an exciting morning.

yesterday morning at 4:44 jb and i woke up to a loud, piercing beep going off in our house. basically the most annoying alarm ever.

justin attempted to dismantle any remaining smoke detectors (he's got a secret vendetta against fire detectors), but none of them were the culprit.

finally, he traced the sound to the hall closet where our furnace lives. it was our carbon monoxide detector.

we just got the CO detector about six months ago when our heater went out and the repair guy stuck it in the closet with the warning "if it ever goes off, get out of the house immediately and call 911".

so...poisonous gases are not to be trifled with. so i called 911. they dispatched me to the fire department, who asked me a few questions, then told us to get the kidlets and head outside. a few minutes after loading our sleepy littles into the stroller, the firetruck arrived and four firefighters got out.

fortunately, there was no actual CO leaking into our house. the detector must have gotten wet with all the rain we have been getting, or the humidity. the firefighters were insanely nice and told us we were the second call they had that night for that particular CO detector.

they also shamed jb a bit about the missing smoke detectors. needless to say, i've ordered a new CO detector, a fire extinguisher, and justin will be reinstalling all of our smoke alarms this weekend.

but, the kids got to see a firetruck up close and personal, so the morning wasn't a total loss...

brrrr.

our heater went out yesterday. huge bummer, but this time around the fix isn't too crazy - we just need to replace the ignitor. apparently our furnace is 16-17 years old, though, and 15 years is considered unbelievably great, so...it's likely it will give out in the near future (hopefully that means we can get 2-3 more years out of it...). so that will be $7-12K. which is an astronomical amount of money. yikes. maybe we will win the lottery before then!

anyway. stuff like this makes me super appreciative of a lot of things. where we live - seriously, if we lived in another state, we would have much crazier winters and this would be a huge ordeal. it only got down to 39 here last night, and it stayed a balmy low-mid 60s in the house. we bundled the kidlets up in flannel footie pajamas and let them sleep in ek's bed with the space heater. and jb and i just rocked lots of blankets. but all in all, no worse for the wear. definitely wouldn't be the case if we were dealing with temps in the teens and below.

i'm also just grateful to even have a house and warmth and all those modern necessities that we take for granted. it's crazy. there are so many people who don't have a place to live at all, and this time of year has got to be just awful - even in (mostly) sunny texas.

here are the kids last night and this morning. in spite of the chilliness, they are very resistant to wearing winter-appropriate clothing. also, gumbo makes everything better.

sandbox.

we got the kids a sandbox this weekend. seriously, why have we not owned a sandbox for their entire lives?

our original plan was to make one, because that is cute and fun. but with all the projects we've been trying to do at our house as of late, we just decided to bite the bullet and get a pre-fab one. magically, the one we chose fits perfectly in the little space below the fort in their playscape AND it has a lid. lid = key for so many reasons.

we have decided the sandbox is the zen garden of sibling-hood. they do not fight in there. they just giggle and dump sand on each other and spend long stretches of time hanging out. it's like magic.

obviously it is too soon to tell if this will be an ongoing trend, but the sandbox was only operational from saturday evening (30 minutes pre-bedtime) on. i would estimate they spent a good three hours in there, resulting in at least 900 mosquito bites (despite my best attempts at warding them off) and a pound or so of sand in their clothes, hair, bathtub, etc. i think that's a good pre-indicator of success, right?

waiting patiently for sand. 

can't be bothered to look at the camera.

it was a dark and stormy night.

last night, jb and i were couch lounging post-dinner, watching the spurs/heat game (side note: i hate lebron james).  we kept seeing tornado and thunderstorm warnings for counties west and north of us.  the weather people said we should be on the lookout in travis county too, but we sort of ignored that because the weather people are always wrong with central texas weather.  especially when they say we're likely to get any form of precipitation - ha!

anyway...i dozed off for about 15-20 minutes, and when i woke up from my couch nap around 10, it was pouring buckets and the wind was insane.  there was also near-constant lightning and a low rumble of thunder.  jb and i stood in the back door to the porch and watched the spectacle.  i really love a good storm. and no, of course i don't love when people or property get hurt, but i can't help but get really amazed at the forces of nature at work.

so, next thing we know, the electricity is gone. at nearly that moment, we hear a huge crack, and one of our elm trees split in half. super bummer on so many levels. definitely another $500-$700 we didn't need to be spending right now, but what can you do? i think we'll lose the whole tree, too, which i hate because that one provided awesome kiddie pool shade during the afternoon.

the postscript to this story is that ek woke up about 5 minutes later. i think the lack of white noise from our a/c, her fan, her little noise-making vent thing, plus the addition of thunder noise and lightning cracks woke her up, and then she was in a super dark room all alone. poor kiddo. hollis, on the other hand, had the best night of sleep of his entire life. literally. i was up most of the night because i had a 3.5 year old monkey in bed with me and it was hot, but i got up for real around 6:15. by 6:45 i couldn't stand it, so went in to h's room to check on him because he's NEVER slept that late. he was racked out, but of course woke up immediately when the door creaked. sigh. maybe he's turned over a new leaf?

weekendly.

the weekends are never long enough and i always plan to accomplish infinitely more than is possible with two young kidlets, but whatever.  lately we've been beginning the weekend at the new whole foods up north by the kids' school - pick them up friday afternoon and let them go buck wild while we sip a beverage, enjoy the springier weather and graze on yummy snacks.

this weekend, we went to the natural gardener saturday morning to pick out some stuff to grow this year.  our yard was really well-landscaped when we bought our house, but it's been a super hard winter, so we had some stuff to replace.  plus, i wanted to attempt a few veggies this year, and i have a nice herb garden kicking as of now.  so for edibles we have: zucchini, yellow crookneck squash (heirloom variety - super excited), cucumbers, japanese eggplant, banana peppers, cherry peppers.  i will pick up a cherry tomato plant or two this week, as they tend to fare better in our super fun texas summers.  herbs: oregano, cilantro, rosemary, sage, english thyme, lavendar, feverfew, chives, spearmint, burnet salad.  i'm just guessing we'll lose the chives and cilantro before too long, but they've had a good run.  if i could grow other plants as well and i can grow oregano, i would be a horticulturalist.

more upbeat post.

today is gorgeous and heavenly outside.  i have a wicked cold/allergies/who knows what, but i've got the windows open and i'm hydrating while working from home, and it's goodness.  we have trumpet vine growing on our house and it's all in bloom or about to bloom and it's spectacular.  yay for spring.

this weekend i'm taking a sewing class - it's a quilting technique, so i think i'm going to start on what will eventually be hollis's big boy bed quilt (or a template for it), since it will probably take me a year to complete it.

last night before going to bed, ek whispered something i didn't hear as i was closing her door.  she started crying once the door was closed (which she does when i miss/forget one of her random items on the bedtime checklist).  i opened it back up and she said in a loud stage whisper "i just wanted to tell you i really like your dress".  that girl.

rsv.

last night was ek's first "real" dance class, since last week was just a trial.  i'm still on the fence about committing to something like this with her being only three and me already having a hard enough time feeling spread so thin, etc.  but man she loves it so much.  in last night's class, they sang "bippity boppity boo" while twirling and running around the room, flinging scarves this way and that.  she could not stop jabbering about it last night or this morning.

hollis has rsv and an ear infection.  poor thing.  he's so pitiful - this is the sickest he has ever been by far.  i brought him to the doctor this morning and his breathing is still pretty good, so that is a relief.  he's napping right now and when he wakes up we'll go fill his prescription and hopefully get him to eat something.

some dudes are working on our house right now - we're having a wall removed between our laundry/storage rooms, scraping popcorn off the ceiling in the den, removing paneling and installing drywall, etc.  it's a lot to manage.  the television is in the middle of our dining area, furniture and random stuff is scattered throughout the rest of the house.  i'm super excited to see what it's going to look like, just not entirely thrilled about the process toward that end result.

old house/new house.

red house blue house.  not really.  our old house was pink brick and this new one is like grey stone and some green siding with brown trim.  anyway.  we are in the new house!  yay.

as i'm sure i've mentioned, we have been looking for another house off and on for almost a year.  mostly on, though we took a little hiatus when jb was without employment.  the real estate market in austin has been bonkers and we wanted to be more central and we wanted to be in a neighborhood where we'd be able to send the kidlets to public school, SO...hence the onus for moving now.  we were scared that if we held out until closer to kinder-time, we wouldn't be able to afford to live central anymore.  also, it's hard to live in a great house (which our last house really was) knowing that you're not going to be there for very long, and not being able to fully settle because you will probably be moving.

so.  at the end of october, we saw a house list on a wednesday.  it is in a neighborhood we love, near jb's work, good size, good layout, no mandatory right-away projects, and no pool (turns out tiny kids + pool = neurosis for me).  we saw it within two hours of it listing, put in an offer right away, and got accepted!  this was a small miracle, as we've put in a few other offers that we've lost over the last several months.

anyway....everything has really fallen into place and gone incredibly smoothly with this whole process.  of course, moving at any time is a beast.  moving during the holidays with two small humans is a super beast unbeknownst to me before this endeavor.  we listed our old house on ek's birthday and got an offer right away.  we closed on that house wednesday (dec. 11), nine days after closing on our new house.  so, timing-wise, this was really incredible.

a word about the old house.  i really loved that house.  i think we all did.  it is where emme learned to walk, where hollis was born.  it was spacious and comfortable and served so well as our little slice of existence for two and a half years.  this was our first time selling a house, and i have not been without nostalgia about it.  we had lots of fun with the pool, in the kitchen, sitting on the front porch waiting for daddy to get home.  we made it our home in every sense of the word for the time we were there.

and now here we are.  a new place, a new normal.  we will build our lives here, make new memories.  we are grateful for this house - nestled in a place where we can (hopefully) find a community, a sense of belonging.  so, once we get out of all the boxes and chaos, we are excited to begin!

big girl room.

we moved emme in to her big girl room some time around labor day.  but, it's really only now that i can call her room almost finished.  sigh.  projects take a long time around these parts.  i've been way too exhausted in the evenings to get much done these days, and the weekends are like a whirlwind.

in any case, her room was live-able, just not done.  and now, i think it's fairly close to both.  probably 94%.  which is about as much as we complete anything, sadly.

i was torn on the issue of moving emme to a real bed so early - over 2 months before her second birthday.  but, she had slept on pallets on the floor at my parents, and in a real bed while we vacationed in vermont, not to mention the nap mat at school, so i figured she could handle it.  i also wanted to give her plenty of buffer before small smalls was born so she didn't associate him/her with being kicked out of her crib.  finally, the room we moved her in to is right next to the kids' bathroom and i was hopeful that would be a help for potty training.

so.  it was a slow process.  we started talking to her about the room, telling her what things we would put in there, etc.  i picked out fabric for her quilt, which i hoped would be the base of her loose color scheme.  i'm not a theme person, nor am i one to adhere super-strictly to a pallet of any sort, but i knew there needed to be something somewhat cohesive with the room, so i hope i achieved that.  we painted. we dragged in some furniture and bought a couple of other items at target and ikea.  we debated whether to just leave the mattress on the floor - the montessori method recommends that - but ultimately, we thought it really needed to feel like its own space within the room, so we got a low frame from ikea.

the other stuff i wanted to do with the room were things like keeping it super minimal (montessori style), etc.  well, that didn't exactly work.  all of ek's toys were in our living room (the one that has no furniture in it) before, so it was more important to get all that stuff out of the common area than it was to keep her room sparse and monk-like.  it worked out.  i do need to work on de-cluttering some of the stuff that's no longer age appropriate, but for now, i think she's pretty ok with having all her goods at her finger tips.  she's also more than happy to drag it all throughout the house and leave quite the wake. let's just say i sing the restore song a lot.

and, that's it, i guess.  the pictures are all from today on my iphone.  her bed is not usually made (i wish i could lie and say it was), mainly because i can't deal with the belly and the reaching into the far corner, and emme is not big/skilled enough to make her own bed, and justin doesn't care about made beds at all.  but everything else is mostly as it usually is.  emme has done amazingly well with her big girl room.  it took 2 or 3 nights to adjust to the new sleeping sitch, but since then she has loved every second of it.  she still calls us to come get her in the morning/after nap instead of getting out of bed, which i love.  she's potty trained except for nights, and it's great having her bathroom right there.

please excuse the blown-out christmas tree and table lamp, and the darkness of the photos.  i'm doing the best i can....

 sitting area with blocks, puzzles, and (currently) christmas tree.

 bed!

 more books (they are taking over our lives - i love it), justin's old brio train set in the toy box.

 animals on shelves...probably need a few more shelves as it's pretty crowded up there...

the deck.

hi there.  it's been a really long time since i posted.  we are as busy (or busier) than ever here, and i just do not have my act together with where the pictures are, which computer i'm writing on, etc.  silly technology.  

anyway...we built a deck!  er, um...we had a deck built.  in march.  it's amazing.  we're still in the process of sprucing it up and getting it set up the way we want it, but our backyard has come a LONG way from when we bought the house.  very exciting.  for posterity, we documented the before/after.  we need to take some shots of what it looks like stained and with furniture and plants, but baby steps...

it's january, y'all.

and, amazingly, january is almost over.  how did this happen?  what happened to my thoughtful, reflective  time when i decide on all the goals and feats i want to attempt and accomplish in this new year?  the last three weeks have been eaten up by justin traveling to wichita to shoot a wedding, football-watching, house projects, car troubles, and ear infections.  well, just one ear infection, but that's enough to derail a good three days around here.
anyway, in the interest of authentically capturing what our lives are like in this moment in time, i'm going to refrain from back-dating posts and trying to pretend like i'm on top of it.  that's one goal for this year.  just post when i can post, as much as i can, and try not to worry too much about what i'm going to think about it all in five years.
i've been insanely busy at work lately.  i'm running this conference in early february and it's like herding cats getting all the little pieces in a row so everything will go off without a hitch.  it's not bad, just a wee bit stressful since i'm still new and this is the first project i've managed like this.  i think it may occupy more of my mental energy than my physical energy at this point.  outside of work, we've been having a go at getting our house organized and feeling like home.  we cleaned out the garage last weekend, and that was a huge accomplishment.  i don't think either of us expected it to take the FULL weekend, but it did (and then some).  no matter, since it's done now and looks incredible.  peg boards for tools, everything aggregated with its like supplies, shelves installed, and we can now park both cars in the garage, under cover.  this is a first since moving to texas.  i think the only thing left to do is have someone figure out why my garage door works automatically, but jb's is a manual open/close only.
this past weekend, justin began the pressure-washing project of 2012 and completed 2/3 sides of the fence in the backyard.  it's insane how much dirt can accrue on a fence.  we also saw some friends this weekend, which was really nice.  it's crazy that a month used to seem like a long time between visits with friends and now it seems like we don't see most friends for entire seasons.  alas, i think it's just this time in our lives, so i'm trying not to let it make me feel too isolated.
what else?  last week ek got another ear infection - her third in less than 3 months.  we're really praying she holds out and doesn't get another one for a while, as our doc said four in six months would mean we should think about tubes.  blah - i am not at all keen on doing that to her, and i hate to see her sick, too.  so hopefully we are on our way out of this phase.  when i took her to the doctor on tuesday, my car was dead when we were heading out the door, so she and i spent a feverish and long afternoon at the car dealership getting the battery replaced, etc. that day.  keeping a slightly-ill 14 month-old entertained in coffee shops and dealership waiting rooms for 3 or 4 hours is not one of the easiest things i've ever accomplished.
this is such a weird time in our lives, i think.  it feels like everything is moving in slow motion - like we will never finish certain projects, like i am having a ridiculously hard time starting (let alone completing) very simple tasks - and yet, time is flying by faster than i can catch my breath.

lately.

so, i am many many many posts behind.  it's a bummer because i really enjoy writing and know that i will value this record of our lives...but after working on a computer all day, i usually am not super psyched about the idea of sitting down to write on my laptop at home.  and, the evenings just go by in a flash - especially during the week.  anyway.  enough complaining.  i am adding better blogging to my list of new years goals (oh, it's so expansive already, what's one more thing to aspire towards?).  before the new year, however, i hope to post about: emme's 12-month update, emme's 13-month update (embarrassing that both of those are overdue), emme WALKING!, crafts, house projects, the thanksgiving holiday, and all sorts of other things. 
for today, though, i will just share a few recent pictures of things that have been going on lately.  first, we have decorated for christmas.  this has been ridiculously daunting for me for several reasons.  we weren't home for the weekend after thanksgiving, we aren't going to be in town for the actual day of christmas, it's my first year with a mantel (something i consider to be momentous, even though i'm pretty sure justin now has full confirmation that i'm a crazy person), and our house is gigantor now, compared to our old house.  oh, and the weather outside has been frightful - haha! - so decorating outside just seemed like a bad plan.  so.  i overcame (kind of) these obstacles, and this is what's happening.  we have a tree.  it is a full, adult-sized grown up tree.  it was acquired on a super wet and rainy sunday morning with temps in the 30s.  it was kind of awesome and wintry, to tell you the truth, and it was the fastest tree decision we've ever made (you like that one?  i like it too.  sold!).  ek loved the guy with the chainsaw who cut the base, and she was entertained by the guy tying the tree to the roof of our car.  she also passed out completely on the way home, as the whole experience clearly just wore her out.  we (still) have not put a roof rack on the car, so i had to be extra careful driving home.  justin helped by criticizing my driving from the passenger seat, and i let him know how much i appreciated that. 

beyond the christmas tree, we also have a nice nativity scene set up (i don't have a picture of that as it tends to not photograph very well), and a mini-twig tree thing i created from a branch in our yard and some spray paint.  i hung lights and little ornaments from it - it's a total eye-sore when it's daytime, but i think the glow of lights is lovely in the evenings.  and then there's the mantel.  mantle?  i'll go with mantel.  it went through about 16 iterations before settling in its current state.  i'm pretty sure the only reason it really settled is because it's mid-december, and i had to stop at some point.  anyway...it is ok.  our mantel is challenging because it's not very wide, and it's hung poorly, so there is a slope that makes heavy and/or smooth objects slide right off.  dangerous and inconvenient.  maybe santa will bring us a new mantel by next year.  the major christmas item that i have yet to cross off my list (besides shopping...) is making new christmas stockings.  i sewed the polka-dotted ones several years ago when i was just learning to sew and our family consisted of me, justin, ollie, and pippa.  SO...my plan is to make new stockings that kind of align with emme kay's stocking, but that just hasn't happened yet.  i'll fit it in when i'm updating the blog. 

other items for the holidays have included making a few gifts for emme's teachers (and for my boss).  i found some cute ideas on pinterest, and ultimately decided to make good use of my many many many fabric scraps and sew coffee coozies.  these are just a couple that i made and i wrapped them around starbucks gift cards and tied them with a bow.  i was pretty please with the way they turned out, especially since i hammered out four or five of them in about 2 hours.  i could probably have gone even faster but i was doing laundry and organizing the room at the same time....

we also went to justin's office christmas party last saturday night and it was really fun.  we brought emme with us, thinking we'd only stay for a couple of house and her bed time wouldn't get that messed up.  well, we ended up hanging out until nearly 10 and she was a total trooper.  she was obsessed with the christmas tree and ate all the tasty food they had catered.  she passed out around 830 or 9 in my arms and just stayed asleep throughout the white elephant gift opening (we acquired a goldfish that is, thankfully, now employed by justin's company), the departure, the car ride, and the pajama change.  she went right down when we got home and slept until almost 830 the next morning.  champ.  this is her in her carseat after the festivities.  

 finally, here are just a couple more pictures of lately.  we’ve had some cold weather, which has given us many tremendous opportunities to employ ek’s vast collection of hats.  i love them all.  this one with ears is hilarious, if still a little big.  gotta love a chin strap that prevents her from pulling it right off.  we also have, as always, many musical interludes in our family time.  this picture is from sunday morning, before we even had breakfast. the look of intense concentration may have had more to do with what was happening in her diaper than in her musical stylings, but i digress...

i love this season…the busy-ness aside, it’s a time of year that always makes me feel so happy. 

thankful: november 16.

i am thankful for holiday appliance sales.  ha!  when we bought this house, the washer and dryer conveyed and they have been awful.  you have to run the dryer like 3 times to dry a normal load, so our electric bill is through the roof, too.  the dishwasher is terrible as well - dishes don't get clean, and everything smells like the soap didn't really get rinsed off...it's just not a good scenario.  plus, having a baby and all the ridiculous sickness we've had in our house for what feels like months....i just feel like we need good, effective appliances to do all the cleaning we need to do.  so, new stuff was what i decided we needed/wanted for our anniversary.  it will end up being christmas too, i think, but i feel like it's worth the investment.  anyway...back in october, i started looking and researching and this awesome old man named ralph at home depot told me to come back around november 10 for early black friday sales.  well, we headed over last weekend and found out that he was not lying.  we saved literally hundreds of dollars on the exact stuff we wanted!  so, everything got delivered today and i am going to be rocking some hard core laundry for several days, i think.  it's amazing the stuff i get fired up about now that i'm a mom.

warming the house.

last saturday, we threw a little housewarming party.  there was hardly any notice (i think i sent out an invite on facebook about 10 days before...woops), but we figured 2 months just about exhausted the statute of limitations on when a house is considered ripe for a housewarming party.  if we'd waited until the house felt "ready" for a party, i am thinking emme would be nearing first grade, so we just had to make it happen.  

justin smoked two 15 pound (or so) briskets, and we made potato salad, mac n cheese, queso, baked beans, and bread pudding (i think that's everything...).  then mike brought over a pulled pork that he'd smoked as well as some delicious pork stew that was amazing.  we never really lack for food 'round these parts....

this was the first big party we've had with emme on the move, and there were babies and kiddos EVERYWHERE.  it was awesome.  you kind of don't realize how many kids there are until you see them en masse like that, and then it's like a wild daycare.  i love it.  i always wanted to have a massive family with tons of kids running around, but since that's not exactly how things turned out, it's really amazing to have friends that feel like family who we can play with.  

anyway...there were lots of people and lots of food, so we didn't do the best job of taking pictures (well, i never do a very good job of snapping pics, but justin had his hands full at this endeavor, so we don't have his usual on-point documentation of this event - he only got a few the first few minutes of the shindig).  but there are a few.  in any case, we really appreciated everyone showing up and spending the afternoon with us.  we look forward to many more parties and great memories in the new casa.