So, once upon a time, I wrote a blog. Well, I wrote a lot of things, and then I wrote this blog. And then almost a year ago we moved into a brand-new house (hooray!). We finally finished all those years and years and years of school and job-hunting and found where we're going to live for (we hope) the next 20 or 30 years. (That deserves another hooray!). It turns out that there are a lot of projects to do when you have a brand new house. Lots of settling in and unpacking. Lots of working with builders (who did a fantastic job, we think) on finalizing things, finishing things that didn't get finished before because your nice builder actually let you move in before everything was finished since you were technically homeless for a few weeks waiting for it to get done (thanks again to generous cousins Brad and Carrie for letting us stay in their basement!). Then there is lots of organizing to do. Lots of projects for furnishing and decorating a bigger house. That's what you work on during the cold months. In between birthdays, holidays, family weddings, traveling, etc. Then the thaw finally comes and you remember that there's a whole yard to put in! So blogging has kind of fallen by the wayside. And then whenever they talk about family history or journals at church, there is this double load of guilt because this used to be how I justified myself in those categories. See, posterity? I'm doing my bit. It's all here. Except I'm not doing much of any of it lately, and not writing much of anything at all elsewhere. And I've noticed I haven't taken as many pictures of the kids in the last couple months, so maybe there's a correlation between me actually blogging and me remembering to document their lives. Ellie has been talking about her birthday coming up. I am going to try to catch up a bit before the kids age another year!

Sometime I'll get some good pictures of the interior of the house up for family members who have asked to see them (or you all could just come visit!). In the meantime, here are a few pictures of some of the many projects that have kept us busy this past year.

Here is the house just a few days before we moved in. Lots of clean-up to do still.

Here's our family a few days after we moved in. The first morning after sleeping in our new house, Charlie woke up sick. Turned out to be the stomach flu, which I also caught a day or two later. Horribly. Brady and Ellie were spared. That time.

This is a garage sale dresser that I found and refinished before we moved. I painted it white and we have it in our living room now. The TV is on top and we keep DVDs and toys in the drawers.

I should have learned from this that no project is a simple, one-weekend, or one-week project. Took forever. Forever.

I had the builder add this long bench in the living room and another on the landing going upstairs. Both open for storage. I love them. My job, then, was to make the cushions to go on top. Took me forever.

This is our backyard when things started to thaw this spring. We had put grass seed down in the fall. It's hard to see in this picture, but some of it was coming up when the snow was melting. I took this picture after I went out to retrieve a red plastic sled that Ellie had buried during the winter (I didn't want it to block the grass that was coming up there). I thought there was enough snow for me to still walk on to get to the back corner of the yard without sinking ankle deep in mud. It was tricky. Barely made it. I was stranded for several minutes trying to figure my strategic route (there wasn't as much snow as it looks like). I could actually hear the snow melting around me. I'm sure it was pretty entertaining to the neighbors.

This is the image I had going through my head when I was out there. Seriously, guys, we have got to help those polar bears.

We ended up having to reseed the grass in the spring because there was more construction work to be done. A water line to put in out by the garden (we opted not to do a sprinkler system for now), cement steps on the back porch that didn't get done before it got too cold last fall to do them, hauling in a dumptruck full of dirt to level out and fill in our garden space. So we had lots of huge trucks driving through our yard that kind of wiped out the grass that was coming in. Sad.

We also built our house on the remnants of a volcanic eruption, apparently, and have the worst soil ever. So prepping for grass seed took forever. Forever. Really. Forever. Raking and raking it smooth and we'd keep hearing that sound of metal scraping against rock. We also have a slope in our yard  coming down from the garden area. So we started putting the rocks on the slope. We'd dig them out and I started arranging them into a rock wall to prevent landslides and runnoff.

Here's some of the progress of the rock wall last fall. You can see a fence post in the back. The builders were working on getting the fence up at the same time. (Oh yeah, that was another project this spring--sealing and treating the fence. Sheesh). You can also see the neighbor's beautifully perfect, manicured yard. They are amazing. And patient. The grass has grown in below the wall and I've started growing Irish moss in the gaps between the rocks. I still have a section of the wall to finish, but the part shoring up the garden area is finished and held up during our big flood last July. No landslides!

 After we got the grass seed in, I thought I could take on another project (you know, since we couldn't go out on the yard for a while). So I bought materials to make a porch swing. In May I did that. Turns out when you don't have a sprinkler system, grass seed is really high maintenance. And then when it starts coming, the garden takes up your time. And then the swing takes way longer than you thought. And then you have flooding to deal with. And then there are a million other projects. And staining/polyurethane for the thing is a beast. And I didn't finish it until the first weekend of October.

But, hey, the grass is in (along with a lot of weeds, but it's green, drought tolerant, and low maintenance). The fence is stained. The porch is cleaned off and the kids can play on it again. And now I can get back to work on this year's Halloween costumes and birthday projects!

Preschool and Pumpkins

Finally, finally, preschool started for us. It was a long wait. After Flat Mindy's educational pursuits in Twin Falls were so unsuccessful, we thought maybe she could learn a thing or two at the open house for the kids' preschool.

First priority: dress-ups. Flat Mindy and Ellie both did really well at this one.

They found Ellie's cubbie (which Ellie pronounces "cuvvy") on our way out of the classroom. Ellie is blocking her name, so you can only see the name for the other class.

We had to hurry over to Charlie's classroom since their open house times overlapped. He was super excited to show Flat Mindy all around Toddler Lab (or "Tuggler Lab," as Ellie calls it, no matter how often we tell her otherwise). Charlie and Mindy spent some time "doing colors," lining them up carefully one at a time, rolling them over, lining them up again. I think the kid next to Charlie thought Charlie and Mindy didn't really know how to color. He just isn't aware of the many ways of playing with crayons, I guess.

Ellie, being the pro at preschool wanted to show Charlie everything. Here they are rocking in the boat see-saw. I couldn't get a picture without one of them having a blurry face. Sorry. I really liked Charlie's expression in this one. And luckily, Flat Mindy did not get sea sick.

Ellie was excited to see the playground again. Flat Mindy was sort of "Meh" about it, apparently.

And a perspective shot. Ellie really liked the picture where Hannah looked little and Mindy looked big, and asked if we could do one of those. I only stood on the other side of the sidewalk, though, because I didn't want to go out in the parking lot.

Going to preschool sure does wear everyone out. The kids like to relax on the new porch swing these days, while the weather is still nice.

It suddenly dawned on them that Flat Mindy could fall through the slats, and they became a little concerned.

Charlie took her to see the pumpkins instead. Totally safe now with the giant cat head and ghost pirate. Good thinking, Charlie.

So glad Flat Mindy could come along as we've been getting into fall. It's been fun.

Flat Mindy Goes to the Park

Ellie was super excited about this new adventurous auntie, and so excited to help construct her. After Ellie went to bed the first night, I thought maybe Flat Mindy might want a few adjustments to her wardrobe, seeing as how Actual Mindy has been functioning as family wardrobe consultant for years. So I trimmed up the shoes, slimmed the pants a touch, and colored everything a little smoother (sorry, no stripes!). Ellie didn't notice at all, except that she wishes the socks were red. She wants to make a whole bunch of red "accessories" for "Toy Mindy," as she calls her. (She also has been begging for a Toy Tommy. We'll see.)

So we gave Flat Mindy a shiny, protective, laminated cover, put a little magnet on her back (not a beetle!), and headed off for a promised adventure to the park.

Charlie wasn't so sure about this idea of sharing his swing.

Or the slide. 

Ellie was ready to show Flat Mindy all around the park, though. Here they are climbing on whatever this thing is.

Flat Mindy riding shotgun while Ellie drives the stagecoach.

  
Then Ellie realized she needed a driver for her carriage, since she was a princess and all. Flat Mindy was happy to oblige while Ellie sat in the back "being royal."

And then, of course, they had to dance on the stage (the gazebo). By then Charlie  started to catch on to how this worked and we took Flat Mindy over to the  playground.

Climbing and climbing together.

And Charlie's very, very favorite: jumping on the bouncy bridge!

So much fun, Charlie wanted Flat Mindy to jump and jump too! (We were very glad Flat Mindy had decided to go with the protective lamination at this point.)

It was a great day at the park that wore us out. Only Flat Mindy was up for what I like to call "Death Trap Slide." Adventurous as ever.

Once upon a time...

Written on Nov. 18, 2014: Today I am posting this on this blog because I am not keeping up quite as I'd hoped in my catch-up posts for this blog. But I actually have been doing some blogging and wanted to transfer some of those posts over here. You know. For posterity.

My family has been keeping a separate blog while my sister, Mindy, has been living in England for the last few months, taking turns posting. So I am transferring some of the posts I put up over there. But I wanted to include this introductory post that I actually didn't write. Another sister, Renee, was quite clever in coming up with this idea and wrote the following post:

Once upon a time lived a girl named Flat Mindy.  She had an alter-ego called Actual Mindy.  Actual Mindy had lots of adventures, traveling to foreign lands visiting castles and Wonky Towns.  She has her own blog for adventures.  (Her blog has much better grammar than this one might... Luckily Actual Mindy is off the clock and can ignore any major errors...)

Flat Mindy decided while Actual Mindy was out in the wide world (across the pond, as they say) she would stay in Idaho and Utah for some family adventuring.  So she grew out her hair, put on her giant shoes, and decided to get to it.  Well, tomorrow.  It's nearly bedtime, after all. 

Thanks to dear Ellie for making sure Flat Mindy is all ready for her adventures (and has the appropriate hair length).

To be continued....

So that's the project that started in September. Each sibling and my parents all have a Flat Mindy to take to different activities. There are several posts on the separate blog that we made for this project, but I am just going to transfer the ones I wrote. Apparently Blogger is going to shuffle them back in to chronological order in this blog, putting this one in September, even though I'm posting it in November. Anyway, I will add the others over the next few days.

Story Time

In our never-ending winter here, we've been getting plenty more indoor time. Ellie's interest in traditional indoor activities has started waning (the other day she put on a swimming suit and spread out a blue blanket for water and a brown blanket for sand and insisted we have a beach party). I've decided it's time to teach her to read so she'll be interested in story time again. She's doing pretty well so far. Charlie, on the other hand, is always up for a good book. We have a bench on the landing of our stairs with lots of books set out for the kids. Sometimes I hear him coming up, only to get sidelined telling himself a story about a "hippotnannus" or "Chicka Boom Boom Boom." I promised a few people I would try to catch him "reading" in a video. Sorry, the only way I could do it was with him on my lap, looking over his shoulder. Otherwise, he noticed and wanted to come take my phone away instead of reading the book. So you can just look at the pictures with him, I guess.

Charlie Pocoyo Book from Annalisa on Vimeo.

Pretty good reading, although if you caught a performance during church you'd get a bit more drama, I think. "Pato is soooo, tiiii-yerd!" Anyway, one of his favorites.

And here's a picture of him in his "gwasseses." Just had to throw a little cute in there since you couldn't see him in the video.

Hope your winter is turning into spring. If not, hope you can embrace your March snow too.

Reflux 3.0

Ugh. It's not what it sounds like. The title, I mean. It is, but it's different this time. Let's back up. Once upon a time, Ellie got potty trained. If I had written a post about it last year instead of this year, I might have titled it something like, "Riding the Potty Train," (which she asked to do several times) or "Every Party Needs a Pooper," or even a simple, "Potty Party!" (Man, just totally stole my thunder for if I ever write a post about Charlie potty training.) Because with Ellie, everything kind of has to be a party to really get her motivated.

We had to turn potty training into a party because my first attempt to even get her started turned out like this: 

I thought I had gotten her all psyched up to start potty training, but I guess the whole idea of underpants after the security of diapers was a little overwhelming. So our compromise was that she could have a pair on the top if she would also wear a pair on the bottom.

It seemed to take, for a while. If she had an accident and needed a clean pair, she would usually get a pair on her head too, explaining to me, "I'm just being a pirate, Mommy." But she had a pretty rough time of it. In retrospect, starting potty training so soon after our move away from Grandma and Grandpa's house probably didn't help matters. She was losing sleep over it, getting bags under her eyes, anxious beyond what I'd seen her. So I went against the expert advice and decided we'd take a break.

We hit it again a few months later with everything we had. I mean a real potty party, with real party hats to wear. This was an EVENT.

 If there is one thing Ellie will respond to, it's a party.

Balloon party in her tent bed at the time. I think Charlie is in there somewhere.

 Big celebrations all the time.

 All kinds of drinks gatorade and other drinks, which she insisted on having a little bit of all of all the time.

 And of course we had to have a sticker chart. Ellie didn't really get into the whole fill up a grid with stickers and get a prize (totally responds to that now). For her, the sticker chart WAS the prize. She was really into surfing at the time (don't ask me where that came from), so I made this poster and we printed and cut out these surf boards that she got to put up every time she was successful. And lo and behold, she hung in there, and we hung in there, and (eventually) she got it. Huge sigh of relief!

So hooray! It's over! Except it wasn't. Isn't. Still potty trained. But then about the time she really had it nailed, she started complaining about it hurting when she went to the bathroom and she had more accidents. Doctor confirmed a urinary track infection, gave some antibiotics, and we were set. Accidents cleared up, and so did the pain. But she kept getting them. I honestly don't know how many she's had at this point. Right now we're treating the third one since Christmas. We tried to do everything we could to prevent them. Making sure everything was really clean, no bubble baths, drinking extra water, no more pull-ups at night, cranberry juice, etc. Nothing was helping. 

Finally her pediatrician ordered some tests that we had done a couple days ago. Ultrasound of her kidneys and x-ray with contrast (that was a really rough, painful one, Ellie was so tough!). It turns out that when her bladder empties, a little bit flows back up toward the kidney. To put it another way, she has reflux. Again! I'm really starting to hate that word. We'll meet with a urologist next week to see what treatment this will entail, and whether it's something that will need correction or she's likely to outgrown.

So this, and not any extrinsic factors, is what's causing all the infections. Also probably made it pretty hard to get the hang of potty training. Sheesh! Way to hang in there kiddo! Sometimes she would really get sad about having an accident or setback, but she really learned to stay calm and keep trying. Pretty big lessons for such a little kid.

This is a picture of her about that same time. Mindy came to visit and caught the tail end of potty party. Ellie liked wearing her boots. I seem to remember her calling them "happy boots."

This Christmas greeting is NOT late . . .

I know it seems like I'm way behind on blogging, and I really am, but I am NOT too late to send out a little Christmas card.

I know, most of you have probably already packed up the decorations, put away the treats and presents, moved on with the new year's resolutions, all that jazz. We kind of stay in holiday mode until school starts again for Brady, which is tomorrow, so we haven't caught up to all you productive people yet.

And seriously, who can't even get it together for a measly electronic card? It's not like there's any postage, envelope stuffing, address gathering, or mail delivery timing to factor in. Seems kind of pathetic, I know. (You can see that Charlie is clearly disappointed in me too.)

Well, one of these days (or over the period of several days) I will get caught up here (I'm not letting go!), and tell you all about our busy (and sick--blech) season. But I will not excuse myself for being late here. Because I'm not. Did you know that it is technically still Christmas time? Or Christmastide, I should say. You know that song, "The Twelve Days of Christmas"? It's not about the 12 days leading up to Christmas. It's about the days following Christmas. True story. Look it up. Or don't, since I just told you. Tonight is the twelfth day of Christmas, or twelfth night. Tomorrow is the feast of Epiphany (so everyone be brilliant). We technically only celebrate the first day in our culture these days. So there you go. I totally just enriched you lives and maybe just helped you out if you're ever on Jeopardy! You're welcome. Merry Christmas. Hope you all had a lovely Christmas and a happy new year. We love you all.

There. Mission accomplished. And here is a special, happier greeting from Charlie. It's not his best rendition of these phrases, but it's what we caught on film on Christmas Eve. We worked so hard on it all month (since his "Happy Thanksgiving" came out sounding more like "Happy Pig-skin!"), and he was usually a pretty good performer for us, except, of course, when the camera was on him. Here it is anyway.



VID 20131224 205529 from Annalisa on Vimeo.



P.S. I promise we didn't torture Charlie with Santa Claus. He sat on Santa's lap for all of maybe 15 seconds before we rescued him. But I couldn't resist the pictures, which were taken in very quick succession (and, boy, that Santa was a pro). Ellie was so thrilled when Santa showed up at the end of our ward Christmas party, she pushed her fingers up into her cheeks, smiling really hard. I asked her what she was doing, and she said, "I just don't want my smile to go away!"