This is strange . . .

Thank you, thank you, thank you to my sister-in-law Susan and my niece Tessa for inviting Gunnar and Paden to their house for a few days. Neil dropped them off this morning. We just have Fischer at home. This is strange. It was a very quiet, slow-paced, no-nonsense kind of evening. Fischer and I played ball (football and baseball with a tennis ball), made brownies and we played Wii.

While playing Wii Sports Resort, Fischer was requesting different Mii characters. We used Scooby to play table tennis and bowling. Then he wanted to play a new sport, I think Archery (which he calls bowfishing). He wanted to change the Mii character, so he starts saying "big booger, big booger". Sure enough, we move the cursor over a funny looking Mii with big glasses and a big nose and his name is Big Booger. Neil and I were laughing so hard. I didn't know we had a Mii named Big Booger to begin with, but it was soooooo funny that Fischer knew and requested him. We asked him who made Big Booger, he blamed it on Padey. :-)

Fischer is just a funny little kid. I wish we had the video camera on him tonight. He was talking non-stop. He was laughing, he was playing, he was jumping and celebrating.

But, still . . . it was really strange not having my other boys here. What did we do when we only had one kid? What did I do with my time? I felt like I had so much extra time tonight, which I chose to use to RELAX and do not much of anything. That is the strange part. We weren't rushing to get dinner done. I didn't have Paden asking if we could play a board game or go for a bike ride at 7:30pm. I didn't have Gunnar yelling at Paden for who knows what reason. I didn't have baths, I didn't have to argue with someone to feed the dog. I just hung out. Nice. I do miss the boys though and I hope that they do well hanging out with Tessa (and everyone else). Paden is a little bit of a worrier when it comes to sleepovers - or sleeping in general. He sometimes still wants me to lay with him before bed. Sometimes he still crawls into snuggle with me in the mornings. He ususally doesn't sleep in past 5am when we stay at Grandpa's house, so I hope that he sleeps more than than. He and Gunnar get a little cranky when they don't get sleep, even though they won't admit it. And just maybe Aunt Susan wanted to be warned of all these oddities BEFORE she agreed to take these yay-hoos in her home three hours away! I think my boys ususally behave better for others than they do for me, so I am told. I hope those people weren't lying to me!

So, I suppose that I should get some housework done because without the boys, it would actually stay clean. Hmmm, let me think about that. Yeah, not going to happen tonight. Althougth I am hosting a soccer board meeting at my house tomorrow, but I can do enough tidying before that starts to make it presentable. We're good.

Miss you boys, see you Saturday morning!

Small Steps

So, we have lived in our house since December 2007. We haven't made too many improvements to it. It was a nice house when we moved in, just built in the 80's. So, it's got a few odds and ends that one might consider quaint or unique:
There's several light switch covers that are all similar to this lovely style, but none that are the same. Not sure why we haven't changed those out yet. This one above in in my bedroom. :-) One of the first things we did was paint the bathroom and tried to get rid of the sponge-y lavender. In the right light, it still looks kind of lavender-y. I did paint the living room, as well, not too long after we moved in (like w/in the first year). I still haven't replaced the curtains in the living room - we are curtain-less in the main room of our home. I know it sounds strange, but we don't have any houses directly across from us and we don't hang out in that room at night, so it hasn't seemed to bother me (over the last two years).

We replaced the flooring in the boys' room following some really awful vomiting episodes which penetrated the carpet pad under the carpet. I am thinking that was the dog's vomit, not the boys'. Yeah, gross! After Fischer was born, we had to move the boys to the bigger room, so when we swapped rooms and replaced the flooring in the computer room and scraped popcorn off the ceilings in two rooms.

So, the more I think about it, we have done a few minor home improvements, but there are still more to be done. The light fixture in the dining room is/was quite hideous. See for yourself. Please tell me you agree that it's awful. I suppose the deal with home improvements is that it costs money. Sometimes, it's more than I am willing to pay. So, we've been living with this UUUGGLY light fixture . . . until today!!

The new light fixture was originally priced at $230 and it was marked down to $79!! That, I think, is a great deal. It's gives off much more light and it's much more stylish!

So, we are making some small strides in improving upon the 80's style of our home.

This week, I need to put one more coat of paint on the entry way, which looks pretty good in it's new Terra Cotta Rose color. We're shopping around for some wall decor to go with the shotgun above the doorway. :-) The only things that we have so far are new switch covers in black, versus the funky, ugly ones like the one pictured above. I keep forgetting to take pictures of the entry way during day light . . . maybe soon.

We had a yard sale on Saturday - a small one. We didn't have a lot of big ticket items and people out there drive hard bargains. But, I sold my vacuum and made enough from the yard sale to pay for 1/2 of a new vacuum. Yay!! Exciting. We got a Dyson - the compact one - on sale $100 off! The people at BiMart are AWESOME! I knew I saw it on sale, but I couldn't remember when. Neil went to check and there was a sale tag on it, but it was expired as of 7/13, I think he said. This was on 7/23. They said they would honor the price since they failed to take down the sale sign. They even waited until Monday (today). Neil got there right before the store closed on Saturday and couldn't get a hold of me to make sure it was really the one I wanted since it was the small one. So anyway, they said they would honor the sale price and they went back this morning to purchase it. So, anyway . . . It's light weight, small, but has all the suction power of the original. It's perfect. We don't have a lot of carpet in the house and most of it is upstairs. It was fun and gross to use the new vacuum. I didn't vacuum with the old one before I sold it, so the carpet was uber dirty! It was amazing! And gross!!

So, moving on . . . hopefully in the next few weeks, I will get some more paint out and get some other areas painted. Now that I painted the entry way, the stairwell really looks like it needs it, so I think that is next on the list. The downstairs family room is also in need of a a fresh look.

Small steps . . .

Posers!

The boys are totally into Skateboarding lately. They watch Zeke and Luther. They are always playing Tony Hawk's Downhill on the old PlayStation. They are out on the driveway riding and trying to do new tricks. They ask all the time to go to the Skate Park. Gunnar's papers from school always had "SK8" written on them. He some how weaseled his way into owning a pair of DC shoes (which I had never heard of, by the way) because his skater buddy gave them to him.

So, today, I pick them up from aforementioned skater buddy's house . . . well they were actually playing at the neighbor kids' house at the time. So, this time it wasn't the normal skater buddy that we got extra skateboards from, it was the neighbor. But, by the same token we now own another skateboard. A mini . . . the Banana Board . . . as it's been since named.

Before bed, the boys begged to have a photo shoot. If you remember my fantabulous son Gunnar . . . he does enjoy being photographed. He requested. He also went out to the van to get the camera, which was quite impressive.

So, here's a few shots of the boys posing for the camera with their boards! Silly boys.

Visit to Grandmas, the beach and other musings

We took advantage of some great weather (took a chance on the forecast for Western Washington, which can turn on a dime) and some great tides, which fortuneately are very spot on and headed out to my old stomping ground on Hood Canal (Hoodsport & Lilliwaup to be exact). If you are not familiar with this are of the state, you should check it out. I LOVE it. If you asked me that when I was 17 years old, I probably would not have said that. However, usually as we grow older we have much greater appreciation for our childhood and the like.

We took the boys out to the beach for them to explore the sea life on the Canal. On the beach, you can find crab, hermit crab, sea urchins, oysters, clams, jelly fish, star fish, sand dollars, and shrimp and fish in the water. We went to a spot where there are oyster beds - which are completely amazing the amount of oysters on the beach. As we made our way through oyster beds out to the sand following the tide out, we couldn't walk without stirring up hundreds (possibly thousands) of baby crab. I have NEVER in my life growing up on those beaches seen so many baby crab. Usually they hide under the rocks, but these babies were just out in the sand. It was crazy. You probably had to be there to fully appreciate my story right now! ;-)

The boys enjoying wading out in the water, trying to find big crab. They did want to catch one to keep, but where my mom lives you have to have crab pots out further than you can wade. At my granparents' beach, you can find keepers under boulders along the shore and in the shallows as the tide goes out, which is how we always use to go crabbing. My great grandpa fashioned a crab catcher out of some chicken wire and a pole. You would take a metal tub and hook it your waders and take the crab catcher and scoop up the crabs into the tub.

On our beach adventure we found some jelly fish. I put one on my shovel and it looks like a bubble, so Fischer tried to pop it with his rake! We saved him and put him back in the water. We saw three different colors of star fish - red, green and purple. We gave a sand dollar to the baby crabs which they immediately started attacking and eating. I am not sure the sand dollar enjoyed being eaten alive, but such is life on the beach - it's survival of the fittest out there and the crabs have the advantage on that one, even though they are tiny. Paden found a dead fish, which we also fed to the baby crab city. One that was a little larger than the others was certainly trying to rule the roost (or the fish mouth). Crab are funny little creatures - always on the defense with their little claws in the air. There weren't any clams on this beach - not sure where they all went for the holiday weekend, but they weren't squirting. At my grandparents' beach, you could walk through clam beds and get soaked by the clams squirting water up at you.

I love taking my boys to the beach and let them experience something different that we don't have where we live. I love for them to know that there is more our there than the dessert. We do live very near (walking distance) to the Columbia River and I love it too. But, there's a very different ecosystem and I want for them to learn about that. Paden did inform us that he did a report about star fish in school and that star fish do not have "arms", they have "rays". It was cool that he got to see one in real life and pick it up and talk to it . . . and that we saw three different colors and got to throw them back into the water. :)

Neil had never been up to "the lake". I actually grew up living near Lake Cushman and Hood Canal. Pretty cool to have a huge fresh water, beautiful lake and the smelly, beach-y salt water of Hood Canal all w/in 5 mintues of the house. Again, you should definitely check out a map! So, we went on a little drive up to the lake. There is a little bit of new development, but it's pretty much the same as I remember. We drove by the house I lived in from age 13 though 18. It's nestled back into some trees and looks smaller than I remember it being. We drove up to the Lake Cushman Resort where I have A TON of fabulous memories/stories of our posse hanging with the Ragan clan. Again, the lodge which was their house looked smaller on the outside than it seemed back then! ;) The resort was packed! Then we drove up to the state park and foudn out why the resort was so full. The state park is pretty much closed! The campground is closed and there is no access to the beaches. You can lauch your boat, but seemingly you can't step foot onto the beaches. I forgot to ask my mom what happened there. Anyway, it was a good little trip down membory lane. I might want to take a tour of the golf course and some other places that I haven't seen in years next time.

We had a great time, outside of the not-so-good bed we have to sleep on when we go to my mom and Steve's, but it's a sacrifice we are willing to make to have a good visit with Grandma with the puppies and to see the beach and all it has to offer little adventurers.

So, here's the scoop - I am not a fan of uploading pictures to blogger, so I am going to just send you to our ShutterFly page where you can look through the photos. I realized a while back, that if you upload your photos before you type, it's much easier. But, I forgot to do that this time, so forget it! Sorry, Blogger, sometimes you are a pain in my . . .

LINK to ShutterFly - http://www.deadrockcrew.shutterfly.com/