This is why we have AAA

We had an unplanned dinner out the other night. We were going to have dinner at home after running a couple errands, but when 7pm found us at a car repair place across the street from a McDonald's after waiting an hour for a towtruck, we had dinner there instead. A towtruck? Yes, we had to have the Acura towed after it overheated. (It was classic: we were driving down the road getting more and more concerned about the awful engine noises. When we stopped at a red light, the engine died and white steam billowed out from under the hood.)

Why did it overheat? We now know that the radiator wasn't quite up to snuff and a couple fans needed to be replaced (not to mention a faulty temperature gauge), but the precipitating event was letting it idle for an hour while we swept crud out of our new house before the flooring went in. The boys were asleep in the back seat, so we left the car running with the a/c on, which is our modus operandi when visiting the house since the boys usually fall asleep on the way there. The difference is that we're usually in the Escape, which has never had a problem idling for an hour.

Why were we in the Acura, then? Well, that's the car that had the carseats in it when we decided to go to the house. I had gone to a MOPS Steering Team meeting the night before and didn't want to take the Acura, so I moved the carseats over so C could take the boys to the grocery store while I was at my meeting. Why couldn't C have taken the boys in the Escape and I take the Acura? The driver's door window mechanism on the Acura had broken, so the window was stuck down. C had bought the part needed but hadn't had a chance to get it fixed before my meeting and I didn't feel comfortable parking a car with a window down in the church parking lot at night because it's in the middle of downtown and there have been unsavory characters lurking in the area. (Side note: C fixed the window all by himself (with a little help from YouTube) on Sunday morning, saving us $$!)

And that is how we found ourselves at a car repair place across the street from McDonald's on Sunday evening. After shuffling the car to another place (the first one didn't really do the type of repairs we needed), we learned that we had melted the radiator, but the engine was okay. (Which is really good, because replacing the engine would have cost us as much as we paid for the car originally!! Which, if you think about it, means we got an excellent deal on the car.) So it's now Wednesday and we've been a one car family for a few days again. The car should be fixed by this evening, and it really shouldn't need any more work beyond general maintenance for another couple years.

(So I wrote most of this post while one boy was hanging on my leg and the other one was picking on his brother. Fun!)

Chocolate Chip, of course

I made cookies today. I was rummaging through our cupboards and not finding anything for a little between-meals pick-me-up, wait, let me qualify that: nothing containing chocolate, and since Daniel was still napping, I thought I'd try to get a batch of cookies in the oven before he woke up. Not only did I get the cookies in, but I got the kitchen cleaned up and the cookies back out before I heard a peep from the bedroom. That little boy took a 3 hour nap after lunch! Those three hours are the only reason I was sane when C came home from work. It was so bad this morning that I sent an email to him at 11:43am that simply read "today sucks. that is all." I wrote it on my phone during lunch while holding D with one arm because I couldn't stand his fussing any longer, snatching bites of my sandwich with the other hand in between telling Zachary that he needed to stop whining and if he would just let me finish my lunch I would be able to take care of his pressing need to pick up the tomato he had dropped on the floor for the umpteenth time. This wonderful lunch followed a morning that had gone much the same way. Which is why, at 11:43, I had only just gotten out of pj's, the laundry had not progressed, the kitchen was still a mess from the night before, the cat box reeked, and the floor was covered in toys. But then D went down for a nap that lasted three hours and by the time C came home, all my chores were done and I even had a plate of cookies waiting for him. Amazing how much I can accomplish when one child is sleeping! The other one (the older one) is pretty good at entertaining himself as long as I'm busy doing something (read: if I sit down, he's all over me, hence the reason I don't blog much.)

But back to the cookies. Since we only have one cookie sheet, I couldn't bake up all the dough at once. We probably don't need them all baked up anyway, but I didn't cut the recipe down, so after putting a few in the oven, I had a lot of dough left over. What to do? I froze it. I portioned it out, rolled it into balls, and froze it on parchment paper. Once frozen, I transferred the balls to a ziploc freezer bag and voilà! do-it-yourself break-n-bake cookie dough! I feel very clever ;-) (Gotta give credit where it's due: I had a little help from the The America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook for the recipe, freezing instructions, and revised baking instructions. Love that book.)

There's a Fungus Among Us

(I have been meaning to get on here and tell you about this, but every time I've sat down at the computer in the last five days, I find myself doing 20 other things that are more important and then I run out of time to blog! But this time I remembered to blog first.)

We were on vacation in California for two weeks. The kitties were taken care of during that time, so all's well on that front. However, I did leave a few dirty diapers in each of the diaper pails (because, let's face it, that's life). The couple in the 'messies' pail were fine ("fine" being relative, I suppose), but I noticed some fuzzy stuff growing in the 'wets' pail. When I dumped the contents into the washer, I discovered not only white fuzzy stuff, but pink stuff too, and a mushroom that was 8 inches long. Raise your hand if you're grossed out, but a little fascinated too... Who would've thought a mushroom would grow on urine soaked diapers?? Normally I like to take a picture of these sorts of things, but it didn't happen this time (mostly because I wanted to get the crud washed right away. Do you know how small fungus spores are and how quickly they can spread?).

I have no idea how the fungus got in the pail. Any thoughts?

We don't have any two week trips planned for any time soon, but I may need to do something a little different next time I have to leave diapers in the pail like that!

Strollers

For a family who originally didn't want a stroller, we sure have gone through them! When we were expecting Zachary we noticed many, many cases where the child was being carried or walking and the stroller was a glorified shopping cart, so we decided to only use a carrier and not get a stroller. We have a Snugli that we enjoyed using and still have in the back of car. (I use it mainly for going to the library these days).
Here's Curtis carrying newborn Zachary into Babies R Us to purchase his crib (Sept. 07, Nashville)
Here's Curtis holding 11 month old Zachary while preparing dinner (August 08, Nashville) We now know, however, that to think we didn't need a stroller and could get by with just the carrier was silly! We are now on our fourth stroller in two years. Not because we wear them out, but we just can't seem to make up our minds.

This was our first stroller. A blue Graco LiteRider. (Picture taken on Balboa Island, July 2008). My mom picked it up at a second-hand store in California. We used the stroller so often during that trip to California that Curtis and I took it back to Nashville with us when it was time to go home. We used it several times and I have many pictures of Zachary in it at various events.

Stroller #2: a green Graco stroller, slightly newer than the blue one, it included such features as a one-hand fold and drink/snack holder for the parent. (Picture taken in State College, PA, July 4th, 2009). We flew back to CA at Christmas and my mom had picked up another second-hand stroller so that she'd have one when we visited. We had flown the blue one out so as to use it throughout our trip (our trips to CA always involve traveling to more than one location), but the green one was nicer, so we left the blue one (but WHERE did we leave it??) and took the green one back with us. Again, we found ourselves using it quite a bit, even after Zachary started walking.

Stroller #3: a blue Sit-n-Stand stroller by Swan. One child sits in the seat in the front and the older child has a place to sit or stand behind. When we were expecting Daniel, we picked up this Sit-n-Stand stroller on Craigslist (in Nashville). It was great: Daniel's car seat fit on the front and Zachary had a nice little spot in the back. Sometimes he liked to sit and sometimes he liked to stand. The stroller wasn't the newest version of the Sit-n-Stand, and I definitely missed the drink/snack tray on the handle. Also, the basket was impossible to get into, because of Z's seat, so I used a hook to hang my bag from the handle. It was also very long and barely fit in my Escape. But it worked great and pushed easily. However, on the trip to the Huntsville Botanical Gardens where I took the picture to the right (June 2010), I put Daniel in the stroller seat (instead of in his carseat) and discovered the rest of the stroller's shortcomings: the stroller requires a small but tedious modification to go from holding a carseat to holding a child; the seat only has a three-point harness (no shoulder straps); and the seat only reclines so far (because of the seat behind it). I also didn't really like that both children couldn't snooze at the same time. So I jumped on craigslist again...

Stroller #4: a gray and turquoise Graco DuoGlider stroller. What I like about this stroller: both boys have five-point harnesses; the rear seat fully reclines (read: baby lies flat); both boys have sun shades; the basket is accessible (and it's very large); one-hand fold; parent drink/snack tray. However, the reviews I found online said that it was a very heavy stroller and when it has two kids in it, can be very difficult to turn and nearly impossible to push on anything but flat, smooth concrete. I was a little worried about all that, until the first time I took it out. Even with both kids and a huge diaper bag, I had no trouble with pushing or turning, even on a grassy incline, and lifting it into my Escape was no more difficult than any of the other strollers we've had. So, verdict? I'm very happy with this stroller, if only it didn't smell like the inside of someone's storage unit.

The below picture was taken at Sam's Club (with my iPhone, which is why it's a little fuzzy). Zachary had fallen asleep in the car and did not want to wake up, so we pulled out the double stroller, fully reclined the rear seat for the sleeping child and put the wide-awake child in the front. It worked great! Of course, it only worked because Curtis and I were shopping together, so one of us pushed the cart and one pushed the stroller.

No telling if we'll be sticking with this one for a while or not, but the great thing about strollers is that Craigslist is littered with them and it's pretty easy to get a nice one for less than $100. (We didn't pay more than $60 for any of these.) Although it does sometimes happen that Z is walking, I'm holding Daniel, and the stroller is nothing more than a glorified shopping cart, I almost always pull it out of the car when we go somewhere. Having it allows the boys the option of riding, it's extremely convenient if they fall asleep, it's great for feeding them, and it allows me to bring my diaper bag in its entirety which I could not do otherwise as it's too heavy for me to carry for any length of time. So I've found I love having a stroller, I'm particularly pleased to have a double stroller for my boys (despite the two year age difference), and I don't care if you are laughing at me for thinking I would never need one :-)

House Update: Bricks

Since the last update, the windows and doors have been put in, and the exterior has bricks!
Interior: this is the kitchen (that's the island). I'm looking forward to watching this view evolve :-)

Father's Day Shirt 2010

Curtis has another Hawaiian shirt to add to his collection! I wasn't sure when I bought the fabric if I'd be able to get it done in time, but I did. It took 2 Sleeping Beautys, 1 Robin Hood, and 1 Finding Nemo (Z needed something to entertain him while I was sewing!). Unlike last year (post 1 and post 2) when I bought fabric on a whim and didn't have enough, this year I bought the specified amount of fabric, so the shirt is the right length. (Although when C tried it on it looks too long! I can't win.)
If I had read those posts from last year, I would have remembered that the pattern calls for much more fabric than I really need. Since I had so much left over, and C's shirt didn't take all week, I decided to crank out a couple more shirts:
Too cute, right? So all three of my boys have matching Hawaiian shirts! I couldn't get pictures of all three of them wearing them together, because it seemed like they were never all three wearing them at the same time! Z kept switching shirts, because he's 2.5 and it's his job to drive his parents crazy, and C was working on a painting project at one point so I made him wear an older shirt. The only one who wasn't going through the outfit changes was D, who's actually wearing his shirt again today because it's too cute. (Uncharacteristically, Z would not look at the camera; he was too busy telling his brother that I was taking pictures.)

Then I went back to the fabric store and bought just a bit more of the Hawaiian material (the last of the bolt) to make a skirt for myself as well as some jersey knit for a blouse. I got the blouse done but haven't started the skirt yet; I plan I'd like to get it done before we leave on our trip to CA. My new blouse:
Yes, that's the inside of our house :-) I'm standing in the doorway to the boys' room, and that's the kitchen island behind me. I'll get a new House Update post up soon. Speaking of our new house, another thing I'm really excited about is a dedicated place for my projects, including sewing. Because this got old real fast:

House Update: Much Progress!!

I have gotten very behind on these updates, so let's get caught up!

On Monday the 7th the pipes are in place and the area is prepped for the foundation.
The foundation was poured the following day. (picture taken with phone)
On June 11th, the house started to take shape.
The next day it's really looking like a house!
Yesterday's picture:
Yes, we drove by it again today. No, I don't have a picture because I didn't dig the camera out of the diaper bag. Not too much had changed though. Can't wait to see what it'll look like tomorrow!