life is right now.
it’s finally cooling down here. i am able to be inside my own house without melting. it’s just like good old seattle weather right now. awesome.
damon is getting ready for a 50-miler backpacking/camping trip he’s leaving for in the morning. i feel guilty sitting on my computer while he’s running around trying to pull everything together. i must go help him.
i talked to ellison last night. she is visiting an old [best] friend in colorado right now.
when i asked her what she had done so far, she proudly told me that she had bought this:
and done this:
just to gross me out.
and i was.
interestingly, denver’s high yesterday [55] was half what our high was yesterday [108]. bizarre.
today, i have been in the comforts of my good friend’s air-conditioned home all day. we have driven her batty with all the chaos that 9 extra kids(my 4, plus mandy’s 3, plus 2 other friends] bring into an organized, spotless home. we have sent her and her husband away for the night so that we don’t have to go home.
we miss you, elli!
thanks, aimee!
H-O-T
have i mentioned how miserable it is here right now? it’s only wednesday and i have been to costco 3 times this week already- just for “fun”. ridiculous.
last night, this is what the pathetic conditions were like in our little oven (i mean house):
(i didn’t think to take this picture until AFTER the house had cooled down a bit in the evening with all the doors/windows open so the cool 90 degrees isn’t quite accurate.)
we decided to focus all our cooling efforts into ONE room of our house: the boys’ large room. we moved our portable air conditioning unit in there (and damon and lacy made a wood piece to fit in the window to keep out the hot air).
then we brought every fan we own (5) into the same space along with an air mattress for damon and i and extra futons and bedding for the children who didn’t inhabit this room (or who did, but wanted to be on the floor next to my hot body). then we closed the door. stepping outside the room is like stepping into a sauna. seriously.
it was a big family slumber party. kind of like we were camping….in arizona… in july. super fun.
our plan totally worked. we were able to cool the room down into the low 80s!!
which was cool enough for everyone to actually have a blanket over their body- except for me.
i just laid there all night as still as could be with 2 fans pointed directly at me. never even considered pulling a sheet over my body. it was nice and cozy.
can’t wait to do it all over again tonight. even the heat of this laptop is too much for me right now.
oh- and here’s another significant 3-letter word from today:
B-O-Y
it’s what we’ll add to our family in 4 months. congrats to us. :)
what exciting things i’ve done today…
the kids (minus ellison- who is in colorado visiting a friend) and i have been to:
target, fred meyer, staples, costco, safeway, the redmond town center marriott (to inquire about rates for the rest of the week), and now to our friends’ home where we’ve been holed up for the past several hours.
not because i needed to go to any of these places.
and certainly not because i really wanted to maneuver 4 kids around the toy aisles of any of these stores.
and certainly not because i wanted to show off ray’s bizzare fashion choice of his red tank top/basketball shorts outfit grandma nevada got him paired with his argyle sunday socks pulled up to knees and orange flip-flops. (too hot to take a picture)
but simply because all of these destinations have one thing in common:
air conditioning.
i am declaring this heat wave worse than the 5-day power outage in December of 2006.
it’s that bad.
to see if this remains on the ceiling of my car:
i don’t know who stuck it there or who took this picture. all i know is my kids are precious. just precious.
p.s. i know i shouldn’t be complaining about this since i just came from 115 degree weather. but when the majority of homes in seattle don’t have air conditioning (including my own), hot is relative. we are breaking heat records here this week. currently, it’s 9:24 p.m. and 88 degrees…INSIDE my house. feels lovely.
from my trip- besides making the 48-hour drive by myself with only 1 movie watched on my laptop- is this:
5 kids
in 5 ft+ depth water
no more of these:
when i left for arizona, i had 3 non-swimmers very attached to life jackets. by the time we headed home, the life-jackets had been long-forgotten. they’re doing awesome. this accomplishment alone was worth the trip to arizona.
thanks, matt and ed and ada (for access to pools) and pepper for teaching my kids how to do cannon-balls and flips and how to make a wave pool.
we had a great time! and we miss the swimming already.
on a road trip. in our car, the assignments were as follows:
Elli had the most responsibilities as my assistant in the front seat with me.  | her top priority was to keep the music going non-stop- and as loud as i would allow. and if i requested she stop at a song or station that she disagreed with, this is the look she would give me. [“you KNOW this song, mom?”] we listened to the same CD the entire drive home from arizona: a special mix that my brother pepper made for elli. no exaggeration. |
 | it was also her responsibility to inform everyone in her contact list of our whereabouts at all times [and what stupid music i was choosing to listen to.] |
  | and, of course, it was definitely her responsibility to represent our family out in public. this is how i found her most of the 24 hour ride home: admiring and beautifying herself in the mirror. seriously- who needs mascara and lipgloss to go inside maverick? |
  | directly behind my seat was nolan. his responsibilities were two-fold: first, to remind me how tragic this vacation was without damon; and, second, to ask “how much longer until we get home to dad?” oh- and maybe to push his feet up against the back of my seat every 10 minutes or so. |
 | next to nolan sat savannah. she was the repeater of everything that everyone else said. she also kept us on track for when it was time to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner. |
 | behind savannah was emma. emma’s job was to make sure nobody touched or injured her american girl dolls that were buckled in the vacant seat next to her. she also took on the extra responsibility of complaining about cleaning up the tornado in the back seat every time we stopped. |
  | next to emma’s american girl dolls was ray. he was in charge of making messes for emma to complain about cleaning up. he was also in charge of eating all 8 of his lik-m-aids and 3 ring pops within the first hour or two of our trip. |
  | finally, there was me: the driver. my top priority was keeping my hand inside a bag of junk food at all times to keep me awake. junk foods of choice: chewy sweetarts, black licorice, fruity tootsie rolls, and chocolate turtle chex mix. another important job i had was keeping my right finger on the VOLUME DOWN button on my steering wheel. turning the volume down on the console would cause too much drama. i had to be discreet about it and slyly turn it down on the steering wheel one notch at a time. |
the one job that nobody seemed to take on was putting their garbage in the trash bags i provided. i was baffled [and maybe a little enraged] at every single stop that with 3 garbage bags conveniently located in each row of seating, nobody seemed to stretch that extra inch or two to throw their garbage in the appropriate spot. seriously, how hard can it be? so frustrating.
so happy to be back home. we were even blessed with sweet rainfall today. :)
we made it safely home. we are so happy to be back in our beautiful state of washington.
i’m exhausted. i’ll write more tomorrow [maybe], but wanted to leave you with a picture to figure out.
ray sat in the very back with emma. emma was constantly asking for the air conditioning to be on full blast and ray was constantly complaining about how cold he was and that he wanted the heat on. on the last leg of our trip today, he came up with this brilliant solution for his cold feet:
if you have young-ish children, you will surely have these fancy slippers in your car. anybody know where ray found these?
a favorite childhood memory of mine was to walk across the glen canyon dam bridge just outside of page, arizona on our way to utah at least once a year. we had a family tradition that my dad would pull over on the side of the road just before the bridge started and all the kids would get out and walk across while my parents drove the car across. we would meet on the other side at the carl hayden visitor center where we would have a bathroom stop and always buy a treat a the gift shop.
i remember i always made myself sick looking way, way down at the bottom of the dam. sometimes i would run across the bridge in fear and probably a few times i didn’t get out of the car at all.
since we didn’t cross this bridge on our route to arizona (we went through california), i promised myself and my kids that we’d take that way home so they could experience this exciting childhood tradition of mine.
when brooke and i got out of our cars on the other side of the bridge, we both panicked. what were we thinking letting 8 children under the age of 12 walk across that bridge by themselves? we hurried across and met them halfway before ray could do anything really stupid.
crossing over the bridge to see the view from the other side…
nolan was more excited to get a glimpse of the grand canyon than he was to cross the bridge, and when he saw the replica inside the visitors’ center, he was sorely disappointed. “that’s it?”, he exclaimed. “i thought it would be way bigger than that.” the concept of a replica was completely over his head.
but the biggest disappointment for me- besides the fact that it was blistering hot to walk across that bridge in the afternoon- was that they had re-modeled the visitors’ center. and not only were they charging for tours now, but the highly anticipated tiny little gift shop that used to be tucked in the corner was re-purposed into a small auditorium for the tours.
brooke and i were sorely disappointed and left with the same feeling nolan had at seeing the [replica of] the grand canyon: “that’s it?” i planned my whole journey back to seattle around this one little memory and it didn’t play out how i thought it would.
have you ever been disappointed by something you played up in your childhood mind and the reality was that it wasn’t really that great afterall?
my moms sick so now i (elli) a taking over!
we are staying in a hotel in beaver, utah and some of us aren't feeling so good…
sorry about the short blog post. hope you feel better tomorrow mom
love,
elli
our plans continue to be thwarted. i had always intended to start my journey home to seattle tomorrow. brooke, however, had planned on leaving over the weekend. she’s had some bigger bumps in the road than i have.
since she has still not gotten herself out of phoenix, we were going to caravan tomorrow to utah.
but, alas, she is currently at urgent care with another child for a presumed ear infection. so- what next?
life is sure funny.
in the last 24 hours:
1 frantic phone call to 9-1-1
3 cases of head lice confirmed
7 heads re-checked for lice
1 diagnosis of dandruff confirmed
5 cases of pink eye
roughly 32 loads of laundry completed
12 sets of bedding stripped, washed, made, stripped, washed, and made again
0 trips to the swimming pool
115 torturous degrees
1 monsoon storm
1 wonderfully willing brother-in-law in charge of 9 children
6 siblings reunited for a fabulous thai dinner, including much needed meaningful conversation
1 exhausted mom on “vacation”
8 hours ago, this is not something i thought i would never be blogging about
7 1/2 hours ago, my much-anticipated nap went out the window
6 hours ago, i was positive that the events of today would not be the topic of my blog post
5 1/2 hours ago, my vacation ended
5 hours ago, brooke had a mental breakdown in the privacy of my mom’s bathroom
the time between then and now brooke and i have been very busy.
and somewhere along the way, i decided i could blog about this afterall.
even though i couldn’t bring myself to take any pictures.
this is the only glimpse i will give you:
and i will tell you it sucks. it’s all-consuming. it makes me shiver and dry-heave. it really makes me regret that my husband is not here to deal with this. this is HIS territory; not mine. i “can’t handle” stuff like this. and it’s driving brooke and i mad. we’re exhausted.
some humor in all this:
the instructions specifically state to not use this product on eyebrows or eyelashes or in the “nether regions” (using another word).
so i’m grateful it’s only on heads in this household.
but the worst part of all of this?-
[according to a devastated Nolan]
is that we’ve had to break the Sabbath 3 different times today!! first to buy the first box of Nix. then to buy 2 more boxes. and finally to purchase new combs/brushes, etc. and i’m sure this won’t be the end of it.
if anyone has dealt with this before, please offer advice and words of encouragement.
i’m afraid to lay my head down.
the 2 things we miss the most:
&
i can’t believe i grew up in this climate. it’s killing me! and nolan still can’t believe we left our dad at home- all by himself.
this is what the note nolan asked me to mail home to dad tonight said:
Dear dad,
I miss you. I wish i would of stayed home with you.
Love,
nolan
we have been to a few malls since we’ve been here. a nightmare for me, but a lifeline for my elli.
i’m all about convenience, and i kept consolidating our bags into the largest bag so i wouldn't have to keep track of several bags. but when i noticed ellison, she reminded me of my teenage self: the shopping experience is all about the number of bags you are carrying. your load is not heavy or a burden. in fact it’s quite the opposite: the more stuff you have, the better you feel.
no matter how many times i consolidated our bags, ellison would always take every bag out and carry them individually so she could feel like a successful shopper.
i snapped this picture of her proudly carrying her forever 21, vans, claire’s, aeropostale, shade, and american eagle purchases-for all to see.
shopping is so much fun when you’re 12; not so much when you’re a pregnant 35 and shopping with 5 children in tow.
yesterday, at the arizona science center, the kids entered a Lego Master Builder competition. it was intense. there were so many kids [and cheating parents] there. complete chaos.
each child had a 5-inch square baseplate that they couldn’t extend off of, and their creation could not be taller than 12 inches. they had 4 hours to build something that was birthday-themed because it’s legoland’s 10th birthday this year.
this is what nolan built:
ha.ha. just kidding. this huge (10 foot?) birthday cake was on display
just like at home: nolan’s area was a disaster
the finished creations:
there were some pretty awesome creations that we saw. nolan was really stumped with the birthday theme and felt pretty limited in the fact that he couldn’t build an airplane or ship of some sort. he went very simple, but is still expecting a phone call any minute to let him know he won the trip to legoland.
