Our fridge

is in our living room.  The big storage things from Ikea that serve as our kitchen pantry are in our dining room.  We have a dresser/changing table in the living room and several kitchen appliances as well as things that usually live on kitchen surfaces in our dining room.  Our pots and pans are there, too.  The shoe racks that are usually in our mud room are on our front porch. 

Okay, I’m not finished listing things that are moved, but I think you get the idea.  Our house is turned upside down.  Or at least sideways, so that all the stuff in the kitchen and craft room has shifted to other areas of the house. 

This is not an experiment in smaller-square-footage living, although if it were, I would say that we definitely need to get rid of some stuff.  We’re having some work done to our house.

We bought a Craftsman house that was built in 1916, and there are many parts of it that we really, really love.  The floor in the kitchen was not  one of them.  It was vinyl and held dirt, only to deposit it on the socks or feet of those walking through.  Mopping didn’t help.  Another thing we didn’t really like was that there was a large area in the kitchen taken up by a chimney that used to service the stove in the kitchen.  The kitchen no longer has a stove that requires a chimney, and the chimney had been drywalled (is that a word?) in for a long time, long before we bought the house.  Also, there wasn’t a vent hood for the range.

So this project is to get the floor out, get the chimney out, and put in a range hood.  Stay tuned!  Photos and project descriptions to come…

Tickles

Sometimes Hannah gets grumpy.  Gasp!  I know.  Sometimes it’s totally understandable.  Sometimes it’s merely because her mom requested her to stop reading and do something else. 

Sometimes her mom says (in a very strange voice), “Uh-oh!  Somebody has the GRUMPIES!”  This is followed by chasing and tickling.  Actually, I don’t tickle her any more.  That happened the first time, but now just me saying the word is usually enough to help her out of the grumpies.  And if that’s not enough, a little chasing does the trick.  I try not to tickle overly much, because I really don’t like being tickled.

Now, whenever I say Hannah has the grumpies, she starts to laugh and try to reassure me that she’s NOT grumpy at ALL!  Naomi long since started joining in the quest to get rid of the grumpies, so when I mention grumpies, she heads over to add her tickles in.  Happily, none of the kids are actually very good at tickling, so Naomi’s attempts don’t tickle very much, but they do amuse Hannah.

Today, Simeon heard me say something about the grumpies, and he ran over to Hannah saying, “Tickle!  Tickle!”  That got rid of any grumpies in our house, since we were all laughing about how cute Simeon is.

Weather

Here’s the thing:  I come from Texas.  I worked outside in one of the most hot, muggy cities in Texas all summer long, 6 days a week, during my entire high school career.  I worked with horses – big, hairy, warm beasts who thought it was amusing to watch people try to catch them in the field on a day that was 98 degrees with 98% humidity.  I drank gallons of water and sports drink every day during those summers.  I feel like I know about heat.

Which is why I now live in the Pacific Northwest, people!  I decided I didn’t like the heat.  And now that I’ve lived here for over 10 years, the prospect of spending more than, say, 20 minutes outside on a day like I described above is…not good. 

I have carefully explained to Michael that we will plan our visits to Texas – if at all possible – between October and early April.  He didn’t really understand, but he humored me anyway. 

But when one’s younger brother gets married in June in Texas, one pretty much has to visit Texas during June.  I mentioned February as a great month for getting married when they were planning the wedding, but that idea didn’t get any traction at all with them. 

This past week, we were in central Texas for the wedding.  We had a great time.  We did some sight-seeing, we played with cousins, we visited with family, we swam, we went to our friends’ farm, we praised God for the person or persons involved in inventing air conditioning, we ate snow cones, we witnessed my brother and his bride’s wedding, we learned things.  Michael learned why we don’t usually visit Texas in the summer.  I didn’t learn that – I already knew it.

It has something to do with temperatures in the mid-90s, unrelenting sun, and humidity well above 80%.  The enormous bugs may also be a factor. 

I’m not saying that we didn’t enjoy ourselves – we did!  We had fun! 

I am saying that we were not sorry to see that, on the day before summer, the weather in the Pacific Northwest on our arrival was 54 degrees and rainy. 

It’s good to be back. 

Wedding day

Weather: 94 degrees.
Wedding: Lovely.
Me, in the evening: Tired.
More later.

Helpful…

We’re getting ready to go on another trip, which means that there’s lots to do.  We generally try to have the house in good order when we leave so that when we come back, the house is in good order.  This morning, I had changed the sheets on our bed and Sim’s bed, and then I sent the girls upstairs to get dressed and strip their beds so I could put clean sheets on them.

Pretty soon I heard:

H:  MOM! Come see what we did!

N:  MAMA!  Come up!  Come up!

H:  Come see what we did to your bed!

[At this point, I had a pretty clear picture of what they might have done to my bed.  I was right…]

H:  LOOK!

Me:  Wow!  You stripped my bed!

H:  Yeah.  It was quite a job!

Me:  I’m impressed.  I didn’t know you could do that.

N:  Yeah.  It was a lot of work.

Me:  You know what the funny thing is?

H:  What?

Me:  I had already changed our sheets!  But next time I’ll know that you two can strip the bed for me! 

H:  Oh!  Haha!  Well, I don’t know if we’ll be able to get the sheets back on…

Me:  No, that’s okay.  I’ll put them back on. 

It was so sweet of them to try to be helpful, and I was sorry to have to tell them I’d already done the job, but I did need to put those sheets back on, and they would have wondered what I was doing if I’d put them back on without telling them they were clean already. 

But next time, I won’t put new sheets on my bed until after they’ve stripped it! 

Honesty

can be so enlightening. I'll share an example.

Sometimes when we're on the way somewhere in the car, we'll play the "Who's going to" game. In this game, one person asks the others a series of questions that they answer "me" or "not me." These usually have to do with having fun and behavioral issues. Here's how it goes sometimes:

Me: Who's going to have fun at the playground today?

H&M: Me!

Me: Who's going to run away?

H&M: Not me!

Me: Who's going to swing on swings?

H&M: Me!

You get the picture. Here's how this game went today:

Me: Who's going to have fun at swimming lessons today?

H&M: ME!

Me: Who's going to whine and fuss?

H: Not me!

Me: Who's going to scream and cry?

H: Not me!

Me: Naomi? Are you going to whine and fuss and scream and cry?

N: Oh, no, Mama. I only scream and fuss for my parents. I don't do it for other people. I don't think they like how it sounds.

St. Anthony comes through for us!

We got an email this morning that they found both St. Rose of Lima and our camera and will mail them back to us! Yea! Thank you, St. Anthony!

You keep using that phrase…I do not think it means what you think it means.

If you don’t know where the above quote comes from, please be sure to watch this. 

Simeon has learned a new phrase:  “I’m serious!” 

I’m not exactly sure where he picked up this phrase, but he doesn’t use it appropriately.  I told him it was time for a bath.  He got a huge grin, then started running ecstatically for the bathroom, yelling, “I’m serious!  I’m serious!”

I believe the word you’re looking for is “excited.”

Whoops

I killed a fly today, which proved to be a very big mistake.

Naomi:  [weeping]  I’m sad that that fly came to the end of its life!  It was so beautiful!  I didn’t want it to die.  I hope no more bugs die!  Why did it die?

Me:  Well, because I hit it with my hand.

N:  I didn’t WANT you to hit it with your hand!  That made it the end of its life!

Me:  I’m sorry that you’re sad about that, Naomi. 

Lather, rinse, repeat.  I will not kill bugs with her around again any time soon. 

School’s out

for the summer.  But Hannah only really considers certain subjects as ones that are out for summer.

H:  Mama!  We forgot to read Story of the World! [that’s her history book]  I’d better read it now.

****

H:  Mama, I really like this book. [Janice VanCleave’s book on nutrition for kids] 

She’s reading about water and why one’s body needs it.

Later, as Naomi was reflecting on how inconvenient it would be if someone were allergic to water, Hannah put her new knowledge to good use:

H:  You would DIE if you were allergic to water!

N:  Why?

H:  Because your body HAS TO HAVE water. 

N:  Oh.  Maybe you would only be allergic to house water, and you’d be able to drink rain water.

Later still, she went running up to the table to get a drink of water.  This is very unusual for her – I find myself reminding her to drink water throughout the day usually.

H:  You know, you should drink water often, even if you’re not thirsty, because your body needs water.

****

I got the book, Penrose, the Mathematical Cat, recently.  Hannah found it. 

H:  Mama, can I read this?

Me:  [in mock horror]  What?  A MATH book?!?  You said you didn’t like math!

H:  [smiling]  Mama, I LIKE math.  I do.  Can I read this book?

Me:  Well….okay. 

If wishes were rocket ships

Naomi today said, “I wish we didn’t have a swing.”

This surprised me, because she really likes the porch swing.  She likes to swing on it, and just yesterday she was pushing her cousin on it, pretending to be the mom of a baby, singing a lullaby. 

She went on to add, “I wish we had a rocket ship.”

St. Anthony, we need you!

We seem to have misplaced a couple of things in Boston.  First, Naomi’s treasured doll, St. Rose of Lima.  I’m really REALLY hoping that she shows up at the apartment we rented.  REALLY.  REALLY. 

Also, Michael’s camera, the small one.  This is an especial bummer because we have lots of good photos from our trip on there.  Like the day we went to the Public Gardens and found the Make Way for Ducklings statues and the kids played on them.  Minutes later, we were admiring the ACTUAL ducklings on the lagoon (they call it a lagoon, I don’t know why), and I got pictures of that, too. 

We’re asking St. Anthony’s intercession. 

This post does not include really cute photos from our trip, but imagine, if you will, three cute kids playing on the Make Way for Ducklings statues in the Boston Public Gardens.  Then imagine the same cute kids admiring 3 different groups of sweet little ducklings on the lagoon of the same Gardens.