Busy Busy

Have I been off my posting schedule! Sorry about that. We have had lots of nice things happening, so really, no excuse but busy for me.

Here in the PNW we are in that period of completely disjointed spring weather, where a day starts out glorious and leads to a torrential downpour, followed by brilliant sunshine, followed by gray foreboding, followed by hail, followed by sun, followed by drizzle. This is normal, and boring (yes, it is boring to talk about the weather, I know!), but I bring it up because its disorienting effect is amplified by my work situation, where I work for hours ensconced in my little interior office/cave, and then go to the kitchen to get some water, and look out over the lake. Visit 1, lake is blue, but it's dark where we are. Visit 2, lake is dark gray, but it's sunny where we are. Visit 3, it's pouring, lake is misty and vague, and so on.

This weather also makes it more or less impossible to dress appropriately, or more importantly, to dress one's children appropriately. The consolation is that at some point and maybe multiple points during the day, whatever you're wearing will be exactly right. As my friend likes to say, broken clock = right twice a day!

Weather grousing aside, hooray that spring is upon us, bringing with it the promise of longer days and more motivation and planting things outside and bike rides and the whole shebang. This past weekend, I went to visit my girlfriend in Boise. It was supposed to be a Girls' Weekend in the grand tradition, but it turned into kind of a Mom Plus One weekend when her family needed her back urgently. The lesson of course is that Girls' Weekends work better when enforced by distance, and also, that they are super trumpable, and appropriately so. While I was gone, though, there was some Dad/Daughter gardening going on, which is worth a picture:


This reassures me that they did not just watch movies the whole time I was gone, though, who am I to complain either way?

Going back in time a bit, here we are at the beach walk put on by our church a couple of weeks ago:

There was some kind of extremely low tide condition, and to celebrate Earth Day, a couple of our church members who are certified beach naturalists or some such thing invited everyone to bring a picnic to this lovely beach park in West Seattle and get to know some tidal creatures. At church before we left, there was a puppet show to help teach the kids how to handle (or mostly, to not handle) the creatures. This was terrific for me, as I was teaching Sunday school, and it was truncated for the puppet show. Woo!


We saw sea stars (WA has some rad purple sea stars, as you know), anemones, which is fun to try to get Muriel to say, fish, crabs, and the amusing telltale squirts of underground clams.

Naomi was also very focused on creating a collection- she started with white rocks but kind of went from there. The naturalist told us that this was a protected beach park- you can't remove anything. So Naomi arranged her collection and left it on a drift log.


And Muriel thought it was even funnier to do the same thing with our shades.


OK, and one more thing before I forget. I read an article yesterday on a parenting blog I visit once in a while (here's the article) that really spoke to me, about how being overly busy really does make you unhappy if there is no room in your busy for activities of play or flow (flow being, I think, a kind of grown up play). How's this for a quote:

"Busy-ness does not make us happy. Muller reminds us that the Chinese symbol for busy is composed of two characters: heart and killing."

Being too busy does make me unhappier. But the happy understanding I got from this article is that even though being busy is kind of unavoidable, if I make time for play here and there, the busy-ness doesn't have to prevent the happiness. Though it helps to know how to achieve the flow...

Circles vs. Triangles

Today on the way to school, Muriel said, "Circles. Mom, I really like circles. But I don't like triangles." Good when you know your mind, right?

Here's some photos from Cali:

At Alex's house, you don't have to play music on your old saucepan!

Balcony view from the girls' bedroom.

This moment, brought to you by ice cream, happened while I was away at work. I miss all the fun!

San Diego Zoo, on a particularly beautiful Friday.

Yes, the cuteness. These three had a good time together! Also, check out my sweet backpack.

The beach in front of the Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego. And more ice cream!


This was in Long Beach, near the aquarium. Something about this place- the hills, the grass, the sunshine?- made the kids run around like maniacs. Muriel rolled down a hill over and over, and kept stumbling around. Then there was the tree climbing, the wagon pulling, and the overall cutting loose. Crazy kids!

Yes, indeed, it was quite a trip. I admit, I see why so many people think it's a good idea to live there.

April's Starting Big

I hate to resort to a bulleted list, but there has to be some way to impose order on the chaos of topics at hand, and I refuse to take the high road, a.k.a., editing myself. So, here goes:

- Sportimint Club: What is the Sportimint Club, you ask? What does Sportimint even mean? Naomi and Muriel have formed a club. The clubhouse is their room. There is a sign on the door, made by Naomi. There is a secret knock to get in (which I will not reveal, though I am lucky enough to know it). Other than that, people, I am as in the dark as you are. I *think* it's some amalgam of sports and experiments? Or something? Who knows.

- Little fish: Naomi passed her first round of swim lessons and was presented with a pink cardstock skill assessment and a piece of Laffy Taffy in a ziploc bag. My heart swelled with pride. More so when she shared the Laffy Taffy with her sister with no admonishment from me.

- Other little fish: I watched Ponyo with the girls on Friday night. It is a weird, delightful movie. Of course the girls' favorite part was the beautiful sea goddess (or whoever she was), Ponyo's mother. Those girls are a little predictable.

- Bagels: The first time I tried to make bagels (after declaring my intentions here), the dough was too goopy, and I gave up. I tried again this past Saturday, with semi-success. The process was fun, but the bagels browned too quickly and were not all that tasty. They were good enough to convey some cream cheese and smoked salmon to their final resting places, at least. I will try again, for sure.

- Egg Hunt! We were just late enough to the Easter Egg Hunt at church that we managed to miss all the chaotic coloring and egg hop and whatnot, and get straight to the egg hunting part. For the tinies, this process is much less hunting and much more gathering, so they just walked from room to room and harvested ten eggs (the limit). Fortunately, this year, there were no florescent permanent ink stamps for Muriel to decorate her face with.

- Five Miles: Also Saturday, I ran five and a half miles! Woo! Is this a good time to mention (did I already mention?) that Jim and I are half-planning to run a half-marathon in November? Of course, five miles is not even half-way there, but still, a long run for me.

- Cold water: Saturday night there was a loud noise in the basement, and since I had just been down there fetching up Easter basket supplies, Jim assumed I had knocked something over. But no, it was the hot water heater blowing a something or other. There was a fear-inducing burning smell and a little leakage. So now, NO HOT WATER. Which means, as it turns out, NO DISHWASHER. I never knew how keenly I loved my dishwasher, also, until I spent the whole afternoon cleaning up our breakfast dishes. Bleah!

- Mom of the Year: Only a truly awesome mom would be clever enough to enclose her two-year-old, AND her bag of Easter candy, in her room for a nap. I was so happy to hear how quiet it was for twenty minutes, and then Muriel emerged, a big ring of chocolate around her mouth. I said, did you eat your candy? And she said, just a little bit. Ha! She had eaten about two-thirds of her chocolate bunny and had somehow made a little hole in the carrot-shaped bag of orange Reeses Pieces. The worst part, of course, is that I couldn't act mad at her because I was laughing too hard, and I couldn't even really BE mad at her, because I am the dummy who left her chocolate in there in the first place. Naomi, even at two and a half, would never have helped herself that way, and thinking about that somehow makes me love both of them even more. They are so Naomi and Muriel, respectively. Hee.

This will be a hectic week, as we are leaving town halfway through for a more Vitamin D-friendly destination. More on that later... have a lovely week!

LATE BREAKING NEWS~ Jim had someone come and fix the water heater today. I am listening to the dishwasher whirring away in the kitchen. Happy!

The Face of Healthcare Reform

April Fool's! Naomi really got into the spirit of April Fool's Day today, though her trickery was hilariously straightforward. "Mom, you've got a bug in your ear....April Fool's!" Hee.


We froze a couple of bowls of cereal last night, and served it up this morning. It was a good gag for about twenty seconds.



Then there was just a lot of scraping and chipping to try to eat the frozen milk...

Happy Easter, you all! Have a great weekend.