& the good times rolled on

once you've had interwebs at home, living without them is hard. not impossible but definitely not convenient. was i more productive without the distraction of facebook, blogs, google and wikipedia? not really. i had grand plans to be but few were realized. i even took fewer pictures because if i wasn't going to post them on the blog, what's the point? luckily i shook myself out of that mentality as the days passed.

life continued as normal. we were all busy doing our things: grant, surviving school on minimal sleep; me, running, yoga-ing and staying sane with the girls; hazel and lucy, organizing mass destruction; and oliver, searching for the best sunny spot in which to nap:

he has a hard life.

in the last few months, the girls have become great playmates. hazel has a wonderful imagination and narrates their play. the play kitchen has become an apartment building and the barn is kitty's (and sometimes batman's) house.

one of the funniest themes lately has been barfing. i'm not kidding. a couple of weeks ago, one of our babysitting rotations was pushed back a day because our buddy isaac was sick and that has stuck with hazel. she and lucy will have a dialogue that at some point includes something like this:

lucy, as oliver's mouse: let's go pway at the park.

hazel, as winnie the pooh: *retching noises* i can't. i'm barfing. *more retching*

pretty funny. one day i'll need to sneakily record them playing. it's really fun to listen to, except when a character's mommy gets mad . . . i'm sure it's not a reflection on my parenting skills.  

last sunday, grant suggested we go for a run. he hurt his knee in the half-marathon and thought that it was healed enough to run on it again. so we went up to memorial park. grant finished his 3 mile loop in 23 minutes (and irritated his knee again). i'm not sure of my time because i wasn't able to count the songs i'd run to since i left my ipod at home. we estimated around 33 minutes.  after we finished running the girls played at "the green park" and i tried to take pictures in the fading light:

our camera doesn't do poor lighting so most of them turned out in varying degrees of blurry:

and then i turned on the flash (duh!): 

much better. the next one might be my new favorite picture of lucy:

 love that kid! even though she's a [mostly] fearless monkey:

have i ever mentioned on here that she's scared to death of mosquitoes? she is. she flips out when one flies by her. she woke up screaming in the night a few weeks ago and when i asked her what was wrong she said, between sobs, "the mosquitoes gonna eat me!" it's going to be a long summer for her.

love this kid too:

they're both growing up so fast:

hazel is getting smarter and smarter. she loves working on her letters and her writing is getting neater:

(she doesn't hold her pencil like that while she's writing, just in case anyone was horrified at her poor form...)

she knows her all of the letter sounds and can sound out most words. she loves playing "i spy" in the car, knows her vowels and diagraphs. most of this is thanks to grant. i bought a reading program but i'm not consistent in following the lessons. we listen to the songs:

and play the games. one day i'll be better about the rest of the program. just for kicks, here's a video of lucy singing her abc's:

one of the girls' favorite places to eat is at the chick-fil-a. the last time we were there they were having another one of their craft nights and the girls got to decorate some planters, fill them with soil and flower seeds. you can imagine the excitement, especially once they sprouted: 

hazel reminds us promptly each night that we need to water her flowers. on monday, she told grant that she wanted to drink from the watering pot. instead of saying no, like i would've, he put hazel and lucy in the tub and let them have it:

and that took care of this week's bath.

last night (as with most nights) hazel struggled getting her huge head through her pajama top. she showed us and grant said she looked like a crab (i mis-typed that as "crap" and cannot stop laughing):

and lucy, of course, had to get in on the action:



the end.

& we're back . . . again

i'm hopeful that this time we'll stay. so let's let the good times roll:

i've been debating whether or not to put the catch up pictures/stories in one blog post. it would be a super long one (even by my standards), so i'm going to break it up into two, maybe three. here's part one: another zoo trip (i hope y'all didn't just groan). we met up with grant at the zoo after school on the 18th. we started out in the tropical bird house. sadly, just about every picture i took in there turned out blurry. this one came out great but there's no bird:

the girls were fascinated by the "dead skeleton". 

we moved towards the new african forest exhibit and lucy kamakazied her way over to the drinking fountain:

we made it to the giraffes and we're surprised and excited to see a new one, to the right (at least i think he/she is a new baby. i can't find anything about it on the zoo's website...):

so cute! he/she was sporadically running around like a crazy toddler with too much energy.

also new since our last visit, some gangly roomies for the gangly giraffes:

i really proud of the next picture:

not bad for a point 'n shoot, eh? grant and i were talking about how awkward ostriches look; with their dinosaur-esque legs, huge bodies and spindly necks. it doesn't help that this one needs its eye cleaned. btw, did you know that their eyelids blink sideways?? i didn't until i was watching them 6 feet away from me. (i just looked it up and apparently they have two sets of eyelids and one blinks sideways).

it also appears that they are fed well enough that a piece of grass is not a tempting offer.

at this point we had to turn around because we were headed the "wrong way on a one-way track". so we hunted for the real entrance to the african forest: 

we passed some of the less exotic animals:

and finally came across some grass-hut dwellers:

they showed us their musical skills:

and let us pass peaceably on to the chimpanzees:

and by then the zoo was announcing their closure so we hurried out to avoid being locked in and fed to the animals (at least that's what grant told the girls to get them moving. we are the best parents ever.).

to be continued.....

hiatus

due to technical difficulties (using an ancient laptop in place of a dead laptop), we (well, "i" really. let's be honest, it's been a while since phawlie & friends) won't be posting here for an indeterminate amount of time. isn't this just our luck? we finally get decent internet and our computer crashes? this isn't helping my pro-21st century cause in grant's anti-techonology tirades.

good-bye, friends. hopefully either the computer fairy will work her/his magic soon or i will suddenly figure out a fantastic, new budget that will allow for us to save enough to replace this piece of antiquity...

monday night flashback #28

*reader beware: incredibly sentimental, possibly boring, post ahead . . .

several things have led to this resurrection of the monday night flashback: one was a picture in a [private] blog post of a utah friend and former downstairs neighbor (hi, crystal!) and the other, indirectly, comcast. the picture was of mount timpanogos and in the foreground was our little, 850-square foot, old condo. the one grant and i moved into when we got married. i almost cried. it was our first home! the first half of hazel's life was spent there. i gleefully showed grant the picture, he smiled and went on with his homework. this was the first evening we had the internet back. the next morning our lappy died. or so i thought. every time i started it up, it froze. i spent the morning trying to figure out the problem and get it working. saturday we took it to best buy to see if we could get it fixed for a reasonable price (ha!). they were helpful and after telling grant their crazy "diagnose" fee and separate, crazier "fixin'" fee, they let grant describe what was happening. they said it was probably windows wigging out (my paraphrasing) and that rebooting it should take care of the problem. 

today my task has been to try to save all of our pictures, documents and music. i was loading a partially filled flash drive with some pictures and found the photos we took of our condo when we were trying to sell it, in july of 2008:

the middle window was ours.

i'm feeling all sorts of nostalgic right now. i am also trying not to pine after it too much. we were so blessed to sell as fast as we did. the market wasn't too bad yet but there were, if i remember correctly, 3 or 4 other condo's for sale at the same time. we didn't list it until several weeks after lucy was born and we matched the lowest price of another. not a single call. we let a week or two pass and lowered the price. three bites in one day. we got to take our pick. we went with the man most likely to get a loan through the fastest. sure enough, he called us earlier than we'd expected and grant packed up our things in two days. he did it all on his own. i was still recovering from lucy's c-section birth and couldn't lift anything (a shame. heh heh heh). we signed the papers on a friday and by monday (or maybe it was tuesday?) we were on our epic, 3-day drive to houston.

this was taken from the front door, looking into the living/dining/kitchen:

oh! how i loved those curtains!!  and the gray [semi-gloss] walls!! the kitchen was painted a slightly darker shade but you couldn't tell unless we pointed it out (which we did. constantly.).

looking back to the front door and i think you can see my toes by the hall closet.

we had lots of pictures hanging on the walls but took them down for the photos (i wish they were still up). did you notice something else? no tv. it resided on a cart with wheels in the spare bedroom closet and only came out for a movie or whenever lost was on.

the laundry closet

that aloe vera on the table was awesome. it grew like crazy and i miss it terribly. who did we give it to? is it still alive?? *sob*

turning into the hallway, the first door was a closet and the next was to the second bedroom (hazel's and the bike's room):

note: the bike had been moved for the picture but it usually lived propped up by the window

the walls had been painted twice by us. i was pregnant with hazel and wanted the walls to be a nice, bright, buttery yellow. grant was skeptical but humored the hormonal lady. the color turned into a celery green on the walls and looked awful. headache-inducing awful. so grant picked out a nice off-white to cover it up. and we all lived happily ever after. . .

hazel's crib (in toddler bed form) and changing table that we sold (in a day) for a song (the future-grandma tried to talk me down even more. *sigh* utah...)

the next door led to the, uh . . . water closet:

i'm not sure why the toilet paper holder is empty. we were still living there.

loved having the double sink. did not love not having drawers. and i know the walls look purple-mauve-ish but they were a nice medium brown/tan. i think the paint had "nest" somewhere in it's name...

at the end of the hallway was the master bedroom:

i wish we had a better picture of the stripes. we went all hgtv in our room. those stripes made me curse a lot while we were measuring, chalking the lines, taping, and painting but, by golly, i loved them. we had planned on doing every wall (!) but the first was such a task it didn't happen. a good thing too, it would have been like walking into a vortex.

everybody, sing with me! "this used to be my playground..." and hazel loved it too.

when we moved we got rid of e.ver.y.thing. except the kids.

we sold grant's treasured, custom commuter bike. he rode that to school and back nearly everyday (except parts of the winter):

we (well, really grant's dad, several weeks after we'd left. thanks again, larry!) sold our not-quite so treasured, and certainly not custom, car:

those are some nice floor mats hanging on the fence...

i had that car since before grant and i were dating. it was a great car, just not with two car seats in the back.

i'm so glad we took all of these pictures. it was fun remembering the not-very-distant past, for me anyway. if you stuck it through this post, i honor you.

13.1

comcast pulled through. hooray! so far (it's been about 5 hours) i'm impressed *gasp* we'll see how long they can keep this customer happy . . .

now on to the more exciting stuff. i know y'all've been holding you breath for this post. 

last friday, i packed up the car and the girls and i picked grant up from school. the drive to surfside, texas took us around two hours. it was incredibly foggy and humid, with a slight chill in the wind when we got there. we met up with amanda and matt, picked up our packets and had a really heavy dinner, where amanda got some hilarious pictures of lucy (i've never mentioned this on the blog but lucy cannot have a sweater on and leave her hood down. she freaks out.) then we headed to a hotel with hopes of  sleeping:

sadly, lucy and hazel had other ideas. by 11 o'clock, hazel was nearing unconsciousness and lucy was at least flopping around quieter. i set my alarm for 5:50 am (we planned to leave the hotel by 6:45) and tried to sleep. ha. i fell asleep okay but woke a few hours later. after tossing and turning, i slept again and was startled awake by grant's "it's 6:30, ruth!" sometime in the night i must have knocked my phone onto the floor and then hazel's pillow fell on top of it. i panicked, of course. grant kept a cool head and we made it. 

amanda and matt were excited:

here's the crowd:

we had a lot of friends from church running the half as well. we only got a picture with amelia:

the boys (and babies):

here we have grant finishing (2:10:40 [thanks for the picture, nicole!]):

i was going to write a really long, braggy paragraph about how awesome he is, but i know he wouldn't like that. just know that he is my hero and i love him to pieces. 

and now here i am finishing (2:57:13):

i'm not going to lie, this is probably most photogenic i've ever been. overall, the run was a positive experience. it was somewhat hard on my feet to run on the uneven sand (my shins felt great though) but i think i'd to this race again. i loved listening to the waves. so calming, i probably could have done it without my teeny-bopper music.

here's amanda coming in:

she's my hero as well. despite side aches and cramping feet, she plugged away and finished. way to go, amanda!

after our grueling task was complete, we let hazel and lucy loose on the ocean:

amanda took some fantastic photos of the girls playing on the beach.

i did it. i ran 13.1 miles. what's next? more half-marathons, 5 ks, 10 ks, maybe a marathon . . . we'll see. it seems much more plausible now than it did nearly a year ago.