Lap of luxury

We moved into our new house last weekend and now we are living in the lap of luxury. At least that's how I feel every time I use my GARAGE DOOR OPENER!!! Never mind that right now I'm sitting next to a chain smoker at the library computer, borrowing the internet for now so I can post enthusiastically that I LOVE HAVING A GARAGE!!! (Can you believe they don't even include that in the square footage of a house? Hello?!?)

As for Mark, I think he'll agree that we are living the high life just as soon as we locate our towels and get up a shower curtain.

Lily loves the four full-length mirror-closets where she can dance and play and wave to her newfound "twin."

Eliza and Sage go out each day on treasure hunts in the expanse some people call a backyard and found balls (6) and old receipts and a squirrel statue with a broken ear and they pick grape tomatoes and grapes and line them up in their "clubhouse" (our empty shed...no lawnmower yet).

The only treasures I harvested today were 94 spaghetti squashes that the sellers left behind. Perhaps it's the new zucchini here in Utah. Except I've never heard of spaghetti squash bread or cake. But I did unpack all my bread tins, and my heart did a little leap of joy. Maybe it's time to see if zucchini and spaghetti squash really are cousins.

Speaking of spaghetti, Sage came home from kindergarten with a detailed narrative about one of the rules her teacher outlined for the class. No noodle sleeves. It took me a while to realize Sage was talking about "spaghetti straps."

That's all for now. I can't take the thirdhand smoke fumes any longer. Back to the lap of luxury. Where Mark and I play music at 10pm at night just because we can, and we encourage the kids to jump off the couch again and again, and where we head downstairs every couple of hours to make sure the garage door opener is still working. Just because we can.

Packing shmacking

This weekend is our big move. Our ninth move in seven years. How is the packing going, you ask? Well, I'm blogging. So obviously, it's not going very well.

I've lost my best roll of packing tape already. (Either packed into a box on accident or hiding in a Dora backpack with my cell phone and other things Eliza likes to cart away while I'm not looking.)

Sage has been relatively helpful. She is currently on a mission to earn quarters to buy fancy pencils at the pencil machine at her school. She will do anything to earn a quarter, including pack a box. Unfortunately, she feels that two minutes of haphazardly dumping things into a box deserves at least a quarter. Haggling over her wages has proven to be a major liability in my productivity. Plus, how do you pay tithing on a quarter? By having mom up the payout to twenty-eight cents, so three cents can go to tithing, leaving a full quarter for that stupid 5 cent pencil from China? No wonder I have only packed four boxes. (Half of which I have opened to get something out of them later.)

Sage has also been making labels for the boxes. The problem is we have discovered that small post it notes are not conducive to big words written in large, wobbly letters.
Take, our "kitchen" tag, for example.



Lily has been relatively helpful in the packing process. She has spent several hours crawling around and peering in boxes and sucking on their corners and shaking them to test their sturdiness--or just to sharpen her teeth. (Better that than sucking on the spaghetti sauce mix and butter package in the shopping cart earlier this week.) Who needs Baby Einstein when you've got your own personal jungle gym of boxes?!?

The (only?) good thing about this being our 9th move is that we have learned to save our boxes, and most of the boxes still have labels on them. So by reading the labels on the empty box, I know that although it seems improbable, I will be able to squeeze my wok, my crockpot and half of my tupperware collection into the "Eggs" box.

I've decided that my next packing project (other than banning myself from blogging) should be to take down all my decorations. Then maybe it will dawn on me that instead of preparing baked goods for neighbors I should be preparing baking dishes to be trucked to a new neighborhood. Or instead of planning the menu for the "thank you" meal I provide my mover friends, I should pack so they actually have some boxes to move. I had an emotional battle this morning when Sage plopped all my bread tins in a box. I haven't taken them out yet, but I did label them on the outside, just in case. It's an illness, I think.

I need to remember that this is not spring cleaning time, but rather fall cramming. Maybe I can award myself a quarter per box I pack. To be donated to our mortgage fund.

I hate moving.

But I LOVE new houses!!!! The edible and inedible kind.

2039

In honor of Mark and me signing our names fifty times today and seeing the year 2039 written out for the first time ever, we decided to decorate house cakes for Family Home Evening.
(Our real house actually looks a lot like the cake house, just with about 1800 more square feet. It's also a little more expensive to come by, but I have faith it will be worth it.)

Killjoy

There are some days that I feel my middle name should be Killjoy. At least to my kids.

It’s hard for them to understand that I would like to see them live to adulthood (though I might regret it when I’ve got three teenage girls living under my roof).

I know they think I'm being mean and unreasonable in outlawing so many of their good ideas. And since I'm starting to get a complex about it, I'd like to present the evidence to you, for some reinforcement.

Here is a sample of some of the events I've put my foot down on in the last week.

...A toddler sifting through a 5 gallon bucket of flour.

...A preschooler putting her hands or feet on the baby twenty times each day (Actual quote heard in the car: "Lily laughs when I put my toe in her mouth!") I will refrain from quoting my response.

...A kindergartner wedging an exercise ball between my bed and the window and inviting her sister and friends to try out her homemade trampoline.

As well as being the recipients of my lecturing, Sage and Eliza know how to reverse the roles.

Just this morning, at the breakfast table, Eliza told me, “Mommy, it’s not your job to take a bath with an alligator."

And Sage has spent the last few days playing "school," where she is always the teacher. (The exercise ball-trampoline stunt took place at "recess.")

I enjoy a good time as much as my kids do, but I tend to reject the "activities" that involve excessive cleanup, germs, or gravity-defying moves.

And while I'm not willing to compromise on some things (like putting toes in the baby's mouth), I think I could ease up a little--particularly those that require extra preparation or cleanup on my part.

Like eating breakfast in the garden.

Or letting the kids use straws more often (which is synonymous with asking for puddles of milk on the table).

Or have "kitty day" like my mom sometimes did (where we got to eat without using our hands).

Or letting my kids help me cook.

With aprons, though.

Because when it really comes down to it, I know I'd rather my girls remember how much fun we had in these special (fleeting) years together, rather than how sparkling clean my kitchen floor was.

Okay, I admit it; the floor is only sparkling for about thirty seconds every third day. I guess my real hope should be that I can cover up the memories of a constantly dirty floor with memories of how many fun activities we did in the kitchen together.... Like letting the baby sift through the flour bucket so I am forced to sweep the floor??? Hmmm.

The girl who didn't cry wolf

Today I heard Eliza calling "Mommy, help!"

This is what I found.

And to serve her right, I left her there while I went for the camera.

Once she had been extracted and sterilized she chuckled and said, "That was a good one."

Show and Tell

What is elementary school without the timeless tradition of Show and Tell? Is there any kid that doesn't love bringing some treasure from home to brag about? On the other hand, I can't help but wonder if there is any teacher that does love Show and Tell?

This month I've had a chance to rethink Show and Tell, what with the kindergarten teacher's invitation to Sage (and her 23 other classmates) to bring an item to show every day of their Colors unit this month.


The first day was "Brown Day." I had visions of digging through my souvenirs from other countries so Sage would have something awesome to show. My excitement was short lived, as I discovered that Sage was dead set on bringing her stuffed dog.

On “Purple Day” we forgot to bring something, but Sage proudly related to me that she showed her class a purple crayon from her backpack. She was excited to tell me that another girl ALSO shared a purple crayon. What fun that Show and Tell must have been!

On “Blue Day,” when I was unpacking Sage’s backpack after school, I found at least 20 blue toys in there! With wide eyes, Sage claimed she had no idea how they got in there. Whether that's true or not (aka not), Sage's teacher couldn't have enjoyed Sage's 20-piece-show very much.

By "White Day" I was wondering when the Colors unit (aka "Dig Through the Toy Chest Each Day") would end. I jokingly suggested that Sage bring a bag of marshmallows to school. Her eyes lit up before I realized that my joke was her idea of heaven. It wasn't hard to imagine Sage imagining herself carefully distributing tasty marshmallows to each of her classmates. We resorted to Plan B instead. Another stuffed animal.

There really is nothing like Show and Tell--where each kid gets to produce a crayon, a junky old toy, or a piece of lint and bask in the limelight for thirty glorious seconds. It seems almost therapeutic. I bet even adults could benefit from some Show-and-Tell therapy every now and then. (As for me, I'd probably have a hard time choosing between my Lisa Frank binder from fifth grade and my old retainer to show.)

{screaming}

I JUST found out that the offer we made on a house yesterday was accepted. Two minutes ago.

What the heck were they thinking?!? Don't they know we're just kids?

The thing that keeps going through my mind is that now we have to buy a lawn mower. That feels very....adult-ish. Especially for someone who's been buried in a juvenile fiction book (Fablehaven) all day. And who decided against veggies for dinner tonight just because.

I think Sage prayed us into this situation. She is SO sick of "house hunting," even in spite of the many outrageous bribes we offer for good behavior...and that we deliver regardless of behavior.

The best and worst of the bribes (to the kids and the parents respectively) have been two Disney princess microphones that play only a (very) few stanzas of "Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo." I'm genuinely surprised the batteries aren't dead by now, for the number of times they've been played. My thanks goes out to Disney for making the "on" button also function as an "off" button. (Though heaven knows they are "on" much more than they are "off" during house hunting.) And (no) thanks to Disney, I often wake up in the night with those 4 measures of "Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo" floating through my head.

Sage and Eliza like to play duets with their microphones. They do a countoff, and try to start them at the exact same time. This usually results in Eliza's going off 5 seconds after Sage's. But occasionally they are close enough to bring total chaos to the back seat...not unlike the chaos that comes when they don't have microphones. Without the microphones, they suffer and we suffer. And with the microphones we suffer. This is what I call parental sacrifice. They better buy me a beautiful coffin some day.

Though I joke about Sage praying us into this soon-to-be-home-owners situation, Eliza literally did. Here's a quote from her morning prayer today: "Please help us find a house with all kinds of cool stuff."

Cool stuff, huh? Well, Eliza's easy to please. As long as the Disney microphones move in with us, Eliza will be happy. But cool stuff this house does have....including a dog run (snort snort), a large swingset, a huge yard, and plenty of room for GUESTS and visitors. (And this time, Heather, you won't have to sleep on our living room floor, and your friends can have the entire dog run to themselves!)

So mark your calendars, my friends. It's time to plan a trip to beautiful Salt Lake! And please bring your lawn mowers.

It's time

Ecclesiastes 3:1

"To everything there is a season,
and a time to every purpose under the heaven"

Our Ecclesiastes:

A time to house hunt and screech to a halt in front of these signs [much to the dismay of my kids]

And a time to refrain from blogging and checking any websites that are not Utahrealestate.com.

A time to be grateful for the husband's job and promotion,

and a time to learn how to manage at dinner without the husband.

A time to hold back sniffles

And a time to hold back giggles

A time to back up computer files [oops...that time was actually two weeks ago]

and a time to be grateful for computer geek friends. [Really grateful.]

A time to put away chocolate and make lots of trips to Dad's orchard

[Your photo still makes me drool, Kelly S.]

And a time to ignore the dishes and go outside with the kids

[Because you might find them outside painting themselves with your fabric paints.]