Moving and leaks (craziness #2)

I got home from camp and immediately had to jump into another crazy week: Getting my dad moved into a new apartment. Since my dad has limited resources and limited good health, he needs a lot of help with things like this. We also had to move him during the week during business hours (sheesh.) And while I was at camp his car broke down so he was depended on me to drive him and\or do his last minute moving errands. So it was a lot on me. Luckily, Brian was able to take some time off from work. I was able to hire some young people to help on moving day, my mom helped, and it all worked out in the end. And it reminds me that I have no desire to ever, ever move again. (hah, yeah right.) 

I think this move is really good for my dad. He moved into senior housing. Its basically a regular, normal apartment but for people 63+. There is a community room, activities, a community patio, community wash room, bus trips, exercise room, etc. He will be around people. He wont' be so isolated, which will really help him. The location is also very nice and convenient. The grounds have a pretty garden and he got a nice end unit with extra windows and a nice view. (His car is still broken so he has been grounded for a long time and needs my help a lot more then normal.)

At the same time we were getting my dad moved, I walked into our utility room to do some laundry and the floor was soaking wet! It had just rained. Was it from the rain? Humm...this is a lot of water. Is it from the freezer? It was late. We decided the freezer defrosted for some reason. Went to bed. Next day was the big moving day so I didn't get to deal with our leak problem until that night. I was not convinced the water was from the freezer. It was really wet! Our utility room was a mess because we have been moving some stuff around and we got a whole bunch of stuff from my dad. So things were out of place and the house has just been a disaster. So I end up moving all this stuff and trying to clean up the wetness and finally found the cause of the leak- our water heater. Its just leaking. Weeping. At least its not gushing. Could be worse. But what bad timing. It was stressful. I sucked up at least 9 gallons of water out of the carpet. It kept leaking until it was replaced. One day my mom came over to help. I had to clean up the utility room and throw some stuff away that got wet. We had to move a bunch of stuff into our bathroom too (I'm telling you, our house has been a mess for a few weeks. It just gets worse and worse!)  Now, 3 appointments later we are done with the water heater drama- for now. Its been replaced, inspected, and we had our home owners insurance co out. I'm still not sure if part of the wall will need to be replaced. We have wood paneling down there and I'm pretty convinced the installation got wet. The man from insurance said we should rip up the carpet as well (no padding under)  but Brian didn't do it. We got it pretty cleaned up and it dried out but I'm still concerned that we should have taken the carpet up. If we get sick from mold, you all will know why.

(Our fish tank also leaked on our again at the same time. It keeps leaking from the filter because it gets dirty I guess. And I discovered a wet spot in the ceiling of our office- right under the bathrub.)  

My day: Some Reasons Why I love Summer

Late morning: Baby went down for a nap. Garrett and I worked on cleaning up his room.

Grandma came over. When Tristan woke up from his nap she took both kids for about 3 hours. They went to a little game fair for the developmentally disabled (where she works.) Garrett had fun and won several beach balls and got cotton candy. I took the time to get do some paperwork done and continue to work on my latest project- managing clothes. I finally have the kid's clothes up to date.Now just a bit more work on the adult clothes. (I think the house is slowly getting more together now, finally.)

Once the kids came home we drove to the Bel Air library. I hit the book sale and got a ton of books for only $10. My mission was to find books I can use for home-school and I did pretty well. I'm most excited by the art books I got! (Their fate will be with an x-acto knife.) Next, we headed to the park behind the library for a surprise birthday party for one pretty little 7 yr old. My friend, who lives between 1/2 the years in India and 1/2 the time in Maryland surprised me yesterday with a phone call announcing she was in the area- surprise!! Yeah! She was able to arrange a prompt-to playdate\birthday party with our group. It was fun! We mothers sat in the grass, catching up and having fun, while the kids played happily. It was a good time (and super nice the kids did so well playing together.)  I love this group of friends-  they have been my "mommy" friends since Garrett was about 6 months old. 

After a few hours, most of us made our way to a mime concert at Mt. Zion church. I've been trying to see this a mime show for 5+ years (one of the "mommy" friends is the founder or main leader of this mime troupe.) It was really neat. The troupe is called Silent Witness Mime Ministry. They have kids as young as 11 up to adults. Their concerts focus on biblical\gospel principles. One of Garrett's favorite skits was called The Machine. It was about two kids who got a present- a machine they had to assemble. They set about to build the machine but the 1 child did not want to use the instruction manual- so she threw the instruction manual away and tried to do it all by herself! They went about making this machine (the other mime's were the machine parts). They eventually got it together and it worked briefly but then broke and fell apart. So they finally picked up the instruction manual and followed the directions. This was then related to how the Bible is our instruction manual. How often do we disregard it, thinking we can do it all on our own? Only to finally pick it up when we realize we can't do it all on our own. One of my favorite skits was called the Mirror. It was about how our true value- that we are so much more then what we see in the mirror. It was neat and nice to finally see a performance. Local friends, I highly suggest going to one of their concerts if you ever have the chance!

After the concert we drove home and "oh look, its the first movie night on the lawn!" The little church down the  road from my house was just starting the movie and Garrett begged to go. This is one of Garrett's and mine favorite summer activities. We have been going to this little church to enjoy their movies on the lawn for years. Its so close to our house we always walk. So we  grabbed the stroller and blanket and walked to the movie. (It was already 9:10 by this time.) We got our free snowballs and pop corn, watched about 25 min of the movie and then left because the baby was tired and  wasn't falling asleep nursing.

So that was my day. Tomorrow I'm off to NJ for my niece's 1 yr old birthday party.

Birthday Week Re-Cap

The week before Garrett's birthday (June 1st) Brian had off from work. We enjoyed just being home and trying to get a lot of stuff around the house done.

 (In this picture Garrett is thinking: 'Finally, only 1 link left on my birthday chain- the day we leave to go to the hotel and then the next day is my birthday!')

Then on Memorial Day we headed to Lancaster, Pa on a family vacation\ birthday celebration. We had the honor of "borrowing" our 5 yr old nephew (and Garrett's best bud), Chris Jr for the trip. On Monday we checked into a hotel in down town Lancaster which was way too fancy for our crowd of 2 bouncing-off- the walls-youngsters and 1 baby who likes to scream for a good hour every night we are traveling (but the hotel was the cheapest rate we were able to get!) We were on the 17th floor (and yes, one of the kids pushed the emergency call button in the elevator and the operator was asking "is there an emergency?") That evening it stormed badly, which was interesting to watch being so high up. But the rain didn't stop our fun- it was swimming time in the fancy swimming pool.   (It was also Tristan's first time ever swimming, but I don't have pictures because Brian is anxious around swimming pools and never joins the fun-so I had no one to take pictures for me.)

On Tuesday we woke up and Garrett opened presents.

Then breakfast at Friendly's and off to Dutch Wonderland

We were very blessed in that the weather was nice. Thunderstorms were being called for but they never came. And because of the supposed weather the park was rather empty and the lines really short. We never really had to wait in line and by the evening the lines were so none existent we went on the large roller coaster several times with out stopping (and much to my dismay, the same with the small roller-coaster. The lady kept saying "one more time?" and the kids were so excited to go again with out hardly stopped. I groaned each time but I faked enthusiasm. I don't like those small roller-coasters because they are so jerky!)  It was a good day at the park. The only thing that I was sad about is that for some reason I wasn't feeling too great for most of the day and didn't have my normal amusement park energy.

One intersting thing to note which will be fun to remember in a few years because it perfectly depicts Garrett at this point in his life. When we were leaving D.W for the day Brian told the boys they could buy something from the gift shop- anything that was $10 or less. Chris Jr picked out a toy gun. What did Garrett pick out? A big bag of Twizzlers. All he wanted was candy.

That night, more eating out and then night swimming (I didn't get in this time and the baby fell asleep pool side.)

Next morning, we checked out of the hotel, ate at Olive Garden (yummy food but the kids were a bit too rowdy- I had to take them outside to run around quit a bit. We should have known better!) Then the boys played miniature golf. This was Chris Jr's first time ever playing!!

(bonus points for hitting the ducks!)

Then we hoped into the van. A few Amish horse and buggies later, we were home. (And boy were we adults tired! And Brian was ready to have some alone time!)  Aunt Heather came and stayed for a while and then took Chris Jr home (he lives in southern NJ.)

A few short days later, on Friday the 4th, we had a Backyard Birthday Bash. Except it rained for the first 20 minutes. So we ended up starting inside my house (which I was totally bummed about because my whole plan was to have no one in the house except for the bathroom and stuff like that. My house just gets too small so fast and my downstairs was not clean! It also threw some of my pre-planning off) But oh well. The storm was nasty everywhere else but here and we were just lucky it stopped so quickly.

We eventually made it outside and did some fun things.

Painting on the fence:

Horse shoes and Frisbee horse shoes:

(if you happened to see a big, nasty bruise on my arm lately, its from the Frisbee hore shoes!)

Generally outside silliness:

 (some boys were climbing up on this rope and getting pretty far! My neighbor has a better picture.)

Followed by some silly outside races: A sack race and "ice and spoon" race. (I don't have many great pictures because I was using the video camera most of the time)

All this followed by this very awesome and yummy cake made by our very own Megan B.

In this picture Garrett was asking me to help him blow out his candles. He was being a bit shy and was a bit upset that we sang him happy birthday but I'm not sure the other guests picked up on it.

(The cutting and serving the cake and ice cream was the most stressful for me and Brian because we were all crammed into my dinning room because of the dripping trees and general wetness outside.)

After cake and ice cream there was presents. And eventually everyone left. And Garrett was happy and I was *tired* and thinking "I'm not doing this next year!" (but as Brian pointed out- you know I will.)  

The End

Family and Friends, Good Times

After a long few weeks of barely being able to talk to my husband because of his crazy work schedule we had some family time!

Our trip started on Friday with me and children stopping by Brain's work to see his new office and to pick him up. While in the parking lot we witnesses a women hit a parked car while backing out of a parking spot. She got out, saw the damaged and then drove away! Luckily Brian memorized her license plate and snapped a picture with his iphone. The lady returned to the "crime scene" and pushed the broken tail light back into the mini-van in an attempt to hide the damage. We also have reason to believe she returned yet again and took the note Brian left on the windshield off! The owner of the struck car later told us not only is her tail light busted up but she can't even open her side sliding door. I don't understand this level of dishonesty and lack of integrity displayed in this incident.

(Picture taken in the cafe at the museum)
Once that drama was over we headed to D.C. We had wanted to see the Terra Cotta Warriors but the exhibit was sold out for the rest of its stay in D.C. So instead we went to the Natural History Museum. We had a good time despite the fact it was very crowded. My favorite exhibit was looking at the birds from this area. We were able to look at a Great Horned Owl up close and personal (it was stuffed, of coarse). It was neat because Garrett and I had just read about the horned owl in a book we are reading for homeschooling called Among The Forest People. Garrett enjoyed the dinosaurs and the totum pole. Garrett and I have visited this museum once before but he didn't remember it. When we were there last time he was scared of the dinosaur bones.

We then headed to our hotel room in Tyson's Corner. Garrett was so excited to spend the night in a hotel! We went to the mall, which was really boring, because it was mostly high end clothing stores. We are not rich or classy so the mall was really, really boring. We were so sad there wasn't even a book store! We did, however, get to see 3 cars in the mall that cost more then our house. Brian and I enjoyed asking each other questions such as, how much money would we need to have before we could buy a car that expensive with out feeling guilty? And, can you imagine how much it must cost per year just to maintain insurance on a car that cost 300K?  And oh the horror, what if we actually hit one of these cars on a road in one of our modest cars?! I have to say, Brian is a huge car and truck fan. He drools over fancy sports vehicles, but I don't think he would ever buy a car that expensive even if we had the money!

On Saturday my wonderful, wonderful, friend Kim and her two adorable kids meet us at our hotel. Kim and the kids used to live right down the road from us but sadly they live far enough away now that we only get to see each other about every 6 months. This was Kim's first time meeting Tristan and Garrett and the kids were excited to see each other too! We packed a picnic lunch thanks to Subway and then headed to a place called Great Falls which is on the Potomic River. We walked down the trail (it was a cold day!) enjoying the sites of nature and just hanging out together. When we were done we went our separate ways. It was a fun trip just seeing each other despite it being just a few hours long. And as you can see from the pictures, it is a pretty spot. (Note for my LDS friends: this spot is not far from the D.C temple! You should visit one day!)

My Name is Garrett

My name is GARRETT. My favorite toy in the whole wide world is my Spiderman cape. My little bit favorite toy is my dump truck. My other really, really favorite toy is my Robin mask. But I pretend I’m Batman when I put it on.

My favorite color is purple. My birthday is June 1st. I want a Batman cake for my next birthday when I turn 6 years old. My favorite Xbox game is Lego Batman. I like to eat candy. I like to play outside with my neighborhood friends, Gavin, Logan, Thomas, and Jackson. I like to run around in the grass island and play Star Wars. I also like to swing on my tree swing


(we prepared this for our co-op this week. We made a friendship book.) And for your viewing pleasure... here is a video showing Garrett's great sense of humor. He has always had a good sense of humor but people don't see it very often because he is often shy around others. Humm...well I can't upload a video right now because I don't have that feature on my blogger and don't want to bother with creating a youtube account right now. So I'll post the video later)

Hello Blogging World

Its been a while since I have posted. To be honest, I'm not sure if I really want to continue to blog. I have two main reasons for this. The first reason is, I find it hard to take the time to write and thus it is one more thing in my life I feel like I'm neglecting. The second reason is, I have a hard time sharing my thoughts with others in many ways. I often feel like I never do a good job explaining my own thoughts and feelings. I often feel emotionally vulnerable after sharing.

But here for now, is a short list of what has been going on on my life and things I had thought "oh I should blog about this"  but then never did.

 My friend invited us to a party to celebrate an Indian holiday. The holiday celebrates the rice harvest and the fact that the days start to get longer and warmer once again. There was great company, dancing, panting of rhythm sticks, great food, and talk about Indian culture and customs. Great fun!

 

 Tristan and Garrett both received their baby naming and blessing at church. Brian, Grandma Doris, Grandma Baskin, Grandpa Boehm, Aunt Heather, and 3 cousins were able to come. It went really well. Tristan received his blessing during Sacrament by one of our home-teachers and Garrett received his blessing after church by our other home teacher.

 That same day, I received a new church calling. I'm now on the board to help plan and implement our church's weekday activities for women (formally called the Enrichment Board.) At the same time, Girl's Camp prep is underway! We are now planning our fundraiser for the year (another babysitting night for the members of our church.)  

 Brian went on his annual 10 day business trip to St. Louis. I decided to take a trip to visit my brothers and nieces in PA for a few days. We stayed in a hotel this time because the baby still tends to cry a lot at night. It was a great visit. I also got to see my best friend from my childhood, Cindy and meet her new baby. Sadly, my brother's (who has a different mother)  mother became sick unexpectedly and then passed away the night I left for home.

 

  

 After my trip to PA and while Brian was still away, my (newest) dryer died. My dad came over and diagnosis-ed the problem. Brian came home with 10 days worth of dirty laundry before the dryer was fixed. A few days later my dad repaired it. But something must have gone wrong in the process of putting it together and now it still is sort-of-broken. It only works sometimes! And it only dries small loads. Its been very frustrating and I still have not had it completely fixed.  Ugg! In this process as well, my washroom has been torn apart as well which is kind of good because its forcing me to purge and organize my craft\kid corner. 

 My dad was in a car accident. I'm sad about this. It makes life complicated for everyone. But he is ok besides a really sore back.

We had a meeting with Child Find to discuss getting Garrett evaluated for speech and his fine motor skills. It went ok. Kind of weird. I don't' think they are going to be able to help us. 

 Last week was just a crummy week. One of those weeks things just don't go well. But we had a fun trip to Port Discovery and I meet another like-minded mommy there! I went to a LLL meeting which was great and meet a new lady who is about to give birth with my midwife in attendance. I talked to a mom on the phone who recently had a loss and was able to support her a bit. We had our first meeting with the YW to plan the camp fundraiser and that went great. So it was a bad week but I meet 3 new friends and we did some fun stuff.

 After the Y.W. meeting I locked Tristan in the car by accident. First time that has happened. It was snowing. Luckily Brian was at home and I was jsut about 15 min away at church. So Brian came to the rescue. Tristan cried himself to sleep in the van while I waited. How sad. But hey, it could have happened earlier in the day when I was in Baltimore! Now I"m aware of how it happened which will help me be conscious to not let it happen again.

I woke up 2 days in a roll with a plugged up ear. I was also not feeling too well. Turns out I had a cold and an ear plugged with ear wax! The doctor irrigated my ear out. That was weird. Not exactly painful but not fun either. We all have colds, including the baby, but at least it is not too bad.

Snow! Two big snow storms. Storm #1 Brian was in D.C. for the weekend. I managed to dig a small spot for him to pull into once he came home. He make it home Sunday night but it was a very long process to make it from D.C. to our house. Been in the house a long time and yet my house is messy and I"m not getting much of anything done. I wish I could go sledding. Brian has had no work all week so far.

Brian is working on a book project that isn't going too well (not his fault.) He is busy with a demanding school class. Basically he is home but still working all the time and not available.

I'm still spending a lot of time and energy trying to figure out our homeschool style and trying to get into some sort of routine for me and the kids. I"m enjoying finding all kinds of (free) "living books" to introduce Garrett too. The routine thing is such a hard thing for me. Starting today we are working on following a specific evening\bedtime routine for the next 6 weeks as a family. Pray for us! haha.

Raising Weeds or Boys?

Oh these boys grow up too fast! It makes me wonder if I'm raising weeds or chlidren?

Tristan is about 2 months now and I"m not sure how its possible for time to go by so quickly. He is starting to smile a lot more now and is really starting to "talk." My parents noticed at Thanksgiving he would try to follow my voice with his eyes. This past week we noticed Tristan attempting to following Garrett's movements with his eyes and head while Garrett ran around the kitchen table. Garrett though this was fun and started to run really fast so that Tristan couldn't keep up.

Then a few days ago I was so surprised to see some amazing head control on Tristan when I put him on the floor. I again saw this today when I was laying on the roller table at the chiropractor's office with Tristan laying on my chest. He was holding himself up, looking directly at me and then started to "talk" to me.

And lots not forget to mention that he is simply huge. Where has my little newborn gone?

He still is pretty colicky but it could be worse. It comes and goes which is a lot better then what Garrett had. He has lots of gas and its funny to watch him work all that gas our every morning. I usally lay him on the changing station and he moves and stretches while enjoying diaper free time. He is typically very happy and smily in the morning. I call this "my morning smiles."

(picture: he is so chubby!)

Garrett... he is also growing like a weed. I think he went through a growth spurt because he looks so tall all of a sudden. Or perhaps he just looks big because the baby is so small? He continues to be a great big brother even though his demands to hold his little brother sometimes are at the worse times. (Like when Tristan is crying!)

 (picture: Would you hire this babysitter again??)

Its amazing to me how Garrett has slowly been blossoming too. Ever the shy kid outside of the home, friends and family members have mentioned to me that he is opening up and talking more to them. I see this in him too. I'm amazed at his wonderful memory. He can navigate through video game menues like a pro even though he can't read. (And he also can figuare out many games all on his own. Its scary to see how he is way better at video games then I ever have been.) And today he beat me several times at the game Memory. This kid is good! I did not let him win but he won fair and square! (Sadly Garrett's love for video games has gotten out of control during this period of adjustment in our family so I've had to put a huge restriction on the tv\games during the day. This has been rough for me and my very persistan Garrett. I will say that what seems an annoying and bothersome trait for me to deal with- (Garrett being a very persistant, a quietly strong willed kid)- will one day be a strength for him in life. And an exericise in overcoming my permissiveness for me! (At least this is what I keep telling myself!)


He is slowly getting into Legos but I still can't trust him with a too many because he still tends to get crazy and throw them around. Once he is a bit more responsible with them I"ll bring the lego tables out of storage and some more of the legos. (Brian bought garbage bags full of legos from a co-worker.)

Garrett has lots of energy and I feel like this winter is going to be a long one! I already miss the fact that during the summer and fall he would spent several hours outside playing with his friends. But I'm doing my best to get us outside everyday. I put the baby in the wrap and he plays in the backyard. Today we played tennis on the sidewalk. Brian and I have also discussed enrolling Garrett in martial arts. We found a place 1 mile away from our house and will give Garrett a 3 week trial run soon.

A Busy Weekend

We had a busy, good weekend but by Sunday night I was tired! Here are a few highlights from our busy weekend.

On Saturday the boys and I drove to NJ for cousin Ariel's birthday party. She just turned 3. We also celebrated Chris Jr's birthday because they were unable to have a party for him when he turned 5 back in Sept. 

It was a cold and breezy party at Fort Mott. Garrett had a great time seeing all the cousins, grandma\grandpa, and aunts and uncles. After cake and presents we went for an "Adventure" with some of the cousins around Fort Mott, which happens to be where Brian proposed to me. I had not been there for a long time and they now have many of the rooms closed off but its still a neat place to explore. Once the party was over I went to Heather's house for the evening where we chatted the best we could over loud, crazy children until I left around 7:30pm. I'm not sure what a normal conversation will be like once all our kids are off to school or work in 20 some years. It will probably sound too silent. 

The birthday girl.

Garrett and Chris are best little buds and love to play with each other. Here they are sporting matching shot guns.

Another highlight of our weekend was the fact that I managed to go to church for the first time since Tristan's birth. It went alright. I was a whole hour late. Garrett really doesn't like going to church (but is always happy after Primary) so he was really fighting me getting ready. Once we got there he didn't want to go into Sharing Time but luckily his teacher knows him pretty well and knows a good candy bribe works. Tristan slept most of the time until after we took the sacrament at which point he woke up ready to eat. So we 3 headed off to the mother's room to nurse in comfort. Except Garrett just felt the mother's lounge is one great playground.

(This is a picture Garrett insisted I take even though poor Tristan is very upset.)

He drove me crazy the whole time jumping and boucing around and washing his hands so he had an excuse to use the automatica paper towel dispenser. Then Tristan had a good screaming\crying fit because he got too much milk too fast and was uncomfortable. I'm sure we sounded a mess to the people in the bathroom with all the noise we were making between Garrett's bouncing on everything, Tristan crying, and me telling Garrett (unsuccessfully) to STOP AND CALM DOWN. But I eventually got Tristan calm and in the sling just in time to pack up and go home! 

(Garrett was playing with my camera too!)
Other highlights from the weekend: Friday Garrett went to the eye doctor. He needs to wear his glasses more! My mom took him to the movie and Brian, baby and I went to Marley's birthday celebration at PF Changs and walked the mall a bit to pass a fussy period with Tristan. On Sunday evening we went to an open house to celebrate a friend's happy adoption of their little girl. And finally, late Sunday night I spent an hour picking up our very messy house while everyone else was asleep because it truely was trashed! And I was reminded again that I should never really stay up after everyone else is asleep to clean the house becuase that is always when I feel  overwhelmed with life!