Conglomeration

I have a number of fairly unrelated things that I wanted to share all at once.

First, my sister-in-law Sarah's sister-in-law (say that five times fast!) is having a giveaway on her blog for a bunch of random fabric scraps along with a yard of their favorite designer fabric.  If you're at all into sewing, you should check it out at their blog Made On Maple!  I know I'm keeping my fingers crossed!  I love pretty fabrics, but don't often get more than what I need for a specific project.  Getting a bunch of random pretty fabrics would be so much fun to play with!

Second, I have a new favorite song:  "Anchor" by Mindy Gledhill.  You MUST listen to it!  It's so lovely.  And easy to sing over and over and over again.  I actually bought the mp3 album just because I love the song so much, and I actually love the whole album!  It's difficult to not feel happy listening to it.  :)  So, really... listen to this song!!!


Third, Jesse realized just a couple days ago that it was officially one year from the day he lost his job out in Maryland.  I could probably write an entire post just on my thoughts about that (a whole year unemployed?!??!!!), but my thoughts on it are generally pretty muddled.  Suffice it to say that we've been very blessed with having unemployment compensation all this time, and that our expenses have been small enough that we've only had to dip into savings a handful of times.  Jesse had to re-apply for unemployment, as our state-funded payments have run out, but we still have up to 31 weeks left of federally-funded unemployment, as long as Congress doesn't opt to get rid of such extended benefits.  Of course, we both sincerely hope that Jesse gets a job long, long, long before those benefits would expire.  One year without a job is far more than enough.  If I'm being completely honest, I need Jesse to get a job just to get him out of the house!!  (Sorry, honey!!)  I love him to death, and I love having him around so much, especially when it comes to errands and juggling kids and doing chores.... but having him around so much for a whole year is a little exhausting.  I just don't function the same when he's around all the time.  My brain and body go into vacation mode (even after all this time!), and it's difficult for me to do things with the kids that I would do if he weren't around, like trips to the playground, or craft time, or even sitting down to read books.  I suppose it might be a glimpse into the life of retirees?  It's awesome having your husband at your disposal almost whenever you want him.  On the other hand, it's not.  He needs a job.  ;)  Plus, I have an unhealthy addiction to browsing realty websites and fantasizing about buying houses.  Maybe if he had a job I could put that fantasizing to practical use!!  Wouldn't that be fun?  Anyway, bottom line is that this job hunting thing has been extremely frustrating.  Since his one-and-only interview months ago, we've heard pretty much squat from every employer he's applied to.  We've got a couple decent leads right now, with personal connections, and he continues to find jobs to apply for.  But the black hole is often very discouraging.  Still, we remain confident that the Lord prompted us to return to Colorado for a good reason.  We'll just continue to hang on as long as we can.

Fourth on the docket:  Wildfires in Colorado.  We've had a very wet winter and spring here this year, but once mid-August hit, we got into a dry spell.  Combined with the hot temperatures, things dried out quickly.  And after all that precipitation, there was a lot of growth with things like grasses and brush.  Translated: Easy tinder is abundant.  We went to the city of Louisville's annual Labor Day Parade on Labor Day last week (and got waaaaay too much candy tossed our way! But it was fun!), and as we left, we looked up, where half of the sky was completely covered in a thick plume of brownish smoke.  We went to the highest hill in Louisville, got out of our car, and looked out at the mountains.  Not only us, but a whole crowd of people.  There was definitely a big wildfire out there.  We later found out that it was in the Fourmile Canyon area, just west of Boulder in the mountains.  It quickly got out of hand with the high winds we had that day, and eventually burned more than 160 homes to the ground.  It is just now, a little over a week later, finally seems pretty much contained, and residents are being let back into the area.  It is the most destructive fire in Colorado history, and happened practically on our doorsteps.  It's been sobering.  A couple of the staff at our elementary school are even affected.


View Boulder Fire Area in a larger map

We had plans to go on a hike that day at Chautauqua Park in Boulder.  The fire was north and slightly west of that point, and the wind was carrying most of the smoke away from the area, so we went ahead with our plans.  Well, it was a vastly more difficult hike than I anticipated, because of the constant rather steep uphill, on top of carrying an approximately 30-lb. Alex on my back. I had to keep reminding myself, "What doesn't kill you will make you stronger!"  I want to get into better shape.  How better to do it than tote around a heavy toddler??  Anyway, this was the first time I had hiked Chautauqua.  It was a beautiful area!  I can see why it's so very popular.  And the kids did great, especially Jacob, who could barely manage a short, flat, easy walk on Memorial Day without complaining that he was going to fall over and die if someone didn't carry him.  He not only kept himself from complaining, but he was running ahead of me, up the steep hill!!  I was very proud of him.  Anyway, here are a few pictures from our hike:

View of the famous Flatirons from Chautauqua Park.  A bit of smoke haze in the foreground.

Isn't this gorgeous??  Melinda, Jacob, and Jesse pose on the trail heading uphill towards the Flatirons.  Melinda and Jacob are carrying American flags they got from the Labor Day Parade.

One of the cool things about mountains in Colorado is all the neat boulders and cracked rocks and mountainsides.  We spotted this little stack of boulders on the way back down, and had to take a picture with them. 

The plume of smoke darkening the sky over Boulder on Labor Day (1st day of burning), just northwest of where we were hiking.

It was more than a little shocking when, on our way to Grandma and Grandpa Newson's house this past Sunday (just less than a week after the Fourmile Fire started), we saw another plume of wildfire smoke to the north.  Turns out it started out in the area about halfway between Estes Park and Loveland.  Someone burned a "slash pile" (branches and other yard waste), and it got out of control.  Honestly, what are people thinking, burning fires outside when the ground is bone dry and there's a wildfire not fully contained right in plain sight??  They're lucky that there were already federal firefighting resources nearby working on the other fire, so they could get a head start on containing that fire.  But they still have a ways to go.  We've been praying for rain and moisture.  And Jesse helped volunteer at a Boulder County emergency resources collection center, accepting and sorting through donations.  Wish we could do more... but hopefully the dry summer is well on it's way out.  For all we know, we could have snow in a few more weeks!

In Real Life

Last week, Jesse and I had the immense pleasure of finally meeting some friends of ours... in real life.  We've known "Echo" and his wife Holly since a few years before they even met and got married.  When Jesse and I were still newlyweds, Jesse somehow managed to get me hooked into gaming.  Well, okay.  I suppose I had some predisposition to gaming, battling my Mom in Tetris as a teenager, working my way through Super Mario Brothers 3 (but chickening out at the stress of trying to beat the very last Bowser fight, sigh).  He and I used to play Diablo together, between our computer and his Dad's computer when we lived with them for a few months.  And then when we moved into our own home, it wasn't long before Diablo II came out, and whaddya know- they included online gaming for free!  It wasn't long before we took the plunge into the world of online gaming together.  And there is where we first met Echo, roughly 9 or 10 years ago.  He became our guild leader, and has always been one of the most fair-minded, easy-going, fun-loving people I've ever known on the internet.  It wasn't long at all before he seemed like a fast friend to us.  Years later when we all started playing World of Warcraft together, we got to know his voice through the use of headsets and microphones in-game.  Even later, we got to know his face and his wife's face, and then his wife's voice as they had their lovely daughter and shared pictures and videos online.  We've been friends on Facebook for a good year, too, getting to know each other even more.

So when Echo (fine! Matt! I have a hard time referring to him by his real name!) and Holly headed left their home in Oregon to come visit her family in Colorado for vacation, and offered to meet a whole bunch of friends, of course Jesse and I jumped on the bandwagon.  How could we pass up the chance?

We drove to a park in Denver as sort of a middle-ground meeting location, and hung out for a good 2 hours just chatting and letting the kids play.  The little trip was so well worth it.  Matt and Holly are great, and just the same people I've come to know online all these years.  It's nice that we've been able to keep in touch through forums and Facebook, since Jesse and I have stopped playing games online for quite some time now.

Melinda and Mia playing in the playground sand.  Melinda dug a hole that became a horse den.  Mia later made "bowls" for soup... one of which included a pink pony.

Melinda was quite enthusiastic about pushing Mia in the swing.

Matt and Jesse chatting.  Presumably about video games, lol.

Jacob took this picture.  Not bad!

Another picture courtesy of Jacob.  Mia, Holly, Matt, myself, and Jesse, with Alex throwing himself in the forefront!

We're all laughing here - Jacob did something funny with the camera, I think.

Jesse talks to Matt (not pictured) while Melinda and Mia work on one of their holes.

Melinda took this picture of Jacob on the playground.

Alex goes down the slide...

...Followed quickly by Melinda...

...And followed by Jacob.  They love to go down and bump into each other at the bottom.

Melinda and Jacob showing me how they hang from the bars.

Jacob took this picture of Melinda!  (They really loved having control of the camera...)

Jacob snaps one last picture of Mia before we head home.

It really was so nice to meet Matt and his family in person.  It's awesome that we've had the pleasure of meeting so many good people over the years through our games.  Maybe in another few decades we'll have finally met them all.  ;)

The Kindergarten Boy

I have to take a few seconds here to focus and calm myself. Deep breaths. Imagining I have access to a punching bag. That sort of thing. You see, it's bedtime. These days, it's usually not so bad, the kids do their thing, get to bed, stay quiet enough till they fall asleep. I usually have to lay with Alex for a good chunk of time, but I get some reading done on my iPod while I wait him out. Not so much tonight. Alex was tiiiiired. Too tired, one might say. He started falling asleep as we drove home from Grandma Newson's house today, at about 4:30pm. I kept him awake till we pulled in, and then he woke up enough to goof off until it was almost dinner time. He jumped off the couch just before dinner, and I didn't quite catch how he landed, but it sounded bad. He cried a lot. And then wouldn't settle for anything but sitting in my lap, where he very nearly fell asleep again. But the stove timer went off, and we headed to the dinner table. And while he was taking bites of food, he had his head propped up in his hands, and yup, you guessed it: He started falling asleep again. Jesse decided enough was enough, and ran to get him pajamas and a fresh diaper. But the process of getting him half-changed was enough to snap him out of it, and he spent another 15 minutes eating.

I guess we missed his window. Because from the moment I started getting him to bed after that, it was one big gigantic fit to top all other fits. He screamed (and I mean, screamed!!) about every single thing that crossed his mind. Brushing teeth. Pillows. Reading books. Blankets. Songs (not wanting them). Daddy. Not Daddy. Mommy. Not Mommy. Door open. Pee in potty. Daddy come back. Of course, only about 10 minutes into this, Jesse had to leave. Volunteered to help a friend unload a moving truck. And so there I am, with a screaming-at-the-top-of-his-lungs Alex, who only gets a million times worse if I try to actually respond to his screaming, or dare leave the room before I do something harmful because of the stress, and he's just not calming down for anything. Nothing at all!!!! So finally, I just gave up. I grabbed my iPod, turned on an audio book, stuffed the earphones into my ears, cranked up the volume, and just laid quietly next to Alex until sleep took him over. Which wasn't for another half hour, by the way. Every now and then, I checked to make sure he was still screaming about the same stuff (yup, he was), and went back to the audio book. Finally, finally, he went suddenly still. One minute he was screaming and thrashing, the next he was just quiet. Until about 30 seconds later he jerked (sort of like a baby's startle reflex), and went right back into screaming demands that won't actually mollify him. But only a couple minutes later, he was still again, breathing deep, giving into the sleep his body so desperately needed. I couldn't help but silently laugh when he moan-screamed in his sleep. Yup, he was out.

Of course, the second I left my room, I found Jacob standing in the hall calling my name, whining that Melinda was copying him (oh, the horrors of youth! How many times to I have to tell them, "If you don't say or do anything, there's nothing to copy"?!?!?). I may have lost it there a little bit. Okay, there was no may about it. I yelled, a lot. I threw stuffed animals and snuggly blankets out of their room with as much angry vigor as my shoulders could muster, relishing in the big thuds things made as they flew through the air and hit the opposite wall out in the hallway.

Hence the need to calm down. Writing it out is certainly therapeutic, too. ;)

So anyway, I wanted to give an update on Jacob's adjustment to Kindergarten, because I've had plenty of people ask about it. The day I wrote the last blog entry, with his giant problem in the bathroom, was the last bad day he's had so far. (At least, that's the last Ms. May has told me about. I haven't walked up to her to specifically ask every day, but I assume for now that if there were a problem, she'd wave me over to inform me like she has before.)

For a few days after that, I started watching him through the window as they transitioned from hanging up backpacks to sitting on the group rug. He's done marvelously, prancing in and sitting on his designated Polar Bear spot, right up front, and just waiting till his teacher got there.

He's gotten some Weekly Readers to bring home, which he's read to me enthusiastically. It's really hard to pry out of him what he did during the day, but Melinda's been pretty helpful at prompting him. Like when she sees his class go to the Music Room, she tells him, which makes him tell me a little bit about Music time. He doesn't answer questions about his day ("I can't remember"), but if something jogs his memory, he makes a point to tell me. For instance, just a couple days ago, I was in the shower. Jacob, out of nowhere, comes in just to tell me how he got to ride a trike during recess. Or, when Melinda checked out a book about butterflies, he came over and noticed the pictures of the life cycle of a butterfly, and excitedly told me about how they have "one of those" for tadpoles in their classroom. How they start out as an egg, get to be a tadpole, and as they get bigger, the tail shrinks!!!, until finally they become a toad. (They get to watch this for the next few weeks in their classroom tank!) He fills me in on just little things, here and there. But things seem to be going generally well at this point. Hooray!

He's gotten amazing at riding his bike to and from school. This same boy, mere months ago, could not go on a simple, flat walk without complaining every, single step of the way. We gave up on our idea of regular walks and hikes all around the area because of his attitude. We just couldn't stand it. There were so many things we could have explored as a family, but we just couldn't stomach the constant whining and complaining that he didn't have enough energy, couldn't do it, etc. And yet, here we are, just barely into the first couple weeks of school, and he's already riding his bike almost a mile two times a day- with hills!!- with no issues whatsoever.

Today he started out his day pretty whiny, and cried about a whole lot of stuff. We're not sure when he woke up, only that he was already up and the lights were on when we got out of bed at 7am. We think he must have simply gotten up way too early, because he was just having issues all day. It was the first day the idea of not wanting to go to school escaped his mouth, but he wasn't really serious about it. He still had a good day at school, and got to ride the trike again, which apparently is the best thing ever.

Basically, I'm thrilled that he seems to have gotten over the rough bits of the transition. Me, I'm still working on it! I'm already feeling the build-up of lack of sleep, and it gets harder and harder to pull myself out of bed every morning. On the plus side, we qualify for free school lunches, so I don't have to worry about packing lunches anymore, though I still have to come up with a snack for both kids every day (but that's way easier). And I've done my best with walking whenever possible to get to school. Taking Melinda there and back, taking Jacob there and back, and then going to pick them both up and back... it ends up being close to 5.5 miles of walking every day. A little exhausting... but I could seriously use the exercise, and I'm hoping to see some weight loss if I stick to it long enough. Jesse had the car yesterday, and between all our different destinations, I did 6.1 miles of walking, most of it with either a stroller to push or Alex in a carrier on my back. That much wore me out a bit, and I was sore and couldn't handle the thought of getting right back into it, so Jesse took care of Melinda this morning for me, and we drove the other two trips since it was laundry time at Grandma's house. But for the 2 weeks of school we've had, we've done almost every single trip on foot. Yay!

Alex is starting to take naps again, since Melinda and Jacob are both gone and giving us a nice quiet house in the afternoons. He stopped napping consistently right around his 2nd birthday (and it was really hit-or-miss before that, too!). So you can imagine how novel and thrilling it is to suddenly have honest-to-goodness quiet in the middle of my day, now! Of course, that just further restricts my window for getting things done. I've had a hard time trying to figure out when to do grocery shopping and other things that are out-and-about sort of errands. I only have a 2-3 hour window before I have to be taking kids to school or picking them up, and it just breaks my day up into such small pieces that I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the timing of it all. For instance, I don't have time to sit down and make a menu plan and a grocery list and go shopping all in one window. That would take too long. Instead, I have to be prepared with the plan and a list, and then run to do the shopping as soon as humanly possible, to make sure I still have time to get Jacob fed lunch before it's time to head out again. When Alex naps, it's just that much less time I have to work with. But it sure is nice, all the same. And when he doesn't nap, he's doing awesome at entertaining himself. I think it must be the novelty of not having an older sibling suddenly yank your toys right out of your hand. ;)

In fact, the other day - funny story - he was wearing a cape and pretending he had a lightsaber. (Thanks to the Lego Star Wars video game Jacob got for his birthday, he knows all about this fun new weapon!) He'd gasp in shock, tell me, "Bad guy!!", run down the hall, make some lightsaber sounds, run back with the bad guys apparently dead, and hand me a handful of pretend... meat. Uhh, should I be concerned about that? Why does a bad guy yield meat? Do I want to know?? And then he'd spend time cooking it, adding other ingredients, telling me it's not ready, all the while going back and forth to get more bad guys down the hall.

Tomorrow night is the informational "Back to School Night" for parents. From what I've already learned, Melinda will start getting homework sometime soon after that, but I don't know what the frequency will be like just yet. And I also don't know why all the information is saved for 2 weeks after school starts (I sure feel quite a bit in-the-dark about how lunch is scheduled and run, for instance). But I'm looking forward to learning more about their classroom schedules, plans for the year, and so on!