lately

thanks to our front door, rainbows appear on the wall most afternoons.

this is very exciting to the kiddos.

a recent water balloon fight in the backyard.

jeremy's birthday!

 saturday morning breakfast at the farmer's market.

another lowe's build and grow workshop. we made firetrucks this time.

our kids are the only ones i actually see wearing the goggles ("gobbles" according to love). it's hilarious - they love them.

two tired out kids after a busy morning. (this is a very rare sight!)

we are all about the glitter over here these days!

our house is pretty much covered in glitter.

"house people"

love turned three-and-a-half. we celebrated, because...why not?

painting! he usually ends up painting his face and hair and then needs a bath.

painting some paper bowls to make jellyfish.

and...1, 2, 3!

we are having some fall weather over here - that is, if you can call temps in the 70s and low 80s fall. ha! i guess it's more like summer in the midwest, but after a hot and steamy summer here, it feels like fall to us. i made our first pot of soup on sunday. we've been taking lots of walks (three yesterday!) and enjoying being outside more now that it's more bearable.

also, jobot has learned to climb on the kitchen chairs, couch, coffee table, and anything else that could possibly be climbed on. as a result, this whole parenting thing has just reached a whole new level of exhaustion!

smoothie mornings

we often have smoothies as part of breakfast in the morning. or we have them for an afternoon snack. it seems to be the only way to get green veggies in jobot these days.

(these photos aren't the best quality...our kitchen does not have much natural light, and it was still mostly dark outside anyway. most of the photos are blurry, but that captures how life feels at this stage! a lot of these days, especially ones that involve making something in the kitchen with a one and three year old, seem like a blur!)


the kids each get a little pile of kale (or sometimes spinach) and frozen berries to throw in the blender. sometimes we add a banana or other fruit.

next we pour in the kefir or yogurt and add some milk if we need a little more liquid. sometimes we throw in a few ice cubes, if we feel like it. maybe some honey or stevia.

 then the kids take turns running the blender.

there is usually some fighting.

and someone often ends up crying.

and then we are done!

day in the life {september 19, 2013}

5:00 am - i hear jobot coughing and crying a bit. i hope that he isn't up for the day and debate whether or not i should go in the room. he has been sick with a bad cold and has been coughing/fussing several times during the night which is very abnormal for him. i have been sleeping terribly all night. jeremy has been on call since yesterday at 8 am, so i am home alone. i always sleep badly without him. jobot fusses a bit more and then seems to fall back to sleep. hurray. i fall back to sleep too!

6:30 am - i am woken up by both kids. they both woke up at the same time and both are crying. i go to love's room first to get her up. she is crying, whining, and seems disoriented. she refuses to get out of bed. i start to leave her room and she decides that she will get up. she says she is cold, so i get her settled in the living room with a blanket. she clearly doesn't feel very well...yesterday afternoon she seemed to be coming down with jobot's cold. i go to jobot's room and get him up. he is coughing and still seems sick. love wants to watch strawberry shortcake, so i get out the laptop and put it on.

6:50 am - i change jobot's diaper and get him dressed. it's cool outside, so i put him in the one pair of pants we currently have in his size (we will have to work on that!). then i get myself dressed. i pour myself a cup of coffee and make a pot of breathe easy tea for the kids. i check in with jeremy. he said that he had a good night with no calls.

7:00 am - i sit down with my coffee, read my devotions, and check email and weather. i check the kids' temps. jobot is at 102, love is at 100. bummer.

7:20 am - i start getting breakfast ready. the kids have whole wheat cinnamon raisin english muffins from trader joes, bananas, and tea. i have quiche and pumpkin muffins (made with almond flour) leftover from tuesday's dinner. i reheat my cup of coffee. love looks at my breakfast and announces that she doesn't like quiche and makes gagging noises. we talk about how that is not polite.

7:50 am - i ask love if she wants to get dressed, but she says that she wants to stay in her pajamas for a little while. she doesn't feel good, and we're not going anywhere, so that's fine with me. she settles back in to finish her strawberry shortcake episode.

8:00 am - i clean up breakfast and tidy the kitchen. i walk into the living room to see jobot holding a package of baby wipes and pulling them out one by one. thankfully, there were only six wipes left in the container. i pick up the wipes off the floor and put them in a ziploc - at least we can still use them that way.

8:15 am - i sit down to make a grocery list. i am supposed to go to BSF this morning, but can't because the kids are sick. i text my small group leader to let her know i won't be there. i'm bummed.

8:30 am - we read books.

8:50 am - there is lots of whining going on. love gets dressed.

9:00 am - we head outside for a walk. this is our usual routine when we are home in the morning. we love our morning walks, especially now that the mornings are cooler. we stop to say hello to charlie the cat. he used to run away from us, but now he always comes right over to greet us. he often sits in our front yard during the day.

this photo was actually taken a different day, but it's the same routine every day.

9:30 am - home from our walk. the kids ride their bikes and cars in our carport. i text our generous friends who were planning on watching our kids for us tonight so we could have a date. because the kids are sick, we will reschedule. (another bummer!). our neighbor comes over to chat for a bit.

10:00 am - we go inside. love wants to do a project, so we get out the rubber stamps. i warm up some tea for myself (leftover from yesterday).

10:25 am - done with stamping. i wash the stamps (and think to myself that next time i will have love do that task. she would enjoy it.)

10:30 am - love is whiney and wants something else to do. jobot is chewing on one of love's shoes that he found (gross) and emptying the pantry. i get out more art supplies for love and she gets busy creating. she is at a stage right now where she is very into cutting, gluing, and making all kinds of creations. it is so fun to watch, but today it involves a lot of frustration and crying. when she is sick, she is very whiney and weepy.

10:50 am - jobot falls and splits his lip. i scoop him up and then realize that his lip is bleeding. thankfully it didn't bleed for long. i realize i have blood on my shirt, so i change and spray the shirt with oxiclean.

11:00 am - a glue stick fell on the floor so love is crying. jobot is crying too, though i don't know why.

11:03 am - i reheat my tea.

11:05 am - jobot seems bored, so i get the duplos out for him. we build stuff together while love works on her project in the kitchen.

11:20 am - i reheat my tea for the third time. love is melting down in the kitchen over her craft project not turning out how she wanted it. then the next minute she is excited about her project. jobot is trying to grab her stuff off the table, so that is making her mad too. whew.

11:25 am - i start lunch. annie's mac n cheese and clementines for the kids. they haven't been eating much since they don't feel well, so i want to give them something that i know that will like and eat. lunchmeat, celery with peanut butter, plain yogurt with vanilla and stevia, and canteloupe for me.

11:27 am - jobot walks into the wall. more tears.

11:35 am - i text jeremy. "the whining is going to drive my crazy! LONG day!"

11:40 am - i have a brief moment of losing my cool and bark that there has been enough whining and that i don't want to listen to it anymore. then i apologize. we sit down to eat.

12:00 pm - i clean up lunch.

12:15 pm - i recheck the kids temps. love is at 100.3 and jobot is still at 102. after i check his temperature, jobot snuggles in and i tickle his back. he sits there for about two minutes and then is ready to get down. i change jobot's diaper and put him down for a nap. it is early for him, he usually goes down between 1 and 1:30, but he is clearly tired and not feeling well. he looks relieved and closes his eyes when i lay him in bed.

12:25 pm - i get love settled in her room for her rest time. she seems really tired as well, but i am doubtful that she will sleep. she watches a movie on the ipad. i put a few things away, reheat my tea (again) and head out to sit on the porch and catch up on emails and blogs. i am glad that i did budget/bill paying last night so i can just relax a bit now. i feel tired. i upload photos from the camera and edit them. it is beautiful outside and feels so good to sit on the porch.

1:45 pm - love's movie is over and she is ready to get out of bed. no sleep for her today, even though i think her body really needs it. (since pretty much the day she turned two she has rarely taken a nap, but she still has rest time in the afternoon and she very occasionally falls asleep). she says she wants to do another "pwoject", so we get out the art supplies again and she works on her art at the kitchen table. i get some new batches of kefir going (water kefir and milk kefir).

2:20 pm - love is still engulfed in her project at the table. i sort the pile of art projects she has completed over the past couple of weeks and decide which pieces to keep. the rest go in the recycling bin. we have been going through paper quite quickly these last few weeks. i rearrange some things to make room in a kitchen cabinet for some art supplies. they were stored in our room, but we've been using them everyday, so i decided to just keep them in the kitchen.

2:45 pm - i am hungry so i eat some beef jerky. love has some beef jerky with veggie sticks for a snack. she is still busy at the table. i pick up the toys in the kitchen and living room.

2:55 pm - she has used up the glue stick! time for a new one from our supply drawer.

3:05 pm - she is done creating, so we clean up the craft stuff. she decides to play with model magic, so we get that out. i start folding some laundry. jobot wakes up as soon as i start folding.

3:15 pm - since both kids are up, we head to trader joe's. (this would usually be a stop in the morning on the way home from BSF since both places are close to each other and are far away from our house). since the kids are sick, i was planning on going this evening, but getting it done now will make the evening easier. the kids and i will have time to get groceries before we pick jeremy up at 4:30. then we can run home, drop the groceries off, and head to the health food store for dinner (a thursday night tradition). we were going to be out on our date tonight, but since that can't happen, at least we can go out to eat.

3:20 pm - jeremy calls and says that he is done working. (hurray - we haven't seen him in over 31 hours!). we have just driven by his work, so we turn around to go pick him up. our house is only two miles away, so we head back home so he can change and so we can get a cooler, since we will just go to trader joe's and then the health food store to eat. while we wait in the van for jeremy to change, love writes on her magna doodle. she asks me what letters she wrote and i tell her she wrote an "n". i am amazed when she erases it, writes another "n", draws a picture of a nut, and says, "n is for nut!"

4:05 pm - we set out for trader joe's once again. i am a bit disgruntled that my afternoon has gotten switched around so much. really...i am out of sorts because the kids are sick and the day has looked completely different than it was supposed to look. i explain my frustrations to jeremy and then give myself an attitude pep talk and get over it. jeremy rubbing my neck on the way to trader joe's helped too.

5:00 pm - we leave trader joe's and head to our local health food store for dinner. thursday night is family night where kids can eat free with one adult entree (jeremy and i just share and there is plenty of food for us). it's a great deal - our entire family can eat a healthy dinner out for less than $10! it is so nice to have a night off from cooking and i find that i really look forward to this night every week when we go (it's especially nice after jeremy has been at work for so long and all of us are tired). i am really excited because we see a swing cap bottle of soda, with a bottle that we could reuse. i have been wanting a bottle like that to try making carbonated kefir water, so we get one. jeremy drinks the soda (root beer) with his dinner.

6:10 pm - we are done eating. usually there is a guy who makes balloon animals for the kids, but he is not here tonight and love is disappointed. we leave the health food store and head home. on the way home, we pass a school sign that says, "jeremy day". we laugh - who knew it was jeremy day? ha! we take a photo of jeremy with the sign.

6:30 pm - we pull into our driveway. our neighbors are outside, so we cross the street and visit with them for a bit. love runs around with their four-year-old and jobot putters around the yard. before we know it, the kids are covered with sidewalk chalk.

7:15 pm - we get the kids in the bath. our bedroom light burns out. i put away the groceries while jeremy supervises bath time. i wash the swing cap bottle and put some kefir and juice inside. we will give it 48 hours and see what happens!

7:40 pm - after medicine (hyland's cough medicine), temperature checks (jobot is at 100, love is at 99.5), and teeth brushing, jobot is in bed. he was so tired.

7:50 pm - love is in bed. she calls out to us for a while ("i'm not tired! i don't want to go to bed! i'm not going to sleep"). we pop our heads in her room a couple of times. jeremy finds the lightbulbs and fixes the light. i tidy up the kitchen and house.

8:15 pm - we are both sitting on the couch and we hear love snoring from her room. i am on the computer and jeremy is on the ipad.

9:00 pm - we watch an episode of undercover boss. jeremy rubs my back.

9:50 pm - i take a shower. 

10:15 pm - after reading our devotions together, it's lights out. we are both exhausted! goodnight!

friday night

we enjoyed an afternoon with jeremy home. finally - it was a big work week for him.

then there was friday night pizza night. our neighbors came over for dinner and we ate outside. except for all the flies we were shooing away, it was a beautiful evening. we chatted while the kids played and rode bikes. there was ice cream, and bugspray, and kids sandy from the sandbox. and sometime during the evening, we realized that it was the last night of summer. what a perfect ending.

 the kitchen is clean, the kids are soaking in the tub, and my hubby and i will soon be watching a movie. happy weekend!

* also...my post yesterday is updated to add that today i took one of the handles off of the stroller and attached it to the shopping cart at the grocery store. it was a huge help! i will be making another one to keep in the diaper bag for trips to the store.

DIY No-Sew {5 minute} Stroller Handle

i have a new friend who lives in our neighborhood and we have gone for walks together a few times. she has a double stroller for her two boys and it came with handles attached for kids to hold on to as they walk next to the stroller. it's genius!

love rarely rides in our stroller anymore and usually just walks next to the stroller. i have discovered that it's hard to hold onto a child's hand and push a stroller at the same time, so i decided that we needed handles on our stroller as well. i had several ideas...all which involved sewing some handles with cute fabric.

however, i decided i did not want to haul out the sewing maching and sewing supplies for such a little project. besides, i'm busy and would rather do it in a way that didn't involve sewing at all. i brainstormed about what else i could use to make them, and then it came to me - cheap elastic headbands.

i picked up a pack at the store (maybe you even have some laying around your house!), got out my duck tape (it happens to be neon pink...still left over from my color-coded organization when we moved), and within five minutes, i had four stroller handles.

all you have to do is wrap a piece of duck tape around the headband in one spot (to make the part for the child to hold on), loop it through your stroller, and walks just got easier and safer!

i wanted to use what i had (the neon pink), but they make duck tape in so many colors and patterns now that you could make them really cute.

we have two strollers. one is a lightweight single stroller and the other is a baby jogger city select single/double stroller. i attached two handles on each stroller...one on each side. i purposely used two different colors so that i can tell love "hold onto the blue handle" or "hold onto the purple handle" depending on which side of the stroller i want her to be on (away from the street).

these handles have made our walks much easier and love actually really enjoys (usually) holding onto the handle. jobot even tried out the handles when we walked at the zoo the other day, and he did really well. i also really like that they are elastic rather than just cotton sewed into a handle because i think the elastic of the headband absorbs some of the movements of the child so the stroller isn't constantly being impacted by their movements.

so, there it is. very simple.

* updated to add...today i took one of the handles off the stroller and looped it through the shopping cart at the grocery store. it was a huge help and i will be making another to keep in the diaper bag just for the store. 

(by the way...the baby jogger city select is seriously the best stroller in the world. it can be a single or a double, pushes easily, has a lot of storage, and is very compact for a double stroller. we love it! i am not being paid to say that either, it's just my opinion.)

for thirty-two

today is jeremy's birthday.
here is a little poem i wrote to celebrate.


for thirty-two (a gift for my love)

the alarm goes off,
or sometimes it is a child calling to us.
morning has broken,
even if it is still dark outside.

you get up first,
i struggle to open my eyes.
minutes later you stand by the bed,
cup of steaming coffee in hand.

you set it on the nightstand.
the coffee is for me,
and so are the "good morning"
and the kiss.

the day begins.
work done.
children cared for.
bills paid (somehow).

meals prepared and eaten,
the chaos of dinner and bedtime.
maybe an argument or two,
but hopefully more kisses than arguments.

sleepy devotions before bed.
with heavy eyes we read
and sing quietly,
with cracking voices.

we exchange yawns,
then turn the light out.
we kiss goodnight
and fall asleep in each other's arms.

ordinary days,
but these are the good ones.
treasures upon treasures
in each simple day.

we often forget the beauty
He has given us.
yet He lovingly blesses us
with more days and years.

southern not-hospitality

today our van officially became a south carolina resident. we put it off as long as possible due to the very inhospitable vehicle/property tax that we had to pay before we could register the car. not only do residents have to pay it when they register their car, they have to pay it each year when they renew their registration. the tax is 5% of the purchase price (maximum being $300). it's outrageous. our michigan registration was set to expire in september, so we figured that waiting until september to register the car would be a good idea. that way, if/when we move at the end of jeremy's residency (in august), maybe we won't have to pay the tax again next year.

is it just me or does anyone else feel that a trip to the DMV is comparable to a dentist appointment?

the level of unpleasantness is certainly close, if not equal to visiting the dentist. (although if i were to choose, i guess i would go for the DMV over the dentist).

i don't know if there has ever been a time when i have gone to the DMV and actually done what i came to do in one trip. no matter how many papers, forms, and proofs i bring with me, there is always something more that is needed. it is so. frustrating.

today i showed up armed with all the papers we own about our van. the kids were secured in the stroller and i had two lollipops in my pocket for when they got antsy. i had even filled out the paperwork in advance, so i thought i was good to go. (still, for some reason i get very nervous when it's my turn at the counter and the seemingly unhappy worker glares at me, asks what i'm there for, and starts going through my pile of papers).

despite all my preparations, i was missing something - jeremy's signature. who knew that we both had to sign the form? there was only one line and nothing that said both owners needed to sign. alas, i dragged the kids out to the car (both were eating their lollipops by this point) and off we went to get jeremy's signature. my level of annoyance was quite high at this point.

the story ends three-and-a-half hours, four lollipops, and two emergency happy meals later when we finally walked out of the DMV with our new license plate. by that time jobot was screaming and a man actually jumped up from across the room and ran over to hold the door open for me. i think everyone was just glad that i was leaving at that point.

whew. it wasn't as bad as when we got our driver's licenses. that took three trips to the DMV and i think i actually cried at some point. but still, today was frustrating.

since we moved, life has often felt like a lot of paperwork...addresses to change, health forms to fill out, student loan deferments, health insurance paperwork, preschool forms, and on and on. it tempts me to move to a remote area far from civilization and live off the land. but, that would present a lot of problems as well. i just get tired of life being about papers and tired of my desk being covered with papers to deal with.

meanwhile, our michigan license plate has joined all the other ones we have saved from past states and cars. someday we will have a garage where we can display all those reminders of frustrating trips to the DMV. ha.

why i gave up wheat

{note: feel free to skip this post if you don't care}
 
i know that a lot of people have eczema. i've had eczema on my hands for years and years. there have been brief periods where it has seemed to let up a bit, but it really got bad once i hit high school and it has only gotten worse since. the kind of eczema i have is called dyshidrotic eczema which is especially uncomfortable (google it if for some reason you want more information).

there have been times when it has been so bad that i have cringed every time i washed my hands because they were so sore (this was terrible when i was working as a nurse!). almost every night, i would wake up in the middle of the night with itching and burning hands and i would lay there scratching and hurting. it would keep me awake at night. there were times when i wasn't able to bend my fingers without pain. it was actually quite debilitating. i would also be embarrassed in public because my hands were so red and irritated sometimes.

in high school i went to dermatologists who prescribed steroid creams. i would put the cream on before bed and wear gloves while i slept. my college housemates thought that was hilarious.

all that made my skin feel better, but didn't actually "cure" the problem. (and of course, those steroid creams weren't the best thing to be putting on my skin anyway).

it was miserable and significantly impacted my daily life, especially as a nurse and now as a mom who needs to have functioning hands to do daily tasks. i eventually just resigned myself to living that way for the rest of my life, and realized that in the grand scheme of things it really wasn't that big of a deal. but...to me, it still felt like it was.

then i started learning more about health and food and i just kept thinking that it could be related to something i was eating. i thought maybe it was sugar, so i stopped eating that for a while, but i didn't notice a dramatic change. i've always wondered if it could be wheat, and i've stopped eating wheat at times, but never long term.

and then last january i started this low-carb thing and stopped eating wheat because of that. i went from january to the beginning of august without wheat (except for a few very minor encounters with it). sometime in the spring i realized that my hands were drastically better (it can take quite a while for the wheat to get out of your system). still on the dry and itchy side, but significantly better. i was hopeful that the eczema had somehow gone away, but i also thought that maybe it was just a fluke. and then august came and jeremy was off of work for a week and i decided to eat a few things i was missing as a special treat. i made a homemade pizza with a wheat crust (recipe to come on the blog soon, by the way) because that was what i had missed the most. i ate two pieces and didn't have a thought about my eczema (at this point it had been a lot better for several months).

and then...the middle of the night came...and i woke to itching, burning hands. something i hadn't experienced for months. it lasted for a few days. since then, i've done quite a bit of research. (i had in the past, but not so seriously.) it seems there are a lot of people who have eczema who are allergic or sensitive to wheat/gluten. i certainly seem to be one of them.

why has no doctor that i have ever talked with brought this up as a possible cause of my eczema? i have no idea. it is frustrating because maybe i could have realized this and done something about it years ago. (this reinforces my lack of trust in doctors...but i won't get into that here).

i have read a lot about how the wheat we eat today is different than it used to be and how that can mess up our bodies. that all makes sense to me. i have also read a lot about "leaky gut" and healing your skin by healing your gut (i even tried the GAPS diet for a couple of months two years ago). maybe in the future i will look into something like that again with the help of a professional. for now, though, i am glad to have at least figured this out.

in a lot of ways, it's inconvenient to not eat wheat. but, the plus side is that i feel much better without eating wheat anyway...more energetic, happier, and just better overall. i'm also used to not having it now, so it doesn't seem like that big of a deal to give it up.

from what i have read, some people who are sensitive to wheat can eat traditionally fermented sourdough bread without any problems. a couple of years ago i took an ecourse and started learning about sourdough. I made a starter and made a few recipes and really liked it. then i found out i was pregnant with jobot and couldn't handle the smell of the sourdough (sad!), so i quit. i providentially have a new friend who has a starter she is willing to share and i am looking forward to seeing if i can eat that bread without problems. we will see.

i'm just thankful that now i can sleep all night without waking up when my hands are irritated, and it's wonderful to be able to use my hands without pain. if that means eating an almond flour pizza crust while my family eats a wheat crust, that's totally fine with me. 

and preschool begins!

it's a big day over here - love's first day of preschool. we went for orientation on wednesday, and then today was the real thing. she is attending a small, very diverse little church preschool on monday, wednesday, and friday mornings from nine to twelve. each week they have chapel, sign language, music, and yoga, and fridays are show and tell days. they spend 45 minutes each day outside on their lovely playground. we are so thankful that she can attend and we think it will be a great place for her.

putting her in preschool was a bit of a difficult decision. we are strongly considering homeschooling for our children's education but at this point we don't know for sure that we will. we decided that for this year, it is best for her and for our family for her to be in preschool. i will also be doing some homeschooling stuff with her and i am already enjoying that. and really, all of life is school for her anyway!

when i dropped her off this morning she happily hopped off to her class. a few seconds before she admitted that she was a little scared, but as soon as she saw the director's familiar face greet her at the door she announced, "this is my new backpack," and off she went. she came home with tales of the playground, her snack, new friends whose names she didn't remember, and music where she sang lots of songs. and then she got really cranky and it wasn't very fun. it's probably going to take several days before she is adjusted to the new routine, and transitions are difficult for her anyway. it also probably doesn't help that she woke up at 5 this morning.

jobot and i spent the morning baking pizza crust for tonight's dinner, playing with legos, making nut granola, and throwing a ball down the hallway over and over again. he is a good little helper with cooking and he just loves it. every time we finish a cooking project he throws a tantrum. (the tantrums have begun in earnest these days...and he's only 15 months old!). when he got bored i gave him a dishpan with a little bit of soapy water in it. he had a spoon and a little bowl and that kept him busy for at least thirty minutes.

our weekend looks to be pretty relaxing. jeremy won't be on call (hurray!) and we have plans to grill with our neighbors tomorrow afternoon. tonight is homemade pizza night at our house, our friday night tradition. and just in the past month we made it dessert/ice cream night as well, so that makes it even better. love especially looks forward to this night!

what will your weekend hold?

* also - HELP! maybe someone who reads this blog can give me some cloth diaper advice. we are having cloth diaper troubles over here. it seems that every time jobot wears a cloth diaper he gets a rash. we stripped the diapers and we are still having the same problems. i've been changing him every two hours to try to prevent the rash, but he still gets one. any advice?

new house tour {our porch and yards}

here is the last post in my little tour of our new house.

{backyard}

pros:
- fenced in
- good shade
- the yard is really big with lots of space to play and explore
- quiet and secluded
- perfect spot for a fire pit (maybe this winter if jobot is old enough?)
- fun little cherry tomato plant that we got on clearance shortly after we moved here. love fell in love with it at the store and we brought it home. it has died and come back to life a few times, but is still producing a small harvest. love enjoys picking the tomatoes and sometimes enjoys eating them.
- plenty of little critters to find (bugs, snails, slugs, frogs, worms...)
- the kids have lots of fun with the sandbox, little swimming pool, hose, and sprinkler.

cons:
- no direct access from house (have to go out the backdoor and around the house to get in the gate)
- mosquitoes!!!
- creepy storage sheds (i tried to make them less creepy by hanging a colorful banner up, but they are still scary!)

we spend a lot of time in this backyard and we really enjoy it. i am really looking forward to later this fall and winter when the weather is more pleasant (not so hot and humid!) and we won't be fighting with mosquitoes whenever we are outside. but, we have already used this backyard a lot and are very thankful to have it.

{front yard}

pros:
- front porch always has shade
- carport is a great place for riding bikes (the kids have been doing that more lately)
- a great place to be to see neighbors
- feels relaxing

cons:
- we have to watch jobot every second to make sure he doesn't go in the street

we've actually been spending more time in the front yard than the back the past few weeks. there are less mosquitoes and we like seeing neighbors, especially on a long day at home. we've been going for walks in the mornings and then playing in the front yard for a bit before it gets too hot. the kids have been enjoying their bikes (trying to ride them). the porch is a great place to sit (although it has been too hot lately). we have enjoyed sitting there together after the kids are in bed and look forward to doing lots more of that when the weather cools down a bit.

see the white wicker rocking chair on the porch? we got it off the curb! it is a bit worn, but still works. a while back we picked up a cushion for it on clearance, and we have already gotten quite a bit of use out of it. i have always wanted a wicker porch chair.

also, i have two basil plants on the front porch. we got them on clearance shortly after we moved here and planted them in wine boxes we found on the curb (those and the wicker chairs are the only things we have found on the curb, but all were good finds!). the plants have been thriving, and we've been using them a lot (caprese salads, pizza...i love basil). some bug has been eating them though, so i've got to figure that out. i love that these plants are decorative, but also edible! that's the way to go.

staycation and back in the routine

jeremy had a week off of work two weeks ago, in between his summer program ending and year-long residency program beginning. we had a little staycation. then, this past week he had orientation for his residency and it was a lighter week schedule-wise, so that was nice. now today he has been on call, so we are back in that schedule again (not so fun).

the kids and i joined him for dinner at the hospital tonight. one trauma came in while we were eating dinner, and another came in as we were leaving, so jeremy was keeping busy. the helipad is right in front of the hospital, near the road, so it is a perfect place for the kids to see the helicopters. there were two tonight and before we drove home we sat in the parking lot and watched one of the helicopters take off. there were two kids in the backseat of my car who were very excited to watch.

our staycation was okay. some days were good and a few were not. it rained a lot, then we had a couple of beautiful days that were unseasonably cool, and then the heat and humidity came back with a vengeance. we went into the week with a substantial list of free or very cheap activities we could do as a family. we ended up not doing much at all, which was fine. (and now we still have ideas for days when we are looking for something to do).

we took the kids bowling (through the kids bowl free program). the two of us didn't even bowl, and we only had to pay for love's bowling shoes. the kids thought it was a lot of fun, and we had fun with them!

we went to the zoo. always a fun, free (because we have a membership) activity. we go just about once a week. we fed the lorikeets (something i don't dare try to do with the kids when i take them by myself!).

and one of them bit jobot.

jobot got his first black eye (thanks to a collision with our coffee table).

 
love and i were in charge of feeding our neighbor's cats (she was on vacation). it was the second time we have done it and the five cats seem to like us more each time. they should, as they spend a lot of time sitting on our front porch and lounging in our yard.

we checked out a local health food store and it was a winner. we also found a source of raw milk. awesome.

the best day we had was last weekend when the weather was refreshingly cool and we spent monday playing and working in the yard. love collected backyard treasures in a dishpan. she found two frogs (toads?) in our backyard and held them captive for a little while. she holds them so they lay on their backs and she gently rubs their tummies. they actually lay there looking very content.

jeremy mowed the lawn with a baby on his back. i love this photo, it reminds me of my dad. he did the same thing back in the day!

i got a haircut which was a frustrating experience and i actually almost cried when the guy said he was done cutting my hair. it was terrible. i mean, really terrible. thirty minutes later i left the salon with an okay haircut.

jeremy gave me a day off, which was a wonderful gift. i spent the morning at a coffee shop sipping coffee and catching up on my scrapbooking on the computer. it was so relaxing. in the afternoon i went to a thrift store with hopes of spending a bit of my birthday money on some new to me clothes. i ended up with a shirt and a pair of shorts, so it was successful.

this week we are really going to be back in the routine. jeremy will be working full days again and love will be starting preschool. she will be going just three mornings a week for three hours and i think it will be so good for her and for me. we will also be doing some informal homeschooling at home, and of course, all of life is school for her anyway!

i am feeling ready for the new routine and am eager to figure out what our days will look like with this new schedule. i am looking forward to getting back into sourdough baking for our family (i have a new friend who is willing to give me some of her starter so i don't have to start from scratch!), and yesterday i got started making kefir (something i have been meaning to do for two years...silly me, it is so easy!). i am eager for fall weather, but i don't think we are going to be getting that any time soon. it's been in the 90s and humid with no relief in sight. i find myself missing the cooler fall mornings of the Midwest.