June 13, 2015

After years of waffling, we have drip irrigation!!  Woohoo!!  Coolest thing ever. Now that it's in, it is easy to modify.  I can run emitter tubing from the main line, I can add more tubing in the beds.  It was a bigger project, and an easier project, than we guessed.  Designing it and planning and gathering the pieces was definitely the most brainy part.  It took about 3 1/2 hours to install, and didn't have any hiccups.  We are still tweaking how often it will run and for how long, and there is a dripping leak at the spigot so we are turning it on and off manually instead of using the timer until we get that fixed.

Cocoa came out with this dress up box gem.  He looks like the scariest kind of mob boss: the one who doesn't care what you think.

We ordered about 30 pounds of cherries from a farmer in Eastern Washington through a group buy- I was up till nearly midnight pitting them, and cleaning the kitchen, tucking Mimi in, and helping Ernie clean and vacuum her room.  It was BAD.  I got through about 12 pounds in an hour, which filled three gallon-sized bags for the freezer.

June 12, 2015

I sent this to my sister today.  My hair is increasing in sheer volume.  It would not even cooperate for a bun.  Yikes.  What hath this bleach wrought?  I am fairly certain I am never going to bleach my hair again, so I am having fun while my ends are accepting color.  It will grow out, get trimmed off, and fade soon enough.  Sure fun though :)  Crazy to take care of, especially since I barely even brush my hair normally.  Now, I only have to wash it once a week, but if I get it wet I have to slather conditioner in or it will be a snarled mess.  So....I use shampoo once a week, I use conditioner every 2 or 3 days.  I wash it in cold water, too.

A friend came over to drop off everything my kids left at her house, and she and her kids stayed for a few hours.  The oldest girl, N, is a Brain.  She's five, and she and Ernie get along famously.  They just "get" each other.  Super fun.  

My sister grabbed the kids this afternoon since she was driving by, and I had the house to myself for a few hours.  I probably should have cleaned, but I am still deep into organizing my studio stuff and wanted to dig out of that.  I've been typing up checklists for a master binder to track things like scales, payments, songs passed off, etc.  I know.  Spreadsheets rule my life.  When I feel off kilter I make a list and a spreadsheet.  I still feel off kilter, but at least I can point to a piece of paper and pretend I am in control and everything will go smoothly.  I can pretend.

Oh.  Speaking of planning things, I have been looking at getting drip irrigation for YEARS.  But, it was complicated and expensive.  We are finally at a point that $200 isn't going to break the bank.  I spent hours reading guides, and we bit the bullet.  For our date night tonight we spent an hour in the irrigation aisle of Home Depot getting tubing, hose, timer, fittings, couplers, et cetera et cetera.  I sure hope we have all the bits and bobs we need!!  Tomorrow is the day :)

June 11, 2015

I slept!  Why does every entry start with my sleeping habits?  Sleeping is most important I guess.  The kids actually woke me up at 9:15 and I was kind of grumpy about it too.  I have seen 2 a.m. more often than not this week!

Mimi informed me that the book I gave her to check out last night (The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe) was boring and she needed to go back to the library.  Right now would be great.  I reminded her that nothing was going to happen until I finished my breakfast, but she was welcome to go get ready.  

I looked fabulous, so she had to take my picture before we left.  (This is the result of finally taking out the Mrs. Claus braids I put in two days ago.  Mermaid hair!!)

Cocoa needed his picture taken too.  Does this shot make my eyes look big?

We hit the library, the music store, and the grocery store.  Cocoa was SO SQUIRRELY by the end.  Yikes.  But everyone got books to read, I replenished my studio shelves, and we have a fresh supply of milk, almond milk, gold fish crackers, and antidepressants.  

I told the kids that if they would attack the laundry pile with gusto, I would make them their favorite little rice balls (onigiri.). They did a great job and I filled the balls with beef stir fry from last night, minced.  

I worked on organizing my music shelves this afternoon, and my first student was a little shocked to find me on the floor surrounded by piles of music, with every table, couch, chair, and piano bench covered in more stacks of music.  She'd never seen so much music in one place!  Makes me a little sad- I would love every piano student to have stacks and stacks of music to play, just like kids have stacks and stacks of books to read when they are learning to read.  

We had a good dinner tonight- Spiralizer zucchini with pesto (from two summers ago) and sun dried tomatoes and meatballs, melon, and artisan garlic bread from Costco.  

We scarfed our meal and rushed out the door for my little sister's last concert at her college.  It was a great show- they used the Wizard of Oz as a narrator and wove a storyline together from Wicked, Wizard of Oz, and The Wiz.  All the soloists were in full costume.  Cocoa chose seats right behind the band (piano, synth, drums, stand up bass, and a horn section) so he could watch them.  He gave the drummer (a huge dude with a tiny kit) a high five after the show: first time he'd ever gotten a high five after a show :)  E could not sit still during the songs from The Wiz. Her feet were dancing, her body was swaying, her head and arms were bopping.  I literally mean she could not sit still, it was awesome.

(We met Bert's friend, K, after the show and I pulled her into the group shot!)

June 10, 2015

Wednesdays.  They are the only day of the week I have to wake up early, and so, obviously, are the only days the kids EVER sleep in and are normally preceded by a largely sleepless night.

So, of course, I was up at 2:00 in the morning sitting on my deck in a bathrobe trying to get my restless limbs to settle down.  I think I screwed up my medication- I forgot to take it Sunday and Monday, so I took one Tuesday morning and another Tuesday night.  By everything I was advised, it should have been fine and wouldn't even affect me for a couple more days.... but I popped awake with the sun at 6:30.  Yawn yawn.  At least I'm happy, right?

I taught one great lesson this morning, and we had a calm day.  The house is in good shape, I worked on organizing piano studio supplies and making lists of what I'm missing.  

I invited the kids to do a project with me after they finished their chores: Gak!  Equal parts white glue and water, and then drizzle in a mixture of 1 tsp borax in 1 cup warm water until you have the consistency you want.  Stir and knead!  SUPER fun, Cocoa thought it was amazing.  Mimi left almost immediately to go read, but princess sparkle pants is hard to impress and doesn't really care who knows it.  We are working on her social skills.

At 2:30 I realized that we had to LEAVE for dance class in about ten minutes- Cocoa and I dropped the girls off and came back to adventure a little bit.  We walked to the mail box, then walked to the creek.  I tried to get him to eat flowers with me from the garden when we got back, but he wasn't buying it.  I heartily enjoyed a snack of nasturtiums and borage.  

After we picked up the girls from dance I made a beef stir fry from a cookbook Aunt LoLo gave me (she had an extra copy.)  It's the real deal, guys.  Her mother-in-law uses it- I can't imagine a higher endorsement than that.  MaMa is a fabulous cook and lived in China until she was an adult and moved to the States.  I loved the stir fry, J said thank you, Ernie RAVED about the meat (she is all about meat), Cocoa ate the rice out of his bowl and snuck away when no one was looking, and Mimi acted like I was trying to poison her.  Cads!  I thoroughly enjoyed our beef stir fry, with sirloin, carrots, mushrooms, peppers, and shallots.

J and Cocoa packed up for a night at the beach with the scouts, and the girls and I left for town.  I swapped with a child who had a conflict tonight, so the girls read in the foyer while I had my lesson.  My teacher....I swear, she could spend a month on three measures, and a year on a page.  It's exactly the nit picky heckling I need, but it's really pretty funny.  Can I please give more oomph on those notes, and lift my hands gently but please don't really left- see?  Don't leave the keyboard.  Nice wrist rotation, but not too much.  Dynamics please, but block them.  That's all just one measure.  After two years with her, I think...I am starting to be a pianist.  And I think I have left accompanying behind me for a long while.  I started lessons because I was injured, and I have spent two years learning to play without injuring myself, and I have learned it is a long and deliberate process.  As soon as I go back to sight reading at breakneck speeds for hours at a time, I get injured again.  Sad, because I really love collaborating...but then again, I have been rather "used" for about 20 years.  Maybe it's time for me to stop stepping in to fix everyone's problems, eh?  But...I learned a lot with the trial by fire I've been through as accompanist for everyone and anyone, at with hardly any notice most of the time.  I'm the back up, I don't get advance warning: I get a binder two days before the show.  HA!  (Can't say I don't really, really enjoy the adrenaline though.  I do like that bite of challenge.)

We stopped at the library after my lesson, and then Target for some supplies.  All the kids were in bed by 10, and the sun has barely set.  We are almost to the longest day of the year!

June 9, 2015

I think kids are tired today.  I think I'm tired today.  I think I forgot to take my medication since last Saturday.  Wheeee.....

We have had a breakthrough in cleaning up here- a friend/student of mine/mom/former teacher/I used to teach her kids piano heard we were having trouble and dropped off a cool digital timer a little bit ago, just for the big girl to use.  We were super grateful, and E loved pushing the buttons...but it didn't really accomplish what we hoped it would.  Because...we wanted stuff to get clean.  And it still wasn't getting clean.

Last week a friend shared that she was teaching her crew (three kids 5 and under.  YASSSS.) to do 10 minute clean ups.  The kicker was...they worked hard for 10 minutes, and accomplished whatever they could.  See?  10 minutes is way less scary than "clean it ALL" or "You have 10 minutes and I throw away the rest."  (That last example is me.  It's all me.)  

This morning, in 10 minutes, we unloaded and loaded the dishwasher, tidied the music and living room, cleared and wiped the table and counters, and put away all the dried hand dishes.  NOT BAD.  We took another 10 minutes this afternoon and got the playroom clean enough that I could vacuum most of it.  Again, NOT BAD.  This is actually huge monumental progress, especially for E.

I tried it on myself- I gave myself 10 minutes to clean my room.  It becomes the landing place for papers, laundry, grocery receipts, kids art work, books, random toys Cocoa abandoned, and mis-matched socks.  I got it tidied up and vacuumed- sweet!  Of course, there is a huge pile of laundry that moved from the floor to the bed (which I am NOT GOING TO FOLD.  NO WAY.)  

This?  This is a picture of my lunch.  I actually sat down and ate lunch.  This doesn't happen during the school year, mostly because I am so DONE with children that as soon as the books close I go in my room and shut the door, then grab a granola bar in the afternoon when no one is looking.  Now, I eat lunch when I get hungry because the kids aren't there to see me, they're off playing littlest pet shop pirate princesses go to Hogwarts (and play chinese checkers).  They come up when they're hungry and make sandwiches.  

Isn't it pretty?  It's pretty.

I asked the kids to take a few minutes and clean the entry way.  I assumed they would put away the shoes and grocery sacks blocking the stairs, and maybe sweep.  Instead they trooped outside and raided the garden to create a fairy garden scene for visitors to enjoy.  (Notice the cracked bird has a feathered headdress thing going on.  Which...is kind of ironic.)  

My sister dropped her kids off this afternoon so she could grocery shop in peace.  This is a very valid concern!!  My niece, BuBu, was dropped off sound asleep.  I know she doesn't sleep at night if she naps, so after a while I tried to gently wake her up.  I spoke to her...tickled her feet....kissed her cheeks....propped her eyelids open...girlfriend was not going to wake up, and now she was asleep with her EYES OPEN AND TRACKING ME.  OK, that's creepy.  I knew she was awake when she smacked me across the face and burrowed in the couch.  She finally woke up enough to launch herself, wailing, into her big brother's lap.  The kids called him to play, and he smugly said "No, I can't: BuBu needs me!"  Awwww!  She took him by the hand upstairs and she found the guinea pig.  I gave them a big bowl of salad to feed her.

I taught a piano lesson this afternoon (the child didn't realize they had a lesson before a long summer break, so we worked on her song a bit and then I set her loose trying to write lyrics for the thing.  Hopefully it will help her get the tricky rhythms into her head!)  

We all changed into swimsuits and packed a picnic dinner, and met the dads at the beach for the evening.  The water felt FANTASTIC, it was another hot day.  85 is hot here (really hot.)

June 8, 2015

We did it: A perfect summer day.  WE DID IT!

1)  I was awake from 3-5 with the most amazing head ache.  It was like there were little pebbles on my bones around my eyes.  I tried everything I could think of- I was stretching, rubbing, and pouting.  None of those things really worked- pity.  I worked so hard at them.  J texted me this afternoon to ask if I, at one point, had my bottom where my head should be and my feet up on the wall.  

"Of course."

Ahem.  I DID manage to sleep a few more hours, until about 8:30, to add to my few hours I got before 3.  Not a bad night!  The kids are so self sufficient in the mornings, it's awesome.  I think that's part of why summer has really thrown me for a loop so far: No one needs me.  I am so used to be needed all the time, it's kind of a hard shift to just accept that I get to take a break.  

2)  A friend came by to pick up the last of my wrinkly autumn apples (again, that dang wrist.  How can I peel 50 pounds of apples and stir and do all those things?  I can't.  Less work for me!)  She made up batches of apple sauce this afternoon- she's such a go-getter.  (Of course, she is retired and has the energy of a chipmunk.)  

3)  Around 10:30 I told the girls they could bike to the park.  Cocoa really wanted to go, so (get this) I drove him down.  We stayed until he got tired.  I drove him back.  GENIUS AT WORK!  The girls didn't have to leave before they were ready, I didn't have to try and make him walk a half mile in 82 degree weather, and no one got upset.  Not even me (which is huge: I really, really don't like taking kids to parks.)  This is awesome.  This has possibilities.  Oh the joys my kids are going to have as they get old enough to have the things they want instead of waiting for someone to give them to them!

I drove C home when he got too hot.  When the girls got home we all had lunch.  

4)  By this time, it was 85 degrees outside and starting to heat up upstairs.  I told the girls that if they finished their chores, everyone could watch a movie downstairs.  They chose a Tinkerbell movie.  Do you know how great the Tinkerbell movies are?  I'm not even joking.  The characters have personalities, disagreements, strengths, weaknesses, and real friendship.  Also, real lessons (even hard lessons.)  Tinkerbell and My Little Pony are both pretty great in this house.

5)  After the movie, I pulled out a history story book I'd unearthed while I was organizing our cupboards.  I picked it up at a curriculum 2nd hand shop a few years back, for no reason except everyone else liked it.  We have LOTS to cover during the school year, but just because it's summer doesn't mean the kids aren't still anxious to learn and do guided activities.  Today we learned about nomads and the dawn of civilization in the fertile crescent.  We made cave paintings afterwards, and I challenged the girls to make a shelter out of "found" items in the backyard.  Since they had just watched Tinkerbell put gobs of cool machines together, they were all over it.  

The paint quickly became a moot point as Ernie and Cocoa started smashing raspberries in old garden pots, adding water, and painting rocks.  Cocoa stripped down to his skivvies.  How quickly civilization slips away- can anyone just picture my kids literally going "Lord of the Flies" if I was gone for a solid 48 hours?  That's all it would take, I'm sure of it.  

(Mom's legs are longest- I attack with wet toes with no regrets.)

6)  Ernie convinced everyone to get their swim suits on, and she turned the sprinkler on in the backyard.

7)  I called everyone inside around 5:30 to get dressed.  We went to Costco with the intent of shopping in the air conditioned store and then coming home to eat after the evening had cooled off a little.  It didn't cool off much by the time we were eating at 7:00 (and a few children barely made it through Costco) but I stocked up on no-cook things for meals this week.  We had croissant sandwhiches tonight with grape tomatoes and actual grapes, with frozen blueberries and whipped cream for dessert.  (Third time we've had fruit and cream in a week's time.  I'm hooked.)  I bought shredded rotisserie chicken to mix with an asian slaw for another meal, and I will make the rest of the chicken into a chicken salad with tomatoes and serve it with the rest of the croissants.  I bought zucchini to spiralize and mix with a quick sauce, and garlic bread and frozen meatballs (I can just microwave those.)  That's four meals, not bad!  That will get us through the week- tomorrow night we are having a picnic at the beach.

8)  We finished off our family night by introducing the kids to American Ninja Warrior.  They were entranced.  Am I in trouble??

June 7, 2015

No pictures today!  Is a blog a blog without pictures?  Let's find out.

1)  HOT today.  Going to be a whole week of hot, I see a lot of beach nights in our future!  Our back patio is a close second in terms of wonderfulness though.  I continue my decorating trend of designing our lives and home and yard around the perfect place to put a chair.  There is not a pretty spot or a nice window that does not have a comfy chair next to it.  I like to sit a lot, OK?  I really like to sit....and look at pretty things.  My favorite spots right now are the chair in the front room, the front patio, the back deck, the deck off the master, the grandma chair in the dining room, my bed by the window, and the back patio.  Pretty much wherever I go, besides the kids rooms and the playroom, I have a perfect spot to sit.  Beautiful.

2)  Church was wonderful.  It's normally wonderful these days.  J was released as a family history specialist and called as the 1st counselor in the young men's group.  It will be an adventure!  He's taught this age twice before as a Sunday School teacher.  Guess it's just the age the Lord wants him to be with.  His wood working skills, guitar playing skills, and TRUCK are going to come in very handy I think.  His recent physical therapy to work on his knee, which has been bothering him off and on for years, will also come in handy.  Our relief society lesson was on being courageous- sometimes it's having courage in the moment, sometimes its having courage in the long run, and sometimes it's just trying again the next day.

3)  My wrist is a bit better today.  Am I going to have to pamper this stinking thing for the rest of my life?  Baby.  I am hoping my mid-week I will have finished repenting of my hubris to think I could fold six loads of laundry at once, or thumb type for half an hour, or play piano with bad technique.

4)  We invited my sister's family for dinner tonight- bring a side dish to share and meat for your family.  We had the grill up and running.  J grilled flank steak, I steamed carrots, she grilled chicken and brought a salad.  I served quite possibly the best summer dessert: frozen blue berries topped with a thick cloud of whipped cream.  Superb.  Did I mention it was HOT today?  The six kids ran all over the yard, the adults served and cleared and chatted.  Beautiful evening!

June 6, 2015

What a beautiful day. I'm doing better today. J let me sleep in and then I stayed in my room until a neighbor rang the bell at 11:30 to let me know he saw a large, healthy, unafraid, coyote trotting down our street and I should keep the kids inside.  Love that our neighbors watch out for each other!

It was a good Saturday.  I keep typing and deleting this paragraph because 1) I don't want to sound like the lazy lump I am and 2) I don't want to let anyone know that I probably overdid it today.  Pretty sure I shouldn't have vacuumed or carried patio furniture around the yard or cleaned the kitchen or carried laundry baskets around the house. 

Onwards!  Pretty pictures!  

Life is beautiful.

June 5, 2015

Hot summer day!

We spent the morning at a park in the neighborhood, and the girls biked to a newly re-opened neighborhood park in the afternoon.  It was a really nice day to be at the park.. We saw a few friends and the kids got to play with neighborhood friends.

We've been slowly amassing a flotilla of patio furniture.  Today I sold one of the larger sets so we can rearrange the others and be able to walk through our patios and decks without needing to play "the floor is lava."  (Although that game is fun.)

I feel like an idiot today.  I am in my brace and my thumb tendon aches.  I am using text to type to blog tonight.  It's driving me mad: I WANT to be superwoman darn it.  I've been defeated by a pile of laundry and an iPhone.  My ego is my kryptonite.  I wanted to help J with his chores- folding is one of the few things I still can't do, but he was working so hard on other projects.  I want to keep this blog going so family knows what we're up to.  I wanted to play in the recital last night so that the kids could sound their best with the duets, and I could demonstrate some of the more interesting parts of musical history.  Every parent expressed their delight and how lush the songs sounded or how the recital was structured and how much they learned.  If it hadn't been for the other things I've done the recital wouldn't have been a problem for me.

I had my piano lesson tonight we spent a very nice half hour working on the left hand of Beethoven's third sonata.

June 4, 2015

Recital day!  Recital day!  La La La La.....how many recitals have I hosted now?  Well, two a year for the past 8 years?  You would think I would learn to simmer down.  I'm getting better though.  Really.

I spent the day alternately scrubbing things that no one would see and throwing myself on the couch to complain about my stress headache.  Oh Myrnie.  You're so...Myrnie.  Aunt LoLo happened to be going to Costco right when I called her in a crisis to ask if I should get cake or cookies.  We decided on cookies (good choice) and she grabbed them for me.  Yay sisters!!

I taught piano in the afternoon, and made another good dinner: I am on a roll.  J fried pork chops on the stove while I made sauteed mushrooms, one-pot linguine, and a salad.  Nom nom.  I could get used to have a partner in the kitchen!  He's slowly learning where to find things like salt and pepper, it will only get easier.

We had a beautiful recital.  I was ready to just cancel the whole thing about a month ago, I just couldn't face another recital the same as the last 15.  BUT, I realized we had a good solid line up of old standards....we broke the recital into sections by musical era.  I introduced the eras, threw a few of my own pieces in to demonstrate a few key era-specific quirks, and we had a blast.  I played Bach's Invention No. 8 to show dual-voicing in the Baroque era, Schumann's Knecht Ruprecht to demonstrate the story-telling of the Romantic era, Aaron Copland's The Cat and the Mouse to demonstrate how the sound became the story in the modern era, and finally John Cage's 4'33 to show how the definition of music started to change.  All those pieces formed an effective bridge from Star Spangled Banner to the Beatles.

It was all very well received, and it gave a good frame work for the kids' pieces.  I played a LOT of duets tonight too, so even a piece as simple as repeated middle c's sounded lush.  The parents and grandparents enjoyed the new format, and the kids didn't seem nervous at all.  All very good stuff.  Everyone went outside for cookies and playing, and it was a great recital.  

June 3, 2014

The sun.  It comes up so early.  And when the sun is awake, that means my SON is awake, and he crawls into bed with me and I'm too groggy to do anything about it at 5:45 in the morning.  Ahem.

Wednesdays are early days- I set my alarm for 7 and try and make myself presentable for the first lesson of the day at 7:30.  Let me tell you, that lesson feels a LOT better in the sunshine than in the dark of winter!  

Students did great- everyone is ready for tomorrow's recital.  Not everyone was prepared to receive an end of year progress report.  I did not mince words, and I think the kids knew exactly what I was talking about and agreed with me.  They know when they are giving their best, they know what we are working on, and they know when they've been sliding by.  Love teaching those kids.

(*** Spoiler alert: I am no longer sick.  Hallelujah.)

Right after lessons, J remarked how great it would be if I could drive him to work and pick him up after the girls' dance classes.  WOOT- adventure day, everyone in the car!  We dropped him at work, deposited books at the library, and spent the better part of the day at a friend's house.  

Our kids are different in age (Our cumulative age is 20, theirs is 11 I think) but the kids are a good fit.  The two oldest are peas in a pod- it was pretty hilarious to hear them HOWLING with laughter at each other's jokes.  The nine times table- one number counts up and the other counts down!  Yeah, but look how you can do it on your fingers!  Oh the jokes.  They just rolled on and on.  

We left E there to play pirate fairy princess treasure hunt in the backyard (they drew maps but forgot to hide any treasure, so they were scouring the yard FOR HOURS.  Not sure if they found it.)  I brought my youngest two home- we stopped to pick up some fabulous shoes for me from a fellow Buy Nothing member, and then took some down time at home.  

(Saw this kitty in our yard hunting rabbits.  Sadly, I think it was unequal to the task.)

After an hour it was time to get BACK in the car, get E, and drop the girls off at dance.  Cocoa was so antsy we just turned around and chilled at home for an hour until it was time to go get the girls again.  We picked J up from work, looked at the traffic and the clock, and decided it was unreasonable to give ourselves two hours to fight traffic home, make and eat dinner, and get to within blocks of where we were sitting.  Conveyer belt sushi won (it always wins) and we gorged on pickled herring, cucumber rolls, pot stickers, salmon, and Krab salad.  

(I am back in my brace today.  I remembered why I stopped blogging regularly: thumb typing on my phone is a very, very, very bad idea.  I decided to be a super hero and folded about six loads of laundry two weeks ago, and it just started the slow slide down.  I've been good about resting and stretching, and now I am typing ON THE COMPUTER, like every good human should.  Why do we think opposable thumbs are invincible?  They're not.)

After dinner we headed to the park for E's final regular event with her Activity Days girls and leaders- they had a forest scavenger hunt, played games, and then roasted miniature marshmallows over tea lights and smeared them on honey grahams with chocolate chips.  Tres adorbs.

I love this man.  So much.  So, so much.  And....look at my face.  There IS a light at the end of the tunnel every  month!

June 2, 2015

The first day of really real summer break.  Lots more time for playing, fighting, and learning to make up.

I am going to apologize right now, because I am smack in the middle of what my doctor decided to describe as a "mood disorder" and I normally don't blog while sick, but I promised my wandering parents updates!

I lamented to J that I still, at age 34, do not know how to cook meat.  I wander the meat sections of the grocery store and stare at all the large pink packages, and turn around and go home with sausages because THOSE I know what to do with.  "So....just pick up a package and we'll figure out what to do with it!"

My Costco meat of the week was flank steak- I've eaten that before, I know what to do with it.  I stuck it in a ziploc with Yoshi sauce this morning and let it sit in the fridge all day.  (I picked up pork chops--I think-- at Fred Meyer.  I have to do something with those tomorrow- think of me.)

I spent my day getting the June sacrament meeting music in order, finalizing Thursday's recital program and program notes, and helping the girls clean their playroom.  I had to stop helping when I realized C was too quiet, and I found him watching Family Guy on my iPad.  He's now lost iPad privileges and I'm an idiot for leaving him alone with a device.  I know.  That is DEFINITELY not a kid show.

Let's see.  This picture, someone had told him no, he hadn't stopped, and then someone screamed at him.  And he probably stubbed his toe on his way to find me because dude is growing so fast he doesn't know where he ends and floor begins.  Poor guy picked up a splinter in his foot yesterday, I think from my dining room bench (!!), and it tore his little foot open.  It was a good half inch long and had an entry AND exit point.  He was brave and let me pull it out twice, once from each wound because it broke in the middle.  He spent half of yesterday crawling around pretending to be a dog, to avoid walking on that foot.

Dinner actually work tonight.  HALLELUJAH.  I thought I'd lost my ability to cook.  I gave up my accounting knowledge when E was born.  All sewing stopped when M came.  Then when C came, I've pretty much stopped baking and cooking it seems.  Definitely stopped baking.  I used to make bread every other day, and make cookies and cakes and scoff "OH, it's only three extra minutes to make it from scratch.  Why would I use a boxed mix?"  And then my butt got handed to me on a platter.

Mimi, while hiding from Cocoa this afternoon in the laundry room (which he then insisted was his something or other room and she screamed at him and he cried and I reminded her that is NOT how we make friends)......she saw peaches.  She came upstairs, during the piano lessons I was teaching, to inform me that I was going to serve peaches with dinner tonight.  Look at that plate.  Do you see peaches?  Neither did she.  She came in, saw the meal I'd spent an hour preparing, and with a quiver in her lip and a resigned sigh, quavered "Oh...I thought we were having peaches.  *sniff* It's OK.  We aren't having peaches.  I just...I just thought we were having peaches."

That's when I decided to give her another chance to enter the room, before I smote her with the fiery rod of my mouth.

I served peaches for dessert.

I didn't mention my cramps.  I have cramps.  I am using LAMAZE BREATHING to get through these cramps.  My children, seeing me hunched over the table with my eyes squeezed shut and doing LAMAZE BREATHING, said "Oh.  Mom, are you OK?...... Mom, when do you think you will go get that book you promised to find for me?"

Children are psychopaths.

And yes, when I was done I went and found the books.  After finishing a grade of school, they get to read the corresponding Harry Potter book over the summer.  My heart gave a little thrill when J started off "Chapter One.  The Boy Who Lived."

June 1, 2015

Where did the warm weather go?  Seattle proved it's "still got it" and gave us gloom and drizzle today.  After a warm and dry winter AND spring, I was glad to see some moisture!

C was in bed with me around 6:30 this morning.  We are waking up earlier and earlier, yawn.

The girls finished their tests this morning: we officially have a fifth and a second grader!  

We did grocery shopping before lunch- tonight was our night to prepare a meal for the ladies at the overnight shelter.   We brought them spiralized zucchini noodles with marinara and meatballs, country loaves, garlic butter, salad, and mini cinnamon rolls.  I served my family the same thing tonight- very yummy!

The girls helped me clean the kitchen tonight and we made super quick chocolate rolls (crescent dough with Nutella, rolled into a log, sliced, and baked at 375 for 12 minutes.). Very, VERY tasty. 

June 1, 2015

Where did the warm weather go?  Seattle proved it's "still got it" and gave us gloom and drizzle today.  After a warm and dry winter AND spring, I was glad to see some moisture!

C was in bed with me around 6:30 this morning.  We are waking up earlier and earlier, yawn.

The girls finished their tests this morning: we officially have a fifth and a second grader!  

We did grocery shopping before lunch- tonight was our night to prepare a meal for the ladies at the overnight shelter.   We brought them spiralized zucchini noodles with marinara and meatballs, country loaves, garlic butter, salad, and mini cinnamon rolls.  I served my family the same thing tonight- very yummy!

The girls helped me clean the kitchen tonight and we made super quick chocolate rolls (crescent dough with Nutella, rolled into a log, sliced, and baked at 375 for 12 minutes.). Very, VERY tasty.