Olympics Wrap Up

The Olympics are over...The Today Show cast is back in New York, daytime TV is back to its usual boring self and annoying cartoons have taken over my airwaves.  At the gym I am listening to music again instead of the TV and my favorite standout moments are already starting to fade.  I would have done this post earlier so I remembered everything better but I found myself minus one two year old for two days so I couldn't stop with the productivity (between my last Olympic fixes).  I have been searching for the last week for  a box of 12 month boy baby clothes. I thought all the boxes of kids clothes were labeled and stored under the stairs but the 12 and 18 month boxes I found under there were missing things.  Most noticeably the several fleece sleepers that I knew Ben wore at Milo's size were not in the boxes.  I remembered some cute clothes that were also not there.  I checked and re-checked and looked in closets and drove myself crazy.  Justin said he checked the garage and didn't find anything.  Well, he just checked for cardboard boxes and it turned out there was one odd PLASTIC box on a top shelf in the garage.  When I blindly reached my hand in there I felt fleece.  YAAASSSSS! 

Finding this box inspired me to start packing up his nine month clothes (some are staying out because we have limited quantities of summer clothes in his size) which sent me spiraling down a rabbit hole of drawer cleaning, box condensing and donation pile making.  Some friends I know are having a fundraising rummage sale in a few weeks so I have already been making a pile of my clothing and some household junk.  This project took all weekend and was one of those things that makes such

a huge mess that if you stop and lose your momentum and see what you've done it can be overwhelming and a bit traumatic.  Just the act of opening the door to the crawlspace under the stairs causes me to feel a bit panicked because it is completely full so I had to get this wrapped up with haste.  But I'm satisfied with what I've done.  I could employ a part-time clothes rotator in this house.

Milo is excited to be a "big boy"! Once unpacked that poor box made it to the recycling bin.  I think it's been with us since we moved in 2013. 

Here is a picture of Allan that I caught.  He is wondering what the H3LL I have done to his usually pristine basement. 

Of course, I made sure to watch the Closing ceremony on Sunday night.  It was, as usual, filled with over the top excess, crazy dances and (in my opinion) mediocre music which I would never choose to listen to.  I did, however, enjoy the several parrot themed dances and parade floats (I think that is what that is?)

I think I found my Halloween costume...now I can match Tessa! 

After that performance, where the parrots formed various Rio attractions in marching band style, there was...ummm...some other stuff?  The flags all paraded in and then the athletes came in.  Some of them were carrying cups so I assume this really is a party for them and I would be all over that myself.  If anyone has earned a night of drinking it is Olympic athletes.  Then some dancers rode in on this float and there were singers...and dancers and athletes milling around and forming conga lines...

Then there was a fireworks display and it looked like the whole place exploded like an atomic bomb.

I think I'm blind. 

Of course, there was the handing off of the Olympic responsibility to Tokyo, and I have to say that the prime minister of Tokyo seems like a good natured guy.  He popped out of a vintage Nintendo warping tube like Mario of all things!

Here are a few thoughts that I still remember...

I watched an interview with Pharoah himself, Ashton Eaton and his wife Brianne Theisen-Eaton who is also an Olympic medalist in the heptathlon for Canada.  They are the kind of people you want to hate because they are too perfect.  But then...they were talking about their last days in Rio which they were able to enjoy as a vacation and how they travel all over to compete.  They have a tradition of finding little trinkets from souvenir shops which they...wait for it...turn into ornaments for their Christmas tree.  Gaaaaaahhhh I'm dying.  I love them. 

We saw a lot of coverage of the Jamaican track stars which is fun because they are some charismatic and amazing runners.  I took a liking to Elaine Thompson.  I hear that name and picture any number of Elaines and Thompsons.  Our farm neighbor woman has a slight variation of that name in fact!  But this Elaine Thompson is her own woman. 

Those runners are something else...it's hard to believe they are real when their legs move so fast they are a blur.  The U.S. and Jamaican rivalry is pretty fun too. 

Here is the they are owning everyone else in the 4x400 relay. 

Speaking of track, I saw a few disqualifications for false starts and other violations and...wow...how painful and awkward to watch.  I saw one runner being told he was disqualified from his bronze metal on TV.  He didn't know yet.  Ughhhh.  All the tears. 

I watched the Men's marathon on Sunday morning, the original Olympic event which started it all in ancient Greece.  I also saw the Ethiopian runner throw up his symbol of rebellion and read about how he may be killed along with his family when he gets home.  Ummm...gulp?  Someone help him?  Once again, I'm so glad I live somewhere where athletes can clown around and grin on TV and express themselves and not have to worry about being killed even though they do dumb stuff like stay out all night vandalizing gas stations. It makes the ongoing swimmer nonsense seem downright stupid.  It already was that.  Ugh, Ryan Lochte...at least my main man Nathan Adrian wasn't involved it that nonsense. 

See you in Tokyo, Summer Olypmics. Who knows where I will be in 2020.  I will have an eight year old...I feel like I was just hanging out in 2000, sitting at the kitchen table at the farm, with Napster on the computer and a tower of CD-R's by my side as the Sydney Olympics played on the little kitchen TV. 

Back to School (Shopping, that is...)

August is waning, sports practices have started, my teacher friends on FB are back at school preparing and I just realized Ben doesn't have a decent non-screen printed and faded t-shirt to wear for the first day of school besides the one he wore to "graduation" back in May.  What does this mean?  It means a shopping trip is in order!  I don't think I am unique when I get the urge to back to school shop this time of year, even though it's been eleven years since I left college and eight since I had my last year of grad school.  And no, I didn't exactly school shop the way I did in elementary and high school for college but it is always hard to resist the fall displays and one of my grandmas always send some cash my way for school shopping which was the perfect amount to buy a pair of jeans or shoes. 

School shopping was so fun when I was a child, back when you actually had to buy a full wardrobe of clothes every fall because nothing fit from the year before.  I remember going to JCPenney and loading up my arms with various Arizona Jean Co. brand clothes with some Levis thrown in and hitting the dressing room.  When I started transitioning from the girls department to the juniors sizes there were trips to the "mature" stores Maurices and Vanity.  There was no online shopping, Old Navy or Kohl's and Target and Walmart were a bit too chintzy for school clothes at the time.  Scheels did not yet have its extensive youth sections and only really carried mesh shorts and jerseys. The "mall stores" like Children's Place, American Eagle and Carters were not around yet.  The main choices were JCP, Macy's (aka Dayton's and THE place to get trendy brands like Guess, Tommy Hilfiger, E.N.U.F. and Bum Equipment) and Herbergers.  The school shopping haul, along with some school team clothing, would be the clothes I would wear on a weekly rotation until Christmas came around which was usually when I outgrew my jeans anyway. 

Speaking of those old trendy brands, I tried to find some pictures of E.n.u.f. and BUM Equipment clothes and there isn't much out there on The Googles.  This was the best I could do. 



Even the Internet wants to forget they every happened. 

Anyway, I channeled my shopping urge toward the clearance section Athleta, my favorite expensive workout and athleisure store.  It is so expensive that the only option is the sale section unless you feel like buying $70 workout pants and $100 swimming suits.  My mom had this vest from there that I want so I went searching and came upon this cute swimming suit.

I like plaid and windowpane patterns and I like black suits and this one has the gold standard in slimming swim suite design with the black panels on the sides. It also has a cute keyhole thing in the back.  I would never pay $108.00 for it even if I had the money for such nonsense but the clearance price seemed reasonable since I trust the fit of Athleta.  I scrolled down to the reviews to see if there was any feedback about the fit and the first one seemed promising.  The woman wrote..."I am 5'8" (perfect), 140 pounds (Hmmmm sure, close enough), and 70 years old..." WHAT?  A 70 year old has this suit?  Suddenly I wondered what I was thinking.  I'm only 33 after all.  But I decided to order it anyway.  Free returns, after all.  It probably won't fit anyway.  Shopping for swim wear has descended down a depressing slide from, "Hey, this one's cute!  Oh, it fits!" to being pretty darn close to a "Kathy" cartoon.

Now, the Olympics:

First things first,  Ashton Eaton.

I feel like someone needs to remake "The Ten Commandments" and cast this guy as Pharoah. 

He'd be like Pharoah 2.0.  I'd watch him in a loincloth type garment for the time of a full length feature film for sure.

Next...Did everyone see those three American runners sweep the hurdles last night?

Can you imagine anything better than that?  I can't help but grin every time I see these ladies! I can imagine these three, as the years go by, getting together occasionally and always sharing the bond of winning together at the Olympics in 2016.  And Nia Ali there has a kid.

Whenever I hear about an Olympic athlete who has a kid (and I refer to the women since their body had to actually have the kid...if the men have kids that's great too but it's not the same...) I immediately take an interest in her.  What would that be like? 

I am a Dana Vollmer fan too.  That's a really young baby.  I saw a story about her and he's 17 months old.  There was footage of her swimming with him and I was melting.  It was so cute. 

Syncronized swimming has been shown on TV more now that regular racing swimming is over.  This is a sport we only see on TV once every four years and I forgot how weird it is.

This is on right now as I type.  I don't remember there being a dance routine on the deck of the pool.  Seriously, though, people mock it but I challenge them to tread water upside down with their arms.  I've tried it and I don't see how it's possible and I'm a proven water treader from my lifeguarding days.  I can do it for a long time and with legs only and while holding a weight. Doing it upside down is no easy task.  Synchronized swimming must take some major strength and training.  It's not just about the waterproof makeup and hair pieces.

Only a few more days!  Waaahhh!  At least new TV shows will be starting soon! 

Weekend Recap and Olympic Recap

So...I just spent several minutes writing and decided to upload a picture from my Blogger app on my phone and somehow deleted everything I wrote but the pictures are still here.  I don't have time to rewrite it so...in summary...

Milo can finally stand up so we can be outside without him crawling into the rocks or me having to haul baby holding equipment out on the deck.  He loves the water table.

Yes indeed, he loves the water table. He gets his clothes wet.

Allan watches like a creep out the window.

Ben likes to play with him.

We saw baby Alice this weekend and Milo kept trying to climb on her in this chair.

The other kids got to hold her.  Whew!  Now I'm caught up to where I left off, which was the beginning of my Olympic commentary.  That's more interesting anyway, I think. 

Over the weekend we were at my parents' house and I tried to catch as much Olympic action as possible.  My sister and I were talking about the neon yellow shoes all the athletes are wearing.  They wear one pair for casual wear and on the metal stand and the track stars are wearing a style that is neon yellow with a pink ombre effect on the back. 

The casual shoes...

The performance shoes.

Well, Nike's evil plan worked and we decided we want them.  The casual shoes are $130 and who knows about the performance shoes. 

Well, I just got new $100 Nikes for Christmas so I know I won't be getting more new ones.  I am on a 2-3 year rotation for workout shoes.  However, my previous pair is quite similar to the Olypmic ones in that they are a neon color and have a white sole and a soft, mostly mesh body.  They got really filthy earlier this summer because I wore them to hoe our pumpkin patch for two days in a row but I put them in the washing machine and now they are bright and new looking again!

Yes, this is the picture that I decided to add that caused me to lose my writing.  So...worth...it.

Did anyone see that Chinese woman get proposed to after she was on the metal stand for winning a silver? 

This is the most awkward thing...I know there are cultural differences in how much emotion we show but I feel like she wasn't really happy about his timing.

I have been watching gymnastics and the night of the vault finals I randomly observed that you rarely see athletes from India even though they have a huge population.  Then, a few minutes later, a gymnast from India named Dipa Karmaker is being introduced!  And she was in third place and poised to get a bronze metal...but guess who hadn't had her turn yet...Simone Biles.  So we all know how that turned out.  I was hopeful for Karmaker though.  Of course our commentators were pretty much saying without saying that she should be lucky just to be there but sometimes they need to just be quiet.

Also regarding gymnastics, just last night I watched the beam finals and a gymnast from the Netherlands, Sanne Wevers, did the strangest routine on the balance beam and ended up winning the gold medal in that event.  I don't know much about what makes a routine special or difficult but there was something fascinating about this one. 

Nothing against Simone and my favorite gal Laurie, but Sanne was awesome.

I'm already missing swimming which ended on Saturday, I think.  We will all remember Michael Phelps' last race and of course, gold medal.  I personally enjoyed watching the less famous swimmers in all their glory, including this tearful young man from earlier in the week:

Oh, Ryan Held, you stole my heard with your earnest display of overwhelm! 

OK, I have kids whining and pestering me for attention so that is all I have time for although I could go on all day. One final observation...apparently I have a problem remembering that "medal" is not the same as "metal" and I keep writing metal. 

Everything But the Red Tomatoes

It's been late this year compared to past years, but the garden is in full production mode.  As with most years there have been triumphs....and also some big disasters.  Let's begin, shall we? 

I am starting with a triumph because it's really cute and also because it happened to be the first picture uploaded and I don't feel like rearranging. 

This is a little cactus plant that Justin dug up from a field when he was working in a warmer climate than here.   He and a few co-workers brought them home in gas station coffee cups, complete with their preferred red soil.  The flowering time on these is fleeting and for a few years it didn't flower at all.  I had to go back in the blog archive to find an old picture of its first summer with us.

Haha, oh man, it is the cutest thing...Look at how small it was with its one flower and it's little baby cactus next to it!  Now the baby has its own flowers and there is another baby on the side!  We keep intending to put it in a bigger pot.  Hopefully that won't traumatize it.  It probably won't.  This thing survives indoor winters with minimal sunlight and it also survived a journey in a cup to get here. 

Now, on to the biggest disaster of gardening I have seen in awhile...

No, those weren't picked up off the ground after rotting for days, and no they weren't burned in a fire.  Those are red bell peppers and I picked them off the plant like that.  Rotton on the plant.  Yuck.  Apparently, it could be bacterial blight, it could be blossom end rot, it could be inconsistent watering and moisture.  It is very disappointing.  At least the problem seems to only be affecting the colored peppers.  The green bells are looking robust, although I thought they were ripe so I picked several of them  and tried to eat one.  It ended with me spitting it in the sink because it was definitely NOT ripe.

The following is not exactly a disaster but it's not a success either.  That tall plant is a sunflower seed Ben brought  home from preschool this spring.  It was in the house for a few weeks and didn't sprout but we planted it outside anyway and it started to grow!  It amazes me how sunflowers follow the sun.  Even as a tiny little thing it would turn toward the sun in the morning and follow it all day.

I have been looking forward to the day we wake up and see a big yellow flower facing the sun but I am afraid that day may not come.  You may notice the yellow leaves on the lower part of the stem.  It has been losing leaves one by one starting from the bottom and there are brown spots working their way from leaf to leaf.  I'm sure this is some kind of disease or nutrient deficiency and there are probably agricultural chemicals and fertilizers that would save it if it were one of a field of thousands.  I thought I better take his picture while it is still with us and looking kind of healthy. 

The rest of the garden besides the peppers is productive.  This is one day's harvest of cucumbers after a weekend away.

This year it is cucumbers more than zucchini taking over the countertop and refrigerator shelves.  Like tomatoes, onions, and peppers, I am the only one who eats cucumbers.  I really need to visit my neighbors because I can't eat seven cucumbers in a week and that was just from one day!  I picked another one today and there were several more in the fridge already! 

Thee tomato plants are like trees.  The are as tall as I am and bursting out of their cages.  They have many tomatoes but they have been slow to ripen.  I finally picked a few last week and this week.  We picked some unique ones this year.  One plant is these...

They are called lemon drops or something like that. 

The biggest plant is a cherry tomato and I forgot what kind they were until this morning...

They are "chocolate" tomatoes!  When ripe they are a brownish-purple color.  They taste pretty good although not much different than red ones.  I'm kind of obsessed with their beautiful color.

I have been obsessing over the Olympics the last few days and I am fighting off feelings of resentment constantly because I can't really enjoy any of it without whining kids interrupting me.  They have no idea what is going on and they could care less that it is only on every four years.  They want to watch "Paw Patrol" or whatever brain numbing show they feel like and that's all there is to it. Yesterday I tried to watch in my room while sorting clothes from my overstuffed closet and after thirty seconds I heard them running down the hall to find me. At night I record prime time coverage but I don't get to settle down and watch it in peace until after 9:00 p.m. which causes me to stay up way too late.  Oh well, I guess.  It could be worse.  By 2020 they will be old enough to be interested.  The first Olympics I remember caring about was Lillehammer, Norway in 1992 when I was nine. Even though I feel Olympic deprived I am still finding many things to delight over so I think I will share one thing or a few in each post instead of a long one at the end because I probably will forget everything if I wait. 

Last night was the women's gymnastics team final and of course the U.S. won gold seeing as they have the "best gymnast on Planet Earth" on the team according to the commentators.  Those people can be a bit dramatic.  Between swimming, gymnastics, volleyball, diving and a few other sports I have watched (I highly recommend men's water polo for those fleeting minutes when the men are out of the water!  Aye Carumba!) I have noticed and enjoyed the exhuberant smiles and attitudes of team U.S.A.  It seems like the pressure has overcome some of their opponents and during gymnastics it was rare to see a smile from another team.  I know part of this is cultural and I am glad my culture still makes sports fun even during serious times like the Olympics!

Milo is 10 Months Old

As of yesterday, Milo turned ten months old (and his cousin Claire turned two!).  Ten months is a magical age of extreme cuteness mixed with ever increasing mobility and capacity for destruction.  I still laugh when I think of the following article which I have added the link to...A 10 month old's Christmas list.  It contains just what you would imagine...dust bunnies, cords, glasses and garbage. 

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/holidays/2013/12/a_baby_s_christmas_list_and_letter_to_santa.html

Milo spent the weekend at the lake, where he went in the water for the first time.  I thought about it and I don't think he has been swimming yet.  I am surprised by this since I love swimming and the other two had their first lake/pool experience at a younger age.  We don't really even have a properly fitting swimming suit for him.  I found some trunks that seemed like they would fit but when I stretched the waistband the elastic disintegrated.  That will happen with 2012 era hand me downs that were already hand me downs before that!  The fish suit he is wearing is a 3-6 month one and it fit OK although the waist was tight.  I ended up having him swim in his swimming diaper.  His rash guard shirt is an 18 month shirt.  It was between that and a three month one which wouldn't even fit over his head. 

Just like he is about everything else, he was fine with his ill fitting swimwear.  He was actually quite happy about it.

He was also quite happy about the water.  I feel bad that I haven't had him swim a long time ago.  He loved to float in this little boat. 

He was ready to dive overboard!

We figured out that he was happiest when he was reclining instead of upright with his legs in the leg holes.  The boat retained a small amount of water because of the leg holes so he kicked and splashed.

I love how happy he is...it's like a constant cuteness display around here. 

It's so fleeting...I know what is coming...toddler B.S. We could use more of that around here...I don't listen to enough whining and fighting. 

August Reverie

It's already August which sure feels crazy.  Although August is still definitely summer I sometimes think if it as fall because many fall oriented things in my life used to begin in august.  The main one, of course, was school and also, in my teen years, high school sports.  Girls basketball was played in the fall in my day in this state and I will never forget the heat of those old gyms and locker rooms on the Class B circuit.  Air conditioning was not in the budget when those place were built.  A few blocks away the football team was enjoying their own form of torture in the hot sun.  I don't know which would have been worse...stuffy humid gym or hot sun.  Either way, when the second or third week of August rolls around and a former player notices a certain date on the calendar (usually the 10th, 12th, something like that) they can't help but travelling back in their memories to those days.  I think we can all say that we kind of miss them although we also don't want to repeat them! 

In addition to school and sports, August was usually when wheat harvest was happening and also most of my friends (seriously) had birthdays in August.  There was one week where two friends had birthdays on the 16th, one was on the 17th, one was on the 18th and one, my BFF, was on the 20th!  Then another was on the 24th.  I pretty much lived out of a suitcase and spent the whole week sleeping in my friends' tents, campers and basements after days at the water park, bowling alley or movie theater.  It was certainly fun and busy. 

These years, my August days are pretty monotonous and it has been so hot and humid.  Mostly humid...every time we are outside I fantasize about the year that will come when I can actually take all the kids to the pool and not have to be hovering and watching them all so I can enjoy the pool too.  I also want to take an icy plunge into the pool of my youth which was nothing fancy compared to the jungle gym and climbing wall filled facilities that are everywhere in our city now.  The city pools here will be closing in about a week and it was the same when I worked in Fargo.  Apparently they can't keep them staffed after sports practices start although we had that same routine when I was a teen and no one seemed to care at all that we had practice in the morning before work.  We just filled up our huge water bottles and headed into the sun. Our pool was open until school started at the end of August and was kept up for a week or two after that for school trips and extra hot weekends.  The football team even did water exercise there for conditioning.  I wish my basketball coach had thought that was a good use of practice time! 

Back in June I was at the old pool with my mom and the kids and I went in the office and asked if I could take a picture with my phone of the old picture of the pool that has been hanging in there since I worked there.  This is it. 

I have always been fascinated by this picture.  The pool is exactly the same except that pool house was torn down and replaced in, I think, 2000.  In my youth it was always painted white with blue letters and those glass windows were boarded up and painted and the double doors were boarded with a single door built in. The new one is not nearly as stylish but it has a full roof which makes it kind of damp and stuffy but is probably for the best because, let me tell you, a building with no roof is not fun to clean after being empty all winter.  Birds can really make a disgusting mess over a few months and the leaves really would pile up too.

I'm not sure how old this picture is and no one else ever seemed to know either. That high diving board was a low board when I was a kid in the 90's and 2000's and now it is gone due to insurance and renovation issues (they renovated and had to remove it to get the grant money, I believe, but there is a waters slide now instead) and my dad said their was a high board when he swam there in the 1960's.

I just love digital photo technology.  I never would have thought that I could have this picture for myself but...

Tada!  It is perfect for a bathroom, isn't it?  Now when I am stuck inside because our back deck is too hot for the baby or because a kid is napping or any other reason I can be reminded of the ice cold water of that pool.  It's heated now, which I think I posted about many years ago.  I still can't believe that! 

And now, although it has nothing to do with the rest of this post, here is a picture of Allan faceplanting in a branch of fresh catnip. 

Haha...cats need to dull their senses every once and awhile too...