venty

I don't know why my life feels so busy and crazy.
I'm really not loving this single parent/not living with my husband but for one day a week/attempt all the yardwork myself in this gorgeous weather since he'll only be home on the (forecasted rainy) weekend/can't figure out obnoxious beeping detector/house is on the market so I have to keep it clean and not really decorate for holidays/somebody make an offer on it already stuff.
PMS is not helping.

I can't wait for MOPS to be over, I can't wait to be done with Caleb, I can't wait for school to be out (or at least not have any more big heavy parental involvement projects), I can't wait to just move and get it over with. I hate that it's drawn out and stressing me out so much.

Easter is in four days and I haven't even pulled out the box of spring decorations, Easter baskets or thought for a second about buying, dying or filling Easter eggs.

At least the sunshine makes me happy!

a week with the wests

My sister and her little family were with us for a week. We had to say goodbye yesterday.
As usual, I was super lazy with the camera and I'm hoping snag some from Heidi since she and Gabe were much better about capturing our time together on film memory card.
We had a full week of just about every thing St Louis. Let's see... we did toasted ravioli, the zoo, Chik-fil-A (not really St Louis-y, but definitely a must in visiting us while we're here!), the butterfly house, a tour of Forest Park, frozen custard, McGurk's, carousels, parks, playgrounds, historic villages, the Arch, gooey butter cake, Anheuser-Busch Brewery, Busch Stadium, Old Town St Charles, the botanical gardens, and oh yeah, eight days seven nights at Chez Morrison where the kids (and Caleb) got to be buddy buddy with their newest cousin Levi...

sunny days

There's been lots of babbling around here lately without too many pictures.
A beautiful morning, lots of sunshine and a stop at the park'll switch that up for ya...



























































































































So happy it's Friday! Happy Weekend!!

nashvull

Since I'm too lazy to get up and get the other camera and actually look thru and organize pictures from the past few weeks, you get the Nashville report since that camera is within my reach and well, there are only a couple of shots from the trip. Um, only a couple from on the way home to be precise. I know. I stink.

We had a good long weekend. It was packed full and a little stressful and painful (be advised a five-and-a-half-hour road trip twice in five days is not the best thing for a painful tailbone) but it was nice to be there and get more of a feel for this future home of ours.

As I said before, Ryan's living there with a coworker in a temporary furnished condo right in the heart of the West End. As much as I've resigned myself to the fact that we are indeed a suburban family, dependent on block parties and street hockey and big driveways full of chalk drawings and yards for the kids to run through... it was so, so fun to be in the city. Everything from the garage parking and taking the elevator up to the condo, to being able to walk anywhere to get a bite to eat, etc. Love it. And I love looking out the windows and seeing the city. Especially at night with all the lights. I even love hearing the sirens and the helicopters coming in (which, living a stone's throw away from a medical university hospital and the helicopter pad, you hear a lot of!). Walking to work and walking to go out at night... seems so quaint.

What wasn't so quaint was trying to keep two obnoxiously hyper over-excited kids entertained and well-behaved in the condo. On the third floor. It's been a long time since I've had neighbors on the other side of a wall and underneath my feet. I felt like my whole weekend consisted of "shhh... quiet down... stop it... stop jumping... don't yell... do you have to laugh so loud?... you're stomping... settle down... shhh..." and on and on and on. Did I mention no DVD player or cable??

We looked at a total of I think twenty houses in two days and revisited a few on the last evening I was there. After awhile it all blurs together...
We haven't found our dream house yet. Well, I think I have but Ryan doesn't agree.

We didn't do anything very Nashville or all that fun. We didn't have much free time for fun time. Our dinners out consisted of McDonalds to let the kids run and play and CiCi's Pizza because kids were free. We did play some arcade games, winning some candy and prizes at the pizza place... woohoo, do we know how to have a good time or what?? And about half the houses we looked at were vacant so the kids thought it was great fun to run around a big empty house playing tag and such.

We had a pretty good trip home (after no less than four bathroom stops in the first hour) and made perfect time to hit the hockey game in STL. Savannah read four chapter books on the drive there and back... she had her nose in a book almost the whole trip home.





































I took a picture of this because it makes me laugh every time I get in the car...
Ever since the accident, I can't sit straight in the car, like to drive. I'm okay in the passenger seat because I can lean and situate myself well enough to sit tolerably. However, when I'm driving it's excruciatingly painful. So I sit on a phone book. It's scooted up a bit so my "tail" can hang off the back and there's no pressure on it. (which works wonderfully to relieve the tailbone pain. and honestly isn't too bad driving around town. for ten minutes at a time. sitting on a phone book for six hours, however is another story. i swear i have permanent bruises in a rectangular, phone book resembling shape on the back of my thighs. ouch.)
Anyway, who uses a phone book anymore right? But I managed to find one from when we moved in this house and threw it in the car. It wasn't until after I'd used it for a couple of days that I realized this "Injured?" page was staring up at me. Fitting, eh?

[and disclaimer: yes, we were in a minivan. no, it is not ours. we rented a car for the trip and the van was the only thing they had on hand -free upgrade!!-... ryan and i made fun of each other the whole weekend having to drive a minivan. not that there's anything wrong with that. i just so do not like them. at all. and i felt the need to have a bumper sticker on that said something to the effect of 'no i do not think just because i have two kids i need a minivan!'. ugh. no offense, but as posh as it was (stow 'n go, heated seats, satellite radio...) and as nice and spread out as we could be (more space to trash! was my kids' motto) it reinforced the fact that i just do not like minivans. i do not like the mini van, i do not like them sam i am, i do not like them here or there, i do not like them anywhere! even a long trip to nashville.]

Oh and my favorite part of the trip?
My streak is still alive. Yes, I actually made a seven hundred mile trip without having to pump my own gas. I have now, not only lived in self-serve gas station states for four years, but managed to make a seven hundred mile interstate trip as the sole adult in the car and still not touched a gas pump myself.
When it was decided that Ryan would move down to Nashville ahead of us, we both realized, devastatingly, that it probably meant I would have to start pumping my own gas. It meant the end of an era. 34 non-gas-pumping years down the drain. I mean, I could probably make it here in between his visits, but if we were ever driving down there to meet him? Streak crushed, right there. Bummer.
But. Amazingly I found the one gas station in southern Illinois that still has full-service. (and I only spent an hour online searching for it) It happened to divinely be smack dab right in the middle of my route to Nashville! How crazy is that? Meant to be I tell ya. So I filled up on my way down and rolled into Nashville with still a half a tank of gas. Ryan sent me off with a full tank and I filled up again on the way home. And let me just say how nice it is to once again just roll up to a gas pump, hand your card out the window and simply say, "fill it with regular, please"! Just like old times. :)
The streak is still alive, the game is still on, I still have my "thing" and I'm happy!

here

Man, did I suddenly fall off the face of the earth or what?!
Yeah, that's what five days in Nashville with no internet will do to you. Did you hear that? My husband is living with no internet. I was having serious withdrawls... have you ever tried to navigate a new city, house hunt, research areas and said houses and find things to keep your kids occupied for five days without internet?? Not. Fun.
They don't have a dvd player either.
Or even a remote for their tv.

Ryan has a temporary condo down there next to Vanderbilt with a cohort (ahem, *bossish type of cohort*) who also took a position down there and who's family is staying in St Louis to sell their house and finish out the school year as well. So there they are, these two "bachelors" livin it up in Nashville sans wives and kids in this posh furnished condo with floor to ceiling windows and pretty snazzy views of the city... with no internet, cable or even a tv remote.
Apparently they like to hang out at work.
Ridiculous.

Anyway. I just hopped on here to say I'm here, I'm alive, we're back and we're busy.
We got home late last night after stopping by a Blues game here in STL.
I was actually looking forward to a nice relaxing day catching up on some stuff (read: internet) here at home today.
Well my do-nothing relaxing day turned into the following:

• meeting Mrs. Cohort to pass off some laundry and belongings as she's making the trip down there this weekend (and you guessed it, the guys have no washer/dryer or laundry room).
• last minute pediatrician visit
• drop off rental car
• lunch/playdate for a few hours with friends here while we waited for the window guy (who was supposed to be here between 12 and 3 and of course came at 2:45) to fix a couple of seals on upstairs windows
• soaking up some sunshine outside with the kids
  
• impromptu St Paddy's party this evening with the neighbors with lots of kids running around and lots of food and a few beers

So yeah, I got a little sidetracked.

Here are a couple of pics from the "green game" I took the kids to last night to tide you over...



















(they handed out these green Blues t-shirts at the game, which thrilled Savannah since she was stressing about not having any Blues or green attire!)

























check out the time of the first goal here!!...

this post intentionally left titleless

I got caught up online looking for houses this evening, making a house-hunting list for this weekend, so I (once again) didn't get around to the blogging I wanted to do.

I will get pics on here this week before I'm even more incredibly behind.
But for now I'm headed to bed. I need to bank up a little sleep before we head to Nashville and all four of us share a room for four nights!

Just wanted to check in and say we had a much better day today...
maybe it was the 74 degrees and sunshine, or maybe we were all just better rested, or maybe it was just plain a better day, but whatever it was, it felt good!

(and thank you my friends, for your words of encouragement and offers of help! they are much appreciated!!)

Walked Sawyer to preschool this morning... and then met some girlfriends for a good long walk while he was gone... and then walked back to pick him up! Whew! Returned home to pile the boys in the car and meet more girlfriends for lunch and chit chat. Then back home to spend the rest of the afternoon outside with friends!
It was so nice; we had doors and windows open all day and ceiling fans going!

I hope real spring is here to stay!!

is it friday yet?

I had high hopes of getting some pictures on here today from the last two weekends of great weather (and in psyching up for the highly anticipated 71° tomorrow!!) but I think I'm skipping it. It's been a helluva couple of days.

Was I naive to think Ryan being gone would be no big deal?! Or is it simply coincidence that these first two days have been so full of chaos??

Yesterday was full of a crying baby, a crabby boy, a sick momma, getting the dawdliest girl on earth off to school, a leaky car, a messy house and rushing to a cheerleading program to top it off making it a really unhappy late night for all of us.

Today was full of the same dawdley girl, a teary little boy, a luckily happy baby, cleaning and getting out of the house for an agent open house first thing this morning, hanging out at the car dr, driving here there and everywhere, gloomy gray skies, and a pile of "constructive criticism" on our house from the open house. And a sick momma losing her voice.
Yes, my throat is still killing me.
And I'm so. tired.

So instead of real blogging, I think I'm tucking these kids into bed and making myself a nice hot bath and heading straight to bed myself.

Tomorrow is another day...

and so it begins

I'm hoping to be better about regular writing here now that
a) we're done with house stuff and just sitting around in a clean house all the time (yeah right!)
and b) Ryan's taken off and I'll be sitting all by my lonesome every Sunday night thru Friday each week.

Yeah, so Ryan's gone. He headed south this afternoon and starts his new job in the morning.
I will now be single parenting it 80% of the time.

Okay, no. I hate to say single parent because I do still have an other half to at least share -if not in flesh, then at least in relaying my day- this parenting with. A sounding board, a shoulder to cry lean on, a partner to vent to, a second perspective to glean from.
And he'll make an appearance most weekends.

Most true single parents really are on their own, 100% of the time, without anyone to share any of it with. And I honestly can't even begin to imagine that.

And then there are the people who do this all the time... this is normal life to them; the moms who's husbands work out of town regularly all week for weeks, months, years at a time.
And military wives; let's not forget them.

So I know I still have it much better than the different situations lots of moms are in. Heck, I probably have it better than lots of moms who do have husbands around all of the time.

*****

Last week Ryan took the kids both out to Build-a-Bear to pick out a new friend to make. He picked up a couple of the "build-your-own-sound" recorders, hid out in the bathroom and recorded a Goodnight, I Love You message for each of them to be stuffed in their animals. The kids thought that was pretty cool... now they can hear that every night, even when Daddy's not here to tuck them in each night. They've both of course been sleeping with them and are pretty attached to them even during the day.
















I went in to snap a picture of the kids sleeping with their animals just now and found this.

Savannah was really upset at bedtime tonight, crying and talking about how long Daddy was going to be gone, etc. I know it's not just the anticipation of missing her dad, but everything about all these changes all coming to a head tonight, this first phase of how it'll be for awhile. Even with my reassurance and comforting and her new kitty, she still basically cried herself to sleep.
It made me smile just now to see that she had decided to find and sleep with a pic of her daddy and our family alongside her new 'Goodnight Kitty'.


And as anyone familiar with the archives of this blog would guess, in true Ryan Leaves Town style, we have the first inklings of both human sickness and car trouble:

I woke up this morning feeling like crap, thinking it was mostly because I'd had a good bit of neighborly cheer last night (read: enjoyed a few too many adult beverages), but have come to realize throughout the day that no, this definitely feels like plain old sick. My throat hurt a bit the last couple of days and today turned into what feels like trying to swallow glass... I've been tired and achy and wanted to do nothing but crawl back into bed and sleep for the whole day.
Instead I dragged my butt around town; to church and to lunch and to Costco and back to help Ryan pack up and send him off and then to cheerleading practice and to take the girls out to a end of the season celebratory dinner. Did I mention I was tired??

Also, the car. Our perfectly well-behaved, never-in-it's-twelve-year-life-have-any-problems-except-when-Ryan-leaves-town vehicle decides to start leaking again. Ryan took it in for a regular oil change last Monday. Wednesday/Thursday-ish we noticed leaking oil under the car. Hmmm. So Friday he took it back in for them to check it over, I don't remember what they said but they fixed whatever it was (something easy like a loose filter or bad seal or something?). So they supposedly fixed whatever it was and topped everything off and that was Friday morning and the rest of the weekend there was no oil spotting. Until, of course, this afternoon as Ryan pulled out of the driveway to run one last errand, and I notice fresh puddles on the garage floor again. You know, of course less than an hour before he has to head out of town for two weeks. Ugh.
So I'll take it back in tomorrow. And hope it really is something they did/can find/can fix.

And so begins my (psuedo) single-parenting gig.
One night down, only three months to go...

chop chop

2nd donation to Locks of Love in less than three years...
(and three non-donation haircuts in between... this kid has got hair to spare!!)





































Just over 10 inches this time. Not quite the 14 inches she did last time, but she didn't want it super short.
Her hair was so thick that they cut it off in eight little ponytails instead of one big one. :)



































She's been waiting a good long time to get it done this year and she loves swinging around her short hair do!

struggling

I meant to get around here and post some pics and do some updating this weekend.
We had a fabulous weekend.
Absolutely fabulous...

and extremely rough.

It's like all the things I'm dreading leaving here when we move were all shoved into one weekend, in my face, for "one last", taunting me.

Kids riding bikes around this great neighborhood? Check.
Walking around the corner to the playground on a whim because the sun's out? Check.
Savannah having fun with her best friend and her squad of girls cheering at one last game? Check.
Fun lunch with friends at one of our favorite restaurants around? Check
Amazing night with a collection of the best of friends laughing way too hard and eating way too much? Check
Watching all of our kids play and grow (and be triplets!) together? Check.
Spend a fabulous St. Louis teaser of an almost-spring day at one of the best (and free) zoos in our country right here in our own backyard? Check.

I was really struggling this weekend.
Saturday night after our friends left (or retired to bed in the other room) it really hit me that we soon have to say goodbye to them. And while I know it's not goodbye forever, it's goodbye to nights like this. It's goodbye to the ease of hanging out and of watching our kids grow up together really knowing each other so well.
How long will it be before we have friends like that in our new home? How long will it be before friends just walk on in the front door without knocking, how long before friends are helping themselves in our kitchen and putting kids to bed in our bedrooms? How long before I get hugs like that on an ordinary game night again?
It'll never quite be the same.

And then Sunday, all the way home from our perfect day at the zoo, driving through the beauty that is Forest Park and driving through this great city, I was mourning the fact that soon we won't be able to call this all home.

Even the kids are picking up on this beginning of the "lasts"... every time we go to do something fun or "St Louisy" one of them asks (or points out) if this will be our last. Is it our last trip to the Magic House?, was this our last trip to the zoo? (no, we're going to milk that place for all it's worth for the next couple of months!)... the tickets in my purse to the Blues game in a couple of weeks will be the last one we get to attend here, etc. Sawyer even asked if today was the last time we were going to Costco. :)

I think it's just all hitting me because it's all "official" now.
Ryan's done working here. He starts working in Nashville next week.
The for sale sign went up in our yard last Friday.

I realized too this weekend, that while I'm suddenly feeling how much I'm struggling with all of these uncertainties, stresses and with all of this change, of my closest friends, one is ninety miles away, one is dealing with her mother's breast cancer, mastectomy, reconstructive surgery, chemo and recovery long distance, one moved her family to Nebraska TODAY, and one (aka: the husband) is about to move 350 miles away from me and his kids for about 80% of the time.

So in some ways I'm already feeling pretty alone in all this, which in turns makes everything that much more overwhelming.

Sorry for the downer tonight. I just needed to get some thoughts out.
Meanwhile, we are enjoying Ryan's last full week here.
It's supposed to be good weather all week and we have some fun stuff planned. I also have lots of pics of our fun stuff this past weekend so I'll get those posted this week. Happier things to to enjoy!