my weekend

oh my.  this weekend was just for me.

the husband returned home from his 10 day excursion racing the byu car in new hampshire.

so nice to have a husband back.

i bought a badminton set to celebrate the weekend.

celebrate the sunshine, celebrate cinco de mayo, celebrate the birthday & mother's day. 

  the bebe apparently has another use for the badminton set.  there seems to be a theme...

we spent a fabulous weekend together.

the husband didn't get home until late cinco de mayo, so making the pinata by myself, i just made a mini one this year. and we busted it open with friends sunday evening. the culmination of a great birthday and mother's day

and to this little guy i say:
thank you for the mother's day.
thank you for making me a mother.
thank you for unconditionally loving me and letting me love you more than i knew i could.
thank you for letting me soothe you.
thank you for smiling and laughing at me.
and letting me read you books,
and sing you every song i know, as well as quite a few i don't know.
thank you for helping me discover everything for the first time again through you.
it has been quite a year.  you rocked my world and totally changed my life, and i love it.

ps.  the husband gave me the most thoughtful mother's day gift. a new book for the little guy.  i'll be honest, i didn't understand or appreciate it fully at first.  huh?  i got a book for the bebe for mother's day??  until the next day, when i had a great new book to explore with evan.  ten points to the husband for trying to make my life home with the boy just that much better.

the car

 the husband has been out in new hampshire.

they spent a year building this car, and the formula hybrid international competition is the chance to show it off.

and guess what.  they came in 2nd overall for the competion. (more on all that here)  

and i would like to add, that they had to pass technical inspections, and didn't meet the deadline for 1 event and they still came in second.  pretty much that means that had they been able to qualify to race that event, i'm pretty sure they would have finished 1st overall.  that is pretty good in my book.

when they brought that fancy little car home, they had a bbq for family members to check out and drive it.

so of course, here is our little racer (pretty much wanting to get out of the car as fast as possible...)

worse before it gets better...

why is it that i have to make things a giant mess when my intentions are to clean then up??

i emptied the cellar and barn with the theory of cleaning and organizing.  suddenly our yard looked like a giant yard sale (or episode of hoarders - my worst nightmare!)

really cleaning and organizing also becomes the sentimental time to look through everything before i decide what to keep and what to toss.

 i used to be a keeper.  now it often goes something like this, "oh, sweet!  remember when _____?"  toss or d.i?  someday i might regret some of it, but mostly, it feels so good to not have so much stuff....


thankfully, with many hours of elbow grease - yea for the husband being done with finals!- we now can walk into both the cellar and the barn.

bonus: while cleaning i can hang out in my random cowboy hat.  and bebe can try it on too...

yes- all belongings were neating in place before days end.  and we were tired.

eggs

 i love that holidays are chances to create silly traditions.  we all got socks for easter this year.  i guess the easter bunny really likes socks!


and i love that the bebe gives me an excuse to act like a silly kid even though i did it long before he came along....

and apparently we are searching for our favorite way to decorate easter eggs.  each year we have done something totally different-  too many ideas for something that comes around but once a year.  and i don't love hard boiled eggs (or have the energy) to try them all in one year!


this year we tried natural dye.  the eggs here are beets, coffee, onion skins, blueberries, and dried chili peppers with tumeric (really the dried peppers were a flop, so i threw the tumeric in there to get some color going on.  spinach was also a total flop- white egg was not what i was going for.  

who is this guy?

the husband has finished yet another semester.  1 more to go... (for now...)


in true bobby fashion, he combined skill and creativity and created this beauty for one of his classes.

we have been thinking about building an abacus for one of our walls.  he loved the idea of kinetic art, and i thought, you know, that it would look good.  apparently we know where the talent lies in this marriage...


then when he had to do a project for his creativity class, just any old abacus wasn't going to cut it any more (in his mind) and the wheels began to turn.

my favorite toy in the doctor's office waiting room -random fact, i know- were those bead maze, roller coaster thing-a-ma-bobs.  he combined that with our dream of an abacus, creating a demonstration of chaos and order. there is even quite the word puzzle built in with history, our family, and who knows what else is in there.

yep.  i think it, and he,  are pretty great.

we should be allergic to peanut butter

remember when i got peanut butter in my hair?  before even having bebe to blame it on?

well, the husband did even better- makes that like ten times worse. except i guess he didn't make a public display of his...  so i've got him there... 


once upon a time i was mixing up our peanut butter. (you know- mixing all the oils in to that natural kind)

has anyone ever done this gracefully?

i usually approach it with a butter knife and gently stir it slowly, trying to get it to mix in and pray that i will not spill the oil everywhere, since it is like a millimeter from the top.

so bobby, the tool master, walked in on me, laughed and decided that he had to find a better way to do it.

and i let him.

he got the hand mixer out- put some crazy attachment on it, and whipped that oil in. presto.


i was impressed and gave him all the credit he deserved.

so the next time we opened a jar of good ole pb, bobby tried a repeater.

then i hear a gasp and a thud. and a cry for help.


power tool fail.  the mixer had flung the jar spilling all the oil (which is very necessary to not have serious dry peanut butter mouth).


i helped save what we could, and bobby began to mix again.

the next thud, was well, a thud/splat.

i can not even begin to tell you all the places i found peanut butter. but if you took an inventory of our kitchen from end to end, that would just about cover it.


poor bobby.  i was laughing so hard at him, and he was really not very happy.

all be wanted was a pb and blackberry jam sandwich for dessert...

the run down

the last two days have been so action packed, i have to journal a summary.

++ i quit half my job. we have been trying to work out details for bobby to get a job/internship experience.  i knew and hoped that would likely mean i would be quitting.  i can't stomach the day care idea, and juggling both of us having full times jobs and the bebe is more than i can juggle.  wait, i can't juggle- at all.


enter anxiety here- quit- lose a salary that covers the needs and benefits, or work and leave the bebe...  it was a cycle without solution...

then (in the temple- going to go ahead and call this a blessing...) it dawned on me that i hadn't approached the thought of going part-time.  i nervously approached the subject with my boss.  they aren't very keen on the part timers at my office, and he wasn't very promising. we went to a staff meeting later in the day that basically ended up in a restructuring of our whole team, and one of the other members asking if she could go full-time.

suddenly, what had started the day as a "what if" to throw in the mix of all our life decisions, became a done deal.

enter anxiety here again- i just gave up half my salary and yet to have a job for bobby...


++ the husband is a stud.

his capstone gave their final presentations on this baby yesterday.  bebe and i rushed over to ooo & aahhhh over it between my work mayhem..

did i mention that the husband pretty much was the mastermind behind this beauty?  there is a team that built this car together from the ground up.  and from conception to paint- bobby was the brawn behind the entire body.  it has come to be known as body by bobby.  


this is a time lapse video of a small part of the process

formula hybrid from Ryan McLean on Vimeo.

more to come on this later when the husband goes to new hampshire for this in may.

++ double bonus- this car being done = i have my husband back.

++ the husband went in for a second interview this morning.

++ this afternoon he got offered the job.  no joke people. part time at a local engineering company. part time me, part time husband + bebe = perfect.

++ anxiety slips away. 48 hours or less, months worths of questions and anxiety worked out better than i ever could have schemed.

++ starting prepping the garden for the spring crops. yum.

++ we have movement.

ten months + 1 day, and little mr finally decided to crawl.  made it across the room.  it only took him about ten minutes to do it, and some serious carrot dangling.

same day, he walked along the couch (with a death grip mind you).  yes he wanted my keys that badly.

++ this little bum got diagnosed with ear infection #2.  good thing he is much better spirits about it this time!

phew, what a day...