Who knew it would be the crickets?

One of the things I learned from one of my favs "Jon and Kate plus 8" is that it is imperative to use a sound machine at night to put your kids and keep them asleep. I have a version of the Conair model pictured above. I've used it for a few months now and I have to say that the method works. However, on a lark, Blake changed the white noise from water trickling to crickets chirping a few days ago. Since then, Chase has taken 2+ hour long naps (that we have to wake him out of) and goes 9 hours at one stretch at night, drinks a bottle, then goes down for another 4 hours. Coincidence? I think not. It's the crickets.
He has since earned the nickname Jiminey. As in Jiminey Cricket.

A snippet of berry picking adventures

Today I have to paint my front door and shutters. Don't have time to think of anything deep or clever (because all my posts are like that). So, in the spirit of my limited time, you get a moment in the life of our new favorite hobby - berry picking.

Start training them now

So when they have kids of their own, they can't claim "they never changed a diaper before in their lives and therefore (the wife) should do it". Here's living proof that Blake has and so he can do it in the future.

Great job Blake!

Life is Busy

With the children home non-stop all day long, the days are full and the days tend to be long. Believe it or not - amidst all the chaos, we're actually having fun around here. Let me tell you about a few things.

First, Chase was officially inducted into our family. He fell off the couch. Jackson fell off our bed at three months And I dropped Blake on the floor at church at five months. So Chase is officially one of ours.

Yes, I know he can roll and scoot along but I thought I had put him far enough up on the cushions on the couch in order for me to answer the front door. Low and behold, seconds after leaving the room I hear a "THUNK" and loud wailing. Here he is. (we had to have a picture of his first fall)

But don't worry - he was fine the seconds later after the flash from the camera startled and sobered him. He's fine now. (a little cross-eyed, but fine) .............(I'm kidding of course)

A few days after the fall incident, we started playing around with Chase a lot more on the floor.

After farting around a bit, he decided to put his knees up under his body and try to simulate crawling. He's four and half months old may I add. If there is anything my boys do, it is having extremely extremely large amounts of activity. They never ever stop moving. And from the looks of it - Chase is no exception. Time to start child proofing.

On other notes from the exterior of my house - we have planned and mapped out our backyard (finally). This meant I had to move our compost bin from the side of our garden to the rear side corner of our house.

If you're laughing at the idea of "Shannan composting" - yes, I do compost now. Hey, I live in Oregon. After living here for just a few months, you begin to recycle everything in sight (I just downgraded our trash can to the smallest size you can get), bike to work, use reusable bags everywhere (Costco bags are fabulous!), and you start composting your kitchen and garden waste.

See? Check out that lovely half-composted pile of plants. Okay, so it looks like a pile of dirt right now, but just you wait. It will be black gold by the end of the fall.

Another thing we do here in the Oregon sticks is go out to U-pick farms and pick our own produce. On this particular day, we let the kids experience the joys of picking berries.


Being kids and all, they had more fun running through the rows and rows of plants while we Mothers yell from three rows over, "don't step on the plants!" "Where's your brother?" "Don't step on the plants." "How many berries did you get? The only ticket you have home is a bucket half full!""

Truthfully between you and me, I loved our morning out in the field. Growing up on arid Salt Lake City where there is no such thing as a U-pick farm, I cannot express to you how much I love driving ten minutes from my house to the country and picking my own organic produce. And it is something I can do with the kids.

And dirt cheap prices.

love it.

And when Chase has had enough being in the front pack, I just lovingly lay him down in the soft grass by the raspberries bushes. Hey - what does he think babies do in China while their moms pick rice all day? A mom's gotta do what a mom's gotta do.

Hmmmmm.... by the looks of one of my little berry pickers, there was more berry tasting than berry picking me thinks.

After such busy times, I decided to take the day off yesterday and head to the big city. In my life that means a day in Portland. I had a nose dr. checkup, so I took the opportunity to go get my hair chopped off. Six inches baby.
I wanted a messy bob. I think I got it.

I know I'm being a little cliche by cutting off all my hair after having a baby, but I don't care - it's cute, it's super easy to take care of, and it keeps me a ton cooler in the summer. I'm keeping it.

If you look closely at this last picture, this is my nose now. Bandages are all off and my nose dr. lazered it to take away the redness. It's still a bit swollen, but if you click on the above pic you can see the scar. Amazing job.

That's it for now. Another week of summer down. Another week closer to school starting.

Life is good

Summer days at the beach

are what memories are made of.

Having the ability to say to your family at 12 noon, "Hey, why don't we spend the afternoon at the beach?" and having your kids dip their toes in salt water within a hour.

Who can resist running and splashing in the water?

Even if the water is melted polar ice cap water from Alaska?

When two blues get together

You get children with amazing blue eyes.

In case you've been worried about my nose

Sassy!

This is my nose a few days ago. Photos are three weeks post-op. The scar is knarly underneath the steri-strip dressing you see in this picture, but I'm told that the scar will fade with time (plus I'm going to my dr in a few weeks to get it lazered and "shaved down")

Busy around here

I'm one of those that loves a good project. Since the rains have stopped pouring down on western Oregon, it is time to finish up those unfinished painting projects I started last fall.

This is the brick on our house.

That lovely mauve color is the accent color the builder picked out of the bricks in 1996 to not only paint the front door and the shutters, but the front porch and all the trim and gutters. So I've been power washing everything in sight to remove all the dirt, dead things, spiders and spider webs from the exterior.

Check out my power washing of our back deck. I thought I did a pretty great job. (I definately get carried away when power washing)
Until Jeremy came home from work and said I removed the paint from the wood.
Oops.

Now on to picking out a new color for the front door and shutters and wiping out the infernal mauve that plagues my life.

Can you see the paint sample on the right side? It looks black, but actually a really super dark purple that coordinates with the bricks.

Same color on the front door. I will be replacing the front door hardware as well. Ghastly.

I'm also working on our back door that leads out to the deck. What you are seeing is the primed door. The door and the doorway were a peeling nasty mess of mauve. Now they are white primer colored. I'm debating on color choices. Black like the front door?

So if I don't post as often these days, think of me as I finish up these painting projects I'm starting. Garden is all done for the summer and I will post pictures of that soon. Too busy painting now.

Reflections

(picture courtesy of Grandma Deshazer)

Jeremy and I are back from the beach - short trip I know - but it was the first of many little getaways that we plan to take just the two of us. Remember my new year's resolutions? We went the Oregon Coast (Lincoln City) and wonderful for us that our fab little "boutique" hotel was literally right on the beach. Now just to clear things up, Oregon and Washington's beaches are a bit different from other beaches in the world in that it was pretty much 55 degrees the entire time we were there. And that is typical summer weather for the OR coast beaches. But you do get to walk on the sand, look for seashells, hear the ocean waves from your hotel room, so it kind of counts as a beach getaway.

While we were away, I had some time to reflect on the current state of my life. With the latest cancer scare and all, I've been thinking a lot about what is going on with . What it boils down to is that I really love my life. I've mentioned this before, but I'll say it again - the older I get, the more comfortable I become in my own skin. I spent too much time in my 20's worrying about appearances and my position in life. Now, I can't even begin to tell you how much I love my little kiddos and how grateful and honored I feel that I get to raise them. They are such interesting little characters and they make life full of surprises - daily. Growing up I wanted to be the power CEO of some corporation. In a way, I got what I wanted. I'm the CEO of my family and the little boys that I get to raise.

I'm also so grateful the husband I have. We got married young - 21 years old - and we were young parents - 23 years old. I will admit that getting married young and having children young is not for everyone; I can see why the average rate of divorce is higher for younger aged marriages. But thankfully, I hit the jackpot and feel pretty darn fortunate that my soul mate for life is the one that shares my closet with me.

The last thing that I'm so grateful for today is where I live. I didn't really want to move to Salem because I really love the Seattle area. But Salem has become a nice little nest of quietness for our family. Kids are kids here. Neighbors are kind and invite you over for BBQs. You see the same people over and over and over again and soon you form a small town kind of bond with them. I shuttled my kids to several different VBSes over past few weeks and the people at the churches and parents volunteering could not have been nicer. I love my piano teacher that comes to my house to teach lessons then offered to nanny for me part time and then sometimes comes to my house on Sundays to pick up the kids for church when I am running late. I love my backyard neighbor who will call me up and says she hears Chase screaming and would I like for her to come get him and bring him to her house so I can have some peace and quiet. Yesterday another neighbor knocked on my door to give me this little magnet about having sons and I marveled at how neat it is that she was thinking of us. I am beginning to love where I live and maybe don't want to leave for a long time.

Gotta run, little ones call.