Weber Update

Thought you all might like an update from your favorite rambunctious bunch currently furthest north.

Abby & Eli are no longer sharing a room.  Sunday AM had me painting away the lavender & neutralizing the middle bedroom with a wonderful forest green.  I am much happier with the color & wish I had done it sooner.  We opted for Eli to move since he has such difficulty being alone at night & since we had "the talk" with Abby, we weren't too keen on having her on the other side of our uninsulated shared wall.  TMI?  Hazel hasn't gone to bed well since the transition & visiting PDX this weekend will only prolong the problem, but I get to see baby boy Mesdag shortly after birth so I don't really care.  I know those of you in Hawaii & Arizona are so wishing you could be me this weekend. :)

Hazel has been hilarious lately.  She just smelled my coffee cup & said, "Ew," while waving her hand in front of her nose.  Then I got a short dissertation on how the cup is "ooo-pee," puncuated by her plugging her nose as she's telling me.  She's just a nut.  Her newest activity is to sing quite loudly while either dancing or drumming on a paint can, then pausing to hold her arms up & proclaiming, "Daint choo! Daint choo! Daint choo." (Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!)  Such a funny little pip. 

Spring break this week.  It's nice outside today for the first time.  So excited to throw them out to play.  I'm going to threaten them with chores if they don't go out.  Lots of laundry to fold & piles of toys to sort since there is even less extra space than before in the younger ones' bedroom.  If only I had a cleaning service...

Didn't win my Greatest Loser contest at Curves but I finished it & lost a whopping 6% body weight in 8 weeks.  I was last of the 5 people who finished, but I did it!  Total weight loss since 6/2008: 35 pounds!  I'm starting to look like me again & even had some old friends tell me I'm a hot mama now.  It's so fun to be Hans's trophy wife. :)

EVELYN!!!

dumped egg whites into the gallon of milk. Guess we'll have crepes today :) Don't you all wish you could have an Evelyn?

know what I mean knot what I say :)

frig magnet band

Love the song, Anna! Maybe that's the up and coming alternative to the comb over, Papa should try it.

Good job on the spelling, Erin! I'm sure you had time to consider your words while you watched your car seats.

Look at me!

Did I actually figure this out? Maybe I'm smarter than I think. We looked at 7 houses today all when the girls were supposed to be napping. Keeping Evelyn from throwing things into other people's pools was interesting. I had to fish out a twig mess and one house we looked at with the people there and she threw a rock in while the lady watched. Josh's friend Mike, the guy from South Africa, told Josh that there is a pile of rocks in the bottom of his pool after we had dinner over there. You think we could keep a better eye on her, but already this week she has managed to dump out two different boxes of cheerios. I put them up high in the cabinet but she pushes the stool over, climbs onto the counter and gets them down. The other thing she's into is the Emergency packets. She's always pushing the stool over to get those. She opens them up and tries to get them into a cup, but half always spill out on the counter and by the time I catch her she is usually trying to lick up the raspberry granules. Josh just came out and said he thinks he broke his toe trying to get them into bed. I'm happy he's home. The girls had a nicer afternoon. Yesterday I pulled 4 car seats out of both our cars and disassembled them all and watched their covers. I had to get Josh's drill out for one of them to get the car seat cover off. Maggie opened what we thought was her water bottle but when she opened it it exploded with some chunky throw up smelling liquid. We were on our way to Costco. I let Finley sit up high with Maggie in the front of the cart and her smile took up half her face. She was so cute being a big girl. They had couscous for one of the samples and I fed her one while we were standing in line, she loved it! But back to the emergency packets, one time Evelyn fixed me my own, she brought it to me in the living room because I think she thought I would get mad at her if she was getting into them, but if she was bringing it to me I would be happy. So I drank it and told her thank you, but next time she needs to ask. Mom was asking me if I think she hears well. I agree that food is her toy. Could be because all the toys are in Maggie's room. I'm wondering if she is developing some kind of weird problem where she feels out of control because Maggie thinks all the toys are hers (sound like any other oldest we know?). She stores food everywhere. She likes beans so I gave her some but she ended up storing them in the front pocket of this blue bear chair they used to have in the living room. It's not there anymore because I used to always steam clean it with the upholstery attachment but I decided it could probably fit in the washer. Bad idea. Thank goodness it was garbage day and I got out of the house with it before the noticed. Not so good that when we came back from our play date the garage man hadn't come and they saw their blue bear sitting underneath the too full garbage can lid...whoops. What kind of garbage man takes until lunch time to come? I thought for sure it would have been gone. They handled it well. That was when Mom was here and I think her comforting, "he is injured" or something like comment calmed them down. I just had to prove to them that he broke in the washing machine. Too bad, they loved that bear, but it definitely wasn't the cutest or the cleanest thing in our home. I better hang out with my husband, I think the girls are down! Only 3 mispelled words when I did the spell check...woohoo!

It's not so much the pot...

but the coffee grounds that mess up the kitchen. Although I don't remember cleaning up a single one this last visit. Maybe because I was so busy lying around on the sofa being a slug. I'm happy to clean up coffee grounds any day if it means we get a visit though. Plus I really do wish the coffee pot lived at my home. Oh wait, I don't actually have a house. That I live in, anyway.

Right now it's slushing sideways in Juneau so we've got that going for us.

In case it's not obvious from the female tone of this message, this is the real Robyn Mesdag, not Luke that is typing, even though I'm sure it will put his name at the bottom.

me and my coffee pot

I heard a rumor that my pot messes up the kitchen but to be honest those kitchens probably just need to lighten up and share the counter. Those kitchens are just jealous that my very cool stainless pot doesn't actually live there.

I learned some things while I was away from home. Caden can outsmart his Grandma, now I'm not saying that is hard to do, but I can win a game about as well as the next person, so getting tagged to be "it" because I fell for a dupe is downright disgraceful. I saw Juneau the way I remembered it really being, steel gray with rain coming sideways. Not as hard to leave with weather like that. Leaving Laina, Caden, Robyn, and Lucas was another story, not good for me to let a cry surface, the recovery time is long and not pretty. Hearing your grandchildren giggle and enjoy each other is better than coffee.

I didn't get to spend the night with the Weber's, that was a sick house so I spent the night in Bellingham and came to Mt Vernon in the morning. I thought Grandma had already gone to heaven when I walked into her room, I let out a yelp and she jerked out of her daydream. She drank 4 grape juices, 1 milk, and 2 ice creams while I was there so maybe she's doing better. Anna was good to pick me up at Grandma's and run me over to the shuttle but getting there I realized I had forgotten my purse so I rode along to the girls doctor appointment instead. I didn't get to see the kids as long as I wanted to at all, and I didn't touch a single one of them because I didn't want to carry those germs to Erin's house. I did get to take Abby and Eli over and get an ice cream after Anna learned the doctor was going to flush Hazel's ears to get the wax out. They were infected, and since then she has gotten pneumonia as well. Anna has her hands full!

Stayed the night at home before going to Erin's, by this time I've been in many airplanes. Tucson was cold but it didn't prevent me from getting burnt. I don't really get that but whatever. I sat in the sun with a blanket and read my book while they napped. Evelyn's favorite toy I decided is food. I used to think she was a good eater but now I think she just likes to squish, spread, pour, and not eat. Maggie was preparing for her show and tell which is today. She had to decide what to wear, what earrings, what outfit, what toy. I slept in Evelyn's room, so she climbed into bed with me sometime in the night both nights, well...I snagged her on her way out of the room is why. She is smooth when it comes to escaping.

All in all I think it's a fact that I have the most beautiful, most intelligent, most kind, most endearing grandchildren on the planet. I wouldn't say they're the most quiet though.

It's always good to be home!