Christmas Cards

Yes! I did it! TWO posts in one month! I'm on a roll!

So Christmas cards.

I had every intention of sending out Christmas cards this year. In fact I still do. After all, we had a kid, bought a house, and didn't go bankrupt this year! I think that merits mentioning along with a nice family picture.

Here's how it didn't happen:

I was super excited for Nolan to turn 6 months old on Nov 29 - partly because I get to dress him up in some outrageously cute outfit and have the traditional 6 month pictures taken. Well, the actual day wasn't too good for us so I planned on doing it later that week. That week got busy. So I scheduled an appointment at the photo studio for the following week.

However, I had a genius idea to have a family picture taken at the same time - then we can have a picture for Christmas cards all ready to go! I quickly rescheduled for a time when Kirk could join us after work.

When that day showed up so did some complications and pictures were the last thing we wanted to do. So I rescheduled (yet again). This was now the Monday before Christmas. Cutting it close, but I could still do it.

Well, when that Monday rolled around I got up early to shower and look decent, only to learn that Kirk was not feeling well. Bummer. I decided to still take Nolan in for his 6 month pictures anyway. I could at least send those in a Christmas card.

Drove to the studio.

Had a hard time finding the place.

Showed up too late for the appointment.

No other appointments available before Christmas.

Frustration.

Okay I cried. I'm just trying to be a good MOM and get pictures taken of my child before he grows up!!! Is that too much to ask!?! Hello!?!? And that's when I realized that this was more about me than him. Does my self worth as a mother really lay in living up to the traditions of my parents!?!?

Yes.

But the point is, that's why I didn't send out Christmas cards this year. I still plan on having Nolan's 6 month pictures taken someday (although he's over 7 months now). And I could always send out New Years cards, right? Or Presidents Day cards? Or something!

So to as a treat for all of you, here is the only picture I have of the three of us all together:

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Lame-O Pants, Excuses, and Solids

Dangit, I really wasn't going to fall into the blog-every-so-often trap, but it's so easy to do. Let's face it, they don't call me Mrs. Lame-O Pants for nothing. I've earned that title!

Right now my days are carefully split as follows:

60% Baby Tending

60% Home Matenience

60% Other

I know it doesn't quite add up to 100% (I never was good at math), but we'll just say there's some overlap there somewhere. As you can see, there's little time for blogging.

Here's some super cute pictures of Nolan to make up for the lack of blogging. That should do it :)

He started eating solid foods a few weeks ago. "Eating" is a term used loosely.

Have you ever tried Rice Cereal?!? It's disgusting!! No wonder babies don't eat it. He's doing MUCH better with the squash now. Mmmm, plain unsweetened squash.

Still learning to swallow rather than suck.

He wasn't so good at feeding himself.

Dang that kid is cute. It's a good thing too.

Sometimes the cuteness is his saving grace.

Ok, I promise to blog at some point again this month. Really. Really.

What the...what happened to October??

Hey! It's about time I convey the last month of my life as a picture book! Cuz really, it's THAT interesting. Closing on the house, painting, moving, unpacking, fixing stuff up, and Halloween of course! I'm all about candy and dressing up :)

Here's our house just before we signed our life away.

I will always remember September 23rd 2009 - I dated enough signatures, how could I forget it!?!

FYI - houses are expensive!

On the day we closed, I picked Kirk up from work, stopped by Little Caesars and enjoyed our first meal in our new little home! I pulled out the camping chairs and a surprise basket filled with Sparkling Cider, crystal goblets, and a good book. You know, the type of stuff that goes with pizza.

I spent the next two weeks in these nasty paint clothes. I had high hopes of painting every room in the house when I first started. But in the end, we were lucky to paint over the nasty orange in the kitchen, the green in the living room & hallway, and the blue in nursery. It took several layers. And NO, I didn't get the fun stripes for the nursery painted yet. Darn! But I really want to. White is boring. It needs color!

(It was a sad day when I had to paint over the stripes in the old nursery :( It took three layers)

We moved out of the town home on Friday Oct 9th. That was a stressful day. That morning I was not quite done packing (of course) but I had to go to the new house to hurry and clean things up, when I locked my keys in the car!!! The KEYS, my CELL, the DIAPER BAG - everything but Nolan (luckily). Thank goodness for good neighbors and parent's AAA, but it took an unexpected 2 hours out of an already stressful day. Things still worked out somehow .

And yes, that is a PIANO! It's on loan from my sister for a year and half, but I think I just might be attached already. I LOVE LOVE LOVE having piano (and a place to put it).

We moved into our new house the next day after sleeping on a deflated air mattress (by 3 am I was hittin' bottom, but too tired to do anything about it). We also had trouble getting the U-haul started. But alas, all of our earthly belongings made it into our new home.

Now that' we're somewhat unpacked, we've been busily fixing things around the house before winter.

Here we see Kirk cleaning out the gutters, like the good husband that I trained him to be.

Now he's raking leaves. LOTS of leaves.

and hanging the shelf.

Projects projects projects.

The kitchen was mine. I'm constantly reorganizing it to make it just right.

Note: the walls are no longer orange. But goodness I'm anxious to put up my dazzling red curtains.

The first fire in the stove. We hope to heat our whole house this way.

Now for the cute pictures of Nolan!

I was super excited to dress him up in Halloween clothes :)

He was thrilled

This could have been a good warm costume but he couldn't move his arms or anything very well. Reminded me of A Christmas Story. Nolan just laid there smiling at me, because I was laughing so hard.

We decided on a family theme. Any guesses at what we are?? Collectively we are one thing. It requires in depth creativity. (Nolan did not want to attend the adult party with us so he sent a sub).

Here is the real Nolan in his adorable chili pepper outfit.

Again, he's thrilled.

Love this kid!!

But he's growing up way too fast. He's over 5 months now. Uh, it makes me feel old. It means that I'm like 5 months older than when I had him. But that doesn't really matter. Scratch that. My attempts at being funny are shot. Sadly I probably would have really said that in conversation. Why I'm not editing this more, I don't know. Let's just blame it on lack of sleep. Or something.

In case you're wondering...

...I'm still alive!

But just barely :)

It's been a super busy last couple of weeks/month. Packing, signing our life away for the new house, packing (how'd I get so much stuff?), painting the new house, fixing random little things around the house, cleaning the new house, loading the truck, sleeping on a deflated air mattress, unloading the truck, unpacking, and painting over the old nursery :(

All of the above take a lot more time to actually do than it may sound, ESPECIALLY with a four month old baby! Impossible actually. So he's been at other people's homes for way longer than I'd like each day. With all that's been going on - things have been slightly stressful.

Let's just say, I forgot to wash the conditioner out of my hair yesterday.

Right now the old washer and dryer are sitting out on our new front lawn. It makes me feel very white trashy. But Hey, widening the small pathway between boxes is higher my to-do list these days :)

But we are SUPER excited to finally be in our new house! I'm loving it. But I think I'll love it even more when I get a chance to sit down and actually enjoy it.

We went to church on Sunday, the day after moving in, and we were very impressed with our new ward. About 5 people introduced themselves before we even made it into the chapel! I spent most the time in the mother's lounge (which is huge, awesome), and I met other new moms there. Everyone seems really friendly and down to earth. Just another thing telling us that we're in the right place.

Pictures of the new house to come as soon as I find my camera cord.....where is that thing?? It's probably with laundry detergent...

Ummm.....

....I just heard my baby fart through the monitor.

That's weird.

My Neighbors

Two funny(semi-eerie) happenings as of late:

Story#1: Now that we're moving, I've been on a hunt of moving boxes recently. So I turned to trusty Craigslist to see what I could get for free. One ad said they were giving away a few very large boxes and they could meet in the Costbo parking lot (note: names have been changed for security purposes). I'm thinking, "Sweet, I live right by the Costbo parking lot. I'm so responding to this ad."

I get a phone call the next morning from the lady who says she'll meet me in the parking lot, but she's concerned that the boxes won't fit in my car. I tell her, no worries, I live right by Costbo, I'll just walk the boxes over to my garage. Well, she happens to live right next to Costbo too.

"Oh, maybe we're in the same area, Where do you live?"

"I'm on the corner of 162nd and Whompolooga."

"What?!? I'm on the corner of 162nd and Whompolooga!"

"No way! Let me go out onto my front porch."

Peering out my window I say, "Oh, I can see you from my bedroom window."

"Ok, that's creepy."

So as I'm hauling the boxes the short distance I find out that her and her husband moved in the same time we did a year ago, she's pregnant with her first and due in two weeks, and we both had thought about meeting our neighbors but never got a round to it. We should have been friends long ago. But now it's too late cuz I'm moving....

Sad when we have to meet our neighbors through Craigslist.

Story #2: I recently reconnected with a friend from high school who had a baby boy about the same time I did. Lizz and I were in theater and choir together and she's awesome (check out her blog). She came over a couple months ago, we had grilled cheese sandwiches, it was great. She happened to mentioned that she lived in Hillsboro off of Watery Road and that her neighborhood had some rules about parking on the street.

A few weeks later we find our house, and it is also just off Watery Road and the neighborhood has has parking restrictions. It's gotta be close to her house. So I called her up.

"Hey Lizz, we're buying a house and I think it's close to where you live."

"Oh, what street is it on?"

"Cowabunga Loop."

Pause, "What's the address?"

"1234567."

"That's right next door to me!!! Our neighbors are selling their house!!"

"What!? No way!! We're going to be neighbors!! That's awesome!! What are the chances!?"

And then we continued to talk about it for the next 20 minutes in high pitched girly voices, completely flabbergasted by the whole crazy coincidentalness of it all. (Man, I am on a roll with these made up words). She gave me the scoop on the neighborhood and I am feeling so much better about this whole moving thing now. It certainly helps to already know your next door neighbor. And it's also nice that our baby boys are the same age :) They better be friends.

Funny stuff.

Although it also would have been funny if we had instead accidentally seen each other in our front yards on some random future day.

Moral of the stories: Get to know your neighbors. You'll probably get along with them.

We're buying a House!

If you'd asked us three weeks ago, we'd have said "Well, it'd be really nice, but it's still a far off possibility." We'd been casually looking at houses online since April, but most everything in our price range were real fixer-uppers, foreclosures/short sales, or manufactured homes. And then, there it was. Our three bedroom, two bath ranch style future home:

Ok, it could use some cheery red shutters and a new paint job, but the inside has been fully updated and it's well-built. (Love the trees in the backyard).

Check out those wood floors!

Lovin' the kitchen

My dining room table will look so much better here:)

New tile floors and countertops.

Stainless steel dishwasher.

We were really hoping for a wood stove, and there it is!

Along with some sweet french doors and a ceiling fan.

New bathroom cabinets and countertops

(I feel like I'm running an ad here - but really, I'm just excited to show things off. Sorry, it's off the market)

Not pictured: Huge backyard for our future garden and kids, oversized garage with lots of shelving for food storage, large attic space for our accumulating junk...

Location: Southeast Hillsboro, quiet kid-friendly neighborhood next to wetlands/farmland. Apprx 15 mins from where we currently live.

Bonuses: ONE level, NO stairs, no more shared walls with nieghbors, appliances included, Air Conditioning, and access to the nighborhood POOL!

Negatives: I'll have to redo the nursery wall that I just painted. bummer.

The Sellers seemed pretty anxious to sell, so we got great home value for the price. Our mortgages payments won't be much more than we're paying right now for rent. Also, we'll close before the end of the year, and as first time home buyers, that qualifies us for the $8,000 tax rebate. Woohoo!

Kirk and I are excited to have Saturday home projects and to make improvements on something that we'll be ours. Ownership. There is something nice about that.

We get the keys on Sept 25th!!!

But I'm not excited or anything.

Beach Trip

I've been aching to go to the beach all summer and I finally did! Funny, in Oregon, it's always referred to as "the coast," unless it's actually sunny out, then it suddenly becomes "the beach." We happened to catch it on a gorgeous day! And of course I didn't even think to put on sunblock and got totally burnt, but whatever, it was worth it!

Nolan pretty much slept the whole time in the front pack. I was okay with that.

I took the trip with my sister/sister-in-laws and all their kids.

So it was fun girl time.

Note: tent for sleeping babies is a supurb idea :)

The kids had lots of messy fun in the sand.

Here's Marah, Levi, Delaney, and a view of the ocean which was still far too cold to even touch - but it at least looked refreshing.

I hope to have a girl some day just for this reason.

Pink bums are irresistible.

FYI

I went for a jog today! A real jog. Meaning, I actually jogged. More than half of the time even :D I think Nolan liked it too. At least, he wasn't crying the whole time.

Now I could really go for a nap. If only this little guy would.

Oh, there he goes. He's out. I just watched him fall asleep in my arms. Precious.

Old Stroller, New Stroller

This is the old stroller, which my sister so graciously let us borrow. However, it was time to replace the old one and find our dream travel system. Here we are on our last walk with old blue:

Farewell old friend.

(Okay, that's a cute kid)

We knew that we wanted to get a jogging stroller since before I was even pregnant. Bummer that babies don't do so well with them if that can't sit up yet! However, to our great astonishment, we found a jogging stroller that has a carseat attachment with all the bells and whistles and wasn't overpriced! Yay for Walmart.com! This is the only travel system that I've seen like this. And it makes me very happy :)

The front wheel can swivel for everyday use or lock in place when jogging.

Plus, it's red. Love it! Thanks Caitlin!

Soon after getting it I decided to test it out and go for a run.

Yeah....it turned into more like a walk.

It's been almost a year since I last went running. But at least now I have motivation to get back into it. We're aiming to do another triathlon next year. Gotta start somewhere :) Here's to exercise equipment that makes me feel like I'm in shape just by looking at it!

The Best Two Years

So we just celebrated two years of marriage. It feels a lot longer. I guess a lot has happened. Graduating. Triathlons. Moving. New job. Kid. House hunting (that's a very recent one).

Why not reminisce about the wedding day?

What a stud.

Anyone want to buy a 100% silk dress?

It's been a wonderful two years. Here's to the next 200 or so....

Journal Entry # like 42

I have to admit that the first couple weeks (ok, months) of parenthood were kind of rocky for me. It was definitly a fly-by-the-handle, on-the-job-training experience. It was like someone just handed me this little stranger and said:

"Here. Have a baby. From now on, you are completely responsible for this human being. At all times he will either need to be fed, changed, burped, put to sleep, or held. No, there will be no time for you or anything else. Long showers are right out. Don't even think about trying to blow dry your hair. Oh yeah, and there's no instruction manuel. Well, here he is! Your on your own now. Good luck!"

Anyway, in the midst of the mid-night cryinig bouts and feeling like I'd been stripped of every ounce of energy, I kept telling myself that it was all worth it. At least that's what everyone else was telling me. And of course I wanted to believe it, but it was hard to see how at times. I sorta felt like I was playing house, except that it never ended!

But alas, I have finally moved in with the group who can testify, "Parenthood is wonderful! Sure it's a lot of work, but it IS all worth it." Oh yeah, and "My baby is SOO adorable! He honestly brings an overwhelming rush of joy that I never knew I could feel!" I would seriously do anything for this little bundle of joy who is completely reliant on me and trusting. And I can just tell that he loves me even though he doesn't have more than like a 5 second memory span :)

Although sleep and the next episode of Scrubs are all very appealing at times, I often find myself wanting to do nothing else than sit and make gawking and cooing noses at my sweet little guy. Seeing his smiles and personality come out are the rewards that I've been aching for. He is completely unique and.....he's MY baby. That's still kinda weird to think about, but it's definitly more real now.

He's such a good, easy baby, I realy couldn't have asked for anything more. Even now, he's laying on the changing table completely enthrawled by his hand (of all things) (No really, he'll stare at his fist for seemingly hours on end - that are actually minutes). And I love that his whole face lights up and his body kicks and flales out of control when he sees me. He hasn't quite done a belly laugh yet, but his eye brows go up, he breathes in suddenly and then lets out whatever sound comes out. Usually a yelp, an achk, or a big long Ooooooo.

Eeeekk! I just love him!

Good News!

My pre-maternity jeans fit again!!!

Ok, they're not exactly the most comfortable thing, but I can at least button them.

If I suck in.

And that makes me happy.

I wore them around today. Even though it was uber hot. Weird. Yeah.

Cousins!

Nolan was born two weeks after his cousin, Zack. And because Zack is so much older and wiser, he teaches Nolan how to play, hit, and make origami. My SIL and I are trying to force our children to be friends. As follows.

Placing them on a blanket together lead to some interesting things:

hand holding (cute while babies, but better not last),

sucking on each other's hands (yuk, I know were those hands have been!),

and hitting. Nolan didn't seem to mind.

This was actually the first picture taken of them together. It's oddly symbolic too:

Wise old Zack (aka Snack) gazes down from his mighty throne at his scrawny cousin (aka Smalls) and says, "Hello there, little one. Come. Let me teach you the ways."

Little does Zack know that Nolan will one day outgrow him. At least when it comes to muscle.

Nolan is a rock.