The Cabin - A Virtual Tour

     Our family cabin is a sacred place where few people are ever invited to come. (Partly because there's not enough space). So this is a rare virtual tour of my favorite place on Earth. When my dad was a kid his dad got this "99 year lease" (or something like that) from the national forest to build a cabin on. So my grandma and grandpa and dad and uncles would go up in the summers and work on the cabin. The first summer they built the foundation. My grandpa always says that Grandma Dangerfield worked her fingerprints off by digging around in all the dirt and rocks up there. The second summer was building the framework and actual cabin. Years and years later they added onto it which I'll show later in the tour. So the above shot is all you can see from the road below. It's the closest cabin to the gate so we feel lucky to have this spot. There are only so many gate keys so if you're having multiple cars coming there's usually someone at the cabin with the key, the people coming in their car have to park at the gate and walk up to the cabin for the key and all the way back to drive their car in. I guess people in farther away cabins just have to plan better :) On all the lower steps you can see in the picture, all the names of the kids in my family (and 2 of my cousins) are etched into concrete at the top of the stone. They're usually so covered in dirt and leaves that you can't really tell though. So then you start walking up the steps and see the cabin, and maybe even my dad carrying logs from the woodpile into the cabin:

When you get around to the front of the cabin it looks like this:

Walk in the front door and you'll see the main living area:

Straight ahead you see into the kitchen (notice the super old ice chest that we use just as a cupboard now, but it's a cool little piece of history. Before they actually got electricity up here they actually had to use it!):

 Turn to the left and you see the living room (and my Dad eating snacks, probably Oreos):

Take a step towards my dad and look to the right and you see down the hallway. Lining the hallway are four twin sized beds (bunkbed style). When I was a kid my assigned bed was the one on the top right. Steve was top left. Adam was bottom left and Jack was bottom right (I could be wrong, I always got the boys' confused). Steve and I used to play up on top all the time and throw pillows over the wall at people sitting in the living room (the walls don't go all the way to the ceiling in this part of the cabin.) The wall with the door you see below used to be the end of the cabin. Then they added the back room on. You'll see it later.  Also notice the picture on the wall to the left, those are drawings of animals at the cabin my dad drew when he was young:

  

Before we go into the next room take a look over your right shoulder and you can see where we were before. That's the dining area (and my mom and brother, Steve) and on the right side of the picture is the front door.  Are you seeing how small this place is? But we love it! :

 

Ok, moving down the hall and opening the door we see this. A queen sized bunk bed. Oh yeah. The one on top is like sleeping in a taco. You better like the person you're bunking with because you're going to be cuddling all night. This is where my older sisters Annie and Jess slept. My parents slept on the lower bunk. That is the only decent mattress in the whole place because it's been replaced. The others all sound like crusty, rusted springs every time you move. Ha:

 From the bedroom you take a right and here's the bathroom. It's only a little scary showering in the aluminum box during a lightning storm....Ok I've feared for my life in this shower. But you get used to it :) I'm just grateful the made the addition of the back bedroom and the bathroom and that we have running water up there now! Some cabins don't and I don't know how they do it! So we love this bathroom even if it does look a little....sketchy. The end. That's the whole cabin! Now you know why we don't bring a lot of people up. We fill it up all by ourselves! And even though the quarters are a little tight (especially now that we're all grown up with spouses and kids to bring up) I love it more than any place on earth! Here are some memories from our last cabin trip.

 So my sister Jess bought this pool for playing up in Utah. Cole was sick for a few days but being in the pool was one of the few things he was ok doing so I busted out Eleanor's swimming suit so she could get in on the action. She actually had fun in it and was splashing a little! Then Cole started splashing and the picture below perfectly captures Eleanor's thoughts on that:

 (Hanging on for dear life until the splashing stopped. Haha.)

Wood chopping is a regular activity at the cabin and we round up all the men in the house and send them out back for Feats of Strength. We all love to watch :)

Big brother, Steve, choppin' them logs:

Vince's turn:

Cole naturally stepped up to be a part of the manly action:

He's a real man child:

Vince tried to man Eleanor up too. Can you see her reaction? "I don't wanna touch it" what a girl :)

Uncle Steve helping her figure it out. "Oh I see now. With the mouth....for eating."

Poor sick Cole hanging out with Grandpa and watching the action

Among the new experiences had at the cabin Eleanor got her first taste of goldfish and loved them!

Loved them so much she wouldn't swallow them....

And started laughing at us laughing at her.  When I cleaned them all out it was about 6 goldfish.

Cabin tradition is that babies have to get a bath in the sink. We have pictures of my and my brother in either side of the sink bathing at the same time. It's a big deal ya know.

She loved it! And I learned the beauties of sink baths. I do it all the time at home now. SO much easier than the bathtub! It's way more contained and a lot easier on my back! Plus it's so cute:

The bunk beds were a fun playground for kiddos. We have a 5 Little Monkeys [jumping on the bed] book that Cole liked so we started saying it when the kids were on the bed. Cole learned how to say "No more monkeys jumping on the bed" too and it was adorable. This picture they're letting Grandpa in on the fun:

Of course the biggest cabin tradition is nightly card games! We used to always play hearts until we all got sick of Dad shooting the moon. Now we play Vince's family favorite, Arthritis. I must also mention that the next biggest cabin tradition is not showering, wearing make up, doing hair, shaving, etc.:

You can see why I made the above disclaimer now (Vince and me):

 Dad and Steve

Mom and Dad:

The cards. Just looking at a pile of cards like this gets me in the mood for a game!:

Yahtzee is the other big game we play. My Grandma Dangerfield always had the best luck and we still have some of her score cards with the big wins on it. This is Steve and his Yahtzee smile:

I got a Yahtzee too!:

Uncle Steve reading comic books to Cole on the bunk beds. What a boy thing to do:

Since Cole was sick we let him watch a lot of Aristocats (which he calls Meow) and Finding Nemo (Fishies). Eleanor really liked it too. I think we need to get an iPad now:

Next big cabin tradition is the tire swing! It's actually the neighbor's swing but most of the time they're not there and they said we could use it when they're gone. When we were kids it was THE favorite activity. It's an old tire on a LONG leather strap around a tree branch. My dad would give us "Moon Shots" by running and throwing us up in the air. We probably got 50 feet off the ground (at least that's how high it seemed when we were kids. It was probably like...I dunno Vince says 7 feet but I still think it was higher):

Eleanor mostly liked watching Cole run into people. Cole had a blast though, even though he was sick:

Eleanor did better in the swing with Daddy:

So the other big tradition of the cabin is over-eating. Which needs to be countered by another cabin less observed tradition of hiking. We went on a few hikes while we were there since I am still trying to lose baby weight (and other weight). We got to take Eleanor with us! She got impatient sometimes, but with enough Cheerios she made it through and we got some exercise:

Even though this doesn't do justice to the magic of the cabin, now you have some idea of where we disappear to every summer. It really is my favorite place in the world. It might have something to do with leaving responsibility (including TV, internet, computers, etc.) behind. Or the fact that family is priority up there (since it's the only thing to entertain you). Or maybe it's the smell of smoke, pine trees, and maple syrup. I don't know what it is, I just love the cabin! I hope we can keep going back as our kids grow up so they can experience it too.

Cooking for One (Baby)

I have ventured into the task of making my own baby food. I don't go organic and I don't do it because I think it's better for my baby and I don't do it because it seems like more fun than buying it from the grocery store shelves. I do it to save money. Plain and simple. So here is a documentation of the process and the calculation of savings. Maybe it will inspire someone else to do the same! In fact, the only reason I thought I could make my own baby food was because I saw pictures of someone else doing it and they made it seem like a good idea. And it is!

It all started by going to Sprouts, the cheap produce store. I bought:

1 lb bag carrots $0.77

Bunch Spinach (about a pound) $0.99

Green Beans .69 lb $1.17

Red Yams (Eleanor's favorite) 2.7 lb $2.67

Golden Delicious Apples 2.75 lb $2.67

Total $8.27

(tax not included)

Then I started washing, peeling, steaming and blending thanks to this little guy:

He did such a good job I named him Eddy. I know, it's a clever name. That's why I told Vince about it. He didn't get it, so I explained it to him. When you turn on a blender it looks like a whirlpool. A little whirlpool in a river is, ready for it? an Eddy. So there you go.

To be time efficient I started by putting the sweet potatoes in the oven at 400 for a full hour and while they were getting nice and soft I started steaming the other veggies and while I was blending one batch I'd start steaming the next. It's like playing Cake Mania veggie style. I felt like a little baby food factory (which is nothing new. Once you start breastfeeding that's basically your default mode of operation). So anyway, I've been saving and washing the baby food containers from the hand-me-downs that my sister gave me (yup, still getting hand-me-downs) and from the baby food I had bought to get started. I like that they're already the right portions of baby food. So when I got everything poured out I got this:

Eleanor's favorites: Sweet potatoes and Mixed veggie (which in this case is green beans, carrots, and spinach, and some are just carrots and spinach. Note to self, more green beans next time). I like the mixed veggies because they get all swirly when you mix them. See?

So it was a total of 29 containers of vegetable baby food. That's enough for roughly two weeks of eating. A few days later I started the fruit!

The golden delicious apples were on sale for $0.97/lb so that's why I got them. They weren't as ripe as they probably should have been, but I haven't had any complaints yet. To do this job I was very grateful for this contraption:

I haven't named him but maybe I should. He was a nostalgic buy right after I got married and thought I had money for this kind of thing. It might be the second time I've ever used it, but boy was I grateful to have it on baby food making day! It peels, cores, and slices your apples into those cool curly-cue apples in the background. When I was my kid I would help my mom do this for making canned apple pie filling. I would love to eat the long curly apple peels like spaghetti.  Back to the process: I boiled the apples and sent them through my trusty side-kick, Eddy. Then it was into the jars (which I had also saved from store-bought baby food):

I tried to be all clever and reseal the jars by putting them in a hot water bath. They didn't seal. I guess they're not made for that. If anyone has done this successfully let me know your trick! So I just tossed them in the freezer instead. But that was 7 1/2 jars of applesauce/baby food. So here are the stats:

29 containers of baby food usually comes 2 to a pack and at the store the day I bought all my produce they were on sale for 9/$10.00. So 29 (or 14 1/2 packages) would have cost $13.05.
The fruit jars were on sale 10/$10.00 so it would have cost me $7.50

Total $20.55

Subtract my actual cost $8.27

For a total Savings of $12.28

That's a 60% savings!! Even though it's more work than picking out a few flavors from the store shelves it gives me such a sense of accomplishment! Look, world! I can cook food for my baby AND save money doing it! It's also kind of a fun way to spend the evening when Vince is working late. And guess what else? She likes it!

Mission Accomplished.

Panic Leads to Ranting

For date night tonight we watched We Bought a Zoo. I loved it! It was so cute! However, it led to several different emotional realizations 1. Desire: I really do want to buy a zoo. It has been my biggest dream since childhood and they made it seem doable which is dangerous. 2. Betrayal: They led me to believe that the zoo this movie is based on is in California. I looked it up feeling so excited that our living in California is going to get us some serious perks, only to have the rug completely pulled out from under me when I found out that the zoo is in England and there is no chance I can patronize it. And 3 (which is why I am writing). Panic: There's a scene when Matt Damon, (of whom Vince asked "Is he hot?" to which I responded "Matt Damon?! Are you seriously asking that question?" He knows better now), is looking at pictures of his dead wife and the memories come alive and he watches his wife and kids run around as if he's really there. At this point in the movie I moved from small empathic tears for a (somewhat) fictional character to bawling my eyes out like some kind of crazy person because it made me realize one of my biggest fears that has cropped up since becoming a mother, which is what this whole post is about.

I am scared to death of forgetting what it's like to be a mom to my baby. I know I will always be her mom and I know she'll grow up and things will change and a lot of things will even be better. But it is this very particular time of life that has been my goal for so long. Being a stay-at-home mom with my one baby. Just her and me all day long. It's exactly what I wanted and it's exactly what I have. But now I'm scared that it's such a fleeting period of time that it's going to go away in the blink of an eye and I'll miss it and won't be able to remember a thing. That's why I take so many pictures. That's why I use Facebook as my journal to document everything she's doing. That's why I worry that those things won't be enough. I don't trust my own memory to keep track of all these things for me. I know when Eleanor is grown up and changed that I won't have her little two-toothed face to hold in my hands and giggle at me. She's going to change and get old and one day she'll say she hates me and I'll know that she's exaggerating and she'll get over it and that I'll think of these days and wish I could remember more. Since I found out I was having a girl I've been afraid of that day. Probably because I was a girl and I know what it's like being a teenager. I'm sure a lot of this stems from my "mommy issues" too, but that's a different story. I know I can try harder to get more pictures, make more journal entries, get more moments on video, but even with all of that it's just trying to catch moonbeams in a jar and I'll never be able to capture the entire experience to keep with me forever. I guess I'll just have to trust my memory for this lifetime and wait for the next life when we have a perfect remembrance of things so I can enjoy this time again. Until then, I'll just make the most of what I have right now and live by one of my favorite (and becoming more and more favorite) quotes:

"Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened." - Dr. Seuss

Even though I'm crying now, when I wake up tomorrow it will all seem like silly nonsense and I'll just keep living my days as normal and trying to be a good mom and taking lots of pictures. But these realizations will come again and I think a lot of parents probably have similar thoughts (at least I hope I'm not the only emotionally unstable one) so it feels good to get these feelings out and documented. This is part of the parenthood experience, too, after all. So there's my rant. I hope some of you have learned or remembered something about the burden of motherhood. I love it so much.

Eleanor Summary

Newborn baby Eleanor

1 Month old showing off smiling for the first time

2 Months old at Christmas time!

3 Months old living in Pullman

4 Months old in California

5 Months old in our new house

6 Months!! And sitting up so well

7 Months old and so excited!

Well I hope you enjoyed watching Eleanor grow. I realized the other day that I hadn't posted anything since my due date. Woops! So in review, since that day Eleanor was born, we moved to Pullman, WA with my parents while Vince studied for the bar, then we moved to Mission Viejo, CA. Vince passed the bar and is now working at Smith Campbell in Santa Ana. I love being a mom and it's everything I ever wanted! Eleanor is amazing and has learned how to roll over, sit up, crawl, and get up on her knees and she has also broken her first tooth through the gums (as of today!) She loves laughing, getting tickled, knocking over block towers, and being held by her parents. We love her so much and she is such a miracle to have in our family! So now you know what's been going on the last 7 months or so :)

Due Date!

Well here we are at 40 weeks and Baby (we're still planning on naming her Eleanor) is still safely in tact! I'm pretty good at being pregnant now so I don't really mind. I'm still really comfortable and everything is going smoothly so I'm in no hurry. I AM really excited to meet my little baby though! I just know it's going to be a lot harder learning how to be a mom than sitting around and waiting. We're just praying that she'll make up her mind to come before I have to be induced.

I've been studying Hypnobabies for the labor and delivery and I'm feeling really good about it! I just listen to tracks for a half hour every day and do my own practice of going into hypnosis and I'm feeling confident about having this baby! I know a lot of people who do Hypnobabies still get an epidural but it's great coping for the whole time before you get the epidural. I feel like when people plan to get an epidural the whole time they don't really have a plan for what happens before the epidural and when they start getting those contractions they panic and cry and just have to suffer through it. With Hypnobabies you focus on staying completely relaxed and calm and that sounds way better to me! After my friend gave me the whole program to borrow I started doing some research on the medical journal websites I used so much while I was in school. They've done studies on people using hypnosis as pain relief and found that it works as well as any other pain killer. In fMRIs of people doing hypnosis they found that there is actually an area in the brain (the thalamus - it acts like grand central station for all signals entering and exiting the brain) that is actually inactive during hypnosis used to block pain. That means that the pain signal (nociception) isn't even getting to your conscious brain. Isn't that awesome!? After I read that I was really excited to train my brain to be that awesome. You can actually use hypnosis to stop pain for anything not just labor! They said that people who used it for migraines were able to stop migraine pain in 15 seconds! I've never had a migraine but I know it can take people out of commission for days! If I were one of those people I'd get to a hypnotherapist ASAP. So anyway, I'm pretty excited to put all my practice into action! I'm hoping to make it all the way without an epidural but I guess we'll see how well my practicing has worked. My friend had a completely pain free delivery! That's pretty uncommon just because people don't practice as much as they should. But even when people do experience pain it's much less than it would be otherwise. I think the best part of it is that it keeps you focused on being relaxed and comfortable and not panicking and making things worse for yourself. Enough of my rant on hypnosis, the point is I would recommend it to anyone having a baby whether you want to be medicated or not!

The nursery is done, the hospital bags are packed, all our major items are purchased! I'm feeling ready to bring home a baby! My mom was going to fly down here from Indiana (where she was going to be helping my sister with her baby) but my sister went 2 weeks early so Mom is home now. I was able to convince her to cancel her flight and drive with the whole family down here so I can see everyone. I'm especially excited to see my nephew, Cole, who just turned a year old on the 12th. I wish I could meet my NEW nephew, Clark (who was born Sept 23) but I'll have to wait until Christmas when we both go back to Washington. It'll be nice to have my mom here to help with things though. This weekend we're trying to clean up what we can so it's ready for visitors but I know it'll be nice to have my mom here to help out with all of that. And cooking! I already don't have energy for cooking. It's a lot more fun when you have money to buy good food to cook. As it is, I'm a pretty big fan of mac n cheese with hot dogs and broccoli in it :)

Moral of the story: everything on our side is ready! Now we're just waiting for Eleanor to be! I'm bad at blogging but we'll get pictures up on facebook as soon as we can and I'll blog it all later :) Wish us luck!

Vacations, Homecomings, and more Pregnancy!

We're back! I still can't believe we survived the summer working in California and living in a hotel! Let's just say I won't be excited for a "night away" at a hotel for a long time! We drove back to Utah August 13 and dropped off some stuff in our house (so nice to be back in Provo and NOT staying in someone else's place) then promptly drove to Washington on the 15th.

We stayed in Pullman (my hometown) for a week and it was a lot of fun to see my family, especially my nephew, Cole, who is HUGE and super cute! My sister threw me a baby shower while I was there and it was a lot of fun! It's always nice to see old friends and remember the old life I had so long ago :) Things are so different now! It was harder to remember I was pregnant while I was there. I feel like when I go home I should be in high school again or something! We got a lot of good stuff at the shower and I'm feeling way more prepared to have this baby! Especially in the clothing department. Somehow I ended up getting a lot of sleepers! They're all different sizes so it spreads out pretty well and they're all really cute too so I'm not complaining! It was just the prevalent gift from that shower. Isn't it funny how those things go in groups? For our wedding we got probably a dozen different sets of towels! We'll see if the trend continues at the next baby shower. Haha.

Anyway, the week there went well and on Saturday August 20th we drove BACK to Provo for the weekend. My parents and sister's family also drove down that weekend on the following Monday we all met up at our family cabin (15 miles out of Kamas, UT) to stay there for the week. It was nice to be there and have a little extra time with family while I wasn't trying to do a ton of projects and get ready for a baby shower :) Relaxing is exactly what the cabin is made for so it was lots of fun. Cole and our dog, Nyx, became good friends but I think Nyx has decided that babies aren't as interesting as she initially thought. That's good news for our baby! She might make it to a year old without getting her face licked off!

My oldest sister, Annie, was able to fly in for a couple days on Friday and Saturday. The picture is of her and me showing off the baby bellies! The weird thing is, the whole time she was there I kept thinking how much bigger she was than me until we took this picture. I guess I just don't feel that pregnant when I look down or in the mirror. But man! In pictures I look huge! In the picture she is at 34 weeks and I'm at 32. I can't believe we're going to be having babies so soon! I hope our baby likes playing with both her boy cousins! She'll have enough girls on Vince's side of the family, she can handle some boys from mine :) We did a lot of fun shopping at Deseret Book and Seagull Book for baby board books and things like that. I wanted to buy everything! I only bought a couple but Mom and Dad were nice enough to get us some "Christmas presents" and fund a lot of the reading I'll be doing for my baby :) But then Annie left and the cabin week was over.

Well, we're back for realsies this time! Most of my family is back in Washington and we're in our apartment. It was my first day really feeling like a stay at home wife (/mom-to-be) even though I have been retired for two weeks now. Good thing I had a lot to do! Luckily, my little brother, Adam, is staying with us for the week before he returns to BYU Idaho on Monday so he could help me with some heavy lifting. We had bags and bags of food left over from the cabin trip, all the boxes we had dropped off from previous weekends at home, lots of garbage to clean up, and some basic cleaning to do. I tackled the downstairs today to try to make it livable, which meant moving a lot of things upstairs and into closets and just trying to get things out of the way :)

I also bought a rocking chair that I found on KSL! It was $22 (I gave them $25 because it was totally worth it) and I'm really excited! We'll have to post pictures later, but we're going to be refinishing it and a dresser to put in the nursery. I can't wait! But the nursery is the next big project. Bleh. It still has stacks and stacks of our things in boxes and bins that I have to go through. A lot of it will stay in boxes since we'll be moving in December or February so we probably won't need a lot of it. Hopefully by the end of the week we'll have everything in place and be nearly ready for the baby to move in! I still can't believe it!

The last big event was getting our last snow cones of the summer (unless we can find some late-closing booths around town). We'll miss you, Snow Cones. You've been good to us.

Vince is in his second week of school now and we'll finally start being able to settle in a normal schedule. I'm looking forward to that. And also seeing some friends once we get things into better order around here! Buckle up stay-at-home-mom friends! We'll be seeing a lot of each other if I have anything to do with it! I can't wait to be one of you!