February 18th

I had shared a book with Brittany almost two years ago and it turns out they just made a movie based on the book that is in redbox right now.  When Brittany found out she could hardly wait to watch it and she was willing to wait for me to be able to watch it with her.  We made our date and I brought Alaska along.  With 4 girls that are all grown now and a grandchild they have plenty of toys to play with.  And their family is so relaxed I knew it wouldn't be hard to bring Alaska and have a good time watching the movie and keeping Alaska entertained.

Brittany made popcorn for us and Alaska was absolutely loving it.  Until she got a little piece in her throat that tickled and made her throw it all up.  It was terrible.  She could breathe the whole time, she never choked, it was just like her gag reflex went into overdrive.  That was a little messy and a little embarrassing.  Especially since I didn't have a change of clothes for her and she had to spend the rest of our time in a diaper.  Which was also fine, thank goodness we were at Brittany's house, because it was almost natural to have a baby running around in a diaper there.  I just love that family so much!

Bunco was that night, as well, and I barely had time to get home after the show, grab Steven from work, make dinner and eat before the game started at 7.  I was the last one there and parked in the back at Shirley's house, coming in the back door.  Brittany was there, too, as a sub, and it was so much fun to have a good friend!  I ended up being one of the winners for a half-and-half roll off and got the cutest little bunting banner.  I already have it hanging in our hall and it adds just the right amount of cheer.

February 17th

Alaska's music class in Vancouver.  We went shopping at the Vancouver mall afterwards and didn't get home until 2.  I got a few maternity shirts and have already found that I need more.  I almost have one for each day of the week but I need to get some undershirts from DownEast in order to make them modest.  Right now I have one and it is doing quadruple duty because I wear it every day.  Why they make maternity shirts with such low necks, I will never know.  Even if my boobs have tripled in size, that means all the more reason why I want them covered up.  Not exposed to all the world.  That just looks trashy.  Doesn't matter who is't on.  Cleavage is complete white-trash.  But after you've got your maternity pants coming up above your belly button and always sliding down the last thing you want to do is add more layers.  But it's what has to be done.  Even when I go to work out, I wear an extra-long tank to add length to my t-shirts.  Pregnancy and layering.  It's how it's done.

I dropped dinner off at Jamie and Stephanie's - well, more like I was suppose to do visiting teaching, and so we thought we could double that with dinner.  So I got there with my dessert and my salad, waited 15 minutes for my partner to show up, and then when she did, she had to go really quick because her tire was leaking air and she wanted to get it to the shop before she had to put the spare on.  Went up to Steven's house afterwards and had a family meeting with his family.  Things had just been building up and building up since we moved here and I was sick of it.  I felt stronger after counseling, but it can really only do so much for your relationships without you, yourself, doing something for your relationships.  So we had a counsel meeting, I brought a list of concerning items and we all sat down and talked.  It was hard, but not as hard as I had thought it would be.  Thank goodness it's over and I feel like we can move on.  The hardest parts of moving back closer to family are behind us and maybe now we can actually snuggle in and get comfy here.  Except for the fact that I am already feeling the itch to move on.  Should have been an army wife.

Not that I really want to move, but that I want Steven to get on with his life and get his promotion to a new store right away.  If we're going to make this family growing thing work, we're going to need more money to do it with.  Our apartment feels fine right now, with three of us, but it won't take much for it to be a little cramped.  I know we can do one more child, but I don't know if we can do one more child plus all the stuff that comes with another child.  Like another dresser and another bed and thank goodness we didn't fall into the trap of thinking we needed a changing table.  I like my personal space and I like other people have their personal space and it makes me feel bad to think about cutting Alaska's personal space down or this baby's personal space down for their 'stuff'.  And we're not in the position to be able to afford higher rent for a three bedroom apartment.  Not in the slightest.  That's another $300 added to our already $720.

I am taking a substitute orientation in a couple of weeks and hopefully that will help us land a little bit more moola that we can put into savings.  Or at least work as our 'extras'.  Right now we've been having Steven's pay check be responsible for rent, food and bills.  And that's about all it can do.  When I earn money I put it towards 'family and household' - the nice things that make life worth living.  Clothes for Alaska and me and Steven, any kind of art/house decor, cleaning supplies, whatever it is that we need to make this house a home and put some clothes on us.  Which just dramatically jumped due to needing maternity clothes and Alaska is now in 3T and it's time to start shopping the stores for summer/spring things before they're all sold out.  Like what happened in the fall.  I didn't know you could only get long-sleeved shirts for a few precious months and then we were trapped in what I did get because I couldn't find them anywhere else.  And also, I have noticed Target and Old Navy especially have good sales at the beginning of seasons introducing their new lines and by the time the prices are reduced at clearance time they are no longer what we need in the size and all that.

Also, perhaps I am just picky, but I have a hard time finding cute clothes for Alaska a lot of the time.  I have not had luck yet at a thrift store and only twice have found things at a children't resale store that have been decent enough to buy.  It seems as though baby clothes are used good and hard and by the time they get to a thrift store they are pretty beat up and not in the colors/patterns I would choose otherwise.

February 16th

I was in charge of making treats for the young women and put together some valetine's for them.  Complete with paper bag, cute punch out with a couple of compliments stapled to the top and scotcheroos shaped into hearts and dipped in chocolate and sprinkled with Valentine colors.  They loved them!  And I loved putting them together just as much.

I was also teaching that week and the topic was 'our purpose of life' -  I have gotten quite fast at putting a lesson together and I had it planned and complete with a printed handout in about a hour.  This definitely means that I am getting better and more comfortable with the girls.  Knowing how much class participation I can expect from them and asking just a little bit more.  I try to let them do most of the answering and talking and figuring, because really, they all know the information, it's been review for them since Primary.  But sometimes I forget to get a little thought put together.  So if they don't remember what the lesson was about the week before, at least they remember the sweet feeling of the spirit they had as something that is true was testified.

Because last Sunday church has been cancelled and all plans were put on hold, we went up this Sunday to my family's house for Dorian's birthday dinner.  We had homemade breakfast burritos and I was pooped and ready to go home at 8.

Celebrating Valentine's Day - 15th

The other part of my Valentine's gift for Steven was a session at an indoor shooting range.  I was prepared to go with him and we went in together.  Half way through the safety movie it said something about no pregnant ladies allowed.  I was almost relieved.  Guns really do just freak me out.  I don't care how many times someone can tell me that if it's not loaded it can't do anything and even if it is loaded, if you handle it properly, it won't hurt anything you don't want to hurt.  The shear weight of it freaks me out and I hate holding them and I hate shooting them and I hate pretty much everything about them.  But for Steven's valentine present I was going to go with him.  Because I know it's important to him that I shoot one and be comfortable with it and all that.

But then when he decided that because I couldn't shoot that he didn't want to shoot without me I started crying.  I had put so much thought into it and wanted him to do it that it hurt to think he wasn't going to do it just because of me.  Luckily it didn't take too much convincing to tell him that he should still go ahead and do it.  I waited in the car for 30 minutes writing down my criteria for a camera while he shot.

When we were through we went to a camera store to get a better idea of what was out there.  I was too nervous to buy anything but after getting home and doing some research I think I have decided on what will best fit our needs right now.

We checked at best buy and costco for some other camera deals and decided the camera store had the best rates because they could include a rebate in their prices.  Steven got an eye appointment at costco while we were there and we did a little more shopping while we waited.

Passing a kitchen kaboodle on the way through Tanasbourne we decided to stop.  It's a place I have always wanted to go but was never brave enough to drag Alaska along with me when I was passing it.  We made up a competition as to who could find the kaboodle.  Kaboodle meaning that if you had this one thing, you really did have it all.  I even forget what we found, each of us splitting up and looking through the store as fast as we could because we had a ten minute limit.  Steven ended up winning, but it was interesting to see how many potential kaboodles there really were.  A tomato knife?  As if you need a special knife just for cutting tomatoes.  And it came with a cute little butcher block looking holder.  Just another thing to take up extra space in a drawer if you ask me.  But I have decided that is the best place ever to find Christmas presents for women.  Lots of kaboodles to be had.

Valentine's Day

Mmmmm, I just love me some Valentine's Day!

Put out breakfast for Handsome Husband, two pastries complete with two new t-shirts.  He's taken to only wearing white t-shirts these days and goes through them like candy because they get dirty so easy and then he doesn't let me know that I need to soak them or pre-treat so they end up getting stained.  I could just look, but usually a miss them anyway because the smudge happened to be in a fold while I was looking.

I got the pastries the day before and even though I got there at 7:20 am, there were still only three left!  I grabbed them all, since they are Megan's favorite, too.

Shirley was having a vintage sale that weekend and had asked if I had anything I wanted to add to her collection.  I am not about to give up a chance to get rid of stuff, or in this case, craft up some stuff.  I made a couple more chicken-wire frames out of frames I already had painted and ready to go.  It still took awhile and I thought I was done and ready to leave and then I remembered that I needed everything tagged and labeled.  That took way longer than I thought it would and we didn't get up there until 11.

Alaska and I hung out, looking at stuff and talking for about two hours before going back home because my mom was going to be coming out to give Alaska a little Valentine.  Megan was at the house when we got there and came in to get her Valentine and play with Alaska while the time ticked away her fifth period class.  It was nice to have her there, Alaska just loves her to pieces.  She had made me a little homemade Valentine that was so extra cute.

My mom got to our house and played with Alaska while we waited for David to get out of school so we could go get frozen yogurt.  One of our new favorite treats.

After yogurt I dropped by one of the young women's house to give her a Valentine.  I had made special treats for the girls for Sunday and knew she wouldn't be there so I dropped it off for her early.  I had one for her mom, as well, since she's the yw secretary and we chatted for about a hour before I left to pick Steven up for work.

He surprised me with a love letter that morning and then that evening he let me in on the other surprise.  His dividend check had come in and he had plans to spend it on a camera for me!  Best Valentine present ever!  Besides the year that he got me a diamond ring, of course.  We didn't do much celebrating since he had one of his rare Saturdays off the next day.  We did have a heart-shaped pizza from Papa Murphys complete with breadsticks for dinner.  I need to work on making some Valentine traditions.  Because we need them.  I guess we now have pre-valentine traditions of making cookies and crafting but maybe for valentine's day we need to have doughnuts and pastries for breakfast with some pink strawberry milk and candies scattered on the table with valentines at each spot.  And then for dinner the pizza seemed to work well but in order for it to be a party you have got to have soda.  Make a mental note for next year.

Valentine's Day-Eve

Happy Valentine's Day-Eve is what the 13th is to me.  Maybe bigger and more important than Christmas Eve.  Not in the traditional dinner kind of way.  But in the, 'time to go shopping because if I got candy any earlier it would be gone by now anyways' and the 'hurry, we've got cookies to make' kind of way.  It's a day for spreading the table with an old sheet, cooking and cooling cookies and decorating with lots of sprinkles that don't roll away so fast because of the tablecloth.  And then taking the cloth outside and shaking pink and white and red sprinkles into the rain and watching their colors run on the concrete as they get wet.

We went shopping in the morning and picked up pastries for breakfast the next day.  Got our candies and chocolates.  Made our cookies and frosted them.  And it was one long, eventful, fun day.

Alaska was helping me make the cookie dough and I would scoop the flour/sugar/whatever for her to pour in the mixer.  She would pour it in and then say, "Mom's turn" and let me use my measuring cup to pour an ingredient in before I loaded hers up again.  That was our one requirement.  We each had to have our own measuring cups.  She wasn't much into the sharing that had to go on to use just one measuring cup between the two of us.

The part that she's really pretty good at and loves doing is flipping the switch on the mixer and turning it on.  This time it flipped a little too far.  To a ten.  I realized right away what was wrong but it had already picked up its speed by the time I could get my hands over to turn it off.  Flour went ALL OVER the place and I am almost got mad.  But I didn't.  I took a huge breath, poured in another quarter cup of flour because that was about how much flour was now spread over everything within 12 inches of the mixer.  I usually clean up as I go but this one I knew I had to let go.  I would clean it later.  When I took the bowl off the mixer to put it in the fridge Alaska pointed to all the flour and said, "My mess."  and I just melted.  Not that she could do anything about cleaning it up, but to know that she knew it was hers and take responsibility for it made me feel better about the situation.

She wasn't much interested in cutting out cookies until the very last cookie sheet full, which was just fine with me.  I can only handle so much mess and it was convenient that she wanted to start helping at the end so we could clean up together instead of her getting tired of it and me having to wash her hands and clean up her outfit in the middle of my process.  I let her roll and re-roll the dough as much as she wanted and cut up her cookies.  She loved the smallest heart-cutter.  I use a spatula to get them off the counter and onto the cookie sheet because that saves them from too much finger-pulling destruction.  She couldn't get that part figured out but she would peel her cookies up with her fingers and put them on the spatula for me to move to the cookie sheet.

The last straw was put in when we were decorating cookies.  I could hardly keep her fingers out of the frosting after she had licked them, and we were giving these cookies away.  I gave her the beater to lick and she dropped it on the floor.  It bounced and flicked frosting absolutely all over the carpet and chair legs.  She got scooped up at that point and taken to the bath.  I was on a time crunch to get a few of the cookies ready for my dad to take to the kids in Rainier I had baked them for and had to leave the mess to get 10 or so cookies decorated quick.

Messes were cleaned up and I had dinner made by the time it was time to pick Steven up from work and it felt so good to have done so much amazing-ness in one day.

One Week of February

Oyi, this is so stinkin' ridiculous!  I wanted to blog every day so that I could get a good account of the day's stories and treasures and instead this post is just going to be a very dull list of happenings because I don't have the time or energy to write the details.  But it's better than nothing, and sometimes better than nothing is all we can manage.

The Mindy Gledhill concert did get cancelled.  At 4 pm.  Ridiculous.  They could have cancelled just as easily at noon in my opinion.  All schools got let out early, a St Helens bus back-end still slid off the road and Dominique came from Rainier as soon as school got out to make it to our house for the concert that night before the roads got too bad.  Still had to watch them clean up an accident that involved some lady sliding into a telephone pole, bringing it down with the wires and climbing out with a possible broken arm.  We should have known it was going to get too bad for the concert to go on.  All before 4, when the official word got out.

Dominique already had plans to stay the night with us because the concert would get out so late she was going to drive to school in the morning.  She ended up staying even without the concert because the roads were such a mess.

Friday there was no school and we made the trek up to The Barnes' to do some pretty awesome sledding.  Steven got some tubes from Les Schwab before making our way up there and they are the best ever for steep hills!  Dominique went with us and it was so much fun having her there.  Afterwards we had grilled cheese, hot chocolate and cinnamon rolls.  I had made the cinnamon rolls earlier that morning because everyone know it can't snow without them.  Tamera made grilled cheese and it was amazing.  Probably especially because the last grilled cheese I had was one that I had made and I can't make them to save my life.  It was burnt and the cheese was hardly warm in the middle.  Even after slathering the bread in butter and covering the pan with a lid.  It is definitely a talent, making grilled cheese.

We went down to Muchas for dinner and then to a movie in the big car.  Saving Mr. Banks.  It was a little dry for my taste but it was nice to have everyone together a little longer.  Add to the fact that I have never seen Mary Poppins.

Saturday came and the forecast predicted freezing rain during the evening.  Dominique left in the morning with chains on her car when it first started snowing and it snowed all day again.  Church was cancelled for Sunday and school was cancelled for Monday.  Alaska's music class sent out an e-mail announcing cancellation and the doctor's office called and cancelled my doctor appointment.  More out of the fact that the doctor was delivering a baby in Portland than about the weather, but partially about the weather because it would take him too long to get back to the clinic to make any of his later appointments.  It was a relief.  I had tried to take Steven dry boots and socks that morning and had slid around the parking lot of the complex  before turning in the round-about and getting back in my spot.  I didn't make it to him and wasn't really looking forward to trying again, even though it would be the in the afternoon instead of the morning.

I didn't really mind being stuck inside for so many days.  It was almost a relief to know that I didn't have to go anywhere.  On Sunday, Steven was feeling a little cabin fever even though he had been going to work each day.  I was content to stay home, and actually would have preferred it, but he wanted to go somewhere.  Either my parents house or his parents house.  We opted for mine since we had just been up to his.  We weren't sure what the roads were going to be like and whether Nicolai would have even have been plowed.  But we took our chances and off we went, complete with all our snow gear.

Nicolai had been plowed, though Tide Creek had not.  Bishop Creek hadn't been touched but once we got to the four-way stop we took a little drive up Tide Creek just to see if we could make it up the hill.  We did and Steven decided we could probably make it down Bishop Creek, as well.  My mom had started walking to meet us at the Shiloh Basin church and we met her half-way.  I got out to walk with her and Steven parked at the bottom of the driveway with Alaska.  We all hiked up the driveway together, Alaska being carried since her boots weren't tall enough to keep the snow from falling in.  I always forget how much I make her walk, until she has to be carried.  From when she could first walk I always let her walk into the store and into the house, never do I carry her unless she doesn't have shoes.

Tuesday was a full day.  Alaska and I left for Hillsboro in the morning to go to Winco and Old Navy.  We needed groceries and I needed some maternity clothes.  We made it to my re-scheduled doctor appointment at 2:15 and then went with my parents into John's basketball game in Portland.  We didn't get back home until 8:30.

Yesterday started out rather slow.  Alaska was super tired after her late night but I thought 10:00 was too early to put her down for a nap.  12:00 rolled around I knew that I should have just followed my instincts instead of my logic.  She was so wound up that she couldn't fall asleep for another hour after I put her down.  When she got up we made some treats for the young women for Sunday (valentine ones) and put dinner together while reading stories.  Steven called and said he wouldn't be home in time with the car for me to get to mutual and I freaked out.  But only for a minute and then I calmed down and it was fine.  Alaska and I had already eaten dinner, so it wasn't like we were waiting for him.  We read some more books and snuggled a little before I put her down for an early bedtime for 7:30.  She was exhausted and fell right asleep.  I spent the rest of the evening picking up the house and doing some cleaning that I can't do with her around because she likes to spray the cleaner so much it's hard to tell her when enough is too much.  I was just barely winding down and getting bored when Steven came home and we chattered away while he took a shower, me sitting on the toilet seat like we used to do when it was just the two of us.