Sharing isn’t always caring.

Jay started IT early Tuesday morning.

I got IT Wednesday night. Rose and Jeff caught IT Thursday morning. What is IT? Who knows. Whatever IT was ravaged through our little family this week, leaving us all weak and thirsty. [side note: I felt bad taking this  picture of Jay when he felt yucky, but he’s cute even when he’s sick, so I couldn’t resist] 

I won’t go into any of the unpleasant details, but the only reason this sickness was less awful than prego-shaina is because I knew it wouldn’t last for 5 months straight. This was the first time that Jeff and I were both pathetically ill at the same time, and it was hard not being able to lean on each other—a sympathetic glance [grimace] as we took turns in the bathroom was about all we could manage.  I became quite dehydrated and consequently, Rose’s milk supply got very low. Scary, since she won’t take a bottle.

Rose had the mildest case, thankfully (maybe because her body is the smallest?) She only barfed once. And then she was a patient little angel laying on the floor by my chair calmly all day, squealing, squirming, playing, taking her own naps. Seriously, what did I do to deserve such a SWEET little girl?

Dear Steph (Jeff’s sister) kindly came and whisked Jay away on Thursday to spare him from the …carnage. Even though I knew it couldn’t possibly last 5 months or even 1 month for that matter, by Thursday night I was starting to feel DESPERATE (how did I make it through all those weeks of pregnancy again?) I ran through the list of things we did when I was so sick for all those weeks: prayers, the ER, my Mom’s expertise, and numerous priesthood blessings. There was clearly one thing that we needed!

Our newly organized ward hasn’t assigned home teachers yet, so we called around till we found two priesthood holders and asked them for blessings. Ty and Chad came over right away and gave us each a simple, beautiful blessing. All I can say is that the priesthood is REAL, and I am so thankful for it. Within an hour after they left, my feverishness and aches subsided enough for me to sleep at long last. By Friday morning, we were tender, tired, and thirsty, but HEALED!

This morning, we found out that Steph now has IT. Man I hope we didn’t give IT to anyone else.

This is one of the few blog posts that can NOT be improved by pictures. But then again, if the pictures are completely unrelated to the subject of the post, maybe I can salvage my photoverload blog style/reputation just a little…

When we went to Spokane last weekend, Jay had a good time climbing on Grampa Argyle’s 4-wheeler. Jeff had a good time playing with his fancy-schmancy camera lenses:

Let’s just say that sharing is usually caring, and leave it at that.

Independence Day

Here’s a list of my favorite ways to celebrate the 4th of July:

1. Singing all 3 verses of The Star-Spangled Banner.
2. Singing other patriotic songs—fun ones and serious ones.
3. Going to the local flag-raising ceremony in town.
4. Reading the Declaration of Independence
5. Saying the Pledge of Allegiance.
6. Going on an Independence Day run.
7. Wearing red, white, and blue.
8. Picnics and eating all-American food, especially apple pie.
9. Spending time with family.
10. Waving around sparklers and watching fireworks.

And now, I’m feeling sort of rambly so if you’re not in the mood to read my thoughtful ramblings, just scroll through and look at the pictures instead.

This year we managed to do everything except the sparklers on my list of ways to celebrate our country. We did only see like 1 or 2 fireworks because it doesn’t get dark until 10pm now and I was just too tired to face staying up that late with a two-year old. I went to bed at 9:15pm! We definitely heard plenty of fireworks, though—based on the noise, nearly everyone in town had their own truckload of fireworks to light up. Jay, Rose, and I were exhausted and managed to sleep through all that noise somehow. [Side note: why we were so tired: Sunday we went to Spokane and back for Grampa Argyle’s viewing, and spent nearly 7 hours cramped in the car].

We made a few attempts at a patriotic picture…I’ll let you decide which one turned out the best. I’m scattering them around this post to avoid the monotony of my monolog. [Yes, Jay’s shirt says 2005 on it. No, I wasn’t even married back then. It’s from his big beautiful bin of hand-me-downs from loving friends. We are fortunate to only have ever bought Jay like 3 or 4 shirts in his entire life].

This is not just any ole apple pie. It’s sour cream apple pie with crumbly cinnamon streusel topping. I’ve never even made a normal apple pie because this one is so yummy! Here’s the story of why we celebrate with Apple Pie: On the first 4th of July of our married life, Jeff and I went rock climbing for most of the day with some of his cousins in Utah. Dusty, tired, thirsty, and HUNGRY, we went to Rodizio’s Brazilian meat restaurant to eat after our long day in the great outdoors. After all of that food, Jeff’s cousin Newell said he still wanted something more: Apple Pie. We were all so full that we wondered why he could even think of eating anything else. His reason was that apple pie is American, and it was the 4th of July. That one silly little event started a tradition for us. Now on the 4th of July, I make an apple pie.

Surprisingly, our Independence Day started out great, and then got progressively… harder as the day went on. I’ll blame most of it on my sleep deprivation.

 
Anyways, we started the day off with the Grandview city flag raising ceremony, which our ward was in charge of. That was very nice, although the 21-gun salute scared Rose. Steph called and invited us over for lunch hot dogs, so we walked to the store and got corn on the cob to bring. By then I was hot, TIRED, and hungry. When we got to the White house for lunch, Rose pooped all over herself and the person holding her—me. (Steph lent me some shorts). We played games and ate lunch there. Pleasant (except for the poo).

Jeff made us tasty BLT sandwiches for dinner, and I made the apple pie. We decided that we were too tired to go anywhere for fireworks viewing, sadly. Kids went to bed. Parents watched (dare I admit this? ok, I dare) …an episode of Star Trek Voyager (Netflix recently put all things Star Trek onto its online streaming. We enjoy Star Trek. Sheepish grin.). Everyone in town started up their own little fireworks shows. I went to bed early. Nothing too bad until… around 3 am when Jay started barfing. Believe it or not, that was our first experience with a middle-of-the-night sick child. My husband is a superstar. I won’t go into details, but I’m sure glad Jay is now on the mend.

While my apple pie wafts its sweet, homey aroma around our apartment, I’ll let the scent help me remember some of the times in my life when I have felt the MOST patriotic:

1. Since the USA is so big, normally I think of myself as being from a certain region, state, or town, and other regions/states/towns usually feel foreign. But being OUT of the country for months at a time makes anywhere in the country feel like home to me!I’ve gone on 2 long, multi-month trips outside the USA. Even the airport felt like home after those trips. I was surprised at the rush of emotion that I felt when I looked at our flag and said the Pledge of Allegiance at the SVU graduation right after our Europe trip. It made me feel so glad to be an American!

2. Singing the second and third verses of The Star-Spangled Banner always gives me “patriotic chills.” They are powerful words. Thank you, Francis.

3. Another source of “patriotic chills” for me is The Declaration of Independence (not because it’s swampy green in this picture). I love those self-evident truths. I remember when I saw the original Declaration of Independence. There’s a hush in that room that’s not enforced by the guards. Time may have faded the page, but those WORDS live on! This is the picture of the Declaration that Jeff and I took when we visited the National Archives 4 years ago. It’s kind of a weird green—I don’t remember that part. hmmm. It probably has something to do with lemon juice and hair dryers, but I could be wrong. (I’ll insert a wink here because it’s hard to tell who will be able to read the grin I'm wearing while writing that…)

4. Amazingly, a place that I have felt something far beyond mere patriotic chills is not even on this continent! It was in France. Walking along the D-Day beaches and through the graveyard there has to be one of the most moving experiences I’ve ever had. It’s the kind of emotion that just sort of makes me mute. Can’t describe it. So this picture we took a few years ago will have to do.

5. Look at these American kids—don’t they make you feel patriotic?

Time to go. Happy Independence Day!

Bill’s Berry Farm

Saturday was the Blueberry Festival at Bill’s Berry Farm, a pick-your-own berries place near our town.

It took us forever to get out the door because: I had to feed Rose and then I realized that the bread was perfectly puffy and ready to go into the oven, so we had to let it bake for half an hour. Then it was lunch time, so we ate. When we finally were all loaded into the car, Jeff looked down and saw a huge neon stain on his shirt. Rose had a poopy explosion all OVER the place—it went all the way through to Jeff’s skin! So I carried Rose back inside by an arm and a leg and changed her clothes/diaper while Jeff changed, rinsed, and soaked his damaged apparel. THEN we finally got back into the car and went to Bill’s Berry Farm. We arrived over an hour after we planned! Whew. And we only have two kids.

We parked in a big field with grass as tall as our car tires. After slathering sunscreen all over the place, we waded through the grass and caught a hayride-shuttle to the festival.

Jay adores tractors. Not that you can tell by this picture. He was a tad overwhelmed when we first got there.

and I hate the way I look wearing sunglasses.  It doesn’t help that I put them right over my normal glasses, I know. [All you fashionable folks have my permission to cringe right... NOW] The good thing about having a cute baby strapped to your front is nobody notices any major fashion faux-pas that you make (or your post-partummy-pooch, for that matter).

Jay learned a new animal word: Alpaca! He actually said it. These little guys were SO cute. They were freshly shaven except for the little pouf of fuzz on their heads.

Alpacas are so little! They were pretty timid so we didn’t get to touch their soft fuzz, but who can blame them? That place was crawling with noisy people.

There were a bunch of little tents and booths set up like a country fair. One of them was selling Alpaca yarn and knitted hats, scarves, and finger puppets. That basket by Steph was full of the fluffiest, fuzziest, softest teddy bears EVER—made of long alpaca hair! I saw the wind blowing that soft fur and I had to go over and stroke it. If I had $50 to spend on a teddy bear…

Have I mentioned how much Jay adores his Aunt Steph? He loves her. There was a so-called petting zoo at the farm, but really it was just 3 or 4 cages with sleeping pigs and other tired-looking farm animals. Jay still loved seeing them, though!

There was a playground with a big ole tractor for kids to climb all over. Jay was in heaven. Oh, and that’s a folk music band on a platform in the background. It made for an extra-quaint atmosphere, with the wailing voices, banjo, and 3-part fiddle harmonies going on in the background.

Chillin’.

We decided that Jay and Rose wouldn’t appreciate picking their own fresh blueberries this year. So we moved on to the next best thing…

Blueberry donuts!

The highlight of the Blueberry Festival had to be the fresh, hot, melt-in-your-mouth blueberry cake donuts. They made them right there in front of our very eyes. The machine was so cool to watch! It was Willy-Wonka-ish as it chugged out the donuts all in a row.

hee hee, I made Jeff take pictures of the donut-making machine because it fascinated me. Plop, sizzle, rotate…

…up, up, and away!  Seriously these donuts were heaven on earth. Jeff got right in line for them when we arrived, and good thing too—by the time we got our donuts, the line was twisting away into the distance. [side note—do you see the donuteer’s apron? It says “Fresh Produce and Fruity Fun.” I don’t know which of those categories the donuts fall under, but who cares? They are yummy. That’s enough for me.]

We all sat under a tree in the grass and feasted on fresh blueberry donuts. They only make them 8 times a year at their special festival events (I made sure to ask). We decided that’s probably a good thing for our health.

Rose watched enviously as we indulged in the warm, sweet, melt-in-your-mouth decadence. I got sugar in her hair. I’m so glad I ran 7 1/2 miles that morning—it made the donut-consumption much more…justifiable? We bought a 1-dozen bag of the donuts. We left the farm with only 4 donuts. By that evening, there were zero donuts left. Hopefully our hearts can pump away all that cholesterol before the next Bill’s festival, because you can be sure that we’ll be back in line for more fresh blueberry donuts!

THESE are “those days”

Do you ever say “ah, those were the days!” ?  I do, and I’m only 24. I had a thought this week: some day we’ll look back on NOW and say “ah, those were the days!” So these days ARE those days. Have I lost you yet? Here are some of the recent happenings that led me to think so… philosophically:

1. While I was making dinner the other night, I heard happy squeals and music coming from the family room. I peeked in and  found Jeff and Jay dancing up a storm to random music channels on cable TV! It was so cute and hilarious. [Side note:—why we now have cable: when we switched our Charter internet and phone service over to our new home, they had a deal running that was cheaper than our current service, but included basic cable. Who can argue with a lower bill? We don’t really watch much TV, but then Jeff discovered that there are a ton of music channels. Perfect for dancing!]

2. This week, we visited our new closest-to-home park twice. I love going to the park with my kids.

We have new territory to explore…

…new slides to slide…

…new ladders to climb…

…peek!…

…new swings to swing…

…and a new view for Rose. This park has shade in the right places and BENCHES in that shade. Perfect for Jay’s observing fan club. But Jay prefers it when Rose and I play with him, so we 3 all went down the slide together once or twice, and I got a friction burn on my elbow. We like our park.

3. Jeff has a job interview for a French teaching position at Sunnyside High school this coming week! When he got off the phone with the guy and told us the news, we all shouted and skipped around the apartment. Jay loved it. (he still re-enacts our celebration—supercute). Jeff also found out that he passed the French Praxis on the same day that he scheduled that interview. So we had double the dancing and shouting for joy. It was/is completely awesome to feel…excited and hopeful about the job-future again!

4. I adore Rose’s arm rolls. They are tasty. I don’t adore the stinky milkscum that gets stuck in her neck roll. No matter what, she always seems to have a smelly neck.

5. Look at her CHOW down on that toy! She has been grabbing and biting anything in reach this week. The reason for all this bite-y bite-y, drooly behavior became clear on Thursday: Rose’s first TOOTH poked through! It was her left bottom front tooth. The night that The Tooth was working its way out into the open, Rose awoke twice in tears. Teething is no picnic. For any of us. Now she’s working on Tooth #2. [Side note: That thing on the side of her gums that I thought was a tooth 2 weeks ago turned out to just be a harmless mouth-cyst that el Dr. said should disappear on its own]

6. Jay likes to read in bed. I’ll read him a story before naptime or bedtime, and the hand it over to him and he often falls asleep “reading.” He must be my son! Jay also is really in to: climbing everything, naming the color of every thing he sees and counting up to four, with a few “sebens,” nines, and tens thrown in there every now and then.

7. Since Jeff has been working at summer school in Prosser (about 15 minutes away) from 7:15am to 3:30 pm each day, my vehicle has become the Truck (aka the double stroller). Can you see it parked outside our front door? Sometimes I just chain it to that little railing there for easy access. The kids and I have adventures-a-plenty with that thing. We go to the grocery store. We go to the park. We visit Steph (Jay’s beloved Auntie-dear). We went around the high school track a few times with it one day this week. I even walked  through the bank drive-in with the stroller one morning. It was fun but kind of awkward because I was too tall for the window so I had to bend over to see in.

Another day I crammed our laundry under the stroller and went to the Whites’ house to wash it (they kindly let us do laundry there now that we have to PAY $1.25 to wash and $1.00 to dry our laundry in the basement of our apartment). This stroller rocks.

[pardon the recycled picture—a recycled picture is better than no picture to break up all these WORDS] Last week the stroller’s front wheel wobbled a TON and eventually fell off during my run one day. A nice but rather strange man stopped to help me put it back on. We later figured out that the plastic part of the wheel got warped when we put the new thorn-resistant tire tubes on. So it wobbles when you go faster than a walk. So yesterday I put our single stroller’s front wheel onto the double stroller! Problem solved.

8. On Thursday, I did my homemade “post-baby fitness test” at the high school track. No, this picture is NOT the Grandview High School’s track. The Grandview track is more like a ring of eroded black asphalt. I don’t have a picture of it. I got a Google image of a pretty track for your viewing pleasure. Anyways, I took Jay and Rose over to the track on Thursday morning, laid Rose on a blanket, and turned Jay loose on the infield. He roamed, ran, and explored while I did my little “fitness test.” I ran 1 mile in 6:35, an 800 in 3:09, and a 400 in 1:30. I was pleased. The mile was 22 seconds faster than the last time I did my fitness test 2 months ago. Jay did run right out  in front of me, and I had to put on the brakes to avoid trampling him. So my mile probably could’ve been a few seconds faster. Oh well, at least Jay survived!

I love how GOOD it feels to RUN when I’m in shape! I’m not all the way where I plan to be yet, but running has been getting better and better over the past few weeks. This morning I went on a peaceful 7.5-mile run through the scenic fruit fields (well, it was mostly peaceful—I did get chased by a snarling pack of dogs two different times). Minus the dogs, long Saturday morning runs are THERAPEUTIC. As one of my favorite authors said, “I loved the wind across my cheeks, through my hair. Running aired out my soul. It made me feel alive.” (Wendelin Van Draanen, The Running Dream—a book I highly recommend, by the way). So true!

9. My cabbage patch baby Rose. No explanation necessary. LOVE her.

10a. In a moment of weakness (or a moment of genius?), I got a 4-lb box of strawberries at Costco this week. YUM strawberries ‘n cream oatmeal!!! The best part: you don’t even need to sweeten the oatmeal if you have a little sugar mixed in with the cut up berries. Healthy food makes me feel GOOD.

10b. Who need jam? PB-fresh strawberry-wich. I just sprinkle a little bit of sugar onto the strawberries and mmmm it transforms boring ole PBJ to gourmet. Ah, the bounty of summertime.

11. Bills Berry Farm. But you’ll have to wait for more on that because this post is already too long and I need to go change a diaper and make dinner.

hasta la vista

A Memory

Argyle is a cool name.

2 years ago, we had 4 generations of Argyles all together: Jeffrey Argyle White, Leslie Argyle White holding Joseph Argyle White (aka Jay), and Clarence Argyle.

Father and daughter.
This morning, Jeff’s Grampa Argyle passed away. I only got to visit him 2 or 3 times since I became a part of his family, so I didn’t know him very well. I do have one story to share in memory of his life, though…
The first time I met Grampa Argyle, he “blessed my little heart.” And it wasn’t exactly in the southern way. (He lived in Spokane, WA—not exactly south of much in this country) He was telling me a story about a little girl whose grandma always said “bless your little heart!” while hugging her and patting her on the bottom. The little girl ended up thinking that her booty was her heart. Well, after he told that story, Grampa Argyle blessed my little, um, heart the same way! So even though I didn’t know him very well, I do know that he had a sense of humor, and his family will miss him.
Rose never got to meet her Great-Grampa Argyle, but most of his posterity inherited the “Argyle-Smile,” so she will know him in a small way! 
Here's the link to Grampa Argyle's obituary: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/spokesman/obituary.aspx?n=clarence-corbett-argyle&pid=152312365#.Tg81AhNedeg.facebook