I’m teaching Eleanor how to knit mittens on four needles. It’s actually easier than making a plain ol’ scarf — and way more exotic (to her). Who’d like a pair?
Eleanor has always been very interested in textile crafts. Last Christmas she made potholders for just about everyone she knew. She’s discovered string games and loves weaving big loops of string around her fingers to make different shapes.
Knitting seems like a no-brainer. And we started her off with a little doll-sized scarf about 1 1/2 years ago, but it hasn’t been a hit. Let’s admit it: scarves are boring. Then I found this book called Sunny’s Mittens on Amazon.
It’s a picture book about a girl learning to knit mittens under the tutelage of her Nana. The illustrations are SO 80s and the text is a touch awkward, but it does an excellent job of explaining Swedish “Lovikka” mittens to a child-adult team, explaining what the child can do alone, what tricky bits the experienced knitter should do, and hints for making the knitting easier.
I was so excited that I went out and bought some wool yarn (you have to use 100% wool, as you felt the mittens at the end). The only skein the yarn shop had was massive, but it was a good price, so I decided that I’ll make mittens for other kids when Eleanor gets done with hers.
The shopgirl at the yarn shop wound the skein on her machine for me. This is what it looks like . . . Eleanor calls it “The Wheel.” I included the plastic cup for scale.
Last night Brian graduated from his residency program!
We ate delicious food at the Grand America and only three people jumped up in the middle of the ceremony to watch the Transit of Venus. Scientists rule.
Just for the record, that’s 4 yrs med school + 3 years Ph.D. + 1 year fellowship + 3 years residency = 11 YEARS OF GRAD SCHOOL. OVER!!
In the interest of full disclosure, I must admit that two of the people who ran out to see the Transit of Venus were me and Brian. BUT — there was one other scientist who came along and he had his own solar viewers in his shirt pocket. See? Brian and I aren’t the nerdiest people in the universe! We’re obviously in a tie with that guy!
I also have to mention that the food at the Grand America included salmon with a honey-lavender glaze, which was unusual and delicious.
Brian and I put a gallon of ice cream on the counter. We told the kids it would take about 20 minutes for it to soften enough to be scoop-able. They obviously thought that would take too long — five minutes later, we found the children had opened the ice cream and were hammering it with a meat tenderizer in order to soften it.
The crazy thing is, it worked!
For the record, it was Farr’s Brownies on the Moon, which is just like Rocky Road, only with little brownie chunks instead of nuts. One of my favorites, so I don’t blame them for being proactive about this.
My sister, Liz, decided to make an extended trip to Utah this summer, and my mom made it a point to get a new family group portrait taken a.s.a.p. Why? Because the old portrait (from December 2010) has my brother’s ex-girlfriend in it.
What? IT’S THE TRUTH.
Anyway. Don’t we clean up well?
The photographer said she “only had to swap out 6 of the heads.” Which made little phantom spiders do a fox trot on my spine.
Getting ready to go to my very last children’s literature pie night: a group of librarians, teachers, writers, agents, etc. who get together now and then to talk books and eat pie. *sigh* It’s been wonderful having these witty, intelligent people in my life the last few years — people who care deeply and thoughtfully about books and young readers. Pie away!
Have I mentioned Kidlit Pie Night before? It began when a school librarian named DaNae and I met in the comments section of a post on the influential children’s literature blog, A Fuse #8 Production. We both felt the need to socialize with other people who were passionate about children’s literature — people who read an appreciated it on a professional level — and decided to meet at a coffeeshop in SLC to eat pastry and talk books.
It was a success! Our group grew, and we later relocated our other meetings to the Marie Callendar’s in Bountiful (since many of our members were from Davis County). Our group included Michelle and Shannon, who are also school librarians; Pam, who taught English at East High; Amy, who is a literary agent (the agent who “discovered” Shannon Hale and now works with Jessica Day George); and Matt, who is an author with Scholastic (and I heartily recommend reading his novel, Icefall).
We would eat pie, drink many glasses of diet Pepsi and gab about books, kids, media, intellectual freedom, and anything else that came to mind until closing time. I quit the library world in 2008 when I moved to Salt Lake, but I still kept up with my professional reading. t was so wonderful to talk with people who “got it,” who understood my skill set and appreciated it, and who brought intelligent, diverse perspectives to the table. Kindred spirits are hard to find.
Now our numbers are dwindling as both Matt and I move away; here’s hoping that we all can find many more nights of pie in the future.
Today is Flag Day. This morning some Boy Scouts were out putting a flag in our front lawn. When Jeffrey saw them, he got so excited that he ran outside to greet them. He then saluted them while marching in place and singing “God Bless America” at the top of his lungs.
I didn’t even know he could sing that song.
See? Cute and concise, right? I haven’t been blogging much in the last three much, but boy howdy have I discovered Facebook.
In the past, I was never much of a FB user (although I had an account); I considered a threat to my time-management skills.
But then my brother announced the end of his engagment via Facebook (without telling anybody in person) and I realized that this is a technology I ought to reluctantly embrace.
To tell the truth, I love the format of the statue update: it’s a great way to record anecdotes about funny things the kids do, or other big events in Casa Camisas land without going on and on forever.
Since it’s the only record I have of the last three months, I’m going to use it to write about everything I’ve missed.
You’re looking for new digs on Salt Lake’s East bench, right? Don’t worry, we’re outside of the neighbor-vs.-neighbor would-be historic district, which I simply call the “Disputed Zone.” So you can tear the whole thing down and build your mini-mansion in style!
(*sob*)
Retro Acres is officially for sale. Future buyer, I hope you appreciate the levels of deep cleaning I had to do for the open house we had a week and a half ago.
Let’s just say that I’m not the most dedicated housekeeper.
Let’s just say that my decorating style could charitably be described as “casual.”
Let’s just say that since the six-week deep clean-a-thon, the first thing most people say when entering the house is “Whoa.”
And I somehow didn’t take pictures of my own perfectly clean bedroom and master bathroom?!?
Jeffrey didn’t think it was right that all the house-for-sale pictures I took had no people, so he sneaked the camera away, and did some sample shots with Eleanor as a model.
Yeah, the one on the bathroom shows off the timeless “paper on the floor” school of interior design.
I’m really, really going to miss this house. Setting aside the 50+ decades of Grandma memories (she lived on her own in the house until she was 99) and the fact that this is where Brian officially proposed marriage to me, this is what’s incredible about this house:
3300 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 2 3/4 bath
A lot that catches the curve of the street, so we have an enormous backyard and front yard — big enough for multiple families to pitch tents for backyard campouts.
Three living rooms. We’ve never had an official purpose for the one in the basement. I call it the Place Where Random Furniture Goes to Die.
But what’s really killer is the location.
Walking distance to the elementary school, the preschool, the library (the LIBRARY!), the grocery store, the park, and a funky collection of cute restaurants, gift boutiques, etc.
5-minute drive away from the zoo, This is the Place Heritage Park, Red Butte Gardens, the art-house movie theater, the best gelato place in town, the Natural History Museum of Utah . . . and BRIAN’S JOB. He could WALK to work whenever the need arose.
Don’t blink. You will NEVER see the boys’ room look this clean again.
10-minute drive away from the University of Utah (which included Tanner Dance, where Eleanor and William took classes), the Utah Museum of Art, various attending university-related amenities, and The King’s English (the only decent indie bookstore in town).
By luck, circumstance, and the seemingly boundless generosity of my in-laws, we managed to land ourselves in an incredible house in one of the most coveted neighborhoods in Salt Lake. It’s been really, really hard to give this up. I’m getting mopey just writing this post; in fact, it’s the reason I’ve been avoiding blogging for the past several weeks. This is healthy, writing about something you hate, right?
When I found out that Brian’s job offer at the University of Utah fell through (oh, yes. They named a salary figure. We thought it was a done deal) I spent multiple occasions sobbing for 2+ hours. Like, wailing-style sobbing. Looking for a new house wound me up so tight that I developed insomnia . . . which lead to more wailing.
That was all back in March, and life goes on. Brian and I spend time making lists of What We Won’t Miss About Utah, and that helps. You know what? It’s going to be okay. Losing Retro Acres is tough.
Just in case you’re one of the few people who haven’t heard the news straight from myself (or in caterwauling updates on Facebook): we are moving to Seattle this summer.
I’ve been reluctant to blog about it, mainly because writing it gives it something of a permanent status that I wasn’t ready to admit to. But I’m over that now. Mainly because we’ve found a place to live. The official closing is tomorrow, so I guess there’s no more denying our future.
May I introduce you to Shoreline House?
Please refrain from pointing out the oddity of purchasing a New England Colonial-style house in the Pacific Northwest. The point is: I have totally fallen in love with this place, and criticizing it just gets my dander up.
And if there’s anything you don’t want to hear about going up, it’s a dander.
(Possibly also mortgage rates.)
We googled the sellers as soon as we found out who they were: why were they selling? Turns out the husband is a Presbyterian minister who got transferred to a church in California. He and his wife also had four kids, which explains why the house is so kid-friendly: hooks and shelves in all the closets, hooks on a mudroom nook in the kitchen (I guess hooks are at a premium when 60% of your family can’t operate a clotheshanger), a giant playfort and tree swings in the backyard, and best of all: eight bedrooms, four bathrooms.
Yeah, eight. The house was listed at six bedrooms, but the sellers were worried that eight would scare buyers away. One of the bedrooms has been converted into an office (with a set of double French doors instead of a regular door), so I guess it’s really seven bedrooms. But still! SEVEN!
The funny thing is that I was so exhausted when I first toured the house (owing to stress-induced insomnia, etc.) that I didn’t even see the pink and purple rooms. I left the house thinking that there were only six bedrooms. It was only through comparing my snapshots with the ones on the realty website that we realized there were more.
Each of our kids can have their own room, and there will still be two left over for play, crafts, and best of all, guests.
There’s actually one more bedroom like the one shown just above, but I don’t have a picture of it. The image on the real estate site shows it with a giant stuffed toy moose on a bed, and William keeps talking about how he wants to play with it when he arrives. We’ve given him a smaller toy moose to make up for it.
William also says he still wants to share a room with Jeffrey, and Brian and I are all about encouraging that impulse (if there’s anyone who could benefit from the socializing effects of a roommate, it’s Jeffrey) so there may be even more space to play around with.
Of course, there are downsides to this house. It isn’t in the city (we were priced out of Seattle proper), it has a very long private drive that we share with three other homes (kind of a hike to the mailbox) and there’s some weirdness going on with the heating system (only half of the upstairs rooms get heat, so we’ll have to fix that).
The addition of walk in closets lead to the creation of this odd little nook of a room in the master bedroom:
(I do admire the seller’s choice in paint color.)
(How will fit a piano and an organ into this room? Stay tuned . . .)
(See that? Gas range! Gas range!)
But I am well pleased with what we’ve found. Best of all: there’s room for guests. SO: plan your cheap vacation to Seattle now! We’re only a 20 minute drive from downtown, and a 5-minute drive from the beach.
Since we had no money or vacation days to spend on a trip for spring break, we did the following instead:
Two lunches with Grandma N. at McDonald’s
One viewing of Mirror, Mirror with Grandma S. (Cute show, go see it)
Seven viewings each of two bootlegged episodes of The Legend of Korra
Innumerable poses in front of innumerable daffodils at Red Butte Gardens
ANNNNNND . . .
One stroller slump
Two animal costumes at the Natural History Museum of Utah
Three kids in one fossil footprint
Four kids in the dinosaur dig sandbox
Three older siblings shouting “NO, KATIE!” whenever Katie put sand in her mouth
Many, many laughing mothers whenever the above happened
One dramatic pose in front of a mural (Eleanor requested that I take this photo of her. She’s very much into “setting a scene”)
Three kids on the zoo carousel. (We didn’t see any animals at the zoo that day. Just the carousel, the train, and the playground. Eh, that’s why we have a zoo membership, right?)
Three kids popping their heads up in the zoo’s prairie dog exhibit (Eleanor was nice enough to give William a boost so he could see out)
One baby next to one giant spider
Four adorable kids in an eggshell . . .
. . . and absolutely NO CHORES for the whole week (excepting piano and math practice). Hooray and Happy Easter!
Casa Camisas 