About that Quail

I didn't realize that I hadn't posted on the poultry drama. Monday evening I went over to Starbucks as an excuse to take the kids out of the house. Fresh air makes them less cranky for some reason. Laney told me on the way over that she wanted to go to Barack Obama's house in the city he lives in. She's going to wear a pony tail. She picked out a nice rock in the fountain on the way to Starbucks to give to President Obama. At Starbucks we were going through the usual routine when the barrista said that she had a baby in the back too and would the kids like to see it. A couple of bikers had picked up a quail chick on the Centennial trail and "saved" it. While looking for someone else to complete the "saving" process, they stopped for a coffee and ended up leaving the quail at Starbucks. So there it was, in a coffee cup. The barrista said that she wasn't sure what to do with it and I volunteered that my sister might take it, so I called Dana and she and the kids came down to Starbucks and got it. It went home with them and after it kept trying to fly out of the nest box they put a bantam chick in with it. The two cuddled up and were supremely happy. It's still hanging in there.

Thursday Already?

I decided to do a quickie post and was shocked that my last one was on Sunday. Yikes, what have I been doing? Monday is a blur. I think I went to Costco with the circus (my kids) and that took the bulk of my day and good humor. I couldn't find the milk anywhere and had to go through the drive through bev barn across the street. Tuesday we went to the Kroc center in the morning and I put all the kids in the daycare and worked out (1 hour and 20 minutes to myself). I met Mark Rakes (those not in the know--my high school boyfriend who is now married to one of my good friends Lisa) as I was on the way out and he was heading in. He's doing good but man! he's going super gray. We will not discuss the state of my own hair... Tuesday night we went to the park for Em's 3rd birthday and had a good time. Laney had such a great time that the next day she wanted to know if it was Emi's birthday again. The purple lip crap in the treat bag: not so great. Laney and another boy took turns throwing dirt on each other at the park and when a police officer came to ask about who was illegally parked on the street, a little girl took him aside to tell one of the other kids to play nice. That's what I call using the big guns!
Wednesday we ran errands and then went to the park in the afternoon where Laney had a wonderful time playing with two boys. The older one was the dragon and Laney and the younger boy were the prince and princess. Then I worked feverishly to get everyone fed and bathed so that Ian could babysit while I went to the movies. We saw "The Proposal" with Sandra Bullock. It was cute. I have to say that it is mighty convenient to live right next to the movie theater.
I didn't get any sleep last night and my children were beastly all day for various reasons. Mostly, it was just a typical day 5. It seems like we're all fine for the first 4 days that Charles is on the road but by day 5 the wheels start falling off. Today we went to the park and I took toys. I put a ball in the stroller with Kenna and Laney had a fit. She said that Kenna would throw it in the lake. Sure as God made green apples, we started around the lake and Kenna chucked the ball out of the stroller, down the embankment and in to the lake. So off I went climbing down the bank to retrieve the ball. Did I mention that there is a restaurant with a patio next to the lake and that everyone on it was watching me?? The kids in the park weren't nice today and we had to leave after Laney fought with a little boy. He taunted her as she left too and I had a repressed but strong desire to shout insults back at him. Doodie head. After a quick nap we got dressed and washed the snot off so we could walk over to dinner at Red Robin for Matt's birthday. It was fun, but there is something about that place that seems to set the kids off. All the noise? I walked over to Starbucks afterward and ran in to the Quail Girl barrista (on her day off) and gave her an update on the quail--it's doing well with its surrogate sibling the bantam chicken at Dana's.

Farmers and Fathers

Saturday we went to the farmers market and with the kids. Dana and Jeff met us there, since Jeff wanted to scout egg prices and the general lay of the land. I miss the market. There's one in Oro Valley but it is really tiny and most of the stuff isn't really grown or made by the people there. It's always festive to go to this one. A 90 year old woman did a dance to Itsty Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini and had on one of those t-shirts with the fake bikini lady on it. I'm a little scarred. I was terrified to stick around too long because I heard she was planning to hula later. May I live to be 90 and doing vaudeville. I couldn't resist taking picts. Those yellow tomatoes above were delish by the way. I got an invite from the peony man to come check out his farm, so I think I will do that if the weather improves. Little known fact about Lori: Peonies are my all time favorite flower. They are just so exuberant and slightly over the top while still being so fragile and fleeting. Sigh. When I was about 5, I rode my bike to school (first grade at Washington Elementary) and took the scenic route. On the way, I passed a house with the most beautiful flowers I had ever seen (peonies). So beautiful in fact that I couldn't resist them and picked one of the raspberry colored blooms and took it to school (sorry about that mysterious home owner). I admired that flower all day. I still remember the way it smelled and its velvet petals.
Today we went to breakfast with Charles for Father's Day after giving him his tie. Ties are traditional, right? We went together and bought my Dad a Ryobi toolset that includes a two saws, a drill and a flashlight--so basically Charles got the shaft. Perhaps I'll make it up to him on his birthday. C flew to Oklahoma after b-fast and I stopped by the parents. Carter had spent the night so they were up and at 'em early. He had many new acquisitions from yesterday's yard sale at Aunt Lynda's. I'm sure his mother is thrilled. One of his new treasures is a green cosmetic bag with sequins. He and Griffin will make a good pair one day, since Griffin also enjoys accessories particularly headbands with Barbie on them.
This afternoon Kenna walked most of the way across the living room. She's on a roll now. Look out. We went back to Mom's for dinner tonight. We had turkey and mashed potatoes. Which was a great meal on a rainy cold day. I think the high temp was 65. I think Tucson's temp was 106 today. Cool and rainy isn't so bad. As long as it goes away soon.
PS Trying out a collage feature in Picasa...how does this look to you? Not sure how this will display on other's computers.

Gardening at Dana's

Ok you lurkers, where are the comments?? I admit that I was a bad poster there for a while but it is sad to see no comments. sniff.
We seem to all be over our little plague. Laney had a little tummy bug and puked a few times and ran a fever. Kenna had something that made her feverish and Griffin is, as usual, running massive boogies from the nose. I took G to the Dr this week and will call tomorrow for results on the allergy testing.
Today I went to Dana's to garden again. It was so nice being outside in the garden in the sunshine, listening to the crickets and the calls of the pheasants, pulling up nature just as fast as I could. I still didn't get very far since pulling all the grass out is very painstaking. I'll have to go back....
Dana has another new chicken which puts her at a total of 7 (I think). She's got 4 teenagers, 2 just getting their feathers and 1 in fluffy fluffy peep peep stage. You know what I mean. She also has bunnies coming out her ears. That saying about rabbits is no lie. Laney had an incident with Colleen and a ball point pen today while I was out in the garden. She has a scratch from her nose to her eye, with a cut under the eye. I must admit I was a little freaked out about it. I mean, a 1/2 inch higher and she could have been in the punctured eye honey category (if I have not posted on the eye honey story, let me know and I'll fill you in on the grisly details). I'm not sure how you can accidently stab a toddler in the face with a pen. But things do happen I guess.
I think G stealth walked behind my back for the first time today. I turned around just in time to watch him sit back down--about two feet from my chair. Hmmm. The two of them are really getting in to the walking thing. Griffin can also climb things quite well, like in to his stroller seat or up onto Dana's rocker. He thought he was the man when he got in the rocker today. Just beaming and trying to make the chair rock. Kenna has been the sweetest baby lately. Just darling. Laney is just discovering the art of the tantrum, which is just awesome. really. May this stage pass quickly. Tomorrow we are going to the park again and maybe to the pool.

Birthdays, Babies and Blood

Ok. So last Thursday I finally overcame my party block and got cracking on thinking of something to do for the twins. Friday I worked like a little beaver to order food, cake, buy party supplies, etc. Plan A was to have the party in a park, but the park was booked, so plan B was my mom's. We had a backyard bug theme (for my Kenna bug) and it turned out well. Charles and I made hanging bugs out of paper lanterns and bug antennae for all the kids out of pipe cleaners and headbands. We made the cutest treat bags that were little honey bees. So I got all Martha at the last minute. The cakes turned out cute. I got a mini cake for each child and a big cake for the rest of us. We lit a candle and sang to each of them. I think it's a shaft to have to share everything--it doesn't take that much to sing to each kid. I think we had about 18 people or so. I forgot my camera (!) so had to use my mother's. I need to run over there and abscond with it to get my pictures, since anything I take on that camera goes into the great black hole of never downloading to anywhere.
Sunday we had a relatively quiet day. I went out and bought some new running shoes. My feet and my chest changed sizes with the babies, not in a good way. I've got to start working out at the gym we joined since I've been eating like I'm on vacation for three weeks. We went over to Mom's for dinner and I had to have the discipline discussion with my dad again. He thinks my children are unruly. Honestly, my kids are sort of pesty (at home--they are usually quite good in public). Disciplining children is a tough thing and I'm sure I need to do a better job of it. Or at least figure out how to do it well before I have two more toddlers! Yikes.
The babies have been a little cranky. Kenna was sick on Sunday with a fever (and was awake allll night) and Griffin is still leaking from the nose at an alarming rate. I finally bit the bullet and took him to the doctor today. The doctor says that some kids are just snotty, but that he might have allergies. He suggested a blood test to figure out what the boy might be allergic to and possibly treatment with Singulair eventually. So we went for a blood draw. Turns out that taking blood from a tiny baby arm is not really that easy and Mr. No Nap was not happy. He did ok until the needle was removed and then he had a hissy. During the hissy the little piece of gauze got dislodged and he started squirting blood all over the place. Acckkk!! Once we got that taken care of he calmed down (basically so he could smile and wave at all the people in the waiting room).
I met a woman in the waiting room who was expecting twins as a surrogate. It's her second time as a surrogate. How cool is that? I admire most deeply anyone who can go there for another woman. Twins though.... wow. She says that she has very easy pregnancies. But I'm here to say that having a single baby is a whole different ball game than having two at a time. The upside for her is that after a grueling pregnancy she doesn't have to spend the next six months with two new babies. I hope it goes well for her (and the new parents/babies).
We also went over to Dana's today to play in the garden and check out the latest bunny and chicken additions. It was muddy but fun. Though I hate weeding out grass. Grass is a pain in the ass. I will be returning to weed and clean her house for her since she volunteered to watch my kids when we go rafting in July. After we went there and prior to the doctor I had to take my children to WalMart to buy bottle sleeves. I went in there with mud all over me with my children looking like hell all covered in snot and dog hair and dirt and ketchup. I walked really really fast to get the shopping done. Though, in a way, I sort of blended. Sadly.

Laney's First Haircut

Yesterday, after awaking at an ungodly hour, we all went to the mall to go bra shopping. What incredible fun you must be thinking to yourself. I bet you can't imagine what could be more pleasurable than trying to navigate through the unmentionables with a twin stroller and try on bras (lamenting the sad results of nursing three children) while your toddler yodels out the bottom of the door. I can hardly think of anything more joyful. Laney shoplifted from Gymboree, so we had to go back and return some things. Cute stuff though. If I was in the mood to spend stupid money on kid's clothes, I would totally go there. After our lunch at the food court--kids were all good, people all stared--we had to make a trip to the potty. Gross. What is with people and their willful disregard for hygiene? Then we got Laney a haircut. I made the mistake of answering my cell phone while in the hair place and my daughter found herself a lovely lip balm on a key chain for $9.50 (!!) that she thought was so great she tried it on. So she got her first "real" haircut and a rockin' lip balm. Said lip balm was the impetus of a massive meltdown at Hallmark and then again at home prior to nap. All of the kids passed out immediately upon entering the car (and Laney promptly peed in her sleep). Twenty minutes later, I unloaded everyone, got them upstairs, fed the babies their bottles, put them back down for a nap and then fought with Laney for 2 1/2 hours about taking a nap. I needed a nap. No nap.
Tired and disgruntled, I thought we'd make it easy and go to the pizza place for dinner. Pizza place is closed. So we went to Red Robin. It was not an easy dinner. But eventually they all went to bed. Today is a new day, right?
Speaking of today, we got up at a more reasonable hour, waking me out of a dream in which I was running a marathon that involved hanging on to ledges and going through other obstacles--weird, things are going better. Griffin was just trying to put his shoe on and said "ball". They are about to go down for an early nap.

Books, Bunny Ranch and Birthdays

I remember a time when no one woke me up at 5. I even remember a day when I could ignore a certain someone until around 7. You cannot ignore three someones, especially when two of them are right next to your bed. I should have gone to bed earlier but I was finishing my book. I've read two great books this last week: "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society" and "Julie and Julia", which are very different but I really enjoyed both. The GLPPS was a very sweet read and interesting for incorporating WWII information on the occupation of Guernsey and JandJ is about a blogger's quest to cook her way through an entire Julia Child cookbook in one year which involves lots of the f word and staying up until 11:30 at night to eat sweetbreads, but was really a fun read too. So I give them my two thumbs up.
Laney is watching our crappy cable right now. They've got some weird kid shows. Sometimes I watch her watching something and wonder if she's just thinking to herself "what the hell?". I was hoping she would sleep in today since we went swimming last night at the Kroc center (finally). We had to wait an extra half hour for them to open up the cove pool and tried out the roped off part of the lap pool. Coldest water I've ever been in in an indoor pool. Yikes. We were all turning blue. Then we had to wait again for the other pool all wet. We went in to one of the family dressing rooms and hung out in a hot shower while waiting. Brrr. (Fast Fact: did you know that British people never say the word "brr"? True. I guess they just say it's cold). It was just cold in general yesterday. The high was about 65 and it rained for a good part of the day. Sun is back today though.
So to continue the recap of last week: after our day out on Wednesday we got back to the condo with the intent to not leave again, but I discovered that my near freak out at the Kroc center was perhaps somewhat hormonally fueled and I had to go out to the store again for stuff I didn't bring with me. So I did what anyone would do and called my sister and invited us over for dinner. We went over to the Post Falls Bunny Ranch and Goat Hotel to check out the animals (some of which we consumed for dinner. Yes, my sister raises rabbit for food). Thursday we went downtown for lunch at Bonsai Bistro. They have a koi stream running through the restaurant with turtles and koi. Laney thought it was awesome. They sat us on the island too, so we went over a little bridge and were surrounded by water. Afterward we went to the city park and played and went wading in the lake. Summer spirit was everywhere and people were already swimming in the lake, but it was seriously cold. Friday we had dinner at the park in Post Falls with Mom, Dad, Matt, Michelle and the kids. I took a picture with my camera phone, but am not sure how to transfer it--there was only one baby swing, so we put the babies in back to back. Hilarious! Charles came home on Friday night. Saturday I finally went in to get my "natural highlights" covered and a haircut. It was great. The place I went even gives you a glass of wine. Rock on. Then Saturday night Charles and I went out for dinner and Lizzie babysat. Sunday we went up to Sandpoint for Vadin's 6th birthday. Brian and Renee (Vadin's parents) decided to move here from San Diego. We saw lots of relatives that I haven't seen in forever. When did everyone else get so old??
Ok. Now that I'm caught up, I'll try to post regularly so I don't have to do giant ones.

Move In Day

I've been radio silent for the last week because my darling husband used my computer last weekend and then packed up my power supply and took it with him to Kansas City. So it didn't return to me until late Friday night and the weekend was weekendy as per usual.

So, you may ask, what are the Phillips up to? Right now the girls are fighting with each other. Laney is in her room and won't let Kenna in. It seriously amazes me that sibling in-fighting can start so early. You'd think it would at least for the end of babyhood. But, sadly, no.

We got moved in to the condo last Monday after much running around by yours truly. It is quite nice and I can't complain at all. I just wish it had a third bedroom. My son insists on waking up at 5 and I'm just not ready for his chirpy little face that early in the morning. We're on the third floor and conveniently located near the elevator. Eventually I got the code to use the parking garage and that has simplified things as well. I've never lived in a condo before so it's all new and exciting. Sadly, they were supposed to have a Barnes and Noble here, but it didn't get put in yet but otherwise the necessities of life (Starbucks) are close at hand. Here's some picts of the new home:

Tuesday the kids and I went to the park and Laney fell and massively bit her lip and scratched up her face and leg. Blood was pouring. She's looked pretty bad ever since. But she's a tough little bird. I asked it she wanted to go back to the condo and she said no, she wanted to play. Tuesday night the kids had their first real babysitter (someone not related to them who I actually paid) and I went to graduation for Nick. Wednesday I had a massively bad morning trying to take the kids to the Kroc center and take Laney swimming. But it got better when we went to the garden party at the Post Falls middle school that was sponsored by the lifeskills class that my sister works in. Laney enjoyed playing with the kids and the kids enjoyed my children being there. It definitely gave me an appreciation for the things I have.

Saturday

I know I promised to write a lot while in Idaho, but it's been hard since I'm using Mom's computer (too lazy to get my own out and add to the chaos in the house) and we've been busy busy. We had a family bbq last week on Monday and admired Dad's deck. The roof collapsed while we were here at Christmas due to the snow load and Dad rebuilt it all the spring -- bigger better stronger. It looks really good and when the grapes come back it will be really nice. Dad stained it right before we got here, so all the kids are getting covered in stain every time they go outside. It mostly comes out with spray n wash though.
I've spent the week gardening my little butt off. Which I can't complain about. I just love to weed--seriously. It's a sickness. And my parents' yard always provides lots of opportunity to get my fix. I've also been cleaning house in preparation for the big party this weekend to celebrate Nick's graduation. We're having a luau tonight and 'Chelle has been working really really hard on it. I'm sure it will be really fun. We're expecting around 55 or 60 people.
Laney and I helped Dad plant the garden this week too. I used to plant the garden every year with my Grandma too. The kids and I went to Rendezvous at Ponderosa Elementary on Thursday to visit Colleen. The 4th grade class ends their year with this big exposition on pioneer living. We learned archery, horseback riding, cast iron cooking, fishing, log sawing, native american crafts, and participated in storytelling in teepees, soldier reinactments (including cannon fire) and some other stuff. It was pretty cool. We met Matt, Michelle and the kids at McDonalds for dinner and play time on Thursday night.
I still haven't bought a stroller. I went to a big used baby sale today in the hopes of finding another used one, but people either bought them all already or just don't have a lot of need of twin strollers here. So I'll probably have to go to Spokane tomorrow to buy one. I look sort of pathetic running around with a missing front wheel.
We move into the condo on Monday (but Charles won't be here for the whole week. Maybe I'll tell him where we are... maybe not! ha ha).