Harried, Hurried and Hard Hat Harry: HURRAY!

Tuesdays at my house are INSANE.

At 9 AM The Boy has to report to Creative Arts Camp, where he will finish painting his bird house and ruining his clothing. Then, even though Creative Arts Camp does not end until 1PM We have to get him at noon, get him all naked in the car and change him into his bathing suit, shark shirt, goggles and swim shoes (all of which he INSISTS on wearing - You Cannot be too careful in the pool, you know) and get himt o swimming class at 12:30. He can finish his lunch on the way in the car, but I make sure to give hima lunch that has a lot of little things in it instead of big stuff, so he can save some for later, and also he will not be too full and sink to the bottom of the pool....

At 1 Pm swimming is over. We will dry him off, get him dressed and then realize we have once again forgotten the comb, and thus, Spencer will spend the rest of Tuesday with uncombed Swimmer's Hair. He will come home and build with his blocks and watch his Construction movie that I WISH WISH WISH I had never bought him, starring the most annoying person on EARTH, Hard Hat Harry.

Hard Hat Harry is a Genie who wears a construction outfit and lives in a thermos bottle until these two kids come along and free him from the bottle. Then he grants them wishes, and of course they wish to see how houses are built or what lumberjacks do all day. Spencer knows this movie by heart. I am not even exxaggerating he can recite it. How sad is that? But thanks to Hard Hat Harry, whenever we go downtown or see something being built Spencer will say something like "That is a TOWER CRANE, Mommy. it has Stabilizers on the sides." Or "Mommy, that dump truck over there weighs over 100 tons!!"

Hard Hat Harry. He's a tool.

I HATE Hard Hat Harry. I am convinced he is some kind of a voodoo artist who has cast a spell on my child. I would like to hide that DVD forever and ever and maybe bury it and then dig it up and feed it to the goat. Of course, this is Spencer's FAVORITE movie and he loves to sing the songs about he the crane, and the lumberjacks and all the other stupid stuff.

We may have to meet with the builder tomorrow, which may spare us from HHH.

Anyway, after Swimming and playing for a bit he changes in to his GI and heads to Kinder Kempo. After that, I drag him to my Weight Watcher's meeting and then we pretty much Call it a Day.

Stylish Hair, Stolen Driveway, Stoned Painters, Swimming Fish, Silly Shoes

When the rain finally stops and Summer in Oregon starts, many things happen: The Corn Festival, the Clackamas County Fair, the Goat show, the Rodeo, The Corn Lady opens for business, All the U-PICK farms open (where you go to pick blueberries, blackberries, marionberries, raspberries, olalleberries, oslerberries, discoberries, strawberries, lingonberries, obamaberries, iplawberries and corncannonberries) PLUS.... People get realllly crazy and everyone paints their houses.

You have to, because you only have about three days in June before Monsoon Season starts again, so you have to act fast. In case you are not from Oregon, Monsoon Season lasts from about June 12 to June 9th. Its a lot of rain, but those two days of sunshine a year here are totally worth it.

This year in our neighborhood, there is truly some kind of an epidemic... Maybe its because gas is like 7 dollars a gallon and no one can afford to drive anywhere except to Home Depot to get more paint. Or maybe they figure they cannot sell their houses in this economy, so they had better make them look nice and enjoy them while they are living. Or maybe The Corn Lady used a little too much fertilizer on her crops this year, which are directly adjacent to my subdivision, and the fumes drifted over here and made everyone go insane, or temporarily blind, or perhaps both. Its had to say, but people in our neighborhood are going CRAZY with paint this year.

The biggest trend is DARK colors, especially dark green and dark royal blue. ALso everyone is using this paint that ir really shiny instead of the normal flat kind lately. Also I see a lot of houses that have not one color and trim but like FOUR DIFFERENT colors trim one color, Mian body another then like door a third, and then you know the wood stuff near the roof is yet another color, and so on. Oh and NOT JUST dark blue, there is Very dark green, Very dark brown, Very dark red - you name it. There is an almost black house next door to our old house right now, and honestly it LOOKS OKAY!!! I saw a purple house today. To each their own, it is very cloudy here, and maybe we do need to brighten up the place a bit....

But then I saw this house:

Hail to the Victors Valiant

Wow. Maybe they are U of Michigan Football fans? You cannot see it here but the trim is bright yellow. I dunno... GO BLUE!!!!!

Anyway Ours is probably going to be THIS color we have almost totally decided:

We are gonna paint our house this color grey.. the one on the bottom

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz I KNOW!!!! But what can I say?
I love gray, and I have had ENOUGH excitement this year.


Also we got to the Sploded house today and someone had stolen the driveway....

Hey, Who Stole my Driveway????

I guess they are getting ready to replace the concrete and that is one the last big hurdles.

Today Spencer started Creative Arts Day Camp at his preschool. He had fun, but we had to make a mad dash to swimming. There are kids from his preschool in his art camp this week, including his little buddy Dylan T (one of the three Dylans at his school, Dylan T. is the Dylan with two moms.) Both of Dylan's moms are very nice, but I can only ever remember one of their names. I think HEATHER is the one who drives the Camry, and The Other One drives the Volvo wagon. When they switch cars I really get in trouble.

Also I got a hair cut today. I chopped it allll off. SO far no one has even noticed. Not even Bill, and he was there. I like it though. I love having long hair and throwing it all up into a bun with a scrunchie, but it is not a good look for me, really, and Bill hates it. He calls it my "Old Lady Bun." I got into the habit of it in Nursing school, because we all had to wear our hair up off our collars.

SO anyway. I went back to my blunt bobb. I almost went as far as the Victoria Beckham hairdo, but I was afraid I would look more like SCARY Spice than Posh Spice. SO now I look like my mother. Which is not bad I guess.

Oh and Spencer got the funniest thing at Walgreen's yesterday: It is this fish light... it was like 10 bucks but he LOVES it. it lights up and then the fish "SWIM" inside. It really does look like an aquarium, sort of... He sleeps with it on at night.

Fish light OFF

Fish Light ON, Fish are "swimming"

Also yesterday I got him two more Fake Jibbets for his Fake Crocs: A turtle, and a Penguin. The turtle is because Spencer is my turtle, and the penguin is so he can be inspired to reach his goal of joining the Canby Penguins.

I am not sure if it is ok for boys to wear jibbits on their crocs but he is only four... so who cares?

Well, that is about all the news that is fit to print today.

Fish Scales, and Play Dates, and Quiznos, OH MY!!!

Today we met Siri and Steve and Travis at the park and the kids played and Siri and I went over our lists and I refined mine and got a LOT of new ideas from hers. it was great however one of hers was "Go camping in the back yard." Uhmmmm NO. I hate camping. If Bill wants to camp outside with all the bugs etc that is fine, but that will not be on the MOMMY list. Yes I went to ELEVEN YEARS of Summer camp.... It was all in DORMS. We lived in DORMS. We had overnight camping trips like four times a summer and they were unbearable and mosquito filled and we played truth or dare and and ate gross hot dogs cooked on sticks and S'mores and stole each other's underwear and sleeping bags and went canoing etc... but I did NOT LOVE it and I would never ELECT to do that. Everyone says camping is fun I am missing out. Ok I believe you. You go, have fun. I sprayed so much OFF on myself during summer camp all those years that if I even ever get even a small whiff of it I get flashbacks... No thanks.

Anyway We all went to Quiznos for dinner after the park and I had two of those little SAMMIES things. The kids had fun. Some restaurants in Canby are cool with kids and that is one of them.

When we went to pick out all the lights last week, I loved this stained glass fixture that was in the showroom but I did not even ask about it because I thought it would be so expensive, I did not even really want to hear the price. When we had looked at every single light on the World Wide Web and still not found anything we liked, I finally asked about it. I know it is not everyone's taste in fact I am sure of it... because the guy was like I will give you a HUGE discount on it... because I have had it a while and it was not a big hit...

SO it LOOKS LIKE this lamp I mean it is this EXACT fixture


BUT mine has like blue and greenish fish scales - more blue than green.... so ours is more like THIS color:

And I also got sconces for the walls, two of them in the same color as above but they will look something like this:

They are a little fussy but what else goes with my bargain chandelier? I am pretty sure mine will be turned UP instead of down and also that they will not have the little flowery things... I discussed that with the guy.

SO I am not sure what I was going for here but I do love stained glass a LOT. I have an Oak Hutch and china cabinet thing that I got two years ago from Craig's list for like the lowest price it was awesome that I love, and we will get a new dining table to match Maybe later on from this Amish Workbench place in Aurora - the next town over. Or maybe Craig;s again I have had great luck with furniture on there.

SO I have to go now and go watch other people cook stuff on the Food Network and PBS. I tape certain shows each Saturday... Stuff like Everyday Food, Everyday Baking, Caprial and John's Kitchen, America's Test Kitchen, Primal Grill, Barefoot Contessa, Nigella Lawson, and then also DIY stuff like Flip this House and Hometime, This Old House etc Stuff like this. Its fun to watch other people do really cool hard stuff. Then On Saturday night I always Tivo. 48 Hours Mystery. I also like this one show The Next Food Network Star... and of course this one show called Deliver Me abotu these OB/Gyns in California I have NO IDEA why I even watch that one... . Nothing like a little Cooking, Childbirth, Home Improvement and Murder to brighten up a Weekend.

The Next Food network Star is Hysterical There is this one INSANE woman whos cooking theme or whatever is "Beautiful Basics" whatever that means.. She is INSANE and really really Kooky. I think her name is LISA:

LISA of the "The Next Food Network Star."

Also a new season of Kathy Griffin and FLIPPING OUT has started on Bravo. SO I am all set.

I may have a problem.... But this year, other people's lives at least LOOK more fun than mine. I mean, I have yet to see a Goat at Kathy Griffin's house.

Goldfish, Gators, Grout, Gi, Going Crazy, Art Camp & Getting a List

Canby Penguin....

Spencer ended his second swimming session today after two weeks of going every day. He is still a GOLDFISH and has not graduated up to the GOLDFISH II group yet, but he has made a lot of progress since he started a few months ago. He got his second little certificate, and it has the things he needs to concentrate on next, but he is progressing toward his goal of becoming a competient enough swimmier to be accepted in to the Canby Penguins.
http://www.ci.canby.or.us/Departments/swim/penguin.htm
This is like the Junior swim team of Canby. Then after a while in there he can maybe be a Canby Gator, which is like this hard core swim team of Canby,
http://www.canbygators.com/
and they compete all over the place. It is huge to be a Gator, but you have to be a Penguin first. To get to be a Penguin you have to be able to swim I think one entire lap and some other stuff. He is very determined and we intend to keep signing him up for lessons as long as he wants them he loves it and he cannot wait to get tot he pool every day. it has been a bit of a sacrifice for us because Monday thru Friday he HAS to be there at 12:30. That kind of breaks up our day, and he has to be there. I think its only for the summer and then when preschool starts again he can go back to twice a week at night. Anyway...

Canby Gators..

He also loves his Kinder Kempo class but he is not as enthusiastic about practicing it, and though he has had only one lesson he is not what you would call a NATURAL at it. However he has his GI ( Karate suit) now and we are ready to go. We have a lot to deal with packing for the move, and building the house and all the other stuff so we have not gotten around to gymnastics classes yet. We think that should wait to the fall. For now he has a lot. the Kempo, the swimming and next week on Monday - Fri starts the first of four week long Day Camps at his preschool. This one is CREATIVE ARTS camp. Though it is at his preschool it will be a different staff and different kids and we hope he makes new friends and has fun. He is doing four of them and though we are happy to do them its going to make for a crazy couple of weeks: MON - FRI he has the camp from 9 to 1, AND he needs to pack a lunch for that, BUT he has to leave the camp everyday at noon to get to swimming on time. Then Swimming at 12:30, M- F and THEN on TUESDAYS, it is time for KEMPO with SENSAI JENNY. Tuesdays are going to be INSANE but actually everyday is going to be a little nuts having to get to the preschool camp exactly at noon and get him into his suit and his goggles and all of the swimming stuff, and then off to the class... YIKES.

Today after swimming we also went to the house and Habib and his wife Dee were finishing the work. They have done a lot of tiling in places and its not all done but its enough for now so that we can move in. They have done an amazing job and though my pictures are reallllly bad here are some of the things so far:

This is the little desk area of the kitchen and the pantry next to it. That hole in the wall to the right is where the wall oven thing will go. Also no handles on cupboards yet.

This is the kooky flat rocks from Bali I picked for the tiny bathroom downstairs. I like how it looks so organic and weird. The rocks are really flat and smooth and it is a reallly small bathroom. Something like 15 or 20 Sq feet total. this is a bad picture but there are no lights in the house

This is the tile in the laundry room, which is also very small. We just used some leftover tile since it was so small. It came out really great looking actually. Of course this is another terrible phone camera picture...

Ok this is the livingroom and the naked stairs... but honestly, the wall color here is LAZY GREY However it looks more blue than grey but I still think it might look great when we have other stuff, like furniture, molding, floors, lights stuff like that.

Also: My very good friend Siri is a teacher, and she has the summers off. She has made a list of things like 33 things or something that she wants to do with her three year old son this sumer. I LOVED this idea and I am now creating my own list. Mine will be shorter, and I am planning to get some ideas from her list,since I am not from oregon and I do not know all of the things to do here. However I have at least started the list and I hope to do at least some of these things this summer with Spencer.

In no real order, here is my list:

1. Take a boat tour of Portland... Every time we go downtown Spencer sees the boats and wants to go on one. He loves seeing what he calls "the city" so this might be fun.
2. OMSI to see that Dinosaur thing... http://www.omsi.edu/
3. The Children's Museum http://www.portlandcm.org/
4. To our neighbor's Dairy Farm
5. To a movie... HOPEFULLY a GOOD Kids movie will come out soon. SO far I have not found one I want him to see...
6. This train thing that goes to some place I think near Mt Hood or something... have to research that one.... I think it is THIS: http://www.trainweb.org/oerhs/wst.htm
7. TO the coast, again but this time to Tillamook to see the lighthouse AND the Cheese factory
8. Maybe back to the aquarium on the coast, but we have already been there once this year
9. Tours of places to see how stuff is made.... he loves seeing this kind of thing, and I have no idea what is around here but we can figure out something like this to do as one of the things...

SO who knows? Maybe this is too ambitious for this summer when we have all that stuff going on, but I would like to do a FEW at least. Our life has been insane and we get so wrapped up in schedules and preschool and all of this, we sometimes forget that he is going to only be this age ONCE and we have so much fun we could be having with him.

Finally some pictures: Will also have more this afternoon

Here are some pictures of the house as it is coming along. THere are some weird things but since there is no goat living there I will be glad to move in now, or anytime actually. I have to get a mammogram, my first one (Such Joy) this afternoon, and a bone density test. Just my doctor being all test happy. But we will go to the house this afternoon and I will take more pics of the tile.

Here is the new Builtin in bookshelf mantle thing.. which to me, looks weird.. its like the mantle is resting on two sticks or something.... but the guy is like whatever..... so we will have to talk to the builder to get this corrected if we want it fixed or changed and he is out of town for a week.

Here is the new kitchen at the new house and I am fine with it I guess. Paint is changeable and our lazy gray turned out more blue than we would like but after the the backsplash and the floors and all of the appliances are in finally we will not even see much of the walls. He forgot the cabinet for under the cooktop. He is bringing it later.

There is really no alternative to this weird standalone cabinet to the right of the sink. However the molding on the top bugs me Does this cabinet look to you like its about to take flight? FLY!! BE FREE my little KRAFTMAID FLYING CUPBOARD!!!!!! I am being weird and probably too picky probably?
But then, I am pretty weird....

Kinder Kempo, Kooky Cabinets

Yesterday we had a very very very busy day. We had to meet with people at the house in the morning, then go to swimming, then more house stuff after that. Then Kinder Kempo at 3:30, which was hilarious, and then we had to drop something off at Teacher Gina's because Spencer starts one of his Day Camps next week. Then we met Siri and Steve and Travis at the park and played until like 8 PM. Then we finally came home and ate dinner. We all collapsed into our beds about 9 PM. Until about dinner time all I had all day was iced green tea and half a biscotti.

Today Bill is supposed to go to Seattle to work in a fellow luthier's shop. He will not be back until late, late, late. Spencer and I are going to play, go to swimming, wash some strawberries and try to have fun without him. Maybe Spencer and I can do a project of some kind. The cabinets are in the house, and the floor in the laundry room is done. The cabinets have no handles or drawer pulls, we have to go get them ourselves I guess. SO we can do that later. There are no countertops yet, but the entire inside of the house is painted. We have something like 43 days left before we move in, but honestly I want to get all packed totally now as much as we can before it gets too hot. The goat farm HAS AC, but it seems as if the insulation is not that great or something because it is not effective. When it is very hot, we are also very hot.

I will take some pictures today.

MORE complaining!!!!!!

But you know whatever.... Most of the kitchen cabinets are in and it seems there are some mistakes with them and it really annoys me but they guy will be there again tomorrow so tomorrow I will go over there and talk to him about it. I had this great cabinet right near the stove that had these wooden dividers in them. THey held cutting board and cookie sheet pans, bit of which I used a lot because I roasted a lot of vegetables on the sheet pans and I was always cuytting up stuff ont eh millions of cutting boards i had You know, those white plastic type ones. SO this time around I asked for TWO cutting board cabinets. Not only is there only ONE of them, but the dividers in them are not wood, they are these stupid white wire ones that are just gonna be dumb. I could have put those in myself. Then, one side of the pantry has NO shelves. Then also the drawers for the desk are on the wrong side...

Dude.... what the hell were you SMOKING when we ordered these things? I remember he barely even wrote it all down and he blew me off a lot when I told him some stuff I wanted.

I am not in love with the color of the cabinets, but Bill wanted that color.

I know this is not earth shattering either, that I may live through this crisis, its just that I was NOT that picky when it came to what I wanted in the kitchen, I asked for just a few little things and I did not get them. It not like I ordered etched glass cabinet doors, or wine racks or spice drawers or a bunch of the ten thousand other things available I just wanted TWO CUTTING BOARD CABINETS instead of ONE!!!! Uhmmmmm........How difficult is that? It seems like this one section of cabinets is way too short for the granite, Also the stupid wall oven cabinet is like so DUMB it puts the wall oven like 5 inches off the ground... which negates one of the reasons I wanted a wall oven in the first place.. If I still have to bend way over to look and see if the stuff is done then it might as well be on the floor. SO I could go on and on with this, especially because I have had a realllllly crappy day but whatever Even seeing Habib today did not cheer me up However he is so AWESOME. We picked out some slate for around the fireplace. We are still deciding on a bunch of stuff.

I know that guy is going to be really mad when I tell him the stuff that is wrong, or maybe he has a good reason it is complete screwed up. Tune In tomorrow.

The garage door is in, it has no windows, just like Bill wanted. No windows. We are still arguing about the color to paint the outside of the house.

The rest of the day we spent driving in the car to Home Depot far away to look at some stupid tiles that they do not even have because that store is just idiotic. Spencer went to swimming, we went there after that. Spencer is at this age where he NEVER stops talking and I can take it for like most of a day and then after a while, I just cannot stand to hear "MOMMY??????" for the 346 time in a row. He asks questions ALL DAY LONG, after a while I just lose it.

Then we went to our old neighborhood, and everyone was out playing with the kids and stuff, and we were inside arguing about kitchen cabinets. All day Spencer is asking MOMMY????? When are we going to move into our house???? MOMMY???? MOMMY??? MOMMMY? MOMMY I saw a rainbow. MOMMY? I am thirsty. MOMMY what day is it? Mommy? Mommy? do I have swimming tomorrow? Mommy?

This time of year always puts me in a bad mood. My Mother's mother died on Mother's day ,. May 11, 1974; My own mother, her daughter, died on May 11, 1994. Right on Mother's day or after it or something. Then Father's day happens, I had a terrible relationship with him..... and then June 19th is my mom's birthday. Its the TRIFECTA of PAIN for me this time of year, and while I have a great life and not at all anything to complain about, everything annoys me this time of year. Add one exploded house, all that we have been through int he last year to that fact that we have woken up in someone else's house for 422 days now, and have spent over 6 months with a goat and I am reallllly sick of all of it. I need all of this to be OVER, and it seems like it will NEVER END.

I have no right to complain, yet it never stops me.

Tile O'Rama, Helpful Spencer, Battleship paint, and tons of cabinets.

Spencer was extremely helpful at the tile showroom. He brought his tape measure and helped everybody out....

It was awesome. I have pictures but they are still on my phone Right now I have to go to Petsmart before they close. Gawd. Stupid Dog.

OK I am back. I think the goat gave the dog fleas. The sooner I can move out of Green Acres the better.

SO: we looked at many different options. We found some tiles for all of the bathrooms and also for the many weird things I want to do to Spencer's bathroom later. The thing with two of the bathrooms is that one is only 21 sq feet and the other is only 28 sq ft I mean that is what, two boxes of tile? Habib said that since he was gonna be there tiling anyway that we should do those two tiny rooms. So we are doing that. Slate is relatively cheap these days and I have always loved it so we went with a lot of slate and also these weird flat rocks that I really like. We were able to get those really cheap too.

Similar to part of what is going in the shower, along with 12 inch cheap black slate tiles.

My weird flat rocks that are going in the teeny bathroom. Except mine are all black. Yes those are guitar fake jibbets (from dollar store) on Spencer's fake crocs....

As for Spencer's bathroom for later, they have so many cool ideas:

sea life motif

Turtle tile

This is like a Zoo or wild animal theme.... WAY cute But Spencer is a TURTLE. So he needs a turtle bathroom.

ALso there has been a LOT of progress on the house. It is completely painted on the inside. The Lazy Gray and Sleepy Blue have all been applied to the walls. Bill said it reminds him of the short time when he worked for the Navy on San Nicholas Island... Anyway..... and the guy brought about 200 boxes of cabinets over and more are coming. He put Spencer's bathroom cabinet up there, and the master bath set too. On Monday the cabinets are all going in, the garage door is being installed and Habib is gonna start in on the tile. So it is starting to look more and more like a house, and I am realllllly looking forward to living there again, whatever state it is in on July 31. I can take more pics of the inside later, maybe tomorrow. I am so tired from the long day of Tile O'Rama.

LIghts are ordered:

One bowl of Fire Soup, coming up. Actually we pretty much ordered all of the lights I said we would in the last post except that first one for the kitchen. We got that second one instead. ALso I got a stained glass pair of sconces and a stained glass light for the dinig room. So one hangs over the table and then two sconces ont he wall. Probably too much but I set them up so that they could be turned on independently of one another.

Tomorrow we go meet Habib the Tile Guy at Oregon Tile and Marble to pick out tiles.

Tile, Lights, and Bowls of Fire Soup.

Spencer says some pretty nutty things sometimes, and I think a lot of them stem from little games he plays with his friends at Preschool. He will be goofing with me and once in a while will say "I am gonna put you in JAIL." The jail changes. Sometimes it is Tiger Jail, or Feet Jail, and lately he has threatened to put me in "Fire Jail." I asked him what happens to a person that goes to Fire Jail, and he told me "every day for lunch you have to eat a bowl of Fire Soup."

he has been doing the Fire Jail thing for about two weeks I guess. Tomorrow we have an appointment to go pick out all of the light fixtures that will be in the house. On Saturday we are meeting Habib at Oregon Tile and Marble to pick out floor tiles. I have learned to come prepared to these meetings and "picking out sessions" but kind of figuring out what I like ahead of time. Otherwise we either stay there all day and nothing gets picked or Bill and I end up arguing. I have now learned to go in there with some ideas. TO that end, I researched alll the light fixtures on this store's website, and they rep about 25 light manufacturers, so that was a LOT of lights. We basically looked at lights until our eyes started to bleed.

We started by looking for the big fixture that will go in our Foyer, which is two stories high. This light has to be BIG, and the one that was there before I was not crazy about. It was one of those bit BOWL LIGHTS that are sort of suspended by three bars... they are everywhere.

I did not want another one of those but after a million times going back and forth with Bill about "I like this one and he likes that one and that one is ugly.." and all of that, I came upon this one goofy one which was OF COURSE in the style I did not want... BUT Bill and I both thought the SAME EXACT THOUGHT when we saw it: It looks like a BOWL OF FIRE SOUP!!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAH We laughed so hard about this, and decided that we both could live with it, and thus, tomorrow we are ordering THIS light for our foyer, this nutty fixture that looks like a BOWL OF FIRE SOUP. I think ours will be silver metal instead of black, but other than that, this is it:

Bowl of Fire Soup Light, A tribute to Spencer

For the bathroom lights we are probably going to get these in all three bathrooms:

bathroom lights

and for the kitchen probably something like one of these:

Kitchen Contenders - have changed them 600 times already.

For the outside we are getting these lights. They will go on either side of the garage door.

This is a LOT less fun than I thought it was gonna be. Seriously.

WOW. Pretty sure THIS GUY is having a bad day....

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080611/ap_on_re_eu/britain_lost_documents_8

The plastique is gonna hit the fan in the sleeper cell tonight.... or maybe the British left them ? I don't know.. either way what a mess.

Habib the Tile Guy is on board. Seattle, Packing, Freddie Bear

Freddie Bear (above) not to be confused with...

Huggy Bear.. OR


Freddie Mac, or...


Mac Daddy, or....
Mac N Cheese. I am glad I could clear this up.

Well, 50 days left on the goat farm, and the 'Sploded house is coming together. They are in there spraying crap on the walls - not sure what it is and then they will paint. On Monday the cabinets come, and Habib will start the bathrooms asap. Today we also had to pick out what exact garage door we wanted. I chose one that will not fly 50 yards across the street again. On Friday we meet with some dude to pick out the lights, ceiling fans, doorbell stuff like that. The other day Bill and I went in to a place near here called Aurora Architectural salvage. Its this cool place that has all these things from old houses, you name it they have it. I am not so into old stuff though. Maybe one day. To stay sane these days I think of tile ideas for Habib and obsess about that stuff.

Bill worries if we will have enough time to pack to move out of here. Got news for you pal, I was packed three months ago. Today I went to MD appt and then dropped something off to one of the our attorneys. Tomorrow we have Spencer's swimming class, and then on Thursday Bill is driving up to Seattle for the day to work in a fellow luthier's shop. He is once again making the guitars for the radio station contest in San Jose and he is facing that deadline along with everything else. I would like to just pack us all up and go with him, but that guy lives near well some town I cannot remember but it is a real tourist trap. The only thing I would want to do is go to the Seattle Ikea, but I really do not need to be buying stuff right now, just as we are moving. Still it would be nice to get out of town for a day BUT honestly? Once you get to the guy's house there is nothing to do there and it is boring. So, Spencer and I will hang out here. I will take him to swimming and then we can do our usual frozen stuff for dinner.

I am sleepy. I have to go to bed its very very late. Spencer woke me up. Hey here is a warning to anyone who may have children in the future: GET A VERY BIG BED. There are nights where there is barely enough room for me, as I am competing with Bill, Spencer who occasionally crawls in with us in the middle of the night, and the dog. They do not all start out in our bed, but in the morning, there they all are. Spencer is getting better about it but he does sometimes still wake up at night all freaked out and hysterical. Tonight he woke up saying "I am SO TIRED!!!!" And we were like Uhmmm yeah well you are in fact in your bed you could just go to sleep... He is so funny. Tonight we got him back into his bed for once, and of course at night time, Freddie Bear is always with him. I dont have a picture handy of Freddie Bear, but he is Spencer's night time pal.

Picnic, Habib the Tile Guy, Lights,

Bill and Amy the Dawg, at our picnic yesterday

Here are some highlights from the picnic on Sunday. It was pretty fun,. We met our friends Siri and Steve and their son Travis (aka "Donut") at the Maple Street Park in Canby. They brought Subway for their lunch but since we were running late I just made our lunches. I grabbed one of those all in one salad kits from Costco, some grilled chicken, a big bowl, some drinks, Yo Kids, and some fresh strawberries and blueberries. I mixed that salad when we got there and it was pretty fun. Spencer and Travis had a blast, we all did. It has a great playground plus at the other end of the field there was a soccer game going on. The kids played on the toys, Spencer can totally push himself on the swing now!!!

Then today at 12:30 he started his first day of GOLDFISH (level C) swimming class which will be every week day for the entire summer probably, with maybe a little time off to move out of the goat farm. Then, we headed to the Sploded house to meet Habib and his wife and Builder Nick to talk about tile. it was great to see Habib again, and he had some great ideas. And when we are ready for it he is going to totally make Spencer's bathroom into a turtle room.

The house is coming along. Nick says they are going to be painting like tomorrow, and then the cabinets are going in Friday and the garage door. Then we got some lunch and then headed over to this place to pick the light fixtures out. Turns out you have to make an appointment to do this, but we do now have the website with all the products to choose from, so we will go thru that and then be prepared for our appt Friday. I have heard that wrought iron fixtures are kind of on the way out and I would prefer brished nickel, but then that will go out too, like brass did and we will be stuck with it, so we may go with the wrought iron stuff. I will update the blog when we have made these earth shattering decisions.

Probably I will get this for the dining room. It is a chandelier made of Gummy Bears. Bill liked it, but he thinks we should spend the extra money for the one made of Pop Rocks and Jolly Ranchers.

This one will be for the kitchen, obviously. It is made of green teacups, beads and I think a small colander.

We need a BIG fixture for our two story entry, and it needs to make a certain statement. I am thinking this one will do the trick. The statement this one makes is: "We used to live with a goat, and we have been out of our house for so long we could barely locate it, even with a compass and a map."

This is for our Master bedroom. It is very romantic and made entirely of glue from a glue gun. While festive, I hope we will be able to hang it in a place where it will not block the mirrors on the ceiling, or detract from the red velvet walls I have planned.

Tomorrow I have an appointment in the AM in Beaverton and will also drop off some stuff to our attorney. Friday we meet with the Light Fixtures dude. Party On.

Trip to Trader Joe's,FedEx, Costco..Tote Bags, China, Tank Man, YoKids, Prius Envy

Spencer LOVES these tubes full of yogurt. Stoneyfield YoKids Squeezers, and we freeze them They are like an organic yogurt freeze pop.

Woman at left: Devil or Tote Designing Diva? You decide. Though, I gotta say, her friend's vest is a little kooky... reminds me of Sally O'Malley (a Molly Shannon Character on SNL, a dancer who brags that she is "FIFTY YEARS OLD.")

Bill and Spencer shopping in Trader Joe's this afternoon. What a pair. Spencer has his stoner hat on and Bill is wearing a shirt from a guitar string company.

Spencer wore his hat that makes him look like one of those skateboarding/snowboarding stoner type kids you see a lot of in the Pacific northwest mostly downtown or in REI. He looked so funny.

We went to Trader Joe's to get some more Sauce to make Indian food. That is the only place that sells it. We were right by there anyway, because Bill had a ship a dude's guitar from the Fed Ex in Lake Oswego.

Ok here is a nutty little story: back when Spencer was first learning to talk he would see things and just shout out the name of them. He got to know the Fed Ex and UPS truck well because they came to our house like every day for Bill's business. However he had a little trouble pronouncing them correctly at first. When he would see a UPS truck he would shout "LOOK! PS Truck PS Guy!!!!!" That was fine. the trouble came when he would see a Fed Ex truck on the road or just anywhere. He would point, and shout "Look Mommy!!!! FAT ASS! FAT ASS Guy!!!!!" Uh, I think you mean FED EX, right Spencer? "Yes Daddy! FAT ASS!"

"FatAss" Truck

We also needed stuff from Costco - groceries and more importantly, GAS! Costco usually has pretty good gas prices. They also have great prices on fruit I think stuff like blueberries and strawberries, both thinbgs that Spencer would just INHALE if he could. We have discovered a great salad kit they have there two of them actually One is called Parisian Blend orMix or something its like a kit with everything you need to make this great salad: lettuce, dried cranberries toasted almonds, some kind of cheese and this white balsamic vinaigrette. Its GREAT and WAY cheaper and better then the kind you can get at the regular grocery store. Then they also have this great broccoli slaw kit thing you can get to make a huge bowl of broccoli slaw. Not that fattening, has 5 g protein per serving, it is like cole slaw but make from broccoli instead of cabbage. it also has like these soybean nuts in it, dried cranberries the dressing and some other stuff.. it is awesome. And Bill was out of coffee - can't have that. I rarely drink coffee anymore... Bill makes it pretty strong, so that mostly I will take a few sips from his ginormous daily morning mug and that is all I need to hit the ground running.

I am really getting much better at remembering to bring my own reusable shopping bags to the store. I must have like 25 of those bags that I have purchased but I really do use them everytime I go. it is a huge change for me, because i was ADDICTED to collecting plastic grocery bags. I had a HUGE collection of them in a giant Cheerios box under the kitchen sink, with instructiuons on the box to anyone who might happen upon them that they are NOT to be thrown away. I was using them for everything, especially back when we were still in the diapers phase... Long gone, thank goodness.

Now I use the reuseable bags. There is a kind they sell at the Fred Meyer here that are made by a co in Portland called Patty Reed Designs. Her bags are awesome and Fred Meyer has them for like $3 each. They are really festive, strong, well organized and durable. I use the INSTA-TOTES. Here is the Patty Reed website:
http://www.pattyreeddesigns.com/instatote/index.htm

But also here is a woman in Portland who says Patty Reed is evil because her bags are made in China and she sells them to Walmart too.
http://effdupgirl.wordpress.com/2007/12/19/to-patty-reed-designs/

SO maybe Patty Reed IS the Devil, but her bags are really really cute. I do not like any of the other bags out there, and I have tried a bunch. These are cute and they stay that way. They can stand up to me, my dog , my family, all kinds of abuse. One thing I like about them is that they do not have the STORE's name all emblazened all over them. I have like 8 of them at least: I like the Wildflowers one so much I have like 6 of those. I got enough to make sure I could always have them in both cars, so I do not forget to bring them to the store ever.

hearts

fruit on one side, veggies on the other


cherries
poppies

Wildflowers - my favorite one

Anyway. Bill is tired of me buying these totebags. They are made in China and I saw this program recently on PBS called The Tank Man about that guy who stood up to that line of tanks right after the Tianaman Square thing in China. I think it was an episode of FRONTLINE. In fact I thnk you can watch it on their website: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tankman/view/
China is a scary place and I wish they would not exploit workers and I do make an effort to not buy stuff made in China I guess but sometimes it is really hard, I mean WHAT ISNT made there now?

So. 53 days left on the Goat Farm. I have to go make a list to pack up the POD in an orderly fashion. Spencer is SUCH a pill sometimes but he has to be one of the sweetest kids EVER. Unlike his complaining mother, he derives such pleasure out of the simplest things. if you tell him that Yes, we will buy some YoBaby Yogurt tubes at Trader joes he is like doing backflips all the way home. I have never been that excited about yogurt. However here is a tip: freeze them. Kids LOVE them frozen. He is awesome. Spencer's favorite is the YOKIDS Squeezers. We freeze them and he eats them like a freeze pop.
http://www.stonyfield.com/ourproducts/kidsyogurt
Also: its not that I do not LOVE my Matrix, but I would LOVE a PRIUS and everytime I see one on the road, which is a LOT here in Portland, I want one. I wish we could have gotten one. Especially now that gas is $4.20 A GALLON. If things get much worse I may trade in my matrix for a Prius later this year.

I have Prius Envy.