''Squad Landing''

Papa Clint (My Grandfather) has given me $100 to buy miniatures. I'll show you them now.

The black model mom might get me. The others I'm getting for
sure. The bulky one with the books is a librarian.













The one with a nasty looking cannon is the Techmarine Thunderfire cannon.
At the bottom is the assault squad.
The black one again is the assault chaplain.

Celebration

Today is our 11th wedding anniversary. Since I'm in Utah, but Clint's still in New York, we can't do anything together. So I decided to celebrate by coloring the children. Why not? It's fun, out of the ordinary, and a great thing to do on a special summer day.
(Isaac and Claire colored his arms while Jacob was getting his done. I think if I hadn't put the body crayons away, he'd be completely covered by now. Which would be fine as long as he didn't touch any fabric or upholstery.)

Wood trim

All of the wood trim in the upstairs part of our house has been painted white. There is white semi-gloss and then, in some places, that has been painted over with flat white, using rollers. If my painting friend Jen has taught me anything, it's that you can't paint flat over semi-gloss. And who uses rollers instead of brushes on wood trim and paneled doors?

In any case, I've been looking at our trim closely. At the very least, it would need to be repainted to be consistent. But in our bedroom at least, there are only those two layers. And the varnished wood underneath hadn't been sanded before the initial coat of paint, so it's cracking in places and peels off easily.

So I peeled it off of the inside of our transom window. After I sand and refinish it, I should look pretty good. There's a lot of trim in here. I don't think I'll get done anytime soon. But it's a nice change from working in the yard.

Off the Floor!

When we moved to New York, I looked at the staircase and the narrow hallway and asked, "Can you get a queen sized bed up here?"
"Oh, yeah, of course, no problem," the landlord assured me.

After forty minutes struggling, my team of Russian movers gave up.
"You either have to take down the banister or you take the box spring, cut it in half and fold it."

Sorry shape though the banister was in, we weren't allowed to remove it. And I wasn't about to cut my box spring foundation in half. So the next time I saw the landlord, I told him that the movers had not been able to get the box spring upstairs.

"Oh, that's no problem. What you have to do is, you take the box spring, you cut it in half and fold it."

I was beginning to think everyone on Long Island was a little crazy. But as my sad little mattress sat on the floor, making my bedroom look as tacky as only a mattress on the floor can, the "cut it in half and fold it" idea became more and more appealing.

So my brother-in-law came to visit with a hand saw. We took the shrink wrap cover off the foundation so we could perform our surgery. And it turns out that our box spring had 1/2 inch metal rods going through it. Even if we cut the wood frame, there was no way we could bend the metal. And if we could bend it (and the metal grid on the top), there would be no way to get it flat again.

Our box spring foundation, of necessity stored in the garage, was ruined before we could move away. Without the box spring, we had no use for the metal bed frame, so we gave it away. I complained though a pregnancy spent sleeping on the floor. (Sleeping wasn't the problem. It was the getting up.)

Now we've moved away from New York. And again we had only a mattress on the floor of our new bedroom. Until today.

Today my sister-of-awesomeness Cait and her pickup-driving friend Jared went to SLC and picked up a Pottery Barn platform bed I found on the KSL classifieds. It's a platform bed, so no need for boxspring (although if we ever wanted to add one, we could). It's less than getting an IKEA bed, and far more sturdy. And best of all, I no longer have a mattress on the floor!

Poison Control

As I was installing a chain lock on the back door to prevent Isaac from escaping, I heard a scream of shock and pain. In the laundry room, he had climbed up on the diaper pail and gotten at the oxyclean stain remover spray on top of the dryer. And Isaac had squirted it straight into his face, in his left eye.

So I grabbed him up and held the struggling little guy over the kitchen sink and sprayed water in his face, mostly the left eye, but also the right for good measure. After a few minutes he was soaked and shivering (ever try to flush a toddler's eyes for 15 minutes?) and fighting to get free. I had Claire bring a couple of bath towels. I stripped tiny tot and wrapped him in the towel and stuck him back under the water, this time with arms securely pinned to his sides.



When the fifteen minutes were finally up (with water shot in his mouth for good measure, in case he ingested any) I wrapped him up in a dry towel and called the nurse hotline, who immediately sent me on to poison control. 1-800-222-1222, in case any of you were wondering. By then Isaac was exhausted and crooning to me. But his eyes look good, no redness or swelling. (They were puffy and red when I started the water flushing treatment. At least one was. I was moving too fast to be as observant as I probably should have been.) So the lady at poison control praised my quick action and will be calling back a couple of times to check up on Isaac.

As I type this now, about 40 minutes after the first scream, he's asleep next to me, still wearing nothing but a towel. I only hope that the treatment wasn't so traumatic that he forgets that the culprit was the nasty stuff inside the spray bottle.

Our Home

So here's the view of our little house from 3rd South. There used to be heart gingerbread trim on the porch and porch rails with heart cutouts. Many thanks go to my brother-in-law Brandon for demolishing those for me. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

You can see the young privet hedge that goes along the sidewalk. It goes around most of the property's circumference. We need to weed, dig out, and mulch the entire thing. Clint got a couple of yards done while he was here, but we still have a long way to go.

We love the front door of the house. I especially like the carved sunburst panels in the center. The sellers made the stained glass window. It needs a new coat of varnish or some kind of protective layer. And we need to get the deadbolt lock keyed so we can use it more.

Settled in

We have moved to Provo and are mostly settled into our new home here. It's a cute 1904 Dutch colonial close to downtown. We can walk to BYU campus or the Provo Towne Centre mall in less than half an hour. We have a lot of work to do fixing the exterior and landscaping, but we're excited about it.

Here is the archway between the entry hall and the living room. I love the way my chairs from Texas match the wood of the arch.


The living room, as seen from the dining room. We've since hung the Dali pictures. I liked them down with the Zapotec rugs, but Isaac couldn't leave them alone.


The bookshelf fits in the dining room area. The dictionary is close for mealtime discussion reference.


Claire in the backyard, drawing the house. As you can see, we have a lot to do, but we're happy that we have so much space to work with. And the hot dry Utah air is better than the little electric clothes dryer.


You can see Claire and Isaac in the back room breakfast/artwork area. We can put up a gate so Isaac doesn't disturb messy art projects or board games. I like the cool old sink, but we need to strip and refinish it.


The opposite side of the room is my weaving area. Since this picture, I've also unpacked my yarn and other weaving/knitting supplies.


Then we have the kid's playroom upstairs. There is a desk in the corner across from the futon, so when Clint moves out at the end of August, we'll put his big computer on that for family movie watching.

And then there's the kids' bedroom. I love the spindle beds from Texas. Isaac's little metal Ikea bed extends to a twin. We are thrilled that he sleeps on it by himself all night.



So there's the brief and incomplete tour of our new home! Now that we're in, and Clint's visit is ending, we can start posting about our new life here in Utah valley.