Balsamic Bath

A couple weeks ago I was moving the food storage shelves in the garage. Heidi and Emilia were out there "helping" me as well. I took a break to use the little girl's room. About thirty second later Emilia walked into the bathroom carrying the jagged broken off top of a glass bottle of balsamic vinegar. She nonchalantly informed me that Heidi was moving some food and dropped the bottle. I tried to remain calm, but mostly freaked out and ran out to the garage. Sure enough 16 oz of dark balsamic vinegar mixed with glass shards was seeping across my garage floor. Heidi had somehow managed to walk right through the whole mess with her bare little feet and remain unscathed, thankfully.

So I sent the girls inside and cleaned up the mess. Not such a big deal except our garage is finished so my garage floor is white. Who does that? Anyway, I spent the rest of the afternoon with a bottle of bleach (sorry earth) scrubbing my garage floor. I felt a little OCD, to say the least, but it all came off and aside from the lingering blasamic/bleach smell...you would never even know it happened. :)

The Potty Dilemma

I realize Heidi is only two, and just barely two at that, but I KNOW she could use the potty if she wanted to. The key here is that she doesn't WANT to use the potty and for that reason I know it would be a losing battle...for me.

Here's a bit of our daily routine that leads me to this conclusion.
Every morning Heidi wakes up with a dry diaper.
I ask her, "Heidi, do you want to go pee pees in the potty?"
She answers, "No. Pee pees in diapee."
Then she'll stand there, look at me, wet her diaper and announce "All done pee pees!" Heidi will then go get a clean diaper, open it up and lay it down on the floor. Next she will get out a wipe and lay it next to the diaper. Then Heidi will lie down on top of the clean diaper and say, "New diapee please!"

I suppose for now I will just be grateful to Heidi for making the whole diaper changing experience as easy and pleasant as it could be. I'm just going to have to start a coin jar and make her deposit 25 cents for every diaper she uses. Those things are spendy.

Seal Rock

Leah




One amazing blessing we had during our month of driving from Waldport to Newport everyday was passing by Seal Rock. This has got to be my favorite beach on the Oregon Coast (so far). It's actually only accessable at low tide, but if you catch it right, there are amazing tide pools and the view is incredible! These are just a few pictures of the girls and the amazing scenery and sunset. Have I mentioned I love the coast?

Reconnected

After two months without internet access at home we got hooked back up yesterday! Apparently abstinance has taught me some self control as I didn't even spend an obscene number of hours online last night. (Or maybe it had something to do with the computer randomly wacking out and freezing up on me....but I'd like to think it was self control.) Now if only I can convince my poor computer, that has been moved WAY too many times, to continue working and let me upload my photos I will actually have some pictures to go along with my stories. I'll be doing some back tracking here while I blog about all our going ons that your life has been incomplete without knowing. Fear not, I'm sure it won't be long before I am once again neglecting common household duties to keep my blog current :)

Ocean View

Well, we got the house we wanted to rent. It is fabulous and the girls love it. There is actually room to run and it has a spectacular view of the ocean from the deck upstairs. This is a curse and a blessing. Curse, only because I have no self control and any time I see the sunshine or a beautiful sunset, I bolt from the house and run the three blocks down to the beach just to be part of it...because I can!

We are getting unpacked and settled in. Still no phone or Internet which is again and curse and a blessing. I love the quiet of not having an outside connection, but SO much is done online anymore that it's really hard to keep up with things otherwise. In fact we had a "little mix up" that could have easily been prevented if I'd been able to check my bank account from home.

We have two bank accounts. I just re-ordered checks and the bank routed the checks to the opposite checking account than they were on before. So our first rent check bounced...because all the money was in the other account. Not the best way to start a relationship with a rental agency, but hopefully being able to throw thousands of dollars at them in cash will appease them. Anyway, alls well that ends well. Right? I hope.

Breathing

So here I am at the public library attempting to use the computer before Heidi defiantly starts pulling books off the shelves to get me to hurry up. (It works every time...thanks to the librarians and their flesh melting glares). It's nice to know that some things are universal...love, religion, grouchy librarians...sigh.

After a month of living at our friends vacation home, I believe we finally found a place to rent! I have looked at countless rentals trying to find one that would fit our needs AND be affordable. It was a bit harder than expected. I learned that any home under $1000 bucks a month would not have a garage or a dishwasher. Most of them also did not have a yard, a driveway or carpet. But they DID have black mold and spiders :) Then anything just over $1000 was out of town 5-10 miles and was pretty small. We found one beauty (the one we're hoping to get) for *GULP* $1200 a month.

It was made to be two separate apartments in one home, but they took out the oven in the upstairs kitchen to make it legal to rent as a one family dwelling. So basically it's a huge place with a wacky layout. But it's all new, no mold, no spiders, two family rooms, two kitchens, two bathrooms, laundry room, three bedrooms, a huge garage and deck that looks out over the ocean. (Did I mention it's three blocks from the beach?) Anyway, it's much more than our last place in Monmouth, but it's also much bigger and newer and more beautiful and did I mention you can walk to the beach? Just checking. The greatest thing about it all is that there is plenty of room for all of you fabulous people to come visit me!

DENIAL

So we're moving tomorrow. I'm still not really dealing with it. Over the past two weeks I've been adopting several effective coping skills such as emotional eating, stuffing my emotions and lying to myself. I keep telling myself, We're not moving that far way...I'll probably be back every weekend...yada yada. But here's the deal. My whole daily routine will be shifted. I've spent the last two years dropping my kids off at school and then dropping in on one of my sister-friends. We spend the day goofing off and occasionally sweeping or feeding our children, but mostly just "folding laundry" (translation: laughing hysterically at the trashy day-time TV shows...and secretly getting sucked into them.)

I was trying to explain to Lars on the way home from church today that it's different this time. Somehow the bonds I have formed here are deeper. Maybe because my friends and I have kids that love each other too. Or maybe just because we've spent ridiculous amounts of time together bearing our souls and our spirits, laughing and crying, canning and cooking, crafting and TP-ing, partying and pulling juvenile shenanigans. Whatever the reasons I'm going to miss my friends, are the same reasons that I love them.

Thank you inhabitants of Monmouth for making the last two years of my life the best EVER! I'm going to go lay down in the fetal position and cry now.

Worst Birthday Ever

Heidi turned 2 on August 31st. The girls kept asking if they could make posters and decorate the house. I had already packed all the construction paper and markers and pretty much the only thing left to decorate would have been the stack of boxes in the living room...so I said no.

We spent the day packing and playing with friends. The crowing event of the day was returning the school supplies we had bought for the girls for their old school and re-buying their new list of school supplies for their new school. During our shopping, Heidi grabbed a roll of Scotch Tape from the school supply isle and was pushing it around saying, "Choo Choo Train!" I thought, What the heck? It's her birthday! So I bought it for her.

Happy Birthday Heidi. You deserve much more, but you're two, so I know you'll forgive me. (I didn't even get a single picture of the kid on her birthday...she still looks a lot like the pictures we took on Monday.) ;)

p.s. I would have been racked with guilt if this were my first child...

Sam Case Elementary

Naomi in Oregon
Yaya
Naomi
Heidi
Naomi, Leah, Yaya
On Monday we also enrolled the girls at the school in Newport. Apparently the school is K-3, so Leah is the big dog. The office ladies were very nice and helpful but they weren't exactly thrilled at our address dillema. Currently we have a Monmouth address, then we will be temporarily be living in Waldport until we find a place in Newport. So I had to fill out a transfer request from Monmouth, but then they wanted me to enroll the girls in school in Waldport and then do a transfer to Newport.

By the time this all came up I had already been there an hour filling out a stack of paperwork as tall as Heidi, so I was "done". I just told them as politely as I could muster, that I wasn't going to do it. I would just keep my girls out of school until we had a permanant address rather than putting them in a different school for two weeks and then transfer them. After my blatant refusal, the office attendants promised to "see what they could do". So hopefully when we show up for school on tuesday, the girls will have a place in class :) Otherwise it's an extended summer vacation for us. I think Naomi would be the only complaining. She's the only kid I know who actually counts down until summer vacation ends and school begins. Honestly, if I didn't (vividly) remember giving birth to her, I would swear she was not my kid.

Anyway, we walked around the school and played on the playground. By the end of the day, both Leah and Naomi decided it would be a nice place to be. :)

Mr. Wight

Lars making an embarrassed face that I was taking pictures
His ghetto building behind the high school that his classroom is in
Naomi and Yaya testing out the desks
Leah and Heidi
Heidi inspecting the book shelf. It's pretty sturdy.

This past Monday we went to Newport with Lars and got to see his new classroom. While it looks rather "special" from the outside, it's pretty nice inside with his own office and everything. It was exciting and surreal. Lars is excited to get teaching. He finally got his class rosters and there are 31-38 kids in each class. I guess in October the district is going to re-evaluate the need to add another section of english to reduce class sizes. I say, save the meeting and use common sense...but I'm just the wife.