While You Were Out

Shaunie recently headed north to her tierra natal to attend the funeral of a great man, her Grandpa. She will post on that later. While she was gone, over a period of five days and four nights, we had quite the adventure here at home.

Gordon at the bus stop waiting for Evelyn. This is what happens when Dad dresses him. Khaki shorts, Star Wars shirt, Red Sox hat, blue hoodie, rad!

After dropping Shaunie off at the airport, I took the little kids to the store and we looked at toys before going home to get Evelyn at the bus stop. It just so happens that the same day Shunie left, Jillian had her second-ever dental appointment. If you know Jill, you know she's a creature of habit. New things are to be avoided at all costs, especially when Mommy isn't around. Evelyn went back first, she marched straight in without any hesitation. Jilly, on the other hand, was nervous and clinging to Daddy like she was hanging off a cliff. The dentist, who normally doesn't allow parents back with their kids, thought it would be fine if I went back with her, so Gordon and Evelyn sat in the lobby with the nice receptionist and watched cartoons while Jilly marched toward certain doom. As it turns out, she says, "It wasn't that scary. And the funny toothpaste tastes like bubblegum."

Jilly being brave for the dentist. She has her ducky blanket to keep her safe.

On a separate note, the dentist looks very much like the toy fixer from Toy Story 2.

Having narrowly survived the dentist, I made an executive decision and we went to In'N'Out for dinner. This was a good plan, except for the part where Jilly didn't eat any dinner. I thought maybe she was rebelling against Mommy's absence, but it turns out she just had a fever of 103.2, impeccable timing Mr. Virus (chickenpox). I gave her some medicine to reduce her fever and she went to bed a bit early.

The next day was easy, I was on spring break and only had to get Evelyn to the bus stop on time. I made her lunch the night before, set out the fixings for breakfast and made sure to set two alarms so I wouldn't sleep in. Mission accomplished. The morning was pretty low key, we watered the garden, played some games, I put off doing the dishes, and Jillian's fever had subsided. However, lunch wasn't a smashing success as I was informed that I had not made the macaroni and cheese "like Mommy makes it." Jilly didn't eat much and she started to complain that her body hurt. After we picked up Evelyn, Jillian's previous declaration was restated by her sister, "The macaroni is kind of weird. You didn't make it like Mommy." That night the missionaries were scheduled to come to dinner (another appointment made before we knew about the untimely trip up north). Of course, Jillian started to feel funny, perhaps my macaroni was toxic. I planned to just meet the Elders at Taco Bell since I didn't want to get them sick, and, let's face it, the less I cook the better for everyone. As the afternoon began to fade I found Jillian upstairs dipping Q-tips into water and putting them in her ear in an attempt to stop them from hurting. I looked in her ear and saw what looked like a dark spot with some white puss. Her primary classmate had an ear infection recently and I did the math: prior knowledge of a friend with an ear infection + fever + weird puss-looking stuff in Jilly's ear = ear infection. I called the urgent care folks and they agreed that she should come in. I have Jill some medicine to reduce her pain/fever and by the time we left, she was feeling pretty good. I figured we should go to the doctor anyway. I missionaries were nice enough to cancel for the evening while we headed to urgent care. At the doctor's office Gordon decided he needed to inspect his sister's throat.

"Jillian I need to look inside. Oh, you're okay." -Dr. Gordon

 As it turns out, Jilly just had some wax clogging her ear. The puss-looking stuff was wax that turned white after being saturated by the water that she had put in her ear via q-tips. They washed her ear out and I was just glad that she was fine. Poor Shaunie got about 37 urgent text messages while I was trying to figure things out. When we got home we ate our dinner, courtesy of Taco Bell, and watched The Empire Strikes Back. One of the funniest things I've ever heard is when the girls explain stuff like Batman or Star Wars to each other (inspired by my playing of Lego Batman or Lego Star Wars).

Jilly: Look, Yoda's using the force too, how is he doing it?

Evelyn: I don't know but he is.

Jilly: What kind of animal is he?

Evelyn: Hmmm, let's see. What do we got? He's probably...hmmm, let's see....he's probably a peroson that got really really old, and then, he shrunk.

Jilly: And he turned green.

Evelyn: And is ears grew long, and his hair grew out, because he was so old.

Saturday we slept in a bit, I got the kids fed and we were off to Evelyn's softball game.

Gordon inspecting the ants.

Swinging for the fence.

Ev and everyone on the team did great, they all got at least two hits doing coach-pitch. While Evelyn was playing Gordon and Jill kept busy by gathering sticks and making a "fire". We also played a bit of catch to stay occupied during the game. After it was over we stayed at the park for a bit so the kids could play on the playground equipment.

"Dad! We made a campfire to stay warm!" -Jilly

The kids were great the whole morning so on the way home from softball we stopped and got the fixin's for some root beer floats as a reward. We also got some gas behind this guy.

I told the kids that his car is called a Corvette and that it's a really cool car that goes very fast. Evelyn, after inspecting the gentleman gassing up his car, put two and two together. A guy that wears sun-glasses and drives a fast, cool, car, "must be a spy, like that guy in that show you love." 

She was referring to the character Michael Weston from Burn Notice. Good eye Evelyn. On the way home the kids wanted to know how far I could ride my bike:

Evelyn: Could you ride all the way to Mexico?

Daddy: Yep.

Evelyn: Could you ride all the way to Nevada?

Daddy: Maybe.

Evelyn: Could you ride all the way to Chihuahua, Mexico (where I served my mission)?

Daddy: Maybe.

Evelyn: Could you ride all the way to China?

Daddy: Nope.

Evelyn: Could you ride all the way to San Diego?

Daddy: Yep. I did that before. 

Evelyn: What!?

Daddy: Yep.

That night after dinner (frozen pizza...yep, I'm a great cook) we had root beer floats and watched Return of the Jedi. This of course resulted in impromptu light-saber fights, the dressing up as Jedi knights, and organizing the couch cushions in the shape of an X-Wing fighter. Rad.

Sunday was a more relaxing day, we just kind of hung out, relaxed, listened to general conference, and prepared for the big day. While I was trying to listen to conference/stay awake, the kids kept busy playing with play-doh. They made some pretty cool designs. For dinner Sunday we had broccoli, rice, and orange chicken (thanks to Costco, it wasn't very hard). This was hilarious because the kids kept commenting on my cooking (or lack thereof). Here are a few of the comments:

Daddy: These are the cups you are going to use the rest of the day.

Jilly: Why?

Daddy: Because there is no need to dirty more dishes.

Jilly: [Raises her hand as if to be called on] But don't know how to wash dishes? 

According to the girls, the bucket here is a castle, and all the stuff in front of it is a zoo.

Monday I had to get Gordon and Jill to our friend's house (who kindly agreed to watch them while I taught class), get Evelyn to the bus stop, and get my class all by 8am. The night before I made Evelyn's lunch, set out bowls of oatmeal (just add hot water!), put water in the kettle, and had everybody's clothes set out. I set two alarms and didn't screw up at all. We all had a filling breakfast and got to our respective destinations on time. I picked up the little kids after class and we went home for a nap (Daddy was up late planning his lesson). However, I had forgotten that I had a meeting that day at 12...oops! So I just brought the kids. They were bored, but so was I, meetings are a waste of time. On the way to the meeting and on the way home we got to ride the campus shuttle, the kids loved this. The bus was packed and I was standing, holding onto a rail, while holding Jillian's hand, and she was holding Gordon's hand. The undergrads really didn't know what do to about the fact that there were kids on the bus, so rather than offer us a seat, they stared directly into their iphones and pretended we weren't there. The funniest part was that every time the driver hit the brakes, we'd all lunge forward. Jilly thought it was like a game, try to stay standing. The student in front of her didn't agree so much, Gordon's head kept hitting her in the bum. But hey, next time, maybe offer a seat to the little kids.

Waiting for the bus after the "most boringist meeting ever."

Luckily the bus was much less crowded on the way home and each kid got their own seat.

We picked up Evelyn and soon after, left for the airport to get Mommy. We were all very happy to see her, and she was happy to see that the van and apartment were not trashed and each one of us had all of our limbs. By the time we got there, Gordon was so tired that he had fallen asleep. When we got home and Shaunie got him out of the car, he was so happy that he wanted to keep giving her kisses, but he was so asleep that he kept nodding off, cutest thing ever.

Though we missed Shaunie, I had a lot of fun with the kids. We played a bit of Lego Indiana Jones, watched some Star Wars, read some books, and played at the park. All around we had fun and we even ate some decent food (for one meal). I think next time Mommy goes out of town we'll be fine as well.

The story of the microwave and bad afternoon naps

After re-telling this story to my sister the other night, I figured it was worth typing up because I found it so hilarious after-the-fact. One important fact to note: I am super-cranky when I first wake up from any sleep lasting longer than 40 minutes. I need 10 minutes to lay there and come to my senses before dealing with problems. Otherwise, you're getting the beastly side of me. Ben and the kids don't prefer this side.

We received a microwave for our wedding, a pretty nice one in fact. And while Ben thinks it takes up too much counter space, I guess I am a little attached to it and the fact that it still runs fine keeps me holding onto it. The only flaw it has is the broken LED screen which fried sometime during our first move, and has rarely worked since. Hence, you really have to pay attention to the buttons you're pushing.
Recently, Jilly has learned to make her favorite snack, chocolate chip peanut butter burritos. It's a flour tortilla, with peanut butter spread on one side and sprinkled with chocolate chips. Heat it in the microwave for 16 seconds, roll it up, and it's yummy, warm, gooey goodness.
A few days ago I was on the couch dozing just after lunch and the kids exclaim they're all hungry despite having just eaten. So Jilly offered to make herself and Gordon a burrito, which she did in fine fashion, no messes or mishaps. Evelyn wanted to get in on this (while I am mostly asleep), and then this conversation unfolds:
Mom!
Me, groggy: What?
My tortilla is stuck to the paper towel in the microwave! (Does anyone else keep a paper towel on their microwave plate?)
Me, trying to wake up to properly deal with this problem. Well, just peel it off.
No! Then the paper towel will stick to the tortilla and I'll eat it!
Me, thinking why in the world is it stuck, it never gets stuck. Maybe you didn't heat it enough, put it on for ten more seconds. 10 more seconds.
Mom, it's still stuck! Me, getting annoyed at this point. I go to the microwave and find burned, solid chocolate chips sitting atop bubbled, dried out peanut butter, atop a large tortilla-like cracker. 
Uh, how long did you cook this for?
Well, Jilly said sixty seconds so I pushed one, six, zero.
Um, Ev, it's sixteen seconds. Not sixty. You cooked yours for 2 minutes.
Oohh. Sheepish smile.
Make another one, and push one, six, and then 'start.' Okay? I go back to the couch to finish lazily dozing. Probably 5 minutes later: 
Mom, what do I push?
One, six, then start.
I'm scared to Mom!
What? Why?
Because if I push the start button, it says 'minute plus' and that means it will add minutes and I don't know how long to count!
Me, totally confused and grouchy: What in the world Evelyn? You've run the microwave before, what's the deal?
I don't trust the microwave! (She begins entering Evelyn panic mode) 
Okay, if you're worried about time being on the clock, just push clear a few times and it will reset everything.
I don't know what a few is!!
Beastly exhale from me: Push it two times! Then push one, six, and start!
But mom, I can't push start because it will add minutes!!
No it won't! Don't you trust that I know how to run the microwave?
Noo!!!
If you want your burrito, push the right buttons!!
I can't!!!!
Now really frustrated, I go back to the kitchen and try to help her gain trust in my microwave skills. 
Look, I promise, that if you push one, six, and then start, it will not add minutes. Okay?
But how do you know Mom?!!
Ugh. I push them for her. She watches her burrito spin. 
More panicking: Mom! No! No! No! The tortilla is blowing up! It's blowing up!!!
Evelyn! It's okay! It does that! The timer's almost done!
No!! The other one did that and then it turned all burned and hard and yucky!!!
Beeeeeep. Out comes warm, gooey goodness.
Oh. Sheepish smile. Thanks Mom.

Oh, the morals of this story. I pick "I should not nap in the afternoon."

The 200th post

 Is dedicated to Jillian and her love of taking pictures recently. I think she did okay for a camera whose LCD screen is mostly broken and un-viewable outdoors. 

Typical Jilly hairstyle: slicked smoothly down the front, hair in the face, and a headband. She has since had a haircut which looks quite nice when I blow-dry it (which is maybe once a week). 

 Part of my kitchen. 

 The light fixture that was hanging over the dining table. 

 Until a pipe upstairs started leaking and dripping down the afore-mentioned fixture, resulting in the loss of the light all together and a ceiling full of holes. It doesn't look too bad here, but this was only half-way through the "where's this leak coming from?" process. Think swiss cheese, and you get the idea. 

Evelyn probably didn't know she took this. Evelyn asked me to cut her hair that short. So much easier to fix in the mornings. 

 Now we head to the community garden for photos. This was early May. Those sunflowers are now gone and the tomato plants are triple the size seen here. Gordon is covering up his eyes cause he's a stinker. 

 A photo of the sun, because when you're five, you don't know you shouldn't look at the sun and Mom wasn't paying attention. 

 Said inattentive Mom. Sidenote: I love wearing floppy sun hats, but they definitely impede my peripheral vision, thus hampering part of my "mommy radar." Not sure what to do about it, but not too concerned either because my children are beyond the "may die or seriously injure themselves every five minutes" stage. 

 Calendulas in the garden. A much prettier relative to marigolds. 

 Exhibit I: Jilly's hand. 

 Exhibit J: Jilly's hand with dirt, because dirt makes everything more interesting. 

Exhibit K: Mom has five kids! Not really, I baby-sit the seated sassy little miss roughly 4 days a week now. It's actually not bad at all, mostly because I'm not sleep-deprived having to care for kids through the night. One of Evelyn's neighbor friends is pictured to the left.

Jilly is so ready for kindergarten, and to be in-the-know (as far as school goes) like her big sister and friends she plays with. Jilly really doesn't have friends that are her age, they're either a year younger or older than she is. Right now she's at a really logical, polite, and helpful stage. It's really nice considering Evelyn is in a mood-swing stage complete with attitude. I thought kids weren't teenagers until they turned 13. 

April Re-cap

April was a busy month for us: Evelyn's Spring Break, Ben starting the last quarter of the academic year, Easter, a birthday, and then all the regular stuff that goes on. 

 Ben took the kids to the mall for free scoop day at Ben and Jerry's. 

 Ben scopes out new parks and viewpoints on his bike rides, and this was a fantastic park we found for flying kites. The ocean breeze comes right over the top of this hill. 

 We also practiced softball skills with the kids.

 Playing after a softball game. 

 Ben's favorite dessert that we mostly gave away this time. 

 The kids were big on Playdough in April. Jillian especially can sit there and create for quite a while. Gordon likes to mash all the colors together, much to the girls' chagrin. 

 Evelyn loves making pictures for people, here's one for her cousin. 

Jillian likes being in control of the camera, and this was one of the few decent shots she took on her last "photo shoot." Lots of blurry pictures, one of Gordon's underwear-clad bottom, pictures of "The Cat in the Hat" show on PBS, etc. 

The first-graders were asked to sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" for their last school assembly. Ev's in the back with her hand raised. There are nearly 100 first-graders. Crazy. She has really grown up a lot this year and learned quite a bit. I wish she'd slow down on the growing part though, she's already got the mood swings to match a teenager. Ugh. Only 7.5 more weeks of school, I can't wait! 

Easter did not produce many good pictures at all; Gordon was fighting off the chickenpox, and so we kept Easter small this year. We did the goodies on Saturday (all the other festivities were that day anyway), so on Sunday we could better focus on the Savior instead of chocolate bunnies and jelly beans. I think it's a tradition we'll keep. 

My garden is a big source of satisfaction lately. I'm grateful to have somewhere to dig in the dirt. I got my garden all ready and planted for this spring/summer, and it's looking to be a much better growing year than last year. Most of the seeds have sprouted, and are continuing to grow instead of just staying tiny seedlings. I still had lots of trouble with my spinach (something ate the sprouts), and then a package of lettuce seed failed to sprout at all, leading me to think it was bad seed or something. My Calendulas and Bert's button flower mix are growing fantastically, as are the tomato plants, sunflowers, bunching onions, and radishes. We planted "Martian Sweet Corn," and Sugar Baby watermelons, which I will attempt to trellis due to a lack of space and mildew problems here. We'll see how the experiment goes!

Happy Birthday Gordon!

 This miniature Buzz Lightyear turned three early last month. He's most definitely no longer a toddler, he likes being rough and tough and can keep up with kids much older than he is. In the last month, he's been able to pretend play with Jilly and Ev in their make-believe games, which is a huge development beyond walking in and destroying whatever set they've built (still does this occasionally). He loves to play in the water, as evidenced by today's partial flood in the bathroom (two sink counter-top, one sink is really clogged, let that faucet run for a while, you can take it from there...). He really enjoys digging in my garden plot and making mud, and splashing in rain puddles to find the snails, slugs and worms that abound in our "May Gray" weather (personally loving it). He sang the beginning section from the "Imperial March" (Star Wars) for the 20 minute car ride home from a store yesterday. He loves Bob the Builder shows and Wonder Pets. 

He picked out Fruit Loops cereal for his birthday breakfast (sugar cereal is rare around here), and asked for maple syrup for lunch. Just syrup.....and then a little while later he added that he wanted "little squares cut up" with it. Jilly translated and said that meant waffles. So that's what we did. This boy LOVES brownies (takes after his mom he does) and so we did a big plate of brownie squares with scoops of vanilla ice cream on top, with an Oreo pushed into each ice cream scoop. The video below demonstrates my complicated technique. Uncle Dan has not missed a birthday yet I think, and he was with us for the afternoon. Gordon loves Uncle Dan. 

 Batman. (Sorry for fuzzy pictures).  

 He got a new baseball glove, and he's opening Great-Grandma Green's present here. 

 "Uuhhuh! More tissue paper?"

He was rewarded with a new pair of jeans. Gordon loves his jeans and when it hits 85 degrees later in the summer, I will have to say the winter fairy stole them until the weather cools off or something. Other random facts: He's been potty-trained for nearly a year now, he is no longer waking up before 6:30 am regularly, but still climbs into bed with me a few times a week. He's been the only kid I've been able to stand having in the same bed, he doesn't squirm around much. He drinks water like a fish, and goes to the bathroom just as much. When we're out in our garden or just playing around the landscaping in our apartment complex, I often find him relieving himself on a bush, wall or rock. Or the girls just yell loud enough for anyone nearby to hear, "MO-OM! Gordon's peeing on (whatever)." Today I wondered if some animalistic territory-marking gene has been activated.  I love my ticklish, squishy, rambunctious boy!

Kids Say the Darnedest Things

This little guy was watching a children's program in which they showed several videos about skyscrapers, parking garages, and other buildings that are made primarily of re-bar and concrete. I don't think he quite understood the message of the show, or maybe he did. Soon after finishing the show he asked me to take him potty, after looking at his handy work in the bowl he said, "Daddy, that's concrete, it's concrete."

The kids

One night when Dad was taking pictures of Evelyn in her softball uniform, Jilly wanted in on the action. She wants to play softball now too, just like Evelyn. We're probably going to buy baseball gloves for her and Gordon, so they can practice alongside Evelyn. 

This is Jilly's bed "set-up." It's been like this since she got her Littlest Pet Shop toys for her birthday last fall. All of her precious things are on the bed somewhere, and she gets quite upset when Gordon or some other unauthorized individual begins re-arranging or cleaning (ahem) this stuff up. She's got about half of her mattress to sleep on. She's finally excited about going to kindergarten this fall, telling me last week that she wishes she could go now. The other thing of note is the way she pronounces R2-D2 from Star Wars. "Ar-tar-dee-too." I think she's corrected it recently, but every time I think of this I smile.

 Evelyn is the softball girl and is really enjoying it. She's improved quite a bit since she started and was really bummed that her game yesterday was cancelled due to rain. She worries about being injured "for the big game." I predict we'll be doing this again next year.

 Here is some of Evelyn's art work. She likes to draw and write letters and lists of things. I can usually count them as homework. She's a diligent student thus far. 

 Some pictures from her first game. The games are about learning skills, so the entire lineup will hit each time they are up to bat and there are no outs. The score for the first game was 33-33, the Mighty Mermaids vs. the Banana Splits. 

 Gordon and his buddy dressed up Toy Story style. Sorry for the bad back-lighting.

Taking a nap one afternoon (rare these days) when they were both feeling under the weather. Ben loves it when Gordon will snuggle up next to him to sleep. 

 Gordon helping out during an FHE puppet show. 

 So who's heard of a show on National Geographic about extreme emergency preppers? I hadn't, until last night when I came back from the gym to see it on the TV and my kids ripping the couches apart and constructing a shelter. Ben finds the show fascinating, in part because the people on the show structure their whole life around this notion of prepping.

The episode that was on was about a guy in Colorado who had invested more than $300,000 in a mountainside bunker 12 hours from his house. He's preparing for what he believes is an impending shift of the earth's poles, which, of course, would cause a lot of grief. The show really struck a chord with my kids, they've rebuilt their "shelter" today. 

 Random shot from Ben. We've been able to see some really bright stars recently, which thanks to an app, we've figured out are planets. The only downside to the app is the fact that we can also see all the stars we're missing due to the light pollution here. When we were in McCall, Idaho last summer, there was no light pollution and Ben and I went outside at midnight to check out the moon-less night sky. It was amazing. 

 We've got church at 9 am this year, which means we have the whole afternoon to relax and find ways to keep the kids busy. This is a temple they built one afternoon, complete with a petting zoo in the back (the rock and tree area) and a place for you to pose for pictures. I'm surprised Gordon didn't knock it down 1/4 of the way into construction.