“If I Don’t Get My Way…”

(quotes from my children made to various family members and guests)

…then you aren’t invited to my birthday party.

…then you can’t have any of my birthday cake.

…then I am never going to share with you again.

…then you can’t come in my room.

…then I am going to hide your nai-nai guy.

…then the next time God sends a flood, I’m going to tell Him to leave you outside!

Visiting Castles

I am getting excited to visit Scotland!  For me, I am looking forward to visiting places from my childhood, but for my boys, I am looking forward to visiting castles.

I am hoping to stop at a few to break up some long car drives across the country.  It is crazy to think, “we’ll stop at whichever castle is closest when the boys get stir-crazy in the car.”  These are some of the castles from Perth and Aberdeen that we could possibly stop at…

I hope Owen and Jack are as crazy about these as I imagine they will be.  I guess I will have to inspire them, if not.  (Hey, if I can get them yelling “yeah!” when they wake up to a rainy day, then surely I can inspire some screams for castles.)

Amy

Yesterday was my sister’s birthday.  I have been thinking about her lately, and thought I would post a few (very random) memories that I have.

My sister is only about a year and a half older than me, but I have always thought of her as much older, definitely the big sister – no mater how old I get (even if I have somehow become older than her, now that she keeps turning 29…) she will always be my older, protective sister.

I have also always thought of my sister as someone who is “good at things.”  As far back as I can remember, I have been in awe of her.

I remember her being able to read before me, and thinking she was smart.  I couldn’t wait to read too.

I remember drawing a clock with all the numbers written on it in the correct place, and she showed it to our older brother exclaiming how good it was.  I was on a glorious high for days after that, and was sure I was going to be an artist when I grew up!

My sister can sing beautifully, and I loved to hear her sing with my mother.  (And they very kindly let me join in, even though I did not have their talents.) 

When we were in grade school, and the movie Annie came out, Amy convinced many of our schoolmates that she was the actress who played Annie.  They, of course, wanted proof.  So Amy belted out a few lines of  “Tomorrow,” and our schoolmates’ little mouths dropped open. 

She makes a killer grilled-cheese.

When we were young, Amy often crawled in bed with me at night.  She told me she was scared of the dark, but I never really fully believed her. ( I always wondered if  she was saying that to make me feel good.)  I was scared too, but her need for me in this one small instance made me overcome that fear and I felt amazingly brave – especially when I turned off the light and ran across the room to the safety of the bed.

The first time I made her cry crushed me.  I still feel sick when I think of it.  She was always such a tough cookie, and I was teasing her about something which she normally laughed off.  I was stunned when I saw her cry, because I realized that I had truly hurt her.  And worse, I knew that other times that I had teased her had hurt her too, and she had just been better at hiding her pain before.

Amy can make anyone laugh.

Once, when we were walking in a park together with another friend, Amy pretended to get in a fight with him.  They were being funny, and practicing their acting skills.  I had to let them know they were a little too good, and a burly man was on his way over to intervene…

Once, when someone hurt my feelings, and I was sobbing over the silly thing, my sister gave up her morning to hang out with me instead.  ( I don’t remember what she was supposed to be doing, but I do remember that I knew she really needed to be somewhere else.)  She also took me out to my favorite lunch place with the last tiny bit of money she had.  I remember her digging through the couch cushions and the car to find enough to buy one sandwich to us to share.

My sister is such a beautiful person!

Happy Birthday Amy!

My Dream Car

I saw this car today while driving home.

I want it. I want it BAD. 

Just thought I would put that out there in case anyone has $30,ooo or so burning a hole in your pocket.

 

And in case noone can find Eric tomorrow, I may have to be considered a suspect.  He just told me that this is one of the cars he considered when he bought his new car (less than a year ago!!).  “I thought you didn’t care about that car anymore,” he just said to me.  Forget that I have talked about this car for TEN YEARS at least.  

I love my husband.

I love my husband.

I love my husband…

Gardening

I do not have a green thumb.  Thus, this is a section of my yard has been a haven for weeds for the last two years.

 

Becca loves to garden and has done some amazing things in her yard.  She encouraged me to plant something.

So when I saw these ‘sedum’ plants at Costco a few days ago, I bought them, and showed Becca.

She approved.  And five trips to three different Costcos  later, we had (most of) the plants we needed.

Today we spent about six hours organizing, and planting these babies.  We planted the first kind of sedum around the paving stones.  If I can keep the boys from walking on them for a bit, the should grow and fill in all along the edges.  It is my favorite part of what we did (at least it will be if all goes well…)

 

Afterwards we planted the sides of the pavers.  I think we used 5 big plants of the pink guys below, and 72 individual sedum plants.

It was really fun to plant with Becca.  And it definitely was nice to have  someone there who knew what she was doing!  The time truly flew by, and I couldn’t believe how long we worked.  (Though I have no trouble believing it now since I can feel it in my lower back…)

The photo doesn’t really do the job justice, but here is one side of the section that is done.  The pink flowers are planted in a row, and the sedum are planted in a wavy lines.

  

We planted everything else we had on the other side, but we are going for trip 6 to Costco #4 tomorrow morning to see if they have any other of the pink plants left. 

Thanks for all of your hard work Becca. (And thanks to Mat for letting me borrow her for the day.)

Julie Memories

The quality of this photo is terrible, but I have always loved it.  It reminds me of living in Scotland – a time in my life when I have lots of wonderful memories.  This is me and my mom in the yard of the house we owned in Rosehearty, Scotland.

I dug this photo up because I just got an email with a ticket confirmation from my mom saying that she is going to join us for the part of our trip when we are in Scotland.  This totally floored me because I thought she wasn’t going to be able to make it!

I had been holding off on making any plans in Scotland even though all of the other sections of our trip have been booked for a while now.   I knew that it was not too likely that my mom could come, but making the hotel reservations seemed pretty final. And I really wanted my trip to Scotland to be about revisiting some parts of my childhood.

But, a trip without my mom would really not be about revisiting my childhood as much as just adding another country to our itinerary.    You see, I was only 7 when we moved away from Scotland, and while I have a lot of memories, they are pretty fuzzy.  And my family loves to laugh at me (and my memories from this time ) because I often get the facts mixed up.  It is to the point that my memories of Scotland (and some other parts of my childhood) are known as “Julie Memories.”  They would definitely not stand up in a court of law. 

If I am perfectly honest, I don’t know if the photo above was actually taken at the house I am thinking of in Scotland.  (But I have come to the realization that even if I have a “Julie Memory” it is more of a representation of the period in my life and how I felt at the time.  And for me, that photo is having fun in the back yard of that Scottish house with my mom.)

But now, maybe I can revive my memories and take claim back on the term, "Julie Memories.”  Maybe they won’t be synonymous with falsehoods, but just, “Julie’s memories.” (Yeah, I doubt it too.)

 

The photo below is of the house I am referring to.  It is hard to see, but I am standing at the very corner of the house.

And just because I came across this too, I thought I would throw it in.  This is a photo of my sister and brother in 1977 in Fraserburgh, Scotland.  Bobby is 5 in this photo, and Amy is 3 or 4.  I would love to see if we could find this little harbor and take a similar photo of Owen and Jack.  They will be 3 and 5 on this trip. 

Darth Vader

Owen really likes Darth Vader.

He knows he has something to do with StarWars even though Darth Vader does not appear on Owen’s Leapster Game, nor has Owen ever seen the movie.

(Owen was slightly shocked when he recently found out that Darth Vader was a bad guy.)

But, Owen got over it, and still thinks Darth Vader is cool.

While looking at Build-a-Bear store today, Owen discovered this outfit. 

He was quite excited about it, and is hoping to get it for his birthday. 

This is the animal that he wants to wear the Darth Vader outfit.

 

It cracks me up to think of those pink ears peeking out of the helmet. 

“Owen, join the Dark Side.”

My Classroom

Tonight we had our PEPS group over to our house for dinner.  This means 8 kiddos running around.

After dinner the kids were all playing outside, and my inner-teacher kicked in.  It started out with me just having them all running around following random directions. (which was successful)  Then, I really got inspired and tried to teach them a game that I used to teach my second graders - Captain’s Coming.  (kids aged 2 to 5 don’t do too well with that, by the way) I finally settled on Mother May I, which worked a little better as long as I reminded each of them to say, “Mother May I”…

I was a bit frustrated that I thought of games that were too old for the group.  I used to know so many games, and none came to my head.  Of course, the kids all followed the basic directions of the games, and seemed to have fun, and I got more hugs than usual when it was time for everyone to leave, so I guess I shouldn’t be so hard on myself.  (plus, I was having fun.)

I miss my classroom, my students, my creative outlet that works best on 7 and 8 year olds.  I hope I don’t forget everything before Owen and Jack get there…

(PS.  Thanks Rob for taking an unauthorized photo of me, it was fun to find.)

A Bug

Right now, this is the car of choice for my monkeys.

There is instant excitement when one is seen, and the boys yell, “A blue bug!” or “An orange bug!” as excitedly as “Garbage truck!”  or  “Car carrier!” or “Microphone bus!” (The latter being the Microsoft busses that have a station near our house.)

These two cars “live” by our house. (well, copies of these anyway.)  The boys anticipate driving past them as we leave (blue bug) or return home (red bug).  {I’m not sure if the owner of the red bug has a job ‘cause she is always there…For that matter, the blue bug is always there too, but I am not so sure that one runs. Sorry - tangent}

I would greatly appreciate it if NOONE would let my monkeys in on the “Slug Bug” game.

First of all, they need NO other excuse to hit each other (they find plenty on their own.)

Second, while Owen is usually a little quicker to notice the Bugs driving by, Jack still mistakes the following for Bugs…

   

(ah, my dream car!)

Thank-you for your cooperation!

Dry Ice

I received my delivery from from Amazon Fresh this morning. My frozen items were packed in dry ice.  How cool is that?  I know people use dry ice to make fog around Halloween, so I thought it would be fun to show the boys.

We added some blue food color to some warm water… 

and dropped a small chunk inside.

It was fun to blow the “fog” all over.

If you blew all of the “fog” off the top, you could see the water bubbling.  The boys liked that, but jumped whenever the fog came toward them.

I looked online for some more experiments, and found quite a few.  So, we tried some…

We listened to the “screaming” of a spoon (heated by the fire from our gas stove for a few seconds) that was pressed against the ice.

(I know,  a photo doesn’t really help here…)

Later, we smashed up small chunks of the ice so that they fit into a water-bottle, and put a balloon on top. (then we let it expand while we did some other experiments.)

Owen added dry ice to soapy water…     

Jack added it to milk.

(He wanted to drink the milk, but Mama nixed that idea.)

I added some red food color to the milk so you could see what was happening.

This is how big Owen’s balloon expanded from his dry ice.

We also made a balloon for Jack.

Owen suggested we dump the dry ice into Jack’s balloon and then tie it, so we did.

Here is Owen’s balloon (with no dry ice) and Jack’s balloon (with dry ice.)

  

Jack liked that you could see the “fog” come through the balloon. (If you click on the photo, you can see see it in front of his face.)

Here are the same two balloons a little while later.  Owen is not too pleased with how the experiment was turning out…He wanted to trade his balloon for Jack’s balloon.

Until Jack’s balloon exploded!

(which Jack thought was VERY funny despite the fact that he was holding it.)

I had a few more ideas, but that will have to wait for another day… when we can go outside…

tired

Eric says it is just because I stayed up until midnight reading magazines that I am tired.  Could be.

I want to end up being sick, to prove him wrong.    But, I would rather not be sick!  And since he is taking care of the boys while I lay down, I should think nicer thoughts…

So I am hoping that going to bed at 7 and waking up at 7 will make me feel shiny and new.

Sunny Seattle Sunday

(a good one) includes

Uncle Marc

and a game of football

big smiles when you get the ball

and tantrums when you don’t

 

some stellar moves

a big brother

 

and don’t forget Daddy – he’s important

 

at least, that’s what Jack tells me..