Welcome to our House

I figured that since we know we will be moving this year, it was high time I give you a tour of our house. Sorry there are no G pictures, but he is in a few of these, so maybe you can think of it as a "Where's Waldo" situation.

Here's the view when you walk in the front door. The fabric hanging up is for my next sewing project.This is a view of my sewing room on the right of the staircase.


Here's the formal dining room/music room on the left of the stairs.
Then down a short hallway is the kitchen.
It's quite roomy, except the pantry.
And opens up into the family room.
We keep it quite bare in there now, and quite barricaded. It makes for much less chasing on my part.
There's a little corner door that leads to the garage and is next to this hallway. Don't worry, you won't ever have to see that room when you visit.
But in case you were wondering, that other door leads to this:
I normally don't like wallpaper, but the stuff in there is quite enjoyable. That's all for the main floor, so let's go upstairs. We just recently changed the layout of this living area to help with child containment.
Off to the left is the door which leads to your room. Don't worry, I'll move the laundry before you come.
It's really quite spacious, and I already turned down the bed. (read: was too lazy to make it)
This is the guest bathroom, which is directly behind the couch.
The shower curtain was a recent addition. Your welcome. I stood about where the toilet is to take this next picture.
This is G's room from the doorway.
Ignore the pink on the walls, he inherited this room from twin girls.
And the master bedroom, from the doorway.
And from where G was.
On my right from that last picture is the closet. Because I know some of you are curious.
And the other part. Complete heaven, as those of you who are familiar with our last closet situation will attest.
Here is the master bath, which was the closed door you could see from G's position in our bedroom. This is from the doorway.

And this is from the hand towel rack. The towels are on the tub because our hardware has recently started to come out of the walls. I guess there's always something to work on . . . Well, that's about it. Hope you enjoyed the tour. If you haven't scheduled one in person, you should do so soon because the clock is ticking on our stay in Dallas.

Peripheral Tricks

My eyes frequently play tricks on me. At least, my peripheral vision does. And I'm not talking oh-I-thought-that-coat-rack-was-a-person type tricks, I mean I see people walking by me when I'm all alone. It was not as freaky at work, but those who know me won't be surprised that it's freaked me out many another time.

But it's not always bad, sometimes it's funny, like the other day. We were driving to Target and along the road we past many day care centers. Then we past one that made me pause. It was the Tequila Day Care Center.

Okay, it was really Tequila Bar & Grill, but my eyes had seen so many that they just assumed . . . So now every time we drive by we like to point out our favorite "day care center". Wonder if I should market this . . .

Y Zzzs?

The last few weeks G has had trouble getting to sleep. He missed his afternoon naps two days in a row. Which led to this while he was playing:no, Mom, I'm not tired . . . (He never usually does this, by the way, and he just waited there until I got the camera. Then once I took the picture, he popped back up again.)

He's fine once he gets there, but between his new skills and teething, he's had some trouble. Consequently, I have had some trouble with my sanity. So the other day when things started catching up and 2 1/2 hours into the afternoon nap all was still silent upstairs, I went to check things out. Here's what I found.
The sweet boy was still asleep, and very soundly. Normally opening the door is enough to wake him. Here you can see his little bum in the air.
Otto is sleeping too. Obviously, I couldn't wake up this sweetness, so I let him finish on his own. It didn't take long, either.

Happy Birthday

Guess who had a birthday?
Yes, that's right. And since birthday's are a big deal to me, I set out to make it a good one. After all, it's not every day your husband turns [add appropriate, yet flattering age here].

We went to a Brazilian restaurant for dinner. One that promised to be more authentic then the disappointing versions we had been to in the past. It certainly lived up to it's hype, and since there was a store attached, Johnny came home with a stash of stuff.He's on diet Guarana now that he's old. I don't like cake normally, but it was a birthday, and this recipe is delicious.
I didn't put candles on it because [insert fire hazard joke of your choice].
In addition to his food stash, he had quite a stack of presents.
Including his traditional sweater, this time an argyle.
Which G enjoyed helping unwrap. He did a much better job than at Christmas.
I deem the day a success because the next day I got an email that said, "It was quite possibly my best birthday ever." In addition to other things, of course. And who put this together?
That's right G, it was me.

Hair Cut!

Even though G doesn't have much hair, the hair he had was getting so long it was hanging over his ears, curling up strangely, and giving him some wicked bed head, so we decided it was time for a hair cut. Thanks to other toys we have for him that vibrate, he seemed to really enjoy the clippers.
But he was very curious, which made it difficult to get at his hairs.
He was also very distracted, which made it difficult to get him to sit still.
His least favorite part was the back of his head.
This is a lock of hair we cut off. As you can see he really does have hair, or rather, he did.

Fun with Friends

So my friend came to visit. Unfortunately, she picked the worst time-during the only cold spell yet this winter. The weather was actually worse than in Salt Lake City. It was bitterly cold and extremely windy, as G is pointing out.
So the first day she was here we went to the GINORMOUS mall by our house. Here we are browsing the books.The next day, we went to the 6th Floor Museum, site of the assassination of JFK. Seen here:
Disclaimer, these pictures were not taken that day. It was so cold that day as we walked/ran from the car to the museum G started crying and would not calm down until he thawed thoroughly, which took quite a bit of time. Poor cold boy.
I learned a lot in this museum. I didn't know much about JFK's presidency or his assassination before, just enough to pass the AP US History test in high school, but I left the museum with as many questions as factoids. The whole situation still has unanswered questions, and technology what it was, there is little hope of answers, unfortunately. But for you conspiracy theorists out there, it took three attempts before this next picture would upload to my blog . . .
The helpfully labeled "grassy knoll" slowed down traffic as we tried to get on the freeway. Everyone wants pictures.

That day we also went to the Dallas City Library which had originals of a Shakespeare Folio and the Declaration of Independence. How have I not known about this before? It was a great library. I wish I had more time to browse around there, but with a fussy baby and the threat of eminent cold, we couldn't stay too long.

The next day (the date the above pictures were taken) was by far the warmest of the three. We went back downtown to this museum which is now my favorite building in Dallas. It is the Old Red Courthouse and is currently the Dallas Museum.

Any of you who have seen my bridals will not have a hard time imagining why this is my favorite building. They were taken here, at the City and County Building in Salt Lake. The architecture is very similar.In the Dallas Museum I learned about the history of Dallas. And though I did learn a few things, my favorite thing was still the stairs. Though G did enjoy playing in the children's section.
So despite the cold we had a great time.

And we ate really yummy food thanks to some perusal of cook books and a quick trip to the grocery store. This is Pumpkin Black Bean Soup, with yams instead of pumpkin since there's a shortage and all.


G found a way to stay entertained while we ate.
So you're welcome back any time, K. And G loved spending time with you. (As did I.)

It's a Small World

I was at church the other week (like I am every week, Mom) waiting afterwards for Johnny to finish his calling. He is the financial clerk and counts tithing after our block of meetings. We could take two cars, but it's just as easy to keep G happy in the lobby as it would be at home. Plus then I get to hear the other ward's sacrament meeting, and it's usually pretty good.

Anyway, it was the first week of the year and I was helping G walk around the foyer, when someone brought their little boy out of the chapel. Happens all the time, so I didn't pay any attention until he said my name. Turns out he was one of my first FHE brothers in college. Man, those were good times. But it totally surprised me that he would remember my name since I wasn't very outspoken or well-known in that ward. The whole experience made me think of two things:

1) It will be very interesting to see myself through other people's eyes in the afterlife. I have had a pretty severe inferiority complex most of my life. In high school I was always surprised when people knew my name. And in college I was known to say that I was not the main character in my own life for several years. I think it will interesting to see where I fall in the character lineup of other people's stories.

2) I was reminded of the etiquette book from the 50's that I bought at a library book sale. A lot of the advice in it is fun to laugh at, but some still applies, especially the section on meeting people who you haven't seen in awhile, or people outside of their normal context. I have to say, my FHE brother did better than most people, but it is still difficult running into people that I recognize, but not being able to remember a name or how I know them. My book recommends saying your name when you run into someone and mentioning how you know them, if you know. I think I might resolve to be better about doing this, and being fearless about asking people their name and how I know them if I can't remember. I know it's acceptable in our culture, but I still feel like it's rude. I much prefer the re-introduce yourself strategy.