So, I realized this week just how many projects I promised myself that I would start after Christmas break. I've got a charming and willful 2 year old to potty train, a new house to find, and an old house to organize and clean from the inside out. Some updates:
Potty training: Charlotte has started ripping her diaper off at random and will only allow me to put a new one on her if coerced. She will sit on the potty for 3 seconds and then ask for treats.
house search: looks like we're probably going to enter the fascinating and terrifying world of foreclosures. Can anyone tell me why people like to trash their house before they're evicted? Are grown adults really that vindictive? Also, people in Las Vegas don't seem to believe in grass. They make up for it with an almost religious zeal for stucco.
organization: I went a little OCD and got matching containers for all the toys in my locking toy cabinet. Then, I went and printed little labels for all of them. Random visitors to my house have since been subjected to unsolicited tours of my toy cabinet.
cleaning: never realized just how dirty baseboards can get. I'm starting to wish we didn't like our landlords quite so much, and that we didn't convince friends of ours to move in after us.
It's been a fun week! A lot will be put on hold this next week while I teach Jack's preschool. Stay tuned for amusing 3 year old anecdotes from that adventure.
"Life is either a daring adventure or it is nothing at all."--Helen Keller The domestic and international adventures of the Swenson family.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Monday, January 5, 2009
Here are some more random and fun pictures taken over the holidays. From the top: 1-Jack made a snowman Daddy, and snowman Charlotte, and a snowman Jack. He came in for hot chocolate before he could build Mom and Anna. 2-My brother James LOVED holding Anna. He looks tough but he's a real softie for cute kids. 3,4- Cutest children in the world!
Happy New Year! As promised in my Christmas letter, I am really going to try to keep my blog updated this year. With the move coming up soon, I can't afford to burn any friendship bridges, especially things like blogs that travel so nicely.
Our Christmas vacation to UT was marvelous. We saw my sister's family up in Logan, my mom and dad in Peterson, grandparents in Spanish Fork, and all of my in-laws in Riverton. We also made a fun spur of the moment late night run to the Sizzler with Jenny and her cute kids, who were miraculously well-behaved the entire time. What fun!
I spent the second half of the trip with a large and impressive blue bruise on my lip--I hit my face with a ski pole at Brighton--and I looked like I was growing half of a fuhrer mustache. Gorgeous!
In other news, Anna is trying her best to triple her body weight and has the beginnings on a double chin, Charlotte is ludicrously un-ready to potty train but wants to anyway, and Jack's collection of Lightning McQueen paraphernilia is increasing. Matt and I stayed up late rocking out in our pajamas to Guitar Hero World Tour, and now I have a messy, mainly unpacked house to reckon with. And laundry to do. And groceries to buy. And a workout to do. And a shower somewhere in all of this.
Anyone curious anymore about why my last post is dated in August??
Our Christmas vacation to UT was marvelous. We saw my sister's family up in Logan, my mom and dad in Peterson, grandparents in Spanish Fork, and all of my in-laws in Riverton. We also made a fun spur of the moment late night run to the Sizzler with Jenny and her cute kids, who were miraculously well-behaved the entire time. What fun!
I spent the second half of the trip with a large and impressive blue bruise on my lip--I hit my face with a ski pole at Brighton--and I looked like I was growing half of a fuhrer mustache. Gorgeous!
In other news, Anna is trying her best to triple her body weight and has the beginnings on a double chin, Charlotte is ludicrously un-ready to potty train but wants to anyway, and Jack's collection of Lightning McQueen paraphernilia is increasing. Matt and I stayed up late rocking out in our pajamas to Guitar Hero World Tour, and now I have a messy, mainly unpacked house to reckon with. And laundry to do. And groceries to buy. And a workout to do. And a shower somewhere in all of this.
Anyone curious anymore about why my last post is dated in August??
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
cute pirate children
Here are the kids being cute. They literally stood next to me like this for a minute when they saw the camera. I had just taken it out to put some pictures on the computer, but I had to take advantage of this sweet little sibling moment.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
San Antonio
Matt and I loaded the children into our nice new minivan in Maryland and arrived in San Antonio two days later, with stains on the upholstery and travel weary souls. San Antonio has, thus far, proven well worth the drive.
We're staying in TLF which, depending on your attitude, is about the size of an awesome hotel room or a seriously tiny apartment. We've got a separate bathroom and one bedroom, with a little kitchen and a fold out couch in the living room. It's not a huge space, but it's plenty for our little family (especially if Matt doesn't take the car keys to work by mistake and leave me stranded here all day...)
San Antonio is bigger than Salt Lake and smaller than Chicago...big enough to have lots of fun activities, and small enough that you can park anywhere you go. Our main activity during the week we've been here (other than gawking at the cheap houses!) has been going to the zoo/park. The zoo is set within a larger park area, and there is a small train that runs around the whole thing. Jack has ridden it three times and talks about little else. We bought a membership to the zoo and plan on going often while we're here.
We also had Jack's 3rd birthday on Sunday--a relatively sedate experience because we are 1200 miles away from any of his friends and didn't have a party. Still, I made him a lopsided cake that he accepted as his lightning mcqueen cake and gave him his tricycle. He's been riding the tricycle everywhere, from the laundry room to the park and even out to the car. I love three year olds. :)
(While I write this, Jack has watched the video clip we took of him blowing out his candles 8 times and is working on nine. I think I might throw the camera away if I have to hear myself sing Happy Birthday off key one more time...:))
We're staying in TLF which, depending on your attitude, is about the size of an awesome hotel room or a seriously tiny apartment. We've got a separate bathroom and one bedroom, with a little kitchen and a fold out couch in the living room. It's not a huge space, but it's plenty for our little family (especially if Matt doesn't take the car keys to work by mistake and leave me stranded here all day...)
San Antonio is bigger than Salt Lake and smaller than Chicago...big enough to have lots of fun activities, and small enough that you can park anywhere you go. Our main activity during the week we've been here (other than gawking at the cheap houses!) has been going to the zoo/park. The zoo is set within a larger park area, and there is a small train that runs around the whole thing. Jack has ridden it three times and talks about little else. We bought a membership to the zoo and plan on going often while we're here.
We also had Jack's 3rd birthday on Sunday--a relatively sedate experience because we are 1200 miles away from any of his friends and didn't have a party. Still, I made him a lopsided cake that he accepted as his lightning mcqueen cake and gave him his tricycle. He's been riding the tricycle everywhere, from the laundry room to the park and even out to the car. I love three year olds. :)
(While I write this, Jack has watched the video clip we took of him blowing out his candles 8 times and is working on nine. I think I might throw the camera away if I have to hear myself sing Happy Birthday off key one more time...:))
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Always wear your seatbelts!
I started to write an entry about our trip out to San Antonio, but I mentioned our new minivan, and the only way I could possibly begin to justify the fact that we now own a minivan (yuck) is to mention the car accident that required the purchase of a new car, and one does not simply gloss over an accident in which a car is left in a twisted heap of metal on the side of the highway and everyone manages to get out alive. I know, because I made the mistake of trying. Once word got out about how serious the accident was, I got yelled at a lot by the people I had simply told, "I was in a car accident but I'm fine."
There's not a lot in the way of narration because I was asleep (at the wheel) for the most interesting part of the accident--the impressive drift off the road and subsequent launch over the guard rail. The two eye-witnesses differed somewhat: I either hit a rock that launched me over or simply popped up on a low section of the railing, but the first thing I remember, I was barrelling over dirt and rocks at 65+ mph and thinking, "if I brake and swerve, I can get back onto the road and I won't have to call a tow truck." Then in a split second--so fast I didn't process it all for hours--I rolled several times, lost most of a tire, and landed on my side, with the airbag deployed and one window shattered. To my credit as a mom, I turned around and saw that the kids were okay before I started getting annoyed by all the damage I'd just caused. I actually sat there, alive in my utterly destroyed car, and fumed because I would have to pay to get the airbag repacked and the window replaced. Never mind the fact that, oh, I was on my side and the rest of my car was unrecognisable. It was the airbag that annoyed me. Funny how the mind works in times of stress--mine just refused to acknowledge it.
I had to crawl out of the broken side window and see my children trapped in the backseat, with all doors smashed beyond use, before I got scared. I searched around for my cell phone, but it had been sitting on the dash board and had flown off into the woods somewhere. I ran barefoot up to the highway and started to flag some cars down before I noticed the car that had already stopped ahead of me and the man coming from it. He had seen the accident occur, and in retrospect, he must have been surprised to see me running around like a crazy woman on the side of the interstate. He turned out to be a volunteer paramedic and was probably furious with me for moving after such trauma. He came back to the car, helped me inspect the damage and agreed that the kids were not going to be leaving the car through the doors. Several more people stopped--gave me blankets, a coat, helped pull the kids, then their car seats, slowly out through the passenger side window. They took us to the ambulance to check us out and wouldn't let us leave, despite my pleas for a cell phone. I was still in serious shock when we pulled away from the scene, and there are so many details lost: where I was, who had helped me, and most importantly, what that guard rail was in place to guard me from.
I was in West Virginia along route 68 when the accident happened...about 3.5 hours through a 7 hour trip back to Maryland from Dayton, OH. Matt was still in Dayton, and when he got my phone call, left the hospital immediately to come get us. When he did, we stuffed everything from the wrecked car into his car, knowing now that the car was totalled and that we wouldn't see it again. It was sobering to see the car sitting in the salvage lot, and even more sobering to watch the reaction of the people who had towed it. "you were inside that car when it crashed?" We wanted a picture, but couldn't find the camera in the mess.
We escaped with some seriously sore muscles and bruises, but nothing else. It was miraculous in so many ways--that everyone was wearing seat belts, that the car chose to veer off the road and not into other cars, that I fell off the road at, in seemed, the one section of West Virginia with no cliff, no river, no rocky outcropping. It was even miraculous in its own way, that technology has developed to make cars safe even faced with such a disaster. We were very lucky, and I'm still processing it all 2 months later. I'm still thinking about the things that God still wants me to do here.
So, we got a minivan to replace the sonata, because we were going to buy one in a year anyway. Now I'm a minivan mom who always, always, ALWAYS wears her seatbelt.
There's not a lot in the way of narration because I was asleep (at the wheel) for the most interesting part of the accident--the impressive drift off the road and subsequent launch over the guard rail. The two eye-witnesses differed somewhat: I either hit a rock that launched me over or simply popped up on a low section of the railing, but the first thing I remember, I was barrelling over dirt and rocks at 65+ mph and thinking, "if I brake and swerve, I can get back onto the road and I won't have to call a tow truck." Then in a split second--so fast I didn't process it all for hours--I rolled several times, lost most of a tire, and landed on my side, with the airbag deployed and one window shattered. To my credit as a mom, I turned around and saw that the kids were okay before I started getting annoyed by all the damage I'd just caused. I actually sat there, alive in my utterly destroyed car, and fumed because I would have to pay to get the airbag repacked and the window replaced. Never mind the fact that, oh, I was on my side and the rest of my car was unrecognisable. It was the airbag that annoyed me. Funny how the mind works in times of stress--mine just refused to acknowledge it.
I had to crawl out of the broken side window and see my children trapped in the backseat, with all doors smashed beyond use, before I got scared. I searched around for my cell phone, but it had been sitting on the dash board and had flown off into the woods somewhere. I ran barefoot up to the highway and started to flag some cars down before I noticed the car that had already stopped ahead of me and the man coming from it. He had seen the accident occur, and in retrospect, he must have been surprised to see me running around like a crazy woman on the side of the interstate. He turned out to be a volunteer paramedic and was probably furious with me for moving after such trauma. He came back to the car, helped me inspect the damage and agreed that the kids were not going to be leaving the car through the doors. Several more people stopped--gave me blankets, a coat, helped pull the kids, then their car seats, slowly out through the passenger side window. They took us to the ambulance to check us out and wouldn't let us leave, despite my pleas for a cell phone. I was still in serious shock when we pulled away from the scene, and there are so many details lost: where I was, who had helped me, and most importantly, what that guard rail was in place to guard me from.
I was in West Virginia along route 68 when the accident happened...about 3.5 hours through a 7 hour trip back to Maryland from Dayton, OH. Matt was still in Dayton, and when he got my phone call, left the hospital immediately to come get us. When he did, we stuffed everything from the wrecked car into his car, knowing now that the car was totalled and that we wouldn't see it again. It was sobering to see the car sitting in the salvage lot, and even more sobering to watch the reaction of the people who had towed it. "you were inside that car when it crashed?" We wanted a picture, but couldn't find the camera in the mess.
We escaped with some seriously sore muscles and bruises, but nothing else. It was miraculous in so many ways--that everyone was wearing seat belts, that the car chose to veer off the road and not into other cars, that I fell off the road at, in seemed, the one section of West Virginia with no cliff, no river, no rocky outcropping. It was even miraculous in its own way, that technology has developed to make cars safe even faced with such a disaster. We were very lucky, and I'm still processing it all 2 months later. I'm still thinking about the things that God still wants me to do here.
So, we got a minivan to replace the sonata, because we were going to buy one in a year anyway. Now I'm a minivan mom who always, always, ALWAYS wears her seatbelt.
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