Updates

If you're looking for more updates, head on over to My365 or click the link at the top of this page for the photo blog.  Not a lot of text but you can see our life in pictures for the last several days. Also look at our Oregon City blog!

Libby's birthday

Today Libby is 3 years old.   We've been staggering the gifts so it's not too overwhelming, and also because after she unwraps something she wants to play with it, so of course we let her do it and it stops the rest of the gift opening for a while.

Yesterday she asked for a musical instrument, so we gave her a xylophone.

Today on her proper birthday, we gave her a Mickey Mouse DVD that she wanted.  She also opened a gift from Grandma, which she absolutely loved.  It was lots of jewelry, along with some adorable finger puppets.

She also talked to Grandma on the phone!

"Libby, how old are you now?"

Sneaky popsicles

The girls were playing outside and I gave them homemade popsicles.  These are "sneaky" popsicles that we make from 100% juice blends.  Mae's is a V-8 blend so she's even getting some sneaky veggies in there.  She sort of looks like she has a nosebleed, but really it's from the 'sicle, as she calls it.

Clackamette Park

Lots of fun today at Clackamette Park.  This is just down the hill from my house, riverside.  It's an RV park and there must be a boat ramp nearby.  Lots of fishing boats...I'm doubtful if there were actually any fish.

Libby and Mae were fearless and walked right down to the river's edge.  Never mind that there is no beach, only river rocks, and the banks are steep.

They had a ball throwing rocks in the river, and did not want to leave.

Sunset on Mt Hood

Cross-posted to my Oregon City blog as well, but I love this photo.

Unedited:

Me making bread with my club

Mae and Daddy

This picture was taken right after we took our family photo.  By then, Mae had warmed up to the camera.

The visitors

The previous owners of this house put of lots of bird feeders, which are effectively squirrel feeders as well.  We like all the wildlife so we put out bird seed too.  There is nearly always some sort of animal in our yard at all times.  Colorful red and blue birds, squirrels, deer.

As you can see, the squirrel just fits onto the shelf next to the food.


So it's funny to look out the window and see this:

On a clear day, I can see for a long way

These are my crappy pictures of Mt St Helens and Mt Hood as seen from about a block from my house.  My house is midway down a hill, so you can't actually see the mountains from my house itself.  There are better views of Mt Hood in the area, but from where I was standing the view was blocked by a giant tree.  anyway, here they are.

I'm still not feeling Project Life.  It didn't make sense for a while, because I take pictures and I write text, so that's all PL is, so why don't I feel it?  I finally figured it out.  Because I'm still limited by the layouts of the pages provided to me.  You're given some portrait style and some landscape style and some 4x6 and some 2x3.  And there's 16 slots each week.  Well some weeks I don't take 16 pictures and some weeks I take more than 16.  Some weeks they are all landscape and some weeks they are all portrait and there are never any weeks where it's exactly 50/50, which is how the book is laid out.  I hate counting photos and trying to make it all fit.

So...

(A) I think it's back to digital for me
and (B) guess what, I don't have to get rid of my PL stuff, because I'm not moving.  So it can just sit and wait for Libby and Mae to want it someday.  And that's just fine.  What do you think of that, Flylady?  (OMG I'm just kidding Flylady I heart you)

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My vitamin B-12 labs came back normal and my symptoms of B-12 deficiency have gone away, so that's awesome.  I had to try 3 kinds of vitamin pills but the 3rd kind worked and now I don't have to get weekly shots.

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Libby got stuck in chair yesterday.  Mike had to cut it off of her with a tree lopper.  True story.

In other news, we let our nanny go yesterday and the kids started preschool.  They loved it, and the teachers loved them.  The only weird thing so far is that it seems that Mae does not eat while she's there.  Yesterday her report card said "I ate 2 bites." and today her report card said "I ate 3 bites."  The reason this is weird is because at home Mae is the first person to the table and the last person to leave and she hardly refuses any food ever.

Best Pancakes

As life (sort of) returns to normal around here, we're back to cooking.  A lot.  We cook a lot of tried-and-true recipes, but we also try 2-3 new recipes per week, at least.  This means a lot of reading of cookbooks and cooking magazines and cooking websites.

We also have a Magic Bullet, which recently inspired me to make pancakes in it.  Prior to this, I have always used The Joy of Cooking or the back of the Bisquick box for my pancake recipe.

The recipe shown below is allegedly from Good Housekeeping, although I haven't checked it out myself.  All I know is that these are so much better than Bisquick or Joy.  These are thinner and fluffier than Bisquick or Joy, which always turned out too dense for me.

1 cup flour
2 tbsp sugar
2.5 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1.25 cups 2% milk
3 tbsp butter, melted
1 egg
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and then just to be one of those annoying people who has to alter every recipe, I add:
1 tsp vanilla
scoop of egg-based protein powder

Mixa mixa poura poura and you have the best pancakes.

Olfactif

I'm so thrilled about new beauty subscription service Olfactif.  It is only perfumes, and only niche perfumes besides.  PERFECT!  I have been waiting and waiting for such a service.  As soon as I heard this new one had launched I signed up immediately.  I think I missed their first box (boo, because it looked awesome), but truly can not wait for the next one. 

I have not posted or done my PL pages of late because our nanny has been sick again, and since I did not think I would need to (or have time to) find a backup sitter immediately upon moving here, it leaves me scrambling to get my paying work done.  Unfortunately I did have to take some time off work, and with only one income that is unacceptable.

It's pretty obvious that when it comes to child care, this family is cursed.  Inevitably the nanny gets pregnant (happened to us 3x) or develops a chronic illness or has to care for someone with a chronic illness (happened to us 4x). 

I feel like it's LOST and the island is telling us, "no one can care for these children except you."  (A reference to one of many storylines they never finished, and yes I'm still mad about that.)

But I will show you, island/universe!  Today we are interviewing with a structured preschool/day care that has 2 employees!  Not one!  Is the power of the universe strong enough to knock out 2 nannies at once?  heh heh heh...we are about to find out...

Project Life Week 11

Not a lot of photos in the last 7 days, so my PL layout is only one page this week.

I forgot to write that we attempted to potty train Libby again this week, and she really was not interested even if I tried bribing with candy. Will try again in a few weeks. She's probably glad that didn't make it into the book anyway.

Project Life Week 10

A very green layout for St Patrick's Day week. I think I've shared all of these photos full size already.

My prepper moms club is up to 30 members now.  We had our 4th meetup on Thursday night.  Here are some of us with our guest speaker, who came to talk to us about his Go/Stay/Kit.  It's too bad you can't see my Tshirt, it's awesome.

Project Life Week 9

March 4-10.

Layouts shown here:

March 4 was the first day of week 9 and started quite low.  After a week of no fun at all and Mike gone to work in Corvallis, I was not doing well emotionally.  I had to force myself to keep it together that day because I had hired a plumber to come over to check out a leak in my bathroom, and I didn't want to look like a freak when he arrived.

We had suspected a leak since the previous week, when the washer and dryer arrived to be installed, and I found water on the laundry room floor.  The laundry room shares a wall with the bathroom, so I figured the water somehow came from the shower.  Mike suggested that he might have been the culprit, though, since he had used the laundry faucet earlier, and may have spilled.  A couple days later, now after the washer was being used, I found a puddle on the laundry floor.  2nd evidence of a leak.  Finally on March 3 I went down to my bathroom only to find water pouring from my ceiling light fixture, an alarming sight indeed.  The clothes washer was chugging away in the other room.  Hence on the morning of March 4 I was on the phone with a plumber.  After the plumber spent an hour investigating every plumbing fixture I have, and cutting 2 holes in my ceiling, he said he was certain there was no leak.  We were both flummoxed.  He said he believed me, of course, and we continued testing scenarios, until finally we found the answer.  Leak #1 was probably Mike spilling water as he had guessed.  Leak #2 must have been me overloading the clothes washer, since our new one has a smaller capacity than our old one.  Leak #3 was the result of Libby pouring a gallon of her bath water onto the upstairs floor, and the water went into the floor register and down through my light fixture.  It was all a big coincidence, and now I have 2 holes in my ceiling.  But I learned a lot about my house and I was quite relieved that I didn't have a leak.  I'm afraid I was not able to hide my depression well, though, because I swear the plumber tried to hug me at the end of that hour.  Darn, and I thought I was doing so good.

Mike came home that night, and lucky for me he was very receptive to my problem and really saved me from going over the edge.

That was Monday.

On Wednesday, we learned that Mike was going to be fired from his job.

On Thursday, Mike got fired from his job.

On Friday, our nanny came down with stomach flu symptoms and ended up being gone for 5 days.

I took it all in stride with no problems, and I'm sure I owe it to Mike really listening and helping me come back to life on Monday night.

Naturally, I'm still asking the universe, WHEN exactly am I going to get that nice boring routine I've been asking for?  And yes, Mike losing his job has become "routine", but that's not what I'm talking about.

How lucky that Mike lost his job Thursday.  Because that's when Oz the Great and Powerful came out and we got to see the very first screening together.  IMAX 3D and it was awesome!  And so strange because there were only about 10 people there!  In LA, that would never, ever, ever happen!  In a way that made me miss LA.  I would have liked to have seen the movie in a full house.  But it also made me appreciate Oregon all over again, as well.

Also how lucky that Mike lost his job Thursday, so that he was able to cover for our nanny while she was sick.  I did not have time in our first 2 weeks in Oregon City, to find backup care.  Nor did I anticipate that I would need backup care so soon or for so long.

Mike had us both write down lists of things we each think are FUN.

We took the kids to a playground.  That was fun.

I didn't intend this to be a self portrait when I took it.  I was just messing around with the camera.  I decided to save the photo because to me it illustrates how I felt at the time and I am not ashamed of my real life.

Plumber cutting the 2nd hole

Mae has a habit of laying down flat, at random times and in random places

Mama and baby deer outside of my bedroom suite