You know what I’d like?

A Day to Do Nothing.  A day not to have to worry about anyone or anything, no cooking, no cleaning, no teaching.  A day with no agenda.  I’d like a whole day to just do what I want to do, without feeling like I need to get something accomplished with my free time.  I’d like a day without “I really should…” going through my head.  Not the kind of day when you look back and are frustrated because nothing got done, but a day with no guilt.

And you know what else I’d like?

Right after my Do Nothing Day, I’d like a Highly Efficient Day.  Again without the cooking or teaching, but I’d have a long list of to-do’s that I’d accomplish.  All those little things that pile up because other, more important things get in the way.  I’d like to unpack those last two boxes and tidy up the office, move some furniture around, tackle the linen closet and…

Alas, it’s all wishful thinking.

2 Comments »

We’re a little crazy for Disney around here.  That’s putting it mildly.

It seems that everywhere you look in our house, you can find that iconic Mouse in red, black and yellow.

On the floor near the boys’ room.

Waiting to play.

In the kitchen.

On my wrist.

So that after awhile, we start seeing Mickey everywhere!

Doesn’t this car look suspiciously familiar?  Go ahead, scroll up to my watch…and back to the car.  You see it, too!

I’d say we need help, but we refuse to admit that we have a problem.

But if you’d like to stage an intervention, may I suggest holding it at the Disneyland Hotel?

(And let’s not even mention what’s going on in the bathroom…)

3 Comments »

This is for my friend Tami.  The first thing she said when she arrived at our house, after my family finished mugging hugging hers, was that our banister was going to look great for Christmas.

The candy garland is from my childhood.

This buffet table is about 90 years old and newly restored to its former glory.  The dining room is too small to fit the whole set, so this piece moved here.  Philip actually came up with the idea to put it here, and I like the weight it gives to the entry way.   Plus, it provides some nice display area.

Right now it has our lighted Nativity.  I bought this so long ago that I can’t even remember when.  This is the first time we’ve had room to put it out.  Originally we had Mary and Joseph, the shepherds and animals all set up, too, with Baby Jesus safely tucked away until Christmas and the Wise Men waiting off to the side to begin their journey.  Then one of the children said that maybe we should put Mary and Joseph away, too.  And boom!  It hit me.  Boo has a statue of Mary and Joseph on their way to Bethlehem.   We packed everyone away and put the statue out instead.  Now we are reminded of Mary and Joseph’s difficult journey all through the Advent season.

I smile when I see this statue.  Mary’s patient, resigned face is so telling of her end of pregnancy state.  I have been pregnant for two Advents, both times just about ready to pop, too.  In fact, my girls were each born at 8 pm, one 3 days before Christmas and one 3 days after.  I am eternally grateful for the comfort of our car instead of having to sit on a donkey.

————————————–

So here’s today’s Design Delemma.  The staircase seems to need something (during the rest of the year, mostly).  Or does it?  It curves, so it’s tricky to hang anything up, but I suppose we could make it work.  My original thought was to put a round table in the space, but with the buffet table we’d just end up zig-zagging around.  So what say you?  Attempt to hang something on the curved wall?  Leave it as is? Here’s a different view, capturing the whole hallway.

4 Comments »

A  squad of snow soldiers keep silent vigil over  the entrance to our house.

These guys claim the foyer for the USA.

LTC Freeze’s battalion has seized the high ground in defense against the children that are rumored to be in the area.  Freeze is the 3rd guy from the right, with the red hat and green scarf.

(hmm, next time I’ll close the cabinet door for  a better picture)

Snowman Army all present, sir!

1 Comment »

…

In with the new…

When we first moved in we knew that the side-by-side refrigerator that came with the house was going to be too small.  It wasn’t a pressing issue, but we did research and figured out which fridge we wanted when the time came.  Then Thanksgiving week we found an ad from Home Depot and we were able to save $700 on a new fridge!  We’re loving the extra room, especially in the freezer.  There was a brief moment of panic when I realized that we forgot to measure the space between the kitchen island and the counter.  I made Philip get up (we were already in bed) and come with me to confirm that the new fridge would actually be able to be maneuvered in.  No worries, it had a couple of inches to spare.

The rest of the appliances in the kitchen are black, but we decided to go with the stainless for the fridge.  I’m glad we did, since we’ll be getting a gas range in the next few years and so will slowly go completely stainless.

4 Comments »

Two days in a row of snow.  Late openings and closures - including Philip’s office.  And today the troops headed out sledding at the park across the street.  Much fun was had by all.

3 Comments »

I really was going to write this over the weekend, but Saturday morning I was pulling on my socks and I managed to rip my right index fingernail off, halfway down.  It bled and hurt.  Alot.  So much I cried when I had to get a new bandaid.  Hello?  Band-Aid brand?  Whatever happened to the no-stick pad?  Cuz it stuck and naked nail bed hurts. Really badly!!

So I really can’t use that finger much, which makes it hard to type and really interferes with my computer games household chores.  But I’m here now, hurty finger and all, making about 12 typing errors per sentence, but here it goes…

One of the most striking things about our new home was the view.  All the people that traipsed in and out of our since we moved in, the locksmith, carpet cleaner, movers, furniture repair guys…all of them commented about the view.  Of all the windows that face the back yard, only the bathroom and bedroom had window treatments.  It was just too beautiful to block.

Well, the city, in its infinite wisdom decided that the dry creek behind us needed to be cleared of the trees.  Something about improving drainage and delaying erosion.  I’m thinking that tree roots help with erosion, but then again, I’m not in the Army Corps of Engineers.

Now our backyard view is pitiful.  It’s like mighty Samson, shorned, betrayed, weakened and blind.  It hurts to look at.  It hurts to know that this view, this one thing was our home’s crowning glory.  It hurts that it will never, ever look the same again.

Here is the view from the deck, looking to the right of our house, as it was the day we bought the house.

Here it is now. Make sure you click to make the picture bigger so you can truly appreciate the horror.
I know, I know.  I think the drainage pipe is a nice touch, don’t you?  Reminds me of the L.A. River.

Here is the old view, looking to the left.

And now…
Oh look - neighbors I never knew I had.

We were spared one single aspen and one other tree behind our house.

I know they are just trees.  I know that in the grand scheme of life, this isn’t that important.  But I loved those trees.  Looking out our windows brought me such joy.  Sitting on the deck, listening to the wind through the aspens, spying the deer walk along our fence, getting a snack - this is exactly what I thought of when I thought of Colorado.  Even though we were moving to a big city, being surrounded by such Coloradoness was the unspoken dream of my heart.  And I wanted aspens. Imagine my joy at finding all that I wanted.

So my heart broke last week, listening to the chain saws and mulcher turning my trees into wood chips.  I’ll admit it, I cried.  As I sat in the office window one night and could see my across the creek neighbors, I realized we would need curtains.  I’ll never be able to sit outside with my coffee and enjoy the beauty of nature.

It’s tough, accepting the things you can’t change, losing the things you love so much.  I’m sure there is a lesson here, but I don’t really want to know what it is right now.  I’m such an Eeyore anyway, always sad about something and now I’m mourning my trees.

8 Comments »

We woke up to snow this morning.

This is from my front porch, looking across to the park.

It’s not a lot of snow, but still…it’s October! And it stuck around til lunch time.

Of course, this was the scene, back in September:
(I know it’s hard to see, but trust me, that’s snow.)

So if we wanted snow, I guess we picked the right place to live.

2 Comments »

So…life in Colorado continues to be interesting.  On the night we returned from Disneyland, I woke up in the middle of the night to a strange sound.  In my overtired and overly tanned but not quite sunburnt state, I was dreaming that I was hearing the astroblaster from the Buzz Lightyear ride that we’d ridden about two or three times a day for the last 5 days.  When I woke, I heard the sound again and then again.  And then I realized it was that sort of horn sound from a police car.  I was wondering vaguely what might be going on when I fell back to sleep.

Later I learned that two houses down from us, a neighbor had left their garage door open and called the police…not because of a burgular but because a ginormous papa bear had gotten into their garage, opened their freezer and had pulled out and eaten their stash of deer meat, buffalo steaks and ribs.

The lesson here - put your freezer in the basement.

Did I ever mention the three bears we saw walking across the street one day while on our way home from the library?  Philip saw those same bears, a mama and her two cubs, going through another neighbor’s trashcan on trash day.

And then tonight, as I was sitting through an hour and 15 minutes briefing for the parents of Religious Ed students, I learned what the security procedure  is if they have to lock down the campus because of bears or mountain lions.  Apparently, both have been known to cruise around and a mountain lion was once spotted sitting in the tree right outside the church.

And to top it all off, it snowed all day on Monday.  Yes, this past Monday, which just happened to be the last day of summer.   I’m just glad that we have enough room in the children’s closets to store out of season clothes so we were able to get cold weather clothes out without much fuss.

I gotta tell you, I really like it here!

3 Comments »

We started school three weeks ago.  I knew we’d be feeling sad that our house guests had left and Philip was gone, too.  Our Nomad friends had to be moving on to their own brand, new home.  I don’t blame them and even though their visit was a short one, it was a great one!  Unfortunately, their leaving coincided with Philip’s return for Washington, DC.  In a great feat of government efficiency, his employer wanted him to return for an all expense paid (by the taxpayers) trip to undergo a polygraph and psychological evaluation.  Even though he is going to be working the exact same  job that he’s held for the last 4 years, it was important to determine whether or not he is the type of person that would sell our nation’s secrets and then lie about it.  We’re assuming he passed.

So anyhoo, left alone for the first time in a new city, I thought it best to dive into school.  The children were predictably excited to be starting American history with Sonlight’s Core 3.  Their new school books had been waiting for them for about 3 weeks, just taunting them.

Our first day back took forever.  We’ve never taken the summer off  before and I was astounded at how much math knowledge was lost and how much hand holding was needed.  However, Boo and Pumpkin Girl were very supportive and assured me that in a few days, it would all come back to me.

After a late afternoon nap with Bip, I herded everyone in the car to go register Pumpkin for ballet.  It took longer than I’d anticipated because I missed my turn and had to backtrack, and it was rush hour.  Actually, rush hour had nothing to do with it because rush hour traffic here is like normal DC traffic.  In fact, I didn’t even realize it was “rush hour” until after we’d finished with the dance studio and someone piped up that they were hungry.

So we headed off to the McDonald’s near our house 1)because kids can never get enough of McD’s, 2)Bip had been trying to get a beany baby Grimace in his happy meal since we moved here and 3) they have a play area.  Sadly, they were out of beany babies, but we ate there anyway.

After we ate, I let the children play.  I heard a crack of thunder and wondered if I’d remembered to close the upstairs windows at home.  It wasn’t worth worrying about or dragging the children home for, so I turned my attention back to watching people go through the drive through.  Then it started to rain.  Actually, it started to pour.  And you know what - this particular McDonald’s has a skylight-type roof over the play yard and the rain was really loud.  And it got louder and then I noticed the hail bouncing off ground outside.  Just pea size hail, no big deal.  Hail storms don’t really last that long, right?

Right.

All hell broke loose and the hail kept coming and grew bigger and bigger.  At some point the noise in the play yard was deafening, so I gathered up the children and took them into the restaurant, which had a normal, quieter roof.  There we watched the hail pound the parking lot and cover both it and the cars with ice.  It was really quite impressive, except for the fact that our car was out there, getting pounded by hail that was now the size of peach pits.

After the storm passed, the  children kept playing while we waited for the ice to melt.  I wasn’t too anxious to see what sort of damage was done to the car.  I skipped my usual iced vanilla latte out of guilt for going out for fast food and getting the car all dinged up.  Turns out, it wasn’t that bad.  A couple of spots may or may not be hail damage, but nothing to get fixed right away.  We’ll probably wait until the car looks more like a golf ball before heading to a body shop.

Upon our return home, we found our upstairs windows open and hail on the (brand new) roof, in the grass and on the back deck.  We wiped up the water on the window sills and went out to play in the ice.  We took some pictures for the blog.

6 Comments »