adventures in missing the point

When we unloaded the moving truck at my sisters, I was given the sweet job of unpacking Mara and Sonna and getting their room settled. They have the upstairs of the house, full of fun little nooks and crannies. It's all sloped ceilings there is this small crawl space that is actually tall enough to stand up in and probably four feet wide. Turns out it is the perfect little place for all of their games, art supplies, ponies and sleeping bags.

If you know me at all, you know I love me a good organized shelf. I love staging things so it looks clean, inviting and colorful. This project was perfect for me. I worked hard to get everything just so.

I called the room "The sleepover room" because of their sleeping bags spread out on the floor. Mara took this quite literally and went to get all of her pajamas to string along that bar on the side of the slanted ceiling. She thought her pajama's made for nice decoration.

Unfortunately, I had a different vision. I could handle the messy pj's for a while. But before everyone came up to check out the girls rooms I told Mara, "I'm just going to put these back in your dresser, okay?"

Mara nodded and seemed okay but later that night I was stricken with guilt. Are you kidding me? Could I honestly not handle the pajama's hanging as decorations in the sleepover room? Really? Am I really that uptight that I couldn't see the creativity in her thinking?

The next day I apologized to Mara. I told her that I really like a clean and tidy space and that sometimes my need for clean gets the best of me. I told her that after thinking about it, I could understand how clever and bright her pj's were for setting the theme of the sleepover room. I just didn't catch her vision the first time around.

Mara acted fine, I told her she needed to help me relax a bit and enjoy a mess more.

As it turns out, she and Sonna are doing a great job of helping me with this request. Because all those games stacked nicely on the shelf there? They play with them! And the evidence is strewn all over their fun-loving bedroom.

rainbow crayons

I hit up a few garage sales with some girl friends and found these silicone heart and star molds for ten cents. Perfect. I made the alphabet crayons a while ago but they were hard to get out of the molds, and my guess is that they were hard to color with....though they were adorable and I will still make them again and again :)

I had my nieces over on Saturday and decided it was time to get crafty. Mara used the Ikea cheese grater to grate the crayons really fine. Sonna helped take the paper off of the crayons, and I used the super sharp knife to cut the crayons into small pieces.

Full instructions on how I made these crayons can be found on the Alphabet Crayon post. More fun than making the crayons was coloring with them when they were cooled from the freezer. Each crayon was filled with so many colors.

We decorated envelopes and played mailman with our mail slot, a highlight for all visitors-of-a-certain-age to our house.
Unfortunately, this mailgirl left one of the crayons in her pocket and her mom did a huge load of laundry with that crayon tumbling around in the dryer. Big Whoops.

around here

Around here we are enjoying the harvest from our garden. It is a two person vegetable garden, producing three ears of corn at a time, one eggplant every few weeks, tomatoes and cucumbers unstoppable, beans and sweet peas too. Perfect for just the two of us. And each morning there are just a handful of fresh raspberries to throw on my cereal.

Around here we are amused by Ivar’s favorite toy: his big green ball. He can roll in back and forth with one of us, or he plays by himself army scooching to catch it and roll it again.

Around here we are really loving Toonces’ new room in the basement. We can’t hear him at night and it means we all are sleeping much better. Can’t believe it took us so long to figure that one out.

Around here we can't stop playing Sara’s new album. Yesterday I was singing a song from her last album and Rory said, “no. only new stuff. You only can sing from this new album now.”

Around here we are adjusting to Ivar’s vigor for feeding himself. He is a sticky mess after he’s done eating. He loves ground turkey, banana, peaches and cheerios. Recently when I went to wash his arms he was sticky in his arm pits. No idea how he got banana in his pits, but he did. And therefore he got a bath.

Around here we are inspired by yard projects again. Rory is building a compost bin for the driveway and using all sorts of cool tools in the garage. Ivar loves hanging out with his dad out there, sitting in his stroller, eating cheerios and watching him drill and saw and hammer.

Around here there are so many monarchs in our neighborhood. One neighbor wondered if these aren’t the ones that end up in Mexico. They are everywhere!

Around here my sister is moving into a house with her family...that really, truly is around here! Like 15 minutes away, around here!

Around here we are remembering why we love the midwest and the change of seasons. We love summer, but fall is starting to sound nice too. Cozy things like long sleeves, soup, fires in the backyard and lit candles in the house all seem to sound lovely and perfect right about now.

true story

We spent yesterday afternoon with the whole Groves family on a pontoon on Prior Lake. The following conversation took place on that boat:

Lisa: Becca, is that your new camera! Let me see it!
Becca: It is. I love it. I researched for a long time and found a great point and shoot.
Lisa: Oh this is awesome. Way nicer than mine. Mine is old and way less megapixels.
Rory: Lisa, you don't have to put your camera down to make your point. Becca is always self-deprecating like that.
Becca: Wait a minute. You just Becca-deprecated to show Lisa that she was self-deprecating!
Rory: Well, why do you guys do that? Why can't you just say, "this is a nice camera."
Becca: I don't know, but you don't have to wife-deprecate to make your point. (long pause) Maybe I just like deprecating.

one year ago today.

It's my most popular blog post ever. Most discussed of all my writing. And it all happened one year ago today. If you've got the time, take a moment to read or re-read our adventurous move from Omaha to Minneapolis by clicking here.

And if you have read it before, can I tell you the absolute craziest ending to this story?!! Around January I got a blog comment from one of my favorite friends from high school and college, Heather. She told me she was catching up on my blog, had just read about Story City and couldn't believe we were at the Comfort Inn because her in-law's own that hotel in Story City. What in the small world?!!

And, you might also be interested to know that I did send Al a birth announcement. He was such a nice guy!