Emilia's 5th Birthday!

Emilia didn't fare much better than Heidi for the birthday celebration this year. But she at least got real presents and some balloons taped to the wall. I was planning on having a party with her friends from preschool, but it just so happened that her school Halloween party was on her birthday so I just told her that party was for her! Don't worry, I checked the parenting manual and it's OK to lie to your kids to get out of doing stuff.

The House

Finally got my pictures off of my camera so here is a picture of the house we are renting. It's just a little bit nicer than our last place ;)

Secret Weapon

About a month ago as I was making one of our daily treks down to Waldport, I noticed a cop car sitting along side the road. As a knee jerk reaction, I stepped on my brakes as I passed him. I continued driving and about two minutes later saw the dreaded red and blue lights flashing in my rear view mirror. I pulled over onto the 28 inches of gravel along the side of the highway. To avoid being smeared across the road, the state trooper came to the passenger's side of the car. May I just note here that our windows don't roll down, so I had to open my door and reveal the shameful interior of my car. He kindly informed me that my driver's side brake light was out. When the state trooper asked to see my driver's license it only took me about twenty minutes to dig through all the garbage that constantly seems to accumulate on the floor of my car, just to get to my purse. I finally found my driver's license and cringed as I handed it over because I still have my license from Iowa. (What? We only have 30 days to switch it over? I thought it was 30 months...) Then that poor, unsuspecting state trooper asked for my car registration and proof of insurance.



Are you familiar with the prank where you offer someone a fake can of peanuts and when the other person opens the can, snakes pop out and scare said person half to death? Well, opening my glove box was a very similar experience except instead of snakes, tampons. I don't know how this came to be, but there were literally tampons falling out of my glove box, onto my seat and out my open car door. I was trying to dig through the tampons for my car registration and remaining shred of dignity while the state trooper was dodging flying feminine hygiene products and turning six shades of red. When I finally found it (my registration...not my dignity) I shoved it at him and mumbled a sorry and he took it and ran back to his car. By the time he came back I had shoved all the tampons back into my glove box back and had frozen my face into a facade of innocence. Mr. State Trooper had returned to his natural coloring and was willing to play along with my "We didn't just share the most embarrassing moment of your career" game. He gave me back my license and registration and let me off with a verbal warning, very happy to send me on my merry little way.

A thought on Halloween

Does it seem odd to anyone else that we spend 364 days of the year cautioning our children NOT to take candy from strangers and then on Halloween we take our children door to door begging for candy from strangers? Just sayin'

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!