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I promise I read your blog, and have not been ignoring you - you know who you are.

4 Things I Love about my Husband:
- He's a great dad.
- He likes to travel.
- He says he's sorry.
- He loves me.

4 Movies I could watch more than once:
- Pride & Prejudice (A&E)
- Love Actually
- Lord of the Rings
- National Treasure

4 T.V. Shows I watch:
Since I refuse to pay for cable (no, we don't have TIVO either) we don't have a lot of channels, so we mostly watch TV shows on DVD. The series we are up to date on include:
- Bones
- John Adams HBO Miniseries (FANTASTIC!)
- 30 Rock
- 24

4 Places I've been:
- China
- Mexico
- Guatemala
- Bermuda

4 Places I'd like to go:
- Africa (I know this covers a large area, but this way I don't have to exclude anything)
- Japan
- Italy
- France

4 Things I look forward to in the next year:
- Planting grass and cleaning up our yard.
- My parents getting home from their mission.
- Traveling - just not sure where yet.
- The unknown - at this stage in life it is much more exciting than most of the things I know about.

Prodigious

I think I used to have much more interesting posts, particularly when I first started out. Maybe it's just burnout, but now I rarely make time to write anything interesting and tend to only post things about the LG or that I feel obligated to write for the sake of my progeny in hopes that someday I get it together enough to somehow publish my blog in lieu of scrapbooking. Anyway, I guess I am just lucky that for now the LG seems to be at an amusing age - at least according to his mother. This clip is just a taste of his musical repertoire, which includes singing about anything from hippop0tami to strange phrases from books we read like, "shut the door and bolt it" (courtesy of the Grasshopper and the Ants).

Mayhem

Last Friday a bulldozer arrived, along with 4 strong Tongan men, 2 scrawny but very hardworking missionaries, and the rain. The missionaries took one look at the rv parking pad that was partially broken up and tossed into a "mound" (that we initially overlooked as a bush due the ivy growing all over it) and decided to take on our backyard as their service project for the week. Bless their hearts... forever, and ever and ever. I can't tell you how giddy I was that day. It was quite something to watch the bulldozer make small work of what would have taken the BK and me months to do (not to mention the state of our backs afterward). Giddy I tell you. You may think it still looks like a trailer park, but I think it looks like a beautiful blank canvas that will remain muddy and wet for the next 6 months or so until I figure out what to do with it all in the spring.

I dug up this picture which is a pretty good overview of the mess we were originally dealing with. The BK deserves a lot of credit for ridding much of the overgrowth which prevented the sky from being seen.

Here I am sweeping off the "driveway". The " " are to designate that it isn't really a driveway since it leads directly to a fence now and has no access to the road. We figured it might be a good idea before the bulldozer arrived to figure out exactly where the cement was. Notice the beautiful landscaping job behind me where someone so artfully built a beautiful cement retaining wall with parts of the driveway. Nice.
And after the bulldozer did its thing........ Ahhh, so clean. They even cleared out all the stumps of the trees the BK chopped down. Do I mind that the bulldozer also dug up the few flowers I had planted and the only salvagable rose bush in the yard? Not one bit! Seriously, not one bit. If I could just get Mary Poppins to snap her fingers and remove the lingering junk pile.

So below we are looking at the infamous "bush" against the far fence. You can see more cement handiwork peeking out beneath the ivy if you look close enough. There is also a lovely landscaped walkway - also made out of parts of the previous RV parking pad- that leads to the garage door.

And after..... Sorry that this doesn't give you a better idea, but consider that the BK is standing next to the fence, where the "bush" used to reside. Ahhh, so clean.

As I am typing this, it occurs to me that many of you may think we were insane to buy this house, and all the baggage that came with it. All I can say is you may be right.

Late Night Memos

The LG is back to thinking that he is supposed to report for duty between 6:00 and 6:30am. This morning when I finally succumbed to his pleas at 6:40 I asked him if he had received the memo I sent out last night indicating that I didn't want to see or hear from him until at least 7am. After a bit of further pressing it was clear that he in fact had not received the memo and he became very adamant that we find said memo. "A mama, a find memo is. A mama, a find memo is." Usually he is eager to locate food and is asking, "A mama, a have cereal. A mama, a have blueberries. A mama, a have milk." I was impressed that I spent the first 15 minutes of the morning being dragged from room to room looking for the lost memo. After 15 minutes, however, it wasn't hard to divert him with breakfast. I'll send another memo tonight.

Speaking of memos, I finally responded to the ones I received from more than one grandmother that the LG's hair was in need of a bit of a trim. I was inspired last week as he was contentedly sucking on a popsicle that it was now or never. I have such mixed feelings about cutting it because I find his curls adorable, but it started to get in his eyes, and it was getting a little beyond shaggy. He was so good, and his eyes would get very wide every time a chunk of his locks would fall onto the tray of his high chair.

We also went to OMSI last week - one of the refuges in Portland for people with children when it is raining. The LG had a great time painting with his friend ClaireBear. I also found it wildly appropriate that he was wearing his new T-Shirt from Grandma (inspired by the toilet episode) that reads, "If I'm quiet you'd better find me." As we were leaving, the LG took off at a sprint toward the playground area - which I thought was fairly safe since there is only one exit and entrance at the end of a dead end hallway. As I chase after him with umbrella stroller veering every which way and bags swinging from both arms, I apparently miss him running into the open elevator. After frantically searching the indoor playground I come out terrified only to see my friend that we were there with opening the elevator in response to hearing his terrified cries from within the closed doors. Hallelujah no one downstairs needed to come up so it never really moved, but it was enough to scare us both to death. Say what you may, but this child needs a leash.

Gratitude Soapbox

Occasionally I think it is a good idea to be openly grateful for things, and thought I would share a few things from my soapbox of gratitude today.

1 - Beautiful Flowers

My mother-in-law bought these when she was in town visiting. I think they are just glorious. I am also grateful that you can't see what the floor looks like under my table.

2 - Grandmas and Bubbles
You know, kids without grandparents really do miss out. My tolerance for blowing bubbles in the rain is much lower than a grandma's and after about 10 minutes I would be worrying about all of the other things I should be doing rather than messing around in the rain. Grandmas (and Grandpas) are welcome to come and entertain the LG whenever they like. The LG is currently experiencing attention deficit disorder now that she is gone.

3 - People with an Opinion
I don't really care what your opinion is, but please have one. You can change your mind later. On a related note, Portland is pretty left-wing and I don't ever see McCain posters on people's lawns, but there are plenty of proud Obama supporters. I am really impressed with a sign I pass (partially because I agree with it) that sits in the window of a house I walk by daily. "Any government that is big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take it away." A silly-looking Obama figure is captioned with "Obamanation". I keep waiting to walk by and see a rock through the window - which I am ashamed to admit is one of the reasons I don't have a McCain poster on my own lawn. I am officially rambling now, but I think it is dangerous anytime there is too much of any one particular ideology. I felt the same when I lived in Utah. It might be what is really swaying me in favor of McCain this election year. I really respect people with unpopular opinions, even if I disagree with them. I think it is the highest form of patriotism to risk rocks through your windows or having your lawn spray painted or worse (maybe I'm just paranoid).

Political ramblings will be soon to follow in a separate posts. I know you will all be waiting on pins and needles to hear my opinion. ; )

"Oh, LG, you are getting so good at entertaining yourself!"

Yeah, that's what I was thinking as I was wrapping up a couple of emails from the upstairs office while the LG was quietly playing downstairs. As I walked down the hallway toward his room I could see two little puddles before he made his grand appearance looking like this:

Yes, that is the seat to his peewee potty seat that he likes to wear as a hat. Apparently, he also likes to use it to scoop water out of a very full sink and pour it over his head before wearing the potty as a top hat (I'm not interested in comments from the germ gallery). Creative and comical - that's what we are chalking this little mishap up to.

I don't think I could have captured my own feelings toward the situation as well as he appears to have done in the following pictures:

"You, Mister are in BIG Trouble!"

AND

"You, Mister know how to do a mess right!"

Book Tag

I was encouraged to get caught up on my summer reading by a recent tag (okay, not that recent) where you list 10 good books you have read. It sent me on a reading frenzy, so here they are in order. I tag the two Melanies, Ariana and whoever else reads who hasn't already done this. I need some more recommendations.

1. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen - Okay, so this one is a re-read. Whatever. Who doesn't like multiple doses of Mr. Darcy.
2. Atonement, Ian McEwan - I loved this book. Needless to say I wasn't a big fan of the movie in comparison. Regardless, I thought that the author did a superb job of painting believable characters. What intrigued me most was how I sympathized with all of the characters even though they all are at odds with each other at one point or another. Touching and depressing, but worth my time.
3. Light on Snow, Anita Shreve - This book was an easy to read, easy to understand, but not particularly enthralling, exhilarating or entertaining novel about a young girl who, when hiking in the woods with her father, stumbles across a newborn left in the snow. For as heavy as the subject matter should have been, I didn't find any of the characters or story line convincing enough to draw me in.
4. The Other Boleyn Girl, Phillipa Gregory - My mom lent me this one, and I was pleasantly surprised. Although it is a historical novel based on King Henry VII and the Boleyn sisters. It's pretty juicy and I'm sure that the author has taken more than a few liberties to create a very compelling story. Writing is so-so, but I would recommend this book as great airplane reading (which just happens to be where I read it).
5. Waiting for the Light to Change, Annette Haws - This was the weirdest book I have ever read. Not because the book itself is weird but more due to the subject matter. It was written by my debate coach in high school and is a supposedly fictional novel about a debate coach's experience, with the conflict centering around a mischievous policy debate team. It seems loosely factual rather than fictional to me, and I therefore remove myself from critiquing the actual contents of the book. Probably a particularly interesting read for anyone who graduated from my high school or who was ever involved in debate.
6. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas, Frederick Douglas - This book blew me away. I had no idea that he was such an absolutely incredible individual. If I had to recommend just one of these 10 books, this would be it. He wrote this narrative himself when just in his late 20s as an escaped and later emancipated slave. It is just a testament to my belief that there are just some people who are truly unstoppable and that putting your mind to something is a very powerful thing. Seriously, check it out.
7. Kim, Rudyard Kipling - This one was not an easy read, but I am now a big fan of Kipling's writing style and will probably check out some others by him. The book is set in colonial India and as I am not an avid history buff, have a terrible memory, and am an imbecile when it comes to the details of Hinduism and Buddhism, I kept having to look things up. It took me a while to get through, but the language is so rich that I really felt like I was there and was also well worth my time.
8. The Stranger, Albert Camus - This was a VERY bleak book with a main character who IS the stranger. It's a short read, and very interesting. I won't get into all the literary analysis about this book, but it is out there. So bizarre is the main character that I couldn't help but like him even though he is pretty detestable. Anyway. Bizarre.
9. A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini - I became a huge fan of Hosseini's after reading the Kite Runner. I know so little about the middle east generally, and Afghanistan specifically that both of these books have been fascinating. This book, however, struck a number of powerful chords with me, probably because I am a woman. I thought it was a realistic portrayal of unbelievable conditions that the women in Afghanistan must live through, and made me so grateful that I live in a much different world. Since the beginning of time, ladies, since the beginning of time. And to think that the world I enjoy really only began changing a few decades ago in just some parts of the world is a very eye-opening reminder of how lucky I am.
10. Katharine Graham Autobiography - I actually just recently started this book, but can hardly put it down. Graham is the woman who ran the Washington Post after her husband committed suicide. I feel like I am reading the story that Atlas Shrugged was based on. She was right in the middle of high-society and the political goings on in Washington from such an early age that the people she is connected to, things she saw and was involved in are truly inspiring. It also helped put me on planet earth about how much I, as someone who can't currently afford maids, and nannies, and butlers, can honestly expect to accomplish in a day or even a lifetime. It reminded me that even having the time to read 10 books is a luxury for people who spend their whole day trying to put food on the table. Also a must read recommendation.

Phew.