Of Course We’ll Be There!

Last Monday night (the night after we returned from the 14 hour round trip to Lakeview) Ben hung up from talking to his brother Nathan (who is the head coach for Dufur basketball), looked at me with puppy dog eyes and said, “Caleb’s first basketball game is on Friday, in Dufur…and he’s starting. Can we go?” Of course. We wouldn’t have missed it for the world. We woke up that morning, dressed in our best red and black, and practiced cheering “Go rangers!” all day. That night we hopped back in the car, during Friday evening Portland traffic, and very excitedly watched Caleb’s first varsity basketball game. Sam and Seth were thrilled. It was a very special time.

My only goal of the weekend: to get a picture of the three of them…success! Many people in the crowd commented on how Sam and Seth “looked just like Caleb did at their age.”

  

Seth holding his basketball. The Friday night game was at 7:30, and afterwards the boys played in the gym with their balls for close to an hour. Yep, that meant bedtime was around 10:30, but it was well worth it. It was a very reminiscent time for the Morris’ as Seth and Sam are similar age to what Caleb and Levi were when Ben and Nathan were playing high school ball.

I worked very hard to get a picture of both Nathan and Caleb.

I still have a lot to learn about taking pictures in dark gyms. But not to worry, I’m sure we’ll be at lots more games this year for me to practice. Although the above shot is blurry, I still think the movement shown in it is pretty cool!    

Thanksgiving in Lakeview

Due to being very busy last week, I’m behind in blogging. So, caution, you may be iodated in Morris stories and pictures this week. Like I said, we’ve been busy :)

It wasn’t until the day before Thanksgiving that we decided we would take the 6 hour trek to Lakeview. The roads were clearer than expected, and we were healthier than expected, so we hopped in the car to enjoy the holiday with my family. Katie’s family was already there, my cousin Kristi was in town from Montana, and her sister Caitlin just had her first baby, Jack, whom we wanted to meet. It was important that we were there and we were thankful that all the pieces fell into place allowing it to happen!

We enjoyed slow, comfortable days in my parents’ home. The boys adore Papa and Titi, and I get spoiled with my parents not only helping with the boys, but cooking excellent food and allowing me to rest. We played games, sat in the hot tub, chatted by the fire pit, and had a wonderful time!

The boys love “playing” dominos. My dad killed us all in the game (which takes HOURS) and we all swear he must have been cheating.

Are we getting old or what? Ben’s comment to this picture: “You’re including that in the blog?”

The great thing about grandparents: they do things with your kids that you may not have patience to do with them yet…like making chocolate chip cookies!

A miracle! A decent picture of all the Ruda cousins: Clara, Seth, Aidah, Sam, Miriam. What fun they do and will have together!

Warming our hands by the fire: it was so nice to have crisp, sunny days (a welcome reprieve from the rain of Portland!)

Papa pushing them all on the swing: look at the joy on their faces!

Cousins Caitlin, Kristi, Jamie, Katie. The four of us grew up playing weekly with one another at Grandma Minnie’s house. It’s always fun to have a reunion together!

Proud Grandpa Tom with first grandson Jack. Miriam was enamored by him! (we all were too)

Potty Training…Take 5

Or maybe 7? 10? But THIS time, darn it, we’re doing it. No turning back. At least on Sammy. He’s so ready. And you’d think that Seth would be ready seeming that he was able to announce, “I pooping (loudly while straining),” twice during dinner at my parents house. Real classy Seth. And speaking of classy, check out this picture. Future trail blazers folks:

I’ve decided that potty training actually might be more about the parents being ready, than the kids (to some extent, that is). This past week, although it was quite busy with social endeavors, I went for it with Sammy. The days seemed SO much busier  because 5-10 minutes of every hour was spent in the bathroom having Sam go potty. Add to that an extra loud of laundry every day from accidents, and I’m exhausted. I made Ben go to bed with me at 8 the other night and slept soundly until 6:30. But, we’re close with Sam. Averaging one accident a day, and lots of successes…even our first couple of outings and adventures in the heinous world of public restrooms. Once Sam’s pretty consistent, then we’ll move onto Seth, whom at the time being is totally clueless and perfectly content with Sam getting various treats throughout the day, cheers him on, and tells people, “I not potty training yet.” Well, one outta two ain’t bad.

Nature Walks

Thanks to an idea in one of my favorite parenting books, The Toddler’s Busy Book, Seth, Sam, and I have been taking a lot of “nature walks” lately. What is a nature walk? Simply no more than the boys grabbing buckets and filling them with “treasures” on a stroll to a neighborhood business park. But to the boys, it’s learning to look around at all the wonderful things God has created and appreciating His workmanship (at least that’s what I’m trying to teach them!) They pick up leaves, rocks, pinecones, and any other thing of interest. By the time we get to the cute pond at the business park, the buckets are stuffed full and ready to be dumped in the water (the boys’ idea, not mine. They have a huge preoccupation with dumping things in water.) All in all, this a wonderful way to burn off some energy and enjoy time outside.

Ready to find some treasures

 

Seth (left) would fill his entire bucket with these red rocks if I let him. Sam (right) running up the hill to me.

Lots of special leaves here!

  The big dump

Like any good picture taking parent, I left the boys by this water fall to snap a few shots.Contrary to their bored expressions, they thought sitting on the rock was very cool.

My sweet babies: Seth, Sam

  This picture isn’t from the nature walk, but I couldn’t help but share it. The boys (Seth, Sam) are so thrilled that I’m finally letting them destroy my flower bushes. They’ve been spending their evenings tramping through, hacking down, and play hide-and-go-seek in these bushes.

Girls Weekend

I remember sitting in Dr. Derickson’s class at Western Baptist as he said, “Look around you. Statistics show that only 1 in 4 people who say they are Christians at age 20 continue that faith into their 30s.” That statistic has not applied to the group of friends I lived with my senior year of college. They are not only the type of friends that you pick up right where you left off, but after spending a couple days with them, I was encouraged in my faith and blessed beyond compare.

Friday morning Daylan, Leia, and Lindsey and I headed off on a road trip to Gold Beach, Oregon to witness our fifth roommate, Brenna, get married. The six hours in the car ride flew by as we enjoyed the incredible beauty of the drive dotted with fall leaves of every color, a fabulous lunch at a diner in small town Elkton, and tons of laughter. Brenna’s wedding was beautiful, the food (all made by her and her mom) was spectacular, and did I mention how much I enjoyed the fellowship with old friends?

I’m so thankful that I have a husband who was willing to take Friday off and watch the boys for me! It sounds like they had a blast (ate pizza and Dairy Queen in the living room while watching basketball). However, when I returned on Saturday he said a couple things that were music to my ears. First was, “I couldn’t wait to put them to bed at night.” Second, “I was even getting irritable with them today and kind of snappy.” Any mom out there knows that statements like these from your husbands make you feel normal and appreciated. When you’re at home with your kids all day, and then your husband swoops in for two hours in the evening, it is hard for him to understand why you are ready to explode at your children. Now, Ben fully understands. :)

Here’s some pictures of my wonderful weekend:

Jamie, Daylan, Leia, and Lindsey

With the bride Brenna: isn’t she gorgeous!

David, Brenna, and Dahlia (who brought the ring down the isle!)

We got up early on Saturday for a beach walk…what a beautiful morning!

What trip to Gold Beach would be complete without pictures in front of dinosaurs

    The park in Elkton where we ate a picnic lunch on the way back

OMSI

Thanks to groupon, we got half-off passes to OMSI for a year. And while I always feel like it’s quite the germ-fest (maybe that’s because we’ve only gone twice and gotten a cold and the stomach flu), I look forward to breaking up rainy days at home with an adventure to OMSI. Last Friday, my mom was in town helping because Ben had a business trip to Germany. I knew she would just love OMSI and would be a wonderful help with the boys, so we packed a lunch and headed out. Ben’s cousin Alicia and aunt Patti met us there with cousins Judah and Harlee in tow. What a great rendezvous point!

All the kids hit the new water display first (in hindsight, after going through the rest of the morning wet, we probably should have visited it last). I’m pretty sure that Seth and Sam would have stayed at the whirlpool station (as seen in the first picture) all morning. They thought that throwing the balls into the tube was the coolest thing ever. When we finally got them to move to a different station, Sam tried his hand at throwing the balls to the whirlpool from there, and tagged a woman (who didn’t understand the humor in this creativeness. Don’t worry, although I had a giggle, I told him not to do it again.).

Seth on left, Sam on right (check out those bed-heads!)

Skillfully steering the kids away from the sand pit while they were wet, we headed off to try our hands at some cool blocks. I need some of these at home—the boys loved them! I love the series of pictures of Seth and Sam building the pegs higher and higher; what great friends they are!

 

Mom was helping them create with these shape magnets. Sam made a flower, and Seth, a rainbow.

 

Master Bath Re-model

So, it took us 10 months, but it’s finished. Every detail done. It was mostly done after 4 months (don’t laugh), but there were some final wonderful details that I wanted posted, so I waited. And waited. And waited. And finally, we finished everything!

So, here’s before (well, more like during):

Here’s what we had to do: Thanks to a faucet that had been leaking for years behind our shower, the entire wall had to be replaced with hardy backer and then tiled. The front part of the bathroom (with the cabinets) was carpeted, so we took all the carpet out to replace with tile all the way to the shower. The toilet and sinks were disgusting, so they, along with all the fixtures, mirrors, etc. were replaced. The countertops retiled, the cabinets painted with new hardware, the walls and trim painted, a new door for my closet—did I mention this was our biggest renovation yet, and we’d never tiled before? And that our kids got sick shortly after we started and were sleeping horrible? And that the remodel that was supposed to be mostly done at the end of Christmas vacation took at least four months? Am I painting a grim enough picture of our nightmare renovation? But…we made it! And here’s our “after” pictures to prove it:

 

And here is my favorite thing about the bathroom, the details:

Do you see that closet door? Ben built it for me. Yep. Just how I wanted it. And he found that old window for me, for $10. He’s so awesome.

I love my little jewelry section, complete with my favorite print bought in Paris. In fact we used all 3 of our Europe prints to decorate…all taken from a different room of the house, but much more suited to this color scheme. Flower arrangement purchases at Ross for $7. Old vase from different room of the house.

I bought both the faucets online for much cheaper than we could find anywhere else! The oval picture frame was a gift to me from Ben our Christmas dating. And the little bird, a Michaels special, $2, cheap and wonderful.

I love these towel hooks! I bought them at Craft Warehouse, as it was going out of business, for next to nothing. And this is our final Paris print.

 

So, you’re probably looking and thinking, four months, really? It couldn’t have been that bad, right? Well, here’s 10 “tough lessons” we learned along the way:

1. Never try to work on a project that you know nothing about while your kids are on 20+ days of antibiotics for a sinus infection. Especially if the antibiotics make them wake up screaming periodically through the night.

2. If you are tiling for the first time ever, and your only instructions are youtube videos, never start on the wall. Trust me, do the countertop first, where gravity doesn’t matter.

3. When all your friends tell you to go with the darkest grout, believe them. Because after spending hours applying it, you’ll never change the color, no matter now much you hate it.

4. When you’ve bought 2 boxes of floor tiles, before you begin laying, make sure they are exactly the same. And if they aren’t mix them up a bit, instead of having whole strips of one, and then sections of the other. (And if your husband didn’t do this, and your come home after it dries, buy cute floor mats at World Market and hope no one else notices).

5. When they say to immediately clean all your equipment after using mortar, they aren’t kidding. It really doesn’t come off tools when dry. If you’re horrible about cleaning your tools, refer to #6.

6. Learn the way your spouse operates while doing projects EARLY. Ben doesn’t do well at prep work or clean up. I do. Unfortunately we didn’t learn this well until 75 % done with the project. Which means the walls around the shower were demolished without a covering on the shower floor. And lots of muddy foots prints were brought through the house. And tools were left with mortar on them because they weren’t cleaned well. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not dissing Ben…we just didn’t learn how to do projects well together until we were almost finished. I should have offered to do these things, because I’m good at them, and then he could have focused on the details of building!

7. Also referring to #6, scrape the mortar out between the tiles before it dries. Then hours won’t be spent with a box-cutter trying to chip away mortar chunks before grout can be put it.

8. When the husband is 6’5” and the wife 5’5”, it is hard to find a bathroom mirror that accommodates both heights. And no, Ben, we cannot put mirrors at different heights. That would look stupid.

9. You cannot replace your shower head fixture unless you know how to solder pipes (which we don’t and aren’t willing to self tackle). And a plumber will cost $650 dollars to do this. So, suck it up. Your shower head won’t be the great oil-rubbed bronze deal you found on Amazon 6 months ago and can’t return. Bummer. Not such a great deal anymore.

10. Best thing to occupy 2 year old during renovation: their own tool set, so they can “help.”