Just Beachy

For the first time (ever!) my mom and sister and I went to the beach together. Just us (with guest appearances by Jimmers).
It. Was. Awesome.

We drank margaritas and danced the night away at the Ship's Wheel and got manicures and laid out.

*Kidding*

We worked on puzzles and searched for sharks' teeth for hours (I found fourteen!). Then we worked on more puzzles. We wandered through the Gulf Coast Market and Bolivar's one and only thrift store. We worked on more puzzles. We blew right through nap time and looked for more sharks' teeth. We went out for dinner at seven pm (what?! wild and crazy!) and Kelly and I ate a mountain of bbq crabs at the Stingaree.We didn't change any diapers. We didn't refill anyone's milk. We were un-needed for over 24 hours while our own mother took care of us. It was pretty much mom-of-toddlers heaven.

I even stayed in bed until seven. What?!

And then... I came home... to the greatest family ever. One of the best things about going away is missing each other. Chris and I have known each other for longer than we didn't know one another. That sentence was confusing. I met Chris when I was fourteen and I'm now almost thirty-three. So, yeah, missing him every once in a while is kind of nice.

I came home to a clean house and a huge cardboard space shuttle in the living room (I paid 8 bucks for that thing at Goodwill. Score! It's bigger than it looks online). A clean house. Sleeping beautiful children. Bliss.

And then...

And then there was the time Carolena and I built some amazing log cabins while Nils was asleep and she got a seventeen year old version of herself to sit in for the picture.

 

And then there was the time I found Nils decked out! 

 And then there was the time this happened...

And then I sewed another dress!

Just Having a Ball Around Here

Fade In: Casey's house. Interior. Day. Nils is napping. Casey is cutting pattern pieces. Carolena is playing with play dough. Casey's back is turned toward Carolena.

Carolena: I'm going to make something and you can guess what it is.
Casey: Okay cool. I get hints though, right?
Carolena: Yes. First hint: it's a body part, and it's a ball.
Casey Internal Monologue: ohmygodohmygodohmygod
Casey: hmm... is it... ummm... an eyeball?
Carolena: {lots of giggling} noooooo...
Casey Internal Monologue: play it cool. play it cool. think woman think!
Carolena: {lots of giggling}
Casey: Let me think... is it... an elbow?
Carolena: {lots of giggling} No! It's a body part. And a ball. It's balls that are body parts.
Casey Internal Monologue: Holy mackerel! ohmygodohmygodohmygod. Okay, think of all those times moms have given the advice to not jump to conclusions. This can't be what it sounds like. If it is... we'll cross that bridge when we come to it in .5 seconds.
Carolena: {lots of giggling}
Casey: It's really not an eyeball?
Carolena: {lots of giggling} Okay, it's a guy. And he has balls on his body.
Casey Internal Monologue: SERIOUSLY? Am I on hidden camera? Is this for real? Oh what am I going to do if she says a boy's name?!
Carolena: Okay, another hint: he has a carrot nose...
Casey Internal Monologue: Oh thank God!!
Carolena: It's a snowman!!!!
Casey's turns to see finished product and is relieved to see it is in fact a snowman (and thankfully without extra balls).
 

Hiding

So perhaps hiding in my closet to eat candy and read Mindy Kaling's book wasn't the best way to spend the afternoon on my "Restart Day! Lose the five pounds I gained in the last month!" Oh well. You know when a good time to get a grip and lose weight is? Tomorrow.

*sigh* or today I suppose. At least it's "I'm happy weight" which one can trick oneself into believing looks really insanely good. Weight gain due to beer consumption, chips and queso, and secret candy in the closet can do that to you.

Nils had his own "Oh crap where can I hide?!" moment yesterday too which consisted of him grabbing the tv remote, glancing all around him to both (a) check if I was watching and (b) find a secret location to inspect and subsequently push buttons. He opted for scrambling to the "Time Out!" spot where I found him squatting, smiling, pressing, and glancing at me with that impish grin and a twinkle in his eye. "One more minute?" he inquired. That smile. That eye twinkle. He has me wrapped around his chubby little tv-remote-button-pushing-finger, so of course I let him.

Mamma Mia, Here {They} Go Again

Me: "Hey, what are some of your sight-words at school?"
Carolena: "umm... let's see... earrings. And eyepatch."
Me: "Earrings and eye-patch? Those are your sight words. Are you in pirate school?"
Carolena: "Yyeepp."

And then there's Nils, who spent the morning singing "Oatmeal Mia" to the tune of Mamma Mia as he munched on his breakfast.

Unsolved Mysteries

When others talk about the mystery of the "missing left sock" I've always been inwardly dumbfounded. What do you mean you can't find a sock?! Just put both in the hamper, dump the contents of the hamper into the washer/dryer, fold them together... repeat as needed. Evidently I've now reached the point in motherhood in which I can't find the kids' freaking "left" socks. Where do those little devils go?!

They're probably stealing our containers and hitting the road. Because where are all of the containers? I go to put leftovers away and just find a bunch of lids in the cabinet. Where are those lidless containers?!

They're probably somewhere out there with the missing socks. They watch as I bring bags and bags of crap out of my house and while we're sleeping they sneak in to refill the toy bins with Happy Meal sized toys and naked Barbies.

Tale as Old as Time

Chris' response to this?

"Aww man. Looks like I'm going to stay a beast forever!"

Well, at least that means we get to keep Mrs. Potts.

Care for Another Cup?

When we lived in DC we received many more visitors than we do living in Katy. We knew even then that people were visiting for a free place to stay. One such couple came to DC and Chris took them on a whirlwind tour of our nation's capitol. One of the visitors was full of questions like, "what's that building?" (while looking at the capitol) and "I don't know about that war" when standing at the WWII monument.

This is a college graduate.

And yes, evidently I'm extremely judgmental about people in their twenties who don't recognize the capitol building while standing on the national mall or even know enough to keep it to themselves if the details of WWII seem a bit hazy.

So, I confess: I know nothing about Voltaire except his name. Is this someone I should know more about than just his name? At least I recognize the name. I feel like I'm standing at the White House asking if its important. Okay, not that bad. But I'm not even sure if I'm supposed to know more about Voltaire.

Why do I suddenly bring him up?

Last night as I was reading The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin I came across and interesting tidbit. And then I went to wikipedia to confirm:
Voltaire was also known to have been an advocate for coffee, as he was reported to have drunk it 50–72 times per day. It has been suggested that high amounts of caffeine acted as a mental stimulant to his creativity (Wikipedia)

Um. I love him.

Maybe that's what people will say about me someday. "Casey was known to be an advocate for coffee, as she was reported to have drunk it 50-100 times per day. It has been suggested that high amounts of caffeine acted as a mental stimulant to her creativity, feats of strength, patience in motherhood, circus contortionist acts, and pirating the high seas."

Ta-Da!

As Nils likes to say (about anything and everything of note), TA-DA!

Ladies and gents, we have a clubhouse (my term)/fort (Chris' term)/pirate ship (Carolena's)/sliiide! (Nils')!

We've been talking about building something for our kids since... well forever really. Even before having kids we talked about how we would one day build something for them to play on in the backyard.

This time last year we started really talking about it more and couldn't come to a consensus. Chris wanted to build a huge ship to the tune of like 4.7 million dollars. I wanted to find scrap supplies and build "a series of platforms" to the tune of roughly the cost of screws.

So we dropped the conversation and continued to think about it on our own. Then we went to a friend's house where we saw a small platform he'd built for his kid... and the light bulb finally went off. Chris was like, "ohhh NOW I see what you mean... why would you call that a 'platform?'"

And then our idea for "platforms" grew into "with a slide!" and "a deck underneath!" and extra room on the end so that "maybe one day we'll add on a swing!"

Very little conversation actually went into the finished product. Chris whipped up some plans (because he's awesome like that). I tossed in a few ideas (very few because he looked deep in thought and calculations).

I think all of the planning happened on Friday morning, and then Chris went to Home Depot, came home with a truck bed full of supplies, and we went to work!

I committed to the project as "the brawns" and dubbed Chris "the brains." As long as he gave me clear instructions I would just work. And... low and behold... it worked! No fighting went into the making of our clubhouse. I became a master at holding up boards while Chris attached them (helllo shoulders! yikes!) and then I became a master at using the drill as I attached more than half of the boards on that bad boy. Chris was in charge of measuring and cutting as that made me nervous. So, no fighting went into it, but plenty of blood and tears (there would have been sweat but the weather was a perfect Texas spring January day). The tears were Nils' (it's hard to be two) and the blood was mine as I once missed the screw and hit my finger with the drill. Eeeww.

Chris and I had a blast building something together, we have an awesome (insanely sturdy) clubhouse/fort/pirate ship/slliiiiide, the kids are giddy, and all is right with our backyard (for now!).

We finally got around to putting out the mailbox I found in Goodwill months ago and c has had just as much fun with that thing as she has the huge "pirate ship."

There were only two snafus along the way (well, besides drilling my finger which went by with a lot of blood and little to-do). Snafu one happened on Saturday morning when I awoke worried that the structure was too tall. We weren't home that day to work on it and when we came home I confessed my concern about the height. After some thinking and talking about the height (and consulting my bro-in-law), we Chris turned the entire thing on its side and cut off a foot from the bottom! Hercules! Hercules! We hadn't built the bottom deck yet if you are wondering how that was possible.

Numero dos? Wellll as you can probably imagine Chris and I have different ideas as to what should happen with all of the leftover wood. Yesterday Chris and I dubbed our project "finished!" and while I gazed lovingly and thoughtfully at the pile of scrap, Chris was already walking into the backyard with the trashcan. Hmph. So we compromised. I gave Chris plans for two "planters" and he built two boxes. Free?! And we can put some cute plants in there?! Yes. Then I agreed to let him to throw away a bunch of stuff while he agreed to indulge me in sticking a bunch of very useful and awesome and "we paid for this already!" boards into the garage. You know, to sit next to the fence boards I salvaged from our new fence project two years ago... oops.

Man, speaking of things I've salvaged... I have four truck tires in our backyard right now. I had big plans for those tires like "sink them in the grass!" but it turns out they are too rubbery/springy for that, and "make alligators!" but none of our saws can cut through the metal in the tire (believe me I tried and tried), and now "uhh... tire swing?" crap.

I'm looking forward to hours and hours of fun in our improved backyard. Let the mint julep season begin!

Update to The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Update to November's The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly:
January 2016 edition: The Good, the Great, and the Fabulous

My mixer is back! My mixer is back! I would post a picture... but I didn't take one. It's back. It looks like a big stand mixer. And best of all: it works again!

Second best of all: it was at the low-end of the price spectrum for getting a mixer refurbished! Hooray! Hooray! I will be celebrating by making a cheesecake. Because why is our fridge so full of cream cheese?

I have a mixer again. We can have homemade bread, pizza, and desserts aplenty! So that's pretty darn good, great, and fabulous.

Also, my migraine medicine has changed (fingers crossed) and I go back in three months with a report on how this one is going. Why do you care? Because I'm lifting my ban on alcohol since I'm off the other drug. Thus far I've had beer and been totally fine. I think my waistline is going to suffer from this. *sigh* Can't have everything.

Oh, and speaking of drinking - drinking Gatorade when I workout did in fact fix the workout-dizzies. Check.

In other news: C has been looking for things to do around the house (when did that happen?! She's always been so self-sufficient when it comes to playing!) and has been thrilled if I print worksheets for her. Yes, really. This kid loves them. Turns out what she needed was some math and literacy work to do. Go figure. I'm taking it as an opportunity to teach her to always write her name at the top of the page first thing. Hopefully getting that routine early will save some tears in the future. I might also make a big poster chart of things to do. Perhaps I'll make a chart of things to do to help around the house - maybe a sticker chart? - and when she arrives at a certain number of stickers something cool happens. Clearly this is well thought out.

Yep, things are pretty good, great, and fabulous right now. 

Stay tuned to find out what we've been building in our backyard... hint: it's involved wood, the brains (Chris who figured out how to create and how much/what to buy and just tells me what to do to help), and the brawn (me, as I've done all of the holding of heavy boards while he attaches them).

The Girl is Crafty Like Ice is Cold

Reading: The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin. Yes, still. This is a fabulous book if you want to learn every single detail of the life of BFrank. It's not a general overview. Whew. So it's long and sometimes tedious. I'm thisclose to the Boston Tea Party episode though so I can't put it down now! I need to finish it though so I can move on with my life... my pile of books to read and reread (Gone With the Wind!!) is just getting larger.

Coffee Intake: One cup a day! And by one cup I mean one single little scoop of grounds. Go Casey! Go Casey! I think it would be fairly easy at this point to drop that cup, but I enjoy it so much that for now I'm keeping it. At one cup a day I wake up feeling great rather than like I'm going to die if I don't get coffee. Although... that could also be due to the fact that I've been sleeping more than our cats lately.

Sleeping: a lot. A ton. A plethora. I'm not sure what happened but I've been falling asleep between 7 and 8 every night. Not that I was staying up late before... but man, I've been pulling a Jimmers (my dad) and falling asleep while tucking in C (like he used to do to me) OR coming out of a kid's room from tucking-in, turning on The Twilight Zone, and falling asleep on the couch 2 minutes later. Oh well, at least I'm still getting up early. Lots of people need 10 hours of sleep... like cats... and teenagers.

Crafting: Why, yes, I have been. Thanks for asking. I miraculously finished this:

I think I'm going to rip out the date and put it smaller in the corner. It takes away from the family. And hey, what's a cross-stitch without 50 million rip-outs and redos, right? In case you can't tell, it's our fam. From left to right: Max (or a rapid racoon?), Chris, Carolena (holding her lovies Whoppie and Howie behind her back), Nils with his "night-night" blankie and a dead racoon "King Julian," and moi with a cup of coffee and a book about polar exploration (in theory the white stitches on the book are a Compass Rose with bigger N/S arrows... in reality it's just a blob), and of course, Lieutenant Square Body, the fiesty Olive herself (with a purple calm collar on) rounds us out on the right.

I love it. If you want me to make one for your family I'm charging $400,000 due to the cost of labor. Man, cross-stitches would really be a breeze if it weren't for all of the "that looks weird" and ripping out and restitching.

I also pulled out my sewing machine yesterday and made a dress for Carolena. I used an old pattern that I tweaked (look at me, tweaking a pattern!). She LOVES it and when she tried it on yesterday so I could mark where to cut and hem she insisted that she wants it "looonnng" - so it looks like we're going long. Still needs to be cut and hemmed though.

et cetera: Yesterday I taught my son to wipe his nose on his sleeves. Yes, on purpose. It just breaks my heart to see Nils sitting there with a runny nose and he's snot going to get up and go get a Kleenex. So that's a habit I'll have to break later but for now his life will be all that much better. Tonight is Kinder-Expo at school! What?! I'm excited. C is just starting to show signs of restlessness at home. I think by the end of the summer she'll be jumping out of her skin to start kinder. I've got a date on the calendar to go to the beach with my mom and sister (woo!) and I'm feeling footloose and fancy free. I'm dying to see the new Christian Bale movie (*sigh*) so I need to either go next week or find someone (cough cough) to meet me halfway. Yesterday Nils pointed to the sky and yelled, "Bird!" but I heard "Batman!" and was about to put on some fresh lipstick in case it was Christian Bale. Unfortunately, it was a bird.

Dreams Do Come True

Hey, remember that time when Carolena announced her desire for her grandmother to make an Alf costume for her?

Dreams DO come true!!

She did it!!!

If you don't know Grandma/d2/Dianne then you probably don't know that she is the queen of internet searching. We don't know HOW she does it - but she can find anything, anyone, any information online. She is an anomaly Boomer when it comes to the internet. And thus... the Alf mask was found and Grandma got to work on a fur suit.

Carolena loves her new costume and has now spent two days terrorizing our cats (because, duh, Alf eats cats). Nils yells "bumble!" and runs from her as he is convinced that she is dressed as Bigfoot, the Abominable Snowman's East Texas cousin.

And as I watched that furry little guy run by, I found my childhood dream had come true too: Alf is finally running around my house.

Aren't grandmothers the best?

TWO!

Once upon a time... way back in 2014... our darling Nils was born.

January 2014

And he grew and he grew and he grew...

January 2015

And then he grew some more.

Nils, is two! What a fabulous guy he is. Nils cracks us up daily. How can someone so little be so purposely hilarious? What other two year old sings "Buddy Holly" and "Mamma Mia Sopapilla?" Yes, he sings "Mamma Mia Sopapilla." Nils, we love you with all of our hearts.

Yesterday and the Land of Lincoln

Yesterday I did the unthinkable: I watched tv (okay Netflix) all day long.

*gasp*

At Kelly's insistence I've gotten hooked on Jane the Virgin which has upped the number in the overlap of the venn diagram of tv shows Kelly and I like.

Chris is making breakfast for the kids right now. I'm making a venn diagram of tv shows my sister and I like. He's a patient man. Although... he doesn't know that's what I'm doing... bwah ha ha ha!

Back to yesterday. Yesterday I dropped kids off at school and then came home and crashed on the couch. My brother was passing through town and I met him for some great Tex-Mex and then I came home and crashed again until it was time to pick up kids. Guys, I don't think I've EVER spent a school day like that. It was great. Certainly not something I want to do regularly but once a semester or so for sure.

After picking up the kids from school we did this:

My parents gave Chris a HUGE container of Lincoln Logs for Christmas. See that huge blue container? When all of the Lincoln Logs are in it... it's FULL. My plan is to sneak all of the train tracks out of Nils' room one day when he's napping so we can build a huge log cabin village with a train running all through it. I would include Nils except that the majority of the time he plays construction games with us we dub him "Godzilla."

Yesterday was great. Today: a trip to the library, a huge trip to the grocery store, and of course, the Lincoln Log container is already open.

3 pm update

Damn, I love my washing machine and dryer. I don't think I ever ever use them without feeling so thankful to have them. Seriously.

We started the day off on the right foot with Nils' choice of Barney (yes, really) which meant that I got to take a shower in peace. Alleluia! Thank you Barney! I also reorganized our pantry. I would like to say "cleaned out" but we all know that's a lie. I just rearranged. Then, I decided it was high time to face the laundry I've ignored for pretty much a month. Chris was down to nothing. He probably wore a suit to work today. Or a swimsuit.

Mysteriously the majority of Carolena's laundry was leotards and costumes. Okay, not mysteriously. OBVIOUSLY. That kid.

After Barney I announced it was time to go to Target which we never do. No, that isn't sarcasm. I don't actually like going to Target. *gasp* We (cough I cough) went nuts in the 90% Christmas clearance and came home with a ton of wrapping paper and tags and Christmas galore. Hooray for 35 cent wrapping paper! We ran into an aquaintance there who looked at my cart like I was nuts. And of course said something snarky. She would. Umm... but she's the one whose nuts, right? I just spent 3 bucks on $30 worth of wrapping paper. *insert massive eye rolling*

The kids requested McDonald's for lunch and as I was/am determined to have a great day, we went off to the land of Happy Meals. And now... they're both asleep.

All is calm. The dryer is doing all the work. Sure, there is a grocery list to be made and a heck of a lot of laundry to be folded. There is still stuff covering the dining room table that needs to be put away. There's dinner to be made. But for now... quiet. Calm. Now, where did I leave my book?

2015

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December