Yeah, yeah, yeah, get off my back...

So as you may have noticed, it's been a little while since I last posted a blog update. I know. I've been meaning to, and we keep doing cool thinks and I keep thinking it's going to be so fun to do a post about this, and then I remember what all i have to blog before we can get to it, and I get all kinds of overwhelmed and just scrap it for another day. Anyway. It's another day, I've forced myself. And I've decided to just throw all of August into one giant post since once I've over that it'll be a lot easier to get some of the smaller posts finished. Okay, done with my whining, on with my typing...

We (being me and the kids, because someone has to work to allow us to do this stuff...) went home for THE. ENTIRE. MONTH. OF. AUGUST. Bottom line: it was FAN.FREAKIN.TASTIC. This wasn't just a "Hey, my work travels well, lets go to Seattle for a month" kind of trip, it was a "My cousin is getting married, half of us are in the wedding, and by God, I'm not missing a moment of this" kind of trip home. And I don't think there was one thing we missed out on. We got out there the 31st of July, and didn't come home till September 1st.

First up on the list was just enjoying the fact that we didn't have to cram a million things into two week's worth of vacation. So we went to watch a bit of my brother Ben's swim team practice at a pool that Jeff and I both have spent many hours in.

After Ben was done with practice, we got the kids into their swim stuff and hopped in with him. This is the same pool that I did two swim team's worth of practice in, Jeff did his diving and water polo in, while we were in high school. Oh, and there's this whole other lifeguarding/swim instructing thing that we did there through high school (and beyond for me) too. Yeah, you could say that this pool is partially responsible for the existence of my kids. It was like a crazy homecoming, life coming full circle kind of thing for me. Except for the power-trippy, lifeguard, who clearly didn't know my history with this building, gosh I hope I wasn't like that as a guard. It was really cool watching my brother enjoy swimming so much too, it's pretty clear that us Schwabs are good in the water, my only regret was that I didn't race him. I fear that as he goes into middle school this year, my day's of being able to beat him are quickly passing me by.

Then there was the bridal shower, but I was far too busy helping Lori carry out the party to stop for 4 seconds and take a picture. Moving quickly on to the bachelorette party. If you weren't there then you don't know, and that's all I'm saying about that, other than that it was beyond amazing and so much fun. Having all of us together was like the stars aligning just right, I don't think this has happened since my wedding more than 7 years ago.

I also was part of the birth of what will hopefully become a family tradition, the maiden party of Merv, the party gnome. I swear one of these day's I'm going to create a facebook page for him and all of his awesomeness. That way I can keep up with him from many miles away. Maybe one day someone will drive him out my way... hint hint.


Getting back from the bachelorette party, it was time to get on some real wedding seriousness, like baking a million delicious rosemary cookies that Amanda used as her favors. The really special thing about baking cookies, is this is where the flower girl truly fell in love with the bride. I mean seriously, we had talked with Haley about her responsibilities, but Amanda might as well have been a unicorn as far as Haley was concerned. Amanda showed up that night with a cupcake apron for her to borrow and let her help her all night long baking the cookies. LOVE.

Once the cookie baking was done, Haley cuddled up with "Pumpa" and got ready for bed. Prior to staying at my Aunt Linda's house while she was on vacation, we stayed two of the best weeks of my life with my dad. He really got to spend some quality time getting to know the kids and vise versa. It was perfect, there just aren't any words for it. On a side note, the cookie night ended perfectly, Dad showing his sisters Tosh.O. We had been watching this show and any re-runs and on-demand that we could find and just peeing ourselves wishing everyone could see it.

One of the things I was most looking forward to with wedding prep was taking Haley to her first mani/pedi. While she didn't get the whole deal (we had to keep her attention level in check), she did get them painted. We walked in and she immediately picked the brightest shade of purple on the wall... yeah, not so much. We were able to talk her down to a nice shade of sparkly pink. She did great! I can't wait to take her back and do it again... maybe for her birthday.

The next day was the wedding, we took off to get our hair done and all dressed up pretty. It was an incredible day filled with love and the greatest family ever! Haley and I were so honored to be a part of it. As a side note, I wish I had pictures of all the silly faces Haley was making while she was getting her hair done, I know I'm biased, but she was the cutest flower girl around (lots of other people said so too, though).

Three generations getting ready for the wedding. By the way, LOVED my hair that day. I need to pay someone to make my hair look like that everyday. This is my Aunt Judy (mother of the bride) helping cut the strings out of my dress. Jeff joined us for the wedding but left the next day to go on a week long fishing trip for salmon in Oregon.

From weddings, we went to farms. This is the Elliott Farm. They've known Jeff longer than me (by a long shot), and that's really saying something. If you know my son, than you know that he loves, all things boy, and that by no means stops for tractors, cows, and other livestock. So we never miss a chance to get our personal farm tour. This time happened to come with a ride on the tractor (hauling poo... does it get any cooler?!). Bruce Elliott is officially the coolest guy Kale knows, he drives a tractor and Kale also got to "help" him work on his house, which involved tools too.

Jeff came back and joined us for the last little bit of the trip which meant a play date for the boys. No, not Kale and Luca (his pre-determined BFF), but for Jeff and Sonny. Luckily they picked a great new park in Auburn and the kids had some fun too (though I'm not sure it was as much as the dads). This is one of the swings that fits many kids, Haley loved it, I'm not so sure Luca thought it was cool.

Here's how you know she's my kids. She loves spinning rides. It was painful getting her off of the merry-go-round to go do other things around the park. You couldn't spin it fast enough for her, and she had a blast.

Okay, so if you look at Krystal's facebook page, Luca is the happiest kid you'll ever see. He just really didn't think I was the coolest person in the world. Little does he know. But this is a great picture of Aunt Krystal, Uncle Sonny and (someday) Kale's Brother from Another Mother.

See?! Proof he was on a little bit of the vacation with us! The boys just loved running around the park together (this time my boys, not just Sonny and Jeff).

So the greatest vacation ever! I have to say it made me kind of homesick being around for a longer period of time. It really gave me a taste of what it would be like to live out there with my family, and it felt good. But then I came back to Colorado and it's nice here too. So I've decided that everyone in Washington just needs to move to Colorado with me. Problem solved. See you all soon!

YAY! we have real family photos!

So the day before Jeff and I ran our marathons, we took the kids, plus our nephew Alex to Alki Beach for a photo shoot with one of our friends from high school and her husband (they drove all the way over from Moses Lake). It was really fun and they got some really great, truly Seattle photos of us and the kids! You can check out their blog/our post here!

The LONG and winding road

So in order to get home for the marathons we had to drive - a lot of times for us, it's just easier to do that and have our car, and all the stuff we can shove in it while we're at home than to fly. We'll be doing this trip again in August. It took us two days to get out there and since we were lucky enough to be able to haul the boat home, three days to get back. Here are some highlights of the trip.

Before we even left Colorado Springs, Jeff grabbed a booger from Kale then showed it to him - this was his reaction. This kid is so expressive it cracks us up!

Haley doing her impression of Kale.

The Hampton Inn we stayed at in Tremonton, UT on the way home was so kind as to provide chocolate chip cookies upon check in. Kale looks like the kid who took 25 of them when, in reality it was just one. He liked his cookie.

The kids ready for bed in the hotel. This isn't even close to how they slept though. Haley cuddled with me in this bed while Kale and Jeff hung out in the other bed - Kale only fell out once.

Because this is how he insisted on sleeping. We can't be blamed if he won't let us move him to a safer position.

They both loved reading books, this was Kale's favorite! He's pretty into it, even though he hasn't cracked it open yet.

One of the highlights of the trip for me was going to visit my grandma in her awesome new digs - seriously, I want to move in too. She took us on a tour of the place, and then invited us to stay for lunch - she was the hit, with all her friends coming by to ogle at the kids.

Kale and Daddy taking a walk around the place.

Then he got tired and hitched a ride with Great Grandma on her kart. Downhill wasn't bad (thank God she has breaks on that thing), but going up was a challenge.

She took us to see her garden and I think this is by far the best picture of the entire vacation. It's rare that we get both kids looking at the camera and smiling! I can't wait to print a couple of these!

Grandma Debbie filled their buckets with water one evening when it was warmer and they were able to just play. These kids are such water babies, this is where they're happiest, just a bucket and a way to play with the water.

This is Luca, Jeff's best friend's son. Luca and Kale don't know it yet, but they're predetermined to be BFFs so we get them together whenever we can. And if things don't work out with Caden or Yanni, Haley's welcome to go cougar on this guy. We just hope that someday Luca has a sister - then we can officially consider Sonny and Krystal family. Also, please note that my kids are wearing bibs - they demanded because Luca got to wear one, they're just eating PBJs.

I (WE) DID IT!!

It's no big secret that Jeff and I have been working really hard at being healthy and getting into better shape. Last year for our Christmas letter I threw out there that my next goal was that I wanted to run a half marathon. Ours being a marriage of "Anything you can do, I can do better", Jeff upped the ante and decided to run the full (that's 26.2 miles) - I folded and stayed with the half. We chose to run the Seattle Rock n Roll Marathon and Half Marathon, because we thought it would be nice to have family there to support us, and honestly, we knew it would be easier to run at sea level (and why not get every advantage we can get). June 26th we did it! Let me say this again: WE. DID. IT. I'm proud to say that we both finished, and with great times to boot!

I went into this saying that if I finished that was great, then it became, "well, I'd like to do it in 3 hours", then it was "I think I can run the whole thing". I ended up running all 13.1 miles, and finished with a time of 2:32:15. 2 minutes and fifteen seconds away from two and a half hours. The competitor that I am, I know that I can do it in under two and a half and thus becomes my next goal (sometimes being so darn goal orientated can be such a burden - HA!).

The race was absolutely a ball. I got to run on places that people are only able to drive (like the commuter lanes of I-5), along parts of Lake Washington that I've never seen before and all kinds of other great places. Jeff got to run on the I-90 floating bridge and on the Alaskan Way Viaduct! The weather was perfect and the entire experience was more than I hoped for. The best part? Seeing Molly, my dad and Ben as I came down the finish line and their high 5's! Witnesses that I finished! Nobody tells you how emotional it is to finish something like this, I hugged my sister in the meet up place and cried like a baby! I did it! And, since I believe that no blog is complete without pictures, here ya go! If you want to see pictures of me actually running the race go here (there's one of me at the finish where I look like I'm going to die), Jeff running the race - go here (his are pretty cool).

At the start line we got to run underneath the Brooks Rocker's legs. I can die now.

Yes, I realize it's blurry, but the lighting was crud, and did I mention I WAS RUNNING?! This is in one of the commuter tunnels.

My first glimpse of the city! The end is near!

After Jeff and I finished! I'd been done for a bit, but I gave him about 5 minutes to stretch and sit before I made him take this picture. He did his race in 4:30:14!

My medal! I love that there is a coffee cup on it, and that it looks like the Pike Place sign.

Jeff's medal! 26.2 miles! I still can't wrap my head around running that distance!

Memorial Day Weekend, or That time we hauled a lot of dirt

So ever since we moved into this house with it's ginormous backyard, we've known that we wanted to create a vegetable garden to teach the kids about where our food comes from, truly grow locally and seasonally, and mostly, just to enjoy (literally) the fruits (and veggies) of our labor. And ever since we started getting bids on landscaping the backyard and a lady suggested a terraced area in that corner, I knew what we were going to do. It took us the entire 4 days of Memorial Day weekend to complete it, but I think what we came up with is far better than I ever imagined. The specs on it are that it took nearly a pallet of bricks, 6 yards of planters dirt, 7 bags of compost, 2 strings of soaker hose (that doesn't get used), many sections of portable fencing (borrowed from the neighbors), the top section is 13 feet from the corner, the bottom is 16 feet, and the total planting area is approximately 201 square feet. Here are about a million pictures of the process and what all we're growing in this thing.

Kale really loved the wheel barrow. "Ride? Ride?!" He would ask, then when it was full he would "help" Jeff push it back into the back yard.

Working on the first layer of bricks. Amazingly it's pretty level all the way across.

What 6 yards (or two hydraulic trailers full) of dirt looks like when dumped on a much too small tarp on our driveway. Dumping the dirt was pretty easy, but getting a pallet of bricks off of the same trailer was quite the experience - it's a wonder we didn't break the entire load of bricks.

Haley had to go in and change her outfit to wear a cami top "like mommy". Then just for good measure made sure she had her butterfly wings on so that she could be our garden fairy. Also, she has on her good patent leather white shoes - they're highly conducive to working in a garden.

The diagram of the garden. If you're having a difficult time reading it, you should be able to click on it to make it bigger.

The top level all finished, and with Kale's pinwheel that seems to be keeping the birds out of the garden. Or, "Critters" as Haley calls them.

The bottom level.

We went to Harding Nursery for all of our plants. The starts were the biggest we'd seen in town and also really healthy (until I got my hands on them). This is my Roma tomato plant, all of my tomatoes and the Anaheim pepper came with fruit budding on them already.

These are the "Sweet One Millions" a hybrid of the Sweet One Hundreds, that's supposed to be heartier and produce more fruit. I don't know if there's a cherry tomato plant in this world that will produce enough for me plus the kids.

My "First Lady" tomatoes, also a hybrid of the Early Girls.

A blurry but point making photo of my first bloom... a sunflower.

As we call them in our house, the Greeny Beanys. We're going to get some wiring or mesh for the fence right there so that they have something to climb. these have taken off already with their blooms and buds. We have 4 total of these plants.

One of my beans closer up. This should give you a better idea of the blooms they're already starting to get.

Hopefully soon there will be some buds in this area too. It's supposed to be three rows of Sugar Snap Peas, or as Haley calls them Sugar Peas. It's only been about a week and we needed a bit of a learning curve to figure out watering out here, but hopefully they'll be popping up soon.

They called this a Salsa Pepper, but upon further review, it's an Anaheim Pepper. You'll note that there's already a pepper that's pretty big on it. Hopefully we'll get it to produce a few more. Aside from onions our garden is pretty set to produce everything we need for making our own salsa.

This is our red pepper - these things are so expensive in the grocery store, but really quite cheap to grow our own. As of this morning there were about 5 flowers and two tiny peppers starting to emerge. YUMMY!

These are our radishes. They had a pretty rough start, bearing the brunt of our watering skills (or lack there of), but have made up for lost time and are really starting to take off and do well. You can almost see them grow.

The strawberries. We were told that this year we might get 10 berries, but to pinch them off and next year they'll take off in my garden. Our goal is to be able to make our own jam out of these next year (and also snack on them). So it looks like we'll be buying them for one more year, then we should be seasonally self sufficient next year!

Many years ago, Jeff picked Atlas up from training in Idaho and the trainer had a gaggle of bush beans that grew like crazy into HUGE beans. He saved some seeds and we're giving them a shot this year. Another item we're praying pops up soon.

This is our Jack-O-Lantern plant. We bought this one started, but we also have planted a seed from our pumpkins from Halloween 2009 - we'll see what happens. I wish I would have taken this picture this morning, it has a HUGE orange flower that pops out on it in the morning but closes up by the afternoon.

My Zukes! We gave these and the Cukes a wide berth to grow and spread in the upper area and I hope that's what they do... I really want some homegrown zucchini with olive oil and garlic on the grill! Oh, and at dinner the other night we told the kids that the zucchini on their plates came from our garden and they ate it right up - this just might work!

The cucumbers. Yes, they look pitiful, but if you had seen them the other day, this looks like they've come back from the dead. Everyday as we water the snot out of them they look better and better.

I think I was most excited about doing basil. I had some last year but never ended up transplanting it out of it's bucket. This year they made it into a full garden - this is the sweet basil, and I've already used some of it in cooking... Oh Yummy!

I also did a start of Italian basil just to taste the difference... I definitely like the sweet basil better for most cooking, but it'll be fun to have some to put into spaghetti sauce.

There were some other projects that we completed over the course of Memorial Day weekend as well. Things that just needed done around this house to complete the overall look of things.

This is a lilac bush on the side of the yard we only see when we visit the neighbors. Our neighbor, however, sees it everyday and it's pretty plain, and covered in utility stuff. She has a gorgeous front yard that she has really improved this season and she found that she bought an extra lilac plant. Guess where it ended up? Hopefully it'll grow (quickly) and cover up all those utility things on the wall.

With this 4 day weekend, came heat like most people in Washington won't see in a lifetime over the course of a 4 day weekend. It was great! So we decided to finally install a ceiling fan in our room to help circulate the air conditioning. Sooo nice.

Our home has a large, tall front porch and the light that came with it was just disproportionately small, so we bought a nice bigger one. The funny thing is that it came with three lights up in there, and we had to unscrew two of them because when all three are lit up it's like daylight on our porch.

Since we were replacing the big light, we figured the rest of the lights probably needed done too. So this is the one that's just to the right when you're looking at the garage - it has a motion detector which is kind of nice, even though our room is on the other side of the house. On our (Jeff's) to do list is to install another one on the other side of the house (which will require drilling a fairly large hole in the house and playing with electricity - so glad I married a handy guy!), and replacing the cruddy jar lights by the two back doors with a smaller, non-paned version of this one.

After quite a few summers of backyard s'mores, our old fire pit was looking pretty sad so we decided to replace it with this one, which should look good on a patio someday.

And finally, last but not least, was this project. If you know one thing about Atlas, it's that if it's bigger than 1 foot vertical it's his by means of marking it. Ever since we got an air conditioner we've had chicken wire around this to keep him from peeing on it. I'm neurotically convinced that if he pees on something that sends air into my house, the air coming into my house will smell like pee eventually, thus the need to protect the A/C unit. Jeff built up an adorable cedar picket fence (he's kind of a pro at this), to keep him out of it. It still needs to be stained or painted (an ongoing discussion around here), but there it is, and it's so much better than the rebar and chicken wire that was protecting it.

So there you go, you're mostly caught up with what's going on around our house. It's taken us a year and a half, but we're finally starting to settle into this house and make it a home.