Murphy's Law

Random shot:

as Grace would say, "we are the girlie bugs, the girlie, girlie, girlie bugs!"

With the end of the school year coming, I knew things would start rolling -- what with graduation festivities, our house hunting trip, getting ready for our trip to England, and not to mention getting ready for our final move -- what I SHOULD have realized is that for us, when things start to roll, they do so in an avalanche-like fashion.

Last Monday was my first day back running after a week-long hiatus. In case you're wondering, this is what happens when you haven't run (or done any kind of exercise) in 7 days: Basically, you run the first mile, about half of the second mile, some of the third mile, and only the last downhill stretch of the fourth mile. Of course, it didn't help that my iPod went dead about a mile in, and I had finished eating dinner only about an hour earlier. Clearly it took longer than usual to run the route, and by the time I got home it was about 7:30 and I was exhausted. Not too exhausted, however, to run down to the basement to check and see if the TiVo was set up for the night. And this is when the rolling began.

My first step off the stairs into the basement was completely soaking wet. I yelled for Scott and when he came down we discovered the extent of the flooding in the back storage area where Grace's crib was last year. The carpet was completely and totally soaked through and that's when we realized that because we never unhooked the outside garden hoses over the winter, when we turned the outside water back on over the weekend, water started backing up into the house somehow. It was a nightmare -- especially because we were due to leave on Wednesday for our house-hunting trip. And also because the actual homeowners (the ones who are supposed to file the claim for the insurance) are in Ireland which is 7 hours ahead of us. We finally were able to get some people over that night who managed to pull the carpet up, get rid of the carpet pad, and start the industrial fans blowing before leaving a little after midnight.



Tuesday was already going to be a busy day with Scott's last day of classes and getting stuff done before we left, and taking care of the basement flood aftermath, so really, should I have been surprised when that morning Sophie fell in the bathroom and split her eyebrow on the tub necessitating a trip to the emergency room? Luckily she didn't need stitches -- the doctor thought it would leave a bigger scar -- so after putting a surgi-strip on her eyebrow, we were on our way.

Here she is on the way to the hospital.

And here she is IN the hospital. In case you're wondering about the scrape on her nose, the ER folk were wondering about it, too, and for a split-second I was really worried they were going to call the child protection services on me for being a neglectful parent or something. (She's just learning to walk, people!)

The rest of the day consisted of getting Ethan to his last day of preschool, coordinating with the repair people to check on the basement, picking Ethan UP from preschool, and then heading up to the airport to pick-up my sister Sarah who so graciously agreed to watch all three kids for us while we were gone. Oh how I would love to read a blog post about HER experience while we were away. Especially given the 3 page daily schedule that I made out for her so she'd know everything that we usually do in a day. Along with the 1 and 1/2 page set of instructions just for Sophie. Talk about a crash course in motherhood!

Here is Ethan with Miss Dorie

And Miss Raechel

When Wednesday finally came, I was a bit stressed about leaving for our trip. They say that bad things always happen in 3's, and we'd already experienced the basement trouble and Sophie's ER trip. Well, I found out soon enough what that third thing was. Okay, so have any of you ever stayed in a Days Inn? Well, I can now say I have. What I can also say is that I will not be staying in one again. When we first pulled up it was around 9:30 at night or so, and my eyes were immediately drawn to the "J&B Tavern" next door. As soon as we had checked in and gotten in the elevator I started laughing. And I continued laughing for the next half hour. Here are some of the highlights of this Days Inn: the room smelled like a mix of dog and cigarette smoke, the shower was lukewarm at best and it wasn't until the second day that I discovered that if we flushed the toilet every couple of minutes the water would stay nice and hot, there was a safe provided in the room to store valuables at a rate of a dollar a day, the walls were paper thin (I was woken up the first night around 2:30 in the morning by the sound of the TV blaring next door), oh and we saw the cops there a few nights later.

No, thank YOU!

This sign was at the front desk one morning.

Now, in Scott's defense (please let the record show that I did not choose this place), he didn't know how bad it was going to be. He was just trying to save money from our relocation sum. And I was glad we were saving that money on hotels as soon as I saw the most beautiful red jacket in the world on sale at Ann Taylor. I had been eyeing it for over a month and just waiting for it to be marked down. Well, there we were at the mall after meeting some people for dinner, and there was only one left and it was in my size. I told Scott it was a sign and he humored me -- mostly I think because he still felt so bad about how crappy our Days Inn was.

Anyway, this is getting long, but our house-hunting trip was a success! We found the most awesome house ever, and it will be the perfect fit for our family. I don't want to inundate the blog with the hundreds of pictures I took, so if I get around to figuring out how to do a slideshow on here I'll put them all up.

Here is a side-angle of the house.

And the happy, new home-owners!

Okay, here is a slideshow:

In closing, I can't believe that the MBA experience is at the end! Scott graduates this week and it seems like just yesterday that we were starting. I am going to miss the Spouse Association and all the activities so much. Especially Book Club! As a parting shot, here is a photo taken at the very last book club this year.

I love these girls! I only wish all the regulars could have been in the picture.

There you have it! I have tons more pictures from end-of-the-year festivities, but I'll wait and post them all together with the graduation shots. Until next time, here is one last photo of Grace (who is curiously under-represented in this post):

I'm Every Woman

Hi, I'm Scott. My wonderfully amazing wife Jessica has a wicked case of writer's block, so I'm coming in off the bench to write a post about all the things I know she wants to write about, and probably a few more. I'm writing the stories as if I'm her from here on out, so the goal is to capture her voice. I've actually written one other post for her on the blog in the past (10 bonus points and a surprise gift to be sent to the first person who can accurately guess which post), so we'll see how this goes.

"First things first, let me catch you up on my running addiction. My whole goal in starting running was to do the 5k at the Rex Lee Run. Mission accomplished. We had really great weather for the couple weeks before the run, then of course it got really cold right before the Saturday. I woke up and honestly thought it was going to snow. I don't do running in snow, but thankfully the weather held off. It was ridiculously cold at first, but with my trusty iPod rocking out all kinds of musical goodness and my loving family cheering me on, I finished the race in pretty good time. And I never walked. That race has gotten HUGE. When I ran it my junior year in college, there weren't nearly as many people as there were this time around. Totally great experience.

Here are my biggest fans before the race. Grace is the blob in between Ethan and Sophie.

A bunch of friends from the MBA Spouse Association. Girl Power!

And after the race. Grace was done with the whole rah rah thing at this point. Shocker.

With the race out of the way, I'm still managing to run regularly although not quite as religiously. My feet were starting to hurt because my shoes were getting old. After nearly spending $130 on new running shoes that did everything but run for you, I managed to find these cute little ones for almost one third the price. Scott rejoiced for the cost, I rejoiced for how cute they are. And my legs are pretty cute too. Oh wait, that's Scott talking. Dang it, I'll try and stay in Jessica's voice the rest of the way.

Next came St. Patrick's Day. Frankly, it's not really one of those holidays that I manage to turn into week-long celebrations (like Valentine's Day) or three-month extravaganzas (like Christmas). I don't know, maybe it's because leprechauns just kind of creep me out with their impish looks and fiery red hair. But with Scott's parents in Ireland on a mission, I felt the need to support the cause. I was shopping at the mall with the kids and Ethan fixated on a white and green shirt at The Children's Place. Since I'm still one of THOSE moms (see earlier post), I decided this wasn't a battle worth fighting. With Ethan getting a shirt, I knew Grace wouldn't leave unless she got one too. And then Ethan wouldn't let us go without Sophie getting one too. So three rather unattractive shirts later, we had our not-so-Kodak moment.

Yeah, I know. The shirts are ugly.

And Sophie knows it too.

Easter came next. My mom, Amy and Jacob came in town for a few days and it was great seeing them. My mom managed to set up the photo above and we took a few shots. The picture taking went about as expected. See Christmas 2007, 2006, 2005 ... 1989, 1988, or 1987 for further information. That tie on Ethan is his first ever, and he really likes it and the other two we got for him later.

This photo pretty much sums up Ethan and Grace.

Ethan and Grace have begun collecting money for doing odd jobs around the house. And I mean odd. Ethan is always asking for ways he can get quarters for doing some type of chore. I'm pretty sure he's going to start messing things up just so he can get the quarter for cleaning it all up. We'd love to say that Grace has the same work ethic, but she's improving. We actually started the latest collection jars because Grace fell in love with a pair of hot pink Crocs while walking through Nordstrom. I told her they cost $25 and she needed to earn the money to pay for them. She should be ready to pay for them by the time she's 7. Ethan is also saving up for Crocs and a trip to Disneyland. I hope that work ethic came with a healthy dose of patience.

Ethan's preschool experience is wrapping up next week, which is just hard to believe. From what we can tell, he really likes it. He's certainly paying attention at least some of the time. One of the recent topics they covered was camping. We've only been camping once as a family (two summers ago), but apparently that experience and the lesson really stuck. One night Scott went to check on Ethan a couple hours after bedtime because he was talking to himself. That's not really noteworthy in and of itself. But as Scott got to the door, he peeked through the door and saw that Ethan had set up the easel as a tent and his sleeping bag underneath it. He was pretending to be camping and had his flashlight and everything. He fell asleep 30 minutes or so later.

Not to be outdone in the awkward sleeping arrangement department, Grace managed to take her obsession with junk to the next level. It wasn't enough to see the stuffed animals and Mr. Potato Head or even to play with them. She needed to be one with the junk. So one day at nap time, Grace crawled into the bin with all her stuff. Clearly she was pretty tired.


I can't really think of anything else to write about. Oh, I'm taking a hiatus from books with hopelessly romantic love stories. Our latest MBASA book club offering was These Is My Words. The meeting is tomorrow night and I hadn't read the book yet, but Sunday I started around 9 p.m. I finished 12 hours later, with a couple hours of sleep squeezed in somewhere around 4 a.m. OK people. I like to consider myself rational and logical, even down to earth. But this book tore me apart. I couldn't think about anything else all day and had multiple crying binges about the storyline. I won't ruin it for anyone else who wants to read it, but I just decided that I can't keep doing this to myself. Whether it's the Bella-Edward-Jacob love triangle or the Sarah-Jack romance from this one, my heart just can't take it anymore. So it's fluffy stuff or some of that crap non-fiction Scott likes to read for the next little while.

So that's that. The MBA program wraps up in a couple weeks. I'm getting emotional just writing about it, so I better finish up. 'Til next time."