Styro-snow

Have I ever mentioned my dislike of styrofoam? It gives me chills. The sound of two pieces of styrofoam rubbing together is worse than fingernails on a chalkboard. Even lower than that on my list is the sound of a plastic spoon scraping the bottom of a styrofoam cup. SHUDDER. Ear-cringe. Leave the room till it’s over.

Our beautiful new kitchen table was delivered today. It came in a BIG, battered box. And it was well-padded with…you guessed it, STYROFOAM! I’m glad that our table didn’t have a scratch on it, but that white stuff it was swathed in turned our family room into a blizzard. It would’ve been fine if I had been able to quickly dispose of the stuff right away. But I was busy putting the legs on the table and admiring how it looks with the chairs pushed in.

I knew that Jay and Rose were playing with the styrofoam, but when I looked over, they had already crumbled a small pile so I figured I may as well let them play happily for a while before boring-mama came and broke up the party.

As usual, my children surpassed my expectations and created a spectacular snowstorm of styrofoam (say that 5 times fast). Oddly enough, the styrofoam bits weren’t Whiteguys, they were ewoks.  Jay kept saying “I’m making ewoks, Mommy! There are too many to count!” 

Finally I realized that I had to clean up the ewoks before the children started running around the house and scattering the pellets everywhere.

Cleaning up a billion bits of crumbled styrofoam is like trying to sweep up dust on the moon. Here’s what happened:

• I tried brushing it off of the kids’ clothes. But it was too statically charged, so I had to strip them down and whip/shake their clothes out. This spread the chaos even further.
• I had Jay take Rose into their room and close the door so I could deal with the mess without interference.
• SO, I disposed of the box and remaining large pieces of styrofoam.
• Next I tried sweeping up the stuff, but it just blew around and when I finally did get some into the dustpan and tried emptying it into the trash, it floated everywhere but where I wanted it to go:

• Enter: DIRT DEVIL. Why would I have even tried sweeping up the stuff on the carpet at all—why not just vacuum it up in the first place? I had JUST vacuumed the whole house a few hours before this incident, so I was burned out on vacuuming. And my distant days as a Wendy’s employee schooled me in the art of carpet-sweeping with a regular ole broom, so I thought it was possible. Well, sweeping carpet didn’t work well on smooshed french fries then, and it definitely didn’t work well on floaty styrofoam pellets now.
• Thankfully, the Dirt Devil isn’t just for dirt. By the time I finished, the vacuum was full to the brim with white stuff:

• But the front and sides of the vacuum had little white bits static-ed to it so I had to take the hose out and vacuum the vacuum.
• Then I vacuumed up the stuff that fell out of the trash, and finally the place was clean again.

I try to be patient and allow my kids to be messy, but this time I think it may have been better to intervene earlier. One thing that’s for sure: this is probably the last time that I vacuum TWICE in one day!

By the way, here’s what it all looks like now. We still have that box full of all the pictures I haven’t hung yet hiding over there by the bench, and there are no light fixtures in the ceiling yet. I have plans to paint the walls in there a happy yellow and hang some airy curtains up. The only thing that I don’t like about the table is the grooves in it—I like the way they look, but I know it’ll be a pain to scrub sticky stuff out of them. Other than that, I think it’s pretty pretty.

The Shoreline 10k

Tired. Tired. Exhausted. Limp. Thirsty. Sleepy. Lethargic.

Nothing destroys me quite like a summer 10k race!

This morning, Jeff and I ran the Shoreline 10k along the sparkling Columbia River. I can track my energy levels throughout the race by how much of the beauty I remember after the race is over. Today it only took 20 minutes for me to stop noticing the lovely lush park and shining river. Like I said, tired’s the word.

Why do we do these races? I sure don’t know! Habit? Possibly. In college, we used to run races every weekend. Well, whatever the reason for muscle strain and sweat-buckets, we both finished the race.

Jeff ran a 38:10 to place second over all, and I ran a 46:55 and I was the 4th female finisher. We were both first in our age groups! But they gave Jeff a red ribbon for his overall place, and me a blue ribbon for my age-group place. Ah well. At least there wasn’t any sneaky chip-timing.

We both ran nearly 2 minutes slower than we thought we would, but we both felt like our times weren’t too shabby for today. Jeff only started running again 3 weeks ago, so his time is probably the more impressive. I started feeling a bit tingly/woozy around mile 4.5, so I had to slow down. And we’re both slightly sleep-deprived, thanks to children and good books. On our drive home, we talked about our race and our future fitness plans. I love being married to a real runner, because we always like to talk over our races and we understand each other perfectly. We started doing that long before we ever even dated. It’s one of our things.

I love a good early-morning race-date with my husband!

SuperSteph watched Jay and Rose starting at 6:30am when we had to leave to drive to the race. When we got back, Jay and Rose were ultrahappy, as they normally are when they get a couple hours of Stephtime.

Steph painted Rose’s toenails, and Jay couldn’t be left out! (his are pale peachy-pink, thankfully rather harder to see than the dirt around them).

So, who’s up for another sunset?

Crazyheads

Rose got her first black eye this week. While playing chase, she stumbled and fell eye-first into the edge of the coffee table. That is one spectacular eye. It was ironic because in that giant empty room, she had to fall right on the one sharp piece of furniture.

Johnny Bravo hair, post-run.

I haven’t worn a ponytail in 5 months! Only two months after my last haircut, it was high time for another one this week (ahem, pun intended). Now I’m back down to my oh-so-easy pixie. I should’ve taken a picture of the stiff, fume-y- spikeydoo that my hairgirl loves to coif, but I forgot.

We ordered a table and chairs from overstock.com this week, and the chairs have come already. Jeff carefully assembled all 6 of them with Jay’s…gloved assistance.

Nice work, boys.

It was a bit risky to order furniture without seeing it in person, but it was such a good deal, and they turned out to be better than I thought. How rare! Once the matching table comes, we’ll say adios to ole white-n-gold forever. This is big, folks—I ate dinner at that table when I was little. I love how these chairs look in our kitchen already (they hide that dear old table quite nicely), and in spite of their woodiness, they are actually smooth and comfy. 

Jay and Rose love the chair-boxes.

They each have their own box-airplane/boat, but it’s sweet how they prefer to adventure together.

 

Rose is starting to put words together every now and then. The other day she startled me by saying “mo, bee!” (more please) when she finished her food. She is also getting pretty handy with a spoon and open-top cup (although the potential for flying milk still has me putting lids on her drinks most of the time). She calls Jay “Day” and she even says day-doo for thank you.

It was a read-o-rama today. Do you see C3PO?

Jay was reading a story to him.

Happy Sunday!

Rose loves Nursery at church. But it tuckered her out—she was asleep almost before we drove out of the parking lot on the way home!

I love doing sharing time in Primary. It’s so fun thinking up goofy somewhat-lesson-related activities for the kids to do. At one point today, I had them all buzzing their lips with their fingers. Hee hee hee, and I was doing it with them.

Jeff has been sharing the load of story-reading with me this summer—now the kids still get their beloved 10+ stories each day, but it’s easier. By the number of times we deny them a story, you’d think we NEVER read to them. But seriously, they love books! I wonder where they got that gene.

When we got in the oven-hot car after church, Jay said “we’re melting our children!” quoting me from last Sunday.

What do you see?

One of our library books this week was Brown Bear Brown Bear What Do You See? I’ve never really loved that book, but I checked it out so Rose could have something more on her level to enjoy and comprehend. Jay really liked it too. One morning when he wanted me to read it again and I was busy/sick of the repetition, I jokingly said “white guy, white guy*, what do you see? I see a strong boy** lookin’ at me!” A little while later, I was in the kitchen and I heard Jay reading his Star Wars visual dictionary a-la-Brown Bear. I only recorded a 30 second clip, but he literally went through the whole entire 50 pages, from one character to the next. It was awesome.

We love this White guy.

*white guy= storm trooper
**strong boy=rebel in Star Wars…In case you forgot.

This sweet Rose got a painful diaper rash this week. I looked up ways to combat diaper rash with cloth diapers, and discovered that I had been doing everything wrong. Ahh! One of the many suggestions was to leave the waterproof cover off and let the bum air out a bit in plain ole cotton, changing it every time it’s wet. Well, Rose normally wears sleek snap-on pocket diapers so I’m not very good at getting the, uh, old-school diaper to stay on her little hips…

…we’ve had some issues…

…and a few leaks out the side. I think the 2-day airing that her bum got helped some. The all-natural, cloth-diaper-friendly cream came today, so hopefully her bum will feel all the way better soon. I have been laughing my head off every other hour when she comes walking up with her demi-diaper sagging sideways. Kids are so at the mercy of their parents, poor things.

Oh yeah, and we ordered some stools for our tall counter this week. We’ve eaten every meal at the counter since they came. It’s so easy and convenient for our family of four! The kids look so cute and tiny perched on top of those tall stools. Rose is a whole lot less messy when her food is closer to her face.

Stools! And yes, there are 17 bananas on our counter. Soon after this picture was taken, Jay climbed up on the new stools and ate 3 bananas! I may never have noticed that they were gone, except he left 3 peels scattered across the counter top.

Why do we have 17 bananas, anyways? I’ve been buying them up when they’re on sale and freezing them for banana shakes. I got the idea from my friend and OHMAN, theses shakes are yum. Per person: 1 frozen banana, 1 tablespoon of peanut butter, 1/2 teaspoon of cocoa powder (the bitter kind—have faith), and enough milk to make it blend into cool satisfying creaminess. It tastes like a milkshake, but it’s HEALTHY! We’ve been drinking those at lunch most days in this summer heat.

Are you tired of these yet? I’m not! It is fascinating to watch the sun slip below the horizon. It happens so fast! Every night I vow NOT to take a sunset picture, but so often I just HAVE to so I can share the glorious joy. I wonder if the people across the street (that’s their roof in the dark patch) wonder why I keep leaning out the window and aiming a camera at their house. Hmm.

Homey

After a couple pre-packaged posts, it’s time for a general fill-in-the-gaps post.

The best thing about being married to a teacher is JULY! It’s so fun having a whole summer with all of us home together in our new house. We’ve had lots of time home together in the past back when Jeff was a-job hunting, but this kind is so much better because there’s no stress or mystery about jobs/the future. It’s just two goofy parents and two cute kids playing house!

We have been working hard on our home every day. Rose and I brought back some Ikea merchandise, and Jeff put it all together. These are our bouncy chairs.

There’s the whole room. Now all we need is a piano. [Accepting donations]

She suddenly fell asleep right next to me.

Jeff worked hard on our bookshelves this week, and they are done and organized at last! We just got those upright strips with clip-in adjustable brackets to make simple, lower-cost shelving for my Sammy Keyes and Little House books and Jeff’s Philosophy and History books. When I find the right baskets, I will line the floor under the bottom shelf with them.

Here’s the best view I could get of the couch plus some shelves. This is my favorite room (besides the kitchen). I love having ALL of our books out in one place. Some of these books have been hidden in boxes for over a year since we did not have enough space in our old apartment for our library. I felt like I was greeting long-lost friends when I unpacked them. And you know the best part of these shelves? They have plenty of room for MORE BOOKS!

Jay and his blocks. These square blocks migrate all over the house every day. I love Jay’s imagination—these blocks can be ANYTHING (but usually they’re whiteguys).

Rub a dub dub. Another home-improvement Jeff did this week was: unclog the drain in this bathtub. We had to get a special wide screwdriver to get the drain plug off, and then Jeff found the biggest clump of NASTY hair with TWO hair ties tangled in it, like someone chopped off two pigtails or something. YUCK. I’m glad we all have short hair now.

Jeff has also been working his booty off in the  yard, pulling all the spiny noxious weeds and watering it into a green oasis. It’s getting there. I still haven’t made it out there to help him, and when I went and gashed up my knees from falling on that run, he teased me by saying that I’d do anything to get out of weeding! Hopefully this week I can get out to help.

I have been working on “detail cleaning” inside the house: I scrubbed down all the kitchen cabinets because they were all scuffed and scarred from the previous occupants. I dusted all those wide wood blinds. It’s amazing how easy it was to overlook these little details, when once they were done it is noticeably brighter and better and happier in here. These kinds of things don’t really show up in pictures, or else I would’ve taken some, believe me!

And now on to the little Rosebud. She is one month from turning the magical 18 months old. Today Jeff took her to Nursery at church and sat in there for an hour before the sweet leader said he could go because Rose was doing so well. I’m glad she and Jay can be in Nursery together for 4 months. My little cutie is getting so big! I had Jeff take some pictures with his nice camera before church this morning.

Motherly boast: She’s smiling at me for this picture.

Rose kept her “pretty” in all DAY today—for like the second time ever. YAY (pretty=bow)

Rose, 1 year and 5 months old.

And there’s Jay. He is so tall! We got him some nice new church pants and a real belt, and he looks so mature in them. Jay has entered a somewhat defiant phase lately: the why’s are still frequent but he’s added “I don’t want to!” which is tougher to circumvent. It’s taking some practice for me to be able to explain things on his level so that he can understand why he sometimes has to do things he doesn’t want to.

Replace the sippy cup with a soda can and he could do a billboard. Or give him some suspenders and a tweed jacket and he could be Dr. Who.

Mr. Handsome Jay: 3 1/4 years old.

While Jeff was at it, we did another classic, badly-arranged family photo with the tripod. What is a good pose for a family anyway? We sure haven’t found one yet.

I didn’t know that the camera was clicking at this moment, but I kind of like it. Do Jeff and I always look at each other with those semi-sappy, semi-goofy smiles? Probably.

 

The SKY here is the best. It’s different every night—I love watching the sun sink in a gush of gold. I can barely resist the temptation to take a picture of it every night. We have such a gorgeous view. It reminds me every night just how blessed we are.