New flooring!! Hizzah!!

Oh happy day!! At long last we got rid of our icky carpet in our family room. It has been a long time coming. It's not something that we could really afford to do, but it was something that we really needed to do. I am not going to go into specifics, but 3 kids, 8 pets over the years , lots of traffic. You do the math. It was time.
Rockstar did it all himself. He pulled up the carpet and padding. Then we had to pull out 10,000 tiny nails and staples.

Then he carefully started cutting and laying out the flooring. It all snapped together like a puzzle. It really is pretty cool.

Then, before you know it, 6 hours later, we have a complete room done. It looks so much better. It just makes the room seem bigger.

We are still getting used to the echo of the room still. Without carpet there to absorb the sheer volume of our family it is a little deafening. But a throw run will help.

But yeah. I think it looks nice and does wonders for the room.

Oh L'Amour!!

Broke my heart
Now I'm aching for you.
Oh L'Amour
whats a boy in love supposed to do?

Alright enough with the sing along. Although that is now guaranteed to be in your head for the rest of the day.
You can thank me later.

Anyhow, with the great and terrible day of the Valentine almost upon us, most red blooded "normal" girls get all swoony and require roses and chocolates. I am not one of those girls. It is in my mind just another day created for the sole purpose to sell something. Rockstar and I have never really made a big thing of it. Although he usually does make a passing remark to note the day.

My reason for living and love of my life is going way better than that this year. We are spending the Valentine weekend tearing up carpet and laying laminate flooring. When most girls would scoff and not see this as exciting, I jump up and down in rejoice. What a guy! What a stud!!

Home remodeling!!! A man after my own heart :)

Seeing as the flooring project pretty much taps us out, I am making his Valentine this year. So I know it is a couple days early, but better early than late.

So Happy Valentine's day!

weekend marathon ...volume 2

So Rockstar and I went out to lunch Saturday afternoon at the place that we always go if we have an afternoon off. Someplace romantic you may ask,....not really. We always go to Ikea. ....Because we are big dorks. We look at furniture and cabinets and dream of what we could do with our house if money were no object. Plus Ikea has a fantastic cafeteria with really good food. Call it what you will, but hey, we know what we like.

So we finish up with Ikea and we need to get back because my in laws were going to be dropping off the kids soon. So we start heading in that direction, when my husband starts taking a little detour.

Me- "ok where are you going? Have you forgotten how to get home?"
Rockstar- "I have always wanted to see what kind of neighborhoods are over in this area."
Me- "It's right next to the airport, nobody lives over here voluntarily. Sightseeing over, we need to get home so your parents don't think we ditched the kids on them"
Rockstar- "Oh they can wait, I just want to see what is over here......"
Me- (starting to get antsy) "We can do this another time, c'mon we need to get home"

Meanwhile we pull into a hotel parking lot and he turns off the van.

At this point I begin to panic and worry if I should call his parents and let them know that we are going to be late.

Then he says "we aren't going to pick up the kids, they are staying the night at my parents house."

???!!!

What?

"I couldn't wrap up your Christmas present and put it under the tree, but I can give it to you now."

He got me (us) a night at a really nice hotel here in town. Not just a nice room, the Presidential suite.

Oh heck yes!!

That little fart planned this whole elaborate plan with setting up child care, packing all of our clothes, toiletries and sneeking it out of the house right under my nose. Not an easy undertaking. I see all. But this one slid right past me. He even got all the kids clothes packed and got them all church clothes and remembered pajamas. Not that I have ever doubted his ability to do this, but it's just something that I have always taken care of. But he did it all. Not only did he do it all, but he did it all under the radar.

The room was awesome. It had a jacuzzi in the living room and an enormous television. We did absolutly nothing. It was fantastic! We had pizza delivered and sat in the hot tub most of the night while watching TV. It was so nice not to have to worry about dishes, or working on craft projects that I am doing for Christmas presents. I didn't have to constantly be in ear shot of a baby monitor or sleep with one ear open for the kids. I didn't have to let dogs out in the middle of the night to go potty or break up arguments over toys at 5 AM. It seems so simple, but it was the best Christmas present anyone could have given me.

Here are a few pictures of our room.

We came back down to reality sometime Sunday afternoon when we had to go get the kids. For real I mean.

But because it was a marathon weekend, it was only half done. There is still more to come.......

It should be noted also, what an awesome husband I really do have. Not that anyone has ever doubted this. But I thought I should point out here, because I know he would never disclose this.

His band parted ways a couple months ago. All on good terms, but it was still hard to do so for him. He knew he didn't want to do the whole band thing anymore, so he went out and sold all of his equipment. All but one of his basses. He had a lot of equipment. I say this now, because he had this present for me in mind while he was selling his stuff off. This is not something we could normally afford. He used that money he got to pay for Christmas presents. I can't even begin to express my love and gratitude for such an expression. He so rocks!!

The October 32nd party

So last night Rockstar and I got to go to a real life grown up party. His band played a huge house party out in Damascas. It was a a lot of fun. There were 6 or 7 bands that played and everyone was in costume.

I only got a couple of crummy pictures, but really I sort of felt like the stage mom taking pictures, so I chose to enjoy the show rather than take pictures. That and I couldn't get very close to the stage because there was a pretty rowdy mosh pit in front and I didn't want to get sucked into it. (One of the hazards of a rock show)

My childhood best friend came up from White Salmon and her boyfriend were able to come up and go to the party with us too. It was really nice hanging out with her again. Although it was sort of a deja vu moment being at a rowdy party out in the boonies as this how we spent most of our torrid youth :)

A good time was had by all.

Any more disclosure of the events of the night and I fear I may tarnish my squeeky clean (like who am I fooling?) image you may have of me :)

Great gosh O' mighty!!

Ok in our experience when it rains it pours. That is if a day starts going south, everything else goes down with the ship.

Rockstar husband had a friend of his that does MMA (which is sort of like boxing, mixed with wrestling) and he had a big fight yesterday. I knew about it and so he was going to be gone most of the day. Big deal, I am alone most of the time with the kids anyway, so it was no big deal. Of course we had no idea what kind of day it would unfold to be.

It started out with me canning up the last of the pears that I picked from my in law's tree in their backyard. They were perfectly ripe and so the day had come to get them in jars before they went over ripe. So I spent the morning skinning and cleaning them up. I set my canning kettle on to boil. It is a gigantic pot that takes about 45 minutes to bring it to a boil. I turned it on and sort of forget about it. I went out to the garage to see if I had any more wide mouthed jars. Next thing I know there is pandemonium in the kitchen. It turns out there was a piece of paper or something that had fallen into the burner and had now not only caught fire, but set off the smoke alarm filling the house with smoke. I come running in with the kids jumping around and freaking out and the smoke alarm screaming at me. There were flames shooting from the burner. I blew them out and now we just had a house full of smoke. We opened all of the windows and it cleared out. No harm done.Although it left a giant black burned ring on my stove top. Fantastic.

So then I moved on to my next project. While the pears were going through their heat process, I thought I would try to get some Ebay done.Peanut slept through the whole smoke alarm fiasco so I wanted to get a couple more things done while I had this window of opportunity. I was just getting into a groove when I hear Sunshine in hysterics running toward me with her pants around her ankles. It turns out she managed to overflow the toilet and water was cascading all over the bathroom. It took 6 giant beach towels to clean up the mess.Also 4 rolls of toilet paper (that were in a basket on the floor) were sacrificed in this process. Just as I was cleaning up this mess, my canning kettle started to boil over once again setting off the smoke alarm. It was like a comedy of errors.

Then it started getting late in the afternoon so I started to get dinner underway. I made up some penne pasta with homemade sauce. I threw in some basil that I had grown and a whole multitude of spices. My kids naturally turned up their noses and would only eat it if there was parm on top. At this point I was tired of fighting, so I just threw some parm on it to get it down their gullet. I sat them down to eat and everyone was doing fine, so I thought I would go out and get the mail while everyone was mellow. I couldn't have been outside for more than 3 minutes when I come inside and it was like the bad news bears were running wild through my family room. There was penne noodles stuck on the walls. There was sauce on the TV screen. (Yes we were eating in front of the TV, just save your hate mail, I don't want to hear it)Peanut was rubbing his hair with a parm,red sauce mixture. It was like something out of a movie. Needless to say, Libby (the dog) was having a hay day with all of the food flying about. The second I walked into the room everyone froze. Fists full of food waiting to be hurled.

I would love to say that I handled myself in a calm and mature way,not loosing my cool. But if you know me, well, that is not how it went down. Tears were shed and a reluctant cleaning crew was constructed.

Once the clean up was done, Sunshine and Bug went upstairs to play. I could hear them over the monitors getting rowdy and I called up a couple times to settle down, but somehow my voice always seems to fall on deaf ears. Within minutes I hear a crash and Bug comes flying down the stairs in a panic fever screaming "I didn't do anything!! Don't listen to her!!" Then I see Sunshine stagger down the stairs sobbing and bleeding from her face somewhere. It turns out she split her lip because Bug threw a toy at her.It took almost 15 minutes to get her to settle down just to pull that bit of information out of her.

Just as I was cleaning her up and trying to get her to calm down, Rockstar walks in the door.

Chaos a flyin.

"Wow, what did I miss?" He says.

"Well ....lets see, we lit the kitchen on fire, flooded the bathroom ,had a fierce food fight and now Sunshine is now bleeding out the mouth. Ehh, not much."

Wii are back in business!!....Get it?

Ok despite my love/hate relationship with our Wii, really I do love more than hate. Even though it tells me I am fat and gives me a grossly inaccurate age, I still sort of like the little guy. What can I say, I am a glutton for punishment.I have a bit of an abuse seeking personality. I can tell the Wii really likes me, it just doesn't know how to show it.

Well so we got the Wii fit a couple weeks ago. We loved it we hated it, it told us what we needed to hear. I like to call it tough love. We got exactly 2 days out of it when suddenly it wouldn't take disks. It was like there was something jammed in where the disc goes that was blocking the way. My husband fiddled and tinkered and tried to figure what was going on, but in short he would have to take it apart to really find out what was going on. Problem with this is...Nintendo is really sneeky about using special tools when they assemble their products. So you can't just take a screw driver to it an open it up. You have to take it to a special Nintendo repair company. Which is very expensive for a seemingly simple project.

But luckily my husband knows to hit up a few nerd forums on the interwebs to ask for advise. He found a company that sold the special tool needed, so we ordered it. After 2 weeks of anxiously waiting for it to arrive from Hong Kong (yeah really) it finally arrived.

He took it apart last night and found the culprit.


That's right a dumb plastic spoon from a play kitchen set.


Wonder how that got there?

Only a month away!!

Ok I know it's not like Christmas or anything, but next to Christmas, my favorite holiday is Halloween. In my 33 years, I have never not dressed up. Is that weird? I don't know, but it is a fact. And to boot, I have no shame about it. I loves me some Halloween.

I already have my costume lined up and Rockstar is still working on his. It need to be epic to out do costumes of years past. Let us not forget last year's awesome ensemble...




In case you are having a hard time placing that ugly woman, it's Courtney Love. The one on the left I mean.

So what are we going to do this year you may ask....well that as of now is top secret.
But I do need help trying to figure out what Peanut is going to be. I set up a poll there on the right with my top 3 ideas. I just can't seem to decide on my own, so I am asking for help. I need to start thinking about it now because if you wait too long, all the good costumes are gone.

So c'mon! Help a sista out.

Turns out I am the dancing queen.

So I do have a confession. I love to dance. It's true. I spent the better part of my early twenties in seedy techno clubs.

But these day...when the kids go to bed....my husband and I break out the mirrored ball and polyester pants.....well you get the idea.

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Hours of entertainment

How to entertain a toddler.

1 window
1 hose

1 spray nozzle.

He is mesmerized and freaked out all at the same time. He flinches each time the spray hits the window, then squeals when he realizes it is not getting him wet.

What a nut.

What a guy!!

When I found out my husband was going to Chicago for work, I had one thing and one thing only that I wanted him to get me while he was there. I mean I do like my cheezy souvenir shot glass and magnets, but what I really wanted was for him to go to Harpo studios and get me a picture. ...(and also something from Oprah's store)

Not many husbands would actually make good on a request like this. But this one came through with flying colors. He got me an awesome travel mug from her store. He was walking around the city, so he opted not to get a bag to have them put the mug in. A bag as it was pink and had "OPRAH" in huge letters on both sides. He really didn't want to carry that around the city.Can't say I really blamed him. I mean he did survive the whole pink phone humiliation, but a guy can only go so far.

You can't really see it unless you look really hard, but it says "Harpo studios" on the awning.

Seriously. How awesome is that? Pretty darn awesome :)

My poor fabulous husband.

So we had this scorching heat wave last week and were in the 100's for a couple days in a row. Well some cooler weather blew through with a big thunder and lightning display and buckets of terental rain. But because we sort of knew it was coming, my husband planned ahead and wore a full rain suit (pants and coat) to ride his bike to work. What he didn't expect is the rain to be so pounding that it soaked through the seems of his waterproof coat and completely soaked his phone that was in the waterproof pocket of his waterproof coat. (do you see where I am going with this?)

This is not the first phone that has been destroyed by water. His last one flew out of his pocket and into a toilet. ...Yeah eww. But he has been really careful with this one. Really there is no way that he could have prevented this from happening. He rides to work every day. Rain or shine and C'mon, we live in Portland so we get a lot more rain than we do shine.

So in short his phone is dead. Deader than dead. With his job he can't be without a phone. He was just approved for a company blackberry, but has not gotten it yet. Problem is, he has to go to Chicago for a week of training next week. In the meantime he has to use my phone.

My phone is great for me.

It's hot pink, has rhinestone flip-flop charm and plays a Steevie Wonder song for a ringtone. It is fabulous for me and any number of drag queens in the Portland metro area. Not so fabulous for my always in black, punk listenin to, nose in books I will never understand, definatly not girly husband.

The funniest part of this is that next week he is going to have to go through airport security and empty his pockets into that little tray. Where my super cute hot pink phone will be for all of the FSA folks to snark at.

Luckily he is totally comfortable in his skin and masculinity. Stuff like this doesn't really bother him. He will wave around his hot pink Barbie phone proudly and proclaim " at least I have a phone!"

And this is why I heart him so :)

Ahhh! The sound of rushing water...

 

 

 

 

So the past couple days we have noticed this sound in our house. It was very faint, but got more and more noticable. It sounded like someone had left a sink running or something. As the water consumption in this house is staggering, we usually just write it off as "oh it is the dishwasher or clothes wacher or someone just flushed the toilet" Water is in constant use around here. (we are horrible citizens of earth, I know but work it out. I'm trying my best here)Usually those things are the culperate.

But yesterday morning we awoke to "the sound". It sounded like someone had turned the outside hose on full blast and then just walked away.

My husband got up and got ready for work at normal time. By 6:30 he was walking out the door , when he heard ...."the sound". He pinpointed the source of it and realized we had a bit of a problem on our hands. He then called in to work, changed his clothes and got to work digging up the front yard.

It turns out an "on/off" valve has broken it's seal and was spraying water. Problem with this is....it was about 4 feet under ground. So he spent the better part of his morning digging a giant hole in our front yard. Then came the hard part. The actual plumbing issues. Considering we can't really afford to pay some plumber $200 an hour just to come out and fix a valve, he went online and learned how to do it himself. He also called his Dad out for a second opinion. Between the two of them, they figured out the problem, fixed the problem and even got to work a blow torch. How cool is that?

Only problem with all of this, is that we had no water for the better part of the day. You would think that Bug was in heaven. Being able to pee in the back yard and not get in trouble for it. AWESOME!!!

Anyhow, problem is solved. No more leaks or sprays or anything like it. Also water is back on and we are just going to have to pee indoors again.

Just when the fun was beginning.

Pure awesome!!

So yesterday we went down to the waterfront to check out the Rose festival here in Portland.

The past couple years the Rose festival has been sporting this ride that induces pure anxiety among most people. The ride is something that resembles a reverse slingshot where you sit in a pod with about 3,000 springs stretched to the limit and then it hurls you in the air with little holding on to you but a glorified seat belt. It is anchored to the ground by 2 large poles painted like the American flag and it blasts Metallica through enormous speakers to make sure that you hear it 10 stories up as you hurl to your impending death. If it

wasn't $25 for one ride, I would be all over it. I love me some extreme rides.

My husband loves this ride as well. not because he is into big rides. Because that would not be true in any way. Rides just aren't his thing. I try not to belittle his manhood because of this, but I am only human after all. But he loves it because this ride is set up directly in front of his office. On a sunny day if the windows are open, he can hear the blood curdling screams from the unsuspecting souls that think they can handle a ride like this. It is pure joy to listen to the screams over the blaring heavy metal music playing. It just never gets old. It is really entertaining. We are such broken people :)

Well along with the slingshot ride this year, they added a new ride. This one is basically just a giant construction crane with a seat attached to both ends. The crane then spins around at about 30 mph in a circle like a propeller. The seats however are just seats. They have no cage to keep the people in. So literally they could break loose and go sailing at full speed into the murky toxic waters of the Willamette river.

Sound like fun?

Even as I watched this one, I couldn't help but think it was just a little on the scary side.

We sat and watched it for about 15 minutes or so. In that time Bug started to get a little nervous that we were actually going to go on it. We assured him that we weren't we were just watching the people on it.He then had the best quote of the day.

"Good because those people aren't into it and saying "WOO" (imagine a smile and pumping a fist in the air) they were really saying "AAAHHHHH!" ( because they were terrified)."

** He also felt the need to do the motions as I wrote it out.

Smart kid that one.

Best Dad ever!

Ok so you all know of my love/hate relationship with the play doh. It is reserved for only "special occasions". You know like in the event of spending the past 3 days screaming and nagging, I bring it out as a peace offering.

Well my rock star husband stayed home sick today (he's been fighting the death flu all week) and when Sunshine asked for play doh. He of course not knowing the sheer annoyance I have with the stuff gladly agreed to let her play with it.

When we discovered just how gross the old play doh was, he decided to make up some fresh. So he just jumped right in and made some. Plus including Sunshine in the process.

What a guy! What a Dad!

Fancy schmancy

So my rock star husband surprised me this weekend with a big night out. We had planned for the kids to go to his parents and then we just go out to a nice dinner. But instead he got us a really nice room just across town.

Although a nice night out is great, there is always going to be dishes waiting for you when you get home if you know what I mean. So he wanted to just get us out of town without going out of town.

Our room had an enormous jacuzzi in the room which we spent the majority of the time in, just watching TV. It was a luxury we totally can't do at home. The room also had a sleep number bed in it. Now I'm not normally big on gimmicky type things, but if these weren't so stinking expensive, I would buy one of them in a heart beat!! I slept like I haven't slept in years. It was absolutely incredible.

It was just one night and we had to come back to our real life, but it was the best little get away we've ever had. It was great just to do nothing. Although I totally could have used a couple more days :)

By the way, we did go out to a nice dinner too. Hence the fancy schmancy dress.

Sometimes it's just the little things.

So I am believe it or not, but I have had a sort of boring week. Nothing really of blog worthy significance. Although I did get a fabulous night out with the girls and Kurtis last weekend. I had a great time, but my pictures (along with the evening) came out to blurry and dark to put up. It's probably for the best that I don't divulge all the details. I wouldn't want to tarnish my reputation as such a stand up wife and mother :)

So instead I will give you the next best thing.

I was folding laundry and all of a sudden it got quiet in the house. Instantly I felt the need to investigate why. (I'm starting to feel like Mel Gibson in Signs when he drops everything because he can not hear his children)

This is what I stumble on to. Few things warm my heart like the sight of my kids dressed for bed and mellowed out reading a book with Dad. What a guy!

My husband the philosopher

So often I beam with pride by the things my husband does and says. He has an incredible mind not to mention a dark wit. He sees the world through a different filter that most of us do and is able to put the pieces together in a way that I only wish I could. Half the time I just coast through life as a sort of inactive participant. Often I find myself following a "sheeple" mentality. This is something I am working on, but hey, we all have something.

I'm not just being lazy here, but he wrote an awesome and profound post on his blog that I thought was worth sharing.

Which State Do You Live In

Monkey see monkey do.

So my husband stayed home today. He's been having a hard time sleeping and his job is really high stress right now, so a little hookey was in order.

Well on his days off you can most likely find him playing xbox or as of recent wii. Although the wii is the "kids" Christmas present (don't tell them), but my husband can't seem to keep his hands off of it. After all....Christmas is still like 3 weeks away and we can play it when they go to bed and they'll never know. One of these days someone is going to sneek down the stairs and we'll be totally busted.Caught with the remote control nun chucks in hand. But until then....I can totally kick his butt in tennis. But that is neither here nor there.
So video games are just a normal part of our life. Although it really cracked me up when I see my husband playing xbox this morning (Nothing new) and I see peanut sitting next to him with a spare controller pointing at the screen. He didn't know what "it" did, but he knew that we point these at the screen and watch the screen. It was pretty cute. He knew what to do.

A real life grown up party!!

Last night Grandparents took the kids and my Husband and I went to a real life grown up party. Ok granted, it was a Halloween party so everyone dressed up, but there were no streamers, balloons, sugary snacks, but best of all, no ankle bitters I had to chase around and monitor!! Don't get me wrong I love my kids dearly, but grown up fun is few and far between these days. In fact we were thinking about it the other day and the last time my husband and I got out together without kids was almost 3 months ago. He and I sort of do things in shifts. Either he goes out with friends, or I go out and do something. It's rarely both at the same time. But that's neither here nor there. That's just what comes with the territory of having kids. I'm looking at you...anyone out there that is reading this who doesn't have kids. Enjoy your time while it's still your own. Don't take it for granted that you can go see a movie on a whim anytime you want to. I wish I had appreciated it more.
Anyhoo back to the party. It was just a low key party that started at My husbands friend's house and then moved over to a local pub. It was your basic seedy dive bar but our entire group (all in costume) sort of took over the place including the jukebox. We blasted our Def Leopard and Dio and blazed in there like a band of renegades in drag.
Which leads me to our costumes. Which already you have seen the pictures. But let me explain a bit. I am clearly the Queen of hearts. Pretty cut and dry. My Husband however, caused the most commotion in the bar. He is not just an ugly woman. Oh no. He is Courtney Love. After a night of rock-n-roll and binging. My sister in law is a witch and her boyfriend is Cane from Kung Foo.
I think the high point of the night was watching these old grizzled trucker looking guys going into the mens restroom, then turning around and walking right back out with puzzled looks of their faces. Only to find my husband in there in full drag hiking his dress up to tinkle. If only I could have been a fly on the wall ;)

**My husband wants me to make it very clear that this is just for Halloween. He doesn't do this sort of thing normally. It is a gag, not a secret life he's been waiting to share with the world.

The price of fame...

My husband stayed home today.

He is in a pseudo/punk band that had a practice last night. He's always very conscience about wearing ear plugs as we both have extensive hearing damage. Both he and I have seen countless rock shows when we were younger (long before kids even became a topic of conversation). Plus on top of that, I was a club kid, and he was in the Rave scene. It really is shocking how normal we both turned out :)

Anyhow, between the concerts, and the ear bleeding volumes that most techno can only be played at, we are both really hard of hearing. So whenever he's going to be somewhere that the music is going to be loud...like band practice, he'll wear earplugs to salvage what hearing he has left. But apparently the pair that he used last night, one of them wasn't in all the way, so he's got a really bad ear ache in one ear. Any loud noises really hurts as I can see him cringe with every screech that Peanut makes. Today was the day that all of our neighbors decided to mow their lawn, Bug thought it would be a great idea to chase Sunshine until she screamed.

Truth be known, we were all out to get him. That's how it had to look at least. If it still hurts tomorrow, I'm going to make him go see a doctor. We have way too loud a household to try and be quiet. We're just loud people. Take us or leave us :)

I'm ready to go slip into a hot bath and read a book.

Jax out...