True to Form

When Bobby's traveling for business, I tend to spend money, declutter, and blog a lot.

He's in California this week. Check, check, and check.

Spend money:
Paid for the gutter work $$$. Paid for the electrical work $$. Lined up the guy to remove our popcorn ceilings $$. Reserved a place to stay for three days while the house gets de-popcorned $. Purchased a new pair of sandals for James once I realized the new pair of sandals I had already bought him for this summer was a whole size smaller than his current size $. It was a typo, not a growth spurt, and he's been cramming his feet into them for a month. Poor guy.

Declutter:
Took a van load to Goodwill. My only mistake was letting James witness the act. I managed to stop the tears (and buy his silence) with a package of fruit snacks $ from a vending machine. I pray this will never come back to bite me.

Managed to find a good home for our old microwave, James' too-small sandals, and possibly the can roller. Anyone want a bike rack for their car? It hooks on to the trunk area. I've had it for almost 10 years and finally decided to take it for a spin. Well, true to my style*, I managed to overload it with four bikes and drive it over some terrific speed bumps, thus denting our rear door (argh!). Maybe you'll be wiser than I was...

Blog a lot:

My first attempt at creating beautiful flower pot arrangements. I was aiming for "thrill, fill, spill" and got mostly "spill." Love seeing the colors on my patio, though.

My giants and dragons (giant zinnia mix, snapdragon assortment). They look a lot better in person. I promise.

I let the kids pick all the pink snapdragons. They were thrilled.

James not only got on the climbing wall for the first time this week, but he managed to get to 10 feet before looking down and freaking himself out. He climbed a little higher (15 feet) once to retrieve a Batman action figure that the instructor/guide had planted there for him.

*Over stuffing burritos, over loading suitcases, trying to stack just one more thing on the top shelf of the fridge...it's called "Mommy-itis" at our house and I've got it bad. "Daddy-itis" is the inability to see the thing you're looking for especially if it's right in front of your face. Bobby has it the worst, obviously, but Alice has developed a pretty nasty case of it herself.

Hand to Mouth and Matthew Joy

It's peak raspberry season at our house and the kids are literally out there several times a day stuffing their faces. It's insane. I joined them this morning (someone has to pick the high ones, right?) and ate berries until I started feeling sick, then I picked just as many for Matthew (who is a bottomless pit for fresh raspberries). It's been a dream come true! Pick, eat. Pick, eat. Pick some more, eat some more. Hand to mouth. Raspberries are more fragile than strawberries, so they don't transport well and they're harder to share...or so I tell myself ;) I would stop to take a picture of it, but feel compelled to pick delicious berries whenever I'm out there. You will simply have to content yourself with a random picture of three darling boys in a deck box:

In other news, I wanted to note here how happy Matthew makes all of us. He's awfully cheerful about the smallest things, which lightens the mood significantly:

• He raises his hands in the air and shouts, "Yay!" at the end of every prayer. Even in church.
• Bobby walked into the dining room with a bowl of watermelon and Matthew pointed at him with both hands exclaiming, "Meleeeeeeeeee!" Then when Bobby put some in front of him, he squealed and said, "Yah!"
• We offered him a bath and he did a happy dance on the spot singing, "Basssssss! Bassssss!"
• Every white car he sees is apparently Daddy's car. We hear a lot of giddy "Da-deeeeee! Da-deeeeee!" I wonder if Matthew really thinks that is Bobby driving around town all day. 
• He loves a good tickle fight. He's even started tickling other people. He's pretty good at it.
• He crouches a little and walks like an old man with a cane when he's being "sneaky."
• The kid tells jokes. Anything to get the other kids to laugh. He gets the biggest reaction when we're playing the "Can you say" game. "Massew, can you say 'W'?"..."bubuh-doo"..."Bwah ha ha haaaaaaaa!" After a couple rounds, Matthew will start spouting gibberish and the kids will fall out of their seats laughing. Those are some of my favorite moments. Ever.
• He pretends to eat things, just for the reaction, which is hilarious.
• He honors different family members by choosing their lap for family prayer, or asking them to hold him when he's sad. That makes so many people happy!
• Every slight decline in the landscape earns an enthusiastic, "Weeeeeeeeee!" from Matthew as he goes down. It could be a freeway overpass or a wheelchair ramp. Doesn't matter. He's excited.
• He's got this funny habit of saying, "Ta da!" when he finds something. I challenge you to add "ta-da!" to your daily vocabulary and NOT feel more cheerful. You can't.

Everyone loves Matthew. He's so dang happy.

So glad to have him.

Rocket Mix

This spring, I purchased a packet of snapdragon seeds called the "Rocket Mix" from Johnny's Seeds. Here's what the picture looked like:

Awesome, right? I started them in March, babied them through April, transplanted and nurtured them through May, and finally started seeing tiny flower buds in late June. They started to swell and I dreamed of all the beautiful colors that would soon surprise me. Finally!

Then one morning I looked outside to see a bright pink snapdragon flower in my garden.

I was filled with disgust.

That surprised me. Disgust?! At a flower?!

It turns out I really, really, really don't like pink snapdragons. And those are the ones blooming first.

*sigh*

I knew I wasn't fond of pink, but disgust is ridiculous. Just laughing at my picky little self right now.

Pans in the Fire

The kitchen remodel is making progress. Our counter tops are being made and due to arrive in a couple weeks (despite Home Depot's error that put our account $3000 in the red!). The flooring guy can come back now that we've straightened out Home Depot's mistake with the transitions. The electrician comes tomorrow to finish a couple things and give us a quote on the under cabinet lighting. I'm kinda giving up hope that the kitchen will ever really be done. Just seems impossible.

The kitchen remodel spun off two additional projects (so far) that are also making progress this week:

• New soffit and fascia were installed and now we're getting gutters and gutter guards installed a few at a time...don't know exactly why it's being done that way, but maybe that's why my friend could get it done so affordably.

• Removal of popcorn ceiling in kitchen living room, mud room, and adjacent hallways. I'm trying to schedule a start date for this. We had the popcorn ceiling tested and it contains less than 1% chrysotile, which means it is legally asbestos-free. I would prefer a 0% level, but I don't know if the lab we used is legally allowed to say "0%" chrysotile, even if they found none, because they might be held liable if ANY were found later on, etc. Anyway, removing a popcorn ceiling creates a HUGE mess. Enormous. It will make our house less functional than losing the kitchen. I will probably be prepping the house with plastic sheeting and duct tape just to keep the mess from spreading into the other rooms. And I'm thinking we might check in to a hotel for a few days because the mess will cut us off from our bedrooms, bathrooms, and living areas. ALL the hallways are affected. Staycation, anyone?

It's a part time job staying on top of all this.

And THEN there's the garden stuff. I got a little ahead of myself and purchased a few plants that I hadn't researched very well yet, with the intention of putting them along the split rail fence. Turns out, that fence is not a good fit.  Stuck! Gotta carve out a couple new beds or plant and pray. Or both. It's getting a little too hot to put in new beds now...ugh.

The best news of the day, though, was finally cashing in on Robert and James' bickering. We recently instituted a new Love and Logic policy for those two: I charge one extra chore for every 10 seconds I have to listen to them pick at each other. Yay! They got to clean out the cruddiest, most neglected toilet and sink in the whole house (I hate cleaning that bathroom, and it shows!). I got to hear a few more seconds of petty bickering while they cleaned, but they stop now whenever they hear me counting down. Gotta love this Love and Logic.

The boys, in a more cooperative moment, testing out how spacious our new deck box can be.

Dear Bobby

Dear Bobby,

It's the day after Father's Day and there's a blog post entitled "Dear Bobby." You might think that this would be a tribute to you as a husband and father.

Well, it turns out I'm far too selfish to pull that off.

This is a little note to get you thinking about the perfect birthday gift for me in a couple months. It might look exactly like this, but with kids I know and love on it:

And yes, it was originally published as a Father's Day gift idea.

Fully aware of the irony,
Susan

P.S. A half dozen of these little beauties would go pretty far, too.