Getting a little crowded in here

We're ALL ready to go on a walk to the library! I was promised that the girls wanted to pull the wagon, so I allowed them to fill it with their stuffed animals. However, it was about a block and a half into the walk when, "Mom, can you pull it now and we ride in it with all the dolls? Please, we're SO tired!"

The Fish Hatchery or "where they make lots of fish babies"

On our way home to Portland for Father's Day we decided to stop at one of the places we always speed past and say we should stop at some day. Thus we found ourselves at the fish hatchery with no idea whether it would be of interest to the princesses. But they loved it! After splashing about in a fountain, we wandered over to the sturgeon pond, where we could look at the "stoogins." Those things get freaky huge! Up to 20 feet!Naturally, the girls wanted to know if the "stoogins" could eat them. They thought it was hilarious that they suck up their food like a vacuum instead of using teeth. Meri kept watching them through the underground windows and saying again and again, "this is just fabulous!" Oh, and we decided it's a good thing we clothe Meri. Apart from the normal reasons for wearing clothing, she's so white that it appears she would disappear altogether in the sun if she didn't. Either that or she's a lot more angelic than we give her credit for being!
Then we meandered over to the trout pond, to see the "tramps, I mean what are those called again?" "Are they slimy mommy?"
Jell got so excited about seeing them swim and jump out of the water that she began to levitate.
After convincing the girls that the fish didn't want them to throw little rocks at them to eat, Mom miraculously found a quarter in her purse to purchase a handful of fish food! Thrown one at a time, this provided like 20 minutes of entertainment, which makes it 25 cents well spent in my book. Here's quite the wind-up for a throw that travels 6 inches:She seriously cracks me up. The whole outfit ... it just works.
By some stroke of luck nobody even fell in the water, nor were they eaten by "stoogens" nor "tramps." So we walked off in time to take a quick look at the dam to discuss why water looks white when it's going really crazy. Can anyone help me with that one?

"You gotta see this"

Last night as I was getting ready for bed, Coop checked on the girls and then came back out of Meri's room laughing. He told me I had to come and see what she'd done. He pointed at her pathway of books and the balancing act she'd completed on her rocking chair:I, however, having already seen what she thinks books are good for (she did it during quiet time) looked at her. Here's a closer look:And here:
We're so proud of our daughter, who is going to give birth to a baby giraffe! I can't believe she fell asleep like this! On a similar note, the other day while I was browsing around Lakeshore Learning and the girls were playing happily, a lady came and asked if I was their mom. She was trying to hold back her laughter as she told me she'd just overheard Jell say, "There we go. I feel SO much better when I'm not pregnant." So basically, being pregnant is a little bit on our minds these days! I also just overheard Meri say, "My baby is a monkey." Jell replied, "Oh, yours is a monkey? Mine is an elephant. Are they going to get married?" This mommy hopes her babies don't grow up quite that fast. Oh and yesterday Jell informed me that "baby brother can't grow up ALL the way inside your tummy! He needs to come out sometime!" I would agree wholeheartedly. In fact, I insist he come out sometime. Preferably September 2nd. We can't wait!

Just playing around

Last week when we were still ... enjoying rainy spring weather, we had to get creative to find things to do! So the girls decided to go "camping at the beach." I love all the friends they brought with them. They sat there while I read Pollyana to them "around the campfire."
Then, miracle that it was, they didn't take all night to eat dinner! And as we've said a million times, when you eat quickly there's time to do fun things, so, since it had cleared up nicely, we went on a walk down by the river and found one of Lewis and Clark's campsites, nicely marked with interesting stories for Mom and Dad. And, of course, there were plenty of rocks to throw in the river!
As you might be able to tell from wispy one's hair, The Dalles is rather windy. So much so that the previous couple that lived in this house had a big BBQ that frequently blew over and off the porch into the neighbor's yard. We're not so sure about the wind. It's nice in that we don't have any AC and if we open all the windows, a healthy breeze blows air in and cools things down nicely. However, it's usually more than a healthy breeze and I have doors slamming shut of their own accord left and right and loose papers, toys, picture frames dive-bombing each other all day long. I guess something to get used to? Or another reason to keep my house less cluttered?

A weekend to ourselves!

So my parents have the girls for the weekend - which I think is a win-win. Or more like a win-win-win-win situation. My parents are happy to be spending time with the girls that we so rudely moved away from them, the girls think it's super special to be spending the night without us and were thrilled to make it to a friend's b-day party and cousin's baptism that they would've missed, Patti and Jim got to babysit them which they love, and we get some time alone. I don't know when the last time was that they spent the night elsewhere without us. We totally slept in this morning! It was GREAT! The house is oddly quiet, but I got some painting done in peace earlier and then we went exploring our new surroundings. We drove up this one unpaved road, got to the top and saw this looking one direction:And this, when we turned around to look the opposite way:WOW! WOW! WOW (Let's play name those mountains ... we're not sure about one of them. Anybody know what it is?)! Then the bumpy road threw out our power steering but that's another story (fortunately it recovered after a bit of sweat and worry). Then we drove a ways up the Gorge, up to Rowena Crest viewpoint, and decided to take a 3 mile hike through Tom McCall preserve. I'm not sure hiking around in loosely rocky, steep pathways is part of the pregnant exercise routine but I survived. And these were some of our views:




We kept startling wild life, like lots of birds, crickets, toads, snakes (just as startling to us), chipmunks, probably some mice, and deer, like this one:
Our hike brought us right up to the edge of this crazy plateau cliff overlooking the entire world, although in the picture, our heads our too big for you to see much of anything:
Oddly enough, the hike wasn't supposed to bring us there. It was supposed to take us on some loop ... which we never found. We tried after we were headed back (you couldn't go any farther off the cliff), but ended up discovering we had taken some deer path that kind of disappeared into thin air. Crazy deer. So we broke the law and created our own shortcut back to the trail in order to avoid backtracking because it was hot and we were sweaty and I was out-of-breath. And now I can't move. I might have overdone it a bit. Oh well, since the girls weren't here to see, I had a big bowl of ice cream for dinner to help my sore muscles feel better. Tee hee. And we get to sleep in again tomorrow! Thanks mom!

Preschool graduation!

We were so fortunate to have been able to enjoy two full years of Mother Goose Time preschool (Joy-school style, at-home preschool where the moms rotate teaching responsibilities using a curriculum and materials we got online through Mother Goose Time) with the same wonderfully giggly girls. Jell has loved, loved, LOVED her school and association with her friends. We were just so lucky that it worked out for everyone for two whole years, especially because now that it's done, we seem to be scattering. But after all these fun times, we celebrated with a graduation party! The girls donned their pink graduation caps that they made themselves, walked (down the stairs), performed some of their favorite songs from the last 2 years, and got their diplomas. Good times! Good friends!And good work to all the moms! Next stop - kindergarten (since when did I have a child old enough for kindergarten????)! Can't wait to find out where we'll be sending her to school!

Couldn't have been cuter

The girls got to take a dance class from a friend who did an awesome job. They loved every minute of it and we sure loved just watching them (as opposed to normal dance studio's recitals where you watch other kids for hours) perform 4 whole dances at the recital. They even had a solo number :) which was hilariously adorable. I'll add the video later for family that didn't get to come but here are some too-cute-for-words pictures for starters!
The whole gang:
Sisterly love:
Aah! Too much love!
Nice smiles and excellent form girls (this is just too funny not to include):

We're sure going to miss the dancing and all of our friends!!

Our summer home

So there was a request to see what our house looks like. I have kept putting off taking pictures until I had the house looking decent but I find myself rather unmotivated to get it fully unpacked and/or to keep it tidy when I have. Sigh. The knowledge that it's just for 4 months is not helpful. Nor is the lazy part of me. So here are the pictures in all their messy glory, starting with Meri's room, which requires a bit of an explanation. When Meri gave up naps we instituted quiet time, where they both have to stay quietly in their own rooms for at least an hour by themselves. They are welcome to read or color or sleep if they so choose. Meri's room always ends up looking like this or much worse by the end of quiet time:
Who knows what she does! Then there's Jell's room:
We don't feel like investing in curtains for 4 months but if her window isn't blocked off she wakes up with the sun. Oh, and the grandma rug? Our rooms are in the basement with cold tile for floors. This will be fabulous for keeping us cool throughout the summer months but the floor is COLD, so we borrowed Coop's grandma's rug that was in his parents' garage. Not our style, but again, not going to invest in a rug for 4 months. Like her red moving box book shelf on the left?
Then there's one of the bathrooms. There are 3 in this crazy big house, and the ridiculous thing is we use them all. The smart thing to do would be to close one off and keep it clean, but who's smart? Now we are SO grateful for this house and all the space but there are a few quirky things about it, take this bathroom for example:
It is very small because of the huge closet seen at right, which has space for a washer and dryer (although 1/2 inch too little space to fit our washer and dryer naturally). The door opens in, which it can't do much with Meri's stool in the way. However, every time I try to move her stool, she moves it back because she can't reach to wash her hands without it. Hard to blame her really. I should applaud the fact that she's actually remembering some hygiene! But do try to imagine going in the bathroom, forgetting to turn on the light (the switch is in the hallway), going back in, trying to get a towel out of the closet (no door handles on those doors and you have to close the other door first), wash hands or do much of anything without running into a door. This is getting increasingly difficult for my prego belly to manage. It's awkward indeed. Sadly, this is the main bathroom available to all.
Then there's the kitchen with it's fantastic counter space:
Also pictured here is my arch nemesis: the fridge. It worked for our first few days in the house, stopped for nearly a week, worked for a week, and gave out a few days ago (the freezer hasn't worked more than a day the whole time). The repair man came yesterday and confirmed that it is kaput. So currently our milk and a few other perishables I'm trying to salvage are in a cooler and I kick the fridge every time I walk by. But I do love the counters.
And standing at the edge of the kitchen, this is the rest of the room:
And all of our favorite, the play room:
I LOVE that the toys have a home and for the most part, stay there. On good days, it is clean ... for a few minutes here or there. Mostly I try not to look :)
And then the office/guest room which is supposed to be the master bedroom, but is on the main floor (20 degrees warmer than the basement. no air conditioning in the house) with curtain-less windows everywhere:
So anyway, this is where we are currently hanging out. Sorry for the novel. I didn't include pictures of our bedroom, because it's piled high with all the clothes I need to go fold and put away now. Nor of the other bathrooms, which I have yet to unpack. One of these days, right?

Loving this comic lately

My grandpa used to have a sign up in his office that read, "Insanity is hereditary. You get it from your kids." :)

Things NOT to do when you move:

1. Have lots of stuff. Where did it all come from and why can't I just throw it all out?
2. Rent a truck that is too small to bring all your stuff. (We did this when we moved from Utah too - why didn't we learn? Just cheapos I guess. Coop had to make two trips this time! Good thing it's only 90 minutes away!!!)
3. Be pregnant. I feel a little useless really and so overdid it so many days in a row that I spent most of moving day and the day after sitting down with my feet up. Pathetic.
4. Forget how much time the little stuff and last-minute cleaning really takes.
5. Have your fridge stop working. It worked for like the first 2-3 days here, then we realized the freezer wasn't cold enough so we turned that up and poof! the whole thing stopped working. Lovely. After throwing out most of what we'd just stocked up on, and trying the whole ice-bag-in-the-fridge-(making it just a giant cooler)-until-the-ice-bag-melts-all-over-the-floor-(making you worry about what's leaking until your brain starts actually working) thing. Then when you've given up on living any kind of civilized life ... poof! it all starts working again magically. Can it be trusted????
6. Have your daughter Meri get sick. Not one of those silly little 24-hour bugs. How about a week-long raging fever tipping 105, making her so miserable that she never sleeps for more than an hour before waking up crying about her tummy or some other part of her little aching body. All she wanted was to be held and rocked - which was a tad difficult to do in a sea of boxes.
7. Neglect your daughter Jell, who becomes bored out of her mind because her sister's not feeling well enough to play (so you never leave the house) and all you ever do is rock or unpack or fall asleep sitting up. Poor thing.
8. Unpack boxes with the blue tape designation, meaning they were intended for permanent storage. Not to be opened. This means you either leave out stuff you don't really need for these 4 months or repack a box that you just flattened. Sigh.
9. Try to find anything. It's better to just do without. Who needs to cut fingernails anyway?
10. Have the nagging reminder that in 4 months, you have to do it all over again ... 9 months pregnant.

Despite this, thank you, thank you, thank you for all your help! We couldn't have survived without you all! And we're doing much better already - evidenced by the fact that I have the time to actually write this email :)

Sounds like my house

(Click on it if you can't see the whole thing)
This is my life right now - except the boxes are all coming out of the attic and stacking up in the garage and living room.
My favorite quotes from Jell about moving:
A dad of one of Jell's friends in the ward asked if she would still come back sometime and play on their trampoline. Jell responded slowly as if considering it and said, "Welllll, we will be coming back a lot ... BUT we do have a lot of people to see." I don't think that made him feel like much of a priority :)

"Mom, today at preschool we had a PARTY! For me! Because we're moving and I won't be at preschool anymore and my friends are going to miss ME SOOOOOO much! They are SO sad!"

"Mom, I told my friends about the big yellow truck we're getting that will be big enough to hold ALL OUR CLOTHES and they could NOT believe it!" When I told her it would actually be big enough for all our beds and other furniture, she could not believe it - "NO WAY!"

"MOM!!! (Jell comes running in holding a box of band-aids) What if we get an owie when we're in The Dalles?!?"
Me: "I suppose we'll put a band-aid on it"
Jell: "You CANNOT forget to pack this mom! What if we get an owie? DO NOT forget to pack the band-aids!"

And then there was the discussion about our strawberry plants in our backyard that I have so lovingly cared for and molded into a lovely patch. I pointed out how many strawberries we were going to have very soon and then said, "Well, actually they won't be our strawberries anymore by the time they're ripe. Sad."
Jell: "Mom, they will always be OUR strawberries."
Me: "Not really. We won't be living here anymore."
Jell: "Yes but we planted them and we growed them. They are OUR strawberries."
Me: "Except for another family will live there and water them and keep them growing so really they will be their strawberries then."
Jell: "No mom. They're OUR strawberries. We growed them and it's only for four months."
Me: "Oh honey, we probably won't be coming back to our same house because somebody else will be living there then."
Jell: "They will still be OUR strawberries."
The sad part of this conversation is I realized she doesn't really get the whole moving thing. The funny part of her being so insistent is she doesn't even like strawberries and never would have eaten a single one of them. I, on the other hand, have been looking forward to them pretty much since the season was over and they stopped producing last summer. Not even to mention the raspberries that are looking oh so promising already. Sigh. Fortunately I can take some solace in the fact that one of the blueberry bushes that I so excitedly planted just last fall is looking quite dead.

The Move

So I've been putting off writing about the move because, I don't know, once it's written it's final and really happening and there for posterity to read about. Something like that. Oh and I've been packing frantically every minute and haven't had the energy to spare. So Coop is graduating with his masters next month and he's been applying to jobs all over and we've been praying some of the most sincere prayers of our lives. Everything has been going very discouragingly slow up until a couple of weeks ago.
On April 19th I was searching for jobs for Cooper and did a specific search in Central Oregon because Cooper was going to be headed out to Redmond the next day to do a presentation to the city out there. I found an internship with the city of The Dalles, he called to see if it had already been taken, filled out an application and snail mailed it before 5 that day. However, snail mail needs a new name because before 24 hours had passed he got a call from The Dalles assistant city manager to set up an interview for the next week, April 27th. So he drove out that day, apparently did well in the interview, and received a phone call the afternoon of the 29th offering him the position and asking him to start on May 10th. You might not have a calendar in front of you but that happened fast! And for those of you not familiar with Oregon geography, The Dalles is located in the Gorge exactly an hour and a half from home.
We very quickly weighed all our options - did he just rent a room there and come back to us on the weekends? could we swing a place there and here? did he commute daily? should we just stay in our ward and come back every weekend? None of those turned out to be feasible or very realistic so we are packing up and moving our little herd to The Dalles. That means our lovely house will get rented out to somebody else so we're saying our goodbyes to all the walls and ceilings and such. That meant we were sadly released from our callings on Sunday and are leaving behind the ward we both grew up in and have now lived and served in for 4 years, and will be deeply missing the most amazing friends. Seriously they're amazing - I've hardly seen my kids for the past week as we and now I (Coop started work today) have been trying to pack and clean everything out in less than 2 weeks time. Where have they been? My friends are amazing. They've taken them and kept them in their homes until I know they must've worn out their welcome and then kept them for a few hours more. THANK YOU!!!!! And we will be moving away from nearly all the family we have. I know it's only an hour and a half, and we will be back tons (I'm not even switching doctors for my pregnancy) but we've been very spoiled here and have loved having such close relationships with aunts, uncles, grandmas, grandpas, great-grandmas, great-grandpas, cousins, etc.
And yet, we know that this was an answer to prayers and are very grateful for the opportunity - it's exactly what Cooper would like to be doing and will give him great experience to add to the resume at the very least. It is a reminder that we don't always get to pick how our prayers are answered but we know the Lord knows best. So we are off on our new adventure. The official move date is this Saturday although nearly everything is packed up already, with just some serious cleaning left to do. And so we take this leap of faith, not quite knowing what will happen for the long term (will we have a job by the end of this one? where will we be when this baby comes in September? if we'll be moving back here where will we live? if we're not coming back here than to where and how when I'm 9 months pregnant? where will Jenelle start kindergarten in the fall? etc, etc), and keep praying and trusting that the next step will be revealed in good time and everything will work out for the best. So, The Dalles, here we come!
Oh, and the girls amazingly still find some joy in the chaos of packing:

Drum roll please ...

So I know we weren't going to find out, and I really didn't want to find out because I look forward to the surprise and think it's fun and maybe I'm just a little crazy and enjoy people looking at me like I have a screw loose for 9 months (which people do anyway cause I'm pregnant with my 3rd and who does that anymore?), but since we're moving (more on that in a bit) I kinda needed to know if the baby girl clothes should go in permanent storage or remain accessible. That was a long sentence. Let me take a breath. Okay, so we had the ultrasound today, with a new game plan and recommence the drum roll please ... IT'S A BOY!! It was totally obvious, but even then because of the packing incentive, I asked the lady if she could 100% guarantee that because you know, it's happened before to people I know that they were wrong, and she looked at me like I was daft and pointed out the specific boy parts which were hardly being shy. So away into storage goes all bows and everything pink! It's a boy!!
P.S. I'll post later about the move.