Springtime (and more)

Warm weather is such a welcome change for yard-less children, and anyone who’s been cooped up with them! We love going outside into the blinding sunshine. Life has been so pleasant now that it’s warm. Yes, at the end of many days I feel so emotionally drained that all I want to do is watch an episode of Dr. Who with Jeff and get a foot rub, but I can’t help feeling hopeful in the spring, even when daily life is exhausting.

Rose’s hair is just about long enough for pig tails! I can barely pinch it into two painful little paint brushes.

Luckily I got a few pictures of these little twigs before Rose ripped them out at nap time. I hope she likes wearing her hair in cute doos soon, because I love doo-ing it!

She woke up with the most amazing post-piggy-bedhead that I’ve ever seen.

Oh, and here’s Rose’s post-bath hair.

And my post-run hair. Yikes! I have a few select locations around town that I feel ok about parking the stroller and letting Jay and Rose get out to play while I run laps around them. The high school track is one of them (on days they leave the gate unlocked). Also, I got some running sunglasses. After 3 years of living in this sun-drenched place, I finally switched from hat to sunglasses. They were almost too cool for me, but I got them anyways. I love the brightness here when it’s polarized.

And now since I’ve moved from springtime to hair to sunglasses, I may as well digress further and add a jumble of pictures with no particular storyline, because they make me happy:

We got Rose a swim costume this month. Target has these cute little shirt-bikini bottom combos that give a little bit more coverage than the traditional bathing suit. The little one-pieces were rather adorable, but I went all boringly practical and got Rose one with sleeves to protect her little shoulders.

After I dragged Jay and Rose through part 2 of the monthly grocery shopping, we went to Richland’s Howard Amon Park. It is gorgeous and shady with a giant playground and cool park benches that are on chains so they swing like porch swings. There are sweeping views of the Columbia River.

It was 80 degrees out but that’s awesome park weather when you have lots of shade and no humidity. We could’ve stayed all day if I didn’t forget hats and sunscreen. And if Rose didn’t need a nap. Jay wanted to ride in the baby swings with Rose, so I pounced on the opportunity of having them both tied down and took some pictures.

My little angel girl with her halo of sunshine. I love how strawberry her hair is in this picture.

Jay loved the spiral tunnel slides. Once I had him hold Rose on his lap and go down with her. It was hilarious. He had a death grip around her neck (which I fixed before launching them), and they went soaring and bumping around the curves. When I finally got to the bottom of the slide, Jay was gone and Rose was teetering around looking slightly dazed. I was cracking up.

Remember how excited I was about Rose’s little pink sandals? Oh boy. Now that it’s been warm for a while, those sandals STINK! I didn’t know a little girl’s feet could make such a grown-up smell. And even if I was willing to commit the socks-with-sandals faux-pas, her socks are too bunchy and I can’t cram her feet into the sandals when she has socks on.

So I decided to alternate between superstink sandals and her too-big leather moccasins. It was great to be running around the track and see my cuties toddling around plucking up grass and trading hats. Jay and Rose are becoming such buddies! It’s fun to watch.

Jay is peewing me with his stick-gun, and Rose is fixing the sprinkler. I wish I was as flexible as she is.

This is out of order—oh well—on monthly grocery trip part 1, we stopped at the Columbia River Temple and took a walk around the grounds.

Side Ramble: One of my goals is to just let myself slow down and enjoy each day instead of rushing around trying to get things done. That way we can take advantage of the FUN things in the Tri Cities area as well as the stores, since we do have to drive 45 minutes to get there. That’s why I broke the monthly shopping down into 2 trips this time: Part 1: Costco and Target, Part 2: Winco and Walmart (I recently started forgiving Walmart for its stupidity and now I occasionally stop there).

Jay loves the Temple. I really hope nobody could hear us through those windows. I tried to keep Jay and Rose quiet, but the occasional sound did burst forth.

We caught the tail-end of the tulips.

Jay’s famous headlock hug. Every night before bed, we all give each other hugs and kisses. Jay does this headlock to Rose and plants a kiss on wherever is closest: her ear, her hair, her eye, etc…you get the idea.

Jay wouldn’t give up his trip around the pansy circle long enough to join us for a picture. I probably couldn’t think of a satisfactory explanation to his eighth “why” he should come over, so he didn’t stop for the picture.

Sniff, in 20 years she could be married!

Jay LOVES the fountain at the temple. He goes up and down the stairs, admiring the water. Leaving is tragic every time.

Climbing. The activity of choice 9 times out of 10.

I’m super impressed if you’re still reading this—I try not to be too rambly on here, but if you can believe it, our life is not always packaged into cutesy little episodes and quaint little stories with accompanying pictures. Usually it’s more a rambling chain of cute pictures punctuated with meltdowns, bruises, kisses, and picnics.

I can’t wait to package THIS story up:

It’s almost ours! 3 1/2 weeks till closing day! That saucy sign out front says “Too Late!” flaunting the realtor’s ability to sell houses or something. Don’t you love how it’s white? It’s the White House! The other Whites—Jeff’s parents—live in a brown house 4 houses down the street from here. So ours is THE White house, but theirs can’t be the Brown house because my parents are the Browns, so their house is the Brown House (even though it’s technically tan). The real question is what should we call the Brown house owned by the Whites?

Ok, I was going to be done, but do you want to see the back yard? I went over last week to check it out, and I got some pictures!

The appraiser had the bank remove the giant rotting saggy porch and fix and paint the remaining porch. This house used to have an above ground pool with a deck built around it. That wasted a good yard! We will need to plant some grass… if only they’d let us! But we have to like own the place first or something. I hope I wasn’t trespassing to take these pictures…

Here’s the view from the other side of the yard.

And a view from the porch. The neighbors seem to have a lovely lilac bush/tree. Those big poles above the fence hold up a net so the yards don’t get bombarded with soccer balls from the high school teams.

Ok, I’m done now. Oh wait—one more. In addition to asking WHY a couple hundred times each day, Jay has started drawing people every now and then (this is Luke Skywalker):

Hey, I just remembered that I have a couple cute videos to post too…

…no, I’ll resist. For now.