We've been

On the phone too much, apparently.  Had to document this because I can count on one hand the number of times this boy has fallen asleep somewhere OTHER than his bed or carseat.

Teaching the photography belt loop to my cub scouts for the third time, which means I've been in scouts too long already.  New calling please?
(These boys are just too much fun.)

Reading.  You guys, all MG wants to do is read books.  All. Day. Long.   If I sit down for a second she finds a book and brings it to me, and how can I say no?!
This makes me crazy and crazy proud at the same time.  If she takes after her mother, she'll be reading these herself in less than three years.
(One can only hope.)

I've also been reading great stuff online that has made me think.  Some of it I shared on Facebook, all of it is good:

One of the most beautiful essays I've read in a long time about motherhood and self-image in a modern world. (Other good things on the website.)
Family Stories that Bind Us.  Naturally, I love everything about this.
My friend Kelsie's great post about perspective.
The growing stay-at-home-mom trend.
Holidays are getting crazy.
Giving up new clothes for a year, which is something I would LOVE to do if I could quit changing sizes.  (See above post about motherhood and self-image.....)

Pinterest, You Are Drunk.  Occasionally inappropriate but a good laugh, especially if you're like me and wonder who does those crazy things, and why does everyone else like it??  We all need a reality check every once in a while.

Watching.  I stopped for a while because I was SO MAD about Rose Tyler being stuck in a parallel universe, but I'm trying to like Martha.  I really am.

Dad

There's an old joke in my family about my dad injuring himself doing the most ridiculous of things - walking down the sidewalk, for example - when he was an active athlete for his first 25 or so years of his life.

One incident I remember vividly was a summer evening when we were walking on empty plastic barrels in our backyard.  (What?  Not everyone has 55-gallon water barrels lying around?)
We were all testing our skills and balance, walking along the tops of the rolling barrels, and I guess Dad thought he needed to show us a thing or two.  Long story short: he scared us all pretty good.
Dads shouldn't get seriously injured, right?

SO.  Last night I was in the kitchen, ready to start on dinner, when Slice walked in the back door.
"Uh .... Rachel .... I cut myself.  It's pretty bad."
"What?  What do you mean you cut yourself?"
"I mean I cut myself!  With a knife!"
At this point I turned to look.  He was fairly calm, so when he pulled up the pant leg I was surprised at the size of the gash in his leg.
"How did that happen?"
"I was throwing my knife and it bounced back and sliced my leg ..."
"You were throwing the ... bounced back off ... of what?"
"THE TREE."
.....


On the bright side, we have good insurance and live 4 blocks from the hospital.  And, I won't have to tell Liam not to play with knives for a very long time.  That kid remembers EVERYTHING.

you know I have to put this here.

mid-March

If I wasn't still recovering from the worst flu virus since Christmas '09 I would have mentioned something earlier about Slice being home from his mission for half a decade (last week).  That trip to Salt Lake - that instant I walked in and saw him for the first time in over two years - left an indelible impression on my memory.  I've said it before and I'll say it again: he was glowing.
My friend had grown up in Japan.

Every March I start getting a little sappy thinking about the series of un/fortunate events that led to our wedding a mere three months later.

Now we have two kids, a house, a dog and and a Kitchenaid.  And a 26th birthday tomorrow for Slice.

Time flies when you're having fun!

Storage

The day that Slice goes back to work you can usually find me dragging myself out of bed, house torn apart, trying to recover from six days of work and play.  Today is one of those days.

Our goal for the month of February was two-fold: storage room under the stairs and case lot sale.  Truth be told, we did it late and in the wrong order.  Saturday we hit up the grocery store and spent over $400 on goods that, hopefully, will last us a long time.  It was a little bit emergency essentials (wheat, oats, water barrels) and a lot of what we eat on a regular basis (mandarin oranges!).  It looks so pitiful in this photo.

Monday we took everything out of the storage room under the stairs, which is a room I have pretty well managed to avoid for the two years we've been in this house.  It was scary.  Bare foundation walls, water streaks, cobwebs, decades-old food stains, perpetually cold ... out of sight, out of mind, right?
It doesn't look pitiful enough in this photo, because Slice had already started painting it.

We vacuumed and wiped and scrubbed it all as well as we could, and yesterday Slice started painting the whole thing.  Paint sprayer, folks, I highly recommend.  A thin coat of primer took several hours to dry because the walls were so cold, but by evening it was finally ready to insulate.

We cut 3/4" foam in pieces to fit between the walls and the shelves.  Every single shelf opening is a different size, naturally, so it took me a few hours and a few razor blades and a few episodes of Word World to get it all done.

Then we put down some wallpaper to preserve the shelves (brightens it up a bit!), and put everything back in there.  I'm pleased to say I don't have nightmares about it anymore.

this is only half the room.  well, a little more than half, because it's under stairs ....

You can't see the walls in the picture but trust me, the new white is MUCH better than the old dinginess.  The foam keeps it a little bit warmer, but still cold enough for good storage.  And we might still put down some epoxy floor coating just for kicks. 

Another day, another day.