Category: Misc

• After having my kids in my car for over 4 hours this weekend, it is a bit … disgusting. I found pieces of quesadilla and a chunk of mushed (and then hardened) banana this morning. I really need to clean it, but that thought is almost as unappealing as the mess, especially since we would have to move the pop-up to pull my car into the garage.
• Since June we have been away every other weekend except for once in July where we were gone for 2 weekends in a row and then home for two in a row. It is getting exhausting.
• The kids have gymnastics (tumbling) tonight … I am curious to see how Ben does with the “sit still and mind.” Should be entertaining.
• Speaking of Ben, he cried when I dropped him off at the sitter’s today for the first time. I don’t usually drop him off so there’s not a lot of chance for him to get all mopey, but it was still very sweet and quite guilt inducing.
• I am woefully behind on many things like folding laundry, cleaning out closets, uploading photos, organizing papers. I’m having a hard time caring though because the days are short and the kids are cute.
• Next week is Labor Day. Where.did.summer.go?
• I am really loving Pinterest. Just wish I could Pin from Google Reader.
• The peaches have been amazing this year and to cap off the peachy goodness we’re taking delivery of a 20# box sometime in early Sept. We buy these from a coworker’s kid’s school and they come directly from Colorado’s western slope (Palisade Peaches!) … undoubtedly we will eat at least half straight from the box, but we will also be making some Peach Crumb Bars (perhaps now my favorite dessert) and some Peach Preserves.
• I have been having some good runs lately … feels like *knock on wood* the rust is coming off and I’m getting back into the groove. This is good. I’m running a 10 mile race on 9/5 and of course the half marathon on 10/9 and it would be pretty bad to go through those distances with the run/walk & puff method.
• I think we’re going to try to have one last hurrah at the pool with some friends on Weds … or maybe one last after that this weekend. We’ve done way better with actually using the pool this summer than ever before. Helps that the kids are into it!
• Our NYC trip is almost here. It seemed SO far away when we first made plans but it’s like 3 wks from tomorrow. Wow.

So now that we’re back from camping, what is going on this week? Plenty.

• We went to see Cars 2 with some friends last night. We’d already seen it in Nashville but Ben was on a tear that day and Matt and I both missed a few scenes taking him to the hall. He did much better this time, but still didn’t really want to sit still. $2 movies are great for that though. It’s all families and pretty loosey goosey.
• We probably should have stayed at home though because our cleaning people come today and we needed to get the house picked up … so Matt and I stayed up too late last night cleaning.
• But I’m super glad the house is going to be cleaned because I’m hosting Bunco on Thrusday. We are having quiche made by the fine folks at Costco (or one of their suppliers) and a lovely salad (made by me). Maybe some bread if it works out. I will also be making the most excellent peach crumb bars for dessert. Swoon.
• The kids were supposed to start tumbling classes tonight, but we’ve decided to skip their first one in favor of going to a going-away party for my cousin and his girlfriend who leave for a semester abroad at the end of this week. Should be fun!
• Tomorrow is our 9 year (WOW) anniversary. We have nothing planned. We were going to go away to Vail for a weekend, but we haven’t found a weekend that works yet. Maybe October?
• Friday I’m hoping to go visit a good friend of mine who just had a baby. I want to bring her a little something and a meal for the freezer. I’m thinking I may do Mexican Chicken Casserole for the meal, but not sure what to get the little guy for a present (or his big brother). Hopefully something will come to me.
• This weekend is booked up too. Saturday we’re getting together with our cousins for some shopping and a movie.
• Saturday afternoon/night Matt and I are hanging out solo while the kids visit my parents.
• We can’t stay up late though because we’re running the Heart and Sole Half Marathon on Sunday Morning. I’m not looking forward to this … I haven’t run more than 8 miles since May and it is going to be HOT.
• We are also supposed to borrow a pressure-washer this weekend and work on some of the nastier bits of our house … i.e. anything the kids touch. Not sure we’re going to have time for it, but I’d love to get that done.

What’re you up to?

So I didn’t tell you the funnest part of our Saturday hiking adventure. Our camera died (well not really but read on). We were pretty much at the turn-around point of the hike and I noticed the low battery notification. Usually you have a bit more juice and so I kept snapping away. All of a sudden the camera was dead. Normally you at least see the indicator lights and some read-outs on the console but I had NOTHING. So I figured the battery just really died. We got back to the condo and I pop the card in the reader and also got NOTHING. Tried my mom’s camera. NOTHING. Then I put a new battery in the camera and tried Mom’s card in my camera and NOTHING. I was getting pretty panicky at this point, thinking the camera AND the card died.

Matt did figure out later that the battery I used wasn’t charged enough and the camera itself is fine. But the card seems to have died … and took all the lovely hiking photos with it. Happily, Kelly got a few on her point-and-shoot, but I took tons more of the kids that I want. We’re getting another card-reader just in case, but if that doesn’t work, these fine folks in FL will be attempting to recover my photos. OY.

Happy Ending Update: The new card-reader arrived early (wasn’t supposed to arrive until late Weds after this was posted) and happily, the card was readable and we got all but the last photo (it seems to have died mid-write).

So. In addition to needing a new card, card reader and/or data recovery services for our camera, my long-lived MP3 player, an awesome Creative Zen Vision: M that they do NOT make anymore is gasping its last breaths. Sucker has lasted me for years and I have not been kind to it. I use it daily, frequently for hours at a time. I have dropped it more times than you can imagine. In other words, it owes me nothing! And yet it has been trucking along. Even still it’s not dead. It is having weird power surges and doesn’t turn off/on predictably. And then it sometimes decided to re-build its library randomly, a 3-5 minute process. Irritating.

A bit part of me says I should just go ahead and drink the kool-aid and buy an ipod. They hook up to the gym’s treadmills. They have TONS of accessories. They are what all the cool kids have. But I can’t quite bite. I’ve really loved my Zen and I do not want to deal with iTunes for data transfer. I just want to load folders of music and books without having to load Apple’s bloatware. So now I’m debating between sticking with Creative and getting a Zen Style or a Zen Mozaic or going with a Sansa Fuze (Sansa makes the awesome Clip players I use for running). Decisions decisions.

Remember last week when we had snow? That was fun, right? Yes, so much fun that Mo Nature upped the ante and gave us HAIL this week. We had a good 20 minutes of pea-sized hail rain down on us. It was, happily, not enough to do any damage to my car, but it got the plants around  here pretty good.

Thankfully, we’ve been total slackers about the garden and were lucky to have very minimal damage since we have next to nothing out!

All this generally lovely weather (temps maxing out under 60 degrees all week) is making me a bit grinchy. Our cook-out with friends to night will be a cook-out/eat-in. Ah well … I’m sure I will get to complain about the heat soon enough. Might as well enjoy the rain while we’ve got it!

The residents of Denver woke up this morning, YES THIS (May 11) morning to SNOW. I know it’s not a lot. I know it didn’t stick to streets, but I had to scrape off my car and put the kids in real shoes with socks and jackets. To say it dampened my mood is a gigantic understatement.

However, it did COMPLETELY justify my procrastination vis-a-vis our garden. Yay! I think I may supplement my usual minty green tea with some hot chocolate this morning. One excellent thing to come out of this cold snap though … excellent race day conditions for Sunday!! I could certainly do without a repeat of last week.

[flickr float=”left” size=”small”]5629091105[/flickr] [flickr float=”right” size=”small”]5629085829[/flickr]

It has been a big huge couple of weeks. What with the race  and the party, we have been going at a rate even a bit nuts for us. So contrary to my take no prisoners general attitude about life, I’ve been letting things go a little bit. There is laundry all over the place in various states of completion. I have not yet made our weekly grocery run, so we had nachos for dinner last night  (with fruit – we’re not savages, after all). I did finally get fed up and force the kids to clean the playroom last night when there was so much junk on the floor I couldn’t even open the door. But overall, it’s going to be a much more chill existence than normal this week. There are but three little items on our to-do list:

1. get the house back in order
2. construct the eggbot (Easter’s almost here!!)
3. host a dinner party (on Friday)

Totally doable, right???