Bwahaha

Otter pop Wednesday

Room to play

The old shelves

In an effort to get our adult stuff into a storage solution that:

• holds more stuff
• holds more stuff out of sight
• takes up a lot of room
• encourage the kid to play upstairs

We picked white wardrobe units from Ikea and the saga of re-configuring the loft area began.  I packed all the items that were on the lean-to shelves from the single girl condo and moved them out.  They will flank the tv at the front of the room.  They will again hold our family photos, but now also kid toys.

The wardrobes will hold our table cloths, music, games,  and other random things including my stealthy box of Christmas gifts that I gather throughout the year.  The fact that I need a ladder to reach the top shelf gives me comfort that I can hide things from Lucy for a while.  I don't hide things from Jason, and can't shop too far in advance for him.  He's tricky.

Building the massive wardrobes was a Herculean task that required multiple trips to Ikea due to a faulty designer selection and a break-fix.  These units are 93 inches tall and 80 inches wide - they are now part of our lives permanently.  When we die, we can be stowed on the bottom shelf with room to spare.

After they were expertly assembled (I LOVE YOU JASON!), the next task was to stow all the music CDs into binders.  This allowed us to eliminate an entire bookshelf of cd's.  Sounds easy, but it was a tedious task and the desire for alphabetization was strong, but mostly the music grouped in alphabetical sections - not order.

Once that one shelf of music was moved we were able to bring one of the lean shelves back in and then start the move of the DVD library into the office.

  This 'small' project has thus far impacted the loft, the living room downstairs, the office, the guest bedroom and the closets in our bedroom and the hall.   Oh, and about 6 weekends and no less than 16 nap-work sessions.

This past Sunday, we made amazing progress and managed to move all the big furniture pieces that will be impacted.

Yesterday during my lunch break, I decided that the room needed more color and so I pulled out the wool carpet that we had been storing behind Lucy's bed and dragged it into the room.

When you see movies and some schlub rolls up a dead body into a carpet and then puts it in the back of their car to dump somewhere you should know that it is made-up bullshit.  The carpet alone is hardly manageable by one person, let alone adding the weight of a lifeless thug.    My plans of disposing of unwanted house guests in this manner are dead and require retooling.  Oooh..tools.  There's an idea.

Anywhooo.... I restocked the lean shelves with our trinkets and loaded the bottom levels with things like the lego bin, a tub of stuffed animals and when Lucy came home she ran into the room, stopped looked around and immediately understood that this was a zone to play in.  My heart soared when she grabbed the legos and the dolls and plopped herself on the floor.  

I hoped that if we got rid of the towering shelves of dvds and cd's that she knew she wasn't supposed to touch that she would feel like this was her space.  Mission accomplished.

We still have a few tasks left.  We'll be installing a wire curtain rod along the blank wall (at a safe height) to hang current art work and colorful play things and I'm still moving things around from packed drawers to the wardrobe.  We need to move some of the downstairs toys "up".

like this!

The toy kitchen will remain downstairs, but the bins of dolls and trains will come to the upper play room.   Lucy is welcome in every corner of the house (not the home office), but her toys need containment.  And if I'm too lazy to pick up everything at nights end, I don't want it in the downstairs area.

Our office actually looks more polished with the removal of the frilly Pottery Barn desk and the addition of the DVD towers, as well as the console piece that was behind our couch fits very nicely under the window and I've managed to clear out some drawers to give Jason more storage.

I'm delighted with our work.

Crossing the lines

Sometimes the technology demands of others force you to change your ways.  

I admit that I'm the last person on earth that is still using the Blogger platform to share my witty and amazing view of the world.  I am on Facebook and use YouTube to house short videos of the kid doing kid-like things.

I have a Google+ account, but don't really see the value.

I "Twitter", but it feels a lot like standing on my back porch and yelling very short statements to the universe.

I do not rededit.  When I see screenshots of other people's discussions I wonder why...

I do not instagram.  I think the filtered pictures are nice, but if you want to see my pictures, come to the blog or facebook.

Today...in order to post something on a blog I admire, I had to sign up for Tumbler.  I don't know if I'll be spending loads of time over there, but we'll see.  

I linked this blog to that account to "expand" my audience.  We'll see about that.

In reviewing past blog posts it's clear that I use to be funny.  However, mostly my humor was bitching about other stuff.  There's not too much time these days for bitching, so I have turned into the dreaded "Mommy Blogger."'

Soon all posts will be about potty training, cheerios and Elmo.

FML.

Ah vacation

What a whirlwind two weeks.

I had a trip to San Jose on the books and because of the (work) event didn't get home until 7pm on the Friday before flying out to Denver for our summer vacation.  It was a long two days and I was thankful that Lucy mustered a nap on the day we arrived in Denver.  For me it was a return to the early days of "nap when the baby naps."  that only lasted a day, but I like to invoke it when I need it.

Getting everything (most everything) ready before I left for SJ was prudent.  As it was Jason had to repack Lucy's suit case and distribute other items in our suitcases.  We always pack too much when going to Denver, but our excuse this time was the need for bike helmets and a variety of clothing options for our mini-excursion to Vail in the midst of our family time with Grandma, Papa and Grandmama (my mom.)

I swear that next time we do the Denver trip I'll leave half of the clothes at home.  (Don't hold me to it.)

We spent our time doing a wide variety of things, visiting family and friends, taking Lucy to the various kid locations like the pool, a kiddy amusement park, the Children's Museum and around the neighborhood to visit all the wonderful people who send cards and tokens on her milestones.

One afternoon, we traded Lucy in for a 10 year old and went to a real amusement park to ride the rides.  We promised the trusting grandma, whom he was visiting, that we wouldn't do any upside down rides.  We lied about that one, but fessed up and certainly didn't force him into it.  Frankly, I was more nervous but Jason was super excited.   He was a great kid and I know he had a blast.  Visiting grandma is great when you're ten, but getting an outing to roller coasters clearly made his day.

In the midst of our grandparent palooza, Jason and I grabbed a rental car and headed up to Vail for two nights. (Thank you Marriott frequent customer points).  The weather was questionable, but once we purchased an umbrella we didn't experience anymore rain.  Funny how that tends to work out.   Vail in the summer is about hiking, biking, walking and dining.  The first day we found a pub and made "friends" with the bartender.   He guided us to a place for dinner and we enjoyed our rainy afternoon.

We forgot the bike helmets, which ended up being a good thing as Jason had sprained his ankle on Monday and I think the planned bike excursion was going to hurt it even more.   However, I still insisted on purchasing the lift ticket to head to the top of the ski slope to take in the view.  We hiked from one gondola to the other and funny how at 10k feet that will kick your bum, even on a 'flat' walk.  gasp, gasp.

Our dinner the second night was superb!  The weather cleared up and we sat on the deck overlooking the creek.  As our dinner slowly progressed other patrons finished up and at the end of the evening it was just Jason and I in the quiet outdoors.  The inside of the restaurant was super busy and energetic but we loved the peaceful end to our evening.  Yeah Sweet Basil!

Vail has an amazing feature to make their hamlet more enjoyable.  Architectural standards... kidding.  They do have them and the whole village feels very "Swiss Chalet", but what I'm talking about is a free shuttle bus that circulates through the town to eliminate the need for a car.   It ran all day in late into the evening.  We parked the rental and didn't retrieve it until time to check out.  Well played Vail... well played.

We returned to a sweet kid Thursday before naps and were thankful for our time away, but equally happy to be back together.  Friday we played during the day and went to dinner to celebrate the Forty-Fifthing of TPgal.  

We returned home Sunday, but Monday was still a vacation day for us.  Lucy went to school and Jason and I spend time unpacking and putting our vacation stuff away.  It was a smart plan that allowed us to see a matinee before retrieving our happy but tired girl Monday afternoon.

We're back to real life.  We feel rested and are looking forward to the remainder of our summer activities.

Vacation Pix - Summer 2014

A tame ride

a birthday present for me!

Vail Village

Gondola ride to the top

View from 10k feet

wild flowers

looks harmless...

and yet.. super wet!

The summit at Vail.

Toffee Nut Bread Pudding!

Lucy @ the Children's Museum in Denver

Monkey Bizness Gym

Vail!

Vanity

The mommy vanity buttons tweak pretty hard when the super polite 9 year old boy (son of a close friend)after enduring a day of playing games aimed at a 2.5 year old kid asks "can Lucy come sleep over at my grandma's house? We'll bring her back in the morning. "

Thanks Sammy, but she (and I) aren't ready for that (and your grandma would kick my butt if I tried.)

He was so sweet and happy to hang out with Lucy and play the silliest of games (i.e. dried noodles as sand and Jason's 40 year old Fischer Price toys.)