ode to the joy of a couch

Note:  For the 33 of you that have already read the sleepy, first edition of  "Ode to the couch" blog, stick around for the photos.  For the rest of you...this is all new information.  Kisses.


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I'm coming to you live, from my new couch.  The one that feels like a velvet covered cloud and is the soothing color of a perfectly sweet creamed coffee.  We've had the couch for a week and 2 days and I haven't done one single bit of evening physical activity since this beautiful creature came in to our lives.  I cannot resist the chase lounge, the over stuffed pillows.  We've even spent the night on it.  Both of us. And we slept better than we do in our bed.  This could be very very bad.


I've caught up on about 5 tv shows that I never even heard of before.  Which is easy because I don't really watch tv.  I have accidentally found some tv I enjoy via the netflix, but hulu is a different game entirely.  Hulu and this couch have given me blogger's block.  Every time I belly up to my desk to write, I get tense and figity, distracted by the siren song of the couch and the hulu.


It took me a week and 2 days to give up the fight and cave completely, bringing the laptop to the couch.  My giant comfy blanket and my holiday jammie pants are made of the same material. I'm encased in velvety goodness, velcroed to this spot, peering over the top of my laptop fearful that the witch hunters will burn to to get rid of her dark magic.  Name the terrible CW show.


But the writer's block is gone:)  When you can't move your ass from the couch to the desk, bring the desk to the couch I guess.  And then write about said couch.  


This is no way to get ready for the Warrior Dash or a Tough Mudder or even the Pumpkin Festival 5k.  I feel an intervention coming.


Or, it could be that my body needs this little piece of heaven just now.  I have been crazy content, it's been building day by day since December.  I'm taking deeper breathes, reading books, cooking new meals from new cookbooks.  I'm journaling meals, complete with pictures, giddy with the idea that someday the girls will pick up this "cookbook" to find not only delish recipes, but their momma's sense of humor, and memories of how we always partied in the kitchen.  


I'm not crashing on the couch every night.  I'm sitting here reading.  Real books, from start to finish.  I've been reading the same 3 books for about 3 years.  This couch comes along and BAM!  New book done in less than a week.  This couch is making me smarter.  Fatter...but smarter.


When I'm not pining over furniture, some good work is getting done around here.  A massive purge of excess toys brought more organization to several rooms in our new house.  Finally, I feel like these rooms have their own purpose, a specific function rather than just places we dumped our stuff 6 months ago.  We've lived in a lot of houses over the last 10 years and each time, there is a moment when I realize the house has become our home.  When our people arrived last weekend for Autumn's 15 birthday, and everyone was settling into their rooms and tossing suitcases around like they would stay for ever...I felt that moment.  


I love walking by a room and seeing suitcases open, things tossed about.  It means someone is visiting:)


Fast forward 24 hours.  After a peaceful snowed in Sunday at home, I just jumped on here to enjoy some of my frick'n amazing chili and finish this blog.  Add some photos and call it good.  But what I saw was 33 page views.  For a blog post I did not send out into the universe. Except... I did.  In my couch drunk stupor, I must have "posted" the blog instead of "saved" it.

I am too cool.

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My girl turned 15 on January 17th. 15.  Fifteen.  Quince.  It blows my mind.  Of my three children, the story of how Autumn came to us is my favorite .  She was the unplanned game changer of my life.  In 3 minutes my life went from one of total self absorption to one of possibility.  The possibility of knowing love so intense and overwhelming, you lose yourself in it.  You would throw yourself in front of a freight train for it.  That 15 seconds of peeing on a stick, followed by 165 seconds of watching a second blue line appear, forged a bond between myself and that cluster of cells that would forever change the course of my life. In 3 minutes, I become a mother, without hesitation, reservation or regret.


By the time I got pregnant with Annika I knew I was capable of sharing this love with however many children the universe blessed me with.  


I knew I loved being pregnant and could rock it.


I had breastfeeding down.  I could feed nations.


I could work off the baby fat in 12 months with out sacrificing Mexican food. 


And when we decided to see if God and my old eggs could rally one last time, I was content with what I had, so Liam was the cherry on top.  He is ALL dessert baby.


And as much as I believe each of my children is nothing short of a miracle, the truth is that neither Annika or Liam would have ever even had a chance...without Autumn.


My girl.

Well hello baby girl. 

Look at my girl now.  Totally confident in her style...eat'n an apple.  I think she is the coolest.

My favorite part of birthday weekends?  The long, lazy mornings.

with superman...

and Grandmas...

Grandmas who wear Ed Hardy glasses rule.

Grandma's who wear Superman t-shirts rule.

and favorite cousins...

I'm not a big shopper.  As a matter of fact, you could know me for a very long time and never hear me utter the words "Let's go shopping!!"  No, it's typically more like "Ugh, I have to go shopping, will you go for me?"

But for some reason, my 3 Aries loves can sweet talk me into just about anything, even a Saturday of shopping.  How do they do it?

From left to right: Libra, Aries, Aries, Scorpio (me), Capricorn and... Aries.

The Aries.  They are lovely, complicated creatures.  I seem to be wildly attracted to them as well, even though as a Scorpio their over the top enthusiasm for life and right on the surface emotions require a lot of focus.

I have 4 Aries in my "inner circle" already, and I recently befriended another one without even realizing it. There is something going on here.  I'll get back to you when I complete my research:)

I love it when family hangs out in my kitchen.

And it always happens.  I've lived in houses where the kitchen is the smallest room in a tiny house and without fail, we end up piled high, sitting on counter tops and floors with wine in hand chatting away.  Standing room only, the rest of the house available, but no...the kitchen is the heart of the home in my family. 

My family + my husband's family + our family + eating a giant breakfast in my house = over the moon, swooning, gushing, cheesy joy! 

Yup.  We are home.

Speaking of my home.  I need your help.  

I have A LOT of windows that need A LOT of help in the window treatment department.  At the moment there are blinds on them.  I hate blinds. I'm grateful the former owners left them on, because this would be a giant fishbowl peep show if not for the terrible beige blinds.  But we aren't really "beige" blinds kind of people.

Having said that, I am struggling to find a beautiful, creative and affordable way to cover all these fracking windows.  I would like to spend less than 300.00, but so far that seems unlikely. 

The big issue is that anytime you are going to toss up this much fabric, it needs to not overwhelm the room.  I want to make them myself, but what fabric?!?!? 

There are more, I just can't get them all in the photo.

Please, please help a sister out.  

Happy Chinese New Year!  And don't forget to give my other little project some love when you can! XOXOXOXOXO

anniversary nuggets

hump day nuggets: little bits of the season in photos and words about the last week.  Encouraged to steal this idea from Dig This Chick because she is awesome blossom. 

I'm coming live to you from Anniversary High.  A location I almost missed due to the minuscule emphasis my husband and I put on "special" days.  


It's always been this way, beginning with a mutual dislike for Valentine's Day and an agreement to always boycott it. Somehow all other holidays sort of fell into a semi boycott category by default.  Never in regard to the kiddos...just each other. 


Maybe it's simply laziness, an excuse to not have to remember and therefore acknowledge these personal holidays.  The truth is most of our 9 years together we have been too broke to make much out of any day.  And of course this intentional ignoring of these small special days does fly in the face of our whole "VIVA LA FAMILIA!" vibe.  But I'm comfortable with that because it frees me from expectations.  I can deliver a random memorable day...grown organically from spontaneous goodness.  I kind of suck at delivering a planned and well executed "special day" for someone.  Not a point of pride, but a fact.


So... consistent with the previous 3 years, we forgot our wedding anniversary.   Had we not gotten a card addressed to both of us (which sent us into a tailspin of pondering) we would probably not have remembered this...the exact date of our wedding.  Even after opening the card we couldn't quite pin down the exact date, or how many years.  We agreed on 3, but the card said "On your 4th Anniversary".  We stand corrected. 


But.. we did get the card (thank you Grandma Karen!!!) and that spontaneous realization of what day this was, created a memorable night.  Unplanned and unorchestrated, we went on a date. I told Autumn mom and dad needed her to watch the baby while we celebrated something we didn't know 24 hours ago.  She loved it.  She helped me curl my hair and do my makeup.  She let me borrow her dress and brought me my boots.


The energy of the moment, mom running in barking orders about pizzas, dishes, baby bathes and dogs while peeling off work clothes. The excitment of two daughters realizing that their parents were going to DO SOMETHING TOGETHER!!!

Annika ran in the bathroom with a tarnished rhinestone butterfly necklace Great Grandma Wattier gave to her: 

"Here mom...you can wear this tonight."  

I did.


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The Nuggets are slim pickings this week because all I've been doing is this:



I'm not complaining, it's all good in the hood. I'm just saying the energy surrounding this project has reached a fever pitch and it is eating us all alive.  I am too excited.




I don't post pictures of myself often because...why would I? Behind the lens is the place to be. I'm making an exception to illustrate my excitement for my new iPhone 4S. 


Who loves their new phone the most?

this chick

Anniversary food porn.  But not much because I promised my husband I would focus.  So I got the beginning:
  


And the end:



And finally, my favorite nugget of the week.  My little baby nugget in the hat that may be forever on his head.   He loves this hat like nothing else...ever.  Thank God it's adorable. 


I've been wanting to start a side blog.  A photo a day for a year blog.  In memory of my Aunt Maria.  I can't explain why, except to say that it is just in me and needs to get out.  


I'm not promising groundbreaking photography.  Just things that I see everyday and want to share with her.  


I'm hoping this expedites the healing process.  


And honors her legacy.  

"love really does make all the difference"

If you are interested you can find it at:

http://wingsformaria.blogspot.com/

Happy Anniversary baby. 

a declaration

It's official, we have a first day of school curse.


Two years ago...two heads of lice.  Compliments of an "epidemic" in the Minneapolis school system.
Last year...Annika was home on the first day of school due to yuckiness.


This year...a freak accident involving a backed up main drain, two inches of water on the basement floor and a running naked post shower teenager resulted in this:



While Miss Annika posed excitedly for her first day of middle school:



Miss Autumn sat with her fresh stress fracture on ice.


To be immediately followed by this:  rashy, pukey, strep throat.



Between the slip and slide fun and the strep throat, we did manage to get a first day of school photo:



But I think we are both calling tomorrow her first official day of high school.  This is Autumn's first major do over and has she earned it.


If you think of it, send a little love her way today.  It's not easy being the new kid in school especially when you puked in the hallway on the 3rd day:(


Sometimes, despite best intentions and love and joy...stress stays and takes a seat at the celebration table.  The bastard sits at the table and refuses to let us forget...even for a moment.  Forget loss and frustration...refusing to let one bask in the bright light of living in the moment.  The blinding joy that sends you into orbit. If you've ever truly just paused to take in what is going on around you.. without regard for what is next, without planning what comes after, you have ridden that light into orbit.  And stress hates it when you learn to do that. It wants you to worry, fear, fret and stew, it needs you to because without that kind of control, it's powerless.


I say this only because I was so hopeful the girls would have an amazing first day of school and we recently had a kick ass weekend, and stress tried it's best to take a seat at both tables.  We beat it back again and again, but it keeps coming.   And as passive aggressive is NOT my style, I feel like I need to take this opportunity to publicly declare war on stress and all his minions (broken pipes, stress fractures, mystery rashes, late party starts, lost phones, water, water everywhere).   


I just declared war on ...stress.  What is that?  A feeling?  A thing?  A condition?  Anyway....war on stress.  Can I get an amen?


Launching my first missile....BAM!

A gaggle of insanely cute babies. Specifically...our babies.


Regardless of their age, I call them our babies. I suppose it could be said that their reaching each milestone means they earn the right to be called something else. But it doesn't feel right to me. Breast milk or orange Fanta, curled up peacefully in a sling or begging for a Vespa, playing in my makeup or wearing it...she is my baby. They are our babies. Their ability to venture away from us, does not change the fact that they are from us.  And as often as they will leave us, they are welcome to return to that safe familiar spot in the "sling" whenever they need to.


Our babies are communal babies. It takes a village right?









Despite stress's best efforts, we gathered our families to celebrate my Grandfather's 90th birthday. 90th.





Look at this handsome devil and his stunning bride:



They have been married for 67 years. 67.  Of all the things they have taught me, what I still need to learn is how they did that.  


On the way home, I asked B "If I live to be 90, how long will we be married?" 54 years. Can a modern day marriage, founded in 2007 survive 54 years? If anyone's can, ours can. I feel that in my soul. And if it doesn't, no one will be more surprised than us.


For the record, this was us when we first met:



It will be interesting to see what we will look like after 54 years together. Stay tuned.


So we gathered once again at the farm, each from our own separate corners of the universe. More separated now than just 30 days ago, when two of our families could share the ride if we wanted to. We move away, we come home...we leave again. And even as the miles expand and contract, the relationships grow and grow. And much as that bastard STRESS would like to find the crack in our armor and make one of these expanding and contacting cycles detrimental...he won't. because we always, always come home.




This trip home, my little Aries tomboy found her farm groove big time. She has been desperate to leave the city and live closer to nature for as long as I can remember. Remember her fishing peace?


And now this:



Like a fish to water, there was not a moment's hesitation. Uncle Chad took over with BB gun safety 101 and she was a sponge. And a pretty damn good shot.



Followed by a little toad and snake catch and release.




Calling her in at dusk, to wash up and get ready for some serious card playing reminded me so much of my own childhood on the farm.  There was even popcorn and Lawrence Welk.  You think I'm making this up...but I'm not.


As long as the farm is here, someone will bring their babies here to learn how to catch a tree frog. Someone will make popcorn and find Hee Haw on TV.  Someone will take their cousin, niece, nephew, mom , dad, brother/sister in law for a sunset walk down the lane.  Beers in hand.







And stress...can bite me.


XOXOXOXOXOXOXO

Photo Challenge...Red, White & Blue

I Heart Faces weekly photo challenge time again:) The 4th of July is a big holiday in my family and this cake is a staple of our celebrations. I cannot remember a year without it.   It is part of our tradition, to leave our cities and gather at the farm.  To wear cheesy matching red, white & blue t-shirts and spend too much money on South Dakota fireworks (thank you SD for your less restrictive laws).  It is currently my mom's job to whip up this patriotic cake, but I'm next:)

Check out more fantastic, Red, White & Blue inspired photos at:

http://www.iheartfaces.com/2011/07/photo-challenge-red-white-blue/