Raking Leaves Again

It was another one of those days at home where the only time-sensitive item on my to-do list was "Soak beans overnight" for our church's Trunk or Treat Chili Cookoff tomorrow. Days like this don't often happen, so I delved into a few more "home projects" and spent a lot of time playing with Alice:

• "Raked" the leaves in the front yard. I used the lawnmower to chew up the leaves and dump them into the lawn and leaf bags. Alice generally hates the noisy lawnmower, so she ran inside and watched from the screen door. Every time the lawnmower bag would get full, which was quite often, I'd have to turn off the engine and dump the chewed up leaves into a paper bag. Every time I stopped the lawnmower, Alice would shout through the screen door, "All done?" When I finally said "Yes!" she gleefully skipped outside asking for a pile of leaves she could jump into. Fortunately for her, it was a windy day and leaves were quickly gathering on our lawn once more. We piled and played until she came across a patch of sticky brown stuff and asked, "Is that mud or poop?" Game over.
• Took Alice's red Fisher-Price car for a drive on the street for the first time.
• Played with sidewalk chalk on the driveway.
• Packed a picnic lunch to eat at the church building while I did administrative stuff for the Family History Center. We were pretending the church was our "school" and she got to carry the lunches in her spiffy new-to-her backpack. With the right angle, almost any errand/chore can become exciting fun for this kid. I like this age.
• Posted several large items on craigslist. All part of the cleansing ritual that started with the bathroom remodeling. A nice bathroom and freshly painted kitchen makes the rest of our house look like crap. Most of my time at home this week has been spent de-crapping our house. I now have a literal truck load of perfectly-usable-but-not-worth-storing-anymore stuff that's headed to Goodwill tomorrow.
• Made a spectacular dinner, laid out a splendid table, then crouched with Alice under the table for 10 minutes waiting for Bobby to get home. This girl loooooves to surprise Daddy.

 

Yes, she's wearing a huge rubber band around her head. She found it at the Family History Center one day and decided it was a helmet. It cracks me up, but she's totally serious about it.

Also, while I was preparing our amazing dinner, Alice was preparing a feast of her own for all of her friends and family. I made her pose next to the table she set, which is why she looks so awkward standing there. The clothespins are pretzels, there's one pear, and everything else is either a bagel or a brownie. "Baby Taydoh" and "Baby Tiger" have already been seated.

Starting to Sink In

I was driving along the other day, chatting it up with Alice as we always do, when suddenly I felt this new baby really move for the first time. I was startled and confused..."Wait. If I'm talking to Alice, then who's in THERE?!"

*sigh*

Just one step closer to wrapping my brain around what's in store.

Painting by Name

I'm not much of a home decorator, as you must know. I had lots of help this time. My friend JulieAnn took me to a few places to look at paints and shower curtains. We had to start from scratch..."So, what do you like?" "Uh, I don't know. I literally never notice anything unless it's hideous." "Okay, what's not ugly here." "Uh..."

From Bobby's update, you can tell I finally picked something, but not before collecting a hundred different "white" paint chips for the bathroom and a dozen "earthier browns" for the kitchen. I found the color names hilarious, as any of them would make a great name for our future movie star baby:

La Fonda Boulder
Tagsale Linen
Churchill Hotel Wheat
Bleached Sand
Homestead Resort Buff
Tattered Sail
Silent Delight
Bubble Tea
Apricot Fluff
Whirling Wind
Clam Island
Peach Froth
Sentimental
Cracker Bitz
Lilac Intuition
Kiss Me Kate
Willow Springs
Coral Gable Biltmore Mediterranean Caramel

I'm pleased with the results of our efforts in both the bathroom and the kitchen, especially all the remodeling stuff everyone else did in the bathroom. It's an awesome transformation! I love it. The kitchen needs a little more work on my end...couple more highlights, clean counters, organized chef station, etc.

Bobby's Sunday Summary

Well, this week can probably be summed up as painting. Both the bathroom and the kitchen were to the point this week that we were able to paint, and install some of the basics. It is not completely done yet, but here we go.

and the kitchen

They both are actually usable now. The kitchen still needs some touchup work on the ceiling, but the picture is so horrible you cannot tell. My phone just does not take good pictures in low light. The bathroom still has some touchup work, some caulking, and we need to replace the floor eventually.

We primed the bathroom twice, and the kitchen once, I spent almost all day Saturday painting, and with the help of our home teachers we painted the entire kitchen Friday night.

We also attended Will, our nephew's birthday party. It was a fairly typical birthday party, and I would include pictures, but that whole camera not working in low light, or moving objects, well the 3/4 year olds really don't stop moving, so the vast majority of the pictures are just colored fuzzy streaks.

Punkin' Huntin' Exchange Program

Since discovering it with the Jarvies last year, I've decided to make Negangard Pumpkin Patch an annual tradition in our household. You don't hunt for your perfect pumpkin in the patch, per se, but there's a lot of hunting involved as you wind your way through rows and rows of beautiful, unique, and spectacular pumpkin varieties.

 

Bobby selected a huge one for carving, I instantly fell in love with a multicolored warty one that's shaped like a pyramid, and Alice insisted on five baby pumpkins (at $0.25 a piece, it's easy to say "yes". She also came home with 2 teensy gourds which promptly became mother and baby). Grandma Poulson came home with a pale pink pumpkin that made 3 excellent pies with minimal effort. Grandpa Poulson opted to stay home to work on the bathroom remodeling.

We brought along our friends as part of an exchange program. They are die-hard "hunt in the patch" folks, and we prefer bargain basement prices and more variety, so the two of us agreed to experience each others' version of the great punkin' hunt this year. Here are photos from Negangard's:

Wagons are the best part.

Ready to go!

Where to begin?



Start with the babies, of course.



"One, two, fwee..."



Buddies in the wagon



Helping Daddy find a big one.



The final lineup. We drew faces on the pumpkins this year, though we may carve them when it gets closer to Halloween. Alice drew the face on the middle one. She can't draw a recognizable face on paper, but it's crystal clear on a sphere. She also helped us color the other ones, and she wanted Bobby's pumpkin to have stitches ("tishes"). My warty pumpkin is in the back.

And here are the photos from Curtis Orchards' Pumpkin Patch. We were too late to get good pumpkins in the field this year, but there was still PLENTY to do. Alice and I both had a great time. The best part for her, though, was the doughnut and fresh cider afterwards.

Alice going through the Ruby Slipper Maze

"Mommy! See how big my is. Aaaaaaaaaaaa! Ladybug!"
Alice running through the pumpkin graveyard. She was eager to go ahead and find cool ones to show me. She only biffed it twice.
She's having a great time with baby pumpkin. The wind didn't bother her much this time. We did learn, however, that it's hard to remain modest in a dress while sitting cross-legged in a wagon.
Alice deciding which she wanted more: the baby pumpkin or a fresh apple cider doughnut. Mommy made her choose between them since she had 5 other baby pumpkins waiting at home. Doughnut wins.

The final verdict: I think we'll do both pumpkin patches every year. They both have their exciting bits, and I can't pick just one. Besides, it's all about hanging out with friends and doing something a little out of the ordinary. Both outings were a screaming success by those counts, so I'm excited to continue the tradition indefinitely.

Bobby's Sunday Summary

This week has been interesting. As you all know we have been remodeling our bathroom. We have made a lot of progress, the first one is midweek, the second is yesterday.

The sink is in, the shower is caulked, we have primed a lot of the walls and door, and I put in the medicine cabinet. But there is still a lot to do. We have to prime the celling, paint everything, caulk the sink, and redo the floor. We also plan on painting the kitchen. Susan has gotten into a bit of a home improvement kick. So expect to see several more small transformations to our house.

Yesterday was a busy day. In the morning Susan had to work at the family history center, and I took Alice to a tour of the University Dairy. A friend of ours is getting his PHD doing some experiments there. Alice didn't really enjoy it all that much. The wind was blowing a lot which made Alice want me to hold her the entire time. According to her she squirt milk and baby cows squirt milk too. She did not actually squirt milk, I squirted some milk, and held Alice while I did it, so I guess that sort of counts. My arms are very sore today, but from all the things I did yesterday, hang the medicine cabinet, prime the bathroom, and cary ALice at the Dairy, I think it is the last one that is really getting to me. Some interesting facts about cows. It takes 10 lbs of milk to make 1 lbs of cheese. Each holstein cow can produce about 100 gallons of milk each day, and holsteins make up about 92% of the Dairy cows in the US. This happened after World War Two, when they needed to produce lots of cheap milk for the baby boomers.

Mom and Dad

I don't know where to start talking about the last 10 days or so. Bobby posted a photo of our gutted bathroom. Our ONLY bathroom. It looks much better now, but it's still only barely functional. The sink and countertop were not finished today as hoped. Maybe by Friday, they say. Until then, we'll continue to wash our hands, shave, and brush our teeth in the kitchen sink. The contractor won't come out to caulk the tub and shower until the countertop is ready, either, so blue tape is our temporary solution there. Our showers must be kept short and cool to minimize steam/water on the exposed drywall and green board. *sigh*

We haven't been harping on the contractor or caulking things ourselves because we already have enough work to do. My dad has worked nonstop on every project: demolition, demolition, demolition, moving and installing new light fixtures and a fan, installing a wider door, ripping out drywall in the kitchen to inspect termite damage, replacing drywall when the termite damage turned out to be not-so-bad, spraying texture on the new walls, hand-texturing our new bathroom ceiling with a bucket of joint compound and a cement trowel, installing shelves in the garage, and finishing up all the drywall that the contractors left behind. He's saving us thousands of dollars and months of time. I can't imagine how to BEGIN to repay him.

My mom has also been working nonstop on another series of projects: sewing window treatments for the kitchen, doing dishes after every meal (my kitchen has never been so clean so often before!), sewing a maternity skirt for me, helping with meal preparation, entertaining the babe, helping me with other events and responsibilities that I scheduled this same week (oops), chatting spirituality and parenting and friendship and self-discovery with me whenever the mood strikes to chat, and (most importantly) uplifting and empowering me as a mom. She's got a knack for helping without belittling or judging. She seems to know just the right tasks to do (i.e. taking out the trash, clearing off the table, telling me to rest for a minute, volunteering to read Alice a story, putting the folded laundry away, emptying the dishwasher, making 3 pumpkin pies, etc.) at just the right time so they never clutter my "ugh, gotta remember to do THAT" list. That is the best gift in all the world.

I don't believe there's any way to express my gratitude properly. Alice and I will be taking my parents back to the airport tomorrow. It's a long drive to St. Louis, but I'm looking forward to those last few hours with my parents.

Bobby's Sunday Summary (a bit early)

This week has been a very stressful one.  We are remodeling our bathroom.  Luckely Susan's parents are in town helping us.  They have saved us a lot of time and money already.  We stripped it down to the studs as you can see in the picture.  Then today a contractor showed up and took out the tub, did the plubing and started on the drywall.

Sadly today, the day I needed to stay home to answer any questions etc. is the day our internet decided to die.  So right now I am writing this on my phone rather then the computer.  Sadly we get phone service through our internet too, so my cell phone is the only form of outside communication we have right now.  I will try and post more later once the bathroom is finished so you can see how it turned out. 

Bobby's Sunday Summary

This week was a long one. I flew to California Monday morning. I arrived there at about 2 and my meetings started at 3. They lasted until 6 that night. The next day started at 8 am and ended at 8 pm. Lots and lots of meetings. I flew to CA for a conference. The conference was Wednesday through mid-day on Friday, but my boss wanted us to get a lot of other stuff done while we were out there. The trip, and especially the conference was a lot of fun, but again it was full of very long days.

The first night Yahoo! had a fancy get together at the San Jose Museum of Art. I was rather tired so I did not stick around that long, but the food was very good.

Friday night I got together with my brother, my sister, and her husband. Susan insisted that I get pictures, but it was late and they did not turn out that well.

I got home Saturday at about 4 and I have been exhausted ever since.