Still unpacking

Goodness! As boring as our life has been over the last few weeks you'd think that we'd be all settled in. Though there are several personal touches in place around here, I'm finding new pleasure in looking at them as I pull new ones out in our attempt to organize our various storage areas. The little spice rack my grandfather made for me, the stool with the fold-down back that my mom cleaned up for my kids to use (said stool having been used since I was a wee one), a framed wedding photo, the family home even chart I painted for a relief society activity. It's surprising how much home I really did have all along. I just needed to learn how to see it and cherish it. We havn't seen some of these things since July so it's almost like they're new again. I started a Norman Rockwell puzzle last night which I intend to frame but I think that project is still a future event.

Princess is getting ready for a birthday soon and I'm wondering if I ought to be super functional and throw a party for her. If so, it'd have to be the Saturday afterward b/c I'm so not prepared for something in just a couple of days. We also don't know anyone except for one nice girl up the street who is 2 years younger. They play well together and her mom and I get along swimmingly, so I guess I shouldn't be too picky. ;) A package came from her great grandparents the other day and now suddenly her birthday is an imminent reality for her. Tag keeps asking if "we" can open her presents after her birthday. It's a hard thing for him to understand that the togetherness of opening Christmas gifts doesn't apply to birthdays. It's a good thing his birthday isn't too far behind! We watched some old videos of them from a year or two ago and I marveled at how much they really have grown. They don't look different at all, just older and more mature. Does that mean I look older and more mature?? Man seems to think so. ;)

Christmas bells are ringing!

Ah, what a joyous and uplifting time of year. Relief Society this past Thursday was wonderful. We enjoyed some great preformances by sisters in the ward, both of singing and the spoken word. Yummy treats and visiting were enjoyed by all. Over at my house, our little family spent a nice though short evening together watching a video about the first Christmas, and drank snowman soup (hot cocoa with a hug, a kiss, and a couple of marshmallows thrown in). Christmas morning was actually rather late since our little ones are too young to wake themselves up extra early on days like this so we spent a lazy morning poking through our stockings, opening up and assembling presents, and generally enjoying each other. The afternoon brought a trip to see my grandmother and her neighbors who take care of her. My grandmother gave me a beautiful tree skirt that she made many years ago with a nativity scene depicted on it. It was so nice to visit her again. Christmas night saw us all tucked in our own beds, exhausted from the long weekend, and happy to savor a simple and relatively uneventful day. -sigh- How I love simple, beautiful days.

Not for the squeamish or faint of heart

This is a warning. If you are squeamish or do not enjoy tales of sick people, read no further on this post. I'm going to post a nice happy one about Christmas etc, but this particular one is about an illness I had and a funny story about one of the kids being ill.

First, just to make sure everyone gets the story from the horse's mouth yes, I did have an abscess. Man's family and my family know, at least from second hand knowledge that I was sick over the weekend. About a week and a half ago I got a bug bite that didn't fade. It got larger and painful until I finally went to see a dr. It was cellulitis and was still in a stage treatable by antibiotics. The nurse practitioner prescribed me an antibiotic that is commonly resisted nowadays, so I found myself on Saturday trying to get a hold of my dr so I could get my prescription changed before things got too nasty. She was out of the country so her nurse suggested that I simply go to the ER. Haha. Since the darn thing was starting to turn black in the middle I knew something had to be done soon. After a 2 hour wait I finally got in to be seen only to be told that I had an abscess that needed an incision and drain which meant the dr got to pretend that he was an overgrown teenager popping an overgrown zit using a small saber instead of a needle, and I got to play with nitrous oxide. It was the first time I've used that stuff before and it hit me like a ton of bricks and made my whole body tingle. He numbed me up and when I recovered my senses I had experienced my first "procedure." I am now old, ladies and gentlemen. I have had a difficult time releasing a lot of my emotions from the past year or so but being drugged brought all of it up to the surface and instead of laughing from the gas I ended up sobbing for the next day. It felt good to get a lot of it out. The dr said to come back if I got sick, but otherwise come back in a couple of days to get the (10-12" of) packing out. Of course I got pretty sick b/c they kept me on the antibiotics that didn't work in the first place and now the infection was in my blood from the incision, so we spent another 3 hours in the ER just to have them switch my meds to something that works. 4 hours after my first dose of the new stuff and I feel like a million bucks. Christmas day I got my packing out and now things "ought" to heal just fine from here on out. Whew! Yeah, that's gross stuff.

Anyway, Princess has been feeling a bit under the weather the last few days with some sort of eye gunk illness. Tonight, about an hour after the kids were all asleep (in the same room) I heard Tag start crying. I thought he just fell out of bed and would crawl back in with no problems. After a minute or so he cracked his door open to report that Princess (who sleeps on the top bunk) had thrown up on his bed (which is the bottom bunk). With some chagrin and a speck of disbelief Man and I went to assess the damage. We flipped the light on after the smell confirmed the presence of vomit only to see that Tag's pillow, comforter, sheet, the ladder, and a good part of Princess's bed were all covered. Even better, they have a wood floor in there which made a fantastic splash surface. Man and I looked at each other and just cracked up with laughter. Man said "you know, of all the terrible ways to be woken up..." and we kept laughing. Pebbles woke up and got hysterical almost right away, Tag cheerfully boomed out his opinion on the situation, Man and I kept laughing, and the little vomitor slept through it all until we pulled her out of bed and put her in a warm shower. I'm glad we were given the gift of seeing the humor of the situation while in the midst of cleaning it up. We spent the day today cleaning up after a long weekend of ER visits for me and the Christmas mess.

I think tomorrow we'll clean some more, fold all this laundry that we're washing tonight, and just watch Pinky and The Brain and eat chicken nuggets, laughing our weaselly black guts out.

Tag and Princess now have their heads at opposite ends of the bunk. What's the worst way you can imagine waking up?

Advent calendars

For some reason, this year I've been fascinated by advent calendars. I absolutely love Christmas and this year, with all of the stress and emotion we've been dealing with, the season is touching my heart a little more than seasons past. To help my children get into things one day at a time we've been opening a little window on their chocolate advent calendars every day (they look a lot like these) I made a bunch of little advent ornaments for our mini tree (paper clips glued to the backs of fun buttons, felt candy canes, and some mini ornaments from the dollar store), but I'm still looking for ideas for next year. This website (here) has a very cute idea that wouldn't take up storage space, can hold things besides candy, and is infinitely personalizable (<- is that a word?). On the other hand, there is virtue in being able to reuse an old calendar (here, second craft down). The longer lasting ones look like more work to make though. Princess Butterfly just loves a paper chain that they made at church and faithfully takes one link off every day without prompting from me at all.

Does anyone else do the advent thing?

This year I'm missing some things that had become tradition for my side of the family. The huge dinner at Uncle S and Aunt C's house, Christmas morning at my Grandparents' house, collaborating on the stockings with my mom. It's kind of fun this year to know that we'll be able to do our own thing for Christmas. What will we do? Where will we go? What will we eat? This is our 6th Christmas as a Man and Me unit (though we've more than doubled in number over the years) and we have yet to have a Christmas where we have selected all of the events of the day. I'm feeling just a bit lost but excited, and keenly missing my extended family but really looking forward to a day of just us. I'll be sure to take pictures. ;)

Digital oddity

I appreciate digital technology. Before we got a digital camera I threw away about half of the pics I got developed. With the old film you could occasionally get some weird light effects that made no sense in the final print and I finally have a digital version.




This is totally untouched. Straight from my camera to your eyes.

Training little taste buds

It's never too early to cultivate good taste in kids.

Today I was scrounging around for lunch when I decided to use up some leftover mashed potatoes, add some cheese and an egg, and fry it in patties (the patty idea didn't work out, but it made a yummy fried cheese mess overall). Princess Butterfly took one look at the mix I was mashing and said:

"Ew! I don't like that stuff."

Now, having lived with these friends, I decided to try one of their tactics.

"Good, Princess. Now I can have all this yummy grown up food to myself. It's so good, that if you don't like it I'll go ahead and eat it all and you can have this peanut butter and jelly sandwich."

Well, she ate her sandwich and after my concoction was done being scraped out of the pan she wandered over to see how it turned out.

"So... mom, what is that?"
"Oh, it's too yummy. Potatoes and cheese."
"Are you going to share it with Pebbles?"
"Maybe. She might like it. What do you think?"
"I think she would. [pause] If she likes it, maybe I'll try a bite."
"Oh, really? Maybe you could take a teeny bite and let me know if she would like it, that way it won't go to waste if she spits it all over the place."
"Ok. Just a little bite."

Said bite was taken. Princess gets a very thoughtful look on her face.

"Maybe I could have another tiny bite. Because, maybe it's a little bit good."

In this manner I shared a plate with her and made another batch. Pebbles hasn't gotten any of it. ;)

The many faces of bliss

Today's fun moments:

Walking to the commissary today, it rained! I know this isn't odd or uncommon here in the winter, but it was fun to walk through the drizzle and chuckle at the thought that this might actually be considered a "heavy" storm.

Breakfast: roasted garlic focaccia, avocado (the avocados here are the size of my fist, folks!), red chili sauce, and toasted nori and sesame seeds.

Catching the trash truck just in time. Those nice men waited for me to dash out with my trash bin.

Finding out that nori sheets are $1 per pack here, rather than the $7 at the grocery where we lived before.


Having all boxes out of sight. Man has asked that rather than going through things and putting them away as I open the boxes, that we stash everything and then go through it afterward. Ah, clean home. Just don't open my cupboards or storage room.

Lesson learned for the day: don't give babies dried mango, no matter how tiny it's chopped. Goes through them like senna tea and epsom. Sad baby.

Second lesson learned for the day: Never underestimate the power of a young boy to tell whether it's a bus or a trash truck out the closed and shaded window. My ear is not so discriminating as Tag's. That boy has a spidey sense when it comes to these things.

Long time, no typey!

Well, here we are, all moved and partly settled. It's so strange to be in a place so big all to ourselves. It's funny how having kids can make a place shrink somewhat. After all the hoopla about making sure we didn't have too much stuff, I ended up renting a truck two sizes too big and we coulda bought another 2000 pounds of stuff without even really coming close to our weight maximum. The casualties of the move were small (relatively) and after a couple of setbacks this place is really starting to take shape. We swapped two bedrooms (which took a whole day) and had to buy a new clothes washer. The other one was very old and going out before we moved anyway. The land here is amazing. We have a park in our backyard, a eucalyptus tree mere yards from our back door, a view of the ocean, a tomato plant in the front yard, a carport, within walking distance of the grocery store, and within a 3-10 minute drive of everything we could possibly need.

Things I miss:
1) The family. Grandfolks, parents, sibs, uncles and an aunt. What a hoot y'all are and I miss you guys tons.
2) The family we were staying with. Their cheerfulness, love, the companionship, and I have had to seriously cut back on how much food I cook. It's kinda fun to pretend that I'm cooking for a mess hall.
3) The snow. Not much chance of that happening here.

Things I'm glad to leave behind:
1) The ICE!!! Love snow. Can do without the ice.

And that's all I can think of. Weird.

I think Princess Butterfly has grown about 3 inches in the last 4 months or so. She put on some pants yesterday that she hasn't tried in a long time. They used to flop off the ends of her feet by at least 3 inches but now they fit perfectly. Tag is also starting to outgrow some of his clothes but it totally oblivious to that when it comes to his favorite white pajamas that his Oma got him. He insists on wearing them every night no matter how cramped they get. Pebbles took a few days to get used to Man, but will now fall asleep in his arms if she doesn't have any other needs. I'm still her favorite, but I was Tag's favorite for a long time as well. All three of them love all of the space here. We're still making things baby-proof, especially since we have found that one single packing peanut, in the hands of a little baby, can make a spectacular mess. At least we don't have the melting kind around.

By the way, my couches look great in the living room here, and the bed is pretty dang comfy.

Someone I knew from the university town we lived in moved and was able to put her home together within three days. I thought about that, the third day after we had moved, and looked around at all of my boxes and pictures that had yet to be hung.

Oh, well. I'm glad someone out there can do it. :)