Sciarrino made tutu this Pilgrim hat and she toddled around with it a good part of the day.
Even while checking out the sales fliers!
My wonderful husband. He cooked the appetizers... I did zero cooking, yay!
A beautiful table set by my mom (with her wonderful cranberry sauce). There was no kids table. This was the grown-up table, so I guess that makes the other table the old person table, ha!
mmm bacon. Taro said that he can't get bacon like ours in Japan, their version doesn't have as much fat. I don't think I will ever be living long term in Japan :)
All my friends and family. I am such a lucky girl, and I do know it. I hope you and yours had a fabulous day as well and are going to bed with full tummies and warm hearts.
Last night my wonderful husband threw me the best party of my life. I told him I wanted a backyard party with BBQ burritos and our friend's band playing. The rest was up to him. He went crazy and almost all my friends came, it was brilliant.
The set up for the band:
Jettison Bend.Really it was just Brian going solo since his bandmates had commitments, but it was so great! His music is awesome, please clicky click on their link.
Looking back up at our house (reusing the garland from Tutu's party). I guess since tomorrow is my birthday I can tell Bj that I really want french doors, ha (groan the house will never be done... :)!
I have been excited about my 30th birthday since I was nearly 8 and my mom turned 30. Of course what I remember and what really happened might not be lined up just right but in my eyes then nothing was cooler than the shindig my dad planned. A limo came to our house, but it was a funny limo with a sign that said my mom only looked "29 1/2". I don't even know where they went, but they didn't come home until we were asleep and my mom was dressed all glamorous. I've told Bj that story lots of times so he triple checked that I didn't want to go some where. I didn't though because I love our yard and our friend's music and thought this would be so fun.
But guess what? It was even more fun than that! Tuesday had a blast over at Donna's house with William and his grandma and aunt. She stayed their for three hours until ten, when I brought her back to the party and then she stayed up until 11 saying hello to everyone.
What can I say about my lovely husband? He put up lights, and made food, and even squeezed 30 organic lemons and brewed lavender lemonade for his favorite non-drinker (me :). Sciarrino and Sarah helped too, making signs and picking up three of my favorite desserts (peanut butter pie from Big River in Corvallis) on the sly.
I felt like the luckiest girl last night, nothing could have been better. Tomorrow I'm 30 on the 30th!
Well, we got a decidedly late summer start here and I've had no desire to welcome fall anytime soon. With temperatures looking high into the next week I don't think I'll have to. We have not necessarily been super busy, just having a good time loving life. Helping this is the fact that I really truly think I kicked my diet coke habit. I don't know what came over me really, the day before I decided to stop I bought a 12 pack! Overall we have been eating local and organic (and yummy summer fruits and veggies, yum!) so I think I knew it was coming. I just started thinking about the chemicals and processing and I snapped, quit cold turkey halfway through a can. It's crazy because I only ever quit one other time, while pregnant, and I'm not pregnant now and I can really tell this time the difference in how I feel; so much better. I eat so much less, I have so much more energy. I know that doesn't seem right since it's supposed to give you energy (and it was my only source of caffeine), but I do! I've been working out again and I'm hoping by my 30th birthday (on the 30th—cool, huh?) that I'll be at pre-baby weight (totally doable I only have 1.5 pounds to go).
Now a photo recap. We've been visiting Hazel and William:
(my favorite shot from a photo shoot I did over there).
We visited another newborn. Tuesday was a fan:
The newborn (who I'd like to point out has more hair than my 19 month old daughter) was not so sure about her:
It will be no problem getting picture of Tuesday playing with it because she love, love, loves it (that should tell you how bad I've been about snapping things around here).
Tuesday and I went Blueberry picking for Salem Neighborhood Harvest. Her second time, my third. What a great program. We pick bushes/trees that have been donated and half the harvest goes to the food bank. The other half we get to keep. I was informed by another picker that if you want 1/2 cup of blueberries a day you need 70 pounds a year! (My breakfast of late is 1 cup cereal, 1/2 cup soy milk and 1/2 cup fruit)
I would not recommend letting a toddler go nuts in a blueberry patch unless they are potty trained, I think they'd get a terrible rash... no self control. Every time I looked over she was stuffing handfuls in her mouth.
We had a play date with crew girl babies toddlers:
Soon this shot will be impossible, such busy little people! Tuesday's been growing I think, she looks as tall as other kids her age now (she was never that short though, just skinny). And I've gone through her clothes three times in the last month!
Tuesday has probably 50 signs she uses (we taught her ASL). I started writing them down, but she picks them up so quick! She also says mama, papa and nana in the sweetest little voice. Other words like Seana (our neighbor), dirt, and yes come and go. She does do a mean firetruck impersonation though.
I'll leave you with a video I shot on my iPhone during dinner, man I love this kid!
And a few notes: I updated the side bar with more dailies, updated reading list, and some fun links. If you ever want to check in between posts my twitter status is over there too (here is a direct link). I'm guessing posting will be light the rest of the summer!
We had a lovely weekend—the sun came out! This coincided nicely with Bj's parents going to the coast, so we joined them for a dinner:
Bayfront dinner with my two favorite people, yes please! And guess what? I ate fresh caught crab (for those of you who don't know I normally don't touch seafood). It was good, that butter helped :) Tuesday got to run around:
Giggling at the wind picking up sticks, rocks and little flowers. We stopped quickly at the cheese factory:
I'll admit this was mainly so I could get root beer ice cream, which is hard to find elsewhere. Mmm so tasty. Bj got to use the Ergo for the first time, he loved it.
Today saw us outside even more—and in our own backyard!
With sidewalk chalk, friends, and some squeaky cheese (cheese curds from the factory). In case you're wondering the backyard looks like this now:
I hope the organic mulch dried out enough in one sunny day to be tilled with our soil so sod can be laid. That's the next step. At the same time a deck (more like a little landing) is being built off of our dining room. I hope we will be planting in ten days or so! Bj finished all the electrical work (for outdoor lights, sprinkles, etc.) today and we are so proud of him for not getting electrocuted! Now he has to built the planter boxes; he's putting his "staycation" to good use :)
I also got a little scrapping in, will share soon. Hope your weekend was fabulous, what did you do?
I always like to focus on the positive, but even so I miss things. Nothing has shown me how wonderful my life is more than this week in the life project. I'm taking more of a big picture approach to the week, and not just because I didn't journal every night. I like to see the rhythms of our day through the lens of the week because no one day ever really seems "typical" to me. We don't do baths every day, or trips to the grocery store (some days we don't even leave the house!), but all of our "regular" things do come up in a week. Looking back on the week I do see gaps. The big one is the lack of exercise for our family. The days seemed packed, but I'm not a fan of slouchy pictures of me. After seeing them I can give some forgiveness to people thinking I'm pregnant again. Also I could use a new bra.
I hope Tuesday sees the record of this week and feels all of the love we poured on her. I hope we remember sweet baby kisses and messy family dinners. I hope the next week in the life shows more outdoor time, less diaper laundry and the same amount of love.
Now I've got to sort through the wealth of memories I've gathered up and start making them into a story with words. I still think I'll go light on them though, as I did take pictures of just about every aspect of our lives! Thank you all for following along!
Midweek notes: I don't know if you can tell by the photo essay but yesterday basically revolved around trying to get Tuesday to sleep. Finally my mom got her down. Then I left and she didn't go to night night sleep until I got back (at ten) and then she woke up at 5:50 this morning and I did not get pictures of it because GOOD NIGHT THAT IS EARLY. I'm powering through though and handing off the camera/using the timer when ever I can. I've already had the first two days printed, about fifty each. I haven't been journaling much, but have been thinking about how I'm going to put it together. I think I'm going to take more of a full week approach. Thanks for all the wonderful comments, if you have any questions I'll answer them there.