Another soggy Sunday

We have been having some serious rain here in Salem the past few weeks.  So much so in fact that many of the smaller streams and rivers around town have flood warnings in place.  I have driven past a few homes and business this week that are all sand bagged and ready to go!  I checked the creek behind our house and noticed it has overflowed its banks already! Luckily our house is high enough above the water level I think it would be next to impossible for the creek to flood enough to reach us.

With all the rain and high water, I was really looking forward to my water sampling this morning! Once I month I go out to a boat launch on the Willamette to take some water quality tests for the Willamette Riverkeepers, a non-profit who reports their data to the Oregon DEQ. If ever there was a great volunteer position, this is definitely the one! Spending a morning out on the quiet river watching eagles fly past is definitely a peaceful way to start the day (of course then I get to come home to a full on knights vs viking battle waging in my living room! haha)

When I got out to the river this morning the water level was very high.  There were five or six large trees that were whisked past as I ran my tests and there was so much sediment in the water I couldn't see more than three inches down!  It took me about an hour and a half to run two sets of tests on conductivity, water temperature, turbidity and dissolved oxygen content. Needless to say I was pretty well soaked by the time I was done!

Just a little wet

part of my test kit

Soccer and a rainy day party

Another Saturday morning soccer practice under our belts.  This has proven to be an enormous challenge for me.  All three boys have to be up, fed, dressed and buckled into their carseats, I have to be showered and presentable and I have to remember to pack the diaper bag, fill the boys water bottles and load up the stroller so we can be pulling out of our garage by 8:30am.  This is next to impossible for me lol  Luckily, we have somehow made it to practice every Saturday.

 Today we had the added bonus of an afternoon birthday party.  The boys had a blast and it was a great way to burn off some of that rainy day energy.  The party was just lovely with a fantastic spread of yummy home-made goodies and an unending supply of balloons. On the drive home the boys actually said they were sleepy!  I tried to push for an afternoon nap, but unfortunately the quiet ride home seemed to rejuvenate them and they hit the floor running!


It was easy to pick out the highlight of Little-Bug's day...he had the opportunity to play with a super-sweet elderly Labrador!  The moment he made eye contact he started to holler "HEh-YO! HEh-YO!!" and was squirming to be let down.  He followed that dog around all afternoon and she was so sweet with him!  She let Little-Bug pet her back and the top of her head, she sniffed his face, but she never licked and was very cautious not to bump into him...a world class pooch!

A little quiet coloring

Today was what we call a "home day" in our house.  That's the kids' term for days when we go literally, no where.  I suppose the fact that my boys notice the rarity of a day without playdates, preschool or errands suggests that we are a pretty busy crew.  Not too surprised there :)  The boys enjoy the occasional "home day."  They stay in their pajamas as long as they like, they create elaborate forts and games, sometimes they even get to eat their lunch on a picnic blanket in the living room.  Yep, home days can be pretty neat for a preschooler.

One thing I am especially proud of is my boys' vocabularies.  Granted, Little-Bug has very limited verbal skills at this point, but I just love listening to the way Big-Bug and Middle-Bug put their thoughts into words.  When Big-Bug gets off with a warning for a "first offense" and responds "Thanks for giving me another chance mom." or when the boys greet their daddy at the door after work and say "Hi dad! Will you be our star command!"  or my recent favorite "What the heck! Oh my gosh!  I can't believe Little-Bug was able to turn off the computer!" Sometimes they just seem so old to me when I hear them speak :)  That said....home days tend to test the limits of my listening capabilities.  One chatty (almost) five year old and one chatty three year old can be a little hard to take for 12 uninterrupted hours.  That's right, lets not forget the fact that neither of them take naps anymore, and haven't for over a year (Big-Bug even longer.)

Today I finally hit my word limit and decided to distract the chatty guys with a little quiet coloring.  I set them up at the table with coloring books, construction paper and a huge stash of crayons.  I tucked Little-Bug in for a nap, and sat myself down at the table with a cup of tea to watch my little artists work away.  Relaxing break for everyone, right?  Wrong.  Why, why oh WHY do coloring books have captions in them?  Big-Bug spent his coloring time flipping through a "jumbo" coloring book at lightening speed asking me to read every caption on every. single. page.  "Mom, mom, mom.  What does this say? Why are they getting in a space ship? What planet are they flying to? What will they find there? Did they find that car there? Look Mom! Mom, mom, mom, look they found a car? Was that already there? Did they bring it with them? Which way are they supposed to go? Mom, mom, mom, what am I supposed to on this page???"   COLOR IT!!!

Surprisingly enough, "quiet coloring" actually turned out the be the chattiest time of the entire day.  By the end I had resorted to default "I don't know I, what do you think" responses, to which he replied "Mom, you always say that." Busted!

Thank you concert gods!

Oh  my, the concert gods have heard my pleas.  I kid you not, yesterday afternoon while I was waiting to pick Ian up from school, my phone alerted me that I had a new email in my inbox.  I opened it up on my snazzy android phone and what do you think it was? A tour announcement from the James Blunt website!  Does he have a stop in the northwest you ask? Why yes he does!!

I instantly sent out a message to my awesome sister and my two awesome cousins with the date, and place and we are officially set!  This will be our third James Blunt Concert together, I think it is turning into a nice little tradition.  This time I vow not to wear my purple coat (long story.)  May can't come fast enough!!

Little James

Getting our stubs signed

All the lost souls tour :)

The concert itch

It has been almost two years since I have been to a concert!  I have been thinking about this more and more lately and I can't WAIT for someone I like to pass through town.  The frustrating thing is, every band site I have visited over the past few weeks shows absolutely NOTHING for tour dates.  I know summer is a ways off, but come one guys!  How about a fall tour!  Somebody? Anybody?!?

Coffee!

Big-Bug has show and tell at school today and he is so excited. He picked out this robot police action figure with a helicopter as a special treat after his dentist appointment last week (he was SUCH a champ!  super helpful and pleasant to the staff there, I had been really nervous! lol)  and he is bringing that in for show and tell today.  He keeps asking me to put it in his backpack for him, he can't wait to leave and he still has two more hours to wait! lol

Tonight is mom's night out with some of the playgroup moms.  I am REALLY looking forward to getting out, this has been one of those weeks for whatever reason.  Just exhausting!  Maybe it's the start of the new school term (my last ever!) or maybe it was the irritation of having to replace our water heater...who knows.  All I do know is 7pm can't come fast enough!  Coffee and girl talk awaits!!

No turning back now!

All my life I have felt young, and I have yearned to be older, wiser, more experienced, more mature, highly regarded.  I assume we all have felt that way from time to time.  I remember in grade school I would watch the older kids sitting in the back of the bus.  The girls with their pierced ears, their cooler backpacks.  By the time I was old enough to ride in the back of the bus though (which I actually never did by the way lol)  I was dreaming about bigger and better things.  I couldn't wait to move on to jr high school with lockers and make up and (hopefully) boys :) I still felt too young, like too much of a baby to get the things I really wanted.  When jr high days came, I was looking onward to high school.  Thinking about cars, part time jobs, real boyfriends, college applications, the future.  And as you might imagine, high school years were filled with dreams about the freedoms of college, the thrill of higher education, the excitement of striking out on my own.  It seemed no matter what I did, no matter how many years went by, I was still just too frustratingly young!  I felt young on my wedding day (and I suppose at 21, I was)  and I was sure there were probably a few well meaning guests in the crowd silently shaking their heads at my youthful fool-hardiness.  I felt too young when my son was born.  Like I wouldn't be taken seriously as a mother because I still had a baby face myself.  Every time a stranger responded with surprise when I told them "actually this is my son"  I felt the desire to speed up time, to go shop for a new wardrobe, to re-evaluate the way I wore my hair.  Instead of "Ten Years Younger"  I was on the hunt for "Ten Years Older."

I'm not sure when it happened, but somewhere along the line I stopped caring.  At some point I settled into myself and I no longer spent time worrying about looking or feeling too young.  Perhaps with the births of my second and third sons, I just became too busy to notice such things.  Who knows. For the past few years, I have even had a hard time remembering my exact age, it just seems to not matter anymore.  Recently however, I have started to be aware of my age in a new way.  I am now closer to 30 than I am to 20.  All of a sudden some of the excuses I have been telling myself for years are getting harder to believe.  I am having a hard time convincing myself that I don't need to worry about daily moisturizers and night creams and eye creams and face scrubs.  I'm having a hard time believing that I don't need to stress if I don't put money into my IRA every month. It's difficult to tell myself it's alright if I'm slacking on my house keeping because I'm a "young mom" after all!  Even more difficult to tell myself I don't need to join a gym yet, because I am still young and can eat whatever I want.

So here's to a new year and the second half of my 20's.  Here's to a new gym membership, skin products, savings plans, housekeeping routines and even self imposed bedtimes. And here's to no longer feeling too young ;-)