to get a second group going. Right now 5 families (not necessarily the same families) swap every other month.  We meet on a 1st or 3rd Friday and bring our kids over as soon as we're done doing our morning errands.  This time for my chicken parmesan (see my post about 40 pounds of chicken) I got a meatloaf, a swiss chicken, a beef stroganoff and enchiladas in return.  Not too shabby, eh?  I also like the idea of when I see my ingredients on sale, I can stock up and use them to make the same meal and trade with someone who got different stuff on sale. 

This morning Carter and his friend were invited to a classmate's birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese.  I'm not personally a fan of Chuck E Cheese.  He and his crack-like inducing games sound like a nightmarish way to spend 2 hours.  Esp at 9:30 in the morning.  Luckily it was a drop-off party.  Let me explain this concept to my friends who still just have toddlers or preschoolers at home.  Around Age 6, some of the birthday parties your child will be invited to will a) not require you to stay and b) be with people you don't really know that well, so 1) you don't know if you have enough in common to stay and chat them up without it being awkward 2) they could be axemurderers, but do have a child the same age as yours and somehow your child knows theirs.  Anyways, you are allowed to "drop off" your child and go do whatever you need to do for a few hours while your kid gets all jacked up on sugar and excitement by another parent.  It means, in exchange for a birthday present, your child gets to have a ton of fun and you get 1-2 glorious hours by yourself.  When Carter had his party, I allowed drop off because I know what an incredible gift this is to other parents. I have to be at the party anyways, it's my kid, I may as well bless someone else with this gift...

Anyways, so I left Henri and Valerie with a half-awake Paul before he could figure out exactly what was going on.  Besides, he owed me since he'd be playing games from noon on until all hours of the evening.  I dropped the boys off, introduced them and myself and thanked the mom for allowing this glorious time to myself. I then headed across the parking lot to the Jubilee Heart & Home Thrift Store .  I'd never been there before.  I liked that they were open at 9:30 on a Saturday morning, they had lots of volunteers helping and organizing (which was good, because the sizes were sort of right, there were a lot of things out of place in the clothing), they also had nice stuff at REALLY good prices.  Pretty much all I had time to check out was the women's clothing.  I tried on probably 70 pieces.  Being on the Eastside, it had nice stuff, though I'm learning that rich ladies are skinny ladies.  A lot of the great stuff was size Small.  But no matter, I found a few gems.

Item one was a lovely brown Buxton laptop bag about $60-$80 new for a steal at $8 with a small scuff on the back.

Item two was a Nine West purch with brown crock in good shape with the little keychain attached.   I would guess it would be $55 new  I got it for $4.  I like it because it's a little larger than my everyday Coach bag I carry. 

I got these tops for $4 each...

Cute black lace top with liner. I promise to wear black under it when I actually leave the house in it.

cute, comfy assemetrical pink shirt...

Stretchy Brown top with tie-back-Banana Republic brand, my own skirt...

Cute & comfy summer skirt-J Crew with my own blouse...

Entire outfits from the store... $8 & $10 total for top and skirt... the first top is a cute sweater tank with rose detail.

This one I love the bottom line of the skirt!

Cute top with my cami...

I also got two other unnoteworthy tops.  so it was successful. Fun, summer clothes!

MOPs end of year tea

My Thursday MOPs has a ladie's tea and testimony time at the end of the year.  Our table leader thought it would be fun if we had hats for our tea :)  I got my hot glue gun, silk flowers and an old cap of Paul's and got to work...

Goin' on a Bear Hunt...

Before I tell you about the bear hunt, I'll update about our health.  We all got better on the antibiotics.  Then yesterday I got stuffy again and without going into too much detail, let's say my infection is not gone.  I called the doctor this morning and she's called in some stronger antibiotics for me.  The babies seem fine, though. Valerie has a followup to be sure her infection is gone on Friday.

Monday swimming was cancelled from a "brown out" Tuesday we went to gym class like normal and today was bible study, Costco trip and then I came home to the phone calls.

There was a bear at Carter's school! It was featured on the local news.  They went on partial lockdown and then decided not to let students walk home and gave parents to option of bussing (if you did not call) or picking up by car (if you call). I figured Carter would love riding the bus, so I set up camp with the babies in the front yard and we waited. And waited. Carter's teacher called 1/2 hour after end of school asking if I was picking him up. I said we were waiting for the bus. I guess Carter couldn't describe which side of the school he lived on (one bus went north, one went south) so they were trying to figure out which bus to put him on.

He showed up the last off with the playground teacher, all smiles.

Us waiting...

Carter coming off the bus...

Here's his tale...




Oh, and can't forget. Paul came home one day this week with this lovely mark on his head. Apparently they were screwing around at work (some balancing game?) and he fell.  He walked in the door and I said, "um, no offense, but what the hell happened to you?

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