Thursday, June 30, 2011

BIRDS!

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On Tuesday night I told the boys that we would be going with Aunt Haley and Miss Molly to the Tracy Aviary.

"Whats an Aviary mom?" asked the inquisitive 4 year old.

"An aviary is like a zoo for only birds," I replied.

"Oh, mom!  Do you think that the aviary will have birds of prey?  I absolutely LOVE birds of prey!  And scavengers...will they have any scavengers?  Did you know vultures are scavengers. Oh, I bet they'll have a peregrine falcon - if I could be a bird of prey I'd be a falcon."  said the 4 year old.

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Yes my boy, they had birds of prey and scavengers and some scarlet ibis.  They had owls and eagles and a red-tailed hawk.  There was enough bird to keep the kids occupied for an hour which is longer than I've ever spent at the aviary in my life.

When we got back in the car, AC blasting, heading to lunch Elliott said to me, "Mom, what was your favorite bird?"

"The scarlet Ibis" I told him.

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"I had 4 favorite birds: the vultures, the Andean condor, the bald eagle and the parrots.  I love parrots." He told me.

I then asked the Chick, "Wyatt, what was your favorite bird?"

He enthusiastically shouted, "Dump truck!" (We did see a dump truck at the aviary)

I asked him again, "Chicky boom, what was your favorite BIRD?"

He said more loudly, "Toucan!"

We didn't see a toucan at the aviary.

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Monday, June 27, 2011

In a nutshell...

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We did science experiments


We tried to make movies

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We ran errands

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We took notes

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Some of us ate hot dogs

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Some of us at Chipotle corn salsa

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We cleaned the BBQ

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Had the family over for Sunday dinner


We learned new games

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Had naps in the sun


And little Miss Molly had to sing a song with her crazy screaming cousin.

Friday, June 24, 2011

Sentimental Summer

On Wednesday night my sister and I, and our kids, fixed dinner for and ate dinner with my Grandpa. We had tin foil dinners. They were delish. My grandpa was excited because he said he hadn't had a tin foil dinner in forever. He ate two.

After dinner we cleaned up, played with the kids and I watered the flowers. I did okay in the front yard because my watering time was also spent yelling at that crazy Chick to get out of the flowers. I was doing just great until my grandpa came outside. He sat on his red chair on the porch.

The other red chair was empty. I made it a few minutes before I was overcome with emotion over that empty red chair but then excused myself to go to the back yard and finish watering the flowers. When I got to the area of the back yard with this goofy garden gnome (alliteration at it's best!) I totally lost it.

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I started to cry. It was one of those moments where last summer, she would have been outside on the deck talking to me while I watered. This year, I was out there all by myself.

My grandma's roses are beautiful. My mom and her sisters have been working on them and last week was a big effort to clean up the yard and get it grandma ready. She may not be there in person, but I'm sure she's looking down from heaven and is willing the yard to be just how she'd want it.

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This is the backyard of my childhood. This is the swimming pool of my childhood. Oh, how I love this place. I loved being there with my sister and eating dinner with my grandpa. I've said it many times, how hard it is to keep moving forward but we have to do it. There is no choice. But keeping the backyard neat and tidy and beautiful, just how grandma always did keeps her memory alive and her spirit close by.

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Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Summertime Science Fair

It's no secret that Elliott has a photographic memory and as most little kids, he remembers everything commercials tell him. Nearly everyday while watching the Sprout Channel, we encounter the 3 minute commercial for the "live butterfly garden". If you ask him, he can go into great detail about the whole process but basically, you get a net and a cup of live caterpillars. You then get to watch the caterpillars grow, turn into crysalids, then butterflies. At that point you can release them from your net or let them live for two weeks and die in the net.

Anyway, as a special "you survived moving to a new house" prize, Ross got the boys their own "live butterfly garden". The nets came in the mail, then we went online and ordered our caterpillars.  They came a few days later and the science experiment/life cycle observation began.

The commercial does not tell you about the caterpillar poop, or how gross in general the little creatures are. We've got two containers, 10 critters total and one of our containers all "chrysalized" yesterday afternoon.  That meant that it was time for dad to take them out of the container that was once filled with food, but now filled with poop and pin them into the net.

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I guess it's a good experience for the kids - to watch the process. Elliott is fascinated with it all, but it does take to long for a 4 year old. If only caterpillars could change in about 3 hours, not a three week process.

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Parking

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My children LOVE the park. They love to run and play. They love slides. They love wood chips. They love exploring and playing super secret agent spy. They love to pretend that they are shooting down perigrin falcons and honey badgers with their secret weapons.

I love thier creativity. I love their enthusiasm. I love watching them climb and explore and be brave by going down the tall fast slides.

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Can I tell you something though, internet? I cannot stand the park. I am one of those parents that for the most part, is involved at the park. I stay close to my boys, I track their location, I make sure they play nice and I follow them around. Yes, I helicopter but my gosh they are little and if your two year old was a fearless climber who constantly gets stuck on high climby things you would helicopter too.

Maybe I have a fear of strange children, or germs, or my kids getting burned on hot equipment. Maybe those moms that sit far away in the shade and don't notice when their kid introduces himself to my kid by punching him in the shoulder just bug the crap out of me. Maybe I'm just too uptight to really let myself enjoy the park or let my kids have as much fun as they want. Maybe I think that when there are about 5 kids under 4, the big kids that are 8 ad older should go play freeze tag by themselves in the open space and stop jumping on the wobbly bridge that my little monkey two year old is desperately trying to cross without crashing.

My boys love the park.

I love the park when my boys are the only two kids there.

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But, it's still a nice place to hang out on a beautiful summer day. Especially when our dad can join us for a few minutes during his lunch break.

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And who doesn't enjoy a quick drive past the buffalo on the way home from an afternoon at the park. Will you look at the blue sky in that picture! Look at it!! It is amazing. A blue sky like that makes the day, no matter where you spend it, absolutely perfect.

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Boys will be boys

It's beyond me what to do with these rowdy crazy boys most of the time.  They are so loud, so physical, so competitive.  Yes, my sister and I would have mercy fights until we drew blood, but that wasn't until we were practically teenagers.  These guys go at it a dozen times a day and pretty soon we're going to have bloody body parts and broken furniture in this house.

If anyone has any ideas on how to tame two wild beasts while still letting them be boys, that advice would be greatly appreciated.  I've yet to catch it on video, but when Wyatt gets mad, he uses this deep scary voice that reminds us of Gozer from Ghost busters.  And Elliott, though he tries so hard to be a good boy, just cannot keep his hands and temper to himself when his brother is concerned and the grabbing, pinching, and shaking of fists is a bit out of control....at least this week.

Regardless, they are my boys and I love them.  They are such "boy" boys, if you know what I mean and they do everything full force and full throttle.

Swimming lessons are so exciting that they are absolutely out of control in the few minutes we wait to begin.  They swim so hard and drink so much water that the ride home is peaceful because they're exhausted.

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Yesterday I was trying to help them get rid of some energy and ride their scooters outside. It of course didn't work and all they wanted to do was blow air from the bike pump up their noses.



And this morning I took them to the park bright and early to burn off some energy. It's a bit of a walk from the new house and they both walked the entire way. Elliott likes to climb and adventure in the park, using all the toys to the best of his ability. Wyatt only likes the slides. He picks the biggest, tallest slide, figures out the most difficult pathway to get to that slide and then spends the next 30 minutes scaring the living crap out of me acting like an absolute crazy boy going up and down the slide. He goes forwards, backwards, climbs up the bottom, thinks about going head first. He is cautious to an extent, but throws all caution to the wind once his but hits the starting line.

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We need preschool back.

Monday, June 13, 2011

The New House. Part 1.

Phew!  The last week of our lives has flown by.  Last week was so overwhelming for me, because I'm a control freak spaz, that I texted my mom to tell her I was having a nervous breakdown.  She left a meeting and called me immediately, helping me calm down.  She reminded me, in a nice and comforting way, that I am a control freak spaz and that in situations like moving to a new home, I have to take it slow...that everything cannot be done instantly.

At times like that, I wish I was magic like on "Bewitched".  I wish I could be Samantha and just wiggle my nose and voila!  the living room is put together.

Speaking of living room, that's the only part of the house that is, for right now, 100% organized.  The furniture is in place, the pictures are hung, and civility abounds.  No boxes, no papers, no dust.  It is compete.  I still need a big area rug that's got a lot of pretty red in it, but I'm pretty comfortable with how it looks.

I'm really liking the new house.  I like how our stuff fits in the house, matches the house and how it really feels like home.  To be completely honest, I sort of have forgotten what it was like in the old house.  I'm glad that I've got so many pictures.

Speaking of pictures, here are a few of the very brown living room.

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The yard at this new house is a bit of a disaster. The grass is totally dead, but we're working on reviving it. While waiting for the moving truck last week, my work crew pulled all the weeds out of the flower beds. That was so appreciated. With a little time on my hands today (thanks Haley, Molly, Willie and Parker for taking the monkeys to the zoo) I was able to plant some flowers in the front.

It makes my heart happy to have flowers. And I can hardly wait for them to fill in throughout the rest of the summer.

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In a nutshell.....

We started private swimming lessons with our most favorite swimmer cousin Natalie. She is so totally awesome.

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We went to the aquarium and tried to eat some fish. While others of us (me!) just tried to not look at the fish because fish are creepy.

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We got to play with Mollywog a couple of times. She likes us and we love her.

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We got our dead lawn aerated and power raked. Then I mowed up all the dead crap and breathed in so much dust and dirt and crap that I couldn't swallow by the time I was done. But, the new yards dead grass is already looking one thousand times better.

We unpacked boxes, cleaned the garage, parked our cars int he garage for the first time all week, loaded bookshelves, set up the TV, connected to netflix via the xbox. There aren't any pictures of that.

On Saturday, my sister and I went to Pioneer theater to see "RENT". It was good. Not the best production we've seen, but my favorite part was done very well so I was pleased.



And finally? That little brother of mine had a court of honor because he earned his Eagle Scout award. The program was nice (I have no pictures). My contribution was simple. 100 eagle scout cupcakes.

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Thursday, June 09, 2011

Summer is here....

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The other day we went to the aquarium and 5 guys for lunch where I was Informed that 5 guys fries are the fattiest fries around. Go figure.

I also pulled a weed out of my new lawn two days ago that, no joke, had an almost 2 foot long root and I fell over a bit yanking it out of the ground.

Over the weekend, in the middle of our move, we opened Shavy Jones for it's third season.

We headed out to run errands on Saturday night. On the way to home depot the chick puked in the car. Gross. I caught most of it in the blanket in my hand and down my arm. Awesome. Luckily the HD is next to a k-mart so Elliott and I headed in to buy supplies: new outfit, blanket, wipes and diapers.

Nothing builds an appetite like vomit so we decided to eat at Arby's. Brilliant voice of course because it was located in the Kmart parking lot. Only problem? One kid had just puked and the older has this new nasty habit of refusing to eat in public.

That of course resulted in a hissy fit and the throwing of said hissy fitter into he car where once he stopped crying he ate his dinner ice cold sitting in the car waiting for dad to buy the wrong part at home depot.

Why is it that one can almost never purchase the right thing the first time at the HD? Its so annoying.

Anyway, the point o this post was that after a crazy night we ended up at Shavy Jone and all was good.

Amen.

Summer, thank you for coming.

Monday, June 06, 2011

Hello out there……

I have a new house. I really like my new house.

I'm surrounded by boxes.

My baby has a stomach virus and puked in the car twice this weekend.

I went to a walmart grocery store out of desperation.

We started most awesome private swimming lessons today.

I have no Internet.

Talk to you later.

Wednesday, June 01, 2011

Today is the day...well, one of the days...

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Today is the day.

Today, I sign away my rights to the house I am sitting in right now....along with forking over a giant check for a decent sum of money.

Today, I sign my name on a bunch of papers for my new digs...along with forking over a giant check for an even larger sum of money.

Today, I am excited. So excited. I'm so excited that I just can't hide it. I love my cute little house dearly. She has been so good to us in the last 6.5 years of our residing within her walls. We have brought babies home to this house, repainted a handful of times, created the yard and truly made it our own. That's a big deal. We've taken really good care of her.

But, it's time to move on. Time for a new neighborhood and new scenery and a new place to go to church. It's time for new yard projects and new paint colors and a space big enough to host some parties.  We've worked hard to pay off debt and get ourselves in a position to make this move work.  I'm proud of that.  I'm proud of my husband for being such a good worker because being jobless as I am, the financial burden of life falls on his shoulders and he's doing a great job keeping us afloat.

I'm lucky that this has all worked out. Very lucky. Count my lucky stars lucky. I love my friends and am so thankful that I'm only moving a little over a mile from where I'm at right now. It's only five minutes to get back into the land of familiar so I can visit, drop off cookies, or just do a drive by when the mood feels right.

I'm excited.

We get the keys tomorrow. I might start pulling weeds tonight. I'll probably get dirt ready to transplant my peony tomorrow.

We move on Friday. We'll sleep in "THE NEW HOUSE!" Friday night....without window coverings.

Feel free to come by and stare.

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