Recent Blog Posts
Date Posted: 11/14/2008
Bridget and I love to share funny goofy things with each other AND coupons! :)
I hope you have an amazing birthday and I wish I was in San Diego to share it with you! Here’s a funny for you for your birthday!
(We just started watching The West Wing, and this scene had me laughing)
Hope you enjoyed the coupon and the funny!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY BRIDGET!
...Date Posted: 11/14/2008
Below is a live picture of one of the roads we take to get to our house. This picture is from a live feed which is cool, so we can watch what’s going on from our kitchen. I can’t find a before and after picture, but this is the road that flooded and the other road we normally take had high potential to flood yesterday, but thankfully it didn’t. The crazy thing is that it’s not even raining here today (Thursday). It rained a little the day before yesterday, but I guess the majority of the water comes from up the mountain and runs down past our little town creating an Island of our town. Apparently the water is the 3rd highest it’s ever been.
Yes, our kitchen is now our office because our bedroom flooded last Friday night! At one point that night Luke asked me if Alyssa had peed on the floor. She hadn’t and so as he was using a towel to dry up the mysterious wet spot he realized the small water spot seemed to be everlasting. We then realized there was another similar spot and then immediately started pulling up the carpet to realize we were floating in standing water.
We then proceeded to move our entire bedroom furniture into our front room! Good thing we didn’t really have furniture in there before! The only piece of furniture we had in there was the bookcase which you can see behind the baby bed. You can also see from the picture we are now sleeping next to a very large picture window. So when we wake up in the morning it’s like “Hello Neighbors!” Here is a before and after picture:
We called our neighbor and asked if he would help us pull up the carpet, etc. He happens to be a landscaper and so right away he knew how to stop the root of the problem. He showed up bright and early the next morning with an excavator and dug trenches around our entire house. And because he had the excavator he decided to go ahead and landscape our yard! I had no idea this excavator machine could do so much, but it dug trenches, moved boulders and was an amazing tool in helping us fix our drainage issues. Once the trenches were dug and the pipes were in we had a flowing river for hours from the back yard to the front yard drainage area because there was so much water in the ground!
Here’s a picture time line:
Friday morning: “Oh cool a pond, let’s buy some fish!” That window in the picture is our bedroom window.
Friday night: “Pee spot! – Yeah right!” yikes.
Saturday morning 8am: Digging up the backyard. Oh yeah and we had to take out our deck.
I took mostly video, but here are 2 pictures a friend took…I’ll try to get better copies. You can see the muddy water flowing from the back to the front of the house. We had 4 neighbors come by and help us as well as 2 friends from church. Everyone was covered in mud when they went home!
Saturday 5pm: Trenches dug, pipes in, deck destroyed
I took this picture today, so as you can tell most of the flowing water is gone from the ditch.
Here is a picture of the "landscaped yard.” Our neighbor gave us all of those plants and that tree is one of those pink flower trees. I’ve never seen one in California, so I’ll send pictures when it blooms in the spring. He put in two flat stones to go from the porch to the “grass area.” The grass area will be where all the mud is! :) It’s hard to tell from this picture, but it’s going to look really nice when we’re done.
Monday morning: Big Super Expensive Fans!
Thursday morning: Demolition of the bedroom…can you see that there was no insulation in part of the wall! It opened up right to the crawl space underneath the house!
Friday afternoon (today): Big Dump Truck!
Lots and lots of rocks! Alyssa loves rocks.
Below a picture of the rock pile after Luke took 6 loads to the back of the house! I think we might need some help!
I took lots of video last Saturday, so as soon as we get it edited I’ll post it. :) But I think you get a pretty good idea of the craziness we’ve been through this past week!
...Date Posted: 11/6/2008
I’m proud of myself to be leaving somewhat on time to an outing with some moms I met in Alyssa’s swimming class…UNTIL
My Garmin runs out of batteries 5 minutes after I’ve left home and I can’t plug it in because yesterday Alyssa dropped a penny in the cigarette lighter and it sparks when I try to stick my finger in there and get it out. So I call Luke and he gives me directions. As I’m driving I run into construction stopping traffic for several minutes which kinda works out because Evan’s pacifier falls out of his mouth and Alyssa is parrotting “crakka, crakka, crakka!” Stick the pacifier in his mouth and find a few crackers to quiet the ‘starving’ girl in the backseat who just had lunch before we got in the car.
We’re on the go again and I get behind a garbage truck. Great. So we get to go 35mph instead of 45mph at which I would have probably decided to go at least 50 if I could. Fine 8 miles at 35mph. Finally 2 lanes! I pull around and onto the freeway to get stuck behind a dump truck with rocks in it and yes you guessed it…a tiny rock pelts my window. COME ON! I can’t believe this. My only saving grace is the Christian radio station I’m listening to and the car pool lane. Which – by the way is awesome that you can get in or out whenever you want to.
Finally at the exit and I call Luke to verify directions. “Turn left then left again and you should see the mall area.” No mall area anywhere. Uh, late and bad directions. I call him back to verify the street. Yep I passed it and so if only this wasn’t a road with no turns for 5 miles! Uh. Okay back around to find the mall. Where the heck IN the mall is the Children’s Museum?! I drive around the entire mall and there are no signs. I am skeptical that it’s in there, but I just park anywhere and I’ll enter the mall at the main entrance. BUT as I’m getting ready to get out of the car I realize Evan needs to be fed. These are the times I wish he wasn’t nursing. So we take another 20 minutes in the car and then head in. An hour or so later and WE’VE FINALLY MADE IT.
And it was SO Worth it. The Children’s Museum was so cool, Alyssa loved it! Wish I had pictures to show you…next time.
Okay here’s a few recent photos of us…not at the museum. :)
I don’t normally brag, but gosh they’re so cute. :)
...Date Posted: 11/3/2008
I feel like I used to be so organized with all the baby stuff. You know like having diapers, wipes, snacks at all times where ever I was. Well now days it’s such a event to get 2 kids out the door that I try to remember those things, but it just doesn’t always happen.
The other day I’m in a public bathroom changing Alyssa and frantically searching my purse to find only the newborn diapers! I’m standing there thinking….do I put back on the dirty diaper? NO ew! Leave her with no diaper on? NO WAY! I’m not cleaning pee out of my car. So I did the only thing I could…put her in a newborn diaper. To my surprise it totally fit and when we got home I took a picture of her in her newborn diaper! It was a little snug, but it did the job. lol
I’ve also had to used wet paper towels for wipes and I’ve found that Alyssa doesn’t mind stale fishy crackers (the ones that have been in the backseat of my car for over 2 weeks opened). lol Ah well.
...Date Posted: 11/3/2008
To quote my friend Bonnie’s facebook status last week: “Bonnie is sewing.. I'm becoming domesticated!!!! ..oh wait, I already am!”
That’s how I felt this week. The only time I’ve really sewn anything before was in 10th grade in Home Economics where I made a dress, that was un-wearable, a stuffed music note and a few hair scrunchies. But this week after searching the internet and elsewhere for kid Halloween costumes, I decided to attempt to make Alyssa’s Halloween costume. I was either going to make a penguin costume or a Dalmatian costume. Luke said I should make both and see which one turned out the best. I decide to make the penguin one first and when I got it finished it was so cute I decided that’s what she would be. PLUS the major reason we wanted her to be a penguin was because we’ve taught her a new “trick.” If we tell her to “do the penguin” she’ll put her arms out behind her. I wanted to get it on video, but we forgot to bring our video camera with us.
Anyhow, to make her costume I took a bigger size black dress and turned it inside out to make it all black and then took one of my old shirts and turned it into a belly and then I remembered I had a black feather boa and tacked that on the dress too. The only thing I had to buy was a pair of black tights. Well here’s the final result:
I didn’t quite take into consideration how wiggly she’d be while she was wearing it and so 3/4 through the party we went to her belly fell off, but that’s okay because she was still cute with just the feathers:
She wasn’t too thrilled when we had to go home because she was having such a good time at the party! The party was at a big church in town called Overlake Christian Church– similar size to The Rock Church.
Oh and here is her doing “the penguin!”
I didn’t make Evan’s costume because I found a cute monster collection at Gymboree and it all happened to be on sale so I jumped on that opportunity. His “costume” is great because he can wear every single piece of it until he grows out of it. :)
He is an awesome baby! He falls asleep so easily. OH and speaking of sleep! Alyssa has been sleeping 10-12 hours and Evan slept 7 1/2 hours last night…it was the best night of sleep in a VERY long time for me. Evan’s been ranging from 4-5 hours, so when I woke up and it was daylight I was pleasantly surprised.
Before the party we went to our friend’s Eric and Jenn’s house. Alyssa loves playing with their girls and their girls love playing with Alyssa so it works out great! They wanted her to go trick or treating with them so we went along to a few houses. Alyssa was very timid about taking candy from strangers, so I guess that’s good! Here’s a picture of Alyssa with her friends Nora and Joeli:
Then after the party we went home to check out our candy stash! She can’t really eat candy, so instead she ate grapes and while doing so she picked up each piece of candy and examined it and then tossed it aside. hehe Here she is post Halloween party outfit/hair. Oh and as we left the party it got all foggy! The perfect eerie Halloween atmosphere! hehe
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