The Thankful Month

On we go to November. 

November started out with a trip down to El Capitan State Beach/Campground (near Santa Barbara) for Dylan's work campout.  We stayed two nights and had a really great time.  WSC is really pretty awesome because they are engineers, but they are fun, interesting, laid-back, and even cool people.  Not your stereotypical engineers.  So, that novelty has not worn off for me yet.  They also however do a lot of drinking, so I realized that going camping with a party all night AND children up really early makes for a pretty lousy night's sleep, but it was still fun, and everyone settled down more quickly the second night.  It was a really warm day, and it was the warmest I have ever slept while camping since the time I went camping in the swamp in Mississippi with my friends in high school.  Oh, and I guess there was that time we slept at Zions with Dylan, me, Cami, and Katie all on one air mattress.  I wasn't cold then.  Oh, wait, and Dauphin Island.  Okay.  I take that back.  It is the warmest camping night I have had in California.  There, that is better.

We spent the day at the beach and did some ocean kayaking with the boys.  In fact, Ethan went out into the waves in a kayak by himself (with Dylan not too far away) and courageously got over the waves and out into the calmer water.  I was hesitant when Ethan asked if he could do it himself, but Dylan convinced me, and I am so glad I listened and let him go for it.

WSC brought along a photographer (who is also the boss' brother-in-law) who took some shots of everyone together and then took some of individual families. We hadn't planned on taking a family picture, so weren't really dressed very well for it, but it is the best family photo we have had in a long time, at least not in costumes.  Here are the pictures.  I would totally recommend him to anyone who needs some photos taken in SLO county.

 As I had said in my previous post, November was also an artsy month for me.  I had to make twenty handmade items to be sold at Tanner's preschool fundraiser, so I decided to make these notebooks.  And then afterwards, I liked them so much, Carter made one for my mom for Christmas and I made one for my friend Chelsey.  I bought the fabric at a thrift store and covered those black and white composition books.  The designs are my own (I looked at pictures of dragonflies and such for reference).  Anytime I do anything that had no origins from the internet, I feel pretty proud of myself.

I think it was in November that I was called as second counselor in the primary presidency, and then Dylan was called as first counselor in Elder's Quorum in December.  I really like this calling already.  It doesn't carry the same burden of responsibility I felt as primary president, but I get to help make a difference.  I miss teaching Carter's class though.  I really like teaching and never really felt like I got a hang of teaching that class before I got released.  As the second counselor, I am over the cub scouts, and that's good, since I had lots of things I wanted to fix there, and now I get my chance to make a difference!

Dylan also started building a shed for the Pattersons in November.  The Pattersons are the ones whose baby was in the ICU for months and Joe and Dylan are best friends.  Dylan asked what he could do to help, and Joe had several projects he was doing at the house when this all happened, so he asked Dylan if he would build a shed for him.  It's a pretty serious shed.  Here's how it looked sometime in December.

Dylan is mostly done with it now.  He took off two weeks at Christmas, and spent most of it building the shed and helping Joe out with getting his rental home ready to rent.  We really care about and feel for the Pattersons, and know that they would help us out with anything that they could if we were in their situation.  The boys and I have gone down with Dylan when we could, and the boys and I helped with digging and forming the footing and framing up the walls.  I am no good with a hammer.  I bent and pulled out way more nails than I got in.

Building it has come at a good time because construction on Dylan's big dam project stopped in November for the winter, so he has had more time.  We see him in the evenings which has been so great. 

On through November!  The next big event was Thanksgiving!  Yay!  My family all came except for Kate and Logan and Soren who we missed having.  It was great to see everyone.  As usual, Cami brought some fun new games that we enjoyed and then got for Christmas.   We also did some hikes, watched the sunset at the beach, and went on a bike ride along the coastal trail.  Ammon had grad school apps that he worked on for a lot of the time, but still went on all of the adventures with us.  And then the food!  Always amazing when my dad is around.  This was certainly the very best turkey I have ever had.  I am not just saying that for effect or to be nice.  My dad salted the turkey and then grilled it on the barbeque and it was so yummy.  Perfectly smoked and moist.  I wish I had been watching more closely so that I could replicate it.  Actually, I always feel that way about my dad's cooking.  Even when I am cooking in the same kitchen next to him, I taste it and can't figure out how to make it like he did. 

I don't have a lot of pictures from their trip.  I really am pretty horrible about taking pictures.  On my birthday, we took everybody on the Garrapata State Park hike which is about a half hour south of us along the coast.  You hike up away from the ocean through a canyon with cactus and sage and cross a creek a few times, and then you hit redwoods.  And it is so powerfully calm and the trees are amazing.  You hike up through this redwood forest and feel like you are in Rivendale.  Pictures cannot capture the magic.  You must come visit and I will take you.  Although I will stop before the giant climb up the steep exposed mountain that we did at the end of the hike.  After that, and playing in the river while Dylan took my parents and Ammon to see his jobsite, my parents watched the kiddos and Dylan and I went out to dinner and ate some yummy sushi, and that was November!

September, hmmm, September.

I can't really remember much from September.  I got called to teach Carter's primary class.  We found good Thai food.  We went to a lot of garage sales on Saturday mornings before Dylan went to work.  Dylan LOVES garage sales.  Me, not so much.  I like going, I just don't like that we come home with more stuff.  But the garage sales here are really quite awesome.  Mostly in Carmel, where there are lots of affluent people.  Come and join us sometime.  Dylan looks them up on Craigslist, and then puts them in to a website that he found that maps out the best route, and we always stop for breakfast burritos along the way.  We have come home with entirely too much stuff, but have got some killer deals.  The boys also love it.  Sometimes we give them each a dollar each.  Usually what happens though is they will pick things up, ask the person how much it costs, and then the person will just give it to them for free.  Our big purchases include a nice leather chair and this: (this was last Saturday, not September, but we were on the subject). 

We'll see if this is a good idea or not; no kids have been run over yet.  And then some pogo sticks, a hammock, lots of books, kid wetsuits and shoes that didn't fit, a scooter, I can't remember what else.

Dylan worked a lot.  Here are some pictures of him at the dam they are removing.  It really is a beautiful job site.  It is pretty far away from us (about a half hour), but it is always sunny in Carmel Valley, and is a secluded oak forest with a river in a canyon.  Can't ask for much more.  Tanner always asks me if Dylan is taking down the dam today.  The other day, he said he wanted Dylan to bring his ax and chop it all to pieces.  It's pretty cute.  And, by the way, Tanner calls me "Amy" now and calls Dylan "Dylan."  Exclusively.  I don't know what changed.  He started calling me Amy after trying to first get my attention by calling, "Mom" "Mom" and if I was talking or something and didn't answer immediately, he was up it to "Amy."  But now it is all the time.  It is fine with me, but I sometimes smile in public when he calls me Amy and am sure that other people probably think I am not his mom.

I mostly just missed Morro Bay, and visited a few times.  Ethan and I have missed our friends a lot.  Carter and Tanner and Dylan have adjusted more quickly.  And we had a quick visit from Todd and his boys and Carter lost his first tooth, wrestling with Ethan, and his second tooth, jumping over the waves at Carmel Beach.

 

Also, Ethan made enough Lego snapshot videos (free app that you can make little lego movies by taking pictures one after another like Claymation) that he filled up my whole phone.  And inspired by OK Go's "This to shall Pass", he made several domino creations like this one, which he worked on for a long time and set if off accidently beforehand so many times that he was close to tears.  But, he finally got it.  Oh, and you can see him sporting his new glasses:

 

And then October! Dylan always says things like this during October, "Good news everyone:  Arts and Crafts time has been extended by three hours today."  I am consistently pre-occupied by costumes during the month of October and then this year I also had to make twenty handmade items for a preschool fundraiser, and then there were the homemade Christmas presents, so it was all of October and November this year.

I know all of you have seen our costumes, but is once really enough?  Not for me, I kept them as my desktop background until like a week ago.  The boys still wear some portion of some costume almost daily.  In fact, Ethan wore the Gimli faux fur-lined boots every day to school for about a month until the seam ripped and I threw them away.  And he still often wears the Frodo jacket to school.  It makes me smile.

 

 

The kids had fall break in October so we went up to San Jose one day and went to Happy Hollow with Ali and her kids.  This was our first time at Happy Hollow.  It is a mini amusement park, petting zoo, and zoo, and was a lot of fun.  The rides are small, similar to a carnival but they had a roller coaster that even Tanner could go on.  It was so fun.  Because it was a weekday and most people don't have a fall break, the kids would just get off it and run around to the entrance and get right back on.  We probably rode it fifteen times and only stopped because it was closing.

 

Here is a little video of Tanner after probably the sixth time riding it.  You should have heard been with him the first few times!  He really exhibited the perfect combination of joy and terror that you feel on a roller coaster.  You are going to have to turn your head sideways to watch this.  I was, after all, riding a roller coaster while holding my phone, so cut me some slack on the cinematography.  And if you are feeling queasy, you really just need to watch that first scream. 

 

 

We also went to Morro Bay during fall break for some kid birthday parties, and I had a girl's night with my girls who I miss so much.  So, we went climbing at Crux because before I found out I was moving I bought a 30 punch pass that expired at the end of the year, so used my punches for them too.  Well, and we went because I love climbing and want them to love it too.  Here's a few pictures.  And that's about it!

 

 

 

 

 

Home open house

Many of you have visited us (Yay!  Thank you!), but for those who have not made it yet, here is a tour of our home in pictures. However, you are not off the hook on visiting us! I really have loved our home, especially today when it is 82 degrees outside in January, and I ate my lunch on the lawn with Carter who had no shirt on.  I have actually mostly been cold since I have been here; this week is abnormally warm.  Our house doesn't stay very warm.  The other day I told Dylan I just needed to have a summer (since summer, winter, and everything in between are basically all the same, and it doesn't get hot) and then I would be okay.  Well, apparently I got summer in January, since this week has been amazing.  Too bad I have two sick kids at home, but I'm still soaking it up while it lasts.

Back to the tour:

Here is the front of our house.  The only big drawback is that we live on a pretty busy street.  It's hard to pull out of our driveway.  And I would drive past my house every single time the first few weeks I lived here because it is around a curve and not very noticeable.  But I don't mind it not being noticeable.  I would feel self-conscious in a pretentious house.

As you come in, the door opens up to an open living area with the living room on left side, the kitchen and dining room on the right side, and the family room past the two in front of you with doors to the bedrooms and bathroom off the family room.  I love having an open living area again, and although our house is not a whole lot bigger than the Morro Bay house, the bedrooms are smaller and the living area is larger, which has been great.  We did have to get rid of one of our awesome beds, the bulldozer bed, because two beds would not fit in the bedroom, and we didn't want to give up the master bedroom/bathroom to the kids.  So, we have bunk beds now for Ethan and Carter, and Tanner sleeps in the pirate ship.  And we still have skylights!  This was one thing I was prepping myself to be missing from Morro Bay.  But we have them here too in the living room, kitchen, weight room, and kids room.  So, I still have lots of natural light and I don't ever need to use lights during the day.  We don't have the seagull bums to look up at anymore, but that was quite the novelty.

Living room:

Kitchen/Dining Room

 

Family room: 

 

Backyard: 

 

Ethan and Carter's room:

 

Bathroom off of family room:

Tanner's room:

 

There is this little room between the family room and our bedroom/bathroom that Dylan turned into his weight room.  At first, I was resistance and grumpy because he put down gray foam mats over the interesting tile floor to keep the weights from breaking them, but I am used to it now.  The other feature that is a little strange here is the glass wall between the master shower/bathroom and the weight room.  So, if you try really hard, you can watch people shower from here.  But, it is generally not an issue.

Master bathroom:

This tub is pretty awesome.  The boys like to take what they call bubble, bubble, bubble baths where we put bubble bath and three boys in and then turn on the jets.  Once, Tanner couldn't sit down in the bath because the bubbles went over his head.  It is not all perfect though.  The plumbing in this place is weird.  The pipes rattle when you turn on and off the water, and the shower takes, no joke, five minutes to warm up hot enough to get in, and then has very low water pressure.  Dylan has thought about re-plumbing the house, but we'll most likely just live with it, and continue thinking every shower we take elsewhere is amazing (including the coin-operated shower at the campsite we went to).

Our bedroom:

Lest you are questioning all that you know to be true and reasonable, and are now thinking I am some sort of super-mom, my house is not ever this clean.  I had to take the pictures as I cleared each room.  Between the time that I took the living room picture and when I got two other rooms clean enough to take pictures of, this happened:



And there you are!  This is our home.

Where did the summer go?

Our summer got short changed because it consisted entirely of going to Utah, moving, and then going to Washington.  The kids school started three weeks earlier than their old school, so I am looking forward to making this summer feel more like a summer break should be.

We still got in some crazy fun like this, for example:

Yes, that is Carter's arm.

After moving, July was really just a rest and recoup and get settled month.  We made the transition to having a backyard for the first time and really loved it all around.  Each one of our kids fell out of the climbing tree in the back, but at least Tanner was wearing a bike helmet.  And we planted a bunch of edible plants.  Unfortunately, the ones in the front yard were also edible to the deer.  So, that was sort of a bummer.  I never have been mad at deer before.  So, we have to stick to the backyard which is fenced.  And we made a compost bin that I put all my kitchen scraps in.  Yay!  I have dreaming of this day.  I know, easily pleased.  I did get a little impatient after a few weeks and put compost on my strawberries we planted (and ate!) and my citrus trees, but then I got tomato and cucumber plants growing there, so I have been waiting more patiently now for the bugs and bacteria to do its magic.

I also decided that our walls needed some art, so I did some paintings.  One of the really special things about living in Morro Bay was our breathtaking view out our window.  I knew well before I left that I was going to miss it.  I spent so much time watching the fog roll in and out, and the sun setting over the ocean, the wind blowing the fronds on the palm tree, and the waves crashing on the breakwater.  My very favorite time of day was at the end of the day when the sun has just set and the sky is orange, the kids are in bed (sometimes), and it is calm.  So, before I left, I painted most of my view so that I could have it at my new house, and then finished it when I got settled in here.  So, here is that:

 

 

Then, I also needed something for above our mantel.  Our big mirror did not work there, so I wanted to do something with red in it to tie in the rug that I bought at IKEA when we went to buy a couch.  IKEA.  Love.  Keep me away from that place.  Dangerous.  The couch, though, was much needed.  Our old one was one that we bought from a friend twelve years ago because he was moving and in a panic and needed to do something with it.  I never liked that couch.  Since then, it has been peed on and spilled on too many times to count, there was a big rip in the back with a metal spring sticking out of it, and just generally very frumpy.  Anyway, I bought some really big canvases online so I could do some painting.  Well, I knew it was a bad idea, I mean how do you ship a canvas?  But it was such a great deal, I couldn't pass it up.  So, when they showed up both ripped and the backer bars broken, I was pretty disappointed (but not that surprised).  But the person gave me my money back, and so I cut off the torn part, modified the supports, and re-stretched the canvas.  It is still warped, but it was free.  And after lots of thoughts and sharpie sketches, I decided to paint an abstract painting of the sand spit across the bay in Morro Bay that we would kayak out to.  There was one time, when Ethan was three or four, and he just booked it up the hill with this determination that was unprecedented and Carter ran along after him.  They didn't even look back, they were on an adventure.  Here's the picture from my phone that day.

 

So, that is what I wanted to capture.  Well, I never really finished it because I made it to a point where I had to add footsteps and little boys, and I was scared to do that and ruin everything.  So, it has been sitting on my mantel like this since August:

 

 

 Someday, I will get up the courage to finish it and seal it.

 

Then, we also went to Washington and Oregon for a Wade Family Reunion.  I still smile when I think about the homemade slip-and-slide that Jared made on the side of the steep grassy hill at his parents house out of plastic sheeting and a garden hose.  Really, the highlight of the trip was probably watching Jared thunder down the hill and crash at the bottom and then get up, laugh, and do it all over again.  We also drove out in the Columbia River Gorge (breathtaking!) where we had rented a house in Hood River for several days.  Here is a view from the place we stayed of Mount Hood in the background.  I really liked Hood River, enough that I thought, I could live here.  And I have not ever, EVER felt that way about the Pacific Northwest.  Usually, I am just grouchy and cold.  But it was such a nice town in a beautiful setting.  And it didn't rain a single time the entire time we were there (That is a first!). 



   

Unfortunately, we had to leave after just one night at the reunion house because the kids were starting school, but we did get in a whiffle ball game, an afternoon at the beach along the river, and a doctor's visit for Dylan.  He got poison oak from his job and it was certainly the worst case of poison oak I have ever seen.  It started out on his ankles and his neck but spread all over his body.  Dylan going to the doctor on his vacation to get some meds says a lot about how bad it was.  He was soooo itchy.  The crazy thing is that he didn't even touch it!  They were clearing on his jobsite to get ready for construction and using a chipper to grind up all the brush (which is basically all poison oak out there), and he was nearby, and got it from the dust.  Pretty sad, huh? 

Then it was school time!  Both the kids have great teachers, and I have been impressed in many ways by their school over these last few months.  I am relieved to not be constantly worrying if they are learning.   And the school is very close.  There is basically just a forest between us and the school, or you can walk along the road for a block and a half.  I tried the forest route with the boys and although there is a technically a way through, you have to climb down a steep ravine, cross a small creek, and climb up a slippery dirt slope, and poison oak of course.  And there was a freshly burnt homeless camp in there, so we walk along the road instead.  I wish there was a sidewalk, but it is still great to be that close.

Tanner started at a co-op preschool here in Pacific Grove.  We go together one day a week and then he goes without me usually two days a week.  I have really enjoyed it.  It is in this cute little schoolhouse that is old by west coast standards, and it is nice to be at school with him.  Since I pay for five days a week (only option), I also can be flexible on what days he goes if I have things I need to plan around.  He was a little unsure about it all at first, and still asks most days if it is my day to stay, but seems to have opened up more at school, and seems to have a good time.   This is the first time I have had a child in preschool and no baby at home.  It is pretty awesome.  The time fills up really fast since it is only 2.5 hours in the afternoon, but it has been great to have that time to get some things done without feeling like I am actively neglecting him.

Dylan bought an above-ground swimming pool in August off of craigslist, and we filled it up and left it in our driveway for a few weeks.  Somehow, without meaning to, I again moved to the foggiest place in the area, so it never really got warm.  Hence, the wetsuit.  But it was fun for awhile, and once it got too icky, I watered our "lawn" with it (really clovers and sand, not much grass) and folded it up and put it in the garage.

 

 

We have found our ward to be very transient.  We were one of three families who moved in the week we came, and on the move-in sheet they gave us, there was a spot for "move-out date."  There are A LOT of people who are here with the military for DLI, the Defense Language Institute.  There is also the Naval Postgraduate School and the Monterey Institute of International Studies, but most of the people in Pacific Grove came here for DLI.  And they come for a short period of time to learn a language and then they and their families are sent off to all sorts of places, like Kazakhstan, for example.  So, that is taking some getting used to for us, but not as much as having to move to Kazakhstan.

 

And that about covers it for July and August.