I just want one room

Today, I was on the phone and in an effort to escape the mayhem that my children are constantly creating, I ducked out of the room they were in and sneaked into my front room to finish my conversation. I haven't finished decorating the room yet, but it has a couch now, and some chairs, and it is clean an peaceful in comparison to the rest of the house. It's my little sanctuary.

See? No toys. No crayon on the walls. No scraped up furniture. Just a couch, but a nice, clean couch that is void of finger smudges and cat hair.

Anyway, it only took a minute before the kids were on to me. Of course they followed me in there and immediately started doing acrobatics from the couch. Argh! I kid you not, within in moments of their arrival there were little feet hitting the wall and the pictures on the wall and chairs crashing into windows. They were opening the doors of my antique cabinet and slamming them closed and every other destructive thing a kid can do.

I'll admit it. I started yelling....

"Why! Why can't I just have one room? Can't I just have one room in the house that is pretty and clean? I just want a place that you don't destroy, that looks like a picture that you can see but can't touch! You have the ENTIRE house to tear apart and all I'm asking for is JUST ONE ROOM that belongs to ME!!!!!"

At that moment, Lizzy looked at me. She was the only one of them who was brave enough to speak.

"Not two?"

Apparently I aim low these days.

Let's Cruise!

Last week, Brent and I had the really cool opportunity to go on a cruise to Alaska with his family. I'm not gunna lie to ya. It was pretty freaking rad. If you were on the fence, wondering if maybe you should go on a cruise to Alaska, allow me to persuade you to do so.

The cruise we took was of the inside passage, which is that little stretch of Alaska right down at to the south and next to Canada. Apparently Canada is only about a stone's throw away. One of our tour guides said "you could just walk over there really quick, except that it's on the other side of the ice fields, which are impassable, so you can't get there."

Here, let me show you...

Our first stop was just barely in the state at Ketchikan, which kept making me think of Catch me if you Can, which reminded of the movie wherein Leonardo DiCaprio pretended to an airplane pilot. Back in the days when flying was glamorous. Not like today. Not. Like. Today.

But I digress.

Here are some photos of our first day back on land.

This is a photo of me and my husband, the talented and handsome Brent, in front of their cool sign. Yes, I am wearing a coat. It was like 50 degrees. It only rained a little while we were there, which apparently is all it takes to make a lovely day in Ketchikan. I think they get something like 13 feet of rain a year, so only raining a little looks pretty good in comparison.

This is another view of the town. It reminded me a lot of Park City, only, you know, next to an ocean.

This is a view of Creek Street, which was built over this here creek.

I think there might be a significant gap between their idea of a creek and mine.

The buildings are so high up because when high tide comes in, the water rises like 2500 feet. Or something like that.

All those bushes are berry bushes. They had wild raspberries and blackberries and blueberries and elderberries and probably a lot of other kinds that I don't know about. The bushes were pretty bare by the time we got there, but I did find one wild raspberry. And then I ate it.

This is a photo of a park. Brent loved the moss everywhere.

This is a photo of a freakishly large slug. We saw these more often than I was comfortable with. Snails are bad enough.

This is a photo of all the boys, save one, in front of Married Man's Trail.

As the story goes, the married men would sneak out this back trail to a brothel at the end of Creek Street so that their wives wouldn't know where they were going. Methinks it probably worked about once before their wives figured out what was going on.

This is a photo of a cool lighthouse on a cool island in the ocean. Anyone else sing Candle on the Water in their head every time they see a lighthouse? No? Just me?

And last , but certainly not least, THIS is a photo of a dog that looked like he was driving a van.

... and another.

Today was Lizzy's first day of her second year of preschool.

She got up, got dressed, ate her Cocoa Puffs, strapped on her shoes, grabbed her tote and off she went.

I'm not exactly sure what it is about preschoolers, but it always makes me a little teary-eyed to see them hop out of the car that first day. Maybe they are just a little too little or maybe it's just hard to let my babies grow up, but you will generally find a stray tear on my cheek as I drive away.

It doesn't seem to bother her at all. Let's just say that the day... went well.

Grade Dos

Yesterday, it happened.

School started.

I'm only slightly panicked about it. I'm that mom who's always ready for her kids to get back into a routine as quickly as possible, which eases the pain of sending them off to school for the bulk of their day to be taught and influenced by a group of relative strangers.

Towards the end of last year, Jane decided to transfer to a different school where she started a Spanish immersion program. As a result, she was a little more nervous about her first day than I thought she'd be, hence the nervous looking photo.

I should have broken out the camera this morning, she was much more cool and collected.

Lizzy doesn't start her first day of Pre-K until tomorrow, but I think we're all looking forward to it. Let the structure begin!

There are two kinds of people in this world....

There are pickle people and then there's... everyone else.

As for me and my house, we're pickle people.

And I just made my first jar out of cucumbers from my garden. I sure hope that in a few days, they taste as good as they smell.

My mouth is currently watering.

Lucky Number 7

Meet Jane.

Jane used to be 6, but not anymore. Now, Jane is 7.

Jane had a party for her birthday and it was filled with rainbows.

There were rainbow balloons and rainbow Twister in the grass.

There were rainbow drinks and rainbow jello.

And a cake.

A rainbow cake.

This made Jane very happy.

And it made her mom very tired.

Unfortunately, Jane had her party a few days before her birthday, and when her real birthday arrived, her mom was too tired to do much, so Jane got to invite one friend over for lunch.

Meet Henry.

Henry is a very good friend to have come to spend Jane's birthday with her.

This also made Jane happy.

Which is good, because on Jane's actual birthday, Jane's mom kinda just sat around like a bum and reminded Jane of the aforementioned rainbow party that had taken place on the previous Friday.

Happy Birthday, Jane. We sure do love you.

Creating Life... and then eating it. Part Three

Sooo, I just got back from a nice 5 days in Summit, where we celebrated the 4th of July and I DO have photos and appropriate documentation of our vacation, but I have to gather it all together, which takes energy. Since I'm suffering from the lack thereof this afternoon, I thought I'd share photos of what happened to my garden while I was gone.

I was totally, completely certain that I'd come home to find the whole thing shriveled up into oblivion, I even called a friend late one night and begged her to go give them some extra water (and a great job she did) so you can imagine my astonishment when I actually came back to a jungle.

Not to toot my own horn or anything, but I will now proceed to toot my own horn.

I've got all different kinds of peppers and tomatoes, squashes, tomatillos, herbs, carrots, peas, beans, cucumbers and corn and other stuff too, all shoved into my last minute decision garden beds. I'm feeling pretty good about my garden considering that I've never managed to produce a one that provided me with more than a weird looking tomato and a handful of green beans

I also ended up being able to start quite a few of my plants from seeds. You have my permission to be impressed.

This garden has been my sanity this summer. I'm not kidding. I might be a lunatic at this point if I didn't have my garden to keep me grounded. I spend/waste a lot of time just sitting out there and playing in the dirt, but I figure that God intended it to be that way, so I'm excused, right?

p.s. somehow, i thought it wise to buy three banana pepper plants which are actually producing banana peppers. problem is that i have no idea what one actually does with a banana pepper. anyone? anyone?