Forgot to tell you we had a baby

 Meet Miles. A few days before Thanksgiving, he was pushed, pulled, and vacuumed into the world. He was pretty beat up with lots of bruises, an injured shoulder, and broken collar bone, but thankfully he healed fast and doesn't seem to be holding any grudges for that very rude welcome to mortality.

 In fact, he's very sweet and easy to get along with. And handsome. And smoochable.

And soft and snuzzley and and fuzzy and delightful, but I'll stop there.

And because I haven't posted since spring, here are a few catch-up photos showing what the kiddos have been up to over summer, fall, and winter:

  We went to the zoo and got a scraped nose

 We played in the rain (that one time it rained this summer)

 We had a birthday, shout hooray

 We had Halloween

 Most charming butterfly/turtle duo in town

 We played in the snow, and ate the snow

And grew bigger and snugglier every minute

Back on the Grid

So I finally found my camera cord again, which means I will officially start posting again. I know, I know, I could have just bought a new one, but things have been a leetle nuts around here and I really haven't felt like blogging much. It might be easiest to explain all of this with a timeline:

October: We sold our house in Nampa (very quickly, I might add) and scrambled to move all of our stuff and our selves into my mom and dad's spare bedrooms. It was a bit tight up there with all of our stuff, and we were living in a maze of boxes. Now you know why I couldn't find my camera cord.

November: Ryan was offered an awesome job at City Hall where he was an intern. YES! We decide to look for a fixer-upper house to buy in Boise. (Washington, we love you, but you'll just have to wait.)

December: My poor mama slips on ice and breaks her ankle really bad. I mean really bad. She has surgery, and Rose and I spend our days doing our best to take care of her. Poor Mom! Ryan graduates with his master's in Public Administration (YESYESYESYES!!!) And we start looking at houses. We find one we love on an acre in central Boise, but it's a LOT of work so we still keep an open mind.

January-March: Basically we look at other houses but focus mostly on negotiating with the bank on the one we fell in love with in the first place. It is a looooooong drrraaaaawwwwn-out affair. Super head-ache. We finally agree on a price, the bank sends in plumbers, the plumbers don't tighten something enough and cause a flood which we discover the day we start moving in, the well turns out to be contaminated and the pipes are so nasty the water basically comes out of the faucet as lumpy orangish-brown mud and it ruins the faucets etc. The furnace breaks. Twice. Hmmm, what else? It's been a party.

Long story short, we finally have moved in to our big giant fixer-upper that we love despite its clunky furnace and crusty pipes and broken doors and unfinished kitchen. The house oozes with potential (and other things) and the yard is even better. There are giant apple and pear trees falling all over themselves, plenty of shade, lots of grass to play in (ok it's mostly dead, but we'll totally fix that) and more garden space than I could ever tackle. Currently there is no kitchen, but we're working on it. Who needs to eat, right? Also, for some mysterious reason, there is no longer a front door. We'll fix that too. If you come visit us, you are more than welcome to come knock on any one of the seven other doors. That's right, seven. Whoever owned this house loved back doors.

If you stuck it out through this whole long post, here's your reward: We are having a baby in November, which is pretty wonderful despite the fact that I'm already the size and shape of a small manatee. Give me another couple of months and I predict I'll be a full-grown elephant seal, nose and all. Am I the only one who's nose seems to get bigger during pregnancy? Mine totally does.

 Rosie on the deck

 Part of the back yard that still has grass

 The lawn goes up to this fence, after which the "wilderness" begins. That's our optimistic term for lots of weeds and brambles and wild trees.

 A lot of the lawn looks like this with dead grass and thriving weeds. With Rose dancing across it.

 See? No front door. The facade needs a little help. Not to mention the front yard.

 And here's my beautiful kitchen. Jealous?

 Some Easter morning cuteness

 Nobody can smile all the time.

Happy Birthday Dear Leo

As of last Thursday, we've officially had one year with this charming and need I say handsome gentleman in our house. Lucky us.

He loved the cake idea.

One cake recipe from great grandma Jones plus one scoop of rainbow sprinkles plus one birthday boy equals one big sticky happy baby.

Did I ever mention how nice this guy is? Even when his sister clips a netted fascinator and a yellow rose onto his head.

Oh man, I just love his smoochy little face. What a wonderful kid. Happy birthday Leo!

The Plan

We've spent the past few months painting the house, switching out old bathroom fixtures, and selling everything we can think of out of this big old house. Yep, we are planning to move! Yesterday we held our first (gigantic) yard sale and got rid of so much stuff that our house feels all empty and echoing like it did when we moved in. That yard sale wore me out so much it made me feel old. (I am kind of old; I'm turning 27 next Sunday.)           

So here's the plan: Ryan starts his last semester of his master's program tomorrow. Then we sell the house some time in the next few months, and stay with my very hospitable parents for a little while. If Ryan gets a job he likes in Boise, we'll find a place to rent around here, hopefully in our same ward, since I was just put in as Young Women's President (eek!). Then we'll save our pennies while Ryan tries very very hard to get a job in Olympia, WA so we can buy ourselves a nice big chunk of forest and live happily ever after in a beautiful green paradise less than an hour from the ocean, and also less than an hour from Ryan's family (yay!). If Ryan does not find anything good in Boise, we'll expedite the whole Olympia plan and move there asap. Who knows? Maybe by January we'll be living in a place that looks like this:

Which, by the way, is a picture of our recent camping trip to Grayland Beach in Washington. Sigh. We love it there.

Meanwhile, I keep getting all weepy thinking about leaving our big beautiful creaky house. I am trying not to get carried away thinking about how my Rose learned to walk in this kitchen, how this is the place my babies have slept and dreamed every night for the last three years, or how long it took me to get the carpet looking nice again after this bloody little episode:

Good grief, this floor has so much of Rose's DNA in it, it's practically one of the family. Ok, so I'm not trying very hard not to get carried away. We love our house, and we will be sad to leave it. But it is happening, and we are way more excited than sad.

Has it really been that long?

Man oh man, it's been a while since I posted anything anywhere. It's true, blogging is not exactly on the top of my priority list when I get a spare minute to do something I want to do. If there is ever a minute or two free from my wonderful babies, and I don't need to clean/garden/cook/do primary secretary stuff/etc, I admit I would much rather work on getting my up-cycled furniture business ready to launch, edit my new book I'm working on, make a milkshake with my new extra-awesome blender, or take a nap. And then there's my husband, who I am also very fond of and would love to spend time with. We haven't seen him a whole lot this year, what with his grad school, two jobs, and a challenging internship (sometimes all four of those things at the same time. . . eek!).  Even with all that pressing on him, he still finds time to do things like hold my hand at the doctor while I get a scary biopsy (don't worry, false alarm) and occasionally hold my hand while we sneak delicious things into the movie theater. By the way, Man of Steal: awesome. I cried just a little.

Here's a nice photo dump of my aforementioned wonderful babies:

There's a little mother-gorilla inside us all

Ok, I know, I'm a little behind on the blogging. I actually have a very good reason, which I will explain later, but right now I need to tell the world (or at least the 7 followers of this blog) the totally blog-worthy experience I had this morning.

Even though I could definitely write for a couple of hours about every detail, I will spare you by keeping this long story short. Suffice it to say, Rose and I found ourselves locked outside early this morning, in our jammies and ballet flats, in six inches of snow, in below-freezing weather, and Rose had to pee, and little baby Leo was inside on my bed just squirming awake from his long winter's nap. Yep, all the doors and windows securely locked. Also the gate to the back yard. Yep, forgot the combo to the padlock. Had to scale the slick, icy, six-foot fence just to find out the windows in the back yard were locked too.  Oh, then I remember the spare key I hid in the back yard, so I grab it, unlock the front door, and bang! The child lock (which I locked during my shower an hour before) keeps it from opening more than a centimeter. Then there's poor Rosie-pie (shut in the car to keep from freezing) crying that she needs her potty and her feet are cold. I totally hand her a little snack-cup I find under the seat and tell her to pee in that and don't spill. I knock on neighbor's doors, no answer. Try to flag down cars, but I guess I look too much like a drug addict and/or crazy person by this time, because nobody stops. So I yell to a lady taking pictures in the park and beg her for a cell phone and she's like, "Ummmm, why do you need it?" and I scream/sob at her that one of my babies is screaming his head off in the house and one is freezing to death in the car and I need to call SOMEONE to get me into my house. So she shuffles off as fast as she can to find her phone (which she left home) and tells me she'll call 911 for me. All of the sudden I get this adrenalin rush and I think that maybe I can just hurl myself repeatedly against the door like a mother gorilla separated from its young and maybe the lock will break off and the door will open. So I do, and it does. YES. I open the car door to get Rose, and she's sitting there, half-naked, clutching her little pee-filled cup and proudly telling me she didn't spill at all. Good kid. It's OK, lady who doesn't carry a cell phone, I got it. We're good.  I go grab my hungry, hungry screaming Leo and all is well.

I promise that was the short version. And now for some updated pictures of my very attractive kids (notice the last one is Rose "feeding" her doll.)

Two Kids

 See, told you she likes him. I still can't believe we have two of these now. I snapped these pictures today when I caught them being impossibly cute together. It was a good minute.

While I was taking these pictures, Rose kept saying, "Two kids! Mommy, two kids!" So happy to have my two kids.