What we do in the sun...

... when I'm not hiding from it, that is. If you don't know this already, I'll tell you now: I'm not a big hot weather fan. But, sunny season has arrived. This is what we've been up to.

There's nothing breezy, shady or refreshing about our yard in the summertime, especially after we massacred our dying cherry tree. Our yard has become a veritable shade wasteland. But Dash Point Beach has trees, sand, refreshing breezes plus it's typically 5-10 degrees cooler on a hot summer evening.  So we like to take our dinner there.

We were somewhat desperate on this particular evening for a cooler dinner venue, a situation somewhat compounded by the fact that our blue 15 passenger van was still on blocks in the driveway. No blue van meant a hot drive in two different vehicles to get our whole family to the park. It I'm not mistaken, this day also included a drive to and from church in two separate vehicles, a trip home involving one flat tire and a lot of time trying to keep the two year old from succombing to carsickness. It might have been a different day that all those things happen... Maybe. I'm thankful that we could go but squishing into to non AC vehicles with broken windows that can't roll down made us especially ready to do this:

And then this:

And a little of this:

When the weather is not rainy, we've enjoyed some after church picnics at the park near our church. Typically, lunch is served picnic style in the car on the way home for our kids as we head home on Sundays but lately we've enjoyed taking our crew to the park. I had my camera out on one of these afternoons, after most of the stickiness of lunch had been wiped away.

Reuben

James and I

Mercy helps 

Girls

What letter do you see?

And the goats. Had to include a picture of our new neighbors. The kids call them Chocolate and Diamond but I learned last night that they are really called Cinnamon and Gunsmoke. 

Update!

Here is my attempt to catch my blog up with the current pace of our life. It's not too hurried of a pace nor has it been a harried time for us these past 6 months. But half a year's gone by! 

So here we go:

Our Christmas celebrations came at the very tail end of our unfortunate water damage repair season. Maybe it goes without saying, but moving one day before Christmas can kind of skew your view of what is important. And by skew I don't mean that all the extras and details just faded out of the picture and we were able to worship and rejoice peacefully. It was chaotic. We were sick. Some of us were hung up on one thing, some of us on something entirely different. The answer may have been polkadot jammies for all. 

 

Thankfully, our home was fixed and we were able to set up housekeeping here once again.

And then, in January, Mercy turned six! (And had a surprise birthday visit from Grandad.) What a little treasure this girl is to me.

And it got really icy- ice storm icy. We lost power and had no heat. Brrr.

So we wrapped ourselves up in blankets and read Tintin graphic novels to each other.

 

With my teaching unit on the horizon, I buckled down to prepare for it during February but my camera will tell us that we took some breaks to celebrate birthdays with family. Happy Birthday Grandma!

And we made up our own celebrations just because...

One mishap that I preserved on camera was The Night That Josiah Fell Out of his Bed. In his sleep, he somehow dropped his eye directly onto the sharp corner of the stairstep IKEA shelving we keep in his room. He had quite the black eye/black nose from this sleepstunt.

And then, Josiah turned four!

With my parents preparing to sell their house, my kids took some time to soak up some of the things they love to do while visiting there.

Since I posted last, Reuben has grown almost 6 teeth, become a crawler and now a walker, signs just a tiny bit and continues be made of the sweetest rolls you've ever squeezed.

In April, we joined our homeschool co-op in a field trip to the End of the Oregon Trail Museum. In reality, it was the End of Car Trips Without Dramamine for James.

In May, Reuben completed his first year. We celebrated quietly with lots of sugar. (See. Look at those rolls!)

 

The Montgomerys joined the Memorial Day masses in Chelan. We have the blue security bracelets to prove it. The beach and the pool entertained and the weather was pleasant. Here is James in his beloved "orange shoes".  They are very comfortable for someone who has a plantar's wart covering 1/3 of the sole of his foot.

"Is it time to go swimming yet?" "Will Logan be at the pool when we go?" "I saw Gracie at the pool when we walked by- we HAVE to go down there or we won't get to swim with her!" "When are we going to swim today?" "Can we go yet?"  This pool has become the absolutely main event for the kids. It's fun.

 

 And now it's June. We're done with our homeschool co-op school year. The garden has been planted. House and car projects continue. Here's to posting again before summer is over!

Going Camping

I found this boy inside his brother's pillow case.

He looked pretty sleepy at first glance.

When I asked him to explain what he was doing...

...it became clear that there was a lot more going on in there.

"This is how you sleep when you are going camping," he said.
The End

JamieJames gets into trouble

Do you know this boy? 

Sweet-tempered, chubby and contented. Big brown eyes in his squishy face. 

That's James.

Today, he so sweetly wedged himself into this cabinet. 

He brought me the tube of toothpaste and showed me the minty white moustache he applied to that chunky face. 

At dinner, his nose contained not only large crusty boogers but also a carpet thread that he was saving there. 

The other day, it took him four big bites out of this candle to decide that it was yucky. He looks concerned but probably not for the right reason...

A few weeks ago, he convinced us all that he'd swallowed a small toy. We haven't found it. 

At two, James' vocabulary is increasing but he tends to rely on miming his thoughts to us with a few sound effects. When he tells us about the vacuum, it sounds like, "This. This. NNNNN!" But while he says that, he's signing "loud" and pretending he's vacuuming and pointing to the electrical outlet. 


When he finally learns to put it all together, I'm really curious about how that carpet thread got up there.

Too MUCH!

The island in the middle of our rental house kitchen is good for a lot of things. On this particular afternoon, we are using it to find a home for all the remaining Halloween candy. I've heard tell of people doing this; cutting up, freezing, setting aside all the chocolate candy for future use.

So we did that. 

And then we made a big batch of chocolate chip cookie dough 
+ peanut butter 
+ rolled oats 
+ Snickers, Kitkat and Milkyway pieces
+ M&Ms
and called it good.


Then we did it again a week later. We still have candy in the freezer.

Thanksgiving

What we some of us did on Thanksgiving (besides eat and be thankful):

 

 

Broken House

So, the cold water supply under the kitchen sink failed. It dripped all night right around Halloween. Bob and I thought the floor seemed a little strange in the kitchen one morning. What was strange was that water was coming up between the planks of our laminate flooring. Upon further examination, we found that the water was every where. Or at least it was almost everywhere important in our house. Specifically, the kitchen, the laundry room and the (one) bathroom. 

We wondered what to do about it for a day or so before we realized that this is why we have insurance. I don't know why it didn't occur to us to call them right away. We kind of thought, "Well, I guess we're just going to add this to the Things We Have to Live With While Living in a Partially Remodeled House list."  Little did we know that once we got the insurance ball rolling, we would begin an adventure that mainly consists of not living in said partially remodeled house at all. At least not for now. 

Pictures to prove it:

Ugh. Something's not right here.

Here's our kitchen with all the wet parts removed. Big, loud, green fans aid the drying process.

All the contents of our kitchen, bathroom and laundry room are in our family room.

Since we had no kitchen, bathroom or laundry room at our house, our insurance company put us up in a hotel for about a week. Despite Mercy's look of boredom here, it was a pretty sweet deal.

We did have to eat a few meals on the floor since there wasn't a table big enough for eating in our hotel room...

And we felt a little cramped doing our school work. On the bright side, the weather was beautiful that entire week and we took walks and played outside between calls to the insurance company, the general contractor, the ServPro people and the temporary housing coordinators.

(If your baby can do this, he is too big for a bouncy seat.)

After everything dried out at the Broken House, and after it was determined that the first layer of vinyl on our floors had asbestos in it, the best course of action was to take all the floors out. Completely.

And why not? It sure makes it a lot easier for the city inspector to see that our floors lack a certain structural soundness. Or insulation. Or proper drainage beneath them. (A few days after this picture was taken, the space beneath the kitchen was under 6 inches of water because we live on a swamp.)

This all starts to sound pretty crappy, I know. And never would we have chosen this route if we could have. And there have been some pretty stressful moments that I didn't choose to memorialize here because I'd rather forget them. But the list of benefits to our situation is much longer than the irritations we're facing:
1. New floors in 2/3 of our house
2. A week's stay at a hotel with free hot breakfasts and dinners (Something we've never done with our kids)
3. A very comfortable rental home 
4. Fees waived and rules bent to accomodate our family specifically
5. The discovery of yucky mold growing in our house and the clean up of that mold 
6. An opportunity to put fresh paint in the kitchen (I did this last night. YES!)
7. Generosity shown to us by family and friends
8. Time spent more purposefully with our kids 
9. A room in our rental house entirely devoted to ALL LEGOS. ALL THE TIME.


For now, we're still in the Upstairs House waiting for the Broken House to be fixed. Currently, Bob and Daniel and Michael  and Reuben are building lego cars and spaceships. Josiah and Mercy have been chasing eachother around the house and James is coloring next to me. We're about to have our 2nd Advent Evening and we have some hot chocolate to drink. 

Despite all the changes and upheaval, I think we're feeling pretty cozy.

The kids and Great Grandma Veda at Thanksgiving