Oregon Trip: Part 1

A break from the remodel!!! YAY!

I can finally blog about this because I got the pictures. As you know my camera is dead so I had to have other people send the pictures to me.

My brother Drew got married on 8/23 so I went to Portland Oregon for the wedding. Kent stayed home with all 4 kids and did they all did ~GREAT~! They were all alive when I got home and things were even relatively clean, considering having a torn apart house, no kitchen and 4 kids. (THANKS so much Kent, you are awesome.)

I drove up to my sister Karen's house on Thursday and stayed with her overnight. We flew together out of SLC airport friday morning. We drank our "slim-fast" breakfast shakes on the way to the airport and listened to Jimmy Chunga (one of Karen's favorite radio guys.) We worried that we wouldn't make it on time because of the crazy traffic, but somehow we made it. Our seats weren't together on the plane because we bought our tickets at different times but some kind soul was willing to switch with us. We had a great start to the trip, discussing flight attendants: "Is it a requirement to wear 2mm of foundation and a have a huge ratted ponytail to be a flight attendant?" we wondered. We did sudoku puzzles, shopped in the air mall catalogue, (anyone need inflatable stairs for your pet so they can get on your bed?) and had some fine airline cookies and crackers. Karen enjoyed her "spicy tomato juice". Me? 9 o'clock am is WAY too early to think about drinking anything spicy or tomatoey. Then Karen (who claims she never sleeps on airplanes) fell asleep.

We arrived in Portland, and after realizing that in Portland exit 23B comes BEFORE 23A we finally hooked up with our other sister Suzanne and took off for the Oregon coast. It was amazing and beautiful, like being in the mountains and at the ocean at the same time. We stopped at a seafood restaurant that Suzanne had been to before called "Mo's". We all ate seafood. (Even *I* the seafood hater ate seafood, just for the experience. I had skewered shrimp and it was good.) Karen was very excited about this because she had been looking forward to the crab legs ever since we found out we were going to the coast. Karen and the crab legs

Sitting outside at Mo's

As you can see in that photo there is green foliage close to where I was sitting. There were a whole bunch of these little furry caterpillars in the leaves. My purse was on the table there by the glass divider and as I reached for it to get my wallet I jumped in surprise because there were 2 furry caterpillars on my purse. I brushed them off and didn't worry about it. This is where the story gets funny. Suzanne (who is one of my most faithful blog readers) thought that it would be a great idea to blog about the caterpillars. She suggested that we put them BACK on my purse so we could take pictures and I could blog about them. I said, "that's ok, I don't really know what I would even say about caterpillars on my bag". She insisted though, and proceeded to put the caterpillars BACK on my bag. At this point I said, "Ok, now this is what I am going to blog about. You putting the caterpillars BACK on my bag so I can blog about them."

So we got a picture of her putting caterpillars back on my bag.

And there you have it.

After Mo's we walked up and down Cannon Beach.


So gorgeous!

Karen, me and Suzanne

While we were walking on the beach we saw some interesting things. (I commented on these things and Suzanne decided to take pictures for blogging purposes, so here you go.)

The lost, lone flip flop sticking out of the sand. Hopefully the owner wasn't buried underneath.

The weird, nasty (and stinky) sea plants that were washed up on the beach. Maybe we should have our friends at ourbestbites come up with a tasty grilled seaweed dish using these beauties. (With or without the sand).

Sea foam. Bubbly, slimy sea foam. (What is this made of anyway? Is it some sort of living plant slime?) Just a note about sea foam. When the person who invented the color "seafoam green" named it they had obviously never actually seen sea foam.

Here is an example of "seafoam green" (with heads removed to protect the guilty. Nice black bras girls. Did anyone tell you these were STRAPLESS dresses???). Hopefully they will never see this picture on my blog. If if by some random chance you are the green dress wearer and you are not ashamed to admit it, leave me a comment and if you can prove this is you I'll give you a gift. (A seafoam green guitar perhaps? To play at that upcoming wedding reception?)


OK, no more tangents.

We continued driving up the coast and we stopped at this overlook to get some pictures. The view was breathtaking.

We made a few more stops on the way to buy fresh cherries and blueberries (yum!). Then we stopped at the Tillamook dairy and watched them make cheese, and of course had delicious ice cream. They had the best bubblegum ice cream I have ever had.

So, that is the exciting day at the Oregon Coast. It was absolutely beautiful and a lot of fun. It was a great break from the kids, but the whole day I was thinking how much I'd love to take them there. The would have had so much fun. I hope to take them back someday.

So that's the first installment of the Oregon trip. I'll have to post wedding pictures (when someone sends me some hint, hint) and give more details of the rest of the trip in the next installment.

Recent Pictures

So are you all getting bored of seeing pictures of the kitchen and not hearing about anything else? Too bad. Here you go. More pictures.

The texturing on the walls and ceiling is done now. We are ready to paint! After that comes the floor, cabinets and countertops. I am hoping we'll be done in 2 weeks. The novelty of this is SOOOO worn off. Not that it was ever fun or novel, but it is even LESS so now that we are through the 3rd week. (Hmm, what am I gonna cook in the crock pot for dinner tomorrow??? Blah.)

Day 16: *&#$^!

Subtitle: Asbestos is evil
Sub-subtitle: We are all gonna die.

Yeah. So, where do I even start?

We had an asbestos inspector come the other day and take some samples of the old building materials in our house to test for asbestos. We thought that since we had scraped the popcorn ceiling in our living room 2 years ago we'd be fine in the carcinogen department. That popcorn ceiling ended up having 8% asbestos, which is a very high percentage. (Exposure incident #1. I can see the little fibers making their permanent home in my alveoli.)

We got the results today that we have asbestos (1%) in the vinyl glue that was used to attach the old flooring to the plywood. While it IS better than the 8% that is already in our lungs it is bad for several reasons. (Well, at least a thousand reasons financially speaking.....)

• We were going to have all the residual glue sanded down instead of using a sub floor under our flooring. Since they can't sand it down now we will have to have a subfloor. This is going to put our flooring budget way over. (Bye bye granite countertops.)
  
  
• Our builder guys are coming over today to clean up the floor, get it wet, and seal over the asbestos glue (which of course adds more time and money to what we have to pay).
  
  
• We have to get the carpets cleaned in the whole house to get rid of all the construction dust and asbestos fiber floaties that have been tracked all over the house. (Exposure incident #2).
  
  
• We have a huge construction dumpster in our driveway and when it is time to haul it away all of the suspicious material may have to be bagged in 4mm plastic bags, sealed and taken to a special bionic-asbestos-holding cell (or whatever). This of course costs much more than just taking it to the landfill. (Don't you know how expensive those bionic-asbestos-holding cells are to maintain????? )
  
  
• Oh, and did I mention we are all gonna die because we have been living in a construction zone for the last 2 weeks with carcinogenic chrysotile asbestos fibers floating around???????

Ok, I just found this. Maybe we won't die from the floor stuff. Just the ceiling stuff.

Day 14: Drywall

BeforeAfterToday was a big drywall day. A crew came and hung the drywall this afternoon and I thought that was all the work that was going to be done today. Another crew showed up around 4:00 and did the mudding and taping. I think tomorrow there is a little more taping to do. Next is the texturing. I hope they'll start that tomorrow. Now that it has been framed it is a lot easier to see how it will look when it it done. And it is REALLY nice not having a gigantic hole in my ceiling.


The wiring is all done, they just have to install the switches and outlets. I picked out the flooring today. Things are moving along quite well. We are hoping to be done in 3 weeks or less. It is going a bit faster than expected (hooray!)

Yearbook Yourself

I saw this on my friend Keri's blog and decided to "yearbook" my family members. You can do it too by going to http://www.yearbookyourself.com/.

Kent 1964

Lisa 1980

Emilia 1974

Elise 1982

Ian 1990

Adele 1960

Note to Self:

When dumping the dirty dish water in the toilet remember to remove washcloth from tub before dumping. (Bye bye little washcloth I hope you don't get stuck in the pipes and cause some unfortunate toilet malfunction.) :O Good one Kent! :D

Bathing The Dishes

Yep, ya read that right. This has become part of our daily life during the remodel. I know you all shudder at the thought of mixing personal hygiene spaces with eating surfaces. In an ideal world the two never have to cross paths. Unfortunately we aren't exactly living in an ideal situation right now so we have to do our best to make sure that we don't actually touch any bathroom surfaces with the dishes. Here's what we do:

• During the day we put all the dirty dishes in the wash tub.


• After about 2 meals the tub is full so I take it and a kitchen rag and a dishtowel up to the bathroom. (Yes, our bathtub is blue. This is the next remodeling project we'll take on in a couple of years.)


• I fill up the washtub with soap and water and sit on the floor and wash the dishes.
  
  


• As I wash them I stack them in the wash tub on the left.
  
  


• Next I dump out all the nasty water with food floaties into the toilet. YUM. Seeing food particles in the toilet never ceases to remind me of other activities involving food and the toilet...


• Then I fill up the tub on the right again with water and rinse all the dishes and rinse out the left tub.


• Then I shake the excess water off the dishes, stack them back in the tub, dry off the bottom of the tubs and take the dishes back downstairs.


• I stack them in the dish drainer and there you go. Clean dishes.
  
  

(I don't want to hear ANYONE complain about unloading the dishwasher. You people are WIMPS! Try doing your dishes in the tub for a change...;)

Day 9: Electrical and Framing

Things are really moving along. Here are some pics of the day.

Tuesday morning before the workers came. See that black pipe sticking out of the floor? That's the plumbing for the new sink.

Here's the pic of the old window boarded up and a hole cut in the wall for the new window.

This is the framed pantry and the window after it was installed. Ian calls the pantry his "food elevator". Tomorrow we have more electrical and more framing. Friday the drywallers start.


We have wires sticking out of the walls and ceiling everywhere.

Update

I haven't updated much on the day to day stuff so here goes:

• Kent went to Tucson for a conference last week. He is home now (yay!). I couldn't blog about this because all the crazy weirdos out there would know that I was husbandless. Well, he's home now so don't mess with me. Having him gone during the first week of the kitchen remodel as well as the first 2 days of school was definitely a challenge.
  
  
• Adele just cut her two top front teeth. She barely has tooth nubs up there but she still manages to grind them with the bottom teeth. I don't know why all kids grind their teeth but it seems they do.
  
  
• Day 3 of the kitchen remodel was moving the plumbing from the center of the kitchen over to the far wall. I didn't take any pictures of it because it was boring just having a few pipes disappear and reappear somewhere else. It IS very exciting though because it means that I won't have a sink in the middle of my room anymore. Hooray!
  
  
• Ian has absolutely loved watching the guys work on the house. He will just sit there for hours watching those guys. Maybe I should check out some "Hometime" and "This Old House" videos from the library for him. I can barely get the kid to watch tv but maybe I have just had the wrong approach all this time.
  


• Elise's Molluscum is FINALLY getting better. She has had it since February. She had bumps ALL over her back and we were starting to think they were never going to go away. Then they got all scabby and infected and we really started to worry. I guess that is normal in the progression of the disease, and the scabbing actually means that they are getting better. She is so happy to be almost "bump free". It was a real bummer for her to have to wear a T-shirt every time she went swimming this summer.
  
  


• My brother Drew is getting married this Saturday so I am going to Portland (sans kids!) for the weekend.
  
  
• Two of our amphibian friends have completed their second estate and have moved onto Paradise. The first one (Floppy) was fatally injured in an accident involving Elise, the moving of rocks and some unintentional squashing. He (she?) died of severe blunt force trauma. The poor adolescent frog did have a proper funeral and burial courtesy of my daughters. Floppy was Elise's favorite and she was very distraught when she killed it. (Rightfully so.) The second victim was found floating in the water just a few hours ago. We are waiting for the autopsy report to reveal the cause of death. (No, we are not going to dissect it! Kidding here! Sheesh!) I am sure we will have another funeral after school tomorrow and maybe the girls will write a little epitaph for the dead froggies.
  
  
• Since my camera is broken I have finally mastered the taking-pictures-with-the-cell-phone-and-sending-them-to-my-internet-account-and-then-emailing-them-to-myself-and-then-saving-them-so-I-can-finally-use-them thing.
  
  

Back to School

It has taken me several days to get to this (hmm, I wonder why). So, here is the only semi-decent picture I got.

This was the 3rd picture I took (with my cell phone of course). Just as I finished snapping this picture we heard the bus drive by. Yeah. So we took off running after it hoping to catch it at the next stop. We didn't make it. And I didn't even think to turn on my cell phone camera to take a picture of us frantically running down the street. THAT would have been a good photo to have for the blog, but really who has time for that when you are trying to catch a bus??? Since the girls missed the bus (#$^&*%$!) I had to get a neighbor to sit with sleeping Adele and we had to drive to school. The kids had been excited to ride the bus on the first day and even told me that they didn't need me to meet them at the school because they KNEW how to get to their classrooms. I ended up driving them to school anyway. It was a very adventurous start to school. Oh, and I must mention that we didn't miss the bus because the kids weren't ready... or even that we were taking pictures.... THE BUS came 7 minutes earlier than it did last year. So. We weren't late, the bus was just early. ;)

Day 2: More Wreckage

Look at all that space!

Day 1: Wreckage

Before

After the cupboards and appliances were removed

During the demolition of the drop-down ceiling

They had some awesome wallpaper. And 3 layers of linoleum under our laminate floor.

I Feel Like I am Moving and Dead Camera

I talked to our contractor this morning and he said we'd be starting the demolition of the kitchen tomorrow. Being unprepared for this to take place, I spent the whole entire day cleaning out my kitchen. I had to take everything off the walls, remove the curtains and of course pack up all the dishes. My kitchen and living areas look so bare. It really feels like we are moving. It is kind of weird actually. I moved everything down to our storage room and into my office. We are setting up a temporary kitchen there. Hopefully we can get the fridge down our bendy and narrow stairs. I have a waffle iron, a griddle, crock pot and I am going to borrow a hot plate from a friend. The only thing I am really lacking is a sink. I have a feeling that doing dishes in the bathtub is going to get old reaaaaally fast.

I got my camera out to take some pictures of the bare kitchen and living room. Unfortunately I think it is officially dead. I am not even getting pink and melty. Just black and liney. I was really looking forward to taking pictures of the destruction tomorrow. I guess I will just have to use my cell phone. (NO!!!!!)

A Memory of Me

Ok, so I saw this on a friends blog and thought it would be fun. So here goes.

1. As a comment on my blog, leave one memory that you and I had together. It doesn't matter if you knew me a little or a lot, anything you remember!

2. Next, re-post these instructions on your blog and see how many people leave a memory about you.

3. If you leave a memory about me, I'll come to your blog and and leave one for you if you decide to play. And I really think you should.

Like my friend Megan said:
"This is kindof like the blogging version of those annoying chain e-mails we all get, but without the seven years of bad luck, or windfall of money in three days, or wishes coming true within the week...oh and another difference is that this is actually fun!!"

Come on guys. YOU know you want to. I am tagging everyone who is reading this.

Amphibian Friends for Mario and Luigi

Remember Mario and Luigi? Well they have some new friends. 14 new friends to be exact. 13 tadpoles and 1 frog.

There is a place near our house where water collects and it has become a frog habitat. This is our 4th summer here and we just found out about it. All the neighborhood kids collect tadpoles and take them home and watch them grow into frogs. Then at the end of the summer, you just take the froggies back to their little swampy home and hope they'll produce a lot of offspring for next summer. These are truly the perfect pets. No commitment. No poo to clean up. No barking, licking, shots, running off etc. My kids and I are excited about our new froggies.

Hmmmm. Do you think this one is a prince?

1986

I was cleaning out some old junk and I found some of my school journals from 4th grade: (spelling and punctuation errors included)

What I Want to Do With My Life

"I want to go to BYU for collage then I want to be a kindergarten-teacher and a mother. I would teach my class their A,B,C's and read them stories. On the weekend I would take my family to the parks and have a picnic on a nice day. I would go on field-trips with my kindergarten class, we would go to the zoo or the children's museum or something like that. I want to have 4 children. I want two girls and two boys."

Ten Years From Now!

"In 10 years I will be 20 and maired. I am a gymnastics coach. I teach the beam, uneven bars and My friend teaches vault and floor. My husband works at a catfood factory called purina and gets $100 dollars a day. We live in a one story house in Littleton Colorado. We are planning to go to California with our one child. She is 2 years old. we are what you call sort of rich. Our child's name is Stephanie. She can say dad mom baby frog. She also knows her colors. "

Hmmmm. Let's see, at 20 I was not married and I and certainly didn't have a 2 year old.... My hubby doesn't work in a cat food factory, but he does make more than $100 per day ($12.50 per hour). I don't live in Colorado, I don't have a daughter named Stephanie, I am neither a gymnastics coach nor a kindergarten teacher. Having 2 girls and 2 boys would definitely been great but that didn't happen either.

Roll Recipe

This is my favorite roll recipe. I have had several people ask me for it so here it is:

French Rolls
2 c. water (very warm)
1 T. yeast
3 T. sugar
2 T. oil
2 t. salt
~5 c. flour
corn meal
1 egg white
2 T. water


Place sugar and yeast in water. Add salt and oil. Add 3 cups of flour and mix well. Add about 2 more cups of flour gradually. Cover and let rise until double. Cut into 20-24 pieces. Grease cookie sheet and sprinkle well with corn meal (0ptional). Shape each dough piece into a ball.

Let rise for 30 minutes or until double. Mix egg white with 2 T. water. Brush each dough ball with egg mixture.

Bake for 10 minutes at 400 degrees. Remove from oven and brush again with egg/water mixture. Bake 10 more minutes or until golden. Makes about 2 dozen smaller rolls or 20 larger ones.


And hey, I am not feelin' the love so much around here so be nice to me and leave me a comment ok??? Maybe I'll make some of these for you..... Thanks!

Kitchen Update

We went to pick our cabinets yesterday and the cabinet guy printed out this 3D floor plan for us. Here's how the kitchen will look after (minus the blue floors and countertops of course).

It looks like we are going start around August 11ish. No final start date though. Hopefully it will be soon! We are getting really exicted!