Painting in Missouri

While we were in OR I got a call from my friend Leah from MO who asked me to come paint a bunch of murals in a new church. (see the complete story and the rest of the murals on my art blog: www.melodyaa.blogspot.com or click on "A peek in the kettle" link on the right.)

The boys and I spent two weeks there and I mostly painted my heart out while my boys were very well cared for by our good friends. We did get a few moments of brief fun in though. We drove to this great new pumpkin farm south of town and got a few pictures and a jump in the blow up Thomas the Train. (I hate those things because they always smell like stinky feet, but Eirik love them. ug) The place was great, as was the company.



I don't remember what Eirik was saying here, but it was something that totally cracked me up. It was probably something like, "I know mom, we can go up in space and make friends with the aliens. It will be so much fun mom!"
I was so glad we got to go to the pumpkin farm since it was the only chance I had to see a bunch of my good friends. How sad to visit our old home and work so much that I didn't get to see our friends much. Well, I hope they all forgive me. I needed to get my kids home as quickly as possible. We ended up leaving before I was done painting because they had had enough of road tripping and we needed a break. But before we made the drive home we got to stay overnight with Katherine and Bobby. What a treat. I felt very spoiled to get the "Domestic Goddess" treatment with this awesome pumpkin penne pasta and homemade rolls, not to mention the great scones and other homemade bread she brought to help me keep painting. Katherine also did me the honor of bragging about me on her blog. I never thought I would be on the front page of a newspaper! Only in Kirksville!



Patty and Alana also came to visit me at the church while I was painting! Thanks ladies. You are such good friends! I miss you all!
Leah and Jo, how can I repay you for such an awesome opportunity! You were such great hosts and friends!
I was a bit worried about the 12 hour drive home with 2 babies, but it turned out great since I left at 7pM and drove straight through until 7AM. I've never had a Red Bull before and yikes! I was shaking like a leaf. It was awesome! :) I didn't yawn once. Plus I was so excited to get home. After almost 7 weeks away.. home sounds pretty good.

Utah

We have been home for from our trip for one week now, and yesterday it hit me that we are back to real life again and I have to say that as much as I love our life here in MI, vacation is more fun. (sorry MI friends, you know I love you, but vacation rocks.) I got a bit of the blues realizing that we get up in the morning, Paul leaves for the whole day and it's just the three of us to hang out together and (again; no offense to my awesome kids) they are fun, but I had even more fun when we shared a house with lots of people that we love.
We got to stop in Utah to see family on our way to and from Oregon. It was only a few days but it was like a big glass of cold water in the desert. I just love these people. I'm glad we will get to spend a bunch of time with them in Dec.


I love this shot of Kristen and her little chip. So pretty!

My mom arranged a trip to a goat and horse farm run by one of her friends. Eirik wanted to see horses of course. We got to milk a goat and try the milk. It was actually very good. I guess goat's milk is much better for the human body than cows milk. The goats were pretty cute too. Joren loved hanging out in the hay and Eirik pretty much complained the whole time because he liked the neighbor's black horse and not the brown horse we came to visit. What a picky child!






My bros Dave and Daniel got a rad new motorcycles and they let Paul ride them. Paul turned into a man obsessed. Those few moments rekindled Paul's true love. For the two weeks I was in MO all Paul did was research motorcycles. He found all the best gear, the best deals, looked into safety classes and licenses and emailed me all the links. Thanks brothers because even though Paul was sexy before, now he is super sexy.


Is Davy wearing blue socks? Yeah, he's cool. That's a mark of character if you didn't know.

This was the best shot I got. 5 of us look pretty unprepared, but everyone else looks good. Sorry mom and dad and Paul.. he he he
My boys and their adorable cousins! What a fun time. The red heads together at last. :)
We had a fun dinner on the porch. My mom made roast. Is there a trend here?

And we got to celebrate Davy's birthday! Happy B-day brother!
We thought his new cute girlfriend was pretty adorable. Hey Becca!

My bro Dave took one look at our ghetto setup and died laughing. Yes, we are that cheap. We didn't buy the equipment to play our IPOD through our car speakers so we scotch taped the computer speakers to the headrest. There are a few problems with this, the biggest one being that only the person driving can hear the music. So Davy hooked us up with the cassette tape with cord that hooks into the IPOD. What a sweetie. Plus he totally hooked us up with some great new tunes for the road. The scotch tape came in handy on more than one occasion on this trip. The other most memorable one was when I scotch taped my sunglasses to my glasses. (No picture available of this atrocity, however if you wish to laugh at me, be my guest.) I long for the day of lasik. ahhh... that will be great.
We also learned on this trip that those chargers that plug into your cig lighter are awesome for road trips. We kept our IPOD, phones, and comp all charged the whole way. What a deal. (Thanks Anona for the lend)

Oregon

Here are some photos of our trip to Oregon. We loved being near family and sharing in the day to day stuff with them. Eirik had fun with his cousins. Here he is with Jake and Megan. Aren't they a bunch of blondies?

We had a great time with Kiersten and Dave at this gorgeous state park in Oregon . We love this place! And we love these two amazing people too.



I want to blow this one up for our house. What a gorgeous view-(and thanks to my new rebel, not a bad shot either. )Pat and Steve prepared this awesome Sunday dinner for us.

They served:

Delicious Roast with vegies
Pototatos and gravy
Homemade Nauvoo bread rolls with homemade strawberry freezer jam
Green Salad
Green Jello salad with sprite and pears and cream cheese topping
Homemade plum juice
Homemade blackberry pie- hand picked blackberries
Key Lime pie
ice cream

It was all so very pioneer spirit, down home garden style, meat and potatoes goodness it made me realize that I probably shouldn't shun tradition so much and maybe one of these days actually make my first roast because there is a reason it's tradition; it's delicious. It was a lovely afternoon and we were so glad Grandpa R could join us.



One of the first things Paul wanted to do when we got to Oregon was go for a walk and the first thing he did on the walk was smell the dirt and insist that I did too. Yum! Yes we love rotting soil. It's the best.

I made a Thai dinner for the family with a coconut soup that called for all kinds of ingredients that I would not have been able to get here in MI, but there was an AMAZING Asian food market just down the street from my in-laws house. I used lemongrass for the first time and many other unusual ingredients. Sorry, I didn't save the recipe. I wouldn't have been able to make it here anyway. It was a hit as was the amazing mango sticky coconut rice desert I love to make.
It was Grandma A's 90th birthday while we were there so we took her out to Sherry's restaurant and we got to look through the scrapbook that she got for her birthday that had a card from every one of her descendants and friends. It filled 90 pages! Cool gift!
Paul and I got to take our kiddos to the art festival downtown Portland on one of his days off. What an amazing festival. They are very selective about who gets to show their work so you can always expect to see a lot of amazing things.. and we did.
Two of my favorites were Jamee Linton who does great landscapes and Cheryl Gail Toh who does encaustic work. We also saw Jill Platner's jewlely line at Twist Gallery again. I have loved her work since I saw it years ago when I met her in Cozumel. She's a really cool lady and someday when I have money I think I'll buy one of her necklaces and wear it everyday forever.

These are some pics from our fun day in Portland.
We also had a good time at the OR state fair. Some punk kids vandalized the horse stalls and shot all he horses with fire extinguishers so all of the horses had gone home. Can you say drama? Eirik was devastated. But we found some carved horses that almost sufficed... almost.

Iron Chef Extravaganza

So much has happened in the past 8 weeks. My head is sort of swimming with all the things I want to record and all the stories I want to tell.

Since I have to start somewhere I guess I’ll start way back in August with this awesome triple date that we planned.

We called it Iron Chef Extravaganza because whenever you add the word "extravaganza" it means that it is not to be taken seriously. So one couple got to be the judges/ babysitters/ hosts and they had the honor of choosing the secret ingredient. We all met at their house to discover the secret ingredient and drop off the kids. We immediately went to the store for our ingredients and then to our respective houses to cook within the 1 1/2 hour time limit and return to the hosts house ready to present the food. We were pretty confident going in that we would be able to put together a pretty respectable presentation. The real trick was that we couldn't use any recipes, internet searches or phone calls. Everything had to be right from our own heads and experience. It was really fun to work as a team with Paul to come up with an appetizer, main dish and desert. We came back surprised that the challenge was more difficult than we had expected it to be, but still pretty confident. We plated our food and were ready to go when we saw that our exceptional opponents had made homemade ice cream! What! We knew at that point that they had trashed us. We had nothing on them. The secret ingredient was Peanut Butter! We made peanut and coconut encrusted shrimp with a marmalade peanut sauce. Our main dish was a Thai chicken peanut sauce dish with cilantro and the desert was Hagan Daas Dolche de Leche ice cream with a homemade chocolate sauce with peanuts and toasted coconut. (Katherine's recipe from memory)

The Miner's made this amazing pork appatizer plate with a peanut sauce and raisins- so good!
The main dish was a spicy curry dish that I still have to get thier recipe for and the desert was homemade peanut butter ice cream with a peanut butter cereal (like rice crispie) treat bar.
They toasted us top to bottom but it was SO fun and all the food was good and we all enjoyed eating after the judges creamed us. :) Thanks you guys! It was so fun.



After we ate the kids did an impromptu talent show for us. We had some real hams. It was so fun and led to some adult singing as well. Not too shabby!
I highly recommend this date idea! I can't wait for Iron Chef II. I'm getting some new ideas up my sleeve!

This Motherhood thing never ends.

The morning of our fifth anniversary Paul said in an exasperated tone, "this marriage never ends." We got a good laugh out of it. And today I said the same thing to myself about motherhood. It just never ends. I've only been away from Paul for a week and I have had tons of help since they boys have been with sitters a ton, yet I'm exhausted today. Teething is tough no matter how you look at it. Joren is such a good sport but cutting 4 teeth all at once just makes hard nights. I think the boys are a bit extra irritable because I've been gone so much so when I'm around they want full steam every minute. Eirik has started the repeat the same question a gazillion time phase. I sometime race with him to try to answer the question before he asks it again the second and third and fourth and fifth and.... time, but usually I have to answer him 8 times before he stops asking. That's trying. :)
He also has picked up some attitude somewhere along the line. Yesterday in the car he said, "I don't want to go to church. I don't like it. It's not fair. It's not fair! I poop on you. blllbbllb. See I pooped on you mom." Great. The poop stage starts early. Of course then he feels the need to repeat the whole schenario over and over again while I try not to respond either way to the whole thing hoping I won't inadvertently reinforce this new very fun behavior. Also, Eirik has decided he is still a baby and he insists that I carry him up every flight of stairs and everywhere there is more than 4 steps of walking to do. He says, "I'm a baby too, I'm a baby too." and then he sits down right where he is and won't move. He did this on the beach in Oregon when I took the boys by myself. I litterally couldn't carry all of our gear, Joren and Eirik up the terrain to the house and he decided a block from the house that he wouldn't walk anymore. I waited and waited for him and finally had to take the baby and drop him at the house and run back to the beach for the stubborn little cus. When I got back he was still planted in the same place in the sand crying, "I'm a baby too!"
Today he ate for the first time in a week. I guess he only needs nourisment once a week. After thowing away meal after meal without a single nibble I can't help but get stressed about it. No morsel can be conned into his stubborn little mouth unless he's willing. Today I told him the story of the loaves and the fishes and after I finished he said, "I want a piece of bread." My jaw dropped and I ran to the pantry as fast as I could before he could change his mind. He ate two whole pieces and a big bowl of applesauce. I wanted to do a dance. Maybe he won't starve to death this week.
I'm off, gotta nap while I have a chance. It might be my only chance this whole week. I love Sundays.

Where did last month go??

Well I have taken a super long blogging break. In the past five weeks we have not slept in our own beds. We have driven over 60 hours in the car with two babies, and we have drastically changed our plans and had a great time doing it all. Since Paul is in his 4th year of med school (YEAH!!) we decided to take advantage of all the out rotation opportunities and get out of Michigan while we still can. (no offense MI). Paul has his sights set on an internship spot in MI so we hope to stay put after this year for about 4 more. So we planned a month rotation in Oregon and another one in December in Utah. A month is a long time, but we love both of our families and since we live so far away they spoil us when we come to town so how could we resist? I have been waiting to blog about our trip until I can upload the jeezilion photos that I took (including the photos from my new CANNON REBEL XTi!!!! that Paul surprised me with for our 5th anniversary.) But I can't wait anymore so now you have to wait for the photos instead.
While we were in Oregon our kids got to spend tons of time with cousins. Eirik learned a lot of independence because I got myself rolled up in a big ol time consuming design project that I just can't ever say no to. I am SUCH a sucker! My sister and brother in law have this big gorgeous home and they had no furniture or decorations... so I got the wonderful job of helping them spend their money on lots of great pieces. It was so much fun and so satisfying to make something beautiful. I love how in design it's like a giant puzzle. All these hundreds of little pieces have to fit together just right to make it work. It takes so much time to move things around and around to get everything just right. Anyway, if she sends me pics when all the furniture gets there I can post some, but let me just say that it was so fun and their house is going to be Stunning! They also hired me to do a custom painting which is totally flattering. Not only will they have their house decorated by me, 5 flower arrangements I made and 5 kids paintings I gave them but a huge painting for over their fireplace. They must really like my style. :)
I also got suckered into painting a flower scene on the walls and the stairs in the stairwell into my mother and father in law's basement. This was very cool because my grandpa did this in his house so I used to go hang out in grandpa's cheery storage room stairwell that had flourescent flowers and cobblestones on the stairs. It was so sweet and always made me wish that I had had a chance to know my grandpa beter before he died when I was only 6. I'm sure I would have loved to be with him. So this painting was for my in-laws house, but it was really in memory of my Grandpa.
It was strange that while I was painting the stairwell I got a call from an old friend in MO. She wanted to know if I would be interested in painting some murals in a church in MO that she is helping build. I said yes so on the way home from Oregon we stopped at an airport to let Paul fly off to MI to work and I kept on driving to our sweet little MO town and I started painting... and painting and painting and painting .. and I have never painted so much in my whole life. I have painted 5 walls with murals so far and I have 9 more to go!!!! It feels like I will never finish right now. It's a huge project. Did I already say that?
So, that's where I am. My kids are basically in day care while I paint away for a few weeks. And they are doing great.
We miss our home and hubby/ daddy though. Today for the first time in 5 weeks Eirik said, "I want to go to Michigan!" and I felt the same way. I will paint fast Paul. And hopefully I can show some pictures and give some adorable little boy updates soon.
untill then.... ;)

August rocks

A couple of things:

1st. Paul took his second boards test on Friday. He took two weeks before to study like a banshi. We're lucky that we have a study/ studio so that he can study at home or we would never have seen him. It's one of those tests that takes like 6 weeks for the results to come in. How can it take 6 weeks to score an online test??? So they make you sweat while you wait, but Paul feels like he did pretty good. Way to go Paul. We're that much closer to that enviable derm spot we're hoping for!

2nd. I just finished

and I'll just say that I was NOT disappointed. (except in myself for being a sucker for a teenage vampire book!) I am just so proud of Stephanie, a BYU grad with two boys at home, for showing that as moms we can make a difference in the world and come out with something pretty darn great. I love that it is a moral book through and through and yet still so intoxicating. Yeah for Stephanie! I hope she just keeps on writing!

3rd. Just some tidbits about our day and some pictures from this month:

It was a relaxing Saturday. It was good to have some of the anxiety of boards out of the house and our Paul back. He made a bow and arrow with Eirik that actually really shoots pretty far. Pretty impressive. Eirik was needless to say, very impressed and I'm sure he won't put it down for weeks. We went to a bunch of garage sales this morning. I found a big life size castle for Eirik for $10.
I also bought two huge bags of games and great toys for another $10. I got a new pressbox to make art out of for $1 and a whole bag of shirts for Eirik $6- just what I was looking for! I also found this sweet barn for $1! I love this. I think I'll paint it red and put turquoise and green and cow patterened backgrounds in the squares and use it as the inspiration for Eirik's next room... that is if he still likes horses when we move next. :)

Garage sales are so fun. I love the deals and I love having new things for my kids that barely cost me anything. For what I spent today I could have bought one new toy or game. Bargains rock!

The weather was gorgeous today. It was an easy 78 degrees with a soft breeze. We have 53 ducks in the pond in our backyard and for some reason they were playing all kinds of games today. It was like a cacophony of ducks and splashing and quacking all day. It was like the ducks had gone crazy. We had fun watching them. The day I took this picture there were about 13 geese too.
Around 5:00 I noticed a dark spread of clouds rolling in. I took my boys to the front lawn to watch the darkness roll in. The clouds were amazing swirling and spreading and changing so fast. We stayed out on the lawn until the raindrops started falling. I'm sure it will be a fun memory to look back on. Paul has been craving chicken wings so we went to Happy's Pizza tonight, and on the way we drove by a house with flames shooting out of the roof!! I have never witnessed a house on fire before and what a sight it is. As we were heading out for a fun happy night someone else's life was being burned up. Crazy how fast bad things can happen. It seems so fragile, this little life we have. I want to soak up every little drop of this time with my Joren while he is still little and before he starts crawling which will be any day now. It seems like as soon as he can crawl, he's just not quite so dependent on his momma for every little thing. There are so many moments in our little family life that I want to record so firmly that I will never forget, like today when Eirik charged through the door of his new castle decked head to toe in his homemade weapons and armor to fight the fiery dragon and save the princess. Or today when we pushed the furniture to the the edges of the room so that we could all demonstrate to Joren how to crawl and then when he pushed up into plank position we all erupted in clapping and he looked like the happiest and proudest little baby in the world. Or yesterday when the boys were taking a bath together and Eirik asked me to help Joren stand up so he could give him a big hug and Joren of his own accord pulled his little chubby arms up around Eirik and hugged him back and then they splashed each other in utter joy for the next 5 minutes.

Here are some photos of the past few weeks:

I taught a little summer art class in July for a few of the kids of some of my friends. I LOVED doing this. They are such great kids and I loved seeing the unique approach that they each had. I loved seeing their talents. I had to work hard to not direct too much and just let them work. I wish I had pics of all the talented kids that have made art in my house. I hope to continue this and open the classes to more kids. I miss it already.



For some reason I thought that the horses, weapons, dragons and knights were just a phase and that it wouldn't last very long, but I was wrong. It seems that they are here to stay... and stay and...... stay...
This was what he created as a make-shift bow and arrow. pretty clever I thought.
all his "things" he can't live without.

For once I wasn't the one playing swords with Eirik. We had friends over and I made them all shields and it was SO fun for all of us!

Peter Pan / Robin Hood costume. His makeshift whip.
Anything can be a weapon.. and if you're tricky like I am it can be used to get the dust "really hard."
Eirik informed me right before he went to sleep that this is how cowboys sleep. I had to get a picture!

We got to go ride the pony's at the park as a reward for some good potty training progress. Eirik named the pony spirit and acted like he had never not been an experienced equestrian.
Although 99% of Eirik's play has something to do with the aforementioned weapons and horses, there are those rare moments where other creative play happens. This was so cute when I found Eirik making a tower out of my bracelets that he explained to me he had "planted" in the cup and was now watering to make them grow. :)
This is our cute little friend Cooper who has truly learned to love books from his wonderful mother.

And I couldn't post without a few pics of this little angel!