Ahhhh, the Fair

In Montana there are fairs all summer long.  Just where we lived there was the Missoula fair, the Kalispell fair and the Plains fair.  In Alaska........there is 1.  But it's a doozy!  The last several years we haven't had a lot of money to spend at the fair so it was usually a pretty subdued experience, but this year we were a little more flush so we had A LOT more fun. 

We started out walking by all the vendors, ooohhing and ahhhing over hot tubs (me), snowmobiles and 4-wheelers (Austin and Connor), mini back massagers (Dustin) and construction equipment (Noah).  Then we hit the food trail.  Oh how we reveled.  We paid so much for food we probably could have fed a small African country for a week.  There were tamales, cheese curds, pizza and tacos followed by cotton candy, ice cream, a rootbeer float and a carmel apple.  No one walked away hungry or unsugared.

Of course rides had to be ridden.....and for your enjoyment I have included pictures :) 

No one puked! Although I came dangerously close on the carousel as it was whipping around at 0.2 miles per hour. 

Finally we toured the barns.  The kids were not impressed with the quilts or the artwork, but had a blast checking out all the animals.  They had fun petting lambs, goats, cows and bunnies.  They got to see baby chicks hatching and turkeys gobbling.  I believe Noah summed up the day best when he told a rooster who had just cock-a-doodle-doo'd, "Chicken, that was AMAZING!!"

Stinky Baby Sasquatch

I suppose its inevitable that my boys will eventually mature into men.....And for some reason I've decided that the easily observable physical signs are the hardest for me to accept.  The boys however seem quite delighted with each new thing that makes them "more like dad." 

Upon their return from Montana this year Austin announced that his legs were becoming quite hairy and that he was turning into a baby Sasquatch.  I found this very funny and told him so.  I also suggested he spend more time roaming the woods around our house just to see if his "true parents" were out there somewhere.  He didn't find that very funny at all.

A few days ago Connor passed by me and caused me to wonder if I had forgotten to put my deoderant on that morning.  So I casually sniffed and was relieved to discover that I hadn't forgetten, which meant......it was time to buy deoderant for the boys (which they used to refer to as "boyoderant" and loved to apply whenever Dustin was caught putting his on).  I was pretty surprised that I had a hard time convincing them they needed it and even went so far as to make them smell their own armpits.  The looks on their faces reminded me of someone who had to suck on a lemon knowing there will be no shot of tequila to follow.  Total bummer dude. 

Last of all, they will soon surpass my own hobbit-like stature and I will become the midget in my house.  At only 9 years of age they are already at my shoulder so I'm forcasting another year or so before they're looking me directly in the eyes.  And should they think that my vertically challenged condition equals weakness, I shall remind them that a lower center of gravity equals a much better tackle :)

Feel the Noise

Today is going to be one of THOSE days.  The kids woke up fighting.  The dogs woke up whining and I think I woke up with this headache.  No wait, I did not have this headache before the kids got up.  And of course we have things to do, places to go and people to see, so locking myself in my bedroom is probably not an option. 

I saw the best cartoon the other day, it showed this furry little monster with huge eyeballs.  The caption read, "I put redbull in my coffee pot this morning instead of water.  Now I can SEE noises!"  An accurate description of how this morning feels I must say.

Therefore I will resort to my stress-reliever of choice, my imagination.  Perhaps if I imagine places that are more noisy and chaotic than my home, I will feel better about being trapped stuck here. Here is a top 10 list:

10. New York City.
 9.  A NASCAR race.
 8.  The tarmac of O'Hare International Airport.
 7.  Bike week in Daytona.
 6.  A professional football game.
 5.  A Southern Baptist revival camp.
 4.  A California freeway at rush hour.
 3.  The state fair on "Kids Get In Free Day"
 2.  Mardi Gras.

And of course, lets not forget.....
1.  All you can eat crab legs at Hooters on a Friday night.

Yup, I feel a little better.  Peace out my friends :)

A Modern Day Love Affair

Don't be confused darlings, that is a picture of my brand-spanking new dishwasher.  As many of you know I have been living a harder simpler life since we moved into this house, which includes washing dishes by hand (not by choice) and in the last 6 months or so hanging all my clothes on a clotheslines in the basement (because the dryer died)......don't cry for me, it's character-building (or so my dad likes to say). 

At any rate, due to my husband's recent job switch and massive amounts of overtime, we can finally afford to start heading back into the 21st century.  This last weekend we went to Lowe's where I thoroughly harrassed the nice salesman and finally picked out a new dishwasher.  It was in and running in no time and I happily encouraged my friends to eat as much as they wanted and use ALL my dishes if they liked, since I no longer had to stand in front of the sink and wash them one by one!

Now I often find myself gazing lovingly at my dishwasher, speaking sweet nothings to it while I load dirty dishes in it and when no one is looking I even stroke the clean white button panel.......but I digress.  

I know how anxious you are to hear about the arrival of my sweet little washer and dryer next month, so I will dutifully keep you posted :)

Love,
Jules

The Old Switcheroo

I love change.  Lots of it, all the time.  I tend to change my hair color every few months, my vehicle every few years and my underwear every day.  My mom says I'm a bit of a gypsy.  I love new places, faces and spaces baby!  Unfortunately I am now married and a mother.....and not everyone likes change as much as I do.  So I get by with little changes here and there, things like paint or pictures, so on and so forth.  One of my most favorite changes has always been rearranging furniture.  You can have a whole new room in 10 minutes!  Again, pretty sure I'm the only one in my family that feels this way as everyone else rolls their eyes and groans when I say, "Let's just change it up a bit in here shall we?" 

My latest project has been moving Noah to the top floor and moving my office from the cleaning closet to Noah's old room.  In order to move Noah upstairs, I had to move his brothers over into the other room.  This has been AWESOME.  I've gotten to paint like a crazy woman, move lots of furniture and make a bazillion trips up and down the stairs (good for the glutes and hammies!)  Sadly, my husband does not share my enthusiasm and for those of you who know my husband, this is not surprising. 

On Sunday I asked for his assistance in moving furniture from the basement to the 2nd floor.  He trudged down the stairs as slowly as possible while I jumped around like the squirrel in Over The Hedge (who acts like he's on crack and speed simultaneously).  Dustin patiently asked, "Haven't we already moved these several times?"  To which I replied, "Nope, you're hallucinating.  We've only moved the corner desk from the old house to this house, right into this spot, and the white desk from upstairs to its current location."  I could see him mentally treading water as he searched for another tactic to avoid this chore.  As I'm sure you've surmised, he didn't find one and the furniture is now in its next temporary location. 

I often think that the desire to keep things the way they are is just around the corner and someday I'll be content to just sit back and enjoy the changing of the seasons, changing the radio station and changing my daily calendar page.  Bwahahahahaha (hysterical evil laugh).  As IF!!

Blink and You Miss It

Blink and you miss it is a phrase often associated with things like really tiny towns, lightening and the amount of time a $100 bill stays in my wallet.  It would also be aptly used to describe this summer in Alaska.  We've had maybe a week of sunshine.  While my mother is down in Montana bitching about the heat, I'm up here bitching about the rain.  The grass is always greener........in Alaska. 

A few posts ago I told you about Greta and her amazing digging ability, which has been directed in a full-on offensive at my flower beds.  Throughout all the digging I was still able to hold on to hope that the annuals I put in containers this year would flourish.  Too bad they're drowning.  The cucumbers in my garden only made it through the first week after transplant before they declared there would be no pickles this year, yellowed up and died.  I stood over them and said, "You are the weakest link!"  Hardy vegetables my ass. 

I've always believed that it's best to try and find the bright side in everything as much as possible, but I'm really struggling with this one.  We had 139" of snow this last winter (almost 12' for those of you who are also math challenged).  I figured God had "blessed" us with as much precipitation as one area could ask for.  Boy, when I'm wrong I'm really wrong (refer to first husband for another classic example of this theory in action). 

Oh well, I suppose acting like a big old cry-baby-pee-pants won't make the rain stop.  Perhaps I should start designing umbrellas.  Do you suppose anybody would want one that says "Noah built his ark and all I got was this dumb umbrella."?

I Paint with Food

When we moved into our current house we knew the entire inside would require a fresh coat of paint.  Of course this job falls to me as I am "The Homemaker Extraordinaire."  As if.  At any rate, regardless of my skills, it's my project.  Let me just say, I have always had a fear of putting colors together.  I first noted my inability to do this well when I started dressing myself 30 years ago.  The other children usually looked pretty well put together.  I looked like a hot mess in horizontal stripes and paisley with hair that usually hadn't been combed.  This lack of color coordination was again confirmed in middle and high school when we were required to take art.  I nailed black and white, failed color collage.  Now, here I am faced with the challenge of a color scheme for an entire home.  And I am determined not to fail. 

Here's what I have learned about myself in the interim since age 4.  I like color!  I like BOLD colors, jewel tones, rich warm colors that make you want to sink into them.  I also like food.  Why is this relevant you ask? Because they name paint colors after foods!!!  I know right?? I was as excited as you are.  This changes everything!  I KNOW food.  I am good at food. 

So I headed to Lowe's and started picking through the paint chips, focusing on the colors I was drawn to.  For the stairs I found sugarcane, a very smooth but warm white.  Moving into the kitchen I found pomegranate red and crumb cookie, another soft white.  I am on a roll!! 

I am a little nervous about the living room and have held off picking those colors yet because they have to coordinate well with the kitchen, since one flows into the other.  I'm leaning towards a coffee color, coffee with lots of cream......maybe if I take my morning cup into Lowe's they could match it for me.....