Is It Naptime Yet

This is going to be the birthday post for May. Jon and I both had our birthdays so here’s what we did.

Jon didn’t like my idea of bowling so we went to the Springs Preserve for his birthday. Lilah had gone earlier in the week with Britta so she was a pro at showing us around.

 

Getting ready to hit the road.

 

Posing for a picture in the “canyons”.

The lizards were fascinating.

Jon was looking at Eden for this shot and Lilah was looking at me.

 

Jon likes stopping and moving the stone.

I’m tired of walking.

I’m happy to walk.

In the garden demonstration area.

Playing with the oranges in the trash place. (This was Lilah’s favorite and we didn’t find it until on our way back from the gardens. It was about recycling and energy use.)

We spent most of the day at the Springs Preserve and the girls and I got Jon’s cake in the oven after we came home.

Lilah choose the blue sprinkles and Eden choose the orange.

Happy Birthday Honey!

For my birthday we went bowling. They didn’t have a shoe for Eden in her size, the smallest size they had for children was 9 and Eden wears a 6 1/2. Eden started crying and the nice attendant let us use a size 9 on Eden free of charge. She did wear them even though I was sure she was going to trip and fall a few times, but she always caught herself.

The battery went low after I caught these few shoots.

 Lilah had a blast.

Even before we left she was talking about how much she was gonna love bowling.

I don’t remember the scores but Eden and Jon actually got a strike and I’m pretty sure Eden’s score was higher than mine and Jon’s was the highest.

After bowling Jon and the girls baked my cake and I took a nap.

Then for dinner I picked us up a pizza, that’s what’s on Lilah’s face.

It was a fun birthday.

We put  Eden in those plastic training pants yesterday.  Jon’s trying to potty train her in his last 4 days of vacation because we’re not seeing much progress with the pull-ups.  She wasn’t liking them and  we asked her why.

“My bottom is big.”

Yep. It’s official. She’s a teenage girl at the age of nearly 3.

On the up side of your husband potty training your child in the messy pants. I call them messy because they ’cause a mess and lots of stress. He has to deal with all the messes and Jon has much more patience. He had to clean the poop out of 3 different pairs of underwear and poop that had leaked onto the floor out of her pull-up that morning. Luckily it was on our fake wood floor and not any carpet.

I was very happy to be incapacitated yesterday. By the third poopy underwear I would have been a little more upset, though she had tried to go to the toilet the third time.
It was a more poop than usual day yesterday also, so I’m glad to have Jon.

The downfall, I have to start dealing with the messes come Monday.

Today was the day  I had my minor surgery. Jon’s being a doll and doing everything he can for me. He’s carried my purse, got the milk for my cereal and has been overall very helpful, at least for the time I’ve been awake. ( I took a long nap this afternoon/ early evening.)

We’ll know if the cells are just abnormal or if they’ve developed to melanoma on June 11th. Jon also had an appointment today and one mole removed for testing.

I’m hoping it was just funny looking.

Was my last day of work. Like real work in an office, not taking care of children work. I worked for Distance Ed at UNLV as a student worker and my due date for Lilah was a month away or June 27th.The contract ended on May 23rd 2003 and rather than put people through  the work of renewing a contract for a lousy 2 or 3 weeks I decided to quit the final day of the contract. ( They renewed student worker contracts every semester and once at the beginning the summer. )

Today I am filling in as the receptionist at my sister’s work. Theirs called in sick, Jon’s home and my mom was already at her other job, who is the normal sub. Any money is good money and this happens to be easy money.  (Jon’s getting the bedroom organized, but most of it’s his books and I have a few boxes, so I don’t feel too bad leaving him to the resettling of the room after I painted it for two days.)

I’m at the office now, but I don’t have my password for my blog so this will not be posted til I get home tonight.

I was a little nervous, but I know the people in the office and they’re very nice, even if they swear like sailors and watch you while you answer the phones to make you nervous. I don’t know real-estate lingo or what goes on so when the people on the phone fire off questions I really wish I could answer them, but all I can do is redirect.

I just think it’s funny. Five years from the date of my final day at work I’m subbing  and “working” at least for the day.

Note from home: Jon had dinner ready when I got home and most of the stuff back in the bedroom and the dishes done. He even did some laundry, and folded it! (I admit I don’t always fold the laundry when I do it.) When Lilah was at the table waiting for dinner to be served and she had overheard some of my thank yous she said “Yeah, Daddy’s such a good housekeeper.”

I’ve finished painting. One coat of primer and two coats of paint and I’m done.

My muscles are killing me. KILLING I said.

I like latex paint much better. It rinses out nicely with water.

I also had the right tools for the color coats and it went much smoother. ( For edging I used a roller that had a special head and it was  soo much easier than than using a paint brush for edging. )
I am pleased and if I use latex paint and the right tools it makes it all worth it. I also think I lost 5 pounds from good old hard work and lots of sweat, but I’ve gained two monstrous zits just in time for my 25th birthday.

I’m going to go lay down and I know I will awake with a lot of pain tomorrow.

Before

After

P.S. The cat came by while I was painting today and went to come in, but I was on the step stool in front of the door and yelled at him. He is crazy.

So we started painting today. (I thought Jon had the whole two weeks off, but today was his first day off.) I have the primer coat on. It had to be cleaned up with mineral spirits, so I have lots of primer on my hands still and I have decided that primer paint is evil, or any paint that you clean up with mineral spirits. It’s not the most even coat, so I’m hoping I still only need one coat of regular paint.

I’m tired and we have no where to sleep because the table that was under our bed is now on our bed and there is no where to put it and I won’t be painting the color on until tomorrow. It’s starting to get dark and I don’t want any bugs coming in the open door while I paint, not to mention cats.

I’m exhausted too.

I think our bedroom will be the only room we paint…ever.

Beets are our most successful crop thus far. You can eat the leaves. (I get the steamer boiling, put the cut up leaves in and then remove the beet leaves from the heat. I also eat them with Italian dressing ’cause they’re too bitter to me without it.)
You can eat the root, well the beet is the root.

I did not like beets as a child. My mom would buy them and they were awful.
Then I ate regular beets as an adult at Jon’s house. They were nothing like the beets I knew as a child because the beets I knew as a child were pickled.

Pickled beets are not regular beets.

That said I still feel that beets are not for everyone. I, myself, like the earthy sweet taste our garden beets have, and canned beets are OK too, but not as tasty as our garden beets. Eden does not like beets. I try to tell her they’re red pancakes but she doesn’t buy it and barely touches any beets we give her.
(Broccoli are trees, mashed potatoes are clouds. We give our food different names for fun most of the time. Lilah loves red pancakes. )

This was our beet harvest this year.

I’m thinking we should plant all beets and plum tomatoes because they seem to produce the most for us. Our radishes also grow well, but I detest radishes, and Jon’s breath for the hour after he’s eaten any.

After dinner note: Eden ate her beet without any complaint and even had a second one! I guess she only likes beets from our garden.

Sorry for four post in one night. (Really three post in one night and one very early in the morning, It’s 1:07 am.) This weekend was just very eventful.

I’m also a lengthy writer so I appreciate anyone willing to read it all.

My high school choir teacher is retiring at the end of this school year. They had a retirement party for her Saturday night and a lot of old students came to her final concert on Friday night.

It was fun to see old faces, but really strange to see kids I babysat or taught in Primary in the high school choir. I felt really old.

For the song O’ Sifuni Mungu Mrs. B let any past members of Varsity Choir get up and sing. Here are the words to the song, and here is a rendition of it, though it’s not  as wonderful as the choral one we sang, but it gives you an idea.

As a long side note: I hate singing any kind of solo’s. I had friends in choir that were just naturally talented singers and I hated any focus on me, since you often got criticized or made fun of behind your back in high school or worse, made fun of to your face. I was in the catch all Girls glee choir my freshman year, then Varsity for the following three years. My senior year I auditioned and joined Expressions, or the highest choir, but I’m sure I made it partially due to the fact that they needed altos. Four of us auditioned, you had to audition every year regardless if you were already in it, and all four of us made it. Fortunately solo days were few and far between and I only sang twice in front of the group. I’m really not a talented singer. I depend on others to help me find my strength as an alto, unless it’s a song I know really well.

Well, my senior year for the final concert I decided I would audition for one of the short solo’s in O’ Sifuni Mungo. Part of my reasoning behind it was my friend Alana was the only alto who sounded nice in the small group that auditioned and there were two alto solo’s so I decided that I would be the other alto and was gonna rock the solo, no matter how nervous I was.

Before I auditioned I practiced in my room all night. I recorded myself over and over again and listened to the recordings over and over again until I felt confident that I sounded nice and would get support from my friends and classmates, rather than criticism. I approached Alana and asked her how I sounded. She was so surprised that I had a voice, since I tended to sing quietly, and helped me get the timing correct. In my nervousness I rushed the beat and was off a little.
I went to the choir room and practiced and I remember Mrs. B also being surprised. I got the first solo, or
All creatures of our God and King (O sifuni mungu)
Lift up your voice and with us sing (o sifuni mungu)

I also performed Friday night, or the night that you know you’re good ’cause she saves the best for Friday.
I was so nervous, but I nailed it, and it has been my only solo.

Back to the weekend.
It was wonderful singing with the choir during a song that meant so much to me.

There’s also the tradition of having all the alumni come up and sing the song Friends, so I did that also.

Afterwards I talked with old friends and caught up a little and then headed home.

Saturday night was the retirement party. I went a little late and saw a handful of choir friends from my past.  It was so weird to see some the the sophomore guys in choir grown up and how they’ve become men. I feel as though I haven’t changed and here they were so different, and some barely recognizable.

The best part of Saturday night was having a young lady I babysat come up to me and recognize me. I hadn’t seen her since she was nine or ten and she was so grown up. When I saw her parents at the concert and found out she was in the choir I had fun guessing which young lady she was, and I did guess right.
I told her how surprised I was that she even remembered me and she told me ‘of course, you were my favorite.’ Then how recently her and her parents had ran into my mom at  JoAnn’s and the first thing she asked was how I was.

It was fun to be remembered since I often feel forgotten by those in my past.

Later I was trying to think if I remembered any of my old babysitters or young woman in the ward when I was only nine or ten, but my babysitters were my older siblings so that was no help.

It was fun to reminisce and see old friends.

Tonight I cried while watching the Country Music Awards while some singer sang a song about the high school girl wanting to grow up and her mom telling her ‘ you’re gonna miss this, you’re gonna wish it hadn’t gone so fast.’ or something to that effect. I don’t listen to the radio much so I don’t know the singer’s name or the song title. It also talked about missing  young motherhood.  I think I’m just a cry  baby tonight,  because I also cried during masterpiece on PBS tonight.

Life was hard in high school since I was so quiet, but I do miss the friends I made there and the true worry free life that I had compared to now. Though I wouldn’t trade being a mom, just trade the letting the parents worry about the house bills and all that jazz. Though I worked my junior and senior year so I could have the money I wanted without burdening my parents as much, but I heard I maxed out the gas card a couple off times. (Sorry mom and thanks for not telling Dad about it.) I was also spoiled, according to my older siblings, because I didn’t technically pay for my car insurance, which was part of the deal if you drove. My allowance, or lunch money for doing chores, just stopped and they paid my insurance. I think they even saved a couple bucks, though I spent that in gas. I was the last kid in the house and I had to do lots of the chores that I shared with siblings, so I think it was only fair.

Last night we went to bed really late. Jon was watching a film and I hate going to bed without him so I waited and watched with him.

We got settled into bed, it was after midnight, and then we hear something.

It was on Jon’s side of the bed and I wasn’t sure what the noise was or who was making it since our room is nearly pitch black at nighttime.

Jon rolls over and I call his name.

“Jon.”

I still hear the weird noise

“Jon?”

“Jon!?!”

I jump up and go to turn on the light but our ceiling fan is on, so the switch was no help to me. I’m a little freaked out at this point and he finally responds.

“It’s a cat.”

“A cat?”

I turn the hallway light on and sure enough he has a cat in his hands.
The noise we heard was the cat clawing at the bed sheets to get up on the bed, but for all I knew my husband was playing a cruel joke on me or someone was attacking him since he wasn’t answering me.

Here’s the amusing part, if you don’t think finding a strange cat in your bedroom, in the middle of the night, is funny enough.

Jon leaves the back door open to let cool air in. Our master bedroom is how you get to our backyard.
Just the other week I told him that he needs to shut the door at night when not in there because a cat might come into the house.

(He wanted to keep it open all night, with a bar in the door so the door couldn’t be opened more than six inches and no adult could fit through, but it’s still freaky to think someone might try, especially on nights when you hear the search helicopter going around your neighborhood. Have I said how we live in a ghetto area of town?)

So my reason of closing the door in case a cat came in sounded far fetched, so I also gave the reason of bugs coming in which he respected a little more.

Last night was one of the few times I’ve ever said ‘I told you so’ to Jon. (We try not to rub things into each others faces unless it’s something crazy like last night.)
Back to last night.

We then discuss what to do with it. We decided to just put it outside since the cat cage was in the shed.

The cat hung out on our porch.

We decided we should get the cage to catch it, since it was hanging out and had already come into the house once.

He approached me as I stood at the door and tried to come in again, but he left once he saw the cage.

We set the cage and this morning we had caught a cat.

It was a different cat.

I looked outside and we had a black cat in the cage and there on the porch was the one who had come into the house.

Jon says it’s stalking us. I tell him some might say it’s adopted us.
It’s a tame cat and when the girls went to check out the cat in the cage through the sliding glass door the invader cat came up to the door and was wanting in.

They were cute telling me how much the cat liked them and how nice it probably was, though Lilah still said how we never pet an animal we don’t know ’cause it might bite.
So the cage it set once more and the door is not to be left open unless someone is outside or in the room.

It was a really strange night.