Saturday, May 23, 2009

I gotta blog more

If I’m using this blog as a “journal” of sorts – to keep all my PotD pics and to keep a current record of our daily life – I gotta blog more. That way there won’t be so much to read all at once…but here goes…

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Sarah’s been working on a bridge for school. They can use paper, cardboard, and straws. Then they test it at school to see how many encyclopedias it can hold before collapsing. Sarah has no idea what the point of this is yet, and it’s all learning by trial and error. So far, the best one at school held 23 encyclopedias. Unfortunately, it wasn’t Sarah’s. Hers held 5. So. Now she has to start over. Too bad she forgot to bring more materials home to work on it over the weekend with her dad. That’s par for the course with her sometimes. Anybody got any great plans for constructing a bridge that will hold encyclopedias?

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Wednesday brought another great soccer game! Here’s Becca’s big kick! She played her friend Sam’s team and they got a little silly with each other, but had fun, and that’s what counts, right? Don’t worry Dee – I do have some pictures with Sam and I’ll e-mail those to you soon. :)

Ed’s had kind of a rough week. On Monday night he played Ultimate Frisbee with the guys from work. The last time he played was a year ago and he pulled some leg muscle that bothered him for months. The time before that he cracked some ribs. Needless to say, I was quite relieved when he came home from Ultimate un-injured. Whew!

Apparently his friends were quite impressed with his athletic prowess after that Ultimate performance because they invited him along on a 30 mile bike ride on Wednesday morning. Yes. You read that correctly. Thirty miles. Or maybe they weren’t impressed. Maybe they’re actually trying to hurt him. Or maybe they’re so intimidated by his brilliant mind and coding genius that they have to show off *their* athletic prowess to him. I don’t know. But whatever it was, Ed went on a 30 mile bike ride with them on Wednesday morning.

He was kinda nervous. I was really nervous. I wasn’t sure I’d see him conscious again.

He finally called me THREE hours after the bike ride started. He had finally caught his breath. I was so shook by the sound of his voice (which basically sounded lifeless) that I thought he must be in the ER. He said he was in his office. I asked him how he felt. This is what he said: “I feel like I just gave birth and I’m really mad at my husband and I never want to go through that again for a long time.”

Yep. That’s what he said. I laughed. I did! I mean, seriously. It was just a bike ride! I know it was 30 miles and I could never do it, but there is no way in the world to compare it to childbirth, unless you’ve actually gone through childbirth and I hate to tell you this Ed, but standing by my side while I gave birth to our four beautiful daughters just doesn’t count.

Anyway, this is what poor Ed did on Wednesday at the first possible moment after he got home.

 

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Thanks much to Ed’s so-called friends who took him on this bike ride. He’ll concede – you’re all more athletic than he is. It’s OK with him. He’s OK with just being who he is. Just don’t ever make him do that again. Oh, but an actual bit of gratitude on my part goes to Bryan who rode slowly with Ed on the ride so that if he did have a heart attack, he wouldn’t be all alone. I appreciate that, Bryan.

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On Thursday, Becca & I spent a glorious afternoon at the park for her preschool picnic. My mom’s been having these picnics with her preschoolers for 20 years and I FINALLY got to go on one! Last year, Becca’s picnic day was rainy, and so was the make-up picnic day, so we didn’t get to go. I was so excited to go and spend this day with Becca and we had a great time. Teacher brought bread to give to the kids so they could feed the ducks and the turkeys and all the animals. The picture above is of Becca reaching out to her teacher (grandma) to get another piece of bread to throw in the pen. We also had a picnic lunch, played games (including my favorite – the wheelbarrow race. Becca giggled so hard she couldn’t keep herself up!), played on the playground, climbed the tower, and blew bubbles. Then our friend treated us to a stop at Sonic for milkshakes on the way home. What a beautiful day!

On Friday, Bethany & I spent a glorious day on the beach and at the local marine life center for her field trip! It’s a field trip I remember going on in third grade and one that I was able to go on with Sarah, so it was awesome to also go this year with Bethany. We spent the morning on the beach and the tide was out really far, so we saw tons of stuff. Bethany knew so much about the creatures, and was not at all squeamish about touching the sea creatures, so we just had so. much. fun. We saw sea stars, sea anemones, tube worms, sand dollars, crabs, herons, sea urchins, chitons, limpets, and more, I’m sure. Then we had our picnic on a driftwood log on the beach and headed over to the marine life center where they have a touch tank and all sorts of stations with tanks to watch other creatures. The coolest part of that was watching the live barnacles moving their…tentacles…or arms…or feelers…or whatever that was through the water out of their shell. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything other than a barnacle shell on a rock. I’ve never seen the actual animal before! It was awesome.

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That’s Bethany picking up the first sea star she found. I think one of her classmates counted 64 purple sea stars, and I’m sure there were hundreds of sand dollars in the one mud pool, so we really saw a lot of stuff.

Today I worked on the bathroom. As some of you know, I’ve been painting the bathroom. I’ve painted that bathroom 3 times this past week.

 

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That’s right. It’s white. I’ve painted it 3 times and it’s white. Here’s the story. I painted it brown. Except it looked pink. It was hideous. The whole family agreed. So. I got more paint. Tried that on just one wall. Didn’t look better. I tried mixing some white paint and black paint into the second pinky-brown paint. Painted that one two walls. Looked a little better, but not really. So. I got some primer and today I painted two coats of white primer over it all. And now it’s white. Just like when I started. Only worse because it’s primer and not real paint. And I still have to choose a brown.

2 comments:

Rachael said...

Poor Ed - 30 miles. I agree, that still doesn't compare to childbirth (especially if they are like mine and you're in labor for 15 hours)

Love the pics. Such a fun life you lead - and busy, as well - but so exciting with all the events you get to go to with your girls.

Sorry, about the paint job. I know some places allow you to bring sample paint home where you just paint a square of paint on the wall and that way you don't have to buy a gallon of paint and end up not liking it. OR maybe a friend of yours has a brown they painted and you can just choose their color if you like it :) I still have to get to painting our bedroom and master bath one of these days.....

Ed / Julie said...

Hey Rachael! I did try a few samples, but all I could get were pre-mixed, so I couldn't just try the color I picked. Of course, about 3 days after I picked the color, the store got in the sample-sizes of the tint base to mix any color. :P I got the paint at the lumberyard where my dad works and they just got this paint stuff, so it's kind of all new to them. I also borrowed all my friend's beige/brown from her house and tried those first too, and they were all too orange for that room. I've always had trouble in this house with anything in the brown realm because of the strange color of the wood trim and dors. It's nice, but you have to go with an opposite color on the walls because getting something kind of close, but not exact just looks awful. Anyway, Ed & I decided yesterday that maybe we're going to go with a very pale lime green instead. I like color and Ed thinks, and now I agree, that any brown is going to be too dark in that small room with no windows. So, this week it's my goal to find a pale lime green that will work with the towels and such that I have in there! Yikes. What color do you want in your master bed and bath? I used a sea blue - it's very peaceful and I absolutely love it. We have black furniture and a white duvet with a blue & white quilt folded over the end that Ed's mom made for us. The bathroom is an ocean-theme and we really love how it turned out. Took me 13 years to "do" our bedroom, but it was worth the wait! Good luck with yours!