Can't sleep.

I can't sleep. It's almost 2:00 in the morning, and I really can't sleep. There are a lot of reasons. One of the main ones is that the back of our house is not there. :) We tore it out in our remodel and will be putting in our new windows and doors in the coming week, but we didn't have time to put up plastic back there, so it's just a huge open wall. The weather was perfect today (in the 80s) and tonight feels just right, so that's been nice. However...see...there's this cat.

Her name is Chloe, but Ethan calls her Chuck the Cat. Chuck the cat is a stray that wanders around all the time and she and our cat gus gus have a very dog-like best friend relationship. They cry for each other at the door and run and play with one another when I open it. They have a little "love trail" through my front yard where you can literally SEE a place for EACH foot to go. Chuck the cat gets his name from our neighbor. Our neighbor leaves food on his porch for Chuck the cat and our neighbor's name is Chuck. Ethan therefore thought that Chuck that cat was Chuck's cat and now we have "Chuck the cat" and "Chuck the guy".

Chuck the Cat loves to be in our house. She sneaks in whenever she can and Ethan chases her back out again. All this to say that with no back wall, Chuck the cat is in for the night and pretty happy about it, but keeps making a crap-ton of noise. Nothing I can do about it, so I thought I would get up.

So...remodel is going great! Sam worked really hard today and got the back windows and wall torn out and framed in and the old floor removed and a new sub floor put down. Tomorrow, we are hoping to finish painting the outside of the last of the 3 windows and get to sheet rocking. It's going a good deal faster than I ever thought it would. The backyard is ATROCIOUS, but there is so much potential back there that once we have the time and money, working on it will be great fun! :)

So...Here are some pics....



This is the old house. blue asbestos siding with painted chipped and somewhat rotted wood siding underneath. Notice the storm windows over the wood windows. there are three and they are all different sizes and framed in with whatever wood happened to be around the person at the time.



Here is Sam removing the white wood siding and you can see my old vinyl bathroom window to his right. Notice the narrow back doorway.



Here is the inside of the vinyl window. You can get an idea of the not-so-great framing job someone did here as well. :)



Here's the new window from the inside. This window is solid wood and I LOVE IT!!! We are working on one side of the house at a time so we can pay for it out of pocket, but it will be worth it!! I think there is more glass in this window and it feels bigger! Sam just put the old trip back up, but we'll eventually trim it out in matching stained fir.

Here's what we did today:



notice the large HOLE in the wall? :) That's where those nasty windows were and where our pretty doors will be going. They are all three technically doors, but only one will have hardware and function that way...the others will just let in a lot of sunshine! :) I'll take some pictures of the rest tomorrow and post them. Sam got the tiny walls framed in and the header above where the new windows and door is going as well as put in the sub-floor.

I'll post some more tomorrow... I'm going to go try to sleep now. :)

night.

Geneology, I am doin' it....

So, most people know that I grew up LDS and was a devout LDS member through my freshman year of college. Having the large and amazing family I do and the strong values of the LDS faith instilled in me since I was a child, I have always been interested in family history. I worked together with my mom (mostly just copying her work) to put together our pedigree charts and family history as a teenager. I think we eventually got back about 18 generations!! It was a lot of fun...like a treasure hunt. I have always been one to love finding pieces of history and have always been inclined to leave pieces of my life for the future generations to find in their history searches.

I have always been a journal keeper. Since before I could write...mom wrote for me. I have them to this day. I am a scrapbooker. I keep photos and write detailed descriptions of events big and small. When we remodeled our kitchen I kept thinking how awesome it would be to find something from 1921 when the house was built to tell us about life then. So...I sat down and wrote a 6 page history of our family and what I knew about the house so far. I included a picture of us, put it all in an envelope and it's now between the wall and my corner cabinet in my new kitchen for the next generation to find. I write birthday letters to myself. It's true. Every year, I sit down and write myself a letter to open on my birthday the following year. I put lots of things in my letter. Hopes. Dreams. Accomplishments. Goals. Every year I find it amazing how much can happen in one year. It's beginning to slow down now that we are settled in a town and have a family and jobs, but things are just ever changing and for that reason, I look forward to my letter to myself every year. I hand write them and keep them in a file in my file cabinet. Once they are opened and read, I stick them back in the file and write the letter to myself for next year. On the 5-year birthdays (20, 25, 30, etc), I write one for 5 years later. I have two in my drawer right now. One for October 11th of this year when I turn 32 and one for the year I turn 35 that I wrote the year I turned 30. Some people may think this is silly, I enjoy it very much. :) I have started doing this for our son. I wrote several letters to him when I was pregnant and when he was a baby and am keeping them for him in his scrapbook for when he's an adult. History and learning about the past of family can be very fun.

This leads me to the reason for this thought. I was digging around in my basement the other day and I found the box of pedigree charts and family history papers that belonged to my mom in her search for her family history. There were letters and photos, birth certificates and marriage certificates. It was very fun to go through. Then, I struck gold...at least...what I consider gold. It's 76 pages of typed memories from my Great Grandpa Collins (on my mom's side). As far as I know, this is the only copy and it's a copy of the original. I have decided to type it out to allow me to have an electronic copy of such a treasure. I started just a few days ago and I have to say it's been SO fun to learn more about him.

I knew my great-grandparents well. I think I am unique in that way as I am sure that there are many people who have never met theirs. Great Grandma Collins taught me to play piano in her basement. Grandpa let me watch him build his doll houses and work in his garden. I can smell their house in Everett, Washington as I sit here typing. Grandma has been gone a long time now and Grandpa died a few short years ago having lived a very full life. I did get time with them both, especially great grandpa and I am very grateful for that.

His memory writings are just that. He doesn't seem to connect his paragraphs with any one thought. It's as if he wandered in to the type writer (or rather dictated to grandma as he didn't have a thumb...) and "jotted down" the memory that he was thinking of at the moment. One paragraph will be of swimming in the canal in the summertime and the very next one will be about the quarantines that were put on their house when he was very young. The following paragraph will be stories of he and his siblings and the next about winter in North Pocatello where his school was 3 miles away from their house.

I plan to transcribe every word directly as written and then attempt to put it together in sections. I am not sure there is enough information provided for me to do a chronological organization (although, I could probably map it out pretty closely based on what I know of his life already), but maybe themes or chapters. Or...maybe I'll just leave it exactly how it is and double space each paragraph so they can stand on their own as memories pure and simple.

I knew a lot about my great grandfather when I started this project, but I learn more and more every time I sit down and start transcribing. I knew he was a fire fighter as an adult, but I didn't know that as a young boy he and his friends and brothers blew up everything they could get their hands on. :) I knew he loved dogs and they had one when I was little (Missy), but I didn't know that he had the same breed of dog growing up and was VERY attached to that animal. I knew he had a compassionate heart and a loving tone, but I didn't quite know the extent. He sat and told me story after story about the trouble he'd caused as a young adult, but he didn't mention smoking behind the barn as a kid..... :) (hehehe...your secret's out grandpa, and if you were around....I'd be giving you a good deal of grief about it.....)

It's been a fun project. I guess I am just kind of nostalgic. I spent this past weekend with my grandparents on my dad's side. I was planning a visit to see them and my aunt and uncle and cousins that happened to coincide with a surgery grandpa was trying to keep secret. So...I went anyway and kept grandma company. Grandpa is home and just about as good as new and I learned a lot in my time with my grandma Donna. She has been losing her short term memory for quite some time now, but it's starting to get pretty bad. She'll have what my uncle Tim calls her "daily mantra" that she gets fixated on throughout the day until something (undetermined) gets her mind to move on to something else. I heard a number of fun stories and it got me thinking that I REALLY wish I had had a voice recorder with me so that I could capture some of those stories for the rest of the family and for posterity. I think this is something I would like to look into. I have a friend who often does oral interviews of family and friends and then transcribes them. Especially with the generational gap that we have in our society, I think it's most important that we remember and treasure the way things used to be. They lived through World Wars, the great depression. They experienced life without TV or computers. They washed their clothes by hand and from the stories that I have heard and read it took ALL DAY LONG!! My really old and cranky washer is done in about 20 minutes and I don't even have to be home! My great grandpa Collins and his friends had experiences as kids that my son will never have because in our world, it's not safe for me to let him out to ride his bike even down the block without being out there to watch him. My great grandfather and his generation grew up with each other. They had social bonds that were so tight, we can't even imagine them today. They had free roam and true adventure!

It's been fun to read and fun to learn and I'm excited to keep going. For now, I will share one excerpt and I'm sure I'll be back as I think on this wonderful treasure I found in my family history!

"There were no schools near our place so we had to walk about three miles to get to school. This was not bad but at times we did have some problems, especially during the winter. I remember that when the snow was deep, that the older kids had to go ahead and break a path for us younger ones. When the snow was three or four feet deep it did present us smaller kids with a problem. Later on they built a two room school about a block from our place where all six grades met in these two rooms. This lasted until they built a new brick school about a mile from our place and each grade had a separate room. I had a hang-up about going to the toilet while at school. Because of this I would hold it until I got home. Sometimes I really had to run fast and hope the bathroom was clear. This was a stupid hang-up, but that is the way it was and I always made it just in time. That is all but once."--Great Grandpa Collins.

The meanings of words and numbers....

The hours in my days that are spent with my son have been filled with answers (and sometimes no answers) to fun, interesting and sometimes difficult questions.

Mama, what does 'before' mean?
Mama, what is 'tomorrow'? When is 'last night'?
Mama, how many is 66? Is 98 bigger than a hundred?
Mama, how big is a five and a 0? 50? Is that a dollar? Half a dollar!!!? Like, you just tear your one dollar like this and you have 50?
Mama, when will it be summer?
Mama, how do you know what to eat?
Mama, how do worms hear?
Mama, how does our oven make things so hot?
Mama, what do flowers eat?
Mama, will you always be my mom?
Mama, what does night time mean?
Mama, are dinosaurs real? I mean...I know they are dead, but are they real?
Mama, why can't we see the moon when it's behind a cloud?
Mama, why do some people sing good and some people sing bad?
Mama, what makes it night time?

It's been fun and interesting to have a 5 year old. I've taken an idea from a Kindermusik blog (that I actually re-posted on my own Kindermusik blog) to make a list of questions to explore the answer to. We have made piles of skittles to see "how big" numbers are and compare them to other numbered piles of skittles. We have planted flowers, picked flowers, dug up flowers. We have looked online at constellations and talked about space. We have talked about our bodies and nutrition. I was reminded today by a friend on facebook about what I said the time Ethan wanted to know where he came from. I said he came from my belly. He knows about pregnancy, but he was only like 3 and I didn't want to have THAT conversation, so I told him he was a present for me from his daddy. I told him he was the best present I had ever gotten and ever would get. If I remember correctly at the time he made some comment about a quest to find a "better" present. :)

Being a Mama is awesome!

Triathletes

So, I raced in the first triathlon of the season today! Granted...it was a "mini-tri" which means it was really only 1/2 the distance I would normally race, but I get some "awsome-ness" points in that it's only May!! :) May of 2008, there is absolutely NO WAY that I could have completed even a "mini-tri". I don't mean do well, I mean actually cross the finish line! I did well today and most of all...I had a BLAST! I had to actually wipe the stupid looking grin on my face in order to focus on the small hill in the beginning of the biking section. I love triathlons. I love the rush, the people, the exercise. I love the push, the thought processes required, and the sense of accomplishment. I still hate to run and I'm still not very good at it, but I'm getting better all the time. I also hate the bike to run transition. Going from making very small, but strong repetitive circular motions with your feet for a length of time to taking long and even motions in the run is just about the hardest thing ever. Oh....and I got lost! I headed out of the swim (which was actually held in a pool) and got my gear on and headed out on my bike. I got to the first stop sign and didn't see any chalk arrows or signs posted, so I kept riding...for about 5 blocks. Crap. Dead end. I must have missed an arrow, so I turned around and rode faster than I had ridden (probably ever) back toward the transition area. I arrived at the arrow that I had missed just as most of my heat of swimmers were headed out on their bikes. So...I joined them. :) I passed several people once on my bike, which made me feel a little better. The bike is DEFINITELY my strongest leg of the race. Then came the bike to run transition. I don't run well (because I don't like to run yet) and, as I have mentioned, the transition from biking to running is a difficult one. Try it! Go out and ride a bike for anything more than 20 or 30 minutes and then get off and try to run. It's like spinning around in the living room and then trying to walk in a straight line!! My legs wouldn't work the way I wanted them to and I spent the first little bit of the run walking. I did end up running most of the leg, and felt good overall, but now I know where I need some work. :)

I can't believe that I love triathlons as much as I do, but I love them! However...I don't really consider myself a "triathlete". I look at the people who are faster than me. Those with better gear and better times and WAY better bodies and I consider THEM triathletes. I just don't see myself that way. Don't get me wrong...if you know me at all, you know that I am a very confident person. Sometimes TOO confident. I know that I work hard and that I squeeze a lot into a 24-hour day. I know that I am great at a lot of things, but sports is NOT one of them. However...I do it. I get out there and swim in a swimsuit in front of god and everyone, ride my bike in the right lane where oncoming traffic gets to make comments of the size of my backside, and run in public places where people may see bouncing that will take therapy to get over. Here's the weird part....it's working. I feel great! I am fairly healthy and usually pretty chipper and happy. I can play with Ethan at the park or in the backyard or run along side him while he rides his bike. That's really all I ask. I don't have to be a triathlete. I just want something that will push me to be better. Triathlons and the triathletes that race in them are my inspiration!

Today was a great experience and I can't wait to gear up for the next race in July and really push myself this year to beat my times. I am excited to swim well, bike fast and run strong. After all...I'm a triathlete and I tri like a girl!! :)

30 is the new 20

So, they say that 30 is the new 20. While this may not be true for some, it's definitely true for me! Now, don't get me wrong, I wouldn't re-live my 20's if someone paid me to. Not that I didn't have a great time and I really don't have too many regrets, but just thinking about it makes me tired.

My 20s were spent gaining 60 pounds in 9 months, getting into debt, drinking, skipping school, and flunking classes because I didn't want to go to them. Really, my 20s were spent making decisions that would affect the rest of my life. My 30's have so far been full of more fun things such as getting OUT of debt, losing 40 pounds in 7 months, drinking, teaching school and grading classes that 20 year olds don't want to come to.

My siblings say I am judgmental. I am...it's one of my flaws. But I have finally come to understand what my parents meant about watching someone make decisions as someone who has been down that road before and knows the better way. It's hard to want things for people that they can't understand the benefits of or things they don't want for themselves. That's where my judgmental attitude comes in. It's not that I am "judging" their decisions. Most of the time, it's that I see the path they will be on down the road if they make that decision because I have been there and paid the price already.

I have noticed this as a generational difference. I, being a 30-something, want the world. I want everything for everyone. My family, my friends, myself...I want the best of all of it and I go after it. I also try (too hard) to guide others toward their happiness. My mom, a representative of the next generation, also wants the world for people. She wants the best for all her friends and family, but she has learned that she can't MAKE people do it. She has learned that she can't HAND people their happiness (as hard as she tries at times). She, in her 50-somethings, is coming to terms with this fact. My grandfather will act as the representation of the next generation up. He just smiles and shakes his head. In his 80-somethings, he has learned that people have to walk the walk for themselves. He has learned, accepted, and come to terms with the fact that people are going to screw up. They are going to drink too much and flunk out of classes. They are going to gain 60 pounds in 9 months and date the wrong people. He loves them for who they are and wants the best for them, but he has also learned that it's part of life to screw up and everyone's got to have their own huge mistakes and there is nothing that anyone else can do about it.

He smiles and shakes his head and kind of giggles to himself when I express my frustration at watching someone I love make decisions in their lives that I feel are mistakes. He doesn't laugh at them. In fact, he might be laughing at me. At my desire to change the world and the course of people's fate. But he does it out of love and it's something I have come to see in his interpretation of people and desire in mine.

I got to thinking about all of this the other day in thinking about decisions of students, friends, family and most of all, my son. :) It was a rough parenting day yesterday. He's 5 now and he's fighting for his independence. We listed all the things that he would learn to do by himself now that he's five. He's going to ride his bike without training wheels, learn to read, learn to tie his shoes. The biggest one for him was pouring his own cereal in the morning. He'll get the bowl. He'll decide how much cereal and how much milk is enough and get more if he needs it. Independence. As his mother, and a woman in my 30's, it's my job to let go and let him make his own decisions and mistakes. Sometimes it's spilled milk. Sometimes it's too much cereal. Whatever it is, it's small in the bigger scheme of learning. Then there was the old "love and logic" standard argument about his coat! He didn't want to wear his coat. I argued. Then I remembered to let go, he went without a coat, he froze and he learned. Had I let go and allowed him to make his decision for himself to begin with, we wouldn't have had the power struggle and he still would have learned the lesson. Not the lesson of "do what mom says because she's usually right", but the lesson of "making sure that I have a coat when I go outside in case I get cold".

My 30's have meant turning over a new leaf. Putting my money in order. Getting my body in shape. Remodeling my home into something I can live in FOREVER! My 30s have been exciting so far. I need to remember that although I am in my 30s and loving it, my son is only just starting on his journey at 5 years of age and needs to make his own mistakes and fail on his own. I need to remember that the decisions that my family, friends, and students make are theirs and not mine. I need to keep my grandfather's face in my mind and smile and not judge. I need to learn to find the balance between guiding my son in his learning and making his decisions for him. My 30s are going to be the best decade yet and I'm so excited for them.

Time Alone

As a kid and a teen, I HATED to be alone. I didn't know how to be alone as the opportunity rarely presented itself being the oldest of 9 kids. I have always been social and wanted to be with people rather than by myself. As I get oldER I find that I quite enjoy my alone time.

Don't get me wrong...I love my husband and son with all my heart! I love my work and I couldn't ask for better friends and family. But this weekend, I had a night to myself (home from camping and Sam was still backpacking). I put Ethan to bed and was as giddy as a school girl with the idea that I could do WHATEVER I wanted for AS LONG as I wanted to. I think it's tied to the idea that I tend to control so much in my life, it's odd for me to let myself be. As moms, wives, sisters, daughters, and social humans, we sacrifice, we consider others, and we make our decision based on the others in our immediate circle...and we should. Our actions affect others in such a way that we have to live our lives with that in mind. In fact...the people who don't consider others before making their decisions drive me crazy! :)

So...what did I do? I read my book. I watched a movie. I drank a beer. I played on the computer. I sat in the dark and watched the lightning and listened to the little bit of thunder roll through. I slept wonderfully!

I used to hate to be alone with my thoughts. I let myself boss me just as much as I boss others and seek for control. So, this past weekend during my hiking and camping adventure with a great friend, she helped me to see a lot about myself. I would like to try to back off. Back off of my family and friends and also give myself a little more lee-way. I work so hard to have everything under control. My family, my work, my home, and myself. What happens is I end up unhappy. That's part of my negativity and pessimism. If I expect everything, I will be disappointed and unhappy with the results most of the time. Not that I can't have high expectations of myself and others, but I think I need to work on what those high expectations might be and how I can learn to deal with things when they don't go as planned.

Leaving me alone with myself seemed to have done a world of good this time. :) I am looking forward to a year that is full of excitement and learning and maybe I can learn to let go along the way.

I have a new appreciation of my family and friends now that I have spent some time with myself. :)

I enjoyed my time alone. I have some work to do. Letting go of control...on some small level to start. We'll see how it goes.

I'm a complainer

It's true. As I sit here longing to journal somewhere and wondering why I ever quit blogging, I log on and found that I hadn't blogged in FOREVER! So...I went through and read some of my blogs. Man...they were depressing. I basically log the details of my not-spectacular life and complain about things. I complained about being busy. That was the majority of the complaints. I complained about the weather, money, my job, my friends, my family, I complained. The entire blog is one complaint.

So...I resolve anew. I am a smart person with intelligent things to offer my future. I have intelligent things to save for future reading and things to offer to those people who have suffered enough already reading through my blog.

I'm a complainer. I will not make it my perfect goal to NOT complain. Not about work, about life, about money or family or friends. I will blog about my thoughts and hopes and dreams and ideas. I will blog about life and how I feel about it.

The end. :)