Pemple! Pemple!

On Friday Amber and I made the 40 minute drive into the tri cities to do some errands. We visited Home Depot, Goodwill, Winco, and Costco--a tall order for one morning. I was hoping to take Amber on a walk around the temple but when we were finally done at Costco it was nearly 12:30pm and naptime. Throwing caution to the winds, we went to the temple anyways. I have found that I have never regretted going to the temple.

In the parking lot I pointed to the big white building and told Amber that it is a temple. She caught on fast and said "Pemple! Pemple!" over and over while we strolled around the outside. I had to chase Amber down a few times to prevent her from demolishing the landscaping, but it was somehow still a peaceful walk. I thought back to all the times I took little Jay and littler Rose there for walks. Jay loved the fountain.  I remembered taking Rose and baby Amber there together. Rose loved the flowers. Now it was just my little Amby at my side, admiring the beautiful sunshine and trotting around the white sidewalk. The rush and bustle of our errands slipped away and I felt calm--centered.

 Sunlight through the stained glass up high

It's wonderful that we don't have to go inside the temple to feel the peace of the place. I still love going inside, and I was privileged to go into the temple TWICE this past month, but I love that walking around the outside is peaceful too. The scriptures talk about being endowed with power from on high, and the temple persuades me that peace is power. Peace is power. The Prince of Peace. The still small voice. Peace be still. Peace is definitely power.

After our walk, Amber slept all the way home.

A normal weekend

This weekend was the last "normal" weekend for our family for a long time, and when "normal" returns, it will be a new normal, not the current normal, because the season will change and the kids will grow and a million other reasons. Track season starts up on Monday, and Jeff will be coaching the distance runners on the high school track team. Track season means "adios, casual carefree Saturdays at home all together!" because Jeff will be spending at least a dozen of the remaining Saturdays in the school year at lengthy far-off track meets. So the kids and I will find our new normal for Saturdays, whether that means driving to visit Jeff at track meets or another activity. Since it's the end of February and spring plus big changes are around the corner, I thought I'd sort some of my unused February pictures into formation to follow a normal weekend White family flow from the winter of 2017.

1. Friday night has been family movie night for years. We eat pizza in the basement while watching a movie together. Lately it's been Costco, Little Caesar's, or Domino's rather than the homemade pizza or yore--gasp, I know, but a labor-cost analysis on my part revealed that buying pizza with a coupon is close enough to the price of ingredients for our homemade pizzas to make the work much less inspiring. Probably less healthy, but oh-so-easy! Family movie night is a staple in our house.

 

2. Kids sleepovers: on non-school nights, the kids are allowed to have sleepovers in each others' rooms. Mostly we don't want Jay keeping Rose up till all hours of the night on school nights because Rose NEEDS all 11-12 hours of sleep to function and Jay only needs 8-9. Amber has started joining in more and more with the big kids' activities and every now and then I find her snuggled up in the top bunk with Rose, even on a school night. But it's so cute that their shorter sleep time is bearable.

3. Saturday morning: the kids wake up and watch three cartoons while Jeff reads and I slowly peel myself out of bed. Then breakfast and Jeff and I take turns running. The kids play, then we usually try to do some sort of work around the house (although that does not happen every Saturday).

Up, up, and over! Saturday mornings are for playing. 

Amber's hair still only really grows in one forelock clump right on top. It's awesome. 

Amber is currently more than half of Rose's weight, so it's quite a feat for Rose to lug her around piggy-back style. 

An example of a semi-rare Saturday project: Jeff assembled these Ikea shelves in the garage and later in the week I stocked them with our slowly growing pantry food storage. Right now we save $20 per month towards food storage, and every 12-18 months or so we use those savings. This year we managed to get these shelves and that blue water barrel. I normally get super overwhelmed about food storage, so this way I only have to think about it once per year, aside from keeping the pantry well-stocked.

4. Saturday evenings are for pancakes at Grampa Dan's house with the cousins. It gets loud and wild fast with 6 kids ages 7 and under in one room. We haven't gotten to do as much with the local cousins this winter so any time they get together feels like a party.

These trampoline pictures were taken at our house this week. It was 40 degrees outside and snow was still melting, but the kids thought it felt like short sleeve barefoot weather, so out to the tramp they went. 

Amber (2), Layne (4), Rose (6), Tate (3) 

5. Sunday mornings are long this year since we have afternoon church at 1pm. 

The kids like to look at their personal project life binders. Amber kept saying "cute!" while looking at baby pictures of herself. 

Rose kept saying "I remember that! I remember that!" 

Last week it was actually sunny and warm enough to go on a Sunday morning family walk! So we strolled a mile around the high school block while the kids galloped along in the sunshine. 

 That blue sky was such a welcome change to the grayness.

6. Sunday mid-morning means get ready for church and eat lunch. Every time I see my kids all polished and dressed up for church, I seem to attempt taking pictures of them. I guess it's a good thing I keep on trying, because I have success very infrequently.

 Two weeks ago, Rose did her own hair and both sisters wore headband bows to church.

 Rose was proud of doing her own hair.

Jay did his own hair all by himself too.

And the group shot was too sunny. 

7. Drive to church: 17-20 minutes. Half of the Sundays, Jeff goes early to ward council. He rides his bike to the church in good weather since we only have one car. In bad weather, he drives our van to the church then drives home to pick us up in time for church.

 Playing peek-a-boo on the way to church on February 5th.

I love it when Rose surprises herself and reads a new book. It's like she forgets that she can read lots of words now, and while she's looking at pictures suddenly the words jump out at her. She read this picture book on the way to church and flashed her signature Rose-grin in pleasure. 

8. Sunday night crepes. This tradition has popped up again in the past month. In the past Jeff has made Sunday lunch crepes, but then I said if he's going to cook, why not cook them for dinner so we both don't have to cook in the same day. His new crepe pans make the process quite efficient. 

Post-crepe messy faces

9. Monday morning things reset to weekday status. Jeff leaves for work before 6:30am and the kids dogpile me till I get up. Then it's a normal school day, with piano practicing and hair-doing and shoe-tying.

A good morning selfie. 

 Amber likes to do her own hair sometimes too.

I drop Jay and Rose off at school by 8:50am and the week has officially begun again.

The big decision

Over the past couple of years, Jeff and I have slowly come to the conclusion that if we stay in Washington, we will move to Sunnyside by the time Jay is in high school at the very latest. Lots of factors and lots of reasons apply to the situation. We live in Grandview, go to church in Prosser, and Jeff works in Sunnyside. That means we basically live stretched thin between three towns (Grandview is between Sunnyside and Prosser). After we got back from Paris last month, Jeff and I started seriously considering making the move soon. We have loved living in our big roomy split level house in Grandview for the past five years, but we would rather downsize to a cheaper house and use those savings for travel instead! I'd live in a hut if it meant we could travel the world!

So I started browsing Zillow for houses in Sunnyside. The market is pretty good right now, but there's not a lot out there. But the Big Decision felt better and better every day we thought about it. Jeff and I prayed about it and thought about it and even took turns going running around Sunnyside on weekends, scouting out good neighborhoods and for sale houses. Finally, last week, I emailed the realtor who sold us our Grandview house and asked him if he'd like to sell it for us and help us find a place in Sunnyside. He is a great realtor with TONS of experience, so he got the ball rolling at super speed.

Jeff and I did a major declutter/cleaning project over the long President's Day weekend and the realtor walked through and priced the house on Tuesday. He stuck a for sale sign in our front yard yesterday. Today someone came to see it and they want to buy it. Already. For full asking price. I mean, anything can happen with housing offers and all of that, but our house's online listing hasn't even posted yet and someone already wants it! Our realtor said it would probably sell fast, but...one day is lightning fast. It's not sold yet, and nothing has been signed. Time will tell, but we are house hunting and number crunching and in serious danger of falling in love with a cute little cottage of a foreclosure on a spacious lot with big trees in a good neighborhood one mile from Sunnyside High School.

Life is full. I have so many everyday pictures that I'm dying to post with captions for memories, but keeping a house realtor-clean with three kids running rampant is taking an unforseen voltage of my energy. I always love order and cleanliness, but as a mother I have learned how to suppress those desires into more realistic levels so I don't drive my family crazy with nagging. This week I have completely unleashed my organizational tendencies/mania on the White house and my wrath has been fearsome to behold. It feels almost bad to succumb and let myself pick up every scrap of paper I see every time someone drops one. But it is working! The place literally echoes with cleanliness. We filled nearly 20 boxes with books and STUFF over the weekend and stashed them in the garage to help our house feel more open, and it helped. The kids have been running around screaming joyfully among the echo-y walls and halls, or bouncing all over the big floors on their hoppers and Rody.

The family room before project de-clutter [above], and after [below]

While our realtor was taking pictures, I snapped a few quick ones myself with my phone, because I'm not sure my house has ever been this clean and I wanted to remember the occasion. I didn't take pictures of the garage or the playroom or the entry way or stairs, but those are too hard to photograph.

The family room--we took down all of the pictures on the wall and rearranged the couch back into the default position that we started with. I insisted on moving the recliner out of that corner after nearly a year's worth of sitting in it so sick, nauseous, and pregnant. Every time I sat down in that corner after my pregnancies, I immediately felt bored with everything--the view, the seat, the room--everything. So last year we moved it around. When we put it back in that corner and I sat down there this week, I was pleased to find that my post partum recliner PTSD had subsided and I was not bored with the seat anymore! That is just one story about one corner of this big house. Houses have so many stories to tell. I love that idea.

This kitchen has been one of my true loves. 

How do people ever sell houses when two year olds and milk are involved?

I didn't take a picture of the kitchen wall before we dismantled it, so these will have to do. We took down the entire bookshelf on the wall behind the kitchen table, and the computer desk and allllll of the stuff on the wall. It is so empty.

After

 [above and below] the girls' room. Although I spent a good amount of energy going against my mom-principles and cleaning my kids' rooms for them before the realtor pictures were taken, our realtor didn't even take pictures of the kids' bedrooms. He said pictures make the bedrooms look tiny. He was right. But I wanted to remember what their rooms looked like, even shrunken in a photo.

The chalkboard wall: awesome idea. 

Jay's room 

The master bedroom. We never got around to painting it. Cleaning my house with the knowledge that people will soon be walking through it and critiquing it was a vulnerable feeling. I suddenly wondered if they would judge my thrift store old-school chair or our complete lack of matching furniture. Then I shook myself and thought positive: less furniture makes the place look bigger!

My beloved book wall in the basement. 

Solution to the two-year-old issue: get out the Windex! Amber helped me clean windows for a solid ten minutes one morning. Then it was back to destruction as usual. 

We went on a trip to Home Depot for a few touch-up supplies like trim paint and light bulbs. Amber loved driving the cart. I love whoever invented that thing. 

 Our snow cave is shrinking daily.

Jeff and I spent last night pounding out drywall anchors and patching nail holes, and it made me feel so old and yet so new all at once.