Oregon Zoo Lights

Tonight we bundled up and headed to the Oregon Zoo for Zoo lights. We have never been until now, partly because we didn't have a child who would enjoy it and, honestly, partly because we didn't have a membership and would have had to pay for it.

We went to Zoo lights with our friends Geneva and James and their little boy Jimmy who is just about 2 months or so younger than Grayson.

Grayson loved it, even though he was very tired from not taking his nap today. One of those days where he was in his bed for an hour and them I heard him playing, I left him in there another hour and finally tried to get him to sleep by rocking. After a few minutes it became clear that he was not going to nap.

Grayson mostly rode on his daddy perch but took a little ride on a stone animal in the play area.


This funny Polar bear could not see a thing- he/she kept trying to lift up the head to see through the MOUTH who they were hugging. Half the time the head was pointed the wrong way from the kids they were talking to! Its a good thing he/she had a personal guide!

Some of the gorgeous lights.

This is the middle of the zoo, a big ampatheatre that is used for shows and things normally, but this time of year its a sea of lighted animals.

This is my favorite pic- I love walls and bridges etc. I love curves.

Friends with the iphone- this is with the night camera ap- its ok- it works but it takes pics all on its own. A little hard to get used to.

Lions and Tigers and Traeger Grills. Oh my!

We were recently given a new Traeger Grill by a friend. If you have never eaten something off a Traeger, man are you missing out! We will never go back to plain ol' grilling again!

This is the one we got

And the turkey we did on the Traeger. It was so moist and delicious! I used it the my meals I made the other day.

From the website:

TASTE: Food cooked on a Traeger pellet grill tastes better than food cooked on gas or charcoal grills. A wood fire is a more natural, healthier way to cook.

SMOKER: Absolutely the best smoker you can own. Cook gourmet smoked foods in your own backyard. Hardwood smoke penetrates the food, adding tremendous flavor. Smoke fish, jerky etc.

SAFETY: Far safer than either gas or charcoal grills. No gas leaks or smoldering briquettes to worry about. Fire safety officials love our grills!

AUTO-START SYSTEM: Automatically lights the pellets every time you turn on the power switch. You're cooking in just minutes! No Flare-ups: Our exclusive, patented E-Z Grease Drain System transports grease drippings out of the cooking chamber into a galvanized catch bucket. There's less chance of frustrating flare-ups developing, while you cook.

VERSATILITY: Your pellet grill is four appliances in one! Smokes, Barbecues, Grills, Bakes. The three position cooking control switch lets you cook anything in a Traeger!

HEALTHIER COOKING: Cooking on a pellet grill adds zero fat, cholesterol or calories to your food. Indirect cooking systems are recommended by the National Cancer Institute because they produce less benzopyrene.

Jesse's tribute to Jonathan

My little (22) brother got ANOTHER tattoo today as a tribute to Jonathan.
It is the same little poem that is on his stone in our yard. I love it. He has inspired me, I think I need a new tattoo. Someday.

My newest craft

Those that have known me know that I love to craft. Those who have known me a long time know that I have tried my hand at almost all crafts at some point or another. Well, a while back I saw this episode of the Martha Stewart Show (go figure) that had needle felted sweaters for children. I ran out at bought bunch of wool sweaters to shrink and felt.

And there they sat. Shrunk and felted and in a drawer.

Until yesterday, I finally pulled them (all 6!) out of the drawer to figure out which one was going to become Grayson's Christmas gift.

So the whole idea, is to repurpose an adult wool sweater into a child's sweater by washing it in hot water and shrinking it into felt (exactly what you are NOT supposed to do with a wool sweater!) Then using the pattern good ol' Martha provides /see funny story at end/you cut them down into these little wee sweaters. Then the fun begins.

You take Roving (wool before its spun into yarn) and using a barbed needle you punch the roving into the sweater to create your design. You can do anything! Grayson loves dinosaurs so this is what I created for him:

Its his pet Dino!

and his tail that wraps around the back of the sweater. :)

Dino is green with some light green dots and a blue color and light blue leash.

I love it! I hope he does too.
Now to hang onto it and not give it to him until Christmas...

Woops forgot the funny story! So I took the patterns to Office Max for enlargement. The guy doing it seemed a bit confused by the whole thing. Basically it is an 81/2 x 11 sheet of paper that has a sleeve, front and back pattern that needs enlarged to either 200%, 225%, 275% or 300 % depending on the side for this kiddo. So he gets one sleeve done hands me the sheet and says "Is that all you need?" I am sure my eyes said "Yum, all my children wear arm warmers instead of sweaters!" But as nicely as I could, and with out using the word DUH, I said no I needed the whole pattern, enlarged to each size listed on their coorsponding sheet. It worked out fine but I almost slapped him silly....

Cook for a Day eat for a Month!

I recently heard/ read somewhere about once a month cooking. I like the idea of pulling things out of the freezer and having dinner on the table with minimal prep or effort. Don't get me wrong, I like to cook. I just really like not having to do it every day or even every other day.

A few years ago we started doing Dream Dinners which is one of those places you go to that you put all the food together yourself in bags then you take it home and freeze it. It is fabulous, but way more money than we can afford right now.

So when Belle was in town and we went to Powell's Downtown I got this book

It is great. It walks you totally through the planning and prep and then you make all your food.
The only down side? Well apparently I am slower than a snail, cause it took me 3!!! days to get all the food made I had planned a prepped for. But finally Thankgiving eve I got it all done. The worst part is that I had done that really hard Pump class on Monday and could barely move all 3 of those days. And the longer I stood the more stiff I got. But I am finally done and packaged in food saver sealed bags and put away. Here is my gorgeous garage freezer now.

27 meals later- as well as some individual portions and 3 mini meals for my friend Tisha who had a baby last week.
Here is what I made:
~bulk spaghetti sauce (which went in stuff mostly but a few side portions for later use)
~2 lasagnas
~3 baked ziti's (plus a mini)
~12 stuffed peppers
~2 poor man's casserole
~2 turkey and rice bakes (plus mini)
~2 turkey cacciatore (plus mini)
~2 chicken casseroles
~4 sloppy joes
~5 sets meatballs
~2 meatloafs
~3 chicken a la king

Bonappetit!

In related news, this is part of the 1/4 cow we split with our friends/neighbors. I used 8 lbs of grounds beef in my cooking this week! All organic and grain fed! Yum!

Thanksgiving

I am sure I should get on here and tell everyone what a wonderful Thanksgiving our family had but sadly that just wasn't the case.
Zack and I were fighting,
I was bitchy,
Grayson got up at 4 so he was a crabby boy,
and Jesse got to be in the middle of the whole ball of fun. Yeah!

Add to it all that this is the first holiday without out sweet baby Jonathan. I can't help but think that I should still be pregnant. I should be enjoying the day and rubbing my belly. Instead of thinking about the child I have lost and how many holidays I will have to go through,
in the rest of my life, without him.

So unfortunately, no I did not enjoy this holiday and I am doubtful I will enjoy the next one. I just wish I could curl up in my bed and not get out of it.
I just want the holidays to go away.

Here is a few pics of us faking it:

Fat off!

My friend and neighbor Jamie and I decided we were both tired of our fat asses so instead of continuing to sit around eating junk food while complaining to each other about our weight we decided to hold each other accountable and get moving. Today is our official start day and until this evening when I sat down with a lovely glass of red and some good and plenty's (not sure how they go together but its workin!) I was doing really well.

I worked out at the gym. I did a Pump class, which really truly kicked my ars! My friend Libby, who has been consistantly doing this class for 9 months said it was hard. Great! Fabulous! Nice day for me to start back after 6 months of not working out.

I was doing good for a while when I was pregnant with Jonathan but the bigger I got the less I wanted to go (anywhere!) because I just didn't want to talk about it with people I didn't know. So I quite going. At all. And now I am fat(er). It's amazing we have children at all, since they ruin our bodies so. Grrr. But I guess its for a good cause.

Anyway, I even took Grayson swimming, in a /gasp/ a bathing suit! after class. It was kind of his payback for leaving him crying in child care. Poor kid, he hasn't been left with anyone he isn't pretty close to in 6 months either. He recovered quickly and I had to prod him and bribe him with swimming to get him to leave.

My plan is to do pump twice a week and hopefully do my elliptical at home 2-3 times a week. I would like to get to the gym a few other times a week for yoga too but I have to see how the rest of the plan goes first before I add more in.

Wish me luck. I am never very good at keeping the workouts going long term. I either get sick or pregnant or something and then I am off my routine again until my ars reminds me that its time again to jump back on....

Hopefully this time I will at least lose some of the weight from GRAYSON! before I get pregnant again! Fingers (and toes) are crossed.

Thoughtful meanderings of cleanliness

So my last post has me thinking... why is it we have to portray perfection? Why is it we want our houses to be spotless when people come to visit, when that is really not who we are and really, whose family could live that way?

I have met people in my life who tried so hard to have the perfect facade that they neglected their children and their husbands and their entire lives. And for what? A clean house? What's the point if no one can see it but you because you are so busy cleaning you have no time to spend with anyone.

No, I am not that girl. I am the girl who remembers someone is coming to dinner tomorrow and spends the whole next day scrambling to get what someone might see clean and barking out orders to those I love. Sorry boys.

So back to my question... is it a learned behavior to want people to think that we are really that tidy and neat? Or is it more innate in our beings? And if we learned it, then was it our mothers who "taught" us? And hers that taught her and so on? I tend to think so.

I feel like somewhere along the lines we all got shafted when that lesson was taught. It makes us all strive for something we are not and while we know that we are not perfect, we all walk through each others homes and lives judging each other and our cleanliness as if we didn't know the true secret.

So in the spirit of being honest with myself and my friends, who I try not to judge but often fail miserably. Here is my laundry list:

~I am a piler, stacker and a hoarder- check any closet in my house
~I come from a long line of pilers, stackers and hoarders
~I judge those that are too clean
~I judge those that are too dirty
~I will buy into almost any organization tip or trend to "help" my junk collections
~The junk I own is pared down from what it was!
~I am very sentimental
~I can't help it
~I can help it
~I hate the pride I feel when someone comments on my house
~It feels like fraud

There, there you have it most of it. I am sure the wine in my blood is helping me to forget a few but you get the jist. Life is a work in progress but as it is such it is our jobs to continually try to do better.

And not just with cleaning our house!

TVG- Photo of the Day 3-4

ahhh crap! See I knew I would miss a day somewhere! To my credit I was busy doing this
His name is Ryker Clayton and he was born on Monday. His mommy Tisha is a friend of mine- I used to live next door to her grandma. He was born exactly a month early and was 6 lbs 8 oz and 19 inches long. He would have been a BIG boy if he had staying in the whole time!

Anyway, back to the dirt. Literally. So today I decided that instead of photographing the clean, tidy parts of my house and giving you all the facade that it is perfect (its not) and exactly like a magazine- oh I wish!- I would get real and show the dirt. As many know, this is hard for me. REALLY hard. As it is for many woman. We take pride in our homes and it makes us feel better to be good housekeepers, even if its only the facade of being such.

I know there are very few magazine that show the mess after the beauty and really there are few that will show you the mess before the beauty. But here it is, in all its glory. My real house.

Dirt, clutter and all.
Enjoy

Summer Fun G style!

I feel so blessed to live in the same city as G Diaper Headquarters.
Every few months they try to plan something for Gmums and Gdads to hook up and celebrate all that is G.
Great, Green, Generous, Giggle, Groovy, Gentle, Global

This was at Jameson Fountain in downtown Portland. It is a gorgeous place to play and very close to gHQ. Above is Michelle- Marketing Director for G.

Here is Jason- gdad and CEO of Gdiapers. Not sure what he is yelling about... I hope it wasn't about me taking his pic... ooops!

And my favorite! Grayson in his little G bum! I gotta write about fall now, writing about Summer when its pouring out is killing me! :)

Smith Berry Barn

This is a little late in coming but I just got the film back- I know film!!!
But alas, my favorite really expensive camera is film. Ugh.

Anyway, Every summer I pick berries at one of the local farms.
My favorite is Smith Berry Barn.

They have the best berries. This last summer my friend Libby and I took our boys
(hers: Jack and Henry are 3 and 2).
They had a better time picking to eat then picking to take home and eat.

Sorry, Rich and Joelle! (owners of SBB)

This summer I picked: Raspberries, Blackberries, Tayberries and Golden Raspberries.

I went home and made yummy Galettes and Scones. Here are the scones! Yum! I miss summer already.

TVG- Photo of the Day 2

Day two! Yeah for me! Woo Hoo! I never thought I could do two days in a row! Oh sorry~ I am back.

Today I decided to photograph the child side of my house. When we first bought our house I was going to try to have no toys in the family room. Ya, I know what was I thinking right? Anyway, this is my family room now.

And I would have it no other way.