Hand Me Downs

I am massively happy that Nathan thinks hand me down clothes are wonderful. I know that mindset will eventually go away, so I'm singing praises of the hand me downs while I can.

He (Nathan) has sprouted upwards in the past month or so. I was pleased that he did it around a season change so we could apply the clothing rotation properly. I took all of the too-small clothes out of his dresser (which was nearly everything) and made a list of everything he was out of/low on. After going through the clothes that we'd kept from Aiden, things were crossed off the list to the point where I only need to buy Nathan a package of socks and two pairs of pants (we've discovered that as they hit around age 3, there's no such thing as hand me down boys pants anymore, as they all get ruined). I was able to cross about $75 worth of clothes off the list and Nathan feels like he just got a brand new wardrobe. Awesome!

Aiden hasn't had much of a growth spurt, so he only lost a couple of shirts, some PJs, and a pair of pants. And -except for the pants- they were kept for future use for Nathan.

Ah, hand me downs. A budget-conscious mother's best friend. And speaking of hand me downs, if anyone (local-ish) is in need of a box of 3T boys clothes, let me know!

Carrie's Update

School: Last week, I received an email from PCC letting me know that I had made the Dean's List for the winter term. This wasn't something that had ever occurred to me, so I was surprised and it was nice to know that my hard work combining school and parenting and housewife-ing had paid off! The way this term is going so far....I don't know that I'll make it again, but it's early still. I'm just struggling a bit to find the time to get everything done. I could use some prayer about that, as I've been feeling quite overwhelmed over the past two weeks.

Shoulder: I completed eight weeks of physical therapy for my shoulder and it's just about back to normal. I do have some limitation on my range of motion if I try to stretch my arm up over my head and can hear/feel some scar tissue crunching around if I try it. There's also some near-constant discomfort (not pain) in my shoulder, but it's very mild and isn't restricting any activities. I got the all-clear to begin exercising again and building strength back up in my right arm. I've been working out every other day for a week now and it's going really well. It feels good to move like that again even though I am still guarding my shoulder quite a bit, just out of fear of injuring it again. I hope to have the comfort level back up soon so that I can finally sign up for ballet classes.

Food: Odd thing to update, I know. But I made a choice a few months ago that has really surprised me. When Lent came around, I decided to give up fast food. I hadn't eaten any fast food in nearly two months at that point anyway, so I figured it would be pretty easy. It was, until I got the stomach flu and then was craving burgers once my appetite came back. But I held on through Lent and even past it. So, after about four months of no fast food, we found ourselves out at dinner time last weekend and had already promised the boys ice cream from McDonalds. We decided to go ahead and get dinner while we were there. We limited ourselves to dollar menu burgers only, no fries or soda. While eating my first fast food burger in four months, I discovered that it tasted horrible. I could barely finish it - it was THAT unappetizing. Since then, I've eaten at least one salad each day (I had two today). It's been surprising to me how my taste for things has changed over the past few months. Junk food does not taste very good anymore, although I can't say that I've stopped eating it entirely. I just don't eat much or else I start feeling ill. We've also discovered that our Costco is carrying more and more organic food all the time. I don't usually buy organic because of the increased cost, but at Costco, I'm paying about the same as I would for non-organic at the grocery store because I'm purchasing in bulk. These are food changes I wasn't sure I'd ever make, but we're slowly seeing a difference in how our bodies react to the things we eat. I'm loving this change!

Sprinkler Fun

We're having a beautiful temporary heat wave here in Oregon and we've been trying to take advantage of the warm, sunny weather before it gets back to mid-50s and raining in another day or so. Today was one day that I've been so happy that we no longer live in an apartment. We got out the sprinkler and spent two full hours splashing around in the front yard. We have a fun Buzz Lightyear sprinkler that we can "launch" with a control lever. One of the best clearance finds at Target that has provided hours of entertainment!

 Launching the spaceship!

 Having sunny fun! Aren't they getting so big?

After a while, Buster joined us outside.

 This picture cracks me up. Like he's saying, "Mmm, driveway water!".

 Panting while cooling off in some shade. Poor fluffy thing can't handle heat for very long!

More launching! Hours and hours of launching!

We've been super happy to play outside as much as possible and it will be a bummer when the rain returns, but having a few sunny days in between storm systems is making the spring bearable. And it really makes us look forward to summer!

Out!

The first loose tooth is out! Can you tell that he's not entirely sure how to feel about the situation?

A Day in the Life

I often post about the craziness that goes on here, but it occurred to me that it might be fun to do a "Day in the Life" kind of post. And even if it turned out to be completely boring for all of you, I would find it interesting to look at my day in hourly tidbits. Normal, crazy, and everything in between. So I spent yesterday (Tuesday) filling things in as I went. I don't know if anyone will enjoy this, but I sure discovered why I'm so darn tired at the end of the day.

7am: Alarm goes off, zombie family awakes. I was pretty sure I JUST did laundry, so why are all of the boys clothes in the dirty clothes basket? Six+ years later and I still haven't figured out how boys can dirty their clothes in record speed.

8am: Drop Aiden off at school, make John's bag lunch, make coffee, take dog out, finish getting dressed and ready because I did a horrible job attempting to make myself look acceptable when I first woke up. Drink pot of coffee (John does take some, so it's not all me).

9 and 10am: Catch up on email, fill in daily calendar, go over my school assignments for the day, do laundry, clean kitchen, make beds.

11am: Argue with Nathan over what shoes he's going to wear and whether or not he's going to wear a coat, get Aiden from bus, take care of Aiden's school assignments, make lunch. Do I want more coffee? Of course I do. What a silly question (yes, I do buzz around my house). Discover that there's a big hole in one of my boots. I wear those boots constantly. Place Target order for replacement boots.

12pm: Eat lunch. Lose 30 minutes on Pinterest while I eat lunch. Do science experiment with boys. Make necessary phone calls for today: doctor to discuss why I'm declining the MRI for my shoulder, eye doctor to see if they can order a part to fix my broken reading glasses so I can cut down on the frequency of headaches. Boys have their big daily fight (I'm not kidding).

1pm-3pm: Playtime with kids. Clean up toothpaste from bathroom floor. Just because placing the toothpaste tube on the floor and stomping on it seems like a good idea, that doesn't mean you should do it, Nathan. Attempt to catch dog as he trips over a stuffed animal and goes tumbling down the stairs. Fail at that attempt. Snuggle with dog. Fold more clothes. Clean up water from leaking sink. Must remember to have John re-caulk the sink. Remind Aiden for the 13th time to put on a shirt (where did his original one go?!). Get hungry right before we need to walk out the door.

4pm-5pm: Take Aiden to bowling class. Give in to the vending machine because I left the house hungry. Have bag of chips get stuck in the vending machine. Stress level increases as Aiden drops bowling ball on his foot, and then on someone else's foot, and then sends the ball flying backwards as he winds up to bowl.

6pm: Rush to make dinner because I didn't have anything going in the slow cooker like I should have on class days. While I'm trying to make dinner, Nathan doesn't quite make it to the bathroom, requiring a change of clothes. Overly dramatic Nathan gets a splinter in his finger, screams and cries. The phone rings with a fundraising call from the school district. Aiden needs help with a video on my laptop. Dog needs to go outside. We finally sit down to eat. John actually made it home for dinner for the first time in a week.

7:30pm: Boys in bed.

8pm: Put garbage and recycling out. Feed cats. Feed fish. Do dishes from dinner. Do nightly two hours of homework.

10pm: Take dog out and check mail. 30 minute workout. Catch up on a TV show. Shower.

11:30pm: Collapse in bed.

Hmm, those two hours of homework really suck away any remaining energy I have at the end of the day. As I looked back over this, I had to laugh. Some things went wrong, some things provided us with lots of fun, some things were just part of keeping our house running. I do feel like I rarely get to sit down most days, but I am never bored!

The Jungle

When we bought our house in mid-2010, it had been vacant for almost two years. That meant that the very small front yard had overgrown it's boundaries BIG TIME. Which made it look even smaller. Also, shame on the landscaping company for not bothering to trim it back even though no one was living there.

Here it was the day we got the keys...

 So many bushes!! A lot of them were partially dead and that weird hairy looking one right in the middle smelled strongly of mold. Yuck.

Fast forward nearly two years later. We haven't been working on it constantly, so this is the result of maybe 5 or so weekends a year, but we've yanked a lot (and I mean a lot a lot a lot) of stuff out of our front yard. The tree has been trimmed so it's nearly half it's original size (of course the entire middle fell out of it last fall). And we've had a new landscaping company for about a year and they've been very proactive at helping us trim things back. So take another look at the before picture and then look at these:

Our blooming tree has spit flowers all over the place, so it's not super pretty at the moment, but look how much we've taken out! Crazy! And we're not totally done yet!

 This is around the tree where those HUGE bushes were. They were spiky and horrible, so we ripped them out. I planted three little annuals and put a solar light in at the corner. We've also planted some wild flower seeds around the tree, so hopefully those will grow.

This is right in front of our porch area. I can't find the before picture of this spot, but let's just say that we couldn't see any of the dirt here because it was just a mass of green growing things. There are some half dead daffodils that I need to take out and I would like to remove the remainder of that bush in the middle. It was around 6 feet tall when we moved in. Cutting it down has really opened up the porch. John wants to leave the bush there, but I would like to take it out and put in a small planter bed for veggies. It's a great spot and it's the perfect amount of space. Negotiations are in progress.

You may notice that we were blessed with the yard with the utility boxes. The two smaller ones are hidden by shrubs that we've shaped down from their out of control masses. The bigger one is a little more of an issue. Luckily, I found an awesome book on container gardening at the library and we've decided on a very pretty vine-like plant in a decorative container with an upside-down tomato cage (who knew?) for it to wrap around. Since the utility box needs to be accessible, we can't really build anything around it, so a large container in front of it is going to be the best option. It will be pretty and just the right size to hide the utility box from the street. Can I just say that I'm really happy our yard isn't any bigger? This is a lot of work!

Making the yard how we want it is just one of many projects we're doing to really make this house our home. And throughout this process I am loving my house more and more. It's cute, it's ours, it's perfect. More before and after pictures to come as projects are completed!

Not Bad - Just Not Easy

Today was one of those utterly exhausting days as a mom. Nothing was bad or horrible or went particularly wrong; I was simply completely worn down physically and mentally. Housework needed to be done, kids needed to be entertained, and Aiden required a lot of support while working through some school frustration. I worked hard and yet felt as though I was barely keeping up. It summed up the "parenting is the most difficult yet rewarding job you'll ever have" saying perfectly. It was difficult today, but I still found myself completely happy to do it.

There was a very quiet hour during the afternoon. I was folding laundry, Nathan was working on Legos, Aiden was creating homework for himself, and the dog was sleeping at the top of the stairs. As it was completely quiet (a rare occurrence in this house), I did some reflection and realized that I was truly happy. I was happy cleaning my house instead of being away at a job all day (that can come much later). I was happy raising my kids instead of living a childless life with a perfectly clean house and lots more money (yes, kids are expensive). We may not have stain-free furniture, take fancy vacations, or have brand new cars, but this is what I want. I have the most amazing, difficult, rip your hair out frustrating, exciting, crazy, fun job in the entire world. And I am so glad that I have been blessed with the opportunity to do it.

Maybe this is a strange thing to suddenly realize, but in case you hadn't noticed, I have some rather challenging boys. And sometimes it can be hard to see through the stress and aggravation. Aiden has been doing a lot of growing this year and he's acting older and older each day. Right now, we're struggling with his frustration that kindergarten isn't teaching him anything that he doesn't already know. Nathan is at the age of pushing boundaries and wanting independence but is still very much a mommy's boy. I'm working on learning how to teach him to do things without him realizing it, or else he'll throw a fit and insist that he knows how to do everything himself. They routinely work me into the ground.

But there will come a day when they don't wear me out quite so much and I know that I will miss it. I want to enjoy every single stinking minute, even the maddening ones.

Randoms from Today

Just a few random happenings and thoughts from today:

From Aiden:

Added after initial posting: "I'm tired of books with pictures. Give me something I haven't learned yet!"

"May I assume that kings and queens might have married in order to rule?"

As he's getting scolded and frowned upon, he says in a calm voice with his arms crossed, "Well, I'm just sorry you're turning into one of the dark ones".

After being reminded to flush the toilet, he says, "Fine, but I'm not cleaning the toilet after I'm finished!".

From Nathan:

"Are the people who clean other people's houses called slaves or maids?"

And a parting thought from me:

Remember, as soon as you complete a thorough steam cleaning of the kitchen floor, you will promptly dump an entire bowl of fettuccine alfredo on it. This is where having a dog comes in handy.

Book Worm

I met with the collection manager at our library today. Unexpectedly, I not only completed the goal of the visit (choose a section to evaluate and get the section report), but I also got a complete tour of the "Staff Only" section of the library and a complete overview of how the technical services and collection development team works. I was in awe. What an amazing opportunity! I guess being a library assistant student has it's perks if you just take the time to ask!

She was so amazingly helpful and provided me with amazing amounts of information. She explained what her job was and took the time to explain her passion for the job and how excited she was that I was pursuing that line of work, because in her opinion it's "the best job in the world". She has offered to provide as much help as I need as I complete my project. I was blown away by her willingness to assist me and let me see how the whole system works.

I came away from that meeting with a renewed excitement and desire for that line of work. I could hardly speak at times because I felt so overwhelmed by what was happening. It was just amazing. Now let's hope that I can keep up that excitement as I work through feeling a tad in over my head with my class!

Librarian in Training

I am taking my first library class this term - Library Materials. I figured it would be a simple class to ease me into my education courses, as it is a lower level course. Wrong! We have been given a project to do a fake evaluation on a small section (50 or so books in a collection) of a library. The only issue is that no library will respond to my requests for assistance. It's definitely frustrating - especially since I really just need to spend 20 minutes with a librarian and then the rest is to be done on my own, so I wouldn't be taking up a bunch of their time. I am supposed to have my project description submitted by the end of the week and I have yet to find a library placement. The class I was extremely excited about is turning out to be something that is stressing me out and making me a little bit angry. And I'm only in my second week of the term.

I am planning on just walking into our library this evening and hoping against hope that I can convince a reference librarian to provide me with the information on a small section without any warning. If not, I will either have to do everything from scratch (copy down all dewey decimal numbers, publication dates, circulation dates, titles, authors, current circulation status, etc) by the end of the week (which CAN be done, but it's crazy complicated) or drop the class. I do run the risk of the librarian refusing to help, as other students have encountered that issue. I had no idea this whole thing would be so confusing and infuriating. If you can, please pray that I can get over this one hurdle of getting the information I need for my project description.

UPDATE: Well, that was fast! Within an hour of posting this, I received a response from our library and the collections manager would love to work with me on my project! I can now officially be excited!

Happy Easter!

We'd like to wish all of our family and friends a very Happy Easter! And show off our Angry Birds (an iPad/iPhone game) eggs that we made.

Happy Easter everyone!

Nutria

Our library has a wonderful expansive outdoor area (technically I think it's part of the business park) and we go there often. Sometimes we feed the ducks, sometimes we take a long walk, and sometimes we take Buster along to give him some social time since there are always plenty of dogs to visit with. There are quite a few ponds and bridges, and there's a little area with rushing water where we like to have "boat" races (putting sticks in at the top and seeing how far they go). The boys have come up with names for a couple of these areas. The wooded area is the Misko Forest, one of the bridges is Lasken Bridge, another bridge is the Bridge of the Aleano Wizard and there's a wizard that lives under it. We go on many adventures here.

Since there was some sun on Monday, we took a break from our errands that afternoon and spent an hour just walking and exploring around this area. Like I said, there are lots of ducks and sometimes we spot a few nutria. The nutria were out and about yesterday and as we walked by two of them, Aiden says in an exasperated tone, "I'm allergic to nutria. Looks like I'm going to have to hire a contractor to keep them away from me whenever we come here now". At that moment, we were walking past a gentleman who looked extremely confused as to what he just overheard. I don't blame him. Aiden seems to be under the impression that he's allergic to rodents and has been insisting that this is true for well over a year now. Also, I'm not sure why he thinks it's necessary to "hire a contractor" to keep the nutria away when the nutria are perfectly content to ignore him. And, what a strange thing to hire a contractor to do. I don't think we'll ever quite understand how Aiden's brain works!

Spring Break Part 3

After dropping the boys off, we got on the road to head to Lincoln City for our weekend away. We had been looking forward to having a relaxing weekend to ourselves for almost six weeks and it was going to be amazing to celebrate 7 years of marriage.

We hadn't stayed with this particular hotel before and we had chosen one of their beach houses (Nantucket Inn) that had been converted into five individual condo-like rooms. We were very excited to stay in the "romantic penthouse" and when we arrived, we found this waiting for us.

 Rose petals on our bed!

 An amazing two person jacuzzi.

 And a fabulous view with just a few steps down to the beach.

The weather was supposed to be awful the entire weekend, but after being sick all week, we were perfectly content to storm watch while curled up in bed in front of the fireplace. That evening, we had the very last reservation of the night at the Blackfish Cafe for our anniversary dinner. They set us up in a somewhat secluded corner and we had a beautiful, quiet meal. Unfortunately my appetite had not yet fully returned after the flu, so I was unable to really enjoy my delicious dinner and managed to eat just half of it. But we both agreed that we enjoyed the experience thoroughly and plan to go back, hopefully with a very willing appetite!

After settling in for the evening, we listened to a huge storm rage the entire night, which made sleeping a little difficult but the sound of the rain was still very relaxing. The next morning, there was a surprise break in the weather.

After a walk on the beach, we decided to explore a bit for the afternoon while the weather was calm. My research during the week had shown that there was a cemetery in town with an amazing view. Before you think that we were being morbid by wandering around the cemetery for fun, it was actually a common thing for us to do when we lived in Philadelphia. Of course, the cemeteries there are gorgeously ornate and crazy old and full of historical people like Ben Franklin.

As we wandered, we discovered some storm damage from the night before.

The dates in the cemetery in Lincoln City aren't super old, but it's always interesting to find the oldest one. The graves that really stood out to me though were for one family. There were the graves for the parents, and then three others. One for their 6 month old daughter, who passed in 1928. Another for their 8 year old son, who passed the following year. And then another for their baby boy (no age), who passed the same year as the 8 year old. They lost all three children within two years. The father passed in 1969 and there was no date of passing for the mother, but her birth date was listed as 1902. A quick internet search revealed that she passed in 2001. It's the finds like this that make you wonder what the story is. Why they would lose all three of their children like that so close together.

Despite the slightly depressing yet interesting find, the view was breath taking.

After the cemetery, we went to Depoe Bay to wander around. We poked around in a rare book store, but after deciding that we could not spend $400 on a very old copy of one of Shakespeare's plays, we moved on to finding pirate stuff for the boys. The weather was starting to go downhill again and as soon as John and I left a store to go back to our car, the downpour began. We got from the store to our car within 30 seconds and we still ended up looking like this:

 You can see the mass of raindrops pouring down our faces if you enlarge the photo.

While we were literally soaked completely through all of our clothes, we decided to go for an early dinner at Rogue Brewery. I yet again couldn't finish my dinner, although I was doing much better in terms of what I could eat. We still had a great time and Rogue is a fun place to eat, especially since you get to walk through the beer production facilities to get the the restaurant. It's pretty amazing.

We made it back to our hotel before the next storm front pounced down upon Lincoln City. We spent the entire evening curled up in bed in front of the fire, listening to the rain, and watching TV. So relaxing.

We had a great weekend and it was fun to really not do much of anything, but we enjoyed our little afternoon adventure. Here's to year 8 of being married to a great guy!

Spring Break Part 2

After our snow day, I had to spend all day Friday preparing for my midterm the next day, so we didn't get any playtime in. We had plans for fun family stuff after my midterm, but when I got home, I discovered that John had come down the flu. The weekend was shot. 

On Monday, John came home halfway through the day because he still didn't feel well. I spent the day cleaning with the kids so we could prepare for starting our super cool spring break stuff on Tuesday (the boys had destroyed their room and had to clean it before we could do anything). Life had other plans. I woke up Tuesday morning sick as could be. I haven't had a stomach bug like that since Norovirus. Ugh. I spent the next two days curled up on the couch, effectively wasting away our spring break. I felt so bad for the boys. They never ended up getting it (thank goodness!) and since John and I were due to go away for our anniversary on Friday, we decided to spend Friday morning with the boys at OMSI to see the new limited engagement Lego exhibit. Every single family in the Portland area had the same idea. It was PACKED. The line to get tickets for admission was out the door and down the sidewalk, but thankfully our membership got us around the line and we got right in!

While it was busy, it was so worth it. The Lego exhibit is amazing. Aiden (our Lego boy) was in absolute awe.

Wow.

There's a portion of the exhibit set aside for playing with Legos, along with a Duplo section for smaller kids. Obviously, we spent quite a bit of our time just playing with Legos.

Germ central, anyone?

After making their own creations, we headed out so we could get Buster to the vet and the boys to John's parents house. It was nice to spend a few hours doing something fun, finally, even if the entire place was packed.

Next, we celebrate our anniversary.

Spring Break Part 1

Spring break started a little early here (good thing too, but we'll get to that later). Aiden's last day of school before spring break was going to be Thursday, but on Wednesday evening, the snow began to fall. Yes, you read that correctly: spring break and snow. Oregon has been extremely confused weather-wise this year.

While we were pretty sure it was going to stop snowing and melt, it decided to keep snowing and stuck around. We went to bed wondering if there would be any school at all.

I got up and checked the school district website to see that there was a 2 hour delay, which automatically cancels morning kindergarten. Spring break began with a snow day! We all slept in a bit, let the older school kids have their snow fun, and then we headed outside later in the morning after everyone else had gone on to school.

 They had obviously been busy!

Aiden was pretty darn happy about this snow thing, if you can't tell!

Even though the snow level was dwindling, the boys tried their best to make a little snowman.

 Leaf arms and Aiden's snow hat!

And then it was crushed. What can I say? I have boys.

After getting thoroughly chilled through, we headed inside for hot chocolate and watched the snow melt off for the rest of the afternoon.

Next up, why the rest of spring break was ruined.